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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 119 134
Rank change year-on-year -21 +15 -14
Contract jobs citing DNS 892 683 757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.31% 1.73%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.82% 18.17% 13.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 553 490 500
10th Percentile £264 £262 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% +12.63% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £535 £513
% change year-on-year -7.48% +4.39% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 12 30
10th Percentile £16.84 - £19.85
25th Percentile £24.18 £23.59 £23.90
Median hourly rate £60.25 £67.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.86% +68.97% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £46.56
90th Percentile £75.75 £82.03 £60.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £81.01 £40.00
% change year-on-year -19.77% +102.53% -13.24%

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 4,501 3,759 5,705
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 12.74% 13.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,813 2,321 3,431
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% - -5.77%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 211 173 427
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.71
25th Percentile £20.79 £20.30 £17.69
Median hourly rate £42.25 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.67% -6.25% +110.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.25 £62.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £67.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £27.50 £46.95
% change year-on-year +90.91% -41.42% +153.76%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -18 783 £500 -8.26% 247
UK excluding London -8 573 £495 -7.48% 225
London -42 252 £500 -4.14% 53
North of England +7 227 £446 -6.11% 58
Work from Home -30 190 £525 -1.87% 149
South East -3 161 £525 -4.55% 69
North West +31 148 £447 +5.24% 25
Midlands +24 111 £390 -29.73% 31
West Midlands +27 97 £380 -23.43% 18
Yorkshire -34 76 £447 -18.77% 24
Scotland +43 48 £550 +22.22% 5
South West -61 44 £575 - 36
East of England -40 41 £450 -14.29% 25
East Midlands -33 13 £394 -30.62% 13
North East -25 6 £306 -9.93% 10
Wales -16 4 £550 +22.22% 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 98 (10.99%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (4.71%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.68%) nginx
4 13 (1.46%) Confluence
4 13 (1.46%) IIS
5 10 (1.12%) Apache
6 9 (1.01%) Skype for Business
7 4 (0.45%) Exchange Server 2010
7 4 (0.45%) WebSphere
8 3 (0.34%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.22%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.22%) WebSphere Portal
9 2 (0.22%) WordPress
10 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 28 (3.14%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.46%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.22%) 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
Cloud Services
1 300 (33.63%) Azure
2 151 (16.93%) AWS
3 150 (16.82%) Entra ID
4 136 (15.25%) Microsoft 365
5 92 (10.31%) GCP
6 62 (6.95%) GitHub
7 53 (5.94%) IaaS
8 43 (4.82%) SaaS
9 41 (4.60%) PaaS
10 38 (4.26%) Serverless
11 36 (4.04%) AWS CloudFormation
12 34 (3.81%) Amazon S3
13 33 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
13 33 (3.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 32 (3.59%) Amazon EC2
15 31 (3.48%) Route 53
16 26 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
17 25 (2.80%) OpenShift
18 23 (2.58%) GitHub Actions
19 22 (2.47%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 386 (43.27%) DHCP
2 279 (31.28%) Firewall
3 226 (25.34%) TCP/IP
4 212 (23.77%) VPN
5 120 (13.45%) WAN
6 113 (12.67%) LAN
7 91 (10.20%) Network Security
7 91 (10.20%) SSL
8 83 (9.30%) BIG-IP
9 81 (9.08%) VLAN
10 79 (8.86%) BGP
11 78 (8.74%) HTTP
12 62 (6.95%) Wi-Fi
13 50 (5.61%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 46 (5.16%) OSPF
15 43 (4.82%) Wireless
16 40 (4.48%) Kerberos
17 39 (4.37%) Wireshark
18 37 (4.15%) DMZ
