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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 121 143
Rank change year-on-year -19 +22 -17
Contract jobs citing DNS 904 669 727
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.28% 1.67%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.72% 17.94% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 568 479 475
10th Percentile £268 £255 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £535 £488
Median % change year-on-year -7.94% +9.74% -7.14%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £600
90th Percentile £650 £696 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £539 £515
% change year-on-year -10.95% +4.66% -0.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 11 27
10th Percentile £16.84 £23.59 £19.40
25th Percentile £24.18 £25.80 £23.80
Median hourly rate £54.00 £80.68 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.06% +101.69% -23.27%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £44.38
90th Percentile £75.75 £82.10 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.25 £81.01 £40.00
% change year-on-year -25.63% +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 4,584 3,730 5,566
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.67% 12.73% 12.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,862 2,294 3,329
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £490
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -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 230 175 424
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.32 £17.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £36.65 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.45% -8.39% +110.53%
75th Percentile £67.13 £58.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £49.36 £24.71 £45.88
% change year-on-year +99.76% -46.14% +148.00%

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 3 May 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 3 May 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 3 May 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 -21 795 £495 -9.34% 284
UK excluding London -2 575 £480 -10.95% 243
London -41 262 £500 -2.98% 75
North of England +1 222 £433 -8.95% 54
Work from Home -37 191 £500 -6.54% 98
South East -5 159 £525 -4.55% 82
North West +36 149 £425 - 24
Midlands +16 114 £380 -32.14% 34
West Midlands +26 100 £378 -29.44% 23
Yorkshire -33 69 £447 -18.77% 24
Scotland +30 48 £550 +22.22% 12
South West -40 48 £550 -5.38% 35
East of England -35 42 £450 -10.00% 30
East Midlands -33 13 £394 -30.62% 11
North East -26 6 £306 -9.93% 7
Wales -19 5 £550 +22.22% 9

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 (10.84%) Microsoft Exchange
2 46 (5.09%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.66%) nginx
4 13 (1.44%) Confluence
4 13 (1.44%) IIS
5 10 (1.11%) Apache
6 7 (0.77%) Skype for Business
7 5 (0.55%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.44%) WebSphere
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 24 (2.65%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.33%) 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 2 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 304 (33.63%) Azure
2 151 (16.70%) AWS
3 150 (16.59%) Entra ID
4 137 (15.15%) Microsoft 365
5 91 (10.07%) GCP
6 63 (6.97%) GitHub
7 53 (5.86%) IaaS
8 43 (4.76%) SaaS
9 41 (4.54%) PaaS
10 36 (3.98%) Serverless
11 35 (3.87%) AWS CloudFormation
12 32 (3.54%) Amazon EC2
12 32 (3.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 31 (3.43%) Amazon S3
13 31 (3.43%) AWS Lambda
14 29 (3.21%) Route 53
15 26 (2.88%) Amazon EKS
15 26 (2.88%) GitHub Actions
16 24 (2.65%) OneDrive
17 23 (2.54%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 387 (42.81%) DHCP
2 277 (30.64%) Firewall
3 227 (25.11%) TCP/IP
4 221 (24.45%) VPN
5 118 (13.05%) WAN
6 111 (12.28%) LAN
7 92 (10.18%) SSL
8 90 (9.96%) Network Security
9 85 (9.40%) BIG-IP
10 81 (8.96%) HTTP
11 80 (8.85%) BGP
12 79 (8.74%) VLAN
13 60 (6.64%) Wi-Fi
14 49 (5.42%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 46 (5.09%) OSPF
16 43 (4.76%) Wireless
17 40 (4.42%) Kerberos
