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

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 112 127
Rank change year-on-year -24 +15 -2
Contract jobs citing DNS 825 739 812
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.99% 2.41% 1.85%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.46% 18.17% 13.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 529 482 516
10th Percentile £213 £243 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £465
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% +9.68% -11.43%
75th Percentile £610 £623 £600
90th Percentile £675 £749 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £516 £463 £500
% change year-on-year +11.62% -7.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 10 27
10th Percentile £13.04 £17.88 £23.85
25th Percentile £15.50 £21.84 £28.13
Median hourly rate £25.15 £23.59 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -41.03% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £56.94 £55.70
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.12 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £22.50 £43.75
% change year-on-year - -48.57% -5.11%

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 4,239 4,068 5,872
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.23% 13.26% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,761 2,442 3,513
10th Percentile £204 £209 £205
25th Percentile £360 £361 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £481
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +4.06% -7.15%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £467 £475
% change year-on-year - -1.68% +1.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 131 382
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £34.00 £32.50 £43.12
Median % change year-on-year +4.62% -24.62% +123.39%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £30.04 £50.00
% change year-on-year +39.61% -39.92% +163.16%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 26 February 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 -19 733 £519 +3.85% 314
UK excluding London -25 522 £516 +11.62% 276
London -9 239 £525 - 80
Work from Home -57 195 £500 -6.54% 94
North of England -18 188 £473 -0.26% 74
South East -3 142 £525 - 91
North West +7 121 £602 +26.79% 43
Midlands +18 109 £375 -16.67% 35
West Midlands +23 105 £378 -6.79% 27
Yorkshire -35 70 £447 -0.67% 25
South West -34 63 £575 +5.12% 34
East of England -18 39 £463 +2.78% 31
Scotland -1 35 £483 +7.22% 15
North East -22 6 £411 +26.38% 9
Wales -14 4 £550 +25.71% 4
East Midlands -35 4 £325 -41.96% 8

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
1 101 (12.24%) Microsoft Exchange
2 58 (7.03%) SharePoint
3 29 (3.52%) Skype for Business
4 18 (2.18%) Confluence
5 16 (1.94%) nginx
6 5 (0.61%) Apache
6 5 (0.61%) IIS
7 4 (0.48%) Exchange Server 2010
7 4 (0.48%) OpenStack
7 4 (0.48%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.24%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.24%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.24%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.24%) WordPress
9 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 37 (4.48%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (1.82%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.12%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (0.24%) SystmOne
2 1 (0.12%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 282 (34.18%) Azure
2 173 (20.97%) AWS
3 149 (18.06%) Microsoft 365
4 127 (15.39%) Entra ID
5 59 (7.15%) GCP
6 56 (6.79%) GitHub
7 53 (6.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 45 (5.45%) Amazon S3
9 43 (5.21%) Amazon EC2
10 42 (5.09%) IaaS
11 39 (4.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 36 (4.36%) AWS CloudFormation
13 33 (4.00%) Serverless
14 32 (3.88%) Route 53
15 31 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
16 30 (3.64%) SaaS
17 25 (3.03%) PaaS
18 24 (2.91%) Amazon ECS
18 24 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
19 22 (2.67%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 373 (45.21%) DHCP
2 265 (32.12%) Firewall
3 257 (31.15%) TCP/IP
4 197 (23.88%) VPN
5 100 (12.12%) WAN
6 94 (11.39%) SSL
7 90 (10.91%) LAN
8 88 (10.67%) Network Security
9 81 (9.82%) VLAN
10 75 (9.09%) HTTP
11 65 (7.88%) BIG-IP
12 64 (7.76%) BGP
