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 25 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 115 115
Rank change year-on-year -29 0 +9
Contract jobs citing DNS 728 719 913
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.28% 2.06%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.44% 17.67% 15.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 469 451 586
10th Percentile £219 £223 £206
25th Percentile £400 £350 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% +2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £610 £615 £600
90th Percentile £675 £738 £681
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 9 24
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.26 £24.48
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.25 £31.81
Median hourly rate £39.50 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.44% -41.03% +3.90%
75th Percentile £74.26 £25.30 £57.30
90th Percentile £78.00 £40.40 £65.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £22.50 £51.25
% change year-on-year +116.53% -56.10% +33.12%

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 3,947 4,069 6,045
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.42% 12.90% 13.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,588 2,365 3,676
10th Percentile £204 £213 £206
25th Percentile £355 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -3.88%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 140 383
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.16 £16.55
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £22.75
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.75 £52.21
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -35.35% +152.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £74.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.49
% change year-on-year +27.52% -43.72% +197.32%

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 25 January 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 25 January 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 25 January 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 -14 656 £525 +10.53% 352
UK excluding London -30 451 £500 +11.11% 345
London +2 227 £550 +4.76% 60
Work from Home -47 172 £525 -1.87% 99
North of England -28 141 £460 +8.24% 73
South East -7 115 £513 +10.81% 107
Midlands +13 110 £380 -10.59% 46
West Midlands +27 106 £385 -4.94% 22
North West -1 95 £500 +5.54% 25
South West -26 64 £575 +5.02% 49
Yorkshire -33 51 £447 +49.00% 40
East of England -19 36 £475 +72.73% 46
Scotland -6 28 £454 +0.89% 22
North East -21 7 £575 +155.56% 12
East Midlands -40 4 £275 -38.89% 23
Wales -14 3 £550 +33.33% 9

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 90 (12.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 64 (8.79%) SharePoint
3 33 (4.53%) Skype for Business
4 22 (3.02%) Confluence
5 16 (2.20%) nginx
6 8 (1.10%) Exchange Server 2010
6 8 (1.10%) IIS
6 8 (1.10%) SharePoint Server
7 6 (0.82%) Exchange Server 2013
8 5 (0.69%) Apache
9 4 (0.55%) Exchange Server 2003
9 4 (0.55%) Exchange Server 2007
9 4 (0.55%) Office Communications Server
9 4 (0.55%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (6.04%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.06%) MS Visio
3 8 (1.10%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.27%) Windchill
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 256 (35.16%) Azure
2 184 (25.27%) AWS
3 142 (19.51%) Microsoft 365
4 111 (15.25%) Entra ID
5 69 (9.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 57 (7.83%) Amazon S3
7 53 (7.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 51 (7.01%) Amazon EC2
9 45 (6.18%) GCP
9 45 (6.18%) GitHub
10 37 (5.08%) Amazon ELB
11 33 (4.53%) AWS CloudFormation
11 33 (4.53%) IaaS
12 31 (4.26%) Serverless
13 30 (4.12%) Amazon ECS
13 30 (4.12%) Route 53
14 29 (3.98%) AWS Lambda
15 23 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
16 22 (3.02%) SaaS
17 21 (2.88%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 322 (44.23%) DHCP
2 241 (33.10%) TCP/IP
3 237 (32.55%) Firewall
4 187 (25.69%) VPN
5 92 (12.64%) SSL
6 91 (12.50%) Network Security
7 90 (12.36%) WAN
8 78 (10.71%) HTTP
9 70 (9.62%) LAN
10 65 (8.93%) VLAN
11 47 (6.46%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 44 (6.04%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 41 (5.63%) BGP
