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 26 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 146 130 115
Rank change year-on-year -16 -15 +24
Contract jobs citing DNS 744 705 986
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 1.93% 2.16%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.53% 15.90% 15.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 459 421 626
10th Percentile £213 £223 £229
25th Percentile £393 £325 £382
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.27% -7.50% -3.85%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £682 £713 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £420 £500
% change year-on-year +19.05% -16.00% +6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 11 22
10th Percentile £15.50 £21.25 £24.55
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.35 £31.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £23.80 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +89.08% -49.89% +80.95%
75th Percentile £75.00 £34.00 £65.25
90th Percentile £87.09 £48.75 £77.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.10 £55.00
% change year-on-year +66.05% -50.73% +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 4,016 4,435 6,382
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.14% 12.16% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,597 2,557 3,955
10th Percentile £206 £225 £211
25th Percentile £356 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 171 346
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.26 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.75 £23.59 £22.81
Median hourly rate £34.00 £42.50 £55.70
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -23.70% +34.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.56 £56.49
% change year-on-year -12.48% -14.04% +25.53%

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 26 November 2025.

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 26 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for DNS in the UK

DNS
Top 17 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 26 November 2025. 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 +9 675 £523 +13.59% 418
UK excluding London -7 436 £500 +19.05% 401
London +14 248 £525 +5.00% 96
Work from Home -19 192 £500 +1.63% 150
Midlands +18 125 £438 +16.67% 49
West Midlands +40 119 £425 - 30
North of England -21 118 £500 +17.65% 48
South East +2 99 £500 +8.11% 185
North West +3 79 £500 +5.26% 33
South West -2 66 £625 +48.81% 53
Yorkshire -21 47 £480 +53.60% 13
East of England -6 44 £363 +31.82% 43
Scotland -41 16 £450 +1.18% 23
North East -14 6 £575 +283.33% 2
East Midlands -31 6 £450 +20.00% 19
Wales -10 3 £550 +83.33% 4
Channel Islands - 1 £440 -

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 (12.23%) Microsoft Exchange
2 74 (9.95%) SharePoint
3 43 (5.78%) Confluence
4 35 (4.70%) Skype for Business
5 15 (2.02%) Exchange Server 2010
6 14 (1.88%) SharePoint Server
7 12 (1.61%) OpenStack
8 11 (1.48%) Exchange Server 2013
8 11 (1.48%) nginx
9 10 (1.34%) Exchange Server 2003
9 10 (1.34%) Exchange Server 2007
9 10 (1.34%) IIS
9 10 (1.34%) Office Communications Server
10 8 (1.08%) Apache
11 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.27%) Apache Spark
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 72 (9.68%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.34%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 7 (0.94%) MS Visio
4 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
5 3 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.27%) Windchill
7 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.13%) Eikon
2 1 (0.13%) Eze OMS
2 1 (0.13%) Fidessa
2 1 (0.13%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 211 (28.36%) Azure
2 193 (25.94%) AWS
3 147 (19.76%) Microsoft 365
4 82 (11.02%) Entra ID
5 76 (10.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 61 (8.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 60 (8.06%) Amazon EC2
8 59 (7.93%) Amazon S3
9 44 (5.91%) Amazon ELB
10 40 (5.38%) GCP
11 39 (5.24%) GitHub
12 36 (4.84%) SaaS
13 33 (4.44%) IaaS
14 28 (3.76%) Amazon ECS
15 27 (3.63%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (3.49%) AWS KMS
17 22 (2.96%) Serverless
18 21 (2.82%) Route 53
19 20 (2.69%) AWS Lambda
20 19 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 345 (46.37%) DHCP
2 277 (37.23%) Firewall
