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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 146 127 159
Rank change year-on-year -19 +32 -20
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,029 705 605
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.15% 1.55%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.31% 18.22% 12.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 632 452 417
10th Percentile £300 £251 £240
25th Percentile £413 £388 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £588
90th Percentile £647 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 33 15
10th Percentile £26.00 - £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.45
Median hourly rate £61.11 £57.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year +6.27% +137.60% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.20 £82.10 £49.38
90th Percentile £98.82 £88.70 £63.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £65.00 £48.03
% change year-on-year -2.34% +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 5,067 3,869 4,742
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.46% 11.80% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,997 2,360 2,862
10th Percentile £250 £240 £225
25th Percentile £400 £368 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £473 £500
% change year-on-year +2.22% -5.50% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 202 313
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -5.61% -12.35%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -4.28%

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 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 21 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 21 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 -11 932 £500 -4.76% 314
UK excluding London 0 639 £500 - 259
London -36 320 £500 -0.99% 94
Work from Home -22 238 £510 -0.49% 107
North of England +25 228 £475 -5.00% 43
South East +7 185 £538 -2.27% 102
North West +30 145 £465 - 25
Midlands -18 115 £450 -5.26% 35
South West -1 95 £550 +0.46% 38
West Midlands -29 93 £450 -5.26% 27
Yorkshire -7 69 £500 -9.09% 14
Scotland +2 34 £550 +21.15% 8
East of England -47 33 £450 -18.18% 36
East Midlands -7 20 £431 -21.59% 8
North East -32 14 £413 +21.32% 5
Wales -13 9 £455 +19.97% 4

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
1 105 (10.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 93 (9.04%) SharePoint
3 23 (2.24%) Confluence
4 19 (1.85%) Apache
5 16 (1.55%) IIS
6 12 (1.17%) nginx
7 9 (0.87%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.58%) Skype for Business
9 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.29%) 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
Applications
1 24 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.17%) MS Visio
3 10 (0.97%) 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 11 (1.07%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.097%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 422 (41.01%) Azure
2 216 (20.99%) AWS
3 184 (17.88%) Microsoft 365
4 180 (17.49%) Entra ID
5 111 (10.79%) GCP
6 73 (7.09%) GitHub
7 57 (5.54%) IaaS
8 55 (5.34%) OneDrive
9 45 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
10 41 (3.98%) Azure Monitor
11 40 (3.89%) PaaS
12 39 (3.79%) SaaS
13 37 (3.60%) GitHub Actions
14 30 (2.92%) OpenShift
15 28 (2.72%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (2.62%) Serverless
17 26 (2.53%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 25 (2.43%) Google Kubernetes Engine
19 24 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
20 23 (2.24%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 483 (46.94%) DHCP
2 368 (35.76%) Firewall
3 293 (28.47%) TCP/IP
4 286 (27.79%) VPN
5 134 (13.02%) VLAN
6 130 (12.63%) WAN
7 129 (12.54%) Network Security
8 108 (10.50%) LAN
9 99 (9.62%) SSL
10 93 (9.04%) BGP
11 74 (7.19%) Wi-Fi
11 74 (7.19%) Wireless
12 73 (7.09%) HTTP
13 71 (6.90%) BIG-IP
14 64 (6.22%) SAN
