DBS Check Contract Job Trends

Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Checks
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for DBS Check qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 9 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 448 339 458
Rank change year-on-year -109 +119 +49
Contract jobs citing DBS Check 180 183 128
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.63% 0.30%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.18% 2.03% 0.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 92 76 66
10th Percentile £147 £140 £149
25th Percentile £165 £147 £166
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £231 £185 £220
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -15.91% +15.79%
75th Percentile £441 £400 £424
90th Percentile £553 £526 £450
UK excluding London median daily rate £205 £185 £200
% change year-on-year +10.81% -7.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 26 42
10th Percentile £12.21 £13.30 £11.71
25th Percentile £12.66 £18.50 £12.75
Median hourly rate £14.30 £22.06 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.18% +47.08% -24.05%
75th Percentile £16.90 £24.31 £21.59
90th Percentile £30.18 £28.60 £26.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £14.30 £20.63 £15.00
% change year-on-year -30.67% +37.50% -25.00%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

DBS Check falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 15,288 9,021 13,089
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.03% 30.93% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,172 5,683 8,089
10th Percentile £349 £288 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £623 £650
90th Percentile £725 £701 £739
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,088 513 1,071
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.85
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.50 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.54 £39.32 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.91% -1.70% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.62 £61.55
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.74 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +18.75% -2.30% -18.12%

DBS Check
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing DBS Check relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

DBS Check job vacancy trend in the UK

DBS Check
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DBS Check.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DBS Check

DBS Check
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DBS Check over the 6 months to 9 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DBS Check in the UK

DBS Check
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DBS Check.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DBS Check

DBS Check
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DBS Check over the 6 months to 9 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DBS Check in the UK

DBS Check
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DBS Check within the UK over the 6 months to 9 May 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 -101 154 £211 +12.67% 415
UK excluding London -103 133 £205 +10.81% 364
Work from Home -4 45 £425 -22.73% 141
London -54 34 £425 -5.56% 95
North of England -66 34 £201 +0.34% 106
South East -85 31 £250 -23.08% 103
Midlands -50 28 £185 +15.63% 59
North West -34 22 £201 -35.78% 51
South West -25 15 £140 -32.20% 44
West Midlands -55 15 £193 +28.33% 39
East Midlands -24 13 £180 -40.98% 20
Wales -3 12 £400 +150.00% 17
Yorkshire -53 12 £213 +32.81% 44
East of England -40 9 £205 +10.07% 37
Northern Ireland +6 4 - -

