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 24 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 123 156
Rank change year-on-year -14 +33 -19
Contract jobs citing DNS 959 681 656
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 2.27% 1.51%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.90% 18.31% 12.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 583 474 447
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £409 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £545 £475
Median % change year-on-year -8.26% +14.74% -9.52%
75th Percentile £579 £613 £581
90th Percentile £636 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -10.00% +10.00% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 17 25
10th Percentile £18.89 - £19.10
25th Percentile £23.13 £29.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.69% +3.75% -23.27%
75th Percentile £62.87 £81.01 -
90th Percentile £74.05 £81.65 £50.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £41.45 £40.00
% change year-on-year -21.59% +3.63% -23.27%

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 4,820 3,719 5,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 12.38% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,962 2,279 3,175
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.98% +3.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 176 426
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.56 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.94 £45.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.91% +12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.08 £77.50 £72.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £36.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -26.79% -23.16% +150.00%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 -16 854 £500 -9.09% 272
UK excluding London -13 597 £495 -10.00% 258
London -36 288 £500 - 65
North of England +4 232 £448 -10.40% 49
Work from Home -33 219 £527 -2.36% 117
South East +4 171 £525 -4.55% 92
North West +34 153 £450 - 28
Midlands +7 110 £450 -5.26% 35
West Midlands +2 96 £444 -6.58% 21
Yorkshire -21 73 £447 -18.77% 16
South West -24 64 £500 -18.70% 34
Scotland +17 41 £500 +11.11% 8
East of England -52 34 £450 -18.18% 38
East Midlands -15 13 £450 -18.18% 14
Wales -14 6 £300 -32.74% 10
North East -41 6 £413 +17.86% 10

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 86 (8.97%) Microsoft Exchange
2 60 (6.26%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.98%) Confluence
4 15 (1.56%) IIS
4 15 (1.56%) nginx
5 13 (1.36%) Apache
6 9 (0.94%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.52%) WebSphere
8 4 (0.42%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
10 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.10%) Traefik
Applications
1 19 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.56%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 345 (35.97%) Azure
2 184 (19.19%) AWS
3 155 (16.16%) Entra ID
4 128 (13.35%) Microsoft 365
5 107 (11.16%) GCP
6 70 (7.30%) GitHub
7 54 (5.63%) IaaS
8 41 (4.28%) SaaS
9 39 (4.07%) OneDrive
9 39 (4.07%) PaaS
10 36 (3.75%) Route 53
11 32 (3.34%) AWS CloudFormation
11 32 (3.34%) Serverless
12 31 (3.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 29 (3.02%) Amazon EC2
14 28 (2.92%) Amazon S3
14 28 (2.92%) Azure DevOps
15 27 (2.82%) Amazon EKS
15 27 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
15 27 (2.82%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 421 (43.90%) DHCP
2 301 (31.39%) Firewall
3 237 (24.71%) TCP/IP
4 235 (24.50%) VPN
5 142 (14.81%) WAN
6 120 (12.51%) LAN
7 107 (11.16%) Network Security
8 104 (10.84%) SSL
9 97 (10.11%) VLAN
10 96 (10.01%) BIG-IP
11 90 (9.38%) BGP
12 77 (8.03%) HTTP
13 63 (6.57%) Wi-Fi
14 58 (6.05%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 54 (5.63%) Wireless
16 51 (5.32%) SAN
17 50 (5.21%) OSPF
18 43 (4.48%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
19 40 (4.17%) DMZ
