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

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 107 129
Rank change year-on-year -38 +22 -7
Contract jobs citing DNS 825 748 803
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.95% 2.49% 1.80%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.21% 18.67% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 533 494 522
10th Percentile £219 £250 £200
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £465
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% +12.90% -11.43%
75th Percentile £610 £613 £579
90th Percentile £675 £738 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £516 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +8.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 13 25
10th Percentile £13.04 £19.05 £23.65
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.59 £25.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £38.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.63% -5.00% -4.48%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.01 £56.40
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.95 £64.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -65.91% +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 4,294 4,007 6,023
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.13% 13.33% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,794 2,426 3,611
10th Percentile £206 £208 £205
25th Percentile £363 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +5.26% -8.65%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -1.16% -0.53% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 143 397
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.35 £14.26
25th Percentile £20.18 £21.46 £18.93
Median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -6.67% +95.82%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.10 £32.50 £46.95
% change year-on-year +29.52% -30.77% +149.44%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -23 733 £516 -1.67% 297
UK excluding London -27 523 £516 +8.68% 268
London -29 236 £519 -1.23% 69
North of England -10 199 £455 -4.21% 73
Work from Home -63 185 £525 - 88
South East +11 148 £525 -3.67% 91
North West +18 132 £569 +20.05% 41
Midlands +8 105 £375 -17.36% 31
West Midlands +19 101 £375 -11.76% 19
Yorkshire -40 69 £447 -14.90% 24
South West -38 55 £625 +14.26% 27
East of England -29 38 £475 - 33
Scotland +1 36 £500 +11.11% 14
North East -18 6 £411 +21.70% 10
Wales -15 4 £550 +25.71% 5
East Midlands -34 4 £325 -41.96% 12

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 99 (12.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 53 (6.42%) SharePoint
3 26 (3.15%) Skype for Business
4 14 (1.70%) Confluence
5 13 (1.58%) nginx
6 8 (0.97%) Apache
7 6 (0.73%) IIS
8 4 (0.48%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.48%) OpenStack
9 3 (0.36%) SharePoint Server
9 3 (0.36%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.24%) WordPress
11 1 (0.12%) Traefik
11 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 32 (3.88%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.82%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.24%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 280 (33.94%) Azure
2 157 (19.03%) AWS
3 144 (17.45%) Microsoft 365
4 128 (15.52%) Entra ID
5 68 (8.24%) GCP
6 57 (6.91%) GitHub
7 48 (5.82%) IaaS
8 39 (4.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 37 (4.48%) AWS CloudFormation
10 32 (3.88%) Serverless
11 31 (3.76%) Amazon S3
12 30 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (3.64%) PaaS
12 30 (3.64%) SaaS
13 29 (3.52%) Amazon EC2
13 29 (3.52%) Route 53
14 25 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 24 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
16 22 (2.67%) GitHub Actions
16 22 (2.67%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 372 (45.09%) DHCP
2 259 (31.39%) Firewall
3 248 (30.06%) TCP/IP
4 191 (23.15%) VPN
5 103 (12.48%) WAN
6 94 (11.39%) LAN
7 84 (10.18%) SSL
8 80 (9.70%) HTTP
8 80 (9.70%) VLAN
9 77 (9.33%) Network Security
10 71 (8.61%) BIG-IP
11 70 (8.48%) BGP
12 57 (6.91%) Wi-Fi
13 55 (6.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 45 (5.45%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 43 (5.21%) Wireshark
16 42 (5.09%) OSPF
17 39 (4.73%) DMZ