13 41 (5.63%) BIG-IP
14 39 (5.36%) Wireshark
15 38 (5.22%) Wi-Fi
16 37 (5.08%) Wireless
17 35 (4.81%) DMZ
18 33 (4.53%) Skype
19 31 (4.26%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.71%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.16%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (2.88%) SQL Server
4 14 (1.92%) Amazon Aurora
4 14 (1.92%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (1.10%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.96%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.96%) MySQL
6 7 (0.96%) Redis
7 6 (0.82%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.55%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.55%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.14%) CouchDB
10 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.14%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.14%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 74 (10.16%) Jenkins
2 67 (9.20%) Git
3 48 (6.59%) GitLab
4 44 (6.04%) JIRA
5 25 (3.43%) Fiddler
6 12 (1.65%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.10%) Terragrunt
8 6 (0.82%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.69%) Subversion
10 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.55%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.14%) GCC
12 1 (0.14%) MSI
12 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
12 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 215 (29.53%) Social Skills
2 104 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
3 69 (9.48%) Public Sector
4 54 (7.42%) Banking
5 44 (6.04%) Documentation Skills
6 43 (5.91%) Finance
7 41 (5.63%) Investment Banking
8 21 (2.88%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.47%) Legal
10 14 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.10%) Military
12 7 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
13 5 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.69%) Law
14 4 (0.55%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.55%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.55%) Marketing
15 3 (0.41%) Local Government
16 2 (0.27%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 100 (13.74%) Network Engineer
2 91 (12.50%) Architect
3 75 (10.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 72 (9.89%) Analyst
5 67 (9.20%) Senior
6 64 (8.79%) Support Engineer
7 43 (5.91%) Platform Engineer
8 40 (5.49%) IT Support
9 39 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
10 33 (4.53%) Security Engineer
11 29 (3.98%) AWS Engineer
12 28 (3.85%) Lead
12 28 (3.85%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 26 (3.57%) 2nd Line Support
13 26 (3.57%) Web Engineer
14 24 (3.30%) SOC Analyst
15 21 (2.88%) Cloud Platform Engineer
15 21 (2.88%) Operations Engineer
16 19 (2.61%) AWS DevOps
16 19 (2.61%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (8.65%) LDAP
2 43 (5.91%) SAML
3 37 (5.08%) OAuth
4 28 (3.85%) OpenID
5 20 (2.75%) OAuth2
6 14 (1.92%) REST
7 12 (1.65%) 802.1X
7 12 (1.65%) Kafka
8 10 (1.37%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (1.10%) SOAP
10 7 (0.96%) Middleware
10 7 (0.96%) OpenTelemetry
11 6 (0.82%) AngularJS
11 6 (0.82%) AWS CDK
11 6 (0.82%) RESTful
12 5 (0.69%) React
12 5 (0.69%) Spring Boot
12 5 (0.69%) YAML
13 4 (0.55%) JPA
13 4 (0.55%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 64 (8.79%) Replication
2 56 (7.69%) PKI
3 53 (7.28%) Data Centre
4 42 (5.77%) Management Information System
5 29 (3.98%) Onboarding
6 24 (3.30%) Security Operations Centre
7 23 (3.16%) Enterprise Software
8 22 (3.02%) Analytical Mindset
8 22 (3.02%) Cloud Native
8 22 (3.02%) Cyberattack
9 15 (2.06%) Hybrid Cloud
9 15 (2.06%) Private Cloud
9 15 (2.06%) Public Cloud
10 11 (1.51%) Clustering
10 11 (1.51%) Cyber Threat
11 10 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (1.37%) Video Conferencing
12 9 (1.24%) NHS
12 9 (1.24%) SCADA
13 8 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 361 (49.59%) Windows
2 175 (24.04%) Windows Server
3 145 (19.92%) Linux
4 62 (8.52%) Windows 10
5 32 (4.40%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.88%) Windows Server 2016
7 20 (2.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (2.75%) Unix
8 18 (2.47%) Windows Server 2012
