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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 121 159
Rank change year-on-year -15 +38 -25
Contract jobs citing DNS 955 665 653
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.30% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.02% 18.29% 12.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 591 470 447
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £402 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £548 £475
Median % change year-on-year -8.68% +15.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £610 £596
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £545 £500
% change year-on-year -11.65% +9.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 13 24
10th Percentile £21.25 - £18.95
25th Percentile £26.00 £29.00 £23.66
Median hourly rate £35.22 £57.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -38.75% +76.92% -37.66%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.95 £50.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -56.34% +101.69% -16.56%

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 4,771 3,635 5,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.72% 12.56% 12.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,920 2,249 3,208
10th Percentile £263 £214 £206
25th Percentile £400 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 163 415
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.96 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.22% +3.75% +119.30%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.44 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.93 £80.81 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.86 £31.79 £45.88
% change year-on-year +6.51% -30.71% +154.89%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 -15 839 £500 -9.09% 350
UK excluding London -5 604 £482 -11.65% 295
London -33 273 £500 -1.96% 93
North of England +12 234 £447 -5.89% 61
Work from Home -25 208 £525 -2.42% 206
South East +2 170 £525 -4.55% 106
North West +39 153 £458 +7.65% 39
Midlands +16 108 £438 -13.37% 35
West Midlands +10 95 £444 +1.43% 21
Yorkshire -20 75 £447 -18.73% 17
South West -30 57 £490 -20.33% 47
Scotland +34 50 £550 +22.22% 9
East of England -46 41 £450 -18.18% 30
East Midlands -25 12 £394 -30.62% 14
Wales -24 6 £300 -33.33% 11
North East -34 6 £306 -12.50% 7

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 87 (9.11%) Microsoft Exchange
2 54 (5.65%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.99%) Confluence
4 17 (1.78%) nginx
5 15 (1.57%) IIS
6 14 (1.47%) Apache
7 9 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.52%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.42%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 18 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.36%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 335 (35.08%) Azure
2 179 (18.74%) AWS
3 149 (15.60%) Entra ID
4 130 (13.61%) Microsoft 365
5 103 (10.79%) GCP
6 75 (7.85%) GitHub
7 58 (6.07%) IaaS
8 43 (4.50%) PaaS
9 39 (4.08%) SaaS
10 34 (3.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 33 (3.46%) GitHub Actions
12 32 (3.35%) Amazon EC2
12 32 (3.35%) Amazon S3
12 32 (3.35%) OneDrive
13 30 (3.14%) Amazon EKS
13 30 (3.14%) AWS CloudFormation
13 30 (3.14%) Serverless
14 28 (2.93%) Route 53
15 27 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
16 26 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 418 (43.77%) DHCP
2 289 (30.26%) Firewall
3 236 (24.71%) TCP/IP
4 229 (23.98%) VPN
5 128 (13.40%) WAN
6 113 (11.83%) LAN
7 106 (11.10%) SSL
8 102 (10.68%) Network Security
9 95 (9.95%) VLAN
10 93 (9.74%) BIG-IP
11 86 (9.01%) BGP
12 80 (8.38%) HTTP
13 57 (5.97%) Wi-Fi
14 54 (5.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 52 (5.45%) Wireless
16 48 (5.03%) OSPF
16 48 (5.03%) SAN
17 41 (4.29%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 41 (4.29%) Kerberos
18 37 (3.87%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (3.98%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.20%) Elasticsearch
3 19 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (0.94%) MongoDB
