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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 155 135 146
Rank change year-on-year -20 +11 -15
Contract jobs citing DNS 994 702 662
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.82% 2.12% 1.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.69% 18.62% 14.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 628 443 405
10th Percentile £300 £214 £219
25th Percentile £413 £377 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% +2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £598
90th Percentile £656 £652 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £425
% change year-on-year +8.42% +11.76% -12.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 32 12
10th Percentile £26.07 £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 £79.38 £76.59 £32.00
90th Percentile £98.44 £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 5,047 3,770 4,549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.25% 11.38% 11.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,920 2,391 2,612
10th Percentile £236 £214 £223
25th Percentile £391 £358 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £602
90th Percentile £680 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £485
% change year-on-year +5.56% -7.21% +6.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 192 190
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £20.13 £24.18
Median hourly rate £32.50 £36.25 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year -10.34% -25.69% -13.65%
75th Percentile £68.69 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £41.72 £54.88
% change year-on-year -37.34% -23.97% -4.57%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -28 901 £511 +2.25% 882
UK excluding London -20 604 £515 +8.42% 495
London -37 320 £500 -4.76% 408
Work from Home -13 244 £500 +5.26% 320
North of England +2 197 £500 +11.48% 103
South East -3 174 £538 +7.50% 138
North West +2 121 £500 +11.48% 62
Midlands -48 99 £450 - 70
South West +1 96 £588 +2.17% 82
West Midlands -54 83 £450 +2.86% 39
Yorkshire +1 61 £500 - 29
East of England -47 42 £525 -4.55% 40
Scotland 0 34 £450 -0.88% 43
East Midlands -4 15 £375 -16.67% 31
North East -39 15 £425 +25.00% 14
Wales -5 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
1 109 (10.97%) Microsoft Exchange
2 89 (8.95%) SharePoint
3 34 (3.42%) Confluence
4 15 (1.51%) nginx
5 14 (1.41%) Apache
6 13 (1.31%) IIS
7 8 (0.80%) Skype for Business
8 7 (0.70%) Tomcat
9 5 (0.50%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2013
11 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
12 2 (0.20%) Apache Spark
13 1 (0.10%) CMS
13 1 (0.10%) Drupal
13 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.10%) Traefik
13 1 (0.10%) WebSphere
13 1 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 23 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.21%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.40%) 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 (1.61%) 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%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 430 (43.26%) Azure
2 214 (21.53%) AWS
3 200 (20.12%) Entra ID
4 195 (19.62%) Microsoft 365
5 88 (8.85%) GitHub
6 86 (8.65%) GCP
7 57 (5.73%) Azure DevOps
8 54 (5.43%) Azure Monitor
8 54 (5.43%) GitHub Actions
9 52 (5.23%) IaaS
10 49 (4.93%) OneDrive
11 36 (3.62%) SaaS
12 35 (3.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 29 (2.92%) Azure Key Vault
13 29 (2.92%) PaaS
14 27 (2.72%) Azure AKS
15 26 (2.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 25 (2.52%) Amazon EKS
16 25 (2.52%) Serverless
17 24 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 477 (47.99%) DHCP
2 376 (37.83%) Firewall
3 298 (29.98%) TCP/IP
4 284 (28.57%) VPN
5 144 (14.49%) Network Security
6 132 (13.28%) VLAN
7 116 (11.67%) WAN
8 98 (9.86%) SSL
9 86 (8.65%) LAN
10 84 (8.45%) BGP
11 80 (8.05%) Wireless
12 66 (6.64%) Wi-Fi
13 64 (6.44%) HTTP
14 60 (6.04%) BIG-IP