9 17 (2.34%) Android
9 17 (2.34%) VMS
10 15 (2.06%) Amazon Linux
11 13 (1.79%) Ubuntu
12 12 (1.65%) Apple iOS
12 12 (1.65%) CentOS
13 11 (1.51%) Windows 7
14 9 (1.24%) Windows Server 2003
15 8 (1.10%) Mac OS
16 5 (0.69%) Solaris
17 4 (0.55%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (22.94%) Problem-Solving
2 121 (16.62%) ITIL
2 121 (16.62%) Load Balancing
3 115 (15.80%) CI/CD
4 113 (15.52%) DevOps
5 98 (13.46%) Infrastructure as Code
6 96 (13.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 89 (12.23%) High Availability
8 79 (10.85%) Migration
9 78 (10.71%) Cybersecurity
10 77 (10.58%) Change Management
11 71 (9.75%) Incident Response
12 68 (9.34%) Disaster Recovery
13 62 (8.52%) Service Management
14 60 (8.24%) Root Cause Analysis
15 58 (7.97%) SIEM
16 53 (7.28%) Mentoring
17 52 (7.14%) Platform Engineering
18 49 (6.73%) Continuous Improvement
18 49 (6.73%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 224 (30.77%) PowerShell
2 153 (21.02%) Python
3 75 (10.30%) Bash
4 42 (5.77%) SQL
5 19 (2.61%) Perl
6 18 (2.47%) Java
7 13 (1.79%) Bicep
8 12 (1.65%) Groovy
8 12 (1.65%) VBScript
9 11 (1.51%) Shell Script
10 10 (1.37%) Go
10 10 (1.37%) Ruby
10 10 (1.37%) VB
11 7 (0.96%) Lisp
12 6 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.69%) C++
14 4 (0.55%) JavaScript
15 3 (0.41%) C#
15 3 (0.41%) Search Processing Language
15 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 271 (37.23%) Security Cleared
2 197 (27.06%) SC Cleared
3 87 (11.95%) DV Cleared
4 70 (9.62%) Degree
5 58 (7.97%) Microsoft Certification
6 42 (5.77%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (5.36%) CCNP
8 38 (5.22%) Azure Certification
9 25 (3.43%) AWS Certification
10 21 (2.88%) CompTIA Security+
11 20 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
12 17 (2.34%) Network+ Certification
13 15 (2.06%) CCNA
13 15 (2.06%) CompTIA CySA+
14 13 (1.79%) CISSP
15 11 (1.51%) Server+ Certification
16 9 (1.24%) ITIL Certification
17 8 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 8 (1.10%) BPSS Clearance
17 8 (1.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (4.67%) GDPR
2 23 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (2.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 19 (2.61%) SLA
5 18 (2.47%) NIST
6 9 (1.24%) NCSC
6 9 (1.24%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.82%) Accessibility
8 6 (0.82%) QA
9 3 (0.41%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.41%) PMO
10 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.14%) RMADS
11 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 325 (44.64%) Active Directory
2 186 (25.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 88 (12.09%) Docker
4 52 (7.14%) Hyper-V
5 43 (5.91%) VMware NSX
6 31 (4.26%) vSphere
7 27 (3.71%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (2.88%) Firmware
9 18 (2.47%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (2.06%) DFS Replication
11 13 (1.79%) Squid
12 12 (1.65%) BitLocker
13 11 (1.51%) Virtual Desktop
14 9 (1.24%) Postfix
15 8 (1.10%) Dovecot
15 8 (1.10%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.82%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.82%) NFS
17 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 5 (0.69%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 135 (18.54%) Terraform
2 122 (16.76%) Ansible
3 83 (11.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 77 (10.58%) SCCM
5 72 (9.89%) Single Sign-On
6 64 (8.79%) Kubernetes
7 55 (7.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 37 (5.08%) vCenter Server
9 34 (4.67%) Grafana
10 26 (3.57%) Prometheus
11 22 (3.02%) FortiGate
12 20 (2.75%) WSUS
13 13 (1.79%) Argo
13 13 (1.79%) SCOM
14 11 (1.51%) Proxmox
15 10 (1.37%) Packer
16 9 (1.24%) Nessus
16 9 (1.24%) Puppet
17 8 (1.10%) Microsoft Clustering
18 6 (0.82%) QRadar
Vendors
1 284 (39.01%) Microsoft
2 222 (30.49%) VMware
3 119 (16.35%) F5
4 108 (14.84%) Cisco
5 82 (11.26%) ServiceNow
6 57 (7.83%) Splunk
7 55 (7.55%) Palo Alto
8 48 (6.59%) CheckPoint
9 42 (5.77%) Blue Coat
10 33 (4.53%) Citrix
11 30 (4.12%) McAfee
11 30 (4.12%) SolarWinds
12 25 (3.43%) Juniper
12 25 (3.43%) NetApp
12 25 (3.43%) Red Hat
12 25 (3.43%) Veeam
13 21 (2.88%) Dell
13 21 (2.88%) Fortinet
13 21 (2.88%) Okta
14 19 (2.61%) Zscaler