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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 119 140
Rank change year-on-year -23 +21 -15
Contract jobs citing DNS 906 677 720
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.91% 2.33% 1.67%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.87% 18.18% 13.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 564 486 474
10th Percentile £265 £259 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £364
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £539 £480
Median % change year-on-year -10.95% +12.41% -8.67%
75th Percentile £585 £613 £600
90th Percentile £640 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £545 £507
% change year-on-year -12.84% +7.55% -1.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 11 26
10th Percentile £16.84 £23.59 £19.25
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 -
90th Percentile £75.75 £82.10 £60.00
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 4,560 3,723 5,506
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.61% 12.79% 12.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,831 2,290 3,296
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -2.50% -3.75%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 235 173 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £40.54 £36.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.07% -8.75% +111.92%
75th Percentile £66.75 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.75 £68.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £24.66 £45.88
% change year-on-year +92.62% -46.25% +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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -13 791 £480 -12.33% 303
UK excluding London 0 576 £475 -12.84% 265
London -39 256 £500 -3.51% 73
North of England +4 218 £425 -10.53% 64
Work from Home -36 194 £505 -5.61% 107
South East -8 158 £525 -4.55% 97
North West +33 147 £425 -2.86% 33
Midlands +19 115 £400 -27.93% 36
West Midlands +28 101 £390 -16.58% 24
Yorkshire -31 66 £447 -18.82% 25
South West -45 51 £508 -13.62% 34
Scotland +30 48 £550 +22.22% 10
East of England -33 42 £450 -10.00% 30
East Midlands -28 13 £394 -30.62% 12
Wales -14 7 £488 +8.33% 7
North East -23 6 £306 -12.50% 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 94 (10.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 45 (4.97%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.66%) nginx
4 14 (1.55%) Confluence
5 13 (1.43%) IIS
6 11 (1.21%) Apache
7 5 (0.55%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.44%) Skype for Business
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 20 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.21%) 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
1 308 (34.00%) Azure
2 153 (16.89%) AWS
3 149 (16.45%) Entra ID
4 130 (14.35%) Microsoft 365
5 93 (10.26%) GCP
6 66 (7.28%) GitHub
7 54 (5.96%) IaaS
8 42 (4.64%) PaaS
8 42 (4.64%) SaaS
9 34 (3.75%) AWS CloudFormation
9 34 (3.75%) Serverless
10 32 (3.53%) Amazon EC2
10 32 (3.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 31 (3.42%) Amazon S3
11 31 (3.42%) GitHub Actions
12 30 (3.31%) AWS Lambda
13 28 (3.09%) Amazon EKS
13 28 (3.09%) Route 53
14 24 (2.65%) OneDrive
15 23 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 389 (42.94%) DHCP
2 274 (30.24%) Firewall
3 230 (25.39%) TCP/IP
4 221 (24.39%) VPN
5 114 (12.58%) WAN
6 108 (11.92%) LAN
7 93 (10.26%) SSL
8 90 (9.93%) Network Security
9 86 (9.49%) BIG-IP
10 82 (9.05%) HTTP
11 80 (8.83%) BGP
12 79 (8.72%) VLAN
13 56 (6.18%) Wi-Fi
14 48 (5.30%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 45 (4.97%) OSPF
16 44 (4.86%) Wireless
17 41 (4.53%) Kerberos
18 40 (4.42%) Wireshark
19 38 (4.19%) DMZ
20 35 (3.86%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (3.31%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.32%) Elasticsearch
3 14 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (0.88%) MongoDB
4 8 (0.88%) Power BI
