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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 134 154
Rank change year-on-year -15 +20 -20
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,002 696 627
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.84% 2.11% 1.63%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.70% 18.25% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 616 438 407
10th Percentile £297 £228 £225
25th Percentile £408 £379 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £583 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £651 £682
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.53% - -1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 30 13
10th Percentile £26.66 £27.72 £20.25
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.10
Median hourly rate £63.48 £45.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +41.07% +86.10% -49.09%
75th Percentile £77.00 £79.76 £38.00
90th Percentile £97.29 £89.63 £49.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.24 £45.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +49.41% +50.00% -25.00%

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 5,086 3,814 4,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.36% 11.59% 11.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,971 2,353 2,673
10th Percentile £235 £230 £230
25th Percentile £390 £363 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £503
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.48% +0.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £455 £500
% change year-on-year +4.84% -9.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 199 265
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.29 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.08 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.72 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -18 907 £500 - 644
UK excluding London -10 624 £501 +5.53% 415
London -48 315 £495 -1.00% 299
Work from Home -25 232 £500 +4.60% 334
North of England +25 207 £500 +11.48% 71
South East -1 175 £538 +2.38% 145
North West +16 129 £474 +5.33% 46
Midlands -26 114 £450 -2.70% 59
South West +2 96 £567 +3.14% 63
West Midlands -40 93 £450 -5.26% 35
Yorkshire -4 64 £500 - 16
East of England -37 39 £475 -13.64% 36
Scotland -1 38 £488 +7.38% 35
East Midlands -2 20 £413 -8.33% 24
North East -36 14 £419 +23.16% 11
Wales -8 10 £440 +16.02% 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
1 111 (11.08%) Microsoft Exchange
2 94 (9.38%) SharePoint
3 31 (3.09%) Confluence
4 16 (1.60%) Apache
5 14 (1.40%) nginx
6 12 (1.20%) IIS
7 8 (0.80%) Skype for Business
7 8 (0.80%) Tomcat
8 4 (0.40%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
9 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
9 3 (0.30%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.100%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.100%) CMS
10 1 (0.100%) Drupal
10 1 (0.100%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.100%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 1 (0.100%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.100%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.100%) WordPress
Applications
1 25 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.10%) 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 (0.100%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.100%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 13 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.100%) Magento
2 1 (0.100%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 411 (41.02%) Azure
2 208 (20.76%) AWS
3 190 (18.96%) Microsoft 365
4 182 (18.16%) Entra ID
5 87 (8.68%) GCP
6 78 (7.78%) GitHub
7 56 (5.59%) OneDrive
8 53 (5.29%) IaaS
9 47 (4.69%) Azure DevOps
10 44 (4.39%) GitHub Actions
11 40 (3.99%) Azure Monitor
12 37 (3.69%) SaaS
13 33 (3.29%) PaaS
14 30 (2.99%) OpenShift
15 28 (2.79%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 27 (2.69%) Serverless
17 26 (2.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 25 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
18 25 (2.50%) AWS CloudFormation
19 23 (2.30%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 482 (48.10%) DHCP
2 360 (35.93%) Firewall
3 291 (29.04%) TCP/IP
4 280 (27.94%) VPN
5 131 (13.07%) Network Security
