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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 129 156
Rank change year-on-year -16 +27 -27
Contract jobs citing DNS 1,030 707 602
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 2.16% 1.55%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 20.36% 18.29% 12.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 629 451 411
10th Percentile £300 £250 £240
25th Percentile £410 £388 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £577 £600 £588
90th Percentile £648 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 31 14
10th Percentile £26.59 - £20.00
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.00 £23.28
Median hourly rate £61.11 £57.50 £24.19
Median % change year-on-year +6.27% +137.70% -36.41%
75th Percentile £74.20 £82.18 £49.69
90th Percentile £98.82 £89.63 £65.45
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 5,060 3,865 4,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.43% 11.81% 12.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,979 2,358 2,811
10th Percentile £250 £243 £220
25th Percentile £400 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £472 £500
% change year-on-year +0.58% -5.55% +10.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 201 302
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £46.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.78% -7.50% -11.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £44.50 £54.94
% change year-on-year -41.93% -19.00% -4.32%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -14 935 £500 -4.76% 321
UK excluding London -3 646 £500 - 267
London -38 318 £495 -1.98% 96
Work from Home -23 237 £505 -0.25% 112
North of England +30 232 £483 -0.92% 44
South East +10 184 £538 -2.27% 99
North West +33 151 £465 +1.64% 23
Midlands -25 121 £450 -5.26% 35
West Midlands -21 99 £450 -5.26% 26
South West +6 95 £550 +0.92% 49
Yorkshire -8 67 £500 -9.09% 15
Scotland +9 36 £500 +10.13% 7
East of England -53 33 £463 -15.91% 35
East Midlands -7 20 £431 -21.59% 9
North East -35 14 £413 +21.32% 7
Wales -11 9 £455 +19.97% 4

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
1 107 (10.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 90 (8.74%) SharePoint
3 25 (2.43%) Confluence
4 19 (1.84%) Apache
5 16 (1.55%) IIS
6 13 (1.26%) nginx
7 9 (0.87%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.58%) Skype for Business
9 5 (0.49%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2010
10 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2013
10 3 (0.29%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.19%) IBM HTTP Server
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.19%) WebSphere Portal
12 1 (0.097%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 24 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.17%) MS Visio
3 11 (1.07%) 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
6 1 (0.097%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 11 (1.07%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.097%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 420 (40.78%) Azure
2 216 (20.97%) AWS
3 187 (18.16%) Microsoft 365
4 183 (17.77%) Entra ID
5 107 (10.39%) GCP
6 72 (6.99%) GitHub
7 56 (5.44%) OneDrive
8 54 (5.24%) IaaS
9 46 (4.47%) Azure DevOps
10 41 (3.98%) Azure Monitor
11 38 (3.69%) GitHub Actions
11 38 (3.69%) PaaS
11 38 (3.69%) SaaS
12 30 (2.91%) OpenShift
13 27 (2.62%) Serverless
14 26 (2.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 25 (2.43%) Amazon EKS
16 24 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
17 23 (2.23%) Azure AKS
18 22 (2.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 480 (46.60%) DHCP
2 366 (35.53%) Firewall
3 296 (28.74%) TCP/IP
4 286 (27.77%) VPN
5 130 (12.62%) Network Security
5 130 (12.62%) VLAN
6 127 (12.33%) WAN
7 103 (10.00%) LAN
7 103 (10.00%) SSL
8 96 (9.32%) BGP
9 78 (7.57%) HTTP
10 75 (7.28%) Wireless
11 72 (6.99%) Wi-Fi
12 71 (6.89%) BIG-IP
13 62 (6.02%) SAN
14 56 (5.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 51 (4.95%) OSPF
