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 18 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 134 149
Rank change year-on-year -15 +15 -17
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,014 703 635
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.86% 2.13% 1.65%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.96% 18.48% 13.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 618 444 411
10th Percentile £298 £219 £225
25th Percentile £413 £375 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £650 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +6.84% - -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 31 12
10th Percentile £26.40 £25.15 £20.13
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £22.64
Median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +41.07% +87.58% -49.49%
75th Percentile £76.50 £78.18 £32.00
90th Percentile £96.53 £89.63 £47.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.00 £45.00 £27.10
% change year-on-year +48.89% +66.05% -32.25%

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 5,079 3,805 4,583
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 11.55% 11.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,940 2,363 2,666
10th Percentile £231 £225 £225
25th Percentile £392 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 411 199 252
10th Percentile £14.30 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.53% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -30.59% -25.89% -0.26%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -15 919 £500 - 830
UK excluding London -15 626 £508 +6.84% 517
London -39 323 £500 - 395
Work from Home -23 239 £505 +6.32% 274
North of England +19 203 £500 +11.86% 92
South East -2 176 £538 +7.50% 170
North West +12 126 £500 +11.48% 62
Midlands -34 113 £438 -2.78% 82
South West +12 98 £575 +4.55% 78
West Midlands -41 92 £438 -5.41% 51
Yorkshire -4 63 £500 - 19
East of England -44 42 £475 -13.64% 36
Scotland +1 38 £488 +7.38% 47
East Midlands -1 20 £413 -8.33% 31
North East -42 14 £419 +23.16% 15
Wales -7 10 £440 +16.02% 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
1 111 (10.95%) Microsoft Exchange
2 93 (9.17%) SharePoint
3 33 (3.25%) Confluence
4 16 (1.58%) Apache
5 14 (1.38%) nginx
6 12 (1.18%) IIS
7 8 (0.79%) Skype for Business
7 8 (0.79%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.49%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
9 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
9 3 (0.30%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.099%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.099%) CMS
10 1 (0.099%) Drupal
10 1 (0.099%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.099%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.099%) Traefik
10 1 (0.099%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.099%) WordPress
Applications
1 24 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.08%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.20%) Houdini
4 2 (0.20%) NUKE
5 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.099%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 14 (1.38%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.099%) Magento
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.099%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 420 (41.42%) Azure
2 208 (20.51%) AWS
3 192 (18.93%) Microsoft 365
4 189 (18.64%) Entra ID
5 86 (8.48%) GCP
6 78 (7.69%) GitHub
7 55 (5.42%) IaaS
8 54 (5.33%) OneDrive
9 49 (4.83%) Azure DevOps
10 46 (4.54%) GitHub Actions
11 42 (4.14%) Azure Monitor
12 41 (4.04%) SaaS
13 32 (3.16%) PaaS
14 28 (2.76%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 27 (2.66%) OpenShift
15 27 (2.66%) Serverless
15 27 (2.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 25 (2.47%) Amazon EKS
17 24 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
18 23 (2.27%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 490 (48.32%) DHCP
2 370 (36.49%) Firewall
3 301 (29.68%) TCP/IP
4 283 (27.91%) VPN
5 137 (13.51%) Network Security
6 132 (13.02%) VLAN
7 117 (11.54%) WAN
8 107 (10.55%) SSL
9 89 (8.78%) LAN
10 86 (8.48%) BGP
11 80 (7.89%) Wireless
12 70 (6.90%) HTTP