19 36 (4.04%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (3.25%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.35%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (0.90%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.78%) DynamoDB
7 6 (0.67%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.56%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.56%) MySQL
8 5 (0.56%) Power BI
8 5 (0.56%) Redis
9 4 (0.45%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.45%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.45%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.34%) MariaDB
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
11 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 52 (5.83%) Jenkins
2 46 (5.16%) JIRA
3 29 (3.25%) GitLab
4 28 (3.14%) Fiddler
4 28 (3.14%) Git
5 9 (1.01%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.78%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.78%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.67%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.45%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.45%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.22%) Introscope
11 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.11%) Subversion
11 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 199 (22.31%) Social Skills
2 90 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
3 73 (8.18%) Banking
4 68 (7.62%) Finance
5 63 (7.06%) Public Sector
6 45 (5.04%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (4.48%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.36%) Legal
9 23 (2.58%) Telecoms
10 18 (2.02%) Military
11 10 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (0.90%) Law
13 7 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.67%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.56%) Local Government
16 4 (0.45%) Aerospace
16 4 (0.45%) Italian Language
16 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
17 3 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
17 3 (0.34%) Police
Job Titles
1 156 (17.49%) Network Engineer
2 117 (13.12%) Architect
3 105 (11.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 85 (9.53%) Analyst
5 75 (8.41%) Senior
6 58 (6.50%) Security Engineer
7 49 (5.49%) Web Engineer
8 43 (4.82%) Support Engineer
9 40 (4.48%) IT Support
10 39 (4.37%) Network Security Engineer
11 36 (4.04%) IT Engineer
11 36 (4.04%) Lead
12 34 (3.81%) Administrator
13 32 (3.59%) Cisco Engineer
13 32 (3.59%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 29 (3.25%) Data Engineer
14 29 (3.25%) Data Network Engineer
15 28 (3.14%) Azure Engineer
15 28 (3.14%) Cisco Security Engineer
16 27 (3.03%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (7.85%) LDAP
2 50 (5.61%) SAML
3 40 (4.48%) OAuth
4 35 (3.92%) 802.1X
5 30 (3.36%) OpenID
6 22 (2.47%) OpenTelemetry
7 13 (1.46%) JSON
8 12 (1.35%) OAuth2
9 10 (1.12%) REST
10 9 (1.01%) Elastic Stack
10 9 (1.01%) Kafka
11 7 (0.78%) XMPP
12 6 (0.67%) ARM Templates
13 5 (0.56%) Microsoft Graph
13 5 (0.56%) 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 77 (8.63%) PKI
2 70 (7.85%) Data Centre
3 52 (5.83%) Cloud Native
4 43 (4.82%) Replication
5 40 (4.48%) Management Information System
6 39 (4.37%) Clustering
7 33 (3.70%) Onboarding
8 32 (3.59%) Public Cloud
9 27 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
9 27 (3.03%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (2.91%) Cyberattack
11 23 (2.58%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 21 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
13 17 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
14 16 (1.79%) Cyber Threat
14 16 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
15 14 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (1.46%) Product Ownership
16 13 (1.46%) Virtual Team
17 12 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 396 (44.39%) Windows
2 215 (24.10%) Windows Server
3 134 (15.02%) Linux
4 46 (5.16%) Windows 10
5 35 (3.92%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.35%) Unix
7 20 (2.24%) Android
7 20 (2.24%) Windows Server 2012
8 19 (2.13%) Mac OS