15 59 (5.94%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 57 (5.73%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 55 (5.53%) SAN
18 47 (4.73%) OSPF
19 43 (4.33%) IPsec
20 42 (4.23%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (4.83%) SQL Server
2 25 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (1.61%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.31%) MongoDB
4 13 (1.31%) MySQL
5 12 (1.21%) Data Lake
6 9 (0.91%) Power BI
7 8 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
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
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%) Flink
12 2 (0.20%) KDB
12 2 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 82 (8.25%) JIRA
2 61 (6.14%) Git
3 60 (6.04%) Jenkins
4 42 (4.23%) GitLab
5 12 (1.21%) Bitbucket
5 12 (1.21%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (0.50%) Artifactory
7 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (0.50%) Selenium
8 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
9 3 (0.30%) MSI
10 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
10 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
11 1 (0.10%) Newman
11 1 (0.10%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.10%) Snyk
11 1 (0.10%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.10%) TestCafe
General
1 270 (27.16%) Social Skills
2 112 (11.27%) Analytical Skills
3 96 (9.66%) Finance
4 83 (8.35%) Public Sector
5 54 (5.43%) Banking
6 53 (5.33%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (3.12%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.31%) Investment Banking
9 17 (1.71%) Legal
10 14 (1.41%) Aerospace
11 13 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.21%) Police
13 11 (1.11%) Local Government
13 11 (1.11%) Military
14 9 (0.91%) Front Office
14 9 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 9 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
16 7 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.70%) Law
Job Titles
1 194 (19.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 159 (16.00%) Network Engineer
3 131 (13.18%) Senior
4 104 (10.46%) Support Engineer
5 87 (8.75%) Cloud Engineer
6 70 (7.04%) Architect
7 52 (5.23%) DevOps Engineer
8 51 (5.13%) Platform Engineer
9 50 (5.03%) Azure Engineer
9 50 (5.03%) IT Support
10 48 (4.83%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 46 (4.63%) IT Engineer
12 43 (4.33%) Security Engineer
13 41 (4.12%) Analyst
14 36 (3.62%) Senior Network Engineer
15 33 (3.32%) IT Support Engineer
16 32 (3.22%) Administrator
17 30 (3.02%) Cisco Engineer
18 29 (2.92%) Network Security Engineer
19 28 (2.82%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 230 (23.14%) Terraform
2 40 (4.02%) SAML
3 36 (3.62%) OAuth
4 35 (3.52%) 802.1X
5 33 (3.32%) ARM Templates
6 30 (3.02%) OpenID
6 30 (3.02%) REST
7 28 (2.82%) LDAP
8 25 (2.52%) Kafka
9 16 (1.61%) JSON
9 16 (1.61%) YAML
10 13 (1.31%) OAuth2
11 12 (1.21%) Elastic Stack
11 12 (1.21%) OpenTelemetry
12 10 (1.01%) .NET
12 10 (1.01%) CSS
12 10 (1.01%) React
13 7 (0.70%) FastAPI
13 7 (0.70%) Jinja
13 7 (0.70%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 130 (13.08%) Data Centre
2 109 (10.97%) PKI
3 81 (8.15%) Onboarding
4 78 (7.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 55 (5.53%) Management Information System
6 43 (4.33%) Cloud Native
7 33 (3.32%) Replication
8 28 (2.82%) Public Cloud
9 27 (2.72%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 24 (2.41%) Linux Command Line
11 23 (2.31%) Clustering
12 19 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
13 17 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
13 17 (1.71%) Driving Licence
13 17 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
14 14 (1.41%) Cyber Threat
14 14 (1.41%) Security Posture
15 12 (1.21%) ARM Cortex
16 11 (1.11%) CMDB
16 11 (1.11%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 484 (48.69%) Windows
2 273 (27.46%) Windows Server
3 228 (22.94%) Linux
4 58 (5.84%) Windows 10
5 45 (4.53%) Windows Server 2019