5 9 (0.94%) Power BI
6 8 (0.84%) MySQL
7 6 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (0.63%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.52%) DynamoDB
9 4 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (0.42%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.42%) MariaDB
9 4 (0.42%) Redis
10 2 (0.21%) Big Data
10 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
11 1 (0.10%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.10%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.10%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 64 (6.70%) JIRA
2 63 (6.60%) Jenkins
3 34 (3.56%) Git
4 32 (3.35%) GitLab
5 24 (2.51%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.94%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.73%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.73%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.63%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.42%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.31%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
12 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.10%) Spinnaker
General
1 215 (22.51%) Social Skills
2 93 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
3 75 (7.85%) Finance
4 73 (7.64%) Banking
5 63 (6.60%) Public Sector
6 47 (4.92%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.77%) Investment Banking
8 27 (2.83%) Legal
9 17 (1.78%) Military
10 15 (1.57%) Telecoms
11 9 (0.94%) Law
11 9 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.63%) Local Government
14 5 (0.52%) Manufacturing
14 5 (0.52%) Police
15 4 (0.42%) Advertising
15 4 (0.42%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.42%) Italian Language
15 4 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 171 (17.91%) Network Engineer
2 131 (13.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 116 (12.15%) Architect
4 84 (8.80%) Analyst
5 72 (7.54%) Senior
6 63 (6.60%) Security Engineer
6 63 (6.60%) Support Engineer
7 47 (4.92%) Web Engineer
8 45 (4.71%) Cloud Engineer
9 44 (4.61%) IT Support
10 42 (4.40%) Network Security Engineer
11 37 (3.87%) IT Engineer
12 36 (3.77%) Cisco Engineer
13 34 (3.56%) Administrator
13 34 (3.56%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 33 (3.46%) Azure Engineer
14 33 (3.46%) Data Engineer
14 33 (3.46%) Data Network Engineer
14 33 (3.46%) Lead
15 32 (3.35%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (7.02%) LDAP
2 53 (5.55%) SAML
3 42 (4.40%) OAuth
4 40 (4.19%) 802.1X
5 31 (3.25%) OpenID
6 20 (2.09%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.57%) JSON
8 12 (1.26%) ARM Templates
9 10 (1.05%) Kafka
9 10 (1.05%) REST
10 9 (0.94%) OAuth2
11 7 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
12 5 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.52%) XMPP
13 4 (0.42%) CSS
13 4 (0.42%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.42%) JPA
13 4 (0.42%) Spring
13 4 (0.42%) Web Services
13 4 (0.42%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 101 (10.58%) Data Centre
2 72 (7.54%) PKI
3 58 (6.07%) Cloud Native
4 52 (5.45%) Onboarding
5 42 (4.40%) Management Information System
5 42 (4.40%) Replication
6 40 (4.19%) Clustering
7 36 (3.77%) Public Cloud
8 33 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
9 29 (3.04%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 29 (3.04%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (2.72%) Cyberattack
11 21 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (1.99%) Cyber Threat
13 16 (1.68%) Enterprise Cloud
14 13 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.36%) Security Posture
14 13 (1.36%) Virtual Team
15 12 (1.26%) Enterprise Storage
15 12 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 405 (42.41%) Windows
2 223 (23.35%) Windows Server
3 145 (15.18%) Linux
4 42 (4.40%) Windows 10
5 40 (4.19%) Windows Server 2019
6 29 (3.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 28 (2.93%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.83%) Unix
9 19 (1.99%) Windows Server 2012
10 17 (1.78%) Apple iOS
11 15 (1.57%) Android