13 55 (6.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 55 (6.67%) Wi-Fi
14 45 (5.45%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
15 44 (5.33%) Wireshark
16 40 (4.85%) OSPF
17 37 (4.48%) DMZ
18 36 (4.36%) Wireless
19 35 (4.24%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.15%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
2 17 (2.06%) Elasticsearch
2 17 (2.06%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (1.09%) Amazon Aurora
4 7 (0.85%) DynamoDB
4 7 (0.85%) MongoDB
4 7 (0.85%) Redis
5 6 (0.73%) Data Hub
5 6 (0.73%) MySQL
6 4 (0.48%) DocumentDB
6 4 (0.48%) NoSQL
6 4 (0.48%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
7 3 (0.36%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.12%) Electronic Patient Records
8 1 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.12%) Power BI
8 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 72 (8.73%) Jenkins
2 54 (6.55%) Git
3 44 (5.33%) GitLab
4 43 (5.21%) JIRA
5 30 (3.64%) Fiddler
6 8 (0.97%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.85%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.85%) Terragrunt
8 4 (0.48%) Chocolatey
8 4 (0.48%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.48%) Vagrant
9 3 (0.36%) Subversion
10 2 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.24%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.12%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (0.12%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.12%) Travis CI
11 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.12%) Vite
11 1 (0.12%) webpack
General
1 231 (28.00%) Social Skills
2 104 (12.61%) Analytical Skills
3 63 (7.64%) Banking
4 58 (7.03%) Public Sector
5 49 (5.94%) Finance
6 48 (5.82%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (5.45%) Investment Banking
8 23 (2.79%) Legal
9 19 (2.30%) Telecoms
10 17 (2.06%) Military
11 11 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.61%) Law
15 4 (0.48%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.48%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.48%) Local Government
16 3 (0.36%) Marketing
17 2 (0.24%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 129 (15.64%) Network Engineer
2 116 (14.06%) Architect
3 81 (9.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 77 (9.33%) Analyst
5 71 (8.61%) Senior
6 66 (8.00%) Support Engineer
7 52 (6.30%) IT Support
8 46 (5.58%) Security Engineer
9 36 (4.36%) Web Engineer
10 35 (4.24%) Platform Engineer
11 33 (4.00%) DevOps Engineer
11 33 (4.00%) Lead
12 32 (3.88%) IT Engineer
13 29 (3.52%) Network Security Engineer
14 26 (3.15%) SOC Analyst
15 24 (2.91%) IT Support Engineer
16 23 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
17 22 (2.67%) 2nd Line Support
17 22 (2.67%) Cisco Engineer
17 22 (2.67%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (8.61%) LDAP
2 43 (5.21%) SAML
3 37 (4.48%) OAuth
4 31 (3.76%) OpenID
5 22 (2.67%) 802.1X
6 20 (2.42%) OAuth2
7 15 (1.82%) OpenTelemetry
8 10 (1.21%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (1.21%) Kafka
8 10 (1.21%) REST
9 6 (0.73%) ARM Templates
9 6 (0.73%) JSON
9 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Graph
9 6 (0.73%) Middleware
9 6 (0.73%) XMPP
10 5 (0.61%) AngularJS
10 5 (0.61%) AWS CDK
10 5 (0.61%) React
10 5 (0.61%) RESTful
10 5 (0.61%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.61%) PKI
2 65 (7.88%) Data Centre
3 54 (6.55%) Replication
4 40 (4.85%) Cloud Native
4 40 (4.85%) Management Information System
5 31 (3.76%) Onboarding
6 25 (3.03%) Security Operations Centre
7 24 (2.91%) Cyberattack
8 23 (2.79%) Analytical Mindset
8 23 (2.79%) Clustering
8 23 (2.79%) Public Cloud
9 20 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
10 15 (1.82%) Cyber Threat
10 15 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
11 12 (1.45%) NHS
12 11 (1.33%) Private Cloud
13 10 (1.21%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 10 (1.21%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 399 (48.36%) Windows
2 192 (23.27%) Windows Server
3 149 (18.06%) Linux
4 58 (7.03%) Windows 10
5 34 (4.12%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (2.30%) Unix
7 18 (2.18%) Android
8 16 (1.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (1.94%) Windows Server 2016
9 15 (1.82%) Windows Server 2012
10 14 (1.70%) Mac OS
11 13 (1.58%) Apple iOS
12 11 (1.33%) VMS
12 11 (1.33%) Windows 7