13 69 (6.80%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (6.51%) BIG-IP
15 61 (6.02%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 61 (6.02%) SAN
16 55 (5.42%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 46 (4.54%) OSPF
18 44 (4.34%) IPsec
19 43 (4.24%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (5.03%) SQL Server
2 27 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (1.38%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (1.38%) MongoDB
4 13 (1.28%) MySQL
5 9 (0.89%) Data Lake
6 8 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
6 8 (0.79%) NoSQL
6 8 (0.79%) Power BI
7 7 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (0.69%) Redis
8 5 (0.49%) Big Data
8 5 (0.49%) MariaDB
9 4 (0.39%) Db2
10 3 (0.30%) Metadata
10 3 (0.30%) SQLPlus
11 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
11 2 (0.20%) Flink
11 2 (0.20%) KDB
12 1 (0.099%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 86 (8.48%) JIRA
2 54 (5.33%) Jenkins
3 50 (4.93%) Git
4 37 (3.65%) GitLab
5 14 (1.38%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.49%) Chocolatey
8 5 (0.49%) Selenium
9 4 (0.39%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (0.30%) MSI
11 2 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.20%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.20%) Vagrant
12 1 (0.099%) Locust
12 1 (0.099%) Newman
12 1 (0.099%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.099%) TestCafe
General
1 279 (27.51%) Social Skills
2 122 (12.03%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (8.38%) Finance
4 79 (7.79%) Public Sector
5 60 (5.92%) Banking
6 55 (5.42%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (3.45%) Telecoms
8 27 (2.66%) Investment Banking
9 16 (1.58%) Legal
10 13 (1.28%) Aerospace
10 13 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.18%) Local Government
12 11 (1.08%) Military
12 11 (1.08%) Police
13 10 (0.99%) Manufacturing
13 10 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 8 (0.79%) Front Office
14 8 (0.79%) Law
14 8 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 184 (18.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 171 (16.86%) Network Engineer
3 123 (12.13%) Senior
4 101 (9.96%) Support Engineer
5 82 (8.09%) Cloud Engineer
6 75 (7.40%) Architect
7 51 (5.03%) IT Support
8 49 (4.83%) IT Engineer
8 49 (4.83%) Security Engineer
9 48 (4.73%) Analyst
9 48 (4.73%) Azure Engineer
9 48 (4.73%) Platform Engineer
10 42 (4.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 42 (4.14%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 38 (3.75%) Administrator
12 35 (3.45%) Cisco Engineer
12 35 (3.45%) Network Security Engineer
13 34 (3.35%) Senior Network Engineer
14 33 (3.25%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 33 (3.25%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (21.01%) Terraform
2 41 (4.04%) SAML
3 35 (3.45%) 802.1X
4 30 (2.96%) OAuth
5 29 (2.86%) ARM Templates
5 29 (2.86%) LDAP
6 28 (2.76%) REST
7 26 (2.56%) OpenID
8 20 (1.97%) Kafka
9 19 (1.87%) JSON
10 14 (1.38%) YAML
11 12 (1.18%) OAuth2
12 11 (1.08%) OpenTelemetry
13 10 (0.99%) CSS
13 10 (0.99%) Elastic Stack
14 8 (0.79%) React
15 7 (0.69%) .NET
15 7 (0.69%) Jinja
15 7 (0.69%) Software Packaging
16 6 (0.59%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 126 (12.43%) Data Centre
2 107 (10.55%) PKI
3 75 (7.40%) Onboarding
4 71 (7.00%) Hybrid Cloud
5 55 (5.42%) Management Information System
6 41 (4.04%) Cloud Native
7 29 (2.86%) Public Cloud
7 29 (2.86%) Replication
8 26 (2.56%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 24 (2.37%) Clustering
10 22 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
11 21 (2.07%) Linux Command Line
12 16 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
13 15 (1.48%) Cyber Threat
13 15 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
13 15 (1.48%) Security Posture
14 14 (1.38%) Driving Licence
15 12 (1.18%) Enterprise Cloud
15 12 (1.18%) Operational Technology
16 11 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 482 (47.53%) Windows
2 269 (26.53%) Windows Server
3 229 (22.58%) Linux
4 66 (6.51%) Windows 10
5 49 (4.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 42 (4.14%) Windows Server 2019
7 36 (3.55%) Mac OS
8 29 (2.86%) Unix