5 131 (13.07%) VLAN
6 117 (11.68%) WAN
7 105 (10.48%) SSL
8 88 (8.78%) LAN
9 85 (8.48%) BGP
10 80 (7.98%) Wireless
11 70 (6.99%) Wi-Fi
12 68 (6.79%) HTTP
13 64 (6.39%) BIG-IP
14 61 (6.09%) SAN
15 57 (5.69%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 50 (4.99%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 46 (4.59%) OSPF
18 43 (4.29%) IPsec
19 42 (4.19%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (5.09%) SQL Server
2 26 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (1.30%) MongoDB
4 12 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.20%) MySQL
5 9 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (0.90%) Power BI
6 8 (0.80%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (0.70%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.60%) Redis
9 5 (0.50%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.40%) Big Data
10 4 (0.40%) Db2
11 3 (0.30%) Metadata
11 3 (0.30%) SQLPlus
12 2 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
12 2 (0.20%) Flink
12 2 (0.20%) KDB
13 1 (0.100%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 81 (8.08%) JIRA
2 54 (5.39%) Jenkins
3 45 (4.49%) Git
4 36 (3.59%) GitLab
5 14 (1.40%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.10%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (0.50%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
9 4 (0.40%) Selenium
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 (0.100%) Introscope
12 1 (0.100%) Locust
12 1 (0.100%) Newman
12 1 (0.100%) TestCafe
General
1 274 (27.35%) Social Skills
2 119 (11.88%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (8.48%) Finance
4 79 (7.88%) Public Sector
5 60 (5.99%) Banking
6 54 (5.39%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (3.49%) Telecoms
8 27 (2.69%) Investment Banking
9 17 (1.70%) Legal
10 13 (1.30%) Aerospace
10 13 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (1.10%) Military
11 11 (1.10%) Police
12 10 (1.00%) Local Government
12 10 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.90%) Manufacturing
14 8 (0.80%) Front Office
14 8 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.70%) Law
16 6 (0.60%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 185 (18.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 168 (16.77%) Network Engineer
3 121 (12.08%) Senior
4 99 (9.88%) Support Engineer
5 84 (8.38%) Cloud Engineer
6 76 (7.58%) Architect
7 50 (4.99%) Analyst
7 50 (4.99%) IT Support
8 49 (4.89%) IT Engineer
8 49 (4.89%) Security Engineer
9 47 (4.69%) Platform Engineer
10 44 (4.39%) Azure Engineer
11 43 (4.29%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 41 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
13 38 (3.79%) Administrator
14 35 (3.49%) Cisco Engineer
14 35 (3.49%) Network Security Engineer
15 33 (3.29%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 33 (3.29%) IT Support Engineer
15 33 (3.29%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 216 (21.56%) Terraform
2 40 (3.99%) SAML
3 35 (3.49%) 802.1X
4 30 (2.99%) OAuth
5 29 (2.89%) ARM Templates
6 28 (2.79%) LDAP
7 26 (2.59%) OpenID
8 22 (2.20%) REST
9 19 (1.90%) Kafka
10 18 (1.80%) JSON
11 15 (1.50%) OpenTelemetry
12 13 (1.30%) YAML
13 12 (1.20%) OAuth2
14 9 (0.90%) CSS
14 9 (0.90%) Elastic Stack
15 8 (0.80%) React
16 6 (0.60%) .NET
16 6 (0.60%) Jinja
16 6 (0.60%) Middleware
17 5 (0.50%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 123 (12.28%) Data Centre
2 106 (10.58%) PKI
3 74 (7.39%) Hybrid Cloud
4 71 (7.09%) Onboarding
5 55 (5.49%) Management Information System
6 46 (4.59%) Cloud Native
7 29 (2.89%) Replication
8 28 (2.79%) Public Cloud
9 26 (2.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 24 (2.40%) Clustering
11 21 (2.10%) Linux Command Line
11 21 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
12 16 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
13 15 (1.50%) Cyber Threat
13 15 (1.50%) Driving Licence
13 15 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
13 15 (1.50%) Security Posture
14 14 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
15 12 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
16 10 (1.00%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 474 (47.31%) Windows
2 265 (26.45%) Windows Server
3 226 (22.55%) Linux
4 64 (6.39%) Windows 10
5 49 (4.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 42 (4.19%) Windows Server 2019
