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 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 127 159
Rank change year-on-year -14 +32 -18
Contract jobs citing DNS 983 687 647
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.25% 1.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.16% 18.22% 12.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 603 474 439
10th Percentile £300 £263 £225
25th Percentile £401 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% +12.84% -8.65%
75th Percentile £584 £606 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £538 £500
% change year-on-year -7.06% +7.60% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 19 25
10th Percentile £18.89 - £19.10
25th Percentile £23.13 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.69% +3.75% -16.56%
75th Percentile £62.87 £81.18 -
90th Percentile £74.05 £82.48 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £41.45 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.59% +3.63% -4.48%

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 4,877 3,770 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.32% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,980 2,297 3,176
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.19%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +1.72% -3.57% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 179 432
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.99 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.69 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.69% - +113.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £80.20 £73.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £36.57 £47.50
% change year-on-year -27.71% -23.01% +114.64%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 -14 874 £500 -7.41% 287
UK excluding London -9 612 £500 -7.06% 277
London -47 295 £500 - 61
North of England +22 237 £450 -10.00% 47
Work from Home -26 223 £527 -2.36% 126
South East +1 174 £525 -4.55% 103
North West +47 157 £465 +4.03% 28
Midlands 0 114 £450 -5.26% 42
West Midlands +5 98 £444 -6.58% 26
Yorkshire -19 74 £447 -18.73% 15
South West -13 66 £490 -20.00% 38
Scotland +16 41 £500 +11.11% 10
East of England -51 35 £463 -15.91% 37
East Midlands -12 15 £450 -18.18% 16
Wales -11 9 £500 +13.70% 6
North East -39 6 £413 - 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 91 (9.26%) Microsoft Exchange
2 62 (6.31%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.93%) Confluence
4 15 (1.53%) IIS
4 15 (1.53%) nginx
5 13 (1.32%) Apache
6 9 (0.92%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.51%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.41%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 20 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (1.63%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 352 (35.81%) Azure
2 186 (18.92%) AWS
3 159 (16.17%) Entra ID
4 132 (13.43%) Microsoft 365
5 106 (10.78%) GCP
6 72 (7.32%) GitHub
7 57 (5.80%) IaaS
8 42 (4.27%) PaaS
8 42 (4.27%) SaaS
9 40 (4.07%) OneDrive
10 36 (3.66%) Route 53
11 32 (3.26%) AWS CloudFormation
11 32 (3.26%) Serverless
11 32 (3.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 29 (2.95%) Amazon EC2
12 29 (2.95%) Azure DevOps
12 29 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
13 28 (2.85%) Amazon S3
14 27 (2.75%) Amazon EKS
14 27 (2.75%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 432 (43.95%) DHCP
2 313 (31.84%) Firewall
3 247 (25.13%) VPN
4 246 (25.03%) TCP/IP
5 147 (14.95%) WAN
6 125 (12.72%) LAN
7 112 (11.39%) Network Security
8 103 (10.48%) VLAN
9 102 (10.38%) SSL
10 95 (9.66%) BIG-IP
11 94 (9.56%) BGP
12 75 (7.63%) HTTP
13 65 (6.61%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (6.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 57 (5.80%) Wireless
16 55 (5.60%) SAN
17 53 (5.39%) OSPF
18 43 (4.37%) DMZ
18 43 (4.37%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 39 (3.97%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (3.97%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.83%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (1.12%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (1.02%) Power BI