20 38 (3.96%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (3.96%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.88%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
5 11 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (1.04%) Power BI
7 9 (0.94%) MySQL
8 6 (0.63%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.52%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.52%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.52%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.42%) DocumentDB
10 4 (0.42%) MariaDB
10 4 (0.42%) Redis
11 3 (0.31%) Big Data
12 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
13 1 (0.10%) KDB
13 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.10%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 65 (6.78%) JIRA
2 57 (5.94%) Jenkins
3 30 (3.13%) Git
4 24 (2.50%) Fiddler
5 22 (2.29%) GitLab
6 9 (0.94%) Browser DevTools
7 8 (0.83%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.63%) Chocolatey
10 4 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
11 2 (0.21%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.10%) MSI
12 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 221 (23.04%) Social Skills
2 88 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
3 77 (8.03%) Finance
4 67 (6.99%) Banking
5 65 (6.78%) Public Sector
6 56 (5.84%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (3.75%) Investment Banking
8 25 (2.61%) Legal
9 19 (1.98%) Military
10 18 (1.88%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (0.83%) Local Government
13 6 (0.63%) Police
13 6 (0.63%) Publishing
14 5 (0.52%) Law
14 5 (0.52%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.42%) Advertising
15 4 (0.42%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 177 (18.46%) Network Engineer
2 135 (14.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 123 (12.83%) Architect
4 74 (7.72%) Support Engineer
5 70 (7.30%) Senior
6 61 (6.36%) Analyst
6 61 (6.36%) Security Engineer
7 53 (5.53%) Cloud Engineer
8 48 (5.01%) IT Support
9 46 (4.80%) Web Engineer
10 42 (4.38%) IT Engineer
10 42 (4.38%) Network Security Engineer
11 38 (3.96%) DevOps Engineer
12 37 (3.86%) Cisco Engineer
13 35 (3.65%) Administrator
13 35 (3.65%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 33 (3.44%) Azure Engineer
14 33 (3.44%) Data Engineer
14 33 (3.44%) Data Network Engineer
15 32 (3.34%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (6.05%) LDAP
2 52 (5.42%) SAML
3 44 (4.59%) 802.1X
4 40 (4.17%) OAuth
5 33 (3.44%) OpenID
6 21 (2.19%) OpenTelemetry
7 15 (1.56%) JSON
8 14 (1.46%) ARM Templates
9 11 (1.15%) REST
10 10 (1.04%) OAuth2
11 9 (0.94%) Kafka
12 5 (0.52%) CSS
12 5 (0.52%) gRPC
12 5 (0.52%) XMPP
12 5 (0.52%) YAML
13 4 (0.42%) Hibernate
13 4 (0.42%) JPA
13 4 (0.42%) RESTful
13 4 (0.42%) Spring
13 4 (0.42%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 112 (11.68%) Data Centre
2 74 (7.72%) PKI
3 63 (6.57%) Cloud Native
4 49 (5.11%) Onboarding
5 44 (4.59%) Hybrid Cloud
6 41 (4.28%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 40 (4.17%) Clustering
8 39 (4.07%) Management Information System
8 39 (4.07%) Replication
9 31 (3.23%) Public Cloud
10 21 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.67%) Enterprise Cloud
11 16 (1.67%) Security Posture
12 13 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (1.36%) Security Operations Centre
13 12 (1.25%) Virtual Team
14 11 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
14 11 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (1.15%) Product Ownership
15 10 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 392 (40.88%) Windows
2 219 (22.84%) Windows Server
3 136 (14.18%) Linux
4 42 (4.38%) Windows 10
5 36 (3.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 35 (3.65%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.44%) Mac OS
8 24 (2.50%) Unix
9 19 (1.98%) Apple iOS
10 18 (1.88%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (1.36%) Android
12 12 (1.25%) Ubuntu
12 12 (1.25%) VMS
13 10 (1.04%) CentOS
13 10 (1.04%) Windows Server 2016
