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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 114 112
Rank change year-on-year -30 -2 +10
Contract jobs citing DNS 733 713 900
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.25% 2.07%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.46% 17.49% 15.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 475 447 580
10th Percentile £219 £223 £206
25th Percentile £400 £350 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £486
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% +2.83% -7.38%
75th Percentile £608 £615 £600
90th Percentile £675 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 9 23
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.26 £24.40
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.25 £31.63
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 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £40.40 £69.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £22.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +116.53% -59.09% +42.86%

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 3,971 4,076 5,950
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.47% 12.86% 13.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,608 2,374 3,638
10th Percentile £204 £213 £209
25th Percentile £355 £363 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.91%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £686 £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 165 140 367
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.16 £17.53
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -36.36% +161.90%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.24 £32.50 £57.00
% change year-on-year +26.89% -42.98% +208.08%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -14 658 £525 +10.53% 392
UK excluding London -27 452 £500 +11.11% 387
London +2 230 £550 +4.76% 62
Work from Home -50 176 £525 - 99
North of England -25 139 £465 +9.41% 80
South East -8 116 £505 +9.19% 119
Midlands +10 112 £385 -9.41% 52
West Midlands +26 108 £390 -3.70% 23
North West -2 95 £488 +2.90% 28
South West -21 63 £575 +4.93% 53
Yorkshire -34 49 £449 +49.50% 43
East of England -27 36 £475 +72.73% 55
Scotland -8 29 £454 -4.62% 24
North East -21 7 £575 +155.56% 13
East Midlands -40 4 £275 -38.89% 28
Wales -13 3 £550 +33.33% 11

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 93 (12.69%) Microsoft Exchange
2 66 (9.00%) SharePoint
3 34 (4.64%) Skype for Business
4 24 (3.27%) Confluence
5 17 (2.32%) nginx
6 10 (1.36%) Exchange Server 2010
7 9 (1.23%) IIS
7 9 (1.23%) SharePoint Server
8 8 (1.09%) Exchange Server 2013
9 5 (0.68%) Apache
9 5 (0.68%) Exchange Server 2003
9 5 (0.68%) Exchange Server 2007
9 5 (0.68%) Office Communications Server
10 4 (0.55%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (6.00%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.91%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.23%) 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
1 255 (34.79%) Azure
2 187 (25.51%) AWS
3 143 (19.51%) Microsoft 365
4 108 (14.73%) Entra ID
5 72 (9.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 59 (8.05%) Amazon S3
7 55 (7.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 54 (7.37%) Amazon EC2
9 46 (6.28%) GitHub
10 45 (6.14%) GCP
11 39 (5.32%) Amazon ELB
12 35 (4.77%) AWS CloudFormation
13 32 (4.37%) Amazon ECS
13 32 (4.37%) IaaS
14 31 (4.23%) Route 53
14 31 (4.23%) Serverless
15 29 (3.96%) AWS Lambda
16 23 (3.14%) GitHub Actions
16 23 (3.14%) SaaS
17 22 (3.00%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 319 (43.52%) DHCP
2 245 (33.42%) TCP/IP
3 239 (32.61%) Firewall
4 189 (25.78%) VPN
5 92 (12.55%) SSL
6 91 (12.41%) WAN
7 90 (12.28%) Network Security
8 82 (11.19%) HTTP
9 70 (9.55%) LAN
10 66 (9.00%) VLAN
11 47 (6.41%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 44 (6.00%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 41 (5.59%) BIG-IP
14 40 (5.46%) BGP
14 40 (5.46%) Wireshark
15 39 (5.32%) Wi-Fi
15 39 (5.32%) Wireless
16 35 (4.77%) DMZ
17 33 (4.50%) Skype