9 26 (2.56%) Ubuntu
9 26 (2.56%) Windows Server 2012
10 24 (2.37%) Apple iOS
11 22 (2.17%) Android
12 21 (2.07%) CentOS
13 16 (1.58%) VMS
14 15 (1.48%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.18%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.69%) Rocky
16 7 (0.69%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.39%) AIX
17 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (25.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 224 (22.09%) Problem-Solving
3 198 (19.53%) ITIL
4 193 (19.03%) Infrastructure as Code
5 174 (17.16%) DevOps
6 166 (16.37%) Load Balancing
7 160 (15.78%) CI/CD
8 153 (15.09%) Migration
9 130 (12.82%) ITSM
10 114 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
11 112 (11.05%) High Availability
12 108 (10.65%) Agile
13 96 (9.47%) Cybersecurity
14 94 (9.27%) Technical Leadership
15 93 (9.17%) Observability
16 90 (8.88%) Disaster Recovery
17 89 (8.78%) Project Delivery
18 88 (8.68%) Platform Engineering
19 85 (8.38%) Change Management
19 85 (8.38%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 274 (27.02%) PowerShell
2 215 (21.20%) Python
3 148 (14.60%) Bash
4 68 (6.71%) SQL
5 50 (4.93%) Bicep
6 17 (1.68%) Shell Script
7 16 (1.58%) ActionScript
8 15 (1.48%) Go
8 15 (1.48%) JavaScript
9 11 (1.08%) Java
10 10 (0.99%) VBScript
11 9 (0.89%) Perl
12 7 (0.69%) Groovy
12 7 (0.69%) VBA
13 6 (0.59%) TypeScript
13 6 (0.59%) VB
14 4 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
14 4 (0.39%) Ruby
15 3 (0.30%) C
15 3 (0.30%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 385 (37.97%) Security Cleared
2 219 (21.60%) SC Cleared
3 166 (16.37%) DV Cleared
4 85 (8.38%) Cisco Certification
4 85 (8.38%) Degree
5 71 (7.00%) CCNP
6 59 (5.82%) Azure Certification
7 55 (5.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 45 (4.44%) CCNA
9 27 (2.66%) Network+ Certification
10 26 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
11 23 (2.27%) AWS Certification
12 19 (1.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 16 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
13 16 (1.58%) CCIE
13 16 (1.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 15 (1.48%) VCAP
15 11 (1.08%) A+ Certification
15 11 (1.08%) MCSE
15 11 (1.08%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.14%) SLA
2 23 (2.27%) NIST
3 18 (1.78%) QA
4 17 (1.68%) NCSC
5 16 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.59%) GDPR
8 5 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.49%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 4 (0.39%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 445 (43.89%) Active Directory
2 279 (27.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 123 (12.13%) Hyper-V
4 88 (8.68%) VMware ESXi
5 80 (7.89%) vSphere
6 66 (6.51%) VMware NSX
7 64 (6.31%) Docker
8 50 (4.93%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (3.85%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (2.17%) Firmware
11 21 (2.07%) NFS
12 16 (1.58%) vCloud
13 11 (1.08%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.99%) Squid
14 10 (0.99%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.89%) Postfix
16 8 (0.79%) Ceph
16 8 (0.79%) UAG
17 6 (0.59%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.59%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 153 (15.09%) Ansible
2 127 (12.52%) Kubernetes
3 114 (11.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 84 (8.28%) SCCM
5 67 (6.61%) vCenter Server
6 59 (5.82%) Grafana
6 59 (5.82%) Single Sign-On
7 50 (4.93%) Prometheus
8 41 (4.04%) SCOM
9 35 (3.45%) WSUS
10 25 (2.47%) FortiGate
11 17 (1.68%) Jamf Pro
11 17 (1.68%) NetBackup
12 16 (1.58%) Packer
12 16 (1.58%) VxRail
13 15 (1.48%) Puppet
14 14 (1.38%) Istio
15 12 (1.18%) Argo
16 10 (0.99%) Progress Chef
16 10 (0.99%) systemd
Vendors
1 401 (39.55%) Microsoft
2 340 (33.53%) VMware
3 186 (18.34%) Cisco
4 133 (13.12%) F5
5 88 (8.68%) ServiceNow
6 56 (5.52%) Citrix
6 56 (5.52%) Palo Alto
7 54 (5.33%) Infoblox
8 51 (5.03%) Google
8 51 (5.03%) SolarWinds
9 45 (4.44%) Splunk
10 42 (4.14%) Juniper
11 41 (4.04%) Red Hat
12 36 (3.55%) Dynatrace
12 36 (3.55%) NetApp
13 33 (3.25%) CheckPoint
14 31 (3.06%) Fortinet
15 30 (2.96%) Zscaler
16 24 (2.37%) Blue Coat
16 24 (2.37%) CyberArk