7 35 (3.49%) Mac OS
8 28 (2.79%) Unix
9 26 (2.59%) Ubuntu
9 26 (2.59%) Windows Server 2012
10 24 (2.40%) Apple iOS
11 22 (2.20%) Android
12 21 (2.10%) CentOS
13 16 (1.60%) VMS
14 14 (1.40%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.20%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.70%) Rocky
16 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.50%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.40%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (25.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 222 (22.16%) Problem-Solving
3 195 (19.46%) ITIL
4 190 (18.96%) Infrastructure as Code
5 172 (17.17%) DevOps
6 168 (16.77%) Load Balancing
7 156 (15.57%) CI/CD
8 155 (15.47%) Migration
9 125 (12.48%) ITSM
10 117 (11.68%) High Availability
11 113 (11.28%) Continuous Improvement
12 105 (10.48%) Agile
13 93 (9.28%) Cybersecurity
14 92 (9.18%) Technical Leadership
15 91 (9.08%) Observability
16 89 (8.88%) Disaster Recovery
17 86 (8.58%) Platform Engineering
17 86 (8.58%) Project Delivery
18 81 (8.08%) Runbook
19 79 (7.88%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 270 (26.95%) PowerShell
2 211 (21.06%) Python
3 151 (15.07%) Bash
4 67 (6.69%) SQL
5 50 (4.99%) Bicep
6 16 (1.60%) Shell Script
7 15 (1.50%) Go
7 15 (1.50%) JavaScript
8 13 (1.30%) ActionScript
9 10 (1.00%) Java
9 10 (1.00%) VBScript
10 9 (0.90%) Perl
11 7 (0.70%) Groovy
11 7 (0.70%) VBA
12 6 (0.60%) TypeScript
12 6 (0.60%) VB
13 4 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
13 4 (0.40%) Ruby
14 3 (0.30%) C
14 3 (0.30%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 377 (37.62%) Security Cleared
2 211 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 164 (16.37%) DV Cleared
4 88 (8.78%) Cisco Certification
5 84 (8.38%) Degree
6 72 (7.19%) CCNP
7 56 (5.59%) Azure Certification
8 55 (5.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 48 (4.79%) CCNA
10 27 (2.69%) Network+ Certification
11 25 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
12 23 (2.30%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
15 16 (1.60%) CCIE
16 15 (1.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 15 (1.50%) VCAP
17 12 (1.20%) MCSE
18 11 (1.10%) A+ Certification
18 11 (1.10%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.19%) SLA
2 25 (2.50%) NIST
3 17 (1.70%) NCSC
3 17 (1.70%) QA
4 15 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (0.60%) GDPR
6 5 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
6 5 (0.50%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 4 (0.40%) JSP 440
8 3 (0.30%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.20%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 438 (43.71%) Active Directory
2 282 (28.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 125 (12.48%) Hyper-V
4 87 (8.68%) VMware ESXi
5 80 (7.98%) vSphere
6 68 (6.79%) VMware NSX
7 65 (6.49%) Docker
8 48 (4.79%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (3.89%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.40%) Firmware
11 21 (2.10%) NFS
12 16 (1.60%) vCloud
13 12 (1.20%) BitLocker
14 10 (1.00%) Squid
14 10 (1.00%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.90%) Postfix
16 8 (0.80%) Ceph
16 8 (0.80%) UAG
17 7 (0.70%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.60%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 158 (15.77%) Ansible
2 133 (13.27%) Kubernetes
3 113 (11.28%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (8.18%) SCCM
5 71 (7.09%) vCenter Server
6 61 (6.09%) Grafana
7 58 (5.79%) Single Sign-On
8 48 (4.79%) Prometheus
9 39 (3.89%) SCOM
10 34 (3.39%) WSUS
11 25 (2.50%) FortiGate
12 17 (1.70%) NetBackup
13 16 (1.60%) Argo
13 16 (1.60%) Packer
13 16 (1.60%) Puppet
13 16 (1.60%) VxRail
14 15 (1.50%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (1.40%) Istio
16 11 (1.10%) vMotion
17 10 (1.00%) systemd
Vendors
1 392 (39.12%) Microsoft
2 338 (33.73%) VMware
3 186 (18.56%) Cisco
4 127 (12.67%) F5
5 88 (8.78%) ServiceNow
6 57 (5.69%) Citrix
6 57 (5.69%) Infoblox
7 53 (5.29%) Palo Alto
8 52 (5.19%) Google
9 50 (4.99%) SolarWinds
10 48 (4.79%) Splunk
11 45 (4.49%) Red Hat
12 43 (4.29%) Juniper
13 36 (3.59%) Dynatrace
13 36 (3.59%) NetApp
14 34 (3.39%) CheckPoint
15 31 (3.09%) Fortinet
16 28 (2.79%) Zscaler
17 24 (2.40%) Blue Coat
17 24 (2.40%) CyberArk