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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 115 111
Rank change year-on-year -22 -4 +13
Contract jobs citing DNS 751 718 902
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.95% 2.28% 2.06%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.63% 17.56% 15.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 484 451 578
10th Percentile £219 £223 £206
25th Percentile £400 £350 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.25% +2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £607 £623 £600
90th Percentile £675 £738 £679
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 9 25
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.26 £24.55
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.25 £32.00
Median hourly rate £33.50 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.01% -41.03% +3.90%
75th Percentile £72.51 £25.30 £56.40
90th Percentile £77.50 £40.40 £64.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.11 £22.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +69.38% -52.63% +3.03%

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 4,031 4,089 6,004
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.47% 12.99% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,652 2,376 3,641
10th Percentile £204 £213 £206
25th Percentile £356 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% -3.88%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 139 388
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.76 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.97 £21.46 £22.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £51.65
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -32.24% +149.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.45
% change year-on-year +27.52% -43.68% +186.89%

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 29 January 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 29 January 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 29 January 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 -16 676 £525 +10.06% 366
UK excluding London -27 470 £500 +11.11% 350
London +6 229 £538 +2.38% 74
Work from Home -41 178 £519 -3.04% 112
North of England -26 148 £460 +8.24% 73
South East -9 123 £515 +11.35% 108
Midlands +6 115 £380 -10.59% 47
West Midlands +35 111 £380 -6.17% 24
North West +5 100 £500 +5.54% 28
South West -22 65 £575 +5.02% 46
Yorkshire -35 52 £449 +49.50% 38
East of England -13 37 £475 +72.73% 54
Scotland -13 30 £460 +2.11% 23
North East -22 8 £411 +82.56% 11
East Midlands -41 4 £275 -38.89% 22
Wales -15 2 £550 +33.33% 6

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 95 (12.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 65 (8.66%) SharePoint
3 33 (4.39%) Skype for Business
4 22 (2.93%) Confluence
5 16 (2.13%) nginx
6 8 (1.07%) Exchange Server 2010
6 8 (1.07%) IIS
6 8 (1.07%) SharePoint Server
7 6 (0.80%) Exchange Server 2013
8 5 (0.67%) Apache
9 4 (0.53%) Exchange Server 2003
9 4 (0.53%) Exchange Server 2007
9 4 (0.53%) Office Communications Server
9 4 (0.53%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.27%) WordPress
Applications
1 44 (5.86%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.00%) MS Visio
3 8 (1.07%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.27%) Windchill
5 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.27%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 266 (35.42%) Azure
2 182 (24.23%) AWS
3 145 (19.31%) Microsoft 365
4 123 (16.38%) Entra ID
5 67 (8.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 56 (7.46%) Amazon S3
7 52 (6.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 50 (6.66%) Amazon EC2
9 45 (5.99%) GCP
10 43 (5.73%) GitHub
11 37 (4.93%) Amazon ELB
12 35 (4.66%) IaaS
13 33 (4.39%) AWS CloudFormation
14 30 (3.99%) Amazon ECS
14 30 (3.99%) Route 53
14 30 (3.99%) Serverless
15 28 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
16 23 (3.06%) SaaS
17 21 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
17 21 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 337 (44.87%) DHCP
2 246 (32.76%) TCP/IP
3 238 (31.69%) Firewall
4 189 (25.17%) VPN
5 95 (12.65%) SSL
6 93 (12.38%) Network Security
6 93 (12.38%) WAN
7 81 (10.79%) HTTP
8 73 (9.72%) LAN
9 65 (8.66%) VLAN
10 50 (6.66%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 46 (6.13%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 43 (5.73%) BGP