5 5 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
5 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (0.55%) DynamoDB
5 5 (0.55%) MySQL
6 4 (0.44%) Data Hub
6 4 (0.44%) DocumentDB
6 4 (0.44%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.44%) Redis
7 3 (0.33%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
8 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 50 (5.52%) Jenkins
2 47 (5.19%) JIRA
3 33 (3.64%) Git
4 28 (3.09%) Fiddler
5 27 (2.98%) GitLab
6 9 (0.99%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.77%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.77%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.66%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.44%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.44%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.22%) Introscope
12 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 194 (21.41%) Social Skills
2 87 (9.60%) Analytical Skills
3 74 (8.17%) Banking
4 69 (7.62%) Finance
5 59 (6.51%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.75%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (4.30%) Investment Banking
8 29 (3.20%) Legal
9 22 (2.43%) Telecoms
10 18 (1.99%) Military
11 10 (1.10%) Law
11 10 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (0.66%) Aerospace
13 6 (0.66%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.55%) Police
15 4 (0.44%) Italian Language
15 4 (0.44%) Local Government
15 4 (0.44%) Manufacturing
16 3 (0.33%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 162 (17.88%) Network Engineer
2 113 (12.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 109 (12.03%) Architect
4 88 (9.71%) Analyst
5 78 (8.61%) Senior
6 65 (7.17%) Security Engineer
7 51 (5.63%) Web Engineer
8 46 (5.08%) Support Engineer
9 43 (4.75%) Network Security Engineer
10 40 (4.42%) IT Support
11 37 (4.08%) IT Engineer
12 34 (3.75%) Cisco Engineer
12 34 (3.75%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 34 (3.75%) Lead
13 33 (3.64%) Data Engineer
13 33 (3.64%) Data Network Engineer
14 32 (3.53%) Administrator
14 32 (3.53%) Cisco Security Engineer
15 29 (3.20%) Azure Engineer
16 26 (2.87%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (7.95%) LDAP
2 51 (5.63%) SAML
3 40 (4.42%) OAuth
4 35 (3.86%) 802.1X
5 30 (3.31%) OpenID
6 21 (2.32%) OpenTelemetry
7 13 (1.43%) JSON
8 10 (1.10%) ARM Templates
8 10 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.10%) OAuth2
8 10 (1.10%) REST
9 9 (0.99%) Kafka
10 6 (0.66%) XMPP
11 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (0.55%) Web Services
12 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
12 4 (0.44%) gRPC
12 4 (0.44%) Middleware
12 4 (0.44%) Spring Boot
12 4 (0.44%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 74 (8.17%) Data Centre
2 73 (8.06%) PKI
3 51 (5.63%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.53%) Replication
5 39 (4.30%) Clustering
5 39 (4.30%) Management Information System
6 38 (4.19%) Onboarding
7 34 (3.75%) Public Cloud
8 28 (3.09%) Security Operations Centre
9 26 (2.87%) Cyberattack
9 26 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
10 24 (2.65%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 21 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
12 18 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
13 17 (1.88%) Cyber Threat
14 15 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
15 14 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (1.55%) Enterprise Cloud
15 14 (1.55%) Virtual Team
16 12 (1.32%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 395 (43.60%) Windows
2 220 (24.28%) Windows Server
3 129 (14.24%) Linux
4 42 (4.64%) Windows 10
5 37 (4.08%) Windows Server 2019
6 22 (2.43%) Unix
7 19 (2.10%) Mac OS
7 19 (2.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 19 (2.10%) Windows Server 2012
8 17 (1.88%) Android
8 17 (1.88%) Windows Server 2016
9 13 (1.43%) Apple iOS
10 11 (1.21%) VMS
11 8 (0.88%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.66%) CentOS
