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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 117 158
Rank change year-on-year -20 +41 -26
Contract jobs citing DNS 947 666 661
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 2.31% 1.53%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 19.96% 18.36% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 589 472 455
10th Percentile £281 £300 £213
25th Percentile £400 £406 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £475
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +15.79% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -12.45% +10.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 12 24
10th Percentile £21.25 - £18.95
25th Percentile £26.00 £29.00 £23.66
Median hourly rate £35.22 £69.09 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.02% +112.58% -37.66%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.35 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £82.03 £50.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.22 £80.68 £40.00
% change year-on-year -56.34% +101.69% -16.56%

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 4,745 3,627 5,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 12.61% 12.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,903 2,250 3,234
10th Percentile £263 £219 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £480
% change year-on-year +2.10% -2.97% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 161 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.96 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.37% +2.50% +118.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.93 £81.01 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £31.08 £45.88
% change year-on-year +4.57% -32.26% +154.89%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -17 830 £500 -9.09% 361
UK excluding London -5 604 £482 -12.45% 307
London -42 265 £500 -3.51% 101
North of England +8 236 £447 -5.89% 65
Work from Home -26 206 £525 -3.67% 210
South East 0 167 £525 -4.55% 106
North West +42 156 £450 +5.88% 44
Midlands +15 110 £438 -19.35% 36
West Midlands +8 97 £438 - 21
Yorkshire -27 74 £447 -18.73% 14
South West -31 56 £490 -20.33% 48
Scotland +39 51 £550 +22.22% 10
East of England -45 41 £450 -18.18% 32
East Midlands -28 12 £394 -30.62% 15
Wales -18 6 £300 -33.33% 13
North East -36 6 £306 -12.50% 9

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 (9.08%) Microsoft Exchange
2 55 (5.81%) SharePoint
3 20 (2.11%) Confluence
4 17 (1.80%) nginx
5 16 (1.69%) IIS
6 14 (1.48%) Apache
7 9 (0.95%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.53%) WebSphere
9 4 (0.42%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.21%) IBM HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.21%) WebSphere Portal
11 1 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
11 1 (0.11%) Traefik
Applications
1 18 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.48%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 333 (35.16%) Azure
2 177 (18.69%) AWS
3 151 (15.95%) Entra ID
4 128 (13.52%) Microsoft 365
5 101 (10.67%) GCP
6 73 (7.71%) GitHub
7 55 (5.81%) IaaS
8 41 (4.33%) PaaS
9 40 (4.22%) SaaS
10 34 (3.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 33 (3.48%) OneDrive
12 32 (3.38%) Amazon EC2
12 32 (3.38%) Amazon S3
13 31 (3.27%) GitHub Actions
14 30 (3.17%) Amazon EKS
14 30 (3.17%) AWS CloudFormation
14 30 (3.17%) Serverless
15 28 (2.96%) Route 53
16 27 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
17 26 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 412 (43.51%) DHCP
2 283 (29.88%) Firewall
3 236 (24.92%) TCP/IP
4 227 (23.97%) VPN
5 129 (13.62%) WAN
6 114 (12.04%) LAN
7 108 (11.40%) SSL
8 101 (10.67%) Network Security
9 93 (9.82%) BIG-IP
9 93 (9.82%) VLAN
10 85 (8.98%) BGP
11 82 (8.66%) HTTP
12 57 (6.02%) Wi-Fi
13 53 (5.60%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 53 (5.60%) Wireless
14 49 (5.17%) SAN
15 48 (5.07%) OSPF
16 41 (4.33%) Kerberos