13 42 (5.59%) BIG-IP
14 40 (5.33%) Wi-Fi
14 40 (5.33%) Wireshark
15 38 (5.06%) DMZ
16 37 (4.93%) Wireless
17 36 (4.79%) Kerberos
18 33 (4.39%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.46%) Amazon RDS
2 23 (3.06%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (2.80%) SQL Server
4 14 (1.86%) Amazon Aurora
4 14 (1.86%) Elasticsearch
5 8 (1.07%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.93%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.93%) MySQL
6 7 (0.93%) Redis
7 6 (0.80%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.53%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.53%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.53%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.40%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.27%) Power BI
11 1 (0.13%) Apache Cassandra
11 1 (0.13%) Electronic Patient Records
11 1 (0.13%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.13%) GIS
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 73 (9.72%) Jenkins
2 67 (8.92%) Git
3 48 (6.39%) GitLab
4 44 (5.86%) JIRA
5 26 (3.46%) Fiddler
6 12 (1.60%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.07%) Terragrunt
8 6 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.67%) Subversion
10 4 (0.53%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.53%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.13%) Browser DevTools
12 1 (0.13%) GCC
12 1 (0.13%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.13%) Travis CI
12 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.13%) webpack
General
1 216 (28.76%) Social Skills
2 105 (13.98%) Analytical Skills
3 69 (9.19%) Public Sector
4 55 (7.32%) Banking
5 44 (5.86%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (5.59%) Finance
6 42 (5.59%) Investment Banking
7 21 (2.80%) Telecoms
8 17 (2.26%) Legal
9 14 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (1.07%) Military
11 7 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.67%) Law
13 4 (0.53%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.53%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.53%) Marketing
14 3 (0.40%) Local Government
15 2 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 103 (13.72%) Network Engineer
2 92 (12.25%) Architect
3 81 (10.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 76 (10.12%) Analyst
5 66 (8.79%) Senior
6 63 (8.39%) Support Engineer
7 42 (5.59%) Platform Engineer
8 39 (5.19%) IT Support
9 38 (5.06%) DevOps Engineer
10 35 (4.66%) Security Engineer
11 30 (3.99%) Lead
12 28 (3.73%) AWS Engineer
12 28 (3.73%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 28 (3.73%) Web Engineer
13 26 (3.46%) 2nd Line Support
13 26 (3.46%) SOC Analyst
14 21 (2.80%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 21 (2.80%) Operations Engineer
15 20 (2.66%) Network Security Engineer
16 19 (2.53%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (9.05%) LDAP
2 43 (5.73%) SAML
3 37 (4.93%) OAuth
4 28 (3.73%) OpenID
5 20 (2.66%) OAuth2
6 13 (1.73%) REST
7 12 (1.60%) 802.1X
7 12 (1.60%) Kafka
8 10 (1.33%) Elastic Stack
9 7 (0.93%) Middleware
9 7 (0.93%) OpenTelemetry
9 7 (0.93%) SOAP
10 6 (0.80%) AWS CDK
11 5 (0.67%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.67%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (0.67%) React
11 5 (0.67%) RESTful
11 5 (0.67%) Spring Boot
11 5 (0.67%) YAML
12 4 (0.53%) ASP.NET Web API
Miscellaneous
1 69 (9.19%) Replication
2 56 (7.46%) PKI
3 55 (7.32%) Data Centre
4 42 (5.59%) Management Information System
5 28 (3.73%) Onboarding
6 26 (3.46%) Security Operations Centre
7 24 (3.20%) Cyberattack
8 23 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
9 22 (2.93%) Analytical Mindset
9 22 (2.93%) Cloud Native
10 16 (2.13%) Public Cloud
11 14 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
11 14 (1.86%) Private Cloud
12 11 (1.46%) Clustering
12 11 (1.46%) Cyber Threat
12 11 (1.46%) NHS
13 10 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (1.33%) Video Conferencing
14 9 (1.20%) SCADA
15 7 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 369 (49.13%) Windows
2 181 (24.10%) Windows Server
3 147 (19.57%) Linux
4 62 (8.26%) Windows 10
5 34 (4.53%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.80%) Windows Server 2016
7 20 (2.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 19 (2.53%) Android
8 19 (2.53%) Unix
9 18 (2.40%) Windows Server 2012