18 38 (4.61%) Kerberos
19 34 (4.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (2.79%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
3 13 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (0.85%) DynamoDB
4 7 (0.85%) MongoDB
4 7 (0.85%) Redis
5 6 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
5 6 (0.73%) Data Hub
6 5 (0.61%) MySQL
7 4 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.48%) DocumentDB
7 4 (0.48%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.48%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.36%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.24%) Power BI
10 1 (0.12%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.12%) GIS
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 59 (7.15%) Jenkins
2 38 (4.61%) JIRA
3 37 (4.48%) Git
4 35 (4.24%) GitLab
5 31 (3.76%) Fiddler
6 8 (0.97%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.85%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.85%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.61%) Browser DevTools
8 5 (0.61%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.48%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.24%) Subversion
11 1 (0.12%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.12%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.12%) GCC
11 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 219 (26.55%) Social Skills
2 103 (12.48%) Analytical Skills
3 70 (8.48%) Banking
4 61 (7.39%) Finance
5 53 (6.42%) Public Sector
6 47 (5.70%) Documentation Skills
6 47 (5.70%) Investment Banking
7 26 (3.15%) Legal
8 18 (2.18%) Telecoms
9 16 (1.94%) Military
10 10 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (0.73%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.61%) Law
14 4 (0.48%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.36%) Local Government
16 2 (0.24%) Advertising
16 2 (0.24%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 132 (16.00%) Network Engineer
2 119 (14.42%) Architect
3 81 (9.82%) Analyst
4 75 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 65 (7.88%) Senior
6 62 (7.52%) Support Engineer
7 51 (6.18%) IT Support
8 50 (6.06%) Security Engineer
9 42 (5.09%) Web Engineer
10 35 (4.24%) Lead
11 33 (4.00%) IT Engineer
12 32 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
13 30 (3.64%) Network Security Engineer
14 26 (3.15%) Cisco Engineer
14 26 (3.15%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 26 (3.15%) IT Support Engineer
14 26 (3.15%) SOC Analyst
15 24 (2.91%) Azure Engineer
16 23 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
17 22 (2.67%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (8.36%) LDAP
2 46 (5.58%) SAML
3 41 (4.97%) OAuth
4 33 (4.00%) OpenID
5 27 (3.27%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.42%) OAuth2
7 17 (2.06%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.21%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.21%) Kafka
9 9 (1.09%) REST
10 7 (0.85%) JSON
10 7 (0.85%) XMPP
11 6 (0.73%) ARM Templates
11 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Graph
11 6 (0.73%) Middleware
12 5 (0.61%) AWS CDK
12 5 (0.61%) RESTful
12 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
13 4 (0.48%) AngularJS
13 4 (0.48%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 72 (8.73%) PKI
2 68 (8.24%) Data Centre
3 50 (6.06%) Replication
4 41 (4.97%) Cloud Native
4 41 (4.97%) Management Information System
5 31 (3.76%) Onboarding
6 27 (3.27%) Clustering
7 26 (3.15%) Public Cloud
7 26 (3.15%) Security Operations Centre
8 25 (3.03%) Cyberattack
9 19 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
10 18 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
11 17 (2.06%) Analytical Mindset
12 16 (1.94%) Cyber Threat
12 16 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
13 15 (1.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 14 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.45%) NHS
15 12 (1.45%) Product Ownership
16 11 (1.33%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 386 (46.79%) Windows
2 193 (23.39%) Windows Server
3 135 (16.36%) Linux
4 50 (6.06%) Windows 10
5 32 (3.88%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (2.42%) Unix
7 18 (2.18%) Android
8 15 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 15 (1.82%) Windows Server 2012