3 232 (31.18%) TCP/IP
4 179 (24.06%) VPN
5 101 (13.58%) Network Security
6 91 (12.23%) SSL
7 89 (11.96%) WAN
8 82 (11.02%) VLAN
9 80 (10.75%) HTTP
10 75 (10.08%) LAN
11 61 (8.20%) Wireless
12 53 (7.12%) BGP
13 52 (6.99%) SMTP
14 47 (6.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 39 (5.24%) Wi-Fi
16 38 (5.11%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 36 (4.84%) FTP
17 36 (4.84%) IPsec
17 36 (4.84%) SD-WAN
18 35 (4.70%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (4.84%) Amazon RDS
2 19 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (2.42%) SQL Server
4 14 (1.88%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (1.08%) MongoDB
6 6 (0.81%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.67%) MySQL
8 4 (0.54%) Apache Cassandra
8 4 (0.54%) Big Data
9 3 (0.40%) Data Hub
9 3 (0.40%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (0.40%) Redis
9 3 (0.40%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.27%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.27%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.27%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.27%) Parquet
10 2 (0.27%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 93 (12.50%) Jenkins
2 82 (11.02%) Git
3 69 (9.27%) JIRA
4 47 (6.32%) GitLab
5 22 (2.96%) Vagrant
6 15 (2.02%) Fiddler
7 7 (0.94%) TeamCity
8 5 (0.67%) Subversion
8 5 (0.67%) Visual Studio Code
9 4 (0.54%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.40%) Vite
10 3 (0.40%) webpack
11 2 (0.27%) MLflow
11 2 (0.27%) Oracle APEX
11 2 (0.27%) Poetry
11 2 (0.27%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.27%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 232 (31.18%) Social Skills
2 105 (14.11%) Analytical Skills
3 81 (10.89%) Public Sector
4 60 (8.06%) Finance
5 45 (6.05%) Banking
6 37 (4.97%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (4.84%) Investment Banking
8 25 (3.36%) Telecoms
9 20 (2.69%) Legal
10 19 (2.55%) Presentation Skills
11 16 (2.15%) Manufacturing
12 9 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (1.08%) Law
13 8 (1.08%) Military
14 7 (0.94%) Aerospace
15 6 (0.81%) Marketing
16 5 (0.67%) Local Government
17 3 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 98 (13.17%) Network Engineer
2 91 (12.23%) Support Engineer
3 73 (9.81%) Senior
4 71 (9.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 69 (9.27%) Architect
6 66 (8.87%) Analyst
7 57 (7.66%) DevOps Engineer
8 44 (5.91%) Platform Engineer
9 40 (5.38%) IT Support
10 37 (4.97%) AWS Engineer
11 35 (4.70%) Administrator
12 32 (4.30%) Security Engineer
13 27 (3.63%) Consultant
14 26 (3.49%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 26 (3.49%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 25 (3.36%) AWS DevOps
15 25 (3.36%) AWS DevOps Engineer
15 25 (3.36%) Operations Engineer
16 24 (3.23%) IT Engineer
17 21 (2.82%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (5.38%) LDAP
2 18 (2.42%) SAML
3 16 (2.15%) OAuth
4 14 (1.88%) 802.1X
4 14 (1.88%) OpenID
4 14 (1.88%) REST
5 13 (1.75%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.61%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.61%) SOAP
7 10 (1.34%) Elastic Stack
8 9 (1.21%) Middleware
8 9 (1.21%) YAML
9 8 (1.08%) Kafka
9 8 (1.08%) NETCONF
9 8 (1.08%) React
9 8 (1.08%) RESTCONF
10 7 (0.94%) cloud-init
10 7 (0.94%) JSON
10 7 (0.94%) Keycloak
11 6 (0.81%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 64 (8.60%) PKI
1 64 (8.60%) Replication
2 62 (8.33%) Data Centre
3 49 (6.59%) Management Information System
4 28 (3.76%) Onboarding
5 22 (2.96%) Analytical Mindset
6 20 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
7 19 (2.55%) Hybrid Cloud
8 17 (2.28%) Video Conferencing
9 12 (1.61%) Cloud Native
9 12 (1.61%) Virtual Team
10 11 (1.48%) Operational Technology
10 11 (1.48%) Security Operations Centre
11 10 (1.34%) Cyberattack
11 10 (1.34%) Private Cloud
11 10 (1.34%) SCADA
11 10 (1.34%) Security Posture
12 9 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
12 9 (1.21%) iPhone
12 9 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 344 (46.24%) Windows
2 171 (22.98%) Linux
3 139 (18.68%) Windows Server
4 63 (8.47%) Windows 10
5 34 (4.57%) VMS
6 32 (4.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 30 (4.03%) Unix
8 25 (3.36%) Amazon Linux
9 24 (3.23%) Windows Server 2016
10 22 (2.96%) Windows Server 2019