10 17 (2.26%) VMS
11 15 (2.00%) Amazon Linux
12 13 (1.73%) Apple iOS
12 13 (1.73%) Ubuntu
13 12 (1.60%) CentOS
14 11 (1.46%) Windows 7
15 10 (1.33%) Mac OS
16 9 (1.20%) Windows Server 2003
17 5 (0.67%) Solaris
18 4 (0.53%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (22.77%) Problem-Solving
2 125 (16.64%) Load Balancing
3 124 (16.51%) ITIL
4 113 (15.05%) CI/CD
5 111 (14.78%) DevOps
6 101 (13.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 96 (12.78%) Infrastructure as Code
8 88 (11.72%) High Availability
9 85 (11.32%) Migration
10 80 (10.65%) Cybersecurity
11 78 (10.39%) Change Management
12 72 (9.59%) Incident Response
13 68 (9.05%) Disaster Recovery
14 62 (8.26%) Service Management
15 61 (8.12%) Root Cause Analysis
16 60 (7.99%) SIEM
17 53 (7.06%) Mentoring
18 51 (6.79%) Platform Engineering
19 50 (6.66%) Identity Access Management
20 48 (6.39%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 231 (30.76%) PowerShell
2 150 (19.97%) Python
3 73 (9.72%) Bash
4 41 (5.46%) SQL
5 18 (2.40%) Perl
6 17 (2.26%) Java
7 12 (1.60%) Bicep
7 12 (1.60%) Groovy
7 12 (1.60%) VBScript
8 11 (1.46%) Shell Script
9 10 (1.33%) Go
9 10 (1.33%) Ruby
9 10 (1.33%) VB
10 7 (0.93%) Lisp
11 6 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
12 5 (0.67%) C++
13 3 (0.40%) C#
13 3 (0.40%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.40%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (0.40%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 280 (37.28%) Security Cleared
2 205 (27.30%) SC Cleared
3 90 (11.98%) DV Cleared
4 74 (9.85%) Degree
5 58 (7.72%) Microsoft Certification
6 42 (5.59%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (5.19%) CCNP
8 38 (5.06%) Azure Certification
9 25 (3.33%) AWS Certification
10 23 (3.06%) CompTIA Security+
11 22 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
12 17 (2.26%) CompTIA CySA+
12 17 (2.26%) Network+ Certification
13 15 (2.00%) CCNA
14 13 (1.73%) CISSP
15 11 (1.46%) Server+ Certification
16 9 (1.20%) ITIL Certification
17 8 (1.07%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 8 (1.07%) BPSS Clearance
17 8 (1.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (4.53%) GDPR
2 23 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (2.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 21 (2.80%) SLA
4 18 (2.40%) NIST
5 9 (1.20%) NCSC
5 9 (1.20%) PCI DSS
6 8 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.80%) Accessibility
7 6 (0.80%) QA
8 3 (0.40%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.40%) PMO
9 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.13%) RMADS
10 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 342 (45.54%) Active Directory
2 190 (25.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 87 (11.58%) Docker
4 52 (6.92%) Hyper-V
5 44 (5.86%) VMware NSX
6 33 (4.39%) vSphere
7 27 (3.60%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (2.93%) Firmware
9 18 (2.40%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (2.00%) DFS Replication
11 13 (1.73%) BitLocker
11 13 (1.73%) Squid
12 12 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
13 9 (1.20%) Postfix
14 8 (1.07%) Dovecot
14 8 (1.07%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.80%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.80%) NFS
16 5 (0.67%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 5 (0.67%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 133 (17.71%) Terraform
2 122 (16.25%) Ansible
3 86 (11.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 77 (10.25%) SCCM
5 73 (9.72%) Single Sign-On
6 63 (8.39%) Kubernetes
7 61 (8.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 37 (4.93%) vCenter Server
9 33 (4.39%) Grafana
10 25 (3.33%) Prometheus
11 22 (2.93%) FortiGate
12 20 (2.66%) WSUS
13 13 (1.73%) Argo
13 13 (1.73%) SCOM
14 11 (1.46%) Proxmox
15 10 (1.33%) Packer
16 9 (1.20%) Nessus
17 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Clustering
17 8 (1.07%) Puppet
18 6 (0.80%) QRadar
Vendors
1 296 (39.41%) Microsoft
2 227 (30.23%) VMware
3 123 (16.38%) F5
4 109 (14.51%) Cisco
5 83 (11.05%) ServiceNow
6 59 (7.86%) Splunk
7 55 (7.32%) Palo Alto
8 48 (6.39%) CheckPoint
9 43 (5.73%) Blue Coat
10 34 (4.53%) Citrix
11 32 (4.26%) SolarWinds
12 31 (4.13%) McAfee
13 26 (3.46%) NetApp
14 25 (3.33%) Juniper
14 25 (3.33%) Red Hat
14 25 (3.33%) Veeam
15 23 (3.06%) Dell
16 21 (2.80%) Fortinet
16 21 (2.80%) Okta
17 19 (2.53%) Zscaler