7 9 (0.92%) MySQL
8 6 (0.61%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.51%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.51%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.51%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.41%) DocumentDB
10 4 (0.41%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.41%) Redis
11 3 (0.31%) Big Data
12 2 (0.20%) Db2
12 2 (0.20%) SQLPlus
13 1 (0.10%) KDB
13 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 66 (6.71%) JIRA
2 57 (5.80%) Jenkins
3 30 (3.05%) Git
4 23 (2.34%) Fiddler
5 22 (2.24%) GitLab
6 9 (0.92%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.81%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.71%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.61%) Chocolatey
10 5 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.20%) Introscope
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.10%) MSI
12 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 230 (23.40%) Social Skills
2 92 (9.36%) Analytical Skills
3 79 (8.04%) Finance
4 69 (7.02%) Banking
5 68 (6.92%) Public Sector
6 58 (5.90%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.66%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.54%) Legal
9 19 (1.93%) Military
9 19 (1.93%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (0.92%) Local Government
12 8 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.71%) Police
14 6 (0.61%) Publishing
15 5 (0.51%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.51%) Law
15 5 (0.51%) Manufacturing
16 4 (0.41%) Advertising
16 4 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 181 (18.41%) Network Engineer
2 140 (14.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 126 (12.82%) Architect
4 76 (7.73%) Senior
4 76 (7.73%) Support Engineer
5 62 (6.31%) Security Engineer
6 60 (6.10%) Analyst
7 56 (5.70%) Cloud Engineer
8 47 (4.78%) IT Support
9 46 (4.68%) Web Engineer
10 44 (4.48%) IT Engineer
11 43 (4.37%) Network Security Engineer
12 40 (4.07%) Cisco Engineer
13 38 (3.87%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 38 (3.87%) DevOps Engineer
14 36 (3.66%) Administrator
15 35 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
16 34 (3.46%) Data Engineer
16 34 (3.46%) Data Network Engineer
17 33 (3.36%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (6.00%) LDAP
2 52 (5.29%) SAML
3 45 (4.58%) 802.1X
4 40 (4.07%) OAuth
5 33 (3.36%) OpenID
6 21 (2.14%) OpenTelemetry
7 16 (1.63%) ARM Templates
8 15 (1.53%) JSON
9 11 (1.12%) REST
10 10 (1.02%) OAuth2
11 9 (0.92%) Kafka
12 5 (0.51%) CSS
12 5 (0.51%) gRPC
12 5 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.51%) YAML
13 4 (0.41%) AWS CDK
13 4 (0.41%) Middleware
13 4 (0.41%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.41%) Spring Cloud
13 4 (0.41%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 116 (11.80%) Data Centre
2 80 (8.14%) PKI
3 65 (6.61%) Cloud Native
4 50 (5.09%) Onboarding
5 46 (4.68%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (4.27%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 41 (4.17%) Clustering
8 40 (4.07%) Management Information System
8 40 (4.07%) Replication
9 29 (2.95%) Public Cloud
10 22 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
11 18 (1.83%) Security Posture
12 17 (1.73%) Enterprise Cloud
13 13 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (1.32%) Security Operations Centre
14 12 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
14 12 (1.22%) Virtual Team
15 11 (1.12%) Cyber Threat
15 11 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
15 11 (1.12%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 402 (40.90%) Windows
2 225 (22.89%) Windows Server
3 139 (14.14%) Linux
4 42 (4.27%) Windows 10
5 38 (3.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 36 (3.66%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.36%) Mac OS
8 25 (2.54%) Unix
9 21 (2.14%) Windows Server 2012
10 18 (1.83%) Apple iOS
11 15 (1.53%) VMS
12 13 (1.32%) Android
12 13 (1.32%) Ubuntu
