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 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 113 135
Rank change year-on-year -28 +22 -14
Contract jobs citing DNS 883 692 748
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.35% 1.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.71% 18.30% 13.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 550 494 497
10th Percentile £263 £263 £211
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £612 £599
90th Percentile £653 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 12 27
10th Percentile £17.72 - £20.00
25th Percentile £25.15 £23.59 £24.63
Median hourly rate £55.50 £67.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.88% +68.97% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £50.33
90th Percentile £75.60 £82.03 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £81.01 £40.00
% change year-on-year -19.77% +102.53% -18.56%

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 4,480 3,782 5,676
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.68% 12.84% 13.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,806 2,345 3,403
10th Percentile £246 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £489
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -0.31% -5.96%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £464 £475
% change year-on-year +2.43% -2.37% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 207 171 425
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.86
25th Percentile £20.79 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £48.72 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.92% -6.25% +110.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.38 £62.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £28.00 £46.14
% change year-on-year +98.21% -39.31% +149.38%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 -25 776 £500 -4.76% 278
UK excluding London -15 567 £500 -4.76% 252
London -43 250 £500 -2.20% 68
North of England +2 217 £447 -5.89% 58
Work from Home -42 188 £525 - 101
South East -4 158 £525 -4.55% 80
North West +28 139 £450 +5.88% 24
Midlands +14 113 £400 -27.93% 33
West Midlands +24 99 £390 -21.41% 16
Yorkshire -38 76 £445 -19.18% 25
Scotland +33 47 £550 +22.22% 11
South West -53 45 £575 +4.55% 38
East of England -29 43 £450 -10.00% 27
East Midlands -34 13 £394 -30.62% 17
North East -22 5 £200 -41.18% 10
Wales -16 4 £550 +22.22% 8

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
1 102 (11.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 44 (4.98%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.70%) nginx
4 13 (1.47%) Confluence
5 12 (1.36%) IIS
6 11 (1.25%) Skype for Business
7 10 (1.13%) Apache
8 4 (0.45%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.45%) WebSphere
9 3 (0.34%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.23%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.23%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Portal
10 2 (0.23%) WordPress
11 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 29 (3.28%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.47%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 300 (33.98%) Azure
2 155 (17.55%) AWS
3 151 (17.10%) Entra ID
4 141 (15.97%) Microsoft 365
5 94 (10.65%) GCP
6 60 (6.80%) GitHub
7 54 (6.12%) IaaS
8 42 (4.76%) SaaS
9 41 (4.64%) PaaS
10 37 (4.19%) Serverless
11 36 (4.08%) AWS CloudFormation
11 36 (4.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 33 (3.74%) Amazon S3
13 32 (3.62%) Amazon EC2
13 32 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
14 31 (3.51%) Route 53
15 26 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
16 24 (2.72%) OpenShift
17 23 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
18 21 (2.38%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 391 (44.28%) DHCP
2 282 (31.94%) Firewall
3 230 (26.05%) TCP/IP
4 209 (23.67%) VPN
5 124 (14.04%) WAN
6 116 (13.14%) LAN
7 87 (9.85%) SSL
8 86 (9.74%) Network Security
8 86 (9.74%) VLAN
9 80 (9.06%) BIG-IP
10 79 (8.95%) BGP
11 77 (8.72%) HTTP
12 63 (7.13%) Wi-Fi
13 51 (5.78%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 49 (5.55%) OSPF
15 42 (4.76%) Wireless
