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

 6 months to
28 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 129 152
Rank change year-on-year -20 +23 -15
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,022 706 607
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.16% 1.57%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.08% 18.21% 13.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 625 447 413
10th Percentile £300 £254 £233
25th Percentile £408 £388 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -1.53%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £644 £650 £662
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 31 13
10th Percentile £26.66 - £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.10
Median hourly rate £63.48 £57.50 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +10.40% +137.80% -38.03%
75th Percentile £74.00 £82.18 £48.75
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £51.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -2.34% +36.84% +75.93%

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 5,090 3,878 4,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 11.85% 12.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,997 2,363 2,784
10th Percentile £250 £243 £220
25th Percentile £400 £365 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +0.21% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 204 302
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -11.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.71 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £42.50 £54.88
% change year-on-year -39.28% -22.55% -4.57%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -14 927 £500 -4.76% 660
UK excluding London -7 638 £500 - 400
London -50 318 £500 - 319
Work from Home -16 239 £505 -3.81% 210
North of England +18 219 £475 -2.56% 80
South East +15 185 £538 -2.27% 132
North West +27 138 £450 -1.75% 51
Midlands -20 120 £450 -5.26% 49
South West +17 98 £550 - 70
West Midlands -28 98 £450 -5.26% 29
Yorkshire -13 67 £500 -9.09% 20
Scotland +10 36 £500 +10.13% 16
East of England -50 34 £450 -18.18% 44
East Midlands -6 20 £431 -21.59% 20
North East -35 14 £413 +21.32% 10
Wales -15 9 £455 +19.97% 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
1 107 (10.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 90 (8.81%) SharePoint
3 25 (2.45%) Confluence
4 18 (1.76%) Apache
5 16 (1.57%) IIS
6 13 (1.27%) nginx
7 9 (0.88%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.68%) Skype for Business
9 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.39%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2010
11 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.20%) IBM HTTP Server
12 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.20%) WebSphere Portal
13 1 (0.098%) CMS
13 1 (0.098%) Drupal
13 1 (0.098%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.098%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.17%) MS Visio
3 11 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.20%) Houdini
5 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.20%) NUKE
6 1 (0.098%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 11 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.098%) Magento
2 1 (0.098%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 418 (40.90%) Azure
2 213 (20.84%) AWS
3 187 (18.30%) Microsoft 365
4 185 (18.10%) Entra ID
5 101 (9.88%) GCP
6 72 (7.05%) GitHub
7 56 (5.48%) OneDrive
8 51 (4.99%) IaaS
9 48 (4.70%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (4.11%) Azure Monitor
11 39 (3.82%) GitHub Actions
12 37 (3.62%) SaaS
13 36 (3.52%) PaaS
14 32 (3.13%) OpenShift
15 27 (2.64%) Serverless
16 26 (2.54%) Azure ExpressRoute
17 25 (2.45%) Amazon EKS
18 24 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
19 23 (2.25%) Azure AKS
20 22 (2.15%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 481 (47.06%) DHCP
2 362 (35.42%) Firewall
3 297 (29.06%) TCP/IP
4 286 (27.98%) VPN
5 128 (12.52%) Network Security
6 127 (12.43%) WAN
7 126 (12.33%) VLAN
8 103 (10.08%) SSL
9 101 (9.88%) LAN
10 93 (9.10%) BGP
11 74 (7.24%) Wireless
12 72 (7.05%) HTTP
12 72 (7.05%) Wi-Fi
13 68 (6.65%) BIG-IP
