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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 136 143
Rank change year-on-year -24 +7 -10
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,006 708 669
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.82% 2.13% 1.78%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.73% 18.81% 14.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 636 445 407
10th Percentile £290 £219 £220
25th Percentile £413 £380 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £485
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% +3.10% -3.01%
75th Percentile £599 £588 £588
90th Percentile £656 £657 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £475 £425
% change year-on-year +8.16% +11.76% -12.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 34 12
10th Percentile £26.00 £15.50 £18.78
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £22.64
Median hourly rate £62.00 £43.25 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +43.35% +80.28% -40.03%
75th Percentile £81.25 £75.00 £32.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £88.24 £47.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £41.48 £24.20
% change year-on-year +53.06% +71.38% -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 5,099 3,763 4,545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.22% 11.33% 12.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,944 2,404 2,616
10th Percentile £235 £213 £225
25th Percentile £390 £356 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £679 £677 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £480
% change year-on-year +5.56% -6.25% +3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 443 186 180
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.15
25th Percentile £19.50 £20.00 £24.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £34.00 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -4.41% -29.98% -14.04%
75th Percentile £68.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.42 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £41.50 £53.75
% change year-on-year -37.35% -22.79% -6.38%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -23 909 £513 +0.49% 258
UK excluding London -24 605 £514 +8.16% 218
London -22 327 £500 -4.76% 62
Work from Home -30 245 £500 - 110
North of England -2 196 £500 +8.11% 51
South East -5 173 £538 +7.50% 68
North West 0 121 £500 +11.11% 31
Midlands -51 99 £450 - 26
South West -3 96 £588 +2.17% 44
West Midlands -53 83 £450 +5.88% 15
Yorkshire -10 61 £500 - 16
East of England -43 44 £475 -13.64% 17
Scotland -2 35 £450 -0.88% 10
East Midlands -1 15 £450 - 11
North East -34 14 £425 +1.19% 6
Wales -6 10 £440 +16.02% 4

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 (10.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 92 (9.15%) SharePoint
3 34 (3.38%) Confluence
4 15 (1.49%) IIS
4 15 (1.49%) nginx
5 14 (1.39%) Apache
6 8 (0.80%) Skype for Business
7 7 (0.70%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.50%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2013
10 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
11 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
12 1 (0.099%) CMS
12 1 (0.099%) Drupal
12 1 (0.099%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.099%) Traefik
12 1 (0.099%) WebSphere
12 1 (0.099%) WordPress
Applications
1 23 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.29%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.50%) 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 (0.099%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.099%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 16 (1.59%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.099%) Magento
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle Retail
2 1 (0.099%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.099%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 436 (43.34%) Azure
2 215 (21.37%) AWS
3 208 (20.68%) Entra ID
4 200 (19.88%) Microsoft 365
5 91 (9.05%) GitHub
6 88 (8.75%) GCP
7 62 (6.16%) Azure DevOps
8 56 (5.57%) GitHub Actions
9 54 (5.37%) Azure Monitor
10 52 (5.17%) IaaS
11 49 (4.87%) OneDrive
12 36 (3.58%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 36 (3.58%) SaaS
13 31 (3.08%) Azure Key Vault
14 30 (2.98%) PaaS
15 27 (2.68%) Azure AKS
15 27 (2.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 25 (2.49%) Amazon EKS