14 7 (0.73%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.63%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.31%) AIX
17 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
17 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 202 (21.06%) Problem-Solving
2 183 (19.08%) Load Balancing
3 170 (17.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 162 (16.89%) Migration
5 156 (16.27%) High Availability
6 135 (14.08%) DevOps
7 134 (13.97%) ITIL
8 125 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
9 118 (12.30%) CI/CD
10 95 (9.91%) ITSM
11 82 (8.55%) Observability
12 81 (8.45%) Identity Access Management
13 80 (8.34%) Disaster Recovery
14 76 (7.92%) Agile
15 71 (7.40%) Project Delivery
16 63 (6.57%) Cybersecurity
17 61 (6.36%) Root Cause Analysis
18 60 (6.26%) RBAC
19 59 (6.15%) Runbook
20 55 (5.74%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 194 (20.23%) PowerShell
2 160 (16.68%) Python
3 101 (10.53%) Bash
4 54 (5.63%) SQL
5 25 (2.61%) JavaScript
6 24 (2.50%) Bicep
7 11 (1.15%) Go
7 11 (1.15%) Java
8 10 (1.04%) ActionScript
9 9 (0.94%) Shell Script
9 9 (0.94%) VBA
10 8 (0.83%) Perl
11 6 (0.63%) VBScript
12 5 (0.52%) Groovy
12 5 (0.52%) Ruby
13 4 (0.42%) C
13 4 (0.42%) VB
14 3 (0.31%) Lisp
15 2 (0.21%) Jython
15 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 320 (33.37%) Security Cleared
2 204 (21.27%) SC Cleared
3 111 (11.57%) DV Cleared
4 95 (9.91%) Cisco Certification
5 75 (7.82%) Degree
6 63 (6.57%) CCNP
7 51 (5.32%) CCNA
8 33 (3.44%) Microsoft Certification
9 31 (3.23%) Azure Certification
10 26 (2.71%) Network+ Certification
11 21 (2.19%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (1.77%) Server+ Certification
13 16 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
14 15 (1.56%) CISSP
15 14 (1.46%) CCIE
16 13 (1.36%) AWS Certification
16 13 (1.36%) MCSE
17 12 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
18 11 (1.15%) JNCIA
18 11 (1.15%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.02%) NIST
2 26 (2.71%) SLA
3 22 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (2.19%) GDPR
5 14 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 12 (1.25%) QA
7 10 (1.04%) NCSC
8 5 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.52%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) Data Quality
11 1 (0.10%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.10%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.10%) PMO
11 1 (0.10%) RMADS
System Software
1 369 (38.48%) Active Directory
2 203 (21.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 93 (9.70%) Hyper-V
4 57 (5.94%) VMware NSX
5 56 (5.84%) vSphere
6 50 (5.21%) VMware ESXi
7 41 (4.28%) Virtual Machines
8 34 (3.55%) Virtual Desktop
9 32 (3.34%) Docker
10 25 (2.61%) Firmware
11 19 (1.98%) NFS
12 15 (1.56%) BitLocker
12 15 (1.56%) Squid
13 12 (1.25%) vCloud
14 11 (1.15%) Microsoft App-V
15 10 (1.04%) Postfix
16 8 (0.83%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.73%) Varnish
18 5 (0.52%) Ceph
19 4 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 160 (16.68%) Terraform
2 122 (12.72%) Ansible
3 91 (9.49%) Kubernetes
4 74 (7.72%) Microsoft Intune
4 74 (7.72%) Single Sign-On
5 54 (5.63%) FortiGate
6 50 (5.21%) Grafana
6 50 (5.21%) vCenter Server
7 44 (4.59%) SCCM
8 39 (4.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 38 (3.96%) Prometheus
10 26 (2.71%) WSUS
11 24 (2.50%) Argo
12 18 (1.88%) SCOM
13 15 (1.56%) Puppet
14 14 (1.46%) HAProxy
15 13 (1.36%) Jamf Pro
15 13 (1.36%) Nessus
16 12 (1.25%) vMotion
17 8 (0.83%) Consul
Vendors
1 312 (32.53%) Microsoft
2 242 (25.23%) VMware
3 178 (18.56%) Cisco
4 157 (16.37%) F5
5 87 (9.07%) ServiceNow
6 75 (7.82%) Splunk
7 69 (7.19%) Infoblox
8 60 (6.26%) Google
9 57 (5.94%) Citrix
10 52 (5.42%) Red Hat
10 52 (5.42%) SolarWinds
11 45 (4.69%) Juniper
12 38 (3.96%) Palo Alto
13 32 (3.34%) Dynatrace
14 31 (3.23%) Blue Coat
15 30 (3.13%) NetApp
16 28 (2.92%) McAfee
17 25 (2.61%) Fortinet
18 24 (2.50%) Okta
19 22 (2.29%) Zscaler