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 4 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 111 133
Rank change year-on-year -30 +22 -10
Contract jobs citing DNS 875 716 774
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.45% 1.75%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.51% 18.96% 13.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 554 493 512
10th Percentile £263 £250 £203
25th Percentile £400 £400 £355
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £599
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £513
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 11 26
10th Percentile £14.25 - £20.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £48.72 £54.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.61% +36.25% -18.56%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.18 £51.12
90th Percentile £76.05 £82.10 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -31.21% +101.69% -18.56%

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 4,485 3,776 5,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.93% 12.92% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,861 2,338 3,544
10th Percentile £225 £213 £205
25th Percentile £380 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £480
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% +1.67% -7.79%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £468 £475
% change year-on-year +1.60% -1.58% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 153 407
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.99 £13.71
25th Percentile £20.41 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £42.25 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.71% -6.67% +97.37%
75th Percentile £70.29 £63.25 £62.25
90th Percentile £77.10 £75.00 £67.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £45.44
% change year-on-year +78.57% -38.38% +145.62%

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 4 April 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 4 April 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 4 April 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 -18 775 £500 -4.76% 306
UK excluding London -18 560 £500 -4.76% 265
London -38 252 £500 - 81
North of England -6 214 £447 -5.89% 68
Work from Home -53 190 £525 +2.44% 93
South East 0 156 £525 -4.55% 80
North West +24 138 £500 +17.65% 37
Midlands +14 112 £400 -27.93% 45
West Midlands +30 101 £400 -19.40% 29
Yorkshire -31 77 £447 -18.82% 22
South West -44 49 £575 +4.93% 33
Scotland +8 43 £550 +22.22% 15
East of England -31 43 £450 -10.00% 24
East Midlands -33 10 £375 -33.92% 16
North East -18 4 £200 -51.52% 11
Wales -20 4 £550 +22.22% 3

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 95 (10.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (4.80%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.83%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.60%) nginx
5 13 (1.49%) Confluence
6 8 (0.91%) Apache
6 8 (0.91%) IIS
7 4 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2010
8 3 (0.34%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.23%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.23%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.23%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.23%) WebSphere Portal
9 2 (0.23%) WordPress
10 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.11%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 26 (2.97%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.49%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.23%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 308 (35.20%) Azure
2 163 (18.63%) AWS
3 148 (16.91%) Entra ID
4 141 (16.11%) Microsoft 365
5 89 (10.17%) GCP
6 61 (6.97%) GitHub
7 58 (6.63%) IaaS
8 40 (4.57%) PaaS
9 38 (4.34%) AWS CloudFormation
9 38 (4.34%) Serverless
10 37 (4.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 35 (4.00%) SaaS
12 34 (3.89%) Amazon S3
13 33 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
14 32 (3.66%) Amazon EC2
14 32 (3.66%) Route 53
15 29 (3.31%) OpenShift
16 26 (2.97%) Amazon EKS
17 23 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
18 21 (2.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 381 (43.54%) DHCP
2 286 (32.69%) Firewall
3 237 (27.09%) TCP/IP
4 207 (23.66%) VPN
5 117 (13.37%) WAN
6 109 (12.46%) LAN
7 87 (9.94%) Network Security
