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 16 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 135 152
Rank change year-on-year -8 +17 -17
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,044 696 597
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.10% 1.54%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.62% 17.80% 12.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 639 449 413
10th Percentile £292 £250 £243
25th Percentile £409 £388 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £584 £600 £588
90th Percentile £639 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 32 15
10th Percentile £26.13 £29.00 £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £37.06 £23.45
Median hourly rate £63.48 £61.25 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year +3.64% +153.10% -39.50%
75th Percentile £74.26 £82.33 £49.38
90th Percentile £98.06 £89.17 £63.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.24 £65.00 £48.03
% change year-on-year +0.37% +35.33% +84.73%

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 5,063 3,911 4,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.43% 11.82% 12.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,994 2,376 2,888
10th Percentile £250 £242 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.95% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 203 321
10th Percentile £15.22 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -4.76% -11.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.95 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -3.58%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 16 August 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 -6 951 £500 -4.76% 290
UK excluding London +1 647 £500 -4.76% 250
London -32 328 £500 - 85
Work from Home -13 240 £510 -2.86% 99
North of England +24 233 £470 -6.00% 49
South East +9 200 £538 -2.27% 92
North West +38 152 £474 +1.94% 30
Midlands -12 119 £450 -5.26% 35
West Midlands -26 97 £431 -9.21% 27
South West -4 87 £513 -12.77% 32
Yorkshire -12 68 £488 -11.36% 13
Scotland +10 33 £550 +20.22% 11
East of England -57 31 £450 -18.18% 32
East Midlands -6 20 £413 -25.00% 8
North East -37 13 £319 -6.25% 7
Wales -13 7 £500 +31.84% 5

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
1 105 (10.06%) Microsoft Exchange
2 92 (8.81%) SharePoint
3 23 (2.20%) Confluence
4 19 (1.82%) Apache
5 16 (1.53%) IIS
6 13 (1.25%) nginx
7 9 (0.86%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.57%) Skype for Business
9 5 (0.48%) WebSphere
10 4 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2010
11 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
12 2 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
13 1 (0.096%) SharePoint Server
13 1 (0.096%) Traefik
Applications
1 25 (2.39%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.15%) MS Visio
3 9 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.19%) Houdini
5 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.19%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 11 (1.05%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 419 (40.13%) Azure
2 214 (20.50%) AWS
3 182 (17.43%) Microsoft 365
4 181 (17.34%) Entra ID
5 114 (10.92%) GCP
6 76 (7.28%) GitHub
7 60 (5.75%) IaaS
8 54 (5.17%) OneDrive
9 45 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (4.02%) PaaS
11 41 (3.93%) SaaS
12 39 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
13 36 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
14 31 (2.97%) OpenShift
15 29 (2.78%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 28 (2.68%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (2.59%) Serverless
18 25 (2.39%) Akamai
18 25 (2.39%) Azure ExpressRoute
19 23 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 487 (46.65%) DHCP
2 376 (36.02%) Firewall
3 290 (27.78%) TCP/IP
4 286 (27.39%) VPN
5 142 (13.60%) WAN
6 128 (12.26%) Network Security
6 128 (12.26%) VLAN
7 119 (11.40%) LAN
8 104 (9.96%) SSL
9 103 (9.87%) BGP
10 83 (7.95%) BIG-IP
11 74 (7.09%) HTTP
12 72 (6.90%) Wireless
13 71 (6.80%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (6.13%) SAN
15 59 (5.65%) OSPF
16 55 (5.27%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 48 (4.60%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 47 (4.50%) DMZ
