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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 110 115
Rank change year-on-year -35 +5 +12
Contract jobs citing DNS 709 713 906
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 2.24% 2.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.12% 17.40% 15.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 462 451 581
10th Percentile £219 £223 £209
25th Percentile £400 £350 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £485
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +3.09% -7.62%
75th Percentile £600 £614 £600
90th Percentile £680 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 9 20
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.26 £24.93
25th Percentile £20.56 £21.25 £31.25
Median hourly rate £46.86 £23.59 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.64% -57.11% +64.18%
75th Percentile £74.26 £25.30 £61.75
90th Percentile £78.50 £40.40 £70.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.11 £22.50 £56.40
% change year-on-year +131.60% -60.11% +46.49%

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 3,913 4,097 5,909
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.49% 12.88% 13.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,580 2,396 3,637
10th Percentile £204 £213 £210
25th Percentile £356 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 141 349
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £17.74
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £23.09
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -38.04% +134.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £74.41 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £58.50
% change year-on-year +29.05% -44.44% +179.48%

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 17 January 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 17 January 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 17 January 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 -19 636 £525 +10.29% 313
UK excluding London -22 447 £500 +11.11% 291
London -11 210 £550 +4.76% 67
Work from Home -49 171 £525 - 94
North of England -39 133 £470 +10.59% 57
Midlands +24 120 £400 -5.88% 35
West Midlands +36 116 £400 -5.88% 18
South East +3 115 £500 +8.11% 103
North West -7 92 £475 +0.26% 24
South West -24 63 £575 +5.12% 38
Yorkshire -38 47 £454 +51.17% 28
East of England -25 33 £419 +52.27% 43
Scotland -14 27 £454 +0.89% 19
North East -19 7 £575 +155.56% 7
East Midlands -41 4 £275 -41.18% 17
Wales -8 3 £550 +33.33% 6

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 89 (12.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 67 (9.45%) SharePoint
3 33 (4.65%) Skype for Business
4 19 (2.68%) Confluence
5 12 (1.69%) nginx
6 10 (1.41%) Exchange Server 2010
7 9 (1.27%) IIS
7 9 (1.27%) SharePoint Server
8 8 (1.13%) Exchange Server 2013
9 5 (0.71%) Apache
9 5 (0.71%) Exchange Server 2003
9 5 (0.71%) Exchange Server 2007
9 5 (0.71%) Office Communications Server
10 4 (0.56%) OpenStack
11 3 (0.42%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.28%) Cloud Foundry
12 2 (0.28%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 2 (0.28%) WordPress
Applications
1 45 (6.35%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.97%) MS Visio
3 9 (1.27%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.28%) Windchill
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
1 2 (0.28%) SystmOne
1 2 (0.28%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.14%) Pegasus Opera
Cloud Services
1 244 (34.41%) Azure
2 182 (25.67%) AWS
3 141 (19.89%) Microsoft 365
4 98 (13.82%) Entra ID
5 65 (9.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 53 (7.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 52 (7.33%) Amazon S3
8 49 (6.91%) Amazon EC2
9 46 (6.49%) GitHub
10 42 (5.92%) GCP
11 39 (5.50%) Amazon ELB
12 33 (4.65%) AWS CloudFormation
13 32 (4.51%) Amazon ECS
13 32 (4.51%) IaaS
14 27 (3.81%) SaaS
14 27 (3.81%) Serverless
15 25 (3.53%) AWS Lambda
16 23 (3.24%) GitHub Actions
16 23 (3.24%) Route 53
17 18 (2.54%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 309 (43.58%) DHCP
2 232 (32.72%) TCP/IP
3 230 (32.44%) Firewall
4 179 (25.25%) VPN
5 94 (13.26%) SSL
6 87 (12.27%) Network Security