8 86 (9.83%) SSL
9 83 (9.49%) VLAN
10 81 (9.26%) BIG-IP
11 80 (9.14%) HTTP
12 77 (8.80%) BGP
13 62 (7.09%) Wi-Fi
14 55 (6.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 46 (5.26%) OSPF
16 41 (4.69%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 39 (4.46%) Kerberos
17 39 (4.46%) Wireshark
18 38 (4.34%) DMZ
19 37 (4.23%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.09%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.40%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (2.06%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (1.03%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.80%) DynamoDB
7 6 (0.69%) Data Hub
8 5 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.57%) MySQL
8 5 (0.57%) Redis
9 4 (0.46%) DocumentDB
9 4 (0.46%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.46%) Power BI
9 4 (0.46%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.34%) BigQuery
10 3 (0.34%) MariaDB
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.11%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 59 (6.74%) Jenkins
2 41 (4.69%) JIRA
3 30 (3.43%) Git
4 29 (3.31%) Fiddler
4 29 (3.31%) GitLab
5 9 (1.03%) Browser DevTools
6 7 (0.80%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.80%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.69%) Chocolatey
8 5 (0.57%) Terragrunt
9 4 (0.46%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.23%) Introscope
10 2 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.11%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.11%) Subversion
11 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 212 (24.23%) Social Skills
2 97 (11.09%) Analytical Skills
3 74 (8.46%) Banking
4 67 (7.66%) Finance
5 54 (6.17%) Public Sector
6 52 (5.94%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (4.80%) Investment Banking
8 30 (3.43%) Legal
9 22 (2.51%) Telecoms
10 16 (1.83%) Military
11 10 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.69%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.69%) Law
13 5 (0.57%) Local Government
14 4 (0.46%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.46%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
16 2 (0.23%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 142 (16.23%) Network Engineer
2 131 (14.97%) Architect
3 93 (10.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 85 (9.71%) Analyst
5 75 (8.57%) Senior
6 55 (6.29%) Security Engineer
7 53 (6.06%) Support Engineer
8 50 (5.71%) Web Engineer
9 44 (5.03%) IT Support
10 36 (4.11%) IT Engineer
10 36 (4.11%) Lead
11 34 (3.89%) Network Security Engineer
12 28 (3.20%) Azure Engineer
12 28 (3.20%) Cisco Engineer
12 28 (3.20%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 28 (3.20%) Platform Engineer
13 27 (3.09%) IT Support Engineer
14 26 (2.97%) SOC Analyst
15 25 (2.86%) Data Engineer
15 25 (2.86%) Data Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (7.89%) LDAP
2 55 (6.29%) SAML
3 42 (4.80%) OAuth
4 36 (4.11%) OpenID
5 29 (3.31%) 802.1X
6 23 (2.63%) OpenTelemetry
7 20 (2.29%) OAuth2
8 10 (1.14%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.14%) JSON
8 10 (1.14%) Kafka
9 9 (1.03%) REST
10 7 (0.80%) ARM Templates
10 7 (0.80%) XMPP
11 6 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.57%) Middleware
12 5 (0.57%) RESTful
12 5 (0.57%) Spring Boot
12 5 (0.57%) Web Services
13 4 (0.46%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.46%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.11%) Data Centre
2 70 (8.00%) PKI
3 50 (5.71%) Cloud Native
4 49 (5.60%) Replication
5 36 (4.11%) Management Information System
6 35 (4.00%) Clustering
7 33 (3.77%) Onboarding
8 31 (3.54%) Public Cloud
9 27 (3.09%) Security Operations Centre
10 26 (2.97%) Cyberattack
10 26 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (2.63%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 21 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
13 19 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.94%) Cyber Threat
15 16 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
16 14 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (1.49%) NHS
17 13 (1.49%) Product Ownership
18 12 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 394 (45.03%) Windows
2 212 (24.23%) Windows Server
3 137 (15.66%) Linux
4 47 (5.37%) Windows 10
5 32 (3.66%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (2.40%) Android