19 38 (3.64%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (5.27%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (0.96%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (0.96%) MongoDB
4 10 (0.96%) MySQL
4 10 (0.96%) Power BI
5 9 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (0.57%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.48%) MariaDB
7 5 (0.48%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.38%) Db2
8 4 (0.38%) Redis
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
9 3 (0.29%) SQLPlus
10 2 (0.19%) KDB
11 1 (0.096%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.096%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.096%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.096%) Flink
Development Applications
1 72 (6.90%) JIRA
2 57 (5.46%) Jenkins
3 45 (4.31%) Git
4 32 (3.07%) GitLab
5 17 (1.63%) Fiddler
6 12 (1.15%) Bitbucket
7 10 (0.96%) Browser DevTools
8 8 (0.77%) Chocolatey
9 7 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.29%) MSI
12 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.19%) Introscope
12 2 (0.19%) Selenium
12 2 (0.19%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 1 (0.096%) Maven
13 1 (0.096%) SonarQube
13 1 (0.096%) Visual Studio
General
1 264 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 123 (11.78%) Analytical Skills
3 97 (9.29%) Finance
4 84 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 72 (6.90%) Banking
6 58 (5.56%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.16%) Investment Banking
7 33 (3.16%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.49%) Legal
9 15 (1.44%) Military
10 13 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.05%) Local Government
12 11 (1.05%) Police
13 9 (0.86%) Manufacturing
14 8 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.67%) Aerospace
16 6 (0.57%) Front Office
16 6 (0.57%) Law
16 6 (0.57%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 186 (17.82%) Network Engineer
2 180 (17.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 122 (11.69%) Senior
4 100 (9.58%) Support Engineer
5 91 (8.72%) Architect
6 77 (7.38%) Cloud Engineer
7 58 (5.56%) Security Engineer
8 56 (5.36%) Analyst
9 51 (4.89%) IT Engineer
10 50 (4.79%) IT Support
11 44 (4.21%) Azure Engineer
12 41 (3.93%) Platform Engineer
13 40 (3.83%) DevOps Engineer
14 39 (3.74%) Cisco Engineer
14 39 (3.74%) Network Security Engineer
14 39 (3.74%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 39 (3.74%) Web Engineer
15 38 (3.64%) Administrator
16 37 (3.54%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 35 (3.35%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (4.79%) 802.1X
2 47 (4.50%) SAML
3 31 (2.97%) OAuth
4 28 (2.68%) LDAP
4 28 (2.68%) OpenID
5 26 (2.49%) ARM Templates
6 19 (1.82%) JSON
7 17 (1.63%) OpenTelemetry
7 17 (1.63%) REST
8 15 (1.44%) Kafka
9 13 (1.25%) YAML
10 10 (0.96%) OAuth2
11 7 (0.67%) CSS
11 7 (0.67%) Middleware
11 7 (0.67%) React
12 6 (0.57%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (0.57%) Software Packaging
13 5 (0.48%) .NET
14 4 (0.38%) gRPC
14 4 (0.38%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 134 (12.84%) Data Centre
2 111 (10.63%) PKI
3 69 (6.61%) Onboarding
4 66 (6.32%) Hybrid Cloud
5 54 (5.17%) Management Information System
6 53 (5.08%) Cloud Native
7 44 (4.21%) Clustering
8 42 (4.02%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 27 (2.59%) Public Cloud
10 26 (2.49%) Replication
10 26 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
11 19 (1.82%) Enterprise Cloud
12 17 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.63%) Linux Command Line
13 16 (1.53%) Security Posture
14 15 (1.44%) Cyber Threat
14 15 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
14 15 (1.44%) Driving Licence
15 10 (0.96%) CMDB
15 10 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 486 (46.55%) Windows
2 259 (24.81%) Windows Server
3 213 (20.40%) Linux
4 62 (5.94%) Windows 10
5 46 (4.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 41 (3.93%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.16%) Mac OS
8 29 (2.78%) Unix
9 25 (2.39%) Windows Server 2012
10 20 (1.92%) Apple iOS
10 20 (1.92%) Ubuntu
11 18 (1.72%) Android
11 18 (1.72%) VMS
12 15 (1.44%) CentOS
12 15 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (1.25%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.77%) Windows Server 2008
