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 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 157 134 145
Rank change year-on-year -23 +11 -16
Contract jobs citing DNS 988 699 644
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.81% 2.13% 1.71%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.56% 18.55% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 617 444 396
10th Percentile £300 £215 £221
25th Percentile £413 £378 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £494
Median % change year-on-year - +1.27% -1.25%
75th Percentile £590 £588 £600
90th Percentile £650 £653 £705
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £475 £425
% change year-on-year +7.89% +11.76% -12.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 32 12
10th Percentile £26.13 £15.50 £18.78
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £22.64
Median hourly rate £62.00 £45.00 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +37.78% +87.58% -40.03%
75th Percentile £77.50 £76.59 £32.00
90th Percentile £98.06 £89.17 £47.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £43.25 £24.20
% change year-on-year +46.77% +78.72% -39.50%

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 5,051 3,768 4,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.24% 11.48% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,910 2,381 2,585
10th Percentile £231 £219 £225
25th Percentile £389 £361 £368
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £606
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £453 £485
% change year-on-year +4.86% -6.60% +6.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 435 200 199
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.15 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.48 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.64% -17.05% -11.49%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.94 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.29 £42.50 £57.30
% change year-on-year -38.15% -25.83% -0.35%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 -25 893 £505 - 1,040
UK excluding London -24 607 £513 +7.89% 658
London -42 313 £500 -4.76% 444
Work from Home -26 242 £500 +3.95% 404
North of England +3 197 £500 +11.48% 138
South East -4 173 £538 +7.50% 191
North West +6 122 £500 +11.48% 85
Midlands -47 102 £450 - 96
South West +1 97 £575 - 89
West Midlands -52 84 £450 +2.86% 49
Yorkshire -7 60 £500 - 36
East of England -40 42 £513 -6.82% 63
Scotland -1 37 £450 -0.88% 53
East Midlands +4 17 £450 - 45
North East -34 15 £425 +25.00% 21
Wales -8 10 £440 +16.02% 20

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
1 110 (11.13%) Microsoft Exchange
2 89 (9.01%) SharePoint
3 34 (3.44%) Confluence
4 15 (1.52%) Apache
4 15 (1.52%) nginx
5 14 (1.42%) IIS
6 8 (0.81%) Skype for Business
6 8 (0.81%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.51%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.10%) CMS
10 1 (0.10%) Drupal
10 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.10%) Traefik
10 1 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (2.43%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.11%) 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
4 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.10%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 16 (1.62%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Magento
2 1 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.10%) Oracle Retail
2 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 416 (42.11%) Azure
2 203 (20.55%) AWS
3 195 (19.74%) Entra ID
4 192 (19.43%) Microsoft 365
5 84 (8.50%) GitHub
6 82 (8.30%) GCP
7 53 (5.36%) Azure DevOps
8 52 (5.26%) IaaS
9 50 (5.06%) GitHub Actions
10 49 (4.96%) OneDrive
11 47 (4.76%) Azure Monitor
12 33 (3.34%) SaaS
13 29 (2.94%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 27 (2.73%) PaaS
15 26 (2.63%) Azure Key Vault
16 25 (2.53%) Serverless
17 24 (2.43%) AWS CloudFormation
17 24 (2.43%) OpenShift
18 23 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
18 23 (2.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 475 (48.08%) DHCP
2 362 (36.64%) Firewall
3 292 (29.55%) TCP/IP
4 277 (28.04%) VPN
5 142 (14.37%) Network Security
6 128 (12.96%) VLAN
7 113 (11.44%) WAN