15 54 (5.25%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 51 (4.96%) OSPF
17 47 (4.57%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 45 (4.37%) DMZ
19 38 (3.69%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (5.44%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (0.97%) MongoDB
4 10 (0.97%) MySQL
4 10 (0.97%) Power BI
5 9 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
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 2 (0.19%) KDB
11 1 (0.097%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.097%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.097%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.097%) Flink
Development Applications
1 72 (7.00%) JIRA
2 52 (5.05%) Jenkins
3 42 (4.08%) Git
4 33 (3.21%) GitLab
5 16 (1.55%) Fiddler
6 12 (1.17%) 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
1 266 (25.85%) Social Skills
2 122 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
3 96 (9.33%) Finance
4 86 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 68 (6.61%) Banking
6 59 (5.73%) Documentation Skills
7 31 (3.01%) Investment Banking
7 31 (3.01%) Telecoms
8 22 (2.14%) Legal
9 13 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.17%) Military
11 11 (1.07%) Local Government
11 11 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
11 11 (1.07%) Police
12 10 (0.97%) Aerospace
13 9 (0.87%) Manufacturing
14 8 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (0.58%) Front Office
15 6 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
15 6 (0.58%) Law
Job Titles
1 184 (17.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 180 (17.49%) Network Engineer
3 124 (12.05%) Senior
4 99 (9.62%) Support Engineer
5 89 (8.65%) Architect
6 76 (7.39%) Cloud Engineer
7 56 (5.44%) Analyst
8 53 (5.15%) Security Engineer
9 49 (4.76%) IT Engineer
9 49 (4.76%) IT Support
10 44 (4.28%) Azure Engineer
11 42 (4.08%) Platform Engineer
11 42 (4.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 41 (3.98%) DevOps Engineer
13 38 (3.69%) Cisco Engineer
14 37 (3.60%) Administrator
14 37 (3.60%) Web Engineer
15 36 (3.50%) Cisco Network Engineer
16 35 (3.40%) Network Security Engineer
17 34 (3.30%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 218 (21.19%) Terraform
2 48 (4.66%) SAML
3 38 (3.69%) 802.1X
4 32 (3.11%) OAuth
5 28 (2.72%) LDAP
5 28 (2.72%) OpenID
6 27 (2.62%) ARM Templates
7 19 (1.85%) JSON
8 17 (1.65%) REST
9 16 (1.55%) OpenTelemetry
10 15 (1.46%) Kafka
11 13 (1.26%) YAML
12 10 (0.97%) OAuth2
13 7 (0.68%) CSS
13 7 (0.68%) Middleware
13 7 (0.68%) React
14 6 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
14 6 (0.58%) Software Packaging
15 5 (0.49%) .NET
16 4 (0.39%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 128 (12.44%) Data Centre
2 107 (10.40%) PKI
3 71 (6.90%) Hybrid Cloud
4 69 (6.71%) Onboarding
5 53 (5.15%) Management Information System
6 48 (4.66%) Cloud Native
7 40 (3.89%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 33 (3.21%) Clustering
9 28 (2.72%) Replication
10 27 (2.62%) Public Cloud
11 26 (2.53%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (1.85%) Enterprise Cloud
13 17 (1.65%) Linux Command Line
14 16 (1.55%) Driving Licence
14 16 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
15 15 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
16 14 (1.36%) Cyber Threat
16 14 (1.36%) Security Posture
17 10 (0.97%) CMDB
17 10 (0.97%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 472 (45.87%) Windows
2 262 (25.46%) Windows Server
3 218 (21.19%) Linux
4 62 (6.03%) Windows 10
5 48 (4.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (3.89%) Windows Server 2019
7 32 (3.11%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.62%) Unix
8 27 (2.62%) Windows Server 2012
9 22 (2.14%) Ubuntu
10 20 (1.94%) Apple iOS
11 18 (1.75%) Android
11 18 (1.75%) VMS
12 17 (1.65%) CentOS
13 16 (1.55%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (1.17%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.68%) Rocky