16 38 (4.30%) Kerberos
16 38 (4.30%) Wireshark
17 35 (3.96%) DMZ
17 35 (3.96%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (3.40%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.38%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (0.91%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.79%) DynamoDB
7 6 (0.68%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.57%) MySQL
8 5 (0.57%) Redis
9 4 (0.45%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.45%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.45%) Power BI
9 4 (0.45%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.34%) MariaDB
11 1 (0.11%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 52 (5.89%) Jenkins
2 45 (5.10%) JIRA
3 29 (3.28%) GitLab
4 28 (3.17%) Git
5 27 (3.06%) Fiddler
6 9 (1.02%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.79%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.79%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.68%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.45%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.45%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.23%) Introscope
10 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.11%) Subversion
11 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 202 (22.88%) Social Skills
2 93 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
3 71 (8.04%) Banking
4 68 (7.70%) Finance
5 63 (7.13%) Public Sector
6 46 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (4.30%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.40%) Legal
9 22 (2.49%) Telecoms
10 18 (2.04%) Military
11 10 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (0.91%) Law
13 6 (0.68%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.57%) Local Government
15 4 (0.45%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.34%) Italian Language
16 3 (0.34%) Police
Job Titles
1 147 (16.65%) Network Engineer
2 121 (13.70%) Architect
3 103 (11.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 85 (9.63%) Analyst
5 75 (8.49%) Senior
6 56 (6.34%) Security Engineer
7 50 (5.66%) Support Engineer
8 47 (5.32%) Web Engineer
9 44 (4.98%) IT Support
10 39 (4.42%) IT Engineer
11 37 (4.19%) Lead
11 37 (4.19%) Network Security Engineer
12 33 (3.74%) Administrator
13 29 (3.28%) Cisco Engineer
13 29 (3.28%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 28 (3.17%) SOC Analyst
15 27 (3.06%) Azure Engineer
15 27 (3.06%) Data Engineer
15 27 (3.06%) Data Network Engineer
16 26 (2.94%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (7.81%) LDAP
2 52 (5.89%) SAML
3 43 (4.87%) OAuth
4 32 (3.62%) OpenID
5 29 (3.28%) 802.1X
6 22 (2.49%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.70%) OAuth2
8 12 (1.36%) JSON
9 11 (1.25%) REST
10 9 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (1.02%) Kafka
11 7 (0.79%) XMPP
12 6 (0.68%) ARM Templates
13 5 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
13 5 (0.57%) Spring Boot
14 4 (0.45%) Hibernate
14 4 (0.45%) JPA
14 4 (0.45%) Middleware
14 4 (0.45%) RESTful
14 4 (0.45%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 72 (8.15%) Data Centre
2 70 (7.93%) PKI
3 52 (5.89%) Cloud Native
4 45 (5.10%) Replication
5 39 (4.42%) Management Information System
6 38 (4.30%) Clustering
7 33 (3.74%) Onboarding
8 32 (3.62%) Public Cloud
9 27 (3.06%) Hybrid Cloud
9 27 (3.06%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (2.94%) Cyberattack
11 22 (2.49%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 21 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
13 17 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.81%) Cyber Threat
14 16 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
15 14 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (1.47%) Product Ownership
16 13 (1.47%) Virtual Team
17 12 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 399 (45.19%) Windows
2 218 (24.69%) Windows Server
3 132 (14.95%) Linux
4 49 (5.55%) Windows 10
5 34 (3.85%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.38%) Android
7 20 (2.27%) Unix
8 19 (2.15%) Windows Server 2012
9 18 (2.04%) Mac OS
10 16 (1.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 14 (1.59%) Apple iOS