8 101 (10.22%) SSL
9 85 (8.60%) LAN
10 81 (8.20%) BGP
11 79 (8.00%) Wireless
12 66 (6.68%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (6.58%) HTTP
14 61 (6.17%) BIG-IP
14 61 (6.17%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 58 (5.87%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 58 (5.87%) SAN
16 42 (4.25%) IPsec
16 42 (4.25%) OSPF
17 41 (4.15%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (4.86%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.23%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (1.62%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.32%) MySQL
5 12 (1.21%) MongoDB
6 10 (1.01%) Data Lake
7 9 (0.91%) Power BI
8 8 (0.81%) NoSQL
9 7 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
9 7 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (0.71%) Redis
10 6 (0.61%) Big Data
11 4 (0.40%) Db2
12 3 (0.30%) MariaDB
12 3 (0.30%) Metadata
13 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
13 2 (0.20%) BigQuery
13 2 (0.20%) DynamoDB
13 2 (0.20%) Flink
13 2 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 81 (8.20%) JIRA
2 59 (5.97%) Jenkins
3 56 (5.67%) Git
4 41 (4.15%) GitLab
5 13 (1.32%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.11%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.51%) Selenium
9 4 (0.40%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
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 (0.10%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.10%) Locust
12 1 (0.10%) Newman
12 1 (0.10%) REST Assured
12 1 (0.10%) TestCafe
General
1 269 (27.23%) Social Skills
2 110 (11.13%) Analytical Skills
3 90 (9.11%) Finance
4 82 (8.30%) Public Sector
5 54 (5.47%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (5.16%) Banking
7 30 (3.04%) Telecoms
8 25 (2.53%) Investment Banking
9 17 (1.72%) Legal
10 14 (1.42%) Aerospace
11 13 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.21%) Police
13 11 (1.11%) Local Government
14 10 (1.01%) Military
15 9 (0.91%) Front Office
15 9 (0.91%) Manufacturing
15 9 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
17 7 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
17 7 (0.71%) Law
Job Titles
1 192 (19.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 163 (16.50%) Network Engineer
3 126 (12.75%) Senior
4 103 (10.43%) Support Engineer
5 85 (8.60%) Cloud Engineer
6 67 (6.78%) Architect
7 49 (4.96%) Azure Engineer
7 49 (4.96%) IT Support
7 49 (4.96%) Platform Engineer
8 48 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
9 47 (4.76%) IT Engineer
10 46 (4.66%) Security Engineer
10 46 (4.66%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 41 (4.15%) Analyst
12 36 (3.64%) Senior Network Engineer
13 33 (3.34%) Administrator
13 33 (3.34%) IT Support Engineer
14 32 (3.24%) Cisco Engineer
15 31 (3.14%) Network Security Engineer
16 30 (3.04%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (22.17%) Terraform
2 38 (3.85%) SAML
3 35 (3.54%) 802.1X
4 34 (3.44%) OAuth
5 30 (3.04%) REST
6 28 (2.83%) ARM Templates
7 27 (2.73%) LDAP
8 26 (2.63%) OpenID
9 22 (2.23%) Kafka
10 17 (1.72%) JSON
11 16 (1.62%) YAML
12 12 (1.21%) Elastic Stack
13 11 (1.11%) OAuth2
13 11 (1.11%) OpenTelemetry
14 10 (1.01%) CSS
15 8 (0.81%) Jinja
15 8 (0.81%) React
16 7 (0.71%) .NET
16 7 (0.71%) Software Packaging
17 6 (0.61%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 128 (12.96%) Data Centre
2 110 (11.13%) PKI
3 77 (7.79%) Onboarding
4 75 (7.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 56 (5.67%) Management Information System
6 41 (4.15%) Cloud Native
7 32 (3.24%) Replication
8 29 (2.94%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.63%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 23 (2.33%) Clustering
10 23 (2.33%) Linux Command Line
11 20 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (1.62%) Driving Licence
14 15 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
15 14 (1.42%) Cyber Threat
15 14 (1.42%) Security Posture
16 12 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
17 10 (1.01%) CMDB
17 10 (1.01%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 480 (48.58%) Windows
2 270 (27.33%) Windows Server
3 224 (22.67%) Linux
4 59 (5.97%) Windows 10
5 45 (4.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 43 (4.35%) Windows Server 2019
