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 11 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 136 161
Rank change year-on-year -9 +25 -25
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,030 704 595
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.93% 2.14% 1.53%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.50% 17.87% 12.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 633 465 409
10th Percentile £295 £259 £250
25th Percentile £408 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £581 £600 £588
90th Percentile £642 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 31 15
10th Percentile £26.00 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £34.38 £23.45
Median hourly rate £58.49 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year +1.73% +137.60% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.55 £49.38
90th Percentile £97.94 £89.63 £63.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.11 £65.00 £48.03
% change year-on-year -5.99% +35.33% +84.73%

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 5,024 3,940 4,737
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 11.97% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,411 2,875
10th Percentile £250 £241 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -5.00% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 198 316
10th Percentile £15.24 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £19.79
Median hourly rate £26.07 £46.88 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.38% -5.30% -3.24%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.30 £74.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.18% -3.36%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 -9 933 £500 -4.76% 422
UK excluding London -1 637 £500 -4.76% 289
London -39 322 £495 -1.98% 173
Work from Home -19 240 £510 -2.86% 151
North of England +22 224 £475 -5.00% 54
South East +5 200 £538 -2.27% 99
North West +42 150 £483 +3.87% 31
Midlands -16 117 £450 -5.26% 39
West Midlands -27 96 £431 -9.21% 28
South West +4 85 £500 -14.89% 49
Yorkshire -24 63 £475 -13.64% 17
Scotland +9 34 £550 +22.22% 12
East of England -53 32 £450 -18.18% 33
East Midlands 0 19 £413 -26.67% 11
North East -40 11 £438 +7.36% 7
Wales -10 8 £463 +6.69% 5

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
1 103 (10.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 86 (8.35%) SharePoint
3 24 (2.33%) Confluence
4 19 (1.84%) Apache
5 16 (1.55%) IIS
6 14 (1.36%) nginx
7 9 (0.87%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.49%) Skype for Business
8 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.39%) Exchange Server 2010
10 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
11 2 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
12 1 (0.097%) SharePoint Server
12 1 (0.097%) Traefik
Applications
1 25 (2.43%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.17%) MS Visio
3 9 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.19%) Houdini
5 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.19%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 10 (0.97%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 412 (40.00%) Azure
2 212 (20.58%) AWS
3 175 (16.99%) Microsoft 365
4 174 (16.89%) Entra ID
5 115 (11.17%) GCP
6 76 (7.38%) GitHub
7 56 (5.44%) IaaS
8 54 (5.24%) OneDrive
9 44 (4.27%) Azure DevOps
10 40 (3.88%) PaaS
11 39 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
11 39 (3.79%) SaaS
12 34 (3.30%) GitHub Actions
13 32 (3.11%) OpenShift
14 28 (2.72%) AWS CloudFormation
14 28 (2.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 26 (2.52%) Serverless
16 25 (2.43%) Akamai
16 25 (2.43%) Azure ExpressRoute
17 23 (2.23%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 478 (46.41%) DHCP
2 377 (36.60%) Firewall
3 293 (28.45%) TCP/IP
4 281 (27.28%) VPN
5 145 (14.08%) WAN
6 130 (12.62%) Network Security
7 129 (12.52%) VLAN
8 124 (12.04%) LAN
9 106 (10.29%) BGP
9 106 (10.29%) SSL
10 80 (7.77%) BIG-IP
11 77 (7.48%) HTTP
12 72 (6.99%) Wireless
13 68 (6.60%) Wi-Fi
14 63 (6.12%) SAN
15 61 (5.92%) OSPF
16 50 (4.85%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 45 (4.37%) DMZ
18 43 (4.17%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 39 (3.79%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (5.05%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (0.97%) MongoDB