12 6 (0.66%) Ubuntu
12 6 (0.66%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.44%) CatOS
14 2 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 190 (20.97%) Problem-Solving
2 170 (18.76%) Load Balancing
3 142 (15.67%) Migration
4 139 (15.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 137 (15.12%) High Availability
6 124 (13.69%) ITIL
7 119 (13.13%) DevOps
8 112 (12.36%) CI/CD
9 111 (12.25%) Infrastructure as Code
10 87 (9.60%) Cybersecurity
11 82 (9.05%) Disaster Recovery
12 77 (8.50%) Identity Access Management
12 77 (8.50%) ITSM
13 75 (8.28%) Observability
14 70 (7.73%) Agile
15 62 (6.84%) Change Management
16 61 (6.73%) SIEM
17 58 (6.40%) Incident Response
18 57 (6.29%) Project Delivery
19 55 (6.07%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 191 (21.08%) PowerShell
2 132 (14.57%) Python
3 80 (8.83%) Bash
4 46 (5.08%) SQL
5 22 (2.43%) JavaScript
6 17 (1.88%) Bicep
7 14 (1.55%) Java
8 11 (1.21%) Go
8 11 (1.21%) Ruby
8 11 (1.21%) Shell Script
9 7 (0.77%) VBA
9 7 (0.77%) VBScript
10 5 (0.55%) Perl
11 4 (0.44%) VB
12 3 (0.33%) C
12 3 (0.33%) Groovy
13 2 (0.22%) Jython
13 2 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.11%) Lisp
14 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 297 (32.78%) Security Cleared
2 204 (22.52%) SC Cleared
3 97 (10.71%) DV Cleared
4 74 (8.17%) Cisco Certification
5 58 (6.40%) Degree
6 43 (4.75%) CCNP
7 35 (3.86%) CCNA
8 34 (3.75%) CompTIA Security+
9 33 (3.64%) Microsoft Certification
10 27 (2.98%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 20 (2.21%) Network+ Certification
13 17 (1.88%) CompTIA CySA+
14 16 (1.77%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
15 11 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 11 (1.21%) CISSP
16 10 (1.10%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.10%) JNCIS
17 9 (0.99%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.31%) SLA
2 25 (2.76%) GDPR
2 25 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 25 (2.76%) NIST
3 16 (1.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 7 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
4 7 (0.77%) NCSC
5 6 (0.66%) QA
6 4 (0.44%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 3 (0.33%) 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
9 1 (0.11%) SOC 2
System Software
1 370 (40.84%) Active Directory
2 198 (21.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 94 (10.38%) Hyper-V
4 51 (5.63%) VMware NSX
5 48 (5.30%) vSphere
6 45 (4.97%) Docker
7 33 (3.64%) Virtual Machines
8 29 (3.20%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (2.76%) Firmware
10 19 (2.10%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (1.55%) BitLocker
12 12 (1.32%) Squid
13 11 (1.21%) NFS
14 10 (1.10%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.77%) Sendmail
16 6 (0.66%) Postfix
16 6 (0.66%) Varnish
17 5 (0.55%) Terminal Services
17 5 (0.55%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.44%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 141 (15.56%) Terraform
2 112 (12.36%) Ansible
3 96 (10.60%) Kubernetes
4 84 (9.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 74 (8.17%) Single Sign-On
6 59 (6.51%) SCCM
7 49 (5.41%) FortiGate
8 44 (4.86%) Grafana
9 43 (4.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (4.42%) vCenter Server
11 29 (3.20%) Prometheus
11 29 (3.20%) WSUS
12 22 (2.43%) Argo
13 15 (1.66%) SCOM
14 11 (1.21%) Nessus
15 10 (1.10%) HAProxy
15 10 (1.10%) Puppet
16 9 (0.99%) vMotion
17 8 (0.88%) Consul
18 7 (0.77%) Nagios
Vendors
1 285 (31.46%) Microsoft
2 241 (26.60%) VMware
3 154 (17.00%) Cisco
4 149 (16.45%) F5
5 84 (9.27%) Splunk
6 73 (8.06%) ServiceNow
7 58 (6.40%) Citrix
8 53 (5.85%) Infoblox
9 46 (5.08%) SolarWinds
10 41 (4.53%) Google
11 40 (4.42%) Juniper
12 37 (4.08%) Blue Coat
13 36 (3.97%) Palo Alto
13 36 (3.97%) Red Hat
14 31 (3.42%) McAfee
14 31 (3.42%) NetApp
15 25 (2.76%) Dynatrace
16 22 (2.43%) Extreme Networks
17 21 (2.32%) CheckPoint
17 21 (2.32%) Okta