7 86 (12.13%) WAN
8 81 (11.42%) HTTP
9 68 (9.59%) LAN
10 63 (8.89%) VLAN
11 44 (6.21%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 41 (5.78%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 40 (5.64%) SMTP
13 40 (5.64%) Wireless
14 39 (5.50%) Wireshark
15 37 (5.22%) BGP
15 37 (5.22%) BIG-IP
16 35 (4.94%) Wi-Fi
17 34 (4.80%) DMZ
18 32 (4.51%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.23%) Amazon RDS
2 25 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (3.24%) SQL Server
4 16 (2.26%) Amazon Aurora
5 9 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (1.27%) MongoDB
6 7 (0.99%) DynamoDB
6 7 (0.99%) MySQL
6 7 (0.99%) Redis
7 6 (0.85%) Data Hub
8 4 (0.56%) DocumentDB
8 4 (0.56%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.56%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.42%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.14%) CouchDB
10 1 (0.14%) Electronic Patient Records
10 1 (0.14%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.14%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 80 (11.28%) Jenkins
2 70 (9.87%) Git
3 49 (6.91%) GitLab
4 40 (5.64%) JIRA
5 24 (3.39%) Fiddler
6 14 (1.97%) Vagrant
7 8 (1.13%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.71%) Subversion
9 4 (0.56%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.56%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.14%) Browser DevTools
10 1 (0.14%) GCC
10 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.14%) Travis CI
10 1 (0.14%) Visual Studio Code
10 1 (0.14%) Vite
10 1 (0.14%) webpack
General
1 215 (30.32%) Social Skills
2 100 (14.10%) Analytical Skills
3 70 (9.87%) Public Sector
4 56 (7.90%) Banking
5 42 (5.92%) Investment Banking
6 41 (5.78%) Finance
7 38 (5.36%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (2.96%) Telecoms
9 20 (2.82%) Legal
10 15 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.13%) Military
12 7 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (0.99%) Law
13 6 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 4 (0.56%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 4 (0.56%) Marketing
15 3 (0.42%) Financial Institution
15 3 (0.42%) Local Government
16 2 (0.28%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 97 (13.68%) Network Engineer
2 83 (11.71%) Architect
3 72 (10.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 70 (9.87%) Analyst
5 69 (9.73%) Senior
6 68 (9.59%) Support Engineer
7 44 (6.21%) Platform Engineer
8 42 (5.92%) DevOps Engineer
8 42 (5.92%) IT Support
9 32 (4.51%) Security Engineer
10 31 (4.37%) AWS Engineer
11 27 (3.81%) Lead
11 27 (3.81%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 26 (3.67%) 2nd Line Support
13 24 (3.39%) SOC Analyst
13 24 (3.39%) Web Engineer
14 23 (3.24%) Cloud Platform Engineer
14 23 (3.24%) Operations Engineer
15 21 (2.96%) AWS DevOps
15 21 (2.96%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (7.05%) LDAP
2 36 (5.08%) SAML
3 30 (4.23%) OAuth
4 23 (3.24%) OpenID
5 20 (2.82%) OAuth2
6 16 (2.26%) REST
7 13 (1.83%) Kafka
8 12 (1.69%) 802.1X
9 11 (1.55%) Elastic Stack
10 10 (1.41%) SOAP
11 7 (0.99%) AngularJS
11 7 (0.99%) Middleware
11 7 (0.99%) OpenTelemetry
12 6 (0.85%) RESTful
13 5 (0.71%) cloud-init
13 5 (0.71%) Keycloak
13 5 (0.71%) React
13 5 (0.71%) Spring Boot
13 5 (0.71%) YAML
14 4 (0.56%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 57 (8.04%) PKI
2 55 (7.76%) Replication
3 50 (7.05%) Data Centre
4 46 (6.49%) Management Information System
5 30 (4.23%) Onboarding
6 25 (3.53%) Security Operations Centre
7 24 (3.39%) Analytical Mindset
8 23 (3.24%) Enterprise Software
9 22 (3.10%) Cyberattack
10 19 (2.68%) Cloud Native
11 15 (2.12%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (1.83%) Cyber Threat
12 13 (1.83%) Private Cloud
12 13 (1.83%) Public Cloud
13 12 (1.69%) Clustering
14 11 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
15 10 (1.41%) Video Conferencing
16 8 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
17 7 (0.99%) CSOC
17 7 (0.99%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 360 (50.78%) Windows
2 174 (24.54%) Windows Server
3 156 (22.00%) Linux
4 61 (8.60%) Windows 10
5 30 (4.23%) Windows Server 2019
6 27 (3.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (3.39%) Unix