15 7 (0.67%) Rocky
16 4 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
17 3 (0.29%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 244 (23.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 235 (22.51%) Problem-Solving
3 192 (18.39%) ITIL
4 184 (17.62%) Load Balancing
5 179 (17.15%) Infrastructure as Code
6 173 (16.57%) Migration
7 164 (15.71%) DevOps
8 156 (14.94%) CI/CD
9 142 (13.60%) High Availability
10 133 (12.74%) ITSM
11 105 (10.06%) Observability
12 103 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
13 94 (9.00%) Cybersecurity
14 89 (8.52%) Agile
14 89 (8.52%) Disaster Recovery
14 89 (8.52%) Project Delivery
15 82 (7.85%) Identity Access Management
15 82 (7.85%) Technical Leadership
16 80 (7.66%) Platform Engineering
16 80 (7.66%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 255 (24.43%) PowerShell
2 215 (20.59%) Python
3 157 (15.04%) Bash
4 70 (6.70%) SQL
5 44 (4.21%) Bicep
6 25 (2.39%) JavaScript
7 15 (1.44%) Shell Script
8 13 (1.25%) Go
9 10 (0.96%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.96%) Java
9 10 (0.96%) Perl
10 9 (0.86%) VBScript
11 7 (0.67%) VBA
12 6 (0.57%) Groovy
12 6 (0.57%) VB
13 5 (0.48%) Ruby
13 5 (0.48%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.29%) C
14 3 (0.29%) Lisp
15 2 (0.19%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 385 (36.88%) Security Cleared
2 218 (20.88%) SC Cleared
3 159 (15.23%) DV Cleared
4 109 (10.44%) Cisco Certification
5 83 (7.95%) Degree
6 74 (7.09%) CCNP
7 54 (5.17%) CCNA
8 51 (4.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 49 (4.69%) Azure Certification
10 31 (2.97%) Network+ Certification
11 23 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (1.82%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.72%) CCIE
14 17 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
15 15 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
15 15 (1.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 13 (1.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 13 (1.25%) JNCIS
16 13 (1.25%) MCSE
17 12 (1.15%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.02%) SLA
2 26 (2.49%) NIST
3 17 (1.63%) NCSC
4 16 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (1.25%) QA
6 8 (0.77%) GDPR
7 5 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
7 5 (0.48%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.38%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.19%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.19%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.096%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.096%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 441 (42.24%) Active Directory
2 270 (25.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 126 (12.07%) Hyper-V
4 71 (6.80%) vSphere
5 70 (6.70%) VMware ESXi
6 67 (6.42%) VMware NSX
7 55 (5.27%) Docker
8 43 (4.12%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (3.74%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.39%) Firmware
11 22 (2.11%) NFS
12 14 (1.34%) BitLocker
12 14 (1.34%) vCloud
13 9 (0.86%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.86%) Postfix
13 9 (0.86%) Squid
14 8 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.77%) VMware Workstation
15 7 (0.67%) Ceph
16 6 (0.57%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 216 (20.69%) Terraform
2 156 (14.94%) Ansible
3 124 (11.88%) Kubernetes
4 111 (10.63%) Microsoft Intune
5 80 (7.66%) SCCM
6 60 (5.75%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (5.65%) vCenter Server
8 56 (5.36%) Grafana
9 43 (4.12%) FortiGate
9 43 (4.12%) Prometheus
10 32 (3.07%) SCOM
11 31 (2.97%) WSUS
12 19 (1.82%) Argo
13 16 (1.53%) VxRail
14 15 (1.44%) NetBackup
15 14 (1.34%) Jamf Pro
15 14 (1.34%) Puppet
16 12 (1.15%) Istio
16 12 (1.15%) Packer
17 11 (1.05%) vMotion
Vendors
1 379 (36.30%) Microsoft
2 328 (31.42%) VMware
3 197 (18.87%) Cisco
4 145 (13.89%) F5
5 93 (8.91%) ServiceNow
6 69 (6.61%) Splunk
7 68 (6.51%) Citrix
7 68 (6.51%) SolarWinds
8 65 (6.23%) Google
9 63 (6.03%) Infoblox
10 58 (5.56%) Juniper
11 46 (4.41%) Red Hat
12 43 (4.12%) Palo Alto
13 37 (3.54%) Dynatrace
14 35 (3.35%) NetApp
15 28 (2.68%) Fortinet
16 27 (2.59%) CheckPoint
16 27 (2.59%) Zscaler
17 26 (2.49%) Blue Coat
17 26 (2.49%) CyberArk