14 60 (5.87%) SAN
15 55 (5.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 50 (4.89%) OSPF
17 48 (4.70%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 46 (4.50%) DMZ
19 38 (3.72%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (4.99%) SQL Server
2 26 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (1.17%) MongoDB
3 12 (1.17%) MySQL
4 11 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (0.98%) Power BI
6 9 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (0.88%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (0.68%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.59%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.59%) Redis
9 5 (0.49%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.39%) Db2
11 3 (0.29%) Big Data
11 3 (0.29%) SQLPlus
12 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.20%) KDB
13 1 (0.098%) Cloud Spanner
13 1 (0.098%) Metadata
13 1 (0.098%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 76 (7.44%) JIRA
2 51 (4.99%) Jenkins
3 44 (4.31%) Git
4 34 (3.33%) GitLab
5 16 (1.57%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.88%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (0.49%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.39%) Selenium
11 3 (0.29%) MSI
12 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.20%) Introscope
12 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
13 1 (0.098%) Maven
13 1 (0.098%) Visual Studio
General
1 267 (26.13%) Social Skills
2 118 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
3 96 (9.39%) Finance
4 84 (8.22%) Public Sector
5 66 (6.46%) Banking
6 56 (5.48%) Documentation Skills
7 34 (3.33%) Telecoms
8 31 (3.03%) Investment Banking
9 20 (1.96%) Legal
10 13 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.17%) Aerospace
12 11 (1.08%) Local Government
12 11 (1.08%) Military
12 11 (1.08%) Police
13 10 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.88%) Manufacturing
15 8 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
16 7 (0.68%) Front Office
17 6 (0.59%) Law
17 6 (0.59%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 186 (18.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 177 (17.32%) Network Engineer
3 123 (12.04%) Senior
4 103 (10.08%) Support Engineer
5 80 (7.83%) Architect
6 79 (7.73%) Cloud Engineer
7 54 (5.28%) Analyst
8 50 (4.89%) Security Engineer
9 49 (4.79%) IT Support
9 49 (4.79%) Platform Engineer
10 48 (4.70%) IT Engineer
11 44 (4.31%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 42 (4.11%) Azure Engineer
12 42 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
13 38 (3.72%) Cisco Engineer
14 37 (3.62%) Administrator
15 36 (3.52%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 36 (3.52%) Network Security Engineer
15 36 (3.52%) Web Engineer
16 34 (3.33%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (21.43%) Terraform
2 49 (4.79%) SAML
3 38 (3.72%) 802.1X
4 33 (3.23%) OAuth
5 29 (2.84%) ARM Templates
5 29 (2.84%) LDAP
6 28 (2.74%) OpenID
7 19 (1.86%) JSON
7 19 (1.86%) REST
8 18 (1.76%) Kafka
9 17 (1.66%) OpenTelemetry
10 13 (1.27%) YAML
11 11 (1.08%) OAuth2
12 9 (0.88%) CSS
13 8 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (0.78%) React
14 7 (0.68%) Middleware
15 6 (0.59%) Jinja
15 6 (0.59%) RabbitMQ
15 6 (0.59%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 121 (11.84%) Data Centre
2 107 (10.47%) PKI
3 74 (7.24%) Hybrid Cloud
4 70 (6.85%) Onboarding
5 54 (5.28%) Management Information System
6 50 (4.89%) Cloud Native
7 33 (3.23%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 30 (2.94%) Clustering
9 28 (2.74%) Replication
10 26 (2.54%) Public Cloud
11 25 (2.45%) Self-Motivation
12 18 (1.76%) Enterprise Cloud
12 18 (1.76%) Linux Command Line
13 16 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
14 15 (1.47%) Driving Licence
15 14 (1.37%) Security Posture
16 12 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
17 11 (1.08%) Enterprise Storage
18 10 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 474 (46.38%) Windows
2 265 (25.93%) Windows Server
3 227 (22.21%) Linux
4 65 (6.36%) Windows 10
5 50 (4.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 40 (3.91%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.23%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.64%) Unix