16 49 (4.76%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
17 48 (4.66%) DMZ
18 37 (3.59%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (4.95%) SQL Server
2 25 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (1.07%) MongoDB
3 11 (1.07%) MySQL
4 10 (0.97%) Power BI
5 9 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (0.58%) Data Lake
6 6 (0.58%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.49%) MariaDB
7 5 (0.49%) Redis
8 4 (0.39%) Db2
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
9 3 (0.29%) SQLPlus
10 2 (0.19%) Amazon Aurora
10 2 (0.19%) KDB
11 1 (0.097%) Cloud Spanner
11 1 (0.097%) Metadata
11 1 (0.097%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 75 (7.28%) JIRA
2 53 (5.15%) Jenkins
3 43 (4.17%) Git
4 34 (3.30%) GitLab
5 17 (1.65%) Fiddler
6 11 (1.07%) Bitbucket
7 10 (0.97%) Browser DevTools
8 7 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (0.58%) Chocolatey
10 5 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.29%) MSI
11 3 (0.29%) Selenium
12 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
12 2 (0.19%) Introscope
12 2 (0.19%) Spinnaker
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.19%) Vagrant
13 1 (0.097%) Maven
13 1 (0.097%) Visual Studio
General
1 267 (25.92%) Social Skills
2 123 (11.94%) Analytical Skills
3 98 (9.51%) Finance
4 84 (8.16%) Public Sector
5 70 (6.80%) Banking
6 57 (5.53%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.20%) Investment Banking
7 33 (3.20%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.04%) Legal
9 13 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.17%) Military
11 11 (1.07%) Local Government
11 11 (1.07%) Police
12 10 (0.97%) Aerospace
12 10 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.87%) Manufacturing
14 8 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.68%) Front Office
16 6 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
16 6 (0.58%) Law
Job Titles
1 183 (17.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
1 183 (17.77%) Network Engineer
2 124 (12.04%) Senior
3 101 (9.81%) Support Engineer
4 83 (8.06%) Architect
5 76 (7.38%) Cloud Engineer
6 56 (5.44%) Analyst
6 56 (5.44%) Security Engineer
7 49 (4.76%) IT Support
8 48 (4.66%) IT Engineer
8 48 (4.66%) Platform Engineer
9 43 (4.17%) Azure Engineer
10 42 (4.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 41 (3.98%) DevOps Engineer
12 40 (3.88%) Cisco Engineer
13 39 (3.79%) Web Engineer
14 38 (3.69%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 38 (3.69%) Network Security Engineer
15 37 (3.59%) Administrator
16 35 (3.40%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 216 (20.97%) Terraform
2 49 (4.76%) SAML
3 39 (3.79%) 802.1X
4 33 (3.20%) OAuth
5 28 (2.72%) LDAP
5 28 (2.72%) OpenID
6 27 (2.62%) ARM Templates
7 19 (1.84%) JSON
8 18 (1.75%) REST
9 17 (1.65%) Kafka
9 17 (1.65%) OpenTelemetry
10 13 (1.26%) YAML
11 11 (1.07%) OAuth2
12 8 (0.78%) CSS
12 8 (0.78%) React
13 7 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
13 7 (0.68%) Middleware
14 6 (0.58%) Software Packaging
15 5 (0.49%) RabbitMQ
15 5 (0.49%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 125 (12.14%) Data Centre
2 107 (10.39%) PKI
3 72 (6.99%) Hybrid Cloud
4 71 (6.89%) Onboarding
5 55 (5.34%) Management Information System
6 49 (4.76%) Cloud Native
7 38 (3.69%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 32 (3.11%) Clustering
9 27 (2.62%) Public Cloud
9 27 (2.62%) Replication
10 25 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
11 18 (1.75%) Enterprise Cloud
12 17 (1.65%) Linux Command Line
13 16 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
14 15 (1.46%) Driving Licence
15 14 (1.36%) Security Posture
16 13 (1.26%) Cyber Threat
17 10 (0.97%) Enterprise Storage
17 10 (0.97%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 471 (45.73%) Windows
2 262 (25.44%) Windows Server
3 223 (21.65%) Linux
4 65 (6.31%) Windows 10
5 48 (4.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 38 (3.69%) Windows Server 2019
7 33 (3.20%) Mac OS
8 27 (2.62%) Unix
8 27 (2.62%) Windows Server 2012
9 24 (2.33%) Ubuntu