8 19 (2.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 15 (1.68%) Windows Server 2016
10 14 (1.57%) Apple iOS
11 11 (1.23%) Windows 7
12 10 (1.12%) VMS
13 8 (0.90%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.45%) CatOS
14 4 (0.45%) CentOS
14 4 (0.45%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
16 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (20.85%) Problem-Solving
2 167 (18.72%) Load Balancing
3 142 (15.92%) Migration
4 134 (15.02%) High Availability
5 130 (14.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 124 (13.90%) ITIL
7 113 (12.67%) DevOps
8 107 (12.00%) CI/CD
9 106 (11.88%) Infrastructure as Code
10 88 (9.87%) Cybersecurity
11 85 (9.53%) Disaster Recovery
12 79 (8.86%) Identity Access Management
13 75 (8.41%) ITSM
14 70 (7.85%) Observability
15 62 (6.95%) SIEM
16 60 (6.73%) Agile
16 60 (6.73%) Change Management
17 56 (6.28%) Incident Response
17 56 (6.28%) RBAC
17 56 (6.28%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 201 (22.53%) PowerShell
2 135 (15.13%) Python
3 78 (8.74%) Bash
4 41 (4.60%) SQL
5 20 (2.24%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.68%) Bicep
7 13 (1.46%) Java
8 12 (1.35%) Ruby
8 12 (1.35%) VBScript
9 11 (1.23%) Go
10 10 (1.12%) Shell Script
11 9 (1.01%) VB
12 6 (0.67%) VBA
13 4 (0.45%) Perl
14 3 (0.34%) C
14 3 (0.34%) Groovy
14 3 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
14 3 (0.34%) Lisp
15 2 (0.22%) Jython
16 1 (0.11%) C#
Qualifications
1 293 (32.85%) Security Cleared
2 203 (22.76%) SC Cleared
3 98 (10.99%) DV Cleared
4 73 (8.18%) Cisco Certification
5 57 (6.39%) Degree
6 43 (4.82%) CCNP
7 35 (3.92%) CompTIA Security+
8 32 (3.59%) CCNA
9 31 (3.48%) Microsoft Certification
10 24 (2.69%) Azure Certification
11 22 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (2.13%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (1.91%) CompTIA CySA+
14 13 (1.46%) AWS Certification
14 13 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
15 12 (1.35%) CISSP
16 10 (1.12%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.12%) JNCIS
17 8 (0.90%) JNCIP
17 8 (0.90%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.03%) GDPR
1 27 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 27 (3.03%) NIST
1 27 (3.03%) SLA
2 16 (1.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 9 (1.01%) NCSC
4 8 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (0.78%) QA
6 4 (0.45%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 3 (0.34%) PMO
8 2 (0.22%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.11%) COBIT
9 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 364 (40.81%) Active Directory
2 192 (21.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 85 (9.53%) Hyper-V
4 51 (5.72%) vSphere
5 50 (5.61%) VMware NSX
6 47 (5.27%) Docker
7 32 (3.59%) Virtual Machines
8 28 (3.14%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (2.91%) Firmware
10 18 (2.02%) BitLocker
11 15 (1.68%) Virtual Desktop
12 12 (1.35%) Squid
13 9 (1.01%) NFS
14 8 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.67%) Sendmail
16 5 (0.56%) Postfix
16 5 (0.56%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.56%) Varnish
17 4 (0.45%) Ceph
17 4 (0.45%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 144 (16.14%) Terraform
2 112 (12.56%) Ansible
3 95 (10.65%) Kubernetes
4 86 (9.64%) Microsoft Intune
5 75 (8.41%) Single Sign-On
6 59 (6.61%) SCCM
7 50 (5.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 49 (5.49%) FortiGate
9 41 (4.60%) vCenter Server
10 39 (4.37%) Grafana
11 25 (2.80%) Argo
11 25 (2.80%) WSUS
12 24 (2.69%) Prometheus
13 13 (1.46%) SCOM
14 10 (1.12%) Puppet
15 9 (1.01%) HAProxy
15 9 (1.01%) Nessus
15 9 (1.01%) vMotion
16 8 (0.90%) Consul
17 6 (0.67%) QRadar
Vendors
1 290 (32.51%) Microsoft
2 232 (26.01%) VMware
3 150 (16.82%) Cisco
4 146 (16.37%) F5
5 83 (9.30%) Splunk
6 78 (8.74%) ServiceNow
7 55 (6.17%) Citrix
8 48 (5.38%) Infoblox
9 45 (5.04%) SolarWinds
10 40 (4.48%) Google
10 40 (4.48%) Juniper
10 40 (4.48%) Red Hat
11 37 (4.15%) Blue Coat
12 36 (4.04%) Palo Alto
13 32 (3.59%) McAfee
14 31 (3.48%) NetApp
15 22 (2.47%) Extreme Networks
16 21 (2.35%) Fortinet
17 20 (2.24%) Okta
18 19 (2.13%) Pure Storage