12 14 (1.47%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (1.15%) VMS
14 9 (0.94%) CentOS
14 9 (0.94%) Ubuntu
14 9 (0.94%) Windows Server 2003
15 7 (0.73%) Windows 7
16 3 (0.31%) AIX
16 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
17 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (20.42%) Problem-Solving
2 176 (18.43%) Load Balancing
3 161 (16.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 157 (16.44%) Migration
5 146 (15.29%) High Availability
6 136 (14.24%) DevOps
7 133 (13.93%) ITIL
8 121 (12.67%) CI/CD
9 119 (12.46%) Infrastructure as Code
10 94 (9.84%) ITSM
11 85 (8.90%) Cybersecurity
12 83 (8.69%) Disaster Recovery
12 83 (8.69%) Observability
13 80 (8.38%) Identity Access Management
14 76 (7.96%) Agile
15 69 (7.23%) Project Delivery
16 65 (6.81%) SIEM
17 64 (6.70%) Runbook
18 63 (6.60%) Root Cause Analysis
19 61 (6.39%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 192 (20.10%) PowerShell
2 150 (15.71%) Python
3 90 (9.42%) Bash
4 53 (5.55%) SQL
5 25 (2.62%) JavaScript
6 24 (2.51%) Bicep
7 17 (1.78%) Java
8 12 (1.26%) Go
9 11 (1.15%) Shell Script
10 9 (0.94%) VBA
11 8 (0.84%) ActionScript
12 7 (0.73%) Perl
13 6 (0.63%) Ruby
13 6 (0.63%) VBScript
14 5 (0.52%) Groovy
15 4 (0.42%) C
15 4 (0.42%) VB
16 3 (0.31%) Lisp
17 2 (0.21%) Jython
17 2 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 323 (33.82%) Security Cleared
2 209 (21.88%) SC Cleared
3 114 (11.94%) DV Cleared
4 87 (9.11%) Cisco Certification
5 74 (7.75%) Degree
6 56 (5.86%) CCNP
7 46 (4.82%) CCNA
8 31 (3.25%) CompTIA Security+
8 31 (3.25%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (2.93%) Network+ Certification
10 27 (2.83%) Azure Certification
11 20 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
12 17 (1.78%) CompTIA CySA+
12 17 (1.78%) Server+ Certification
13 15 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
14 12 (1.26%) AWS Certification
15 11 (1.15%) CISSP
15 11 (1.15%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.05%) JNCIS
16 10 (1.05%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.56%) SLA
2 28 (2.93%) NIST
3 23 (2.41%) GDPR
4 19 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (1.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 11 (1.15%) QA
7 7 (0.73%) NCSC
8 4 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.42%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.10%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.10%) PMO
11 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 375 (39.27%) Active Directory
2 206 (21.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 96 (10.05%) Hyper-V
4 56 (5.86%) vSphere
5 54 (5.65%) VMware NSX
6 44 (4.61%) VMware ESXi
7 43 (4.50%) Docker
8 35 (3.66%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (2.83%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.51%) Firmware
11 17 (1.78%) NFS
12 16 (1.68%) BitLocker
13 15 (1.57%) Squid
14 12 (1.26%) Microsoft App-V
15 10 (1.05%) Postfix
15 10 (1.05%) vCloud
16 8 (0.84%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.73%) Varnish
18 5 (0.52%) Ceph
18 5 (0.52%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 149 (15.60%) Terraform
2 124 (12.98%) Ansible
3 96 (10.05%) Kubernetes
4 78 (8.17%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (7.64%) Single Sign-On
6 51 (5.34%) FortiGate
7 48 (5.03%) Grafana
7 48 (5.03%) SCCM
7 48 (5.03%) vCenter Server
8 44 (4.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 31 (3.25%) Prometheus
10 26 (2.72%) WSUS
11 22 (2.30%) Argo
12 19 (1.99%) SCOM
13 14 (1.47%) HAProxy
14 13 (1.36%) Puppet
14 13 (1.36%) vMotion
15 11 (1.15%) Nessus
16 10 (1.05%) Jamf Pro
17 9 (0.94%) Nagios
Vendors
1 294 (30.79%) Microsoft
2 244 (25.55%) VMware
3 169 (17.70%) Cisco
4 155 (16.23%) F5
5 91 (9.53%) ServiceNow
6 86 (9.01%) Splunk
7 58 (6.07%) Citrix
8 57 (5.97%) Infoblox
9 51 (5.34%) SolarWinds
10 47 (4.92%) Red Hat
11 46 (4.82%) Google
11 46 (4.82%) Juniper
12 33 (3.46%) Palo Alto
13 32 (3.35%) Blue Coat
14 31 (3.25%) NetApp
15 28 (2.93%) Dynatrace
16 26 (2.72%) McAfee
16 26 (2.72%) Okta
17 22 (2.30%) Extreme Networks
17 22 (2.30%) Fortinet