17 40 (4.22%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
18 37 (3.91%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.91%) SQL Server
2 20 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
3 19 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (0.95%) MongoDB
5 8 (0.84%) MySQL
5 8 (0.84%) Power BI
6 6 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (0.63%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.53%) DynamoDB
8 4 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (0.42%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.42%) MariaDB
8 4 (0.42%) Redis
9 2 (0.21%) SQLPlus
10 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.11%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 1 (0.11%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 65 (6.86%) JIRA
2 62 (6.55%) Jenkins
3 35 (3.70%) Git
4 32 (3.38%) GitLab
5 25 (2.64%) Fiddler
6 9 (0.95%) Browser DevTools
7 7 (0.74%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.63%) Chocolatey
9 4 (0.42%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.42%) Terragrunt
10 3 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.21%) Introscope
12 1 (0.11%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.11%) Spinnaker
12 1 (0.11%) Travis CI
General
1 212 (22.39%) Social Skills
2 91 (9.61%) Analytical Skills
3 74 (7.81%) Banking
3 74 (7.81%) Finance
4 63 (6.65%) Public Sector
5 48 (5.07%) Documentation Skills
6 37 (3.91%) Investment Banking
7 27 (2.85%) Legal
8 17 (1.80%) Military
9 14 (1.48%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (0.95%) Law
12 7 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.53%) Local Government
13 5 (0.53%) Manufacturing
13 5 (0.53%) Police
14 4 (0.42%) Advertising
14 4 (0.42%) Financial Institution
14 4 (0.42%) Italian Language
14 4 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 171 (18.06%) Network Engineer
2 125 (13.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 115 (12.14%) Architect
4 84 (8.87%) Analyst
5 72 (7.60%) Senior
6 63 (6.65%) Security Engineer
7 58 (6.12%) Support Engineer
8 48 (5.07%) Web Engineer
9 44 (4.65%) Cloud Engineer
9 44 (4.65%) IT Support
10 42 (4.44%) Network Security Engineer
11 37 (3.91%) IT Engineer
12 36 (3.80%) Cisco Engineer
13 34 (3.59%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 34 (3.59%) Lead
14 33 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
14 33 (3.48%) Data Engineer
14 33 (3.48%) Data Network Engineer
15 32 (3.38%) Administrator
15 32 (3.38%) Cisco Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (7.18%) LDAP
2 54 (5.70%) SAML
3 42 (4.44%) OAuth
4 40 (4.22%) 802.1X
5 31 (3.27%) OpenID
6 20 (2.11%) OpenTelemetry
7 16 (1.69%) JSON
8 12 (1.27%) ARM Templates
9 10 (1.06%) Kafka
9 10 (1.06%) REST
10 9 (0.95%) OAuth2
11 8 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
12 5 (0.53%) Microsoft Graph
12 5 (0.53%) XMPP
12 5 (0.53%) 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%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 98 (10.35%) Data Centre
2 72 (7.60%) PKI
3 56 (5.91%) Cloud Native
4 50 (5.28%) Onboarding
5 42 (4.44%) Management Information System
5 42 (4.44%) Replication
6 39 (4.12%) Clustering
7 36 (3.80%) Public Cloud
8 33 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
9 29 (3.06%) Security Operations Centre
10 28 (2.96%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 26 (2.75%) Cyberattack
12 21 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
13 19 (2.01%) Cyber Threat
14 16 (1.69%) Enterprise Cloud
15 14 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
16 13 (1.37%) Security Posture
17 12 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
17 12 (1.27%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 401 (42.34%) Windows
2 219 (23.13%) Windows Server
3 142 (14.99%) Linux
4 42 (4.44%) Windows 10
5 41 (4.33%) Windows Server 2019
6 29 (3.06%) Mac OS
6 29 (3.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 26 (2.75%) Unix
8 19 (2.01%) Windows Server 2012
9 18 (1.90%) Apple iOS
10 15 (1.58%) Android