18 32 (4.37%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.09%) Amazon RDS
2 24 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (3.00%) SQL Server
4 16 (2.18%) Amazon Aurora
5 14 (1.91%) Elasticsearch
6 9 (1.23%) MongoDB
7 7 (0.95%) DynamoDB
7 7 (0.95%) MySQL
7 7 (0.95%) Redis
8 6 (0.82%) Data Hub
9 4 (0.55%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.55%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.41%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.14%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.14%) CouchDB
11 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.14%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.14%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 79 (10.78%) Jenkins
2 69 (9.41%) Git
3 49 (6.68%) GitLab
4 45 (6.14%) JIRA
5 25 (3.41%) Fiddler
6 14 (1.91%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.09%) Terragrunt
8 6 (0.82%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.68%) Subversion
10 4 (0.55%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.55%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.14%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.14%) GCC
11 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.14%) Vite
11 1 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 218 (29.74%) Social Skills
2 101 (13.78%) Analytical Skills
3 72 (9.82%) Public Sector
4 54 (7.37%) Banking
5 44 (6.00%) Documentation Skills
6 43 (5.87%) Finance
7 41 (5.59%) Investment Banking
8 21 (2.86%) Telecoms
9 19 (2.59%) Legal
10 15 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.09%) Military
12 7 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.82%) Law
14 5 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 4 (0.55%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.55%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.55%) Marketing
16 3 (0.41%) Local Government
17 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 98 (13.37%) Network Engineer
2 91 (12.41%) Architect
3 74 (10.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 72 (9.82%) Analyst
5 70 (9.55%) Senior
6 67 (9.14%) Support Engineer
7 44 (6.00%) Platform Engineer
8 43 (5.87%) IT Support
9 42 (5.73%) DevOps Engineer
10 33 (4.50%) Security Engineer
11 31 (4.23%) AWS Engineer
12 28 (3.82%) Lead
12 28 (3.82%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 26 (3.55%) 2nd Line Support
13 26 (3.55%) Web Engineer
14 24 (3.27%) SOC Analyst
15 23 (3.14%) Cloud Platform Engineer
16 22 (3.00%) Operations Engineer
17 21 (2.86%) AWS DevOps
17 21 (2.86%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (8.32%) LDAP
2 43 (5.87%) SAML
3 37 (5.05%) OAuth
4 28 (3.82%) OpenID
5 20 (2.73%) OAuth2
6 15 (2.05%) REST
7 13 (1.77%) Kafka
8 12 (1.64%) 802.1X
9 11 (1.50%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (1.23%) SOAP
11 7 (0.95%) AngularJS
11 7 (0.95%) Middleware
11 7 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
12 6 (0.82%) AWS CDK
12 6 (0.82%) RESTful
13 5 (0.68%) cloud-init
13 5 (0.68%) Keycloak
13 5 (0.68%) React
13 5 (0.68%) Spring Boot
13 5 (0.68%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 65 (8.87%) Replication
2 57 (7.78%) PKI
3 52 (7.09%) Data Centre
4 43 (5.87%) Management Information System
5 30 (4.09%) Onboarding
6 25 (3.41%) Security Operations Centre
7 23 (3.14%) Enterprise Software
8 22 (3.00%) Analytical Mindset
8 22 (3.00%) Cloud Native
8 22 (3.00%) Cyberattack
9 15 (2.05%) Hybrid Cloud
10 13 (1.77%) Private Cloud
10 13 (1.77%) Public Cloud
11 12 (1.64%) Clustering
12 11 (1.50%) Cyber Threat
12 11 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.36%) Video Conferencing
14 9 (1.23%) NHS
14 9 (1.23%) SCADA
15 8 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 368 (50.20%) Windows
2 177 (24.15%) Windows Server
3 149 (20.33%) Linux
4 63 (8.59%) Windows 10
5 31 (4.23%) Windows Server 2019
6 22 (3.00%) Unix
6 22 (3.00%) Windows Server 2016
7 21 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 20 (2.73%) VMS
9 18 (2.46%) Windows Server 2012
10 17 (2.32%) Amazon Linux