DBS Check
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 7 (3.89%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 15 (8.33%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (7.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.56%) Acrobat
3 1 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
3 1 (0.56%) InDesign
3 1 (0.56%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 12 (6.67%) SystmOne
2 4 (2.22%) ContrOCC
3 3 (1.67%) Maximo
4 2 (1.11%) NEC Housing
4 2 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.56%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.56%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.56%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 16 (8.89%) Azure
1 16 (8.89%) Power Platform
2 13 (7.22%) Microsoft 365
3 9 (5.00%) AWS
4 7 (3.89%) dbt
4 7 (3.89%) Snowflake
5 6 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
6 5 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (2.78%) Entra ID
7 4 (2.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 3 (1.67%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (1.67%) GCP
8 3 (1.67%) Serverless
9 2 (1.11%) Amazon EventBridge
9 2 (1.11%) Amazon SQS
9 2 (1.11%) AWS Step Functions
9 2 (1.11%) Azure Key Vault
9 2 (1.11%) Dynamics 365
10 1 (0.56%) ChatGPT
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.89%) ATM
1 7 (3.89%) Firewall
2 4 (2.22%) Wi-Fi
2 4 (2.22%) Wireless
3 2 (1.11%) LAN
4 1 (0.56%) VPN
4 1 (0.56%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (8.89%) Power BI
2 6 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
2 6 (3.33%) Geospatial Data
2 6 (3.33%) GIS
2 6 (3.33%) Spatial Data
2 6 (3.33%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.78%) Snowflake Schema
4 1 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.56%) Crystal Reports
4 1 (0.56%) Data Mining
4 1 (0.56%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.56%) Electronic Patient Records
4 1 (0.56%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.56%) Semantic Layer
4 1 (0.56%) Spark SQL
4 1 (0.56%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 1 (0.56%) Cypress.io
1 1 (0.56%) Git
1 1 (0.56%) GitLab
1 1 (0.56%) JIRA
1 1 (0.56%) Selenium
1 1 (0.56%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
1 1 (0.56%) Zephyr
General
1 40 (22.22%) Social Skills
2 29 (16.11%) Finance
3 18 (10.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 18 (10.00%) Local Government
3 18 (10.00%) Organisational Skills
4 16 (8.89%) Public Sector
5 13 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
6 8 (4.44%) Welsh Language
7 7 (3.89%) Legal
8 6 (3.33%) Retail
9 4 (2.22%) Advertising
9 4 (2.22%) Banking
10 3 (1.67%) General Ledger
10 3 (1.67%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.56%) Aviation
12 1 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.56%) German Language
12 1 (0.56%) Humanities
12 1 (0.56%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 18 (10.00%) Analyst
2 14 (7.78%) Lead
3 13 (7.22%) Architect
4 12 (6.67%) Data Analyst
5 11 (6.11%) Repair Technician
5 11 (6.11%) SystmOne Analyst
6 9 (5.00%) Developer
7 8 (4.44%) Consultant
7 8 (4.44%) Data Engineer
8 7 (3.89%) EPoS Engineer
8 7 (3.89%) IT Technician
8 7 (3.89%) Support Engineer
9 6 (3.33%) GIS Officer
9 6 (3.33%) GIS Support
9 6 (3.33%) Senior
9 6 (3.33%) Support Officer
10 4 (2.22%) Administrator
10 4 (2.22%) Implementation Consultant
10 4 (2.22%) IT Engineer
10 4 (2.22%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (2.22%) Oracle Fusion
1 4 (2.22%) XML
2 2 (1.11%) A2A Protocol
2 2 (1.11%) Hugging Face
2 2 (1.11%) LangChain
2 2 (1.11%) OAuth
2 2 (1.11%) OAuth2
2 2 (1.11%) OpenID
2 2 (1.11%) PySpark
2 2 (1.11%) PyTorch
2 2 (1.11%) SailPoint
2 2 (1.11%) TensorFlow
3 1 (0.56%) .NET
3 1 (0.56%) HTML
3 1 (0.56%) Next.js
3 1 (0.56%) Playwright
3 1 (0.56%) React
3 1 (0.56%) REST
3 1 (0.56%) Shiny
3 1 (0.56%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (5.00%) Driving Licence
2 8 (4.44%) Management Information System
3 7 (3.89%) Data Structures
3 7 (3.89%) EPoS
3 7 (3.89%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.78%) Algorithms
4 5 (2.78%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.67%) Cloud Native
5 3 (1.67%) Freedom of Information
5 3 (1.67%) Renewable Energy
5 3 (1.67%) Replication
5 3 (1.67%) Web Conferencing
6 2 (1.11%) AI Agents
6 2 (1.11%) Autonomous Agent
6 2 (1.11%) Data Centre
6 2 (1.11%) Enterprise Cloud
6 2 (1.11%) Mainframe
6 2 (1.11%) NHS
6 2 (1.11%) PMI
6 2 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 11 (6.11%) Windows
2 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.56%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (11.11%) Collaborative Working
2 18 (10.00%) Customer Service
3 16 (8.89%) Computer Science
4 15 (8.33%) Business Intelligence
5 14 (7.78%) Problem-Solving
6 13 (7.22%) Agile
6 13 (7.22%) Data Governance
7 12 (6.67%) Service Delivery
7 12 (6.67%) Stakeholder Management
8 11 (6.11%) Mentoring
9 10 (5.56%) Analytics
9 10 (5.56%) CI/CD
9 10 (5.56%) Data Entry
9 10 (5.56%) Test Automation
9 10 (5.56%) Validation
10 9 (5.00%) Continuous Improvement
10 9 (5.00%) Mathematics
10 9 (5.00%) Migration
11 8 (4.44%) Data Modelling
11 8 (4.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 14 (7.78%) SQL
2 12 (6.67%) Python
3 4 (2.22%) T-SQL
4 1 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 1 (0.56%) R
4 1 (0.56%) SPARQL
4 1 (0.56%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 20 (11.11%) Degree
2 14 (7.78%) Security Cleared
3 9 (5.00%) SC Cleared
4 6 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (2.22%) BC Cleared
5 4 (2.22%) JNCIA
5 4 (2.22%) JNCIP
5 4 (2.22%) JNCIS
6 3 (1.67%) CCNA
6 3 (1.67%) CCNP
6 3 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (1.11%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.11%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.11%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.11%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.56%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.33%) GDPR
2 5 (2.78%) Data Quality
3 4 (2.22%) PMO
4 3 (1.67%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.67%) PERC
4 3 (1.67%) SLA
5 2 (1.11%) NIST
5 2 (1.11%) QA
5 2 (1.11%) WCAG
6 1 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.56%) SNOMED CT
6 1 (0.56%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 11 (6.11%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.67%) Docker
2 3 (1.67%) Firmware
3 1 (0.56%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 3 (1.67%) Kubernetes
1 3 (1.67%) Microsoft Intune
1 3 (1.67%) Terraform
2 2 (1.11%) Jamf Pro
2 2 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
3 1 (0.56%) Ansible
3 1 (0.56%) SCCM
Vendors
1 31 (17.22%) Microsoft
2 5 (2.78%) Databricks
2 5 (2.78%) Oracle
2 5 (2.78%) SAP
3 4 (2.22%) Juniper
4 2 (1.11%) Aruba
4 2 (1.11%) Blue Prism
4 2 (1.11%) Cisco
4 2 (1.11%) Meraki
4 2 (1.11%) Salesforce
5 1 (0.56%) Bloomberg
5 1 (0.56%) Capita
5 1 (0.56%) Charles River
5 1 (0.56%) Civica
5 1 (0.56%) CrowdStrike
5 1 (0.56%) CyberArk
5 1 (0.56%) NEC
5 1 (0.56%) Northgate
5 1 (0.56%) Portware
5 1 (0.56%) Workday