17 40 (4.42%) Wireshark
18 37 (4.09%) DMZ
19 35 (3.87%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.10%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.32%) Elasticsearch
3 15 (1.66%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (0.88%) MongoDB
5 7 (0.77%) Power BI
6 6 (0.66%) Data Hub
6 6 (0.66%) DynamoDB
7 5 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
7 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.55%) MySQL
8 4 (0.44%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.44%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.44%) Redis
9 3 (0.33%) MariaDB
10 2 (0.22%) Relational Database
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 51 (5.64%) Jenkins
2 47 (5.20%) JIRA
3 28 (3.10%) Fiddler
3 28 (3.10%) Git
4 27 (2.99%) GitLab
5 9 (1.00%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.77%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.77%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.66%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.44%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.44%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.22%) Introscope
11 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 197 (21.79%) Social Skills
2 88 (9.73%) Analytical Skills
3 74 (8.19%) Banking
4 70 (7.74%) Finance
5 62 (6.86%) Public Sector
6 44 (4.87%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (4.42%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.32%) Legal
9 23 (2.54%) Telecoms
10 18 (1.99%) Military
11 10 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.00%) Law
13 6 (0.66%) Aerospace
13 6 (0.66%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.55%) Local Government
15 4 (0.44%) Italian Language
15 4 (0.44%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.44%) Police
16 3 (0.33%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 159 (17.59%) Network Engineer
2 114 (12.61%) Architect
3 107 (11.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 88 (9.73%) Analyst
5 78 (8.63%) Senior
6 61 (6.75%) Security Engineer
7 50 (5.53%) Web Engineer
8 45 (4.98%) Support Engineer
9 41 (4.54%) IT Support
9 41 (4.54%) Network Security Engineer
10 37 (4.09%) IT Engineer
11 35 (3.87%) Lead
12 33 (3.65%) Cisco Engineer
12 33 (3.65%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 32 (3.54%) Administrator
14 31 (3.43%) Data Engineer
14 31 (3.43%) Data Network Engineer
15 30 (3.32%) Azure Engineer
15 30 (3.32%) Cisco Security Engineer
16 26 (2.88%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (7.85%) LDAP
2 52 (5.75%) SAML
3 41 (4.54%) OAuth
4 35 (3.87%) 802.1X
5 31 (3.43%) OpenID
6 22 (2.43%) OpenTelemetry
7 13 (1.44%) JSON
8 11 (1.22%) OAuth2
9 9 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
9 9 (1.00%) Kafka
9 9 (1.00%) REST
10 6 (0.66%) ARM Templates
10 6 (0.66%) XMPP
11 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
12 4 (0.44%) gRPC
12 4 (0.44%) Middleware
12 4 (0.44%) RESTful
12 4 (0.44%) Spring Boot
12 4 (0.44%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 75 (8.30%) PKI
2 71 (7.85%) Data Centre
3 53 (5.86%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.54%) Replication
5 39 (4.31%) Clustering
5 39 (4.31%) Management Information System
6 37 (4.09%) Onboarding
7 32 (3.54%) Public Cloud
8 27 (2.99%) Hybrid Cloud
8 27 (2.99%) Security Operations Centre
9 26 (2.88%) Cyberattack
10 23 (2.54%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 21 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
13 16 (1.77%) Cyber Threat
13 16 (1.77%) Enterprise Cloud
13 16 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
14 14 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
14 14 (1.55%) Virtual Team
15 13 (1.44%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 396 (43.81%) Windows
2 218 (24.12%) Windows Server
3 128 (14.16%) Linux
4 46 (5.09%) Windows 10
5 37 (4.09%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.32%) Unix
7 20 (2.21%) Windows Server 2012
8 19 (2.10%) Android
8 19 (2.10%) Mac OS
9 18 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 17 (1.88%) Windows Server 2016
11 14 (1.55%) Apple iOS