7 34 (3.44%) Mac OS
8 29 (2.94%) Unix
9 25 (2.53%) Windows Server 2012
10 24 (2.43%) Ubuntu
11 22 (2.23%) Apple iOS
12 20 (2.02%) Android
12 20 (2.02%) CentOS
13 18 (1.82%) VMS
14 15 (1.52%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.21%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.71%) Rocky
16 7 (0.71%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.40%) AIX
18 3 (0.30%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 263 (26.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 216 (21.86%) Problem-Solving
3 211 (21.36%) Infrastructure as Code
4 197 (19.94%) ITIL
5 174 (17.61%) DevOps
6 172 (17.41%) CI/CD
7 162 (16.40%) Load Balancing
8 157 (15.89%) Migration
9 123 (12.45%) ITSM
10 114 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
11 108 (10.93%) Agile
12 100 (10.12%) High Availability
13 99 (10.02%) Cybersecurity
13 99 (10.02%) Technical Leadership
14 93 (9.41%) Disaster Recovery
14 93 (9.41%) Observability
15 91 (9.21%) Platform Engineering
16 90 (9.11%) Project Delivery
16 90 (9.11%) Runbook
17 86 (8.70%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 280 (28.34%) PowerShell
2 208 (21.05%) Python
3 140 (14.17%) Bash
4 71 (7.19%) SQL
5 52 (5.26%) Bicep
6 20 (2.02%) ActionScript
7 19 (1.92%) Shell Script
8 16 (1.62%) Java
9 15 (1.52%) Go
10 13 (1.32%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.01%) VBScript
12 8 (0.81%) Perl
13 7 (0.71%) TypeScript
14 6 (0.61%) Groovy
14 6 (0.61%) VB
15 5 (0.51%) C#
15 5 (0.51%) Kusto Query Language
16 4 (0.40%) C++
16 4 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 4 (0.40%) VBA
Qualifications
1 376 (38.06%) Security Cleared
2 211 (21.36%) SC Cleared
3 164 (16.60%) DV Cleared
4 82 (8.30%) Degree
5 78 (7.89%) Cisco Certification
6 69 (6.98%) CCNP
7 57 (5.77%) Azure Certification
8 56 (5.67%) Microsoft Certification
9 38 (3.85%) CCNA
10 27 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
11 25 (2.53%) Network+ Certification
12 24 (2.43%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.72%) CCIE
15 15 (1.52%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 15 (1.52%) VCAP
16 13 (1.32%) MCSE
17 11 (1.11%) A+ Certification
17 11 (1.11%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.85%) SLA
2 20 (2.02%) NIST
2 20 (2.02%) QA
3 15 (1.52%) NCSC
4 13 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.51%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.40%) GDPR
7 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.30%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.30%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.10%) GLBA
System Software
1 447 (45.24%) Active Directory
2 285 (28.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 125 (12.65%) Hyper-V
4 92 (9.31%) VMware ESXi
5 89 (9.01%) vSphere
6 68 (6.88%) Docker
7 66 (6.68%) VMware NSX
8 52 (5.26%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (4.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (2.13%) Firmware
11 18 (1.82%) NFS
12 16 (1.62%) vCloud
13 13 (1.32%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (1.01%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.81%) UAG
16 7 (0.71%) Postfix
17 6 (0.61%) Squid
17 6 (0.61%) VMware Workstation
18 5 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 148 (14.98%) Ansible
2 124 (12.55%) Kubernetes
3 114 (11.54%) Microsoft Intune
4 85 (8.60%) SCCM
5 67 (6.78%) vCenter Server
6 63 (6.38%) Grafana
7 56 (5.67%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (5.36%) Prometheus
9 42 (4.25%) SCOM
10 32 (3.24%) WSUS
11 18 (1.82%) FortiGate
11 18 (1.82%) NetBackup
12 16 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
12 16 (1.62%) Packer
12 16 (1.62%) Puppet
12 16 (1.62%) VxRail
13 14 (1.42%) Istio
14 13 (1.32%) Progress Chef
15 12 (1.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 11 (1.11%) Argo
Vendors
1 410 (41.50%) Microsoft
2 345 (34.92%) VMware
3 175 (17.71%) Cisco
4 126 (12.75%) F5
5 83 (8.40%) ServiceNow
6 56 (5.67%) Palo Alto
7 52 (5.26%) Citrix
7 52 (5.26%) Google
8 50 (5.06%) SolarWinds
9 42 (4.25%) Splunk
10 41 (4.15%) Infoblox
11 39 (3.95%) Juniper
12 38 (3.85%) NetApp
12 38 (3.85%) Red Hat
13 35 (3.54%) CheckPoint
13 35 (3.54%) Dynatrace
14 31 (3.14%) Fortinet
15 29 (2.94%) Veeam
15 29 (2.94%) Zscaler
16 24 (2.43%) CyberArk