DNS Contract Job Trends

Domain Name System (DNS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring DNS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 152 131 142
Rank change year-on-year -21 +11 -15
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,001 707 661
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.82% 2.14% 1.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.61% 18.63% 14.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 624 447 423
10th Percentile £283 £219 £225
25th Percentile £412 £380 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £650 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £475 £450
% change year-on-year +6.32% +5.56% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 32 12
10th Percentile £26.20 £16.47 £20.13
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £22.64
Median hourly rate £62.74 £45.00 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +39.42% +87.58% -40.03%
75th Percentile £76.63 £76.59 £32.00
90th Percentile £97.67 £89.17 £47.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.24 £43.25 £27.10
% change year-on-year +50.84% +59.59% -42.95%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

DNS falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 5,104 3,795 4,598
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.30% 11.47% 12.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,949 2,369 2,648
10th Percentile £231 £222 £225
25th Percentile £390 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £490
% change year-on-year +5.56% -8.16% +5.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 425 202 227
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £23.45
Median hourly rate £33.00 £42.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.35% -15.00% -11.49%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £72.72 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -32.94% -25.89% -0.26%

DNS
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DNS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

DNS job vacancy trend in the UK

DNS
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DNS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DNS

DNS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DNS over the 6 months to 26 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DNS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DNS

DNS
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DNS over the 6 months to 26 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DNS within the UK over the 6 months to 26 September 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -27 908 £500 - 939
UK excluding London -16 616 £505 +6.32% 562
London -43 318 £500 -4.14% 439
Work from Home -16 240 £500 - 340
North of England +10 200 £500 +11.48% 113
South East -7 173 £538 +7.50% 176
North West +14 123 £500 +11.48% 78
Midlands -42 107 £450 - 82
South West -6 98 £575 +4.55% 73
West Midlands -42 90 £425 -5.56% 49
Yorkshire -8 63 £500 - 24
East of England -46 44 £475 -13.64% 54
Scotland -3 35 £475 +4.63% 39
East Midlands -4 16 £450 - 32
North East -37 14 £419 +23.16% 15
Wales -4 10 £440 +16.02% 10