12 9 (1.00%) VMS
12 9 (1.00%) Windows 7
13 8 (0.88%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.55%) CentOS
14 5 (0.55%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.44%) CatOS
16 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
16 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (20.80%) Problem-Solving
2 171 (18.92%) Load Balancing
3 142 (15.71%) Migration
4 136 (15.04%) High Availability
5 134 (14.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 126 (13.94%) ITIL
7 118 (13.05%) DevOps
8 110 (12.17%) CI/CD
9 107 (11.84%) Infrastructure as Code
10 87 (9.62%) Cybersecurity
11 84 (9.29%) Disaster Recovery
12 78 (8.63%) ITSM
13 76 (8.41%) Identity Access Management
13 76 (8.41%) Observability
14 67 (7.41%) Agile
15 61 (6.75%) Change Management
16 60 (6.64%) SIEM
17 57 (6.31%) Incident Response
18 55 (6.08%) Containerisation
19 54 (5.97%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 194 (21.46%) PowerShell
2 130 (14.38%) Python
3 76 (8.41%) Bash
4 43 (4.76%) SQL
5 21 (2.32%) JavaScript
6 16 (1.77%) Bicep
7 14 (1.55%) Java
8 12 (1.33%) Ruby
9 11 (1.22%) Go
10 10 (1.11%) Shell Script
10 10 (1.11%) VBScript
11 7 (0.77%) VB
11 7 (0.77%) VBA
12 3 (0.33%) C
12 3 (0.33%) Groovy
12 3 (0.33%) Perl
13 2 (0.22%) Jython
13 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.22%) Lisp
14 1 (0.11%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 299 (33.08%) Security Cleared
2 208 (23.01%) SC Cleared
3 97 (10.73%) DV Cleared
4 74 (8.19%) Cisco Certification
5 55 (6.08%) Degree
6 43 (4.76%) CCNP
7 34 (3.76%) CompTIA Security+
8 33 (3.65%) CCNA
9 30 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
10 24 (2.65%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (2.10%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (1.88%) CompTIA CySA+
14 14 (1.55%) AWS Certification
14 14 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
15 11 (1.22%) CISSP
16 10 (1.11%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.11%) JNCIS
17 9 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 8 (0.88%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.32%) SLA
2 26 (2.88%) GDPR
2 26 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (2.77%) NIST
4 16 (1.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 9 (1.00%) NCSC
6 8 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.66%) QA
8 4 (0.44%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.33%) PMO
10 2 (0.22%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 367 (40.60%) Active Directory
2 191 (21.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 88 (9.73%) Hyper-V
4 50 (5.53%) VMware NSX
5 48 (5.31%) vSphere
6 43 (4.76%) Docker
7 32 (3.54%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (2.99%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (2.88%) Firmware
10 17 (1.88%) BitLocker
11 15 (1.66%) Virtual Desktop
12 12 (1.33%) Squid
13 9 (1.00%) NFS
14 8 (0.88%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.66%) Sendmail
16 5 (0.55%) Postfix
16 5 (0.55%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.55%) Varnish
17 4 (0.44%) Ceph
17 4 (0.44%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 144 (15.93%) Terraform
2 109 (12.06%) Ansible
3 97 (10.73%) Kubernetes
4 88 (9.73%) Microsoft Intune
5 77 (8.52%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (6.64%) SCCM
7 49 (5.42%) FortiGate
8 46 (5.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 42 (4.65%) Grafana
10 40 (4.42%) vCenter Server
11 27 (2.99%) Prometheus
11 27 (2.99%) WSUS
12 23 (2.54%) Argo
13 14 (1.55%) SCOM
14 10 (1.11%) Nessus
14 10 (1.11%) Puppet
15 9 (1.00%) HAProxy
15 9 (1.00%) vMotion
16 8 (0.88%) Consul
17 6 (0.66%) Nagios
Vendors
1 289 (31.97%) Microsoft
2 233 (25.77%) VMware
3 151 (16.70%) Cisco
4 147 (16.26%) F5
5 84 (9.29%) Splunk
6 76 (8.41%) ServiceNow
7 57 (6.31%) Citrix
8 53 (5.86%) Infoblox
9 45 (4.98%) SolarWinds
10 40 (4.42%) Google
10 40 (4.42%) Juniper
11 37 (4.09%) Blue Coat
11 37 (4.09%) Palo Alto
11 37 (4.09%) Red Hat
12 31 (3.43%) McAfee
13 30 (3.32%) NetApp
14 22 (2.43%) Dynatrace
14 22 (2.43%) Extreme Networks
14 22 (2.43%) Fortinet
15 21 (2.32%) Okta