10 21 (2.04%) Apple iOS
11 19 (1.84%) Android
12 18 (1.75%) VMS
13 17 (1.65%) CentOS
14 16 (1.55%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (1.17%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.68%) Rocky
16 7 (0.68%) Windows Server 2008
17 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
18 3 (0.29%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (23.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 224 (21.75%) Problem-Solving
3 191 (18.54%) ITIL
4 187 (18.16%) Infrastructure as Code
5 182 (17.67%) Load Balancing
6 169 (16.41%) DevOps
7 166 (16.12%) Migration
8 157 (15.24%) CI/CD
9 127 (12.33%) ITSM
10 125 (12.14%) High Availability
11 110 (10.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 99 (9.61%) Agile
13 98 (9.51%) Observability
14 97 (9.42%) Cybersecurity
15 89 (8.64%) Project Delivery
15 89 (8.64%) Technical Leadership
16 87 (8.45%) Disaster Recovery
16 87 (8.45%) Platform Engineering
17 85 (8.25%) Runbook
18 78 (7.57%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 258 (25.05%) PowerShell
2 216 (20.97%) Python
3 157 (15.24%) Bash
4 67 (6.50%) SQL
5 46 (4.47%) Bicep
6 21 (2.04%) JavaScript
7 17 (1.65%) Shell Script
8 14 (1.36%) Go
9 11 (1.07%) Java
10 10 (0.97%) ActionScript
10 10 (0.97%) Perl
11 9 (0.87%) VBScript
12 8 (0.78%) Groovy
13 7 (0.68%) VBA
14 6 (0.58%) TypeScript
14 6 (0.58%) VB
15 5 (0.49%) Ruby
16 3 (0.29%) C
16 3 (0.29%) Lisp
17 2 (0.19%) C++
Qualifications
1 375 (36.41%) Security Cleared
2 209 (20.29%) SC Cleared
3 160 (15.53%) DV Cleared
4 100 (9.71%) Cisco Certification
5 86 (8.35%) Degree
6 75 (7.28%) CCNP
7 54 (5.24%) CCNA
8 53 (5.15%) Azure Certification
9 50 (4.85%) Microsoft Certification
10 30 (2.91%) Network+ Certification
11 25 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
12 23 (2.23%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
14 17 (1.65%) CCIE
15 15 (1.46%) VCAP
16 14 (1.36%) Server+ Certification
17 13 (1.26%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 11 (1.07%) A+ Certification
18 11 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.08%) SLA
2 26 (2.52%) NIST
3 17 (1.65%) NCSC
4 16 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (1.36%) QA
6 8 (0.78%) GDPR
7 5 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
7 5 (0.49%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.39%) 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 (0.097%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.097%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 438 (42.52%) Active Directory
2 278 (26.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 127 (12.33%) Hyper-V
4 77 (7.48%) VMware ESXi
5 75 (7.28%) vSphere
6 69 (6.70%) VMware NSX
7 60 (5.83%) Docker
8 44 (4.27%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (3.59%) Virtual Desktop
10 27 (2.62%) Firmware
11 22 (2.14%) NFS
12 15 (1.46%) vCloud
13 14 (1.36%) BitLocker
14 11 (1.07%) Postfix
15 10 (0.97%) Squid
15 10 (0.97%) Virtual Servers
16 9 (0.87%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.78%) Ceph
18 7 (0.68%) VMware Workstation
19 6 (0.58%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 163 (15.83%) Ansible
2 130 (12.62%) Kubernetes
3 110 (10.68%) Microsoft Intune
4 82 (7.96%) SCCM
5 63 (6.12%) Single Sign-On
5 63 (6.12%) vCenter Server
6 58 (5.63%) Grafana
7 46 (4.47%) Prometheus
8 33 (3.20%) SCOM
9 32 (3.11%) WSUS
10 31 (3.01%) FortiGate
11 18 (1.75%) Argo
12 16 (1.55%) VxRail
13 15 (1.46%) NetBackup
13 15 (1.46%) Puppet
14 14 (1.36%) Packer
15 13 (1.26%) Jamf Pro
16 12 (1.17%) Istio
16 12 (1.17%) vMotion
17 11 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 382 (37.09%) Microsoft
2 332 (32.23%) VMware
3 192 (18.64%) Cisco
4 134 (13.01%) F5
5 93 (9.03%) ServiceNow
6 63 (6.12%) Citrix
7 62 (6.02%) Infoblox
8 59 (5.73%) Google
9 56 (5.44%) Splunk
10 54 (5.24%) SolarWinds
11 47 (4.56%) Palo Alto
12 45 (4.37%) Red Hat
13 44 (4.27%) Juniper
14 38 (3.69%) NetApp
15 36 (3.50%) Dynatrace
16 31 (3.01%) CheckPoint
16 31 (3.01%) Fortinet
17 29 (2.82%) Zscaler
18 25 (2.43%) McAfee
19 24 (2.33%) Blue Coat