4 10 (0.97%) Power BI
5 9 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (0.87%) MySQL
6 6 (0.58%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.49%) MariaDB
7 5 (0.49%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.39%) Db2
8 4 (0.39%) Redis
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
9 3 (0.29%) SQLPlus
10 1 (0.097%) Cloud Spanner
10 1 (0.097%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.097%) KDB
10 1 (0.097%) Metadata
10 1 (0.097%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 73 (7.09%) JIRA
2 58 (5.63%) Jenkins
3 45 (4.37%) Git
4 34 (3.30%) GitLab
5 17 (1.65%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.07%) Bitbucket
7 10 (0.97%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (0.68%) Chocolatey
8 7 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.29%) MSI
11 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.19%) Introscope
11 2 (0.19%) Selenium
11 2 (0.19%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.097%) Maven
12 1 (0.097%) SonarQube
12 1 (0.097%) Visual Studio
General
1 257 (24.95%) Social Skills
2 116 (11.26%) Analytical Skills
3 92 (8.93%) Finance
4 87 (8.45%) Public Sector
5 70 (6.80%) Banking
6 55 (5.34%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.20%) Investment Banking
8 32 (3.11%) Telecoms
9 25 (2.43%) Legal
10 19 (1.84%) Military
11 13 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
12 12 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (1.07%) Local Government
14 10 (0.97%) Police
15 9 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 6 (0.58%) Aerospace
16 6 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (0.58%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (0.58%) Publishing
17 5 (0.49%) Law
Job Titles
1 186 (18.06%) Network Engineer
2 173 (16.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 118 (11.46%) Senior
4 97 (9.42%) Support Engineer
5 91 (8.83%) Architect
6 76 (7.38%) Cloud Engineer
7 60 (5.83%) Security Engineer
8 55 (5.34%) Analyst
9 49 (4.76%) IT Engineer
9 49 (4.76%) IT Support
10 42 (4.08%) Azure Engineer
11 41 (3.98%) DevOps Engineer
11 41 (3.98%) Network Security Engineer
12 40 (3.88%) Administrator
13 39 (3.79%) Cisco Engineer
13 39 (3.79%) Web Engineer
14 38 (3.69%) Platform Engineer
14 38 (3.69%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 37 (3.59%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 33 (3.20%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (5.05%) 802.1X
2 43 (4.17%) SAML
3 28 (2.72%) LDAP
4 27 (2.62%) OAuth
4 27 (2.62%) OpenID
5 26 (2.52%) ARM Templates
6 18 (1.75%) JSON
6 18 (1.75%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.46%) REST
8 14 (1.36%) Kafka
9 13 (1.26%) YAML
10 10 (0.97%) OAuth2
11 8 (0.78%) CSS
12 7 (0.68%) Middleware
12 7 (0.68%) React
13 6 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
14 5 (0.49%) RabbitMQ
14 5 (0.49%) Software Packaging
15 4 (0.39%) RESTful
15 4 (0.39%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 135 (13.11%) Data Centre
2 110 (10.68%) PKI
3 68 (6.60%) Onboarding
4 66 (6.41%) Hybrid Cloud
5 55 (5.34%) Cloud Native
6 51 (4.95%) Management Information System
7 44 (4.27%) Clustering
8 42 (4.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 26 (2.52%) Public Cloud
10 25 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (2.23%) Replication
12 19 (1.84%) Enterprise Cloud
12 19 (1.84%) Security Posture
13 17 (1.65%) Linux Command Line
14 16 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
15 14 (1.36%) Cyber Threat
15 14 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (1.26%) Driving Licence
17 11 (1.07%) CMDB
18 10 (0.97%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 483 (46.89%) Windows
2 253 (24.56%) Windows Server
3 215 (20.87%) Linux
4 59 (5.73%) Windows 10
5 47 (4.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 41 (3.98%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.20%) Mac OS
8 31 (3.01%) Unix
9 25 (2.43%) Windows Server 2012
10 20 (1.94%) Ubuntu
11 19 (1.84%) VMS
12 17 (1.65%) Apple iOS
13 15 (1.46%) Android
13 15 (1.46%) CentOS
13 15 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (1.17%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.78%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.68%) Rocky