16 25 (2.49%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (2.49%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 479 (47.61%) DHCP
2 380 (37.77%) Firewall
3 300 (29.82%) TCP/IP
4 288 (28.63%) VPN
5 146 (14.51%) Network Security
6 133 (13.22%) VLAN
7 118 (11.73%) WAN
8 102 (10.14%) SSL
9 87 (8.65%) LAN
10 84 (8.35%) BGP
11 81 (8.05%) Wireless
12 67 (6.66%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (6.46%) HTTP
14 60 (5.96%) BIG-IP
14 60 (5.96%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 58 (5.77%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 55 (5.47%) SAN
17 46 (4.57%) OSPF
18 44 (4.37%) IPsec
19 42 (4.17%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (4.97%) SQL Server
2 26 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (1.59%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.29%) MongoDB
4 13 (1.29%) MySQL
5 12 (1.19%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (0.89%) Power BI
7 8 (0.80%) NoSQL
8 7 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
8 7 (0.70%) Redis
9 6 (0.60%) Big Data
10 4 (0.40%) Db2
10 4 (0.40%) Relational Database
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
Development Applications
1 83 (8.25%) JIRA
2 62 (6.16%) Git
2 62 (6.16%) Jenkins
3 43 (4.27%) GitLab
4 12 (1.19%) Bitbucket
4 12 (1.19%) Fiddler
5 9 (0.89%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.50%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (0.50%) Selenium
7 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
8 3 (0.30%) MSI
9 2 (0.20%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.20%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
9 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
10 1 (0.099%) Browser DevTools
10 1 (0.099%) Locust
10 1 (0.099%) Terragrunt
General
1 275 (27.34%) Social Skills
2 112 (11.13%) Analytical Skills
3 98 (9.74%) Finance
4 85 (8.45%) Public Sector
5 55 (5.47%) Banking
6 53 (5.27%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (3.08%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.29%) Investment Banking
9 17 (1.69%) Legal
10 14 (1.39%) Aerospace
11 13 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.19%) Police
13 11 (1.09%) Local Government
13 11 (1.09%) Military
14 10 (0.99%) Manufacturing
15 9 (0.89%) Front Office
15 9 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
16 8 (0.80%) Publishing
17 7 (0.70%) Law
Job Titles
1 193 (19.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 161 (16.00%) Network Engineer
3 133 (13.22%) Senior
4 106 (10.54%) Support Engineer
5 87 (8.65%) Cloud Engineer
6 72 (7.16%) Architect
7 54 (5.37%) IT Support
8 53 (5.27%) Azure Engineer
8 53 (5.27%) Platform Engineer
9 52 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
10 48 (4.77%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 47 (4.67%) IT Engineer
12 43 (4.27%) Security Engineer
13 40 (3.98%) Analyst
14 36 (3.58%) Senior Network Engineer
15 35 (3.48%) IT Support Engineer
16 33 (3.28%) Administrator
17 30 (2.98%) Cisco Engineer
18 29 (2.88%) Network Security Engineer
19 28 (2.78%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (23.36%) Terraform
2 42 (4.17%) SAML
3 38 (3.78%) OAuth
4 34 (3.38%) 802.1X
5 33 (3.28%) ARM Templates
5 33 (3.28%) OpenID
6 31 (3.08%) REST
7 28 (2.78%) LDAP
8 25 (2.49%) Kafka
9 16 (1.59%) JSON
9 16 (1.59%) YAML
10 13 (1.29%) OAuth2
11 12 (1.19%) Elastic Stack
11 12 (1.19%) OpenTelemetry
12 11 (1.09%) .NET
13 10 (0.99%) CSS
13 10 (0.99%) React
14 8 (0.80%) FastAPI
14 8 (0.80%) Jinja
15 7 (0.70%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 128 (12.72%) Data Centre
2 111 (11.03%) PKI
3 81 (8.05%) Onboarding
4 78 (7.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 55 (5.47%) Management Information System
6 42 (4.17%) Cloud Native
7 34 (3.38%) Replication
8 29 (2.88%) Public Cloud
9 27 (2.68%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 24 (2.39%) Linux Command Line
11 22 (2.19%) Clustering
12 19 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
13 18 (1.79%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.69%) Distributed Systems
14 17 (1.69%) Driving Licence
15 14 (1.39%) Cyber Threat
15 14 (1.39%) Security Posture
16 12 (1.19%) ARM Cortex
17 11 (1.09%) CMDB
17 11 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 487 (48.41%) Windows
2 274 (27.24%) Windows Server
3 228 (22.66%) Linux
4 60 (5.96%) Windows 10
5 45 (4.47%) Windows Server 2019
6 44 (4.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 34 (3.38%) macOS