DNS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 114 (11.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 91 (9.09%) SharePoint
3 32 (3.20%) Confluence
4 16 (1.60%) Apache
5 14 (1.40%) nginx
6 12 (1.20%) IIS
7 8 (0.80%) Skype for Business
7 8 (0.80%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.50%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
9 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.100%) Apache Spark
11 1 (0.100%) CMS
11 1 (0.100%) Drupal
11 1 (0.100%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.100%) Traefik
11 1 (0.100%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (2.40%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.10%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.20%) Houdini
4 2 (0.20%) NUKE
5 1 (0.100%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.100%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.100%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 15 (1.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.100%) Magento
2 1 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.100%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.100%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 414 (41.36%) Azure
2 201 (20.08%) AWS
3 195 (19.48%) Microsoft 365
4 191 (19.08%) Entra ID
5 81 (8.09%) GCP
6 79 (7.89%) GitHub
7 55 (5.49%) IaaS
8 50 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
8 50 (5.00%) OneDrive
9 47 (4.70%) GitHub Actions
10 42 (4.20%) Azure Monitor
11 39 (3.90%) SaaS
12 31 (3.10%) PaaS
13 27 (2.70%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 25 (2.50%) OpenShift
14 25 (2.50%) Serverless
15 24 (2.40%) Azure Key Vault
16 23 (2.30%) Amazon EKS
16 23 (2.30%) AWS CloudFormation
16 23 (2.30%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 491 (49.05%) DHCP
2 360 (35.96%) Firewall
3 295 (29.47%) TCP/IP
4 279 (27.87%) VPN
5 135 (13.49%) Network Security
6 128 (12.79%) VLAN
7 113 (11.29%) WAN
8 101 (10.09%) SSL
9 87 (8.69%) LAN
10 81 (8.09%) BGP
11 80 (7.99%) Wireless
12 67 (6.69%) HTTP
13 63 (6.29%) BIG-IP
13 63 (6.29%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (5.99%) SAN
15 58 (5.79%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 54 (5.39%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 44 (4.40%) IPsec
18 43 (4.30%) OSPF
19 41 (4.10%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (4.70%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (1.40%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.30%) MySQL
5 12 (1.20%) MongoDB
6 9 (0.90%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.80%) NoSQL
7 8 (0.80%) Power BI
8 7 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
8 7 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
8 7 (0.70%) Redis
9 5 (0.50%) Big Data
10 4 (0.40%) Db2
11 3 (0.30%) MariaDB
11 3 (0.30%) Metadata
12 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.20%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.20%) DynamoDB
12 2 (0.20%) Flink
12 2 (0.20%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 84 (8.39%) JIRA
2 55 (5.49%) Jenkins
3 54 (5.39%) Git
4 39 (3.90%) GitLab
5 13 (1.30%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.10%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.50%) Selenium
9 4 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
10 3 (0.30%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.30%) MSI
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.100%) Locust
12 1 (0.100%) Newman
12 1 (0.100%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.100%) TestCafe
General
1 274 (27.37%) Social Skills
2 117 (11.69%) Analytical Skills
3 83 (8.29%) Finance
4 76 (7.59%) Public Sector
5 56 (5.59%) Banking
5 56 (5.59%) Documentation Skills
6 33 (3.30%) Telecoms
7 25 (2.50%) Investment Banking
8 17 (1.70%) Legal
9 14 (1.40%) Aerospace
10 13 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.20%) Police
12 11 (1.10%) Local Government
13 10 (1.00%) Military
14 9 (0.90%) Front Office
14 9 (0.90%) Manufacturing
14 9 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (0.80%) Law
15 8 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
16 7 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 192 (19.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 165 (16.48%) Network Engineer
3 121 (12.09%) Senior
4 103 (10.29%) Support Engineer
5 84 (8.39%) Cloud Engineer
6 71 (7.09%) Architect
7 50 (5.00%) IT Support
8 48 (4.80%) Azure Engineer
8 48 (4.80%) Platform Engineer
9 47 (4.70%) IT Engineer
10 46 (4.60%) Security Engineer
11 45 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
12 44 (4.40%) Analyst
12 44 (4.40%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 36 (3.60%) Administrator
14 35 (3.50%) Senior Network Engineer
15 33 (3.30%) Cisco Engineer
15 33 (3.30%) Network Security Engineer
16 32 (3.20%) IT Support Engineer
17 31 (3.10%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (21.28%) Terraform
2 44 (4.40%) SAML
3 34 (3.40%) 802.1X
4 33 (3.30%) OAuth
5 30 (3.00%) REST
6 29 (2.90%) LDAP
7 28 (2.80%) ARM Templates
8 26 (2.60%) OpenID
9 20 (2.00%) JSON
9 20 (2.00%) Kafka
10 15 (1.50%) YAML
11 11 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
11 11 (1.10%) OAuth2