15 7 (0.68%) Windows Server 2008
16 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.29%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (24.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 226 (21.96%) Problem-Solving
3 188 (18.27%) ITIL
4 184 (17.88%) Infrastructure as Code
5 177 (17.20%) Load Balancing
6 169 (16.42%) Migration
7 165 (16.03%) DevOps
8 154 (14.97%) CI/CD
9 128 (12.44%) ITSM
10 126 (12.24%) High Availability
11 108 (10.50%) Continuous Improvement
12 97 (9.43%) Observability
13 96 (9.33%) Cybersecurity
14 95 (9.23%) Agile
15 91 (8.84%) Disaster Recovery
16 88 (8.55%) Project Delivery
17 87 (8.45%) Technical Leadership
18 86 (8.36%) Runbook
19 83 (8.07%) Platform Engineering
20 78 (7.58%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 259 (25.17%) PowerShell
2 213 (20.70%) Python
3 156 (15.16%) Bash
4 66 (6.41%) SQL
5 45 (4.37%) Bicep
6 23 (2.24%) JavaScript
7 16 (1.55%) Shell Script
8 12 (1.17%) Go
9 10 (0.97%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.97%) Java
9 10 (0.97%) Perl
10 9 (0.87%) VBScript
11 7 (0.68%) VBA
12 6 (0.58%) Groovy
12 6 (0.58%) VB
13 5 (0.49%) Ruby
13 5 (0.49%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.29%) C
14 3 (0.29%) Lisp
15 2 (0.19%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 382 (37.12%) Security Cleared
2 217 (21.09%) SC Cleared
3 161 (15.65%) DV Cleared
4 102 (9.91%) Cisco Certification
5 84 (8.16%) Degree
6 76 (7.39%) CCNP
7 55 (5.34%) CCNA
8 51 (4.96%) Azure Certification
9 49 (4.76%) Microsoft Certification
10 31 (3.01%) Network+ Certification
11 23 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 21 (2.04%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.65%) CCIE
15 15 (1.46%) Server+ Certification
15 15 (1.46%) VCAP
16 13 (1.26%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 11 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
17 11 (1.07%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.08%) SLA
2 26 (2.53%) NIST
3 17 (1.65%) NCSC
4 16 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (1.26%) QA
6 8 (0.78%) 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%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.19%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.097%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.097%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 438 (42.57%) Active Directory
2 275 (26.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 128 (12.44%) Hyper-V
4 76 (7.39%) vSphere
5 75 (7.29%) VMware ESXi
6 69 (6.71%) VMware NSX
7 56 (5.44%) Docker
8 42 (4.08%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.60%) Virtual Desktop
10 26 (2.53%) Firmware
11 22 (2.14%) NFS
12 14 (1.36%) BitLocker
12 14 (1.36%) vCloud
13 9 (0.87%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.87%) Postfix
13 9 (0.87%) Squid
13 9 (0.87%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.78%) Ceph
14 8 (0.78%) VMware Workstation
15 6 (0.58%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 161 (15.65%) Ansible
2 128 (12.44%) Kubernetes
3 110 (10.69%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (7.97%) SCCM
5 64 (6.22%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (6.03%) vCenter Server
7 56 (5.44%) Grafana
8 44 (4.28%) Prometheus
9 33 (3.21%) FortiGate
10 32 (3.11%) SCOM
11 31 (3.01%) WSUS
12 17 (1.65%) Argo
13 16 (1.55%) VxRail
14 15 (1.46%) NetBackup
15 14 (1.36%) Puppet
16 13 (1.26%) Jamf Pro
16 13 (1.26%) Packer
17 12 (1.17%) Istio
17 12 (1.17%) vMotion
18 11 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 379 (36.83%) Microsoft
2 331 (32.17%) VMware
3 189 (18.37%) Cisco
4 130 (12.63%) F5
5 91 (8.84%) ServiceNow
6 64 (6.22%) Citrix
7 63 (6.12%) Infoblox
8 61 (5.93%) Google
9 56 (5.44%) SolarWinds
9 56 (5.44%) Splunk
10 46 (4.47%) Red Hat
11 45 (4.37%) Palo Alto
12 44 (4.28%) Juniper
13 37 (3.60%) Dynatrace
13 37 (3.60%) NetApp
14 31 (3.01%) Fortinet
15 30 (2.92%) CheckPoint
16 28 (2.72%) Zscaler
17 24 (2.33%) CyberArk
17 24 (2.33%) McAfee