13 12 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (1.12%) CentOS
15 7 (0.71%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.61%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.31%) AIX
17 3 (0.31%) Rocky
18 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (21.06%) Problem-Solving
2 187 (19.02%) Load Balancing
3 179 (18.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 165 (16.79%) Migration
5 157 (15.97%) High Availability
6 143 (14.55%) ITIL
7 139 (14.14%) DevOps
8 128 (13.02%) Infrastructure as Code
9 122 (12.41%) CI/CD
10 95 (9.66%) ITSM
11 85 (8.65%) Identity Access Management
12 84 (8.55%) Observability
13 82 (8.34%) Disaster Recovery
14 76 (7.73%) Agile
15 75 (7.63%) Project Delivery
16 66 (6.71%) Cybersecurity
17 63 (6.41%) RBAC
18 61 (6.21%) Root Cause Analysis
19 60 (6.10%) Runbook
20 57 (5.80%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 200 (20.35%) PowerShell
2 164 (16.68%) Python
3 102 (10.38%) Bash
4 53 (5.39%) SQL
5 27 (2.75%) Bicep
6 25 (2.54%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.12%) Go
7 11 (1.12%) Java
8 10 (1.02%) ActionScript
9 9 (0.92%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.92%) VBA
10 8 (0.81%) Perl
11 6 (0.61%) VBScript
12 5 (0.51%) Groovy
12 5 (0.51%) Ruby
13 4 (0.41%) C
13 4 (0.41%) VB
14 3 (0.31%) Lisp
15 2 (0.20%) Jython
15 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 334 (33.98%) Security Cleared
2 212 (21.57%) SC Cleared
3 115 (11.70%) DV Cleared
4 99 (10.07%) Cisco Certification
5 80 (8.14%) Degree
6 67 (6.82%) CCNP
7 53 (5.39%) CCNA
8 39 (3.97%) Microsoft Certification
9 33 (3.36%) Azure Certification
10 26 (2.64%) Network+ Certification
11 21 (2.14%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.73%) MCSE
12 17 (1.73%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
13 16 (1.63%) CCIE
14 15 (1.53%) CISSP
15 14 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
16 13 (1.32%) AWS Certification
17 12 (1.22%) MCSA
18 11 (1.12%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.05%) NIST
2 28 (2.85%) SLA
3 21 (2.14%) GDPR
3 21 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 13 (1.32%) NCSC
4 13 (1.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 12 (1.22%) QA
6 6 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.51%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.31%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.31%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.10%) PMO
11 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 379 (38.56%) Active Directory
2 207 (21.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 91 (9.26%) Hyper-V
4 57 (5.80%) VMware NSX
4 57 (5.80%) vSphere
5 51 (5.19%) VMware ESXi
6 44 (4.48%) Virtual Machines
7 35 (3.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 32 (3.26%) Docker
9 26 (2.64%) Firmware
10 21 (2.14%) NFS
11 15 (1.53%) BitLocker
11 15 (1.53%) Squid
12 12 (1.22%) vCloud
13 11 (1.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (1.02%) Postfix
15 8 (0.81%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.71%) Varnish
17 5 (0.51%) Ceph
18 4 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 164 (16.68%) Terraform
2 123 (12.51%) Ansible
3 92 (9.36%) Kubernetes
4 77 (7.83%) Single Sign-On
5 74 (7.53%) Microsoft Intune
6 54 (5.49%) FortiGate
7 51 (5.19%) vCenter Server
8 50 (5.09%) Grafana
9 45 (4.58%) SCCM
10 39 (3.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 38 (3.87%) Prometheus
12 27 (2.75%) WSUS
13 24 (2.44%) Argo
14 18 (1.83%) SCOM
15 15 (1.53%) Puppet
16 14 (1.42%) HAProxy
16 14 (1.42%) Nessus
17 13 (1.32%) Jamf Pro
18 12 (1.22%) vMotion
19 8 (0.81%) Consul
Vendors
1 323 (32.86%) Microsoft
2 246 (25.03%) VMware
3 184 (18.72%) Cisco
4 158 (16.07%) F5
5 89 (9.05%) ServiceNow
6 75 (7.63%) Splunk
7 69 (7.02%) Infoblox
8 61 (6.21%) Google
9 59 (6.00%) Citrix
10 53 (5.39%) Red Hat
10 53 (5.39%) SolarWinds
11 46 (4.68%) Juniper
12 40 (4.07%) Palo Alto
13 34 (3.46%) NetApp
14 32 (3.26%) Dynatrace
15 30 (3.05%) Blue Coat
16 28 (2.85%) McAfee
17 25 (2.54%) Fortinet
17 25 (2.54%) Okta
18 23 (2.34%) Zscaler