10 17 (2.32%) Android
11 14 (1.91%) Ubuntu
12 13 (1.77%) CentOS
13 12 (1.64%) Apple iOS
14 11 (1.50%) Windows Server 2003
15 10 (1.36%) Windows 7
16 9 (1.23%) Mac OS
17 5 (0.68%) Solaris
18 4 (0.55%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (22.78%) Problem-Solving
2 125 (17.05%) ITIL
3 120 (16.37%) Load Balancing
4 117 (15.96%) CI/CD
5 115 (15.69%) DevOps
6 99 (13.51%) Infrastructure as Code
7 96 (13.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 91 (12.41%) High Availability
9 78 (10.64%) Change Management
9 78 (10.64%) Cybersecurity
10 76 (10.37%) Migration
11 70 (9.55%) Incident Response
12 69 (9.41%) Disaster Recovery
13 62 (8.46%) Service Management
14 57 (7.78%) Root Cause Analysis
14 57 (7.78%) SIEM
15 53 (7.23%) Mentoring
15 53 (7.23%) Platform Engineering
16 50 (6.82%) Agile
17 49 (6.68%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 224 (30.56%) PowerShell
2 156 (21.28%) Python
3 77 (10.50%) Bash
4 43 (5.87%) SQL
5 21 (2.86%) Java
5 21 (2.86%) Perl
6 14 (1.91%) Groovy
7 13 (1.77%) Bicep
8 12 (1.64%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.64%) VBScript
9 11 (1.50%) Go
10 10 (1.36%) Ruby
10 10 (1.36%) VB
11 7 (0.95%) Lisp
12 6 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.68%) C++
13 5 (0.68%) JavaScript
14 3 (0.41%) C#
14 3 (0.41%) Search Processing Language
14 3 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 273 (37.24%) Security Cleared
2 199 (27.15%) SC Cleared
3 87 (11.87%) DV Cleared
4 71 (9.69%) Degree
5 59 (8.05%) Microsoft Certification
6 43 (5.87%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (5.32%) CCNP
8 38 (5.18%) Azure Certification
9 26 (3.55%) AWS Certification
10 21 (2.86%) CompTIA Security+
11 20 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (2.46%) Network+ Certification
13 16 (2.18%) CCNA
14 15 (2.05%) CompTIA CySA+
15 12 (1.64%) CISSP
16 11 (1.50%) Server+ Certification
17 8 (1.09%) CCIE
17 8 (1.09%) ITIL Certification
17 8 (1.09%) MCSE
17 8 (1.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.77%) GDPR
2 23 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (2.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 19 (2.59%) SLA
5 18 (2.46%) NIST
6 9 (1.23%) NCSC
6 9 (1.23%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.09%) 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%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 325 (44.34%) Active Directory
2 188 (25.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (12.28%) Docker
4 54 (7.37%) Hyper-V
5 43 (5.87%) VMware NSX
6 31 (4.23%) vSphere
7 27 (3.68%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (2.86%) Firmware
9 18 (2.46%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (2.32%) DFS Replication
11 14 (1.91%) Squid
12 12 (1.64%) BitLocker
13 10 (1.36%) Postfix
13 10 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
14 9 (1.23%) Dovecot
14 9 (1.23%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.95%) Terminal Services
16 6 (0.82%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.82%) NFS
17 5 (0.68%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 137 (18.69%) Terraform
2 121 (16.51%) Ansible
3 82 (11.19%) Microsoft Intune
4 76 (10.37%) SCCM
5 71 (9.69%) Single Sign-On
6 65 (8.87%) Kubernetes
7 50 (6.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 38 (5.18%) Grafana
9 37 (5.05%) vCenter Server
10 30 (4.09%) Prometheus
11 23 (3.14%) FortiGate
12 20 (2.73%) WSUS
13 13 (1.77%) Argo
13 13 (1.77%) SCOM
14 12 (1.64%) Proxmox
15 11 (1.50%) Packer
16 10 (1.36%) Nessus
16 10 (1.36%) Puppet
17 9 (1.23%) Microsoft Clustering
18 7 (0.95%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 283 (38.61%) Microsoft
2 224 (30.56%) VMware
3 120 (16.37%) F5
4 109 (14.87%) Cisco
5 84 (11.46%) ServiceNow
6 58 (7.91%) Splunk
7 54 (7.37%) Palo Alto
8 47 (6.41%) CheckPoint
9 42 (5.73%) Blue Coat
10 34 (4.64%) Citrix
11 32 (4.37%) SolarWinds
12 30 (4.09%) McAfee
13 26 (3.55%) NetApp
13 26 (3.55%) Red Hat
13 26 (3.55%) Veeam
14 24 (3.27%) Juniper
15 22 (3.00%) Dell
15 22 (3.00%) Okta
16 21 (2.86%) Fortinet
17 19 (2.59%) Zscaler