9 26 (2.54%) Windows Server 2012
10 25 (2.45%) Ubuntu
11 22 (2.15%) Apple iOS
12 20 (1.96%) Android
13 18 (1.76%) CentOS
13 18 (1.76%) VMS
14 15 (1.47%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.17%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.68%) Rocky
16 7 (0.68%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.39%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 249 (24.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 222 (21.72%) Problem-Solving
3 196 (19.18%) ITIL
4 187 (18.30%) Infrastructure as Code
5 179 (17.51%) Load Balancing
6 173 (16.93%) DevOps
7 165 (16.14%) Migration
8 155 (15.17%) CI/CD
9 124 (12.13%) ITSM
10 122 (11.94%) High Availability
11 108 (10.57%) Continuous Improvement
12 102 (9.98%) Agile
13 97 (9.49%) Observability
14 96 (9.39%) Cybersecurity
15 89 (8.71%) Platform Engineering
15 89 (8.71%) Technical Leadership
16 88 (8.61%) Disaster Recovery
16 88 (8.61%) Project Delivery
17 84 (8.22%) Runbook
18 78 (7.63%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 263 (25.73%) PowerShell
2 211 (20.65%) Python
3 157 (15.36%) Bash
4 69 (6.75%) SQL
5 48 (4.70%) Bicep
6 21 (2.05%) JavaScript
7 17 (1.66%) Shell Script
8 14 (1.37%) Go
9 11 (1.08%) Java
10 10 (0.98%) ActionScript
10 10 (0.98%) Perl
11 9 (0.88%) VBScript
12 8 (0.78%) Groovy
13 7 (0.68%) VBA
14 6 (0.59%) TypeScript
14 6 (0.59%) VB
15 4 (0.39%) Ruby
16 3 (0.29%) C
16 3 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
16 3 (0.29%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 376 (36.79%) Security Cleared
2 207 (20.25%) SC Cleared
3 164 (16.05%) DV Cleared
4 94 (9.20%) Cisco Certification
5 86 (8.41%) Degree
6 71 (6.95%) CCNP
7 55 (5.38%) Azure Certification
8 52 (5.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 50 (4.89%) CCNA
10 27 (2.64%) Network+ Certification
11 25 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
12 23 (2.25%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.66%) CCIE
15 15 (1.47%) VCAP
16 14 (1.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 11 (1.08%) A+ Certification
17 11 (1.08%) MCSE
17 11 (1.08%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (4.01%) SLA
2 26 (2.54%) NIST
3 17 (1.66%) NCSC
4 16 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.47%) 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 (0.20%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.098%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.098%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 441 (43.15%) Active Directory
2 282 (27.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 130 (12.72%) Hyper-V
4 79 (7.73%) VMware ESXi
5 75 (7.34%) vSphere
6 69 (6.75%) VMware NSX
7 64 (6.26%) Docker
8 45 (4.40%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (3.52%) Virtual Desktop
10 26 (2.54%) Firmware
11 22 (2.15%) NFS
12 15 (1.47%) vCloud
13 14 (1.37%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.98%) Postfix
14 10 (0.98%) Squid
14 10 (0.98%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.88%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.78%) Ceph
17 6 (0.59%) VMware Workstation
18 5 (0.49%) UAG
Systems Management
1 165 (16.14%) Ansible
2 133 (13.01%) Kubernetes
3 109 (10.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 81 (7.93%) SCCM
5 66 (6.46%) vCenter Server
6 63 (6.16%) Single Sign-On
7 60 (5.87%) Grafana
8 48 (4.70%) Prometheus
9 35 (3.42%) SCOM
10 32 (3.13%) WSUS
11 29 (2.84%) FortiGate
12 18 (1.76%) Argo
13 16 (1.57%) NetBackup
13 16 (1.57%) Puppet
13 16 (1.57%) VxRail
14 15 (1.47%) Packer
15 13 (1.27%) Istio
15 13 (1.27%) Jamf Pro
16 12 (1.17%) vMotion
17 11 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 384 (37.57%) Microsoft
2 335 (32.78%) VMware
3 187 (18.30%) Cisco
4 130 (12.72%) F5
5 91 (8.90%) ServiceNow
6 61 (5.97%) Citrix
6 61 (5.97%) Infoblox
7 58 (5.68%) Google
8 54 (5.28%) SolarWinds
9 53 (5.19%) Splunk
10 49 (4.79%) Palo Alto
11 48 (4.70%) Red Hat
12 43 (4.21%) Juniper
13 38 (3.72%) NetApp
14 35 (3.42%) Dynatrace
15 33 (3.23%) Fortinet
16 32 (3.13%) CheckPoint
17 30 (2.94%) Zscaler
18 24 (2.35%) CyberArk
18 24 (2.35%) McAfee
716 DNS jobs Nationwide