13 9 (1.09%) CentOS
14 7 (0.85%) Amazon Linux
14 7 (0.85%) Ubuntu
15 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2003
16 4 (0.48%) CatOS
16 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (24.73%) Problem-Solving
2 155 (18.79%) Load Balancing
3 133 (16.12%) ITIL
4 117 (14.18%) CI/CD
5 113 (13.70%) DevOps
6 107 (12.97%) High Availability
7 106 (12.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 105 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
8 105 (12.73%) Migration
9 79 (9.58%) Disaster Recovery
10 77 (9.33%) Cybersecurity
10 77 (9.33%) Service Management
11 72 (8.73%) Change Management
12 68 (8.24%) Identity Access Management
13 66 (8.00%) Incident Response
14 61 (7.39%) SIEM
15 60 (7.27%) ITSM
16 59 (7.15%) Root Cause Analysis
17 56 (6.79%) RBAC
18 54 (6.55%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 233 (28.24%) PowerShell
2 146 (17.70%) Python
3 78 (9.45%) Bash
4 45 (5.45%) SQL
5 13 (1.58%) VBScript
6 12 (1.45%) Bicep
6 12 (1.45%) Java
7 11 (1.33%) Go
8 10 (1.21%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.21%) Perl
8 10 (1.21%) Ruby
8 10 (1.21%) VB
9 9 (1.09%) Shell Script
10 7 (0.85%) Lisp
11 5 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (0.48%) Groovy
13 3 (0.36%) C#
13 3 (0.36%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.24%) C++
14 2 (0.24%) VBA
Qualifications
1 295 (35.76%) Security Cleared
2 206 (24.97%) SC Cleared
3 101 (12.24%) DV Cleared
4 68 (8.24%) Degree
5 66 (8.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 60 (7.27%) Cisco Certification
7 48 (5.82%) CCNP
8 36 (4.36%) Azure Certification
9 30 (3.64%) CompTIA Security+
10 25 (3.03%) Network+ Certification
11 22 (2.67%) AWS Certification
12 21 (2.55%) CCNA
12 21 (2.55%) CISSP
12 21 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
13 17 (2.06%) Server+ Certification
14 16 (1.94%) CompTIA CySA+
15 13 (1.58%) MCSE
16 10 (1.21%) CCIE
16 10 (1.21%) ITIL Certification
17 9 (1.09%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.88%) GDPR
2 26 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (2.79%) NIST
4 22 (2.67%) SLA
5 19 (2.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.09%) PCI DSS
7 8 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (0.97%) NCSC
8 6 (0.73%) QA
9 4 (0.48%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.36%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 3 (0.36%) PMO
11 2 (0.24%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.12%) COBIT
12 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.12%) RMADS
12 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 360 (43.64%) Active Directory
2 195 (23.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (9.09%) Docker
4 63 (7.64%) Hyper-V
5 56 (6.79%) VMware NSX
6 49 (5.94%) vSphere
7 29 (3.52%) Virtual Machines
8 23 (2.79%) Firmware
9 18 (2.18%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (1.70%) BitLocker
10 14 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
11 11 (1.33%) Squid
12 7 (0.85%) DFS Replication
12 7 (0.85%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.73%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.61%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.48%) NFS
15 4 (0.48%) Postfix
15 4 (0.48%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.36%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 146 (17.70%) Terraform
2 132 (16.00%) Ansible
3 95 (11.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (9.94%) Kubernetes
5 78 (9.45%) SCCM
6 74 (8.97%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (7.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (5.21%) vCenter Server
9 42 (5.09%) FortiGate
10 37 (4.48%) Grafana
11 24 (2.91%) Prometheus
12 22 (2.67%) Argo
13 19 (2.30%) WSUS
14 14 (1.70%) SCOM
15 9 (1.09%) Nessus
15 9 (1.09%) Puppet
16 8 (0.97%) Nagios
16 8 (0.97%) QRadar
17 7 (0.85%) Consul
18 6 (0.73%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 312 (37.82%) Microsoft
2 242 (29.33%) VMware
3 142 (17.21%) F5
4 129 (15.64%) Cisco
5 87 (10.55%) ServiceNow
6 82 (9.94%) Splunk
7 49 (5.94%) Palo Alto
8 45 (5.45%) Blue Coat
9 42 (5.09%) SolarWinds
10 41 (4.97%) Citrix
11 35 (4.24%) McAfee
12 34 (4.12%) Juniper
13 33 (4.00%) CheckPoint
13 33 (4.00%) Red Hat
14 25 (3.03%) NetApp
15 22 (2.67%) Infoblox
16 21 (2.55%) Dell
16 21 (2.55%) Google
16 21 (2.55%) Okta
16 21 (2.55%) Veeam