8 22 (3.10%) Windows Server 2016
9 21 (2.96%) VMS
10 18 (2.54%) Windows Server 2012
11 17 (2.40%) Amazon Linux
11 17 (2.40%) Android
12 14 (1.97%) Ubuntu
13 13 (1.83%) CentOS
14 12 (1.69%) Apple iOS
15 11 (1.55%) Windows Server 2003
16 9 (1.27%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.99%) Mac OS
18 5 (0.71%) Solaris
19 4 (0.56%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 159 (22.43%) Problem-Solving
2 120 (16.93%) ITIL
3 116 (16.36%) CI/CD
3 116 (16.36%) Load Balancing
4 110 (15.51%) DevOps
5 98 (13.82%) Infrastructure as Code
6 93 (13.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 81 (11.42%) High Availability
8 78 (11.00%) Cybersecurity
9 76 (10.72%) Change Management
10 72 (10.16%) Incident Response
11 69 (9.73%) Migration
12 62 (8.74%) Disaster Recovery
12 62 (8.74%) Service Management
13 58 (8.18%) SIEM
14 57 (8.04%) Root Cause Analysis
15 52 (7.33%) Platform Engineering
16 51 (7.19%) Mentoring
17 50 (7.05%) Agile
18 49 (6.91%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 208 (29.34%) PowerShell
2 157 (22.14%) Python
3 77 (10.86%) Bash
4 43 (6.06%) SQL
5 22 (3.10%) Java
6 21 (2.96%) Perl
7 14 (1.97%) Groovy
8 13 (1.83%) Bicep
9 12 (1.69%) Shell Script
10 11 (1.55%) Go
11 10 (1.41%) Ruby
11 10 (1.41%) VBScript
12 9 (1.27%) VB
13 7 (0.99%) Lisp
14 6 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
15 5 (0.71%) C++
15 5 (0.71%) JavaScript
16 3 (0.42%) C#
16 3 (0.42%) Search Processing Language
16 3 (0.42%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 265 (37.38%) Security Cleared
2 191 (26.94%) SC Cleared
3 88 (12.41%) DV Cleared
4 66 (9.31%) Degree
5 59 (8.32%) Microsoft Certification
6 43 (6.06%) Cisco Certification
7 39 (5.50%) CCNP
8 37 (5.22%) Azure Certification
9 23 (3.24%) AWS Certification
10 20 (2.82%) CompTIA Security+
11 18 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
11 18 (2.54%) Network+ Certification
12 16 (2.26%) CCNA
13 13 (1.83%) CISSP
13 13 (1.83%) CompTIA CySA+
14 11 (1.55%) Server+ Certification
15 9 (1.27%) MCSE
16 8 (1.13%) CCIE
16 8 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
16 8 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.23%) GDPR
2 23 (3.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.68%) SLA
4 18 (2.54%) NIST
5 14 (1.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (1.27%) NCSC
6 9 (1.27%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.85%) Accessibility
8 6 (0.85%) QA
9 3 (0.42%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.28%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.28%) PMO
11 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 316 (44.57%) Active Directory
2 196 (27.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (12.69%) Docker
4 56 (7.90%) Hyper-V
5 41 (5.78%) VMware NSX
6 29 (4.09%) vSphere
7 27 (3.81%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (2.96%) Firmware
9 18 (2.54%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (2.40%) DFS Replication
11 16 (2.26%) Postfix
12 15 (2.12%) Dovecot
13 13 (1.83%) Terminal Services
14 11 (1.55%) BitLocker
15 10 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
16 9 (1.27%) Squid
16 9 (1.27%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.85%) NFS
18 5 (0.71%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 127 (17.91%) Terraform
2 120 (16.93%) Ansible
3 83 (11.71%) Microsoft Intune
4 74 (10.44%) SCCM
5 60 (8.46%) Kubernetes
5 60 (8.46%) Single Sign-On
6 40 (5.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 37 (5.22%) vCenter Server
8 33 (4.65%) Grafana
9 25 (3.53%) Prometheus
10 21 (2.96%) WSUS
11 16 (2.26%) FortiGate
12 13 (1.83%) Argo
13 12 (1.69%) Nessus
13 12 (1.69%) Proxmox
13 12 (1.69%) SCOM
14 11 (1.55%) Packer
15 10 (1.41%) Puppet
16 9 (1.27%) Microsoft Clustering
17 7 (0.99%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 263 (37.09%) Microsoft
2 230 (32.44%) VMware
3 116 (16.36%) F5
4 107 (15.09%) Cisco
5 78 (11.00%) ServiceNow
6 58 (8.18%) Splunk
7 55 (7.76%) Palo Alto
8 47 (6.63%) CheckPoint
9 41 (5.78%) Blue Coat
10 35 (4.94%) Citrix
11 32 (4.51%) SolarWinds
12 29 (4.09%) McAfee
13 27 (3.81%) Red Hat
14 26 (3.67%) NetApp
15 25 (3.53%) Veeam
16 24 (3.39%) Juniper
17 22 (3.10%) Dell
18 20 (2.82%) Fortinet
19 19 (2.68%) Zscaler
20 18 (2.54%) Infoblox