17 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
18 3 (0.29%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 237 (23.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 231 (22.43%) Problem-Solving
3 188 (18.25%) ITIL
4 182 (17.67%) Load Balancing
5 176 (17.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 169 (16.41%) Migration
7 164 (15.92%) DevOps
8 153 (14.85%) CI/CD
9 143 (13.88%) High Availability
10 126 (12.23%) ITSM
11 103 (10.00%) Observability
12 98 (9.51%) Continuous Improvement
13 91 (8.83%) Agile
13 91 (8.83%) Cybersecurity
14 88 (8.54%) Project Delivery
15 86 (8.35%) Disaster Recovery
16 84 (8.16%) Identity Access Management
17 77 (7.48%) Platform Engineering
17 77 (7.48%) Technical Leadership
18 75 (7.28%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 244 (23.69%) PowerShell
2 209 (20.29%) Python
3 157 (15.24%) Bash
4 66 (6.41%) SQL
5 43 (4.17%) Bicep
6 26 (2.52%) JavaScript
7 14 (1.36%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.17%) Go
9 10 (0.97%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.97%) Perl
10 9 (0.87%) Java
11 8 (0.78%) VBScript
12 7 (0.68%) VBA
13 6 (0.58%) Groovy
14 5 (0.49%) Ruby
14 5 (0.49%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.49%) VB
15 4 (0.39%) C
16 3 (0.29%) Lisp
17 2 (0.19%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 386 (37.48%) Security Cleared
2 222 (21.55%) SC Cleared
3 156 (15.15%) DV Cleared
4 112 (10.87%) Cisco Certification
5 81 (7.86%) Degree
6 77 (7.48%) CCNP
7 57 (5.53%) CCNA
8 52 (5.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 46 (4.47%) Azure Certification
10 33 (3.20%) Network+ Certification
11 21 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (1.75%) AWS Certification
12 18 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
12 18 (1.75%) CCIE
13 17 (1.65%) CISSP
13 17 (1.65%) MCSE
13 17 (1.65%) Server+ Certification
14 15 (1.46%) CompTIA Security+
14 15 (1.46%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 13 (1.26%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.59%) SLA
2 29 (2.82%) NIST
3 19 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (1.55%) NCSC
5 13 (1.26%) QA
6 9 (0.87%) GDPR
7 5 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
7 5 (0.49%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.39%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.19%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.097%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.097%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.097%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 433 (42.04%) Active Directory
2 263 (25.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 127 (12.33%) Hyper-V
4 70 (6.80%) vSphere
5 69 (6.70%) VMware ESXi
6 62 (6.02%) VMware NSX
7 56 (5.44%) Docker
8 45 (4.37%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (3.69%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.43%) Firmware
11 22 (2.14%) NFS
12 13 (1.26%) BitLocker
12 13 (1.26%) vCloud
13 9 (0.87%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.87%) Postfix
13 9 (0.87%) Squid
14 8 (0.78%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.78%) VMware Workstation
15 7 (0.68%) Ceph
16 6 (0.58%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 211 (20.49%) Terraform
2 155 (15.05%) Ansible
3 122 (11.84%) Kubernetes
4 103 (10.00%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (7.09%) SCCM
6 58 (5.63%) Single Sign-On
6 58 (5.63%) vCenter Server
7 55 (5.34%) Grafana
8 45 (4.37%) FortiGate
9 42 (4.08%) Prometheus
10 31 (3.01%) SCOM
10 31 (3.01%) WSUS
11 20 (1.94%) Argo
12 15 (1.46%) NetBackup
12 15 (1.46%) VxRail
13 14 (1.36%) Jamf Pro
13 14 (1.36%) Nessus
13 14 (1.36%) Puppet
14 12 (1.17%) Packer
15 11 (1.07%) Istio
Vendors
1 368 (35.73%) Microsoft
2 318 (30.87%) VMware
3 199 (19.32%) Cisco
4 141 (13.69%) F5
5 93 (9.03%) ServiceNow
6 77 (7.48%) Splunk
7 70 (6.80%) SolarWinds
8 68 (6.60%) Citrix
9 65 (6.31%) Google
10 63 (6.12%) Infoblox
11 60 (5.83%) Juniper
12 47 (4.56%) Red Hat
13 44 (4.27%) Palo Alto
14 35 (3.40%) NetApp
15 33 (3.20%) Dynatrace
16 29 (2.82%) Zscaler
17 28 (2.72%) Fortinet
18 27 (2.62%) Blue Coat
19 26 (2.52%) CheckPoint
20 25 (2.43%) CyberArk