11 11 (1.10%) OpenTelemetry
12 10 (1.00%) CSS
13 8 (0.80%) React
14 7 (0.70%) .NET
14 7 (0.70%) Jinja
14 7 (0.70%) Software Packaging
15 6 (0.60%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 128 (12.79%) Data Centre
2 108 (10.79%) PKI
3 76 (7.59%) Onboarding
4 72 (7.19%) Hybrid Cloud
5 54 (5.39%) Management Information System
6 41 (4.10%) Cloud Native
7 32 (3.20%) Replication
8 29 (2.90%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.60%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 23 (2.30%) Clustering
11 21 (2.10%) Linux Command Line
11 21 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (1.60%) Driving Licence
14 15 (1.50%) Security Posture
15 14 (1.40%) Cyber Threat
15 14 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
16 12 (1.20%) Operational Technology
17 11 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
17 11 (1.10%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 487 (48.65%) Windows
2 273 (27.27%) Windows Server
3 229 (22.88%) Linux
4 62 (6.19%) Windows 10
5 46 (4.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 43 (4.30%) Windows Server 2019
7 37 (3.70%) Mac OS
8 30 (3.00%) Unix
9 26 (2.60%) Windows Server 2012
10 25 (2.50%) Ubuntu
11 22 (2.20%) Apple iOS
12 21 (2.10%) CentOS
13 20 (2.00%) Android
14 18 (1.80%) VMS
15 15 (1.50%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (1.20%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.70%) Rocky
17 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.40%) AIX
18 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 263 (26.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 216 (21.58%) Problem-Solving
3 202 (20.18%) ITIL
4 200 (19.98%) Infrastructure as Code
5 172 (17.18%) DevOps
6 164 (16.38%) CI/CD
7 161 (16.08%) Load Balancing
8 153 (15.28%) Migration
9 128 (12.79%) ITSM
10 114 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 108 (10.79%) High Availability
12 107 (10.69%) Agile
13 97 (9.69%) Cybersecurity
14 96 (9.59%) Technical Leadership
15 92 (9.19%) Observability
16 90 (8.99%) Disaster Recovery
16 90 (8.99%) Project Delivery
17 88 (8.79%) Root Cause Analysis
18 87 (8.69%) Platform Engineering
19 86 (8.59%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 276 (27.57%) PowerShell
2 208 (20.78%) Python
3 140 (13.99%) Bash
4 66 (6.59%) SQL
5 51 (5.09%) Bicep
6 20 (2.00%) Shell Script
7 17 (1.70%) ActionScript
8 16 (1.60%) JavaScript
9 15 (1.50%) Go
10 13 (1.30%) Java
11 10 (1.00%) VBScript
12 8 (0.80%) Perl
13 7 (0.70%) Groovy
13 7 (0.70%) TypeScript
13 7 (0.70%) VBA
14 6 (0.60%) VB
15 4 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
15 4 (0.40%) Ruby
16 3 (0.30%) Kotlin
16 3 (0.30%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 386 (38.56%) Security Cleared
2 216 (21.58%) SC Cleared
3 170 (16.98%) DV Cleared
4 84 (8.39%) Degree
5 81 (8.09%) Cisco Certification
6 69 (6.89%) CCNP
7 57 (5.69%) Azure Certification
8 54 (5.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 42 (4.20%) CCNA
10 27 (2.70%) Network+ Certification
11 26 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
12 23 (2.30%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
15 16 (1.60%) CCIE
15 16 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 15 (1.50%) VCAP
17 11 (1.10%) A+ Certification
17 11 (1.10%) MCSE
17 11 (1.10%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (4.00%) SLA
2 22 (2.20%) NIST
3 18 (1.80%) QA
4 17 (1.70%) NCSC
5 16 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.50%) GDPR
7 5 (0.50%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.30%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 451 (45.05%) Active Directory
2 282 (28.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 127 (12.69%) Hyper-V
4 91 (9.09%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (8.39%) vSphere
6 65 (6.49%) Docker
6 65 (6.49%) VMware NSX
7 49 (4.90%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (4.00%) Virtual Desktop
9 20 (2.00%) Firmware
9 20 (2.00%) NFS
10 16 (1.60%) vCloud
11 12 (1.20%) Virtual Servers
12 11 (1.10%) BitLocker
13 9 (0.90%) Postfix
14 8 (0.80%) UAG
15 7 (0.70%) Squid
16 6 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.60%) VMware Workstation
17 5 (0.50%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 147 (14.69%) Ansible
2 123 (12.29%) Kubernetes
3 112 (11.19%) Microsoft Intune
4 83 (8.29%) SCCM
5 68 (6.79%) vCenter Server
6 60 (5.99%) Grafana
7 58 (5.79%) Single Sign-On
8 51 (5.09%) Prometheus
9 42 (4.20%) SCOM
10 32 (3.20%) WSUS
11 21 (2.10%) FortiGate
12 17 (1.70%) Jamf Pro
12 17 (1.70%) NetBackup
13 16 (1.60%) Packer
13 16 (1.60%) Puppet
13 16 (1.60%) VxRail
14 14 (1.40%) Istio
15 12 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (1.20%) Argo
16 11 (1.10%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 408 (40.76%) Microsoft
2 343 (34.27%) VMware
3 182 (18.18%) Cisco
4 127 (12.69%) F5
5 87 (8.69%) ServiceNow
6 53 (5.29%) Citrix
6 53 (5.29%) Google
6 53 (5.29%) Palo Alto
7 51 (5.09%) SolarWinds
8 49 (4.90%) Infoblox
9 42 (4.20%) Splunk
10 40 (4.00%) Juniper
11 38 (3.80%) Red Hat
12 37 (3.70%) NetApp
13 34 (3.40%) Dynatrace
14 33 (3.30%) CheckPoint
15 30 (3.00%) Fortinet
15 30 (3.00%) Zscaler
16 25 (2.50%) Veeam
17 24 (2.40%) CyberArk