11 20 (2.69%) Mac OS
11 20 (2.69%) Windows Server 2012
12 19 (2.55%) Ubuntu
13 18 (2.42%) Android
13 18 (2.42%) CentOS
14 13 (1.75%) Windows Server 2003
15 12 (1.61%) Windows 7
16 10 (1.34%) Apple iOS
17 5 (0.67%) Solaris
18 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (19.76%) Problem-Solving
2 130 (17.47%) DevOps
3 129 (17.34%) ITIL
4 126 (16.94%) CI/CD
5 99 (13.31%) Load Balancing
6 97 (13.04%) Infrastructure as Code
7 95 (12.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 80 (10.75%) Change Management
8 80 (10.75%) Migration
9 76 (10.22%) High Availability
10 69 (9.27%) Cybersecurity
11 68 (9.14%) Service Management
12 60 (8.06%) Agile
13 56 (7.53%) Platform Engineering
14 54 (7.26%) Incident Response
15 53 (7.12%) Continuous Improvement
16 52 (6.99%) Root Cause Analysis
17 50 (6.72%) Patch Management
18 49 (6.59%) Containerisation
19 47 (6.32%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 201 (27.02%) PowerShell
2 187 (25.13%) Python
3 97 (13.04%) Bash
4 46 (6.18%) SQL
5 31 (4.17%) Perl
6 24 (3.23%) Groovy
7 22 (2.96%) Java
8 15 (2.02%) Go
9 13 (1.75%) Shell Script
10 11 (1.48%) JavaScript
11 10 (1.34%) Bicep
12 8 (1.08%) VBScript
13 7 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
13 7 (0.94%) Lisp
14 6 (0.81%) C++
14 6 (0.81%) Ruby
14 6 (0.81%) VB
15 4 (0.54%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.40%) Apex Code
16 3 (0.40%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 266 (35.75%) Security Cleared
2 195 (26.21%) SC Cleared
3 92 (12.37%) Cisco Certification
4 85 (11.42%) Degree
5 75 (10.08%) DV Cleared
6 64 (8.60%) CCNP
7 60 (8.06%) Microsoft Certification
8 42 (5.65%) CCNA
9 37 (4.97%) Azure Certification
10 30 (4.03%) AWS Certification
11 23 (3.09%) Computer Science Degree
12 22 (2.96%) CISSP
13 16 (2.15%) CCIE
14 14 (1.88%) Network+ Certification
15 13 (1.75%) MCSE
16 12 (1.61%) CompTIA Security+
17 11 (1.48%) MCSA
17 11 (1.48%) Server+ Certification
17 11 (1.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 10 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.76%) GDPR
2 21 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (2.15%) SLA
4 15 (2.02%) NIST
5 12 (1.61%) NCSC
6 10 (1.34%) PCI DSS
7 9 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (0.94%) Accessibility
9 5 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.54%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.54%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.40%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.40%) WCAG
12 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.27%) PMO
12 2 (0.27%) QA
13 1 (0.13%) COBIT
13 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
13 1 (0.13%) JSP 440
System Software
1 309 (41.53%) Active Directory
2 185 (24.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 92 (12.37%) Docker
4 50 (6.72%) Hyper-V
5 35 (4.70%) VMware NSX
6 32 (4.30%) vSphere
7 28 (3.76%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (3.63%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (3.36%) DFS Replication
10 21 (2.82%) Firmware
11 16 (2.15%) Dovecot
11 16 (2.15%) Postfix
12 14 (1.88%) Terminal Services
13 10 (1.34%) Brightmail
13 10 (1.34%) ISA Server
13 10 (1.34%) Squid
13 10 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
14 9 (1.21%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (1.08%) NFS
16 7 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 144 (19.35%) Terraform
2 125 (16.80%) Ansible
3 70 (9.41%) SCCM
4 60 (8.06%) Microsoft Intune
5 58 (7.80%) Kubernetes
6 45 (6.05%) Grafana
7 42 (5.65%) vCenter Server
8 40 (5.38%) Prometheus
8 40 (5.38%) Single Sign-On
9 30 (4.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 19 (2.55%) WSUS
11 17 (2.28%) Argo
11 17 (2.28%) Nessus
12 15 (2.02%) Packer
13 14 (1.88%) FortiGate
14 13 (1.75%) Progress Chef
14 13 (1.75%) Proxmox
15 12 (1.61%) Microsoft Clustering
16 11 (1.48%) Puppet
17 8 (1.08%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 268 (36.02%) Microsoft
2 219 (29.44%) VMware
3 136 (18.28%) Cisco
4 106 (14.25%) F5
5 92 (12.37%) ServiceNow
6 56 (7.53%) Palo Alto
7 54 (7.26%) CheckPoint
8 44 (5.91%) Splunk
9 40 (5.38%) Citrix
10 37 (4.97%) Red Hat
11 33 (4.44%) SolarWinds
12 29 (3.90%) Blue Coat
13 27 (3.63%) Juniper
14 26 (3.49%) Veeam
15 24 (3.23%) Dell
16 23 (3.09%) Google
16 23 (3.09%) Meraki
17 22 (2.96%) Fortinet
17 22 (2.96%) Remedy
18 20 (2.69%) NetApp