7 18 (2.06%) Unix
8 17 (1.94%) Mac OS
8 17 (1.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 16 (1.83%) Windows Server 2012
10 14 (1.60%) Apple iOS
11 12 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (1.26%) Windows 7
13 10 (1.14%) VMS
14 8 (0.91%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.46%) CatOS
15 4 (0.46%) CentOS
16 3 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
16 3 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (22.40%) Problem-Solving
2 187 (21.37%) Load Balancing
3 135 (15.43%) Migration
4 123 (14.06%) ITIL
5 120 (13.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 117 (13.37%) High Availability
7 116 (13.26%) DevOps
8 110 (12.57%) CI/CD
9 102 (11.66%) Infrastructure as Code
10 87 (9.94%) Cybersecurity
11 85 (9.71%) Identity Access Management
12 82 (9.37%) Disaster Recovery
13 74 (8.46%) ITSM
14 71 (8.11%) RBAC
15 66 (7.54%) Incident Response
15 66 (7.54%) Observability
16 64 (7.31%) SIEM
17 61 (6.97%) Change Management
18 60 (6.86%) Agile
18 60 (6.86%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 226 (25.83%) PowerShell
2 144 (16.46%) Python
3 81 (9.26%) Bash
4 42 (4.80%) SQL
5 18 (2.06%) JavaScript
6 15 (1.71%) Bicep
7 13 (1.49%) VBScript
8 12 (1.37%) Java
8 12 (1.37%) Ruby
9 10 (1.14%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.03%) VB
11 8 (0.91%) Go
12 5 (0.57%) Perl
12 5 (0.57%) VBA
13 4 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
13 4 (0.46%) Lisp
14 2 (0.23%) C
14 2 (0.23%) Groovy
14 2 (0.23%) Jython
14 2 (0.23%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 288 (32.91%) Security Cleared
2 197 (22.51%) SC Cleared
3 105 (12.00%) DV Cleared
4 71 (8.11%) Cisco Certification
5 59 (6.74%) Degree
6 45 (5.14%) CCNP
7 42 (4.80%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (3.66%) CompTIA Security+
9 28 (3.20%) Azure Certification
9 28 (3.20%) CCNA
10 21 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 19 (2.17%) CISSP
12 18 (2.06%) AWS Certification
12 18 (2.06%) CompTIA CySA+
13 15 (1.71%) Network+ Certification
14 11 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
15 10 (1.14%) JNCIA
15 10 (1.14%) JNCIS
16 9 (1.03%) CCIE
16 9 (1.03%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.54%) GDPR
1 31 (3.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 30 (3.43%) NIST
3 24 (2.74%) SLA
4 16 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 10 (1.14%) NCSC
6 9 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.69%) QA
9 3 (0.34%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.34%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.34%) PMO
10 2 (0.23%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 361 (41.26%) Active Directory
2 187 (21.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (8.57%) Hyper-V
4 60 (6.86%) VMware NSX
5 54 (6.17%) Docker
5 54 (6.17%) vSphere
6 27 (3.09%) Firmware
7 24 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (2.51%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (2.06%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
11 12 (1.37%) Squid
12 8 (0.91%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.80%) NFS
14 6 (0.69%) Sendmail
15 5 (0.57%) Postfix
15 5 (0.57%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.57%) Varnish
16 4 (0.46%) Ceph
17 3 (0.34%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 150 (17.14%) Terraform
2 120 (13.71%) Ansible
3 96 (10.97%) Kubernetes
4 91 (10.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 77 (8.80%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (6.97%) SCCM
7 58 (6.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 50 (5.71%) FortiGate
9 44 (5.03%) vCenter Server
10 39 (4.46%) Grafana
11 31 (3.54%) Argo
12 23 (2.63%) Prometheus
13 16 (1.83%) WSUS
14 14 (1.60%) SCOM
15 10 (1.14%) HAProxy
15 10 (1.14%) Puppet
16 8 (0.91%) vMotion
17 7 (0.80%) Consul
17 7 (0.80%) Nessus
18 6 (0.69%) QRadar
Vendors
1 298 (34.06%) Microsoft
2 233 (26.63%) VMware
3 145 (16.57%) F5
4 134 (15.31%) Cisco
5 84 (9.60%) Splunk
6 74 (8.46%) ServiceNow
7 48 (5.49%) Citrix
8 45 (5.14%) SolarWinds
9 41 (4.69%) Red Hat
10 40 (4.57%) Blue Coat
10 40 (4.57%) Infoblox
11 39 (4.46%) Juniper
11 39 (4.46%) Palo Alto
12 34 (3.89%) Google
12 34 (3.89%) McAfee
13 30 (3.43%) NetApp
14 25 (2.86%) Pure Storage
15 24 (2.74%) Fortinet
16 21 (2.40%) Extreme Networks
17 20 (2.29%) Okta