6 44 (4.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 34 (3.42%) Mac OS
8 28 (2.82%) Unix
9 26 (2.62%) Windows Server 2012
10 24 (2.41%) Ubuntu
11 23 (2.31%) Apple iOS
12 21 (2.11%) Android
13 20 (2.01%) CentOS
14 18 (1.81%) VMS
15 15 (1.51%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (1.21%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.70%) Rocky
17 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2008
18 4 (0.40%) OpenVMS
19 3 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 265 (26.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 228 (22.94%) Infrastructure as Code
3 214 (21.53%) Problem-Solving
4 201 (20.22%) ITIL
5 185 (18.61%) DevOps
6 184 (18.51%) CI/CD
7 166 (16.70%) Load Balancing
8 156 (15.69%) Migration
9 127 (12.78%) ITSM
10 117 (11.77%) Continuous Improvement
11 110 (11.07%) Agile
12 108 (10.87%) Cybersecurity
13 102 (10.26%) Technical Leadership
14 101 (10.16%) Observability
14 101 (10.16%) Platform Engineering
15 99 (9.96%) High Availability
16 97 (9.76%) Disaster Recovery
17 92 (9.26%) Project Delivery
17 92 (9.26%) Runbook
18 87 (8.75%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 292 (29.38%) PowerShell
2 215 (21.63%) Python
3 149 (14.99%) Bash
4 73 (7.34%) SQL
5 59 (5.94%) Bicep
6 20 (2.01%) ActionScript
7 19 (1.91%) Shell Script
8 17 (1.71%) Java
9 14 (1.41%) Go
10 13 (1.31%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.01%) 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
1 381 (38.33%) Security Cleared
2 212 (21.33%) SC Cleared
3 166 (16.70%) DV Cleared
4 82 (8.25%) Degree
5 79 (7.95%) Cisco Certification
6 69 (6.94%) CCNP
7 57 (5.73%) Azure Certification
8 55 (5.53%) Microsoft Certification
9 39 (3.92%) CCNA
10 27 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
11 26 (2.62%) Network+ Certification
12 25 (2.52%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
13 18 (1.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.71%) CCIE
15 15 (1.51%) VCAP
16 14 (1.41%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 13 (1.31%) MCSE
18 11 (1.11%) A+ Certification
18 11 (1.11%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.72%) SLA
2 21 (2.11%) QA
3 19 (1.91%) NIST
4 15 (1.51%) NCSC
5 13 (1.31%) 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 (0.10%) GLBA
System Software
1 454 (45.67%) Active Directory
2 279 (28.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 121 (12.17%) Hyper-V
4 91 (9.15%) vSphere
5 89 (8.95%) VMware ESXi
6 72 (7.24%) Docker
7 66 (6.64%) VMware NSX
8 48 (4.83%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (4.12%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (2.01%) Firmware
11 17 (1.71%) NFS
12 16 (1.61%) vCloud
13 13 (1.31%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (1.01%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.70%) Postfix
15 7 (0.70%) UAG
16 6 (0.60%) Squid
16 6 (0.60%) VMware Workstation
17 5 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.50%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 153 (15.39%) Ansible
2 128 (12.88%) Kubernetes
3 119 (11.97%) Microsoft Intune
4 91 (9.15%) SCCM
5 66 (6.64%) vCenter Server
6 65 (6.54%) Grafana
7 57 (5.73%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (5.33%) Prometheus
9 42 (4.23%) SCOM
10 30 (3.02%) WSUS
11 19 (1.91%) NetBackup
12 18 (1.81%) FortiGate
13 16 (1.61%) Istio
13 16 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
13 16 (1.61%) Packer
13 16 (1.61%) Puppet
13 16 (1.61%) VxRail
14 12 (1.21%) Argo
14 12 (1.21%) Progress Chef
15 11 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 420 (42.25%) Microsoft
2 339 (34.10%) VMware
3 169 (17.00%) Cisco
4 123 (12.37%) F5
5 84 (8.45%) ServiceNow
6 57 (5.73%) Palo Alto
7 54 (5.43%) Google
8 51 (5.13%) Citrix
9 49 (4.93%) SolarWinds
10 44 (4.43%) Splunk
11 40 (4.02%) Infoblox
11 40 (4.02%) Juniper
12 36 (3.62%) Dynatrace
12 36 (3.62%) NetApp
12 36 (3.62%) Red Hat
13 34 (3.42%) CheckPoint
14 33 (3.32%) Fortinet
15 29 (2.92%) Veeam
15 29 (2.92%) Zscaler
16 24 (2.41%) CyberArk