8 15 (1.82%) Windows Server 2016
9 14 (1.70%) Mac OS
10 13 (1.58%) Apple iOS
11 11 (1.33%) Windows 7
12 9 (1.09%) CentOS
13 8 (0.97%) VMS
14 6 (0.73%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.48%) CatOS
15 4 (0.48%) Ubuntu
16 3 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
16 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (23.76%) Problem-Solving
2 167 (20.24%) Load Balancing
3 127 (15.39%) ITIL
4 110 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 110 (13.33%) Migration
5 105 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
6 103 (12.48%) DevOps
7 102 (12.36%) High Availability
8 101 (12.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 79 (9.58%) Cybersecurity
10 73 (8.85%) Disaster Recovery
11 72 (8.73%) Identity Access Management
12 67 (8.12%) Change Management
12 67 (8.12%) Service Management
13 64 (7.76%) Incident Response
13 64 (7.76%) ITSM
14 62 (7.52%) SIEM
15 60 (7.27%) RBAC
16 57 (6.91%) Observability
17 54 (6.55%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 229 (27.76%) PowerShell
2 140 (16.97%) Python
3 73 (8.85%) Bash
4 43 (5.21%) SQL
5 13 (1.58%) Bicep
5 13 (1.58%) VBScript
6 12 (1.45%) Java
7 11 (1.33%) Go
7 11 (1.33%) Ruby
7 11 (1.33%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.21%) VB
9 9 (1.09%) JavaScript
10 7 (0.85%) Lisp
10 7 (0.85%) Perl
11 5 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.36%) C#
12 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.24%) C
13 2 (0.24%) VBA
14 1 (0.12%) PHP
Qualifications
1 283 (34.30%) Security Cleared
2 192 (23.27%) SC Cleared
3 102 (12.36%) DV Cleared
4 63 (7.64%) Cisco Certification
5 62 (7.52%) Degree
6 57 (6.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 44 (5.33%) CCNP
8 31 (3.76%) CompTIA Security+
9 27 (3.27%) Azure Certification
10 23 (2.79%) CCNA
11 21 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (2.30%) AWS Certification
12 19 (2.30%) CISSP
13 18 (2.18%) Network+ Certification
14 17 (2.06%) CompTIA CySA+
15 11 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
15 11 (1.33%) MCSE
16 10 (1.21%) Server+ Certification
17 9 (1.09%) JNCIA
17 9 (1.09%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (3.52%) GDPR
2 26 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (2.91%) NIST
4 22 (2.67%) SLA
5 18 (2.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.09%) NCSC
6 9 (1.09%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.73%) QA
9 3 (0.36%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.36%) PMO
10 2 (0.24%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.24%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 354 (42.91%) Active Directory
2 187 (22.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 63 (7.64%) Docker
4 61 (7.39%) Hyper-V
5 55 (6.67%) VMware NSX
6 50 (6.06%) vSphere
7 26 (3.15%) Firmware
7 26 (3.15%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (2.30%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (1.82%) BitLocker
9 15 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
10 8 (0.97%) Squid
11 7 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.61%) NFS
12 5 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.48%) Sendmail
13 4 (0.48%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (0.36%) Postfix
14 3 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 139 (16.85%) Terraform
2 124 (15.03%) Ansible
3 94 (11.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 85 (10.30%) Kubernetes
5 75 (9.09%) SCCM
6 72 (8.73%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (7.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (5.33%) FortiGate
9 40 (4.85%) vCenter Server
10 34 (4.12%) Grafana
11 23 (2.79%) Argo
11 23 (2.79%) Prometheus
12 16 (1.94%) WSUS
13 14 (1.70%) SCOM
14 10 (1.21%) Puppet
15 8 (0.97%) HAProxy
15 8 (0.97%) Nagios
16 7 (0.85%) Consul
16 7 (0.85%) QRadar
17 6 (0.73%) Nessus
Vendors
1 302 (36.61%) Microsoft
2 235 (28.48%) VMware
3 140 (16.97%) F5
4 132 (16.00%) Cisco
5 82 (9.94%) ServiceNow
6 81 (9.82%) Splunk
7 45 (5.45%) Blue Coat
7 45 (5.45%) Citrix
8 42 (5.09%) SolarWinds
9 38 (4.61%) Palo Alto
10 36 (4.36%) Juniper
10 36 (4.36%) McAfee
11 32 (3.88%) Red Hat
12 27 (3.27%) NetApp
13 25 (3.03%) Infoblox
14 23 (2.79%) Google
15 22 (2.67%) Dell
15 22 (2.67%) Fortinet
15 22 (2.67%) Okta
16 20 (2.42%) CheckPoint