11 14 (1.59%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (1.25%) VMS
12 11 (1.25%) Windows 7
13 8 (0.91%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.45%) CatOS
15 3 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
15 3 (0.34%) CentOS
15 3 (0.34%) Ubuntu
16 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (21.40%) Problem-Solving
2 170 (19.25%) Load Balancing
3 142 (16.08%) Migration
4 131 (14.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 124 (14.04%) High Availability
5 124 (14.04%) ITIL
6 111 (12.57%) DevOps
7 105 (11.89%) CI/CD
8 104 (11.78%) Infrastructure as Code
9 93 (10.53%) Cybersecurity
10 83 (9.40%) Disaster Recovery
11 79 (8.95%) Identity Access Management
12 74 (8.38%) ITSM
13 67 (7.59%) Observability
14 63 (7.13%) SIEM
15 62 (7.02%) Change Management
16 60 (6.80%) Incident Response
16 60 (6.80%) RBAC
16 60 (6.80%) Roadmaps
17 58 (6.57%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 210 (23.78%) PowerShell
2 136 (15.40%) Python
3 75 (8.49%) Bash
4 41 (4.64%) SQL
5 19 (2.15%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.70%) Bicep
7 13 (1.47%) Java
7 13 (1.47%) VBScript
8 12 (1.36%) Ruby
9 9 (1.02%) Go
9 9 (1.02%) Shell Script
9 9 (1.02%) VB
10 5 (0.57%) VBA
11 4 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.45%) Perl
12 3 (0.34%) C
12 3 (0.34%) Lisp
13 2 (0.23%) Groovy
13 2 (0.23%) Jython
14 1 (0.11%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 292 (33.07%) Security Cleared
2 200 (22.65%) SC Cleared
3 100 (11.33%) DV Cleared
4 70 (7.93%) Cisco Certification
5 60 (6.80%) Degree
6 41 (4.64%) CCNP
7 34 (3.85%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (3.62%) CompTIA Security+
9 29 (3.28%) CCNA
10 27 (3.06%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (2.04%) CompTIA CySA+
13 16 (1.81%) AWS Certification
13 16 (1.81%) CISSP
14 15 (1.70%) Network+ Certification
15 13 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
16 10 (1.13%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.13%) JNCIS
17 9 (1.02%) CCIE
17 9 (1.02%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.51%) GDPR
2 30 (3.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (3.28%) NIST
4 25 (2.83%) SLA
5 16 (1.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.02%) NCSC
7 8 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.68%) QA
9 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.34%) PMO
10 2 (0.23%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.23%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.23%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 363 (41.11%) Active Directory
2 194 (21.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 82 (9.29%) Hyper-V
4 54 (6.12%) VMware NSX
5 51 (5.78%) vSphere
6 46 (5.21%) Docker
7 28 (3.17%) Virtual Machines
8 26 (2.94%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (2.83%) Firmware
10 18 (2.04%) BitLocker
11 15 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
12 12 (1.36%) Squid
13 8 (0.91%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.91%) NFS
14 6 (0.68%) Sendmail
15 5 (0.57%) Postfix
15 5 (0.57%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.57%) Varnish
16 4 (0.45%) Ceph
16 4 (0.45%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 147 (16.65%) Terraform
2 113 (12.80%) Ansible
3 91 (10.31%) Kubernetes
4 90 (10.19%) Microsoft Intune
5 75 (8.49%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (7.02%) SCCM
7 53 (6.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 48 (5.44%) FortiGate
9 42 (4.76%) vCenter Server
10 37 (4.19%) Grafana
11 26 (2.94%) Argo
12 23 (2.60%) WSUS
13 22 (2.49%) Prometheus
14 13 (1.47%) SCOM
15 10 (1.13%) Puppet
16 9 (1.02%) HAProxy
16 9 (1.02%) Nessus
17 8 (0.91%) vMotion
18 7 (0.79%) Consul
19 6 (0.68%) QRadar
Vendors
1 296 (33.52%) Microsoft
2 233 (26.39%) VMware
3 146 (16.53%) Cisco
4 145 (16.42%) F5
5 80 (9.06%) Splunk
6 75 (8.49%) ServiceNow
7 54 (6.12%) Citrix
8 47 (5.32%) SolarWinds
9 45 (5.10%) Infoblox
10 42 (4.76%) Google
11 40 (4.53%) Red Hat
12 39 (4.42%) Juniper
13 38 (4.30%) Palo Alto
14 36 (4.08%) Blue Coat
15 31 (3.51%) McAfee
16 29 (3.28%) NetApp
17 23 (2.60%) Fortinet
18 21 (2.38%) Extreme Networks
19 20 (2.27%) Okta
19 20 (2.27%) Pure Storage