10 15 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
11 11 (1.16%) VMS
12 9 (0.95%) CentOS
12 9 (0.95%) Ubuntu
13 8 (0.84%) Windows Server 2003
14 7 (0.74%) Windows 7
15 3 (0.32%) AIX
15 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (20.49%) Problem-Solving
2 172 (18.16%) Load Balancing
3 157 (16.58%) Migration
4 156 (16.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 146 (15.42%) High Availability
6 133 (14.04%) DevOps
6 133 (14.04%) ITIL
7 118 (12.46%) CI/CD
7 118 (12.46%) Infrastructure as Code
8 91 (9.61%) ITSM
9 86 (9.08%) Disaster Recovery
10 85 (8.98%) Cybersecurity
11 81 (8.55%) Observability
12 80 (8.45%) Identity Access Management
13 74 (7.81%) Agile
14 68 (7.18%) Project Delivery
15 64 (6.76%) Runbook
15 64 (6.76%) SIEM
16 62 (6.55%) Root Cause Analysis
17 60 (6.34%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 188 (19.85%) PowerShell
2 150 (15.84%) Python
3 91 (9.61%) Bash
4 52 (5.49%) SQL
5 25 (2.64%) JavaScript
6 24 (2.53%) Bicep
7 17 (1.80%) Java
8 12 (1.27%) Go
9 11 (1.16%) Shell Script
10 9 (0.95%) VBA
11 7 (0.74%) ActionScript
11 7 (0.74%) Perl
12 6 (0.63%) Ruby
12 6 (0.63%) VBScript
13 5 (0.53%) Groovy
14 4 (0.42%) C
14 4 (0.42%) VB
15 3 (0.32%) Lisp
16 2 (0.21%) Jython
16 2 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 317 (33.47%) Security Cleared
2 207 (21.86%) SC Cleared
3 112 (11.83%) DV Cleared
4 86 (9.08%) Cisco Certification
5 72 (7.60%) Degree
6 55 (5.81%) CCNP
7 45 (4.75%) CCNA
8 31 (3.27%) CompTIA Security+
9 28 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (2.96%) Network+ Certification
10 25 (2.64%) Azure Certification
11 20 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
12 17 (1.80%) CompTIA CySA+
12 17 (1.80%) Server+ Certification
13 15 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
14 12 (1.27%) AWS Certification
15 11 (1.16%) CISSP
15 11 (1.16%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.06%) JNCIS
17 9 (0.95%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (3.48%) SLA
2 28 (2.96%) NIST
3 23 (2.43%) GDPR
4 19 (2.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 16 (1.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 11 (1.16%) QA
7 7 (0.74%) NCSC
8 4 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 4 (0.42%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.21%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.11%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) PMO
11 1 (0.11%) RMADS
System Software
1 373 (39.39%) Active Directory
2 202 (21.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 95 (10.03%) Hyper-V
4 55 (5.81%) vSphere
5 54 (5.70%) VMware NSX
6 42 (4.44%) Docker
7 39 (4.12%) VMware ESXi
8 33 (3.48%) Virtual Machines
9 26 (2.75%) Virtual Desktop
10 25 (2.64%) Firmware
11 17 (1.80%) NFS
12 15 (1.58%) Squid
13 14 (1.48%) BitLocker
14 10 (1.06%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (1.06%) Postfix
15 9 (0.95%) vCloud
16 8 (0.84%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.74%) Varnish
18 5 (0.53%) Ceph
19 4 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 148 (15.63%) Terraform
2 122 (12.88%) Ansible
3 92 (9.71%) Kubernetes
4 78 (8.24%) Microsoft Intune
5 75 (7.92%) Single Sign-On
6 51 (5.39%) FortiGate
7 48 (5.07%) Grafana
8 46 (4.86%) SCCM
9 44 (4.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (4.54%) vCenter Server
11 31 (3.27%) Prometheus
12 25 (2.64%) WSUS
13 22 (2.32%) Argo
14 16 (1.69%) SCOM
15 14 (1.48%) HAProxy
16 12 (1.27%) Puppet
17 11 (1.16%) Nessus
18 10 (1.06%) Jamf Pro
19 9 (0.95%) vMotion
20 8 (0.84%) Consul
Vendors
1 289 (30.52%) Microsoft
2 240 (25.34%) VMware
3 168 (17.74%) Cisco
4 155 (16.37%) F5
5 89 (9.40%) ServiceNow
6 86 (9.08%) Splunk
7 55 (5.81%) Infoblox
8 54 (5.70%) Citrix
9 51 (5.39%) SolarWinds
10 46 (4.86%) Red Hat
11 45 (4.75%) Juniper
12 43 (4.54%) Google
13 33 (3.48%) Palo Alto
14 32 (3.38%) Blue Coat
14 32 (3.38%) NetApp
15 27 (2.85%) Dynatrace
15 27 (2.85%) McAfee
16 26 (2.75%) Okta
17 22 (2.32%) Extreme Networks
18 21 (2.22%) Fortinet