8 28 (2.78%) Unix
9 26 (2.58%) Windows Server 2012
10 24 (2.39%) Apple iOS
10 24 (2.39%) Ubuntu
11 21 (2.09%) Android
12 20 (1.99%) CentOS
13 18 (1.79%) VMS
14 15 (1.49%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.19%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.70%) Rocky
16 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.40%) OpenVMS
18 3 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 264 (26.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 233 (23.16%) Infrastructure as Code
3 214 (21.27%) Problem-Solving
4 203 (20.18%) ITIL
5 192 (19.09%) DevOps
6 188 (18.69%) CI/CD
7 168 (16.70%) Load Balancing
8 162 (16.10%) Migration
9 129 (12.82%) ITSM
10 117 (11.63%) Continuous Improvement
11 112 (11.13%) Agile
12 108 (10.74%) Cybersecurity
13 103 (10.24%) Platform Engineering
13 103 (10.24%) Technical Leadership
14 101 (10.04%) Observability
15 99 (9.84%) High Availability
16 97 (9.64%) Disaster Recovery
17 93 (9.24%) Runbook
18 92 (9.15%) Project Delivery
18 92 (9.15%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 296 (29.42%) PowerShell
2 218 (21.67%) Python
3 151 (15.01%) Bash
4 76 (7.55%) SQL
5 62 (6.16%) Bicep
6 21 (2.09%) ActionScript
7 20 (1.99%) Shell Script
8 17 (1.69%) Java
9 15 (1.49%) Go
10 13 (1.29%) JavaScript
11 10 (0.99%) VBScript
12 8 (0.80%) Perl
13 7 (0.70%) TypeScript
14 6 (0.60%) C#
14 6 (0.60%) Groovy
14 6 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
14 6 (0.60%) VB
15 4 (0.40%) C++
15 4 (0.40%) Kotlin
15 4 (0.40%) VBA
Qualifications
1 383 (38.07%) Security Cleared
2 214 (21.27%) SC Cleared
3 167 (16.60%) DV Cleared
4 82 (8.15%) Degree
5 78 (7.75%) Cisco Certification
6 69 (6.86%) CCNP
7 58 (5.77%) Azure Certification
8 56 (5.57%) Microsoft Certification
9 39 (3.88%) CCNA
10 27 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
11 26 (2.58%) Network+ Certification
12 24 (2.39%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
13 18 (1.79%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.69%) CCIE
15 15 (1.49%) VCAP
16 14 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 13 (1.29%) MCSE
18 11 (1.09%) A+ Certification
18 11 (1.09%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.78%) SLA
2 21 (2.09%) QA
3 19 (1.89%) NIST
4 15 (1.49%) NCSC
5 13 (1.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.50%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.40%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.40%) GDPR
8 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.30%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.30%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.30%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.099%) GLBA
System Software
1 462 (45.92%) Active Directory
2 279 (27.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 122 (12.13%) Hyper-V
4 91 (9.05%) vSphere
5 90 (8.95%) VMware ESXi
6 73 (7.26%) Docker
7 66 (6.56%) VMware NSX
8 50 (4.97%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (4.08%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (1.99%) Firmware
11 17 (1.69%) NFS
12 16 (1.59%) vCloud
13 13 (1.29%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.99%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.70%) Postfix
15 7 (0.70%) UAG
15 7 (0.70%) VMware Workstation
16 6 (0.60%) Squid
17 5 (0.50%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.50%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 154 (15.31%) Ansible
2 128 (12.72%) Kubernetes
3 121 (12.03%) Microsoft Intune
4 92 (9.15%) SCCM
5 67 (6.66%) vCenter Server
6 65 (6.46%) Grafana
7 61 (6.06%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (5.27%) Prometheus
9 42 (4.17%) SCOM
10 29 (2.88%) WSUS
11 19 (1.89%) NetBackup
12 18 (1.79%) Packer
13 17 (1.69%) FortiGate
14 16 (1.59%) Istio
14 16 (1.59%) Jamf Pro
14 16 (1.59%) Puppet
14 16 (1.59%) VxRail
15 12 (1.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (1.19%) Argo
15 12 (1.19%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 429 (42.64%) Microsoft
2 340 (33.80%) VMware
3 167 (16.60%) Cisco
4 123 (12.23%) F5
5 84 (8.35%) ServiceNow
6 57 (5.67%) Google
7 56 (5.57%) Palo Alto
8 50 (4.97%) Citrix
9 48 (4.77%) SolarWinds
10 44 (4.37%) Splunk
11 39 (3.88%) Infoblox
11 39 (3.88%) Juniper
12 36 (3.58%) Dynatrace
12 36 (3.58%) NetApp
12 36 (3.58%) Red Hat
13 34 (3.38%) CheckPoint
14 33 (3.28%) Fortinet
15 30 (2.98%) Veeam
16 29 (2.88%) Zscaler
17 24 (2.39%) CyberArk