DV Cleared Contract Job Trends

Developed Vetting (DV) Clearance
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for DV Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 24 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 85 39
Rank change year-on-year +35 -46 +15
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,243 965 1,791
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.09% 2.93% 4.70%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.92% 9.30% 16.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,656 684 1,179
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £658 £688
90th Percentile £760 £727 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £588
% change year-on-year +4.35% -2.13% +3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 32 91
10th Percentile £45.30 - £50.00
25th Percentile £58.43 £25.15 £58.00
Median hourly rate £74.50 £45.00 £67.81
Median % change year-on-year +65.56% -33.64% -4.71%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.34 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.88 £87.48 £97.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £70.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year +6.69% +6.87% -9.44%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

DV Cleared 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 17,366 10,381 11,122
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.63% 31.49% 29.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,555 6,488 6,788
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £443 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,391 857 628
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.87 £17.59
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.99
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -7.41%
75th Percentile £72.54 £43.25 £68.19
90th Percentile £88.50 £70.06 £75.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% -

DV Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

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

DV Cleared job vacancy trend in the UK

DV Cleared
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DV Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DV Cleared

DV Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DV Cleared over the 6 months to 24 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DV Cleared in the UK

DV Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DV Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing DV Cleared

DV Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DV Cleared over the 6 months to 24 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for DV Cleared in the UK

DV Cleared
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing DV Cleared within the UK over the 6 months to 24 September 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 +33 2,116 £600 +3.45% 1,238
UK excluding London +18 1,611 £600 +4.35% 1,008
South East +3 856 £600 +4.35% 326
South West +7 507 £575 -4.17% 302
London +50 484 £625 - 240
Work from Home +43 351 £560 -6.67% 557
East of England +19 113 £675 +22.73% 138
North of England -23 52 £600 +4.35% 113
Midlands -74 43 £600 - 48
West Midlands -75 38 £600 - 29
Scotland -2 37 £669 +27.33% 89
North West -25 33 £775 +55.00% 81
Yorkshire -22 14 £510 -18.40% 12
Northern Ireland +5 5 £638 +6.25% 4
North East -40 5 £463 -26.00% 20
East Midlands - 5 £625 - 19
Wales -10 4 - - 6

DV Cleared
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 72 (3.21%) Confluence
2 56 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 41 (1.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.67%) Apache
5 9 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.36%) Apache Spark
7 7 (0.31%) CMS
7 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 5 (0.22%) IIS
8 5 (0.22%) nginx
9 4 (0.18%) Camunda
10 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.089%) Mule
11 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
11 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.045%) Mattermost
Applications
1 64 (2.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (2.05%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 24 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
5 17 (0.76%) AutoCAD
6 16 (0.71%) Revit
6 16 (0.71%) SOLIDWORKS
7 10 (0.45%) MS Visio
8 9 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.089%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Oracle ERP
2 22 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.89%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.76%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.62%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.22%) Primavera
6 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
6 5 (0.22%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
7 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.13%) SAP PP
8 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.045%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.045%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.045%) SAP GRC
9 1 (0.045%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 313 (13.95%) Azure
2 299 (13.33%) AWS
3 113 (5.04%) GCP
4 62 (2.76%) Azure DevOps
5 57 (2.54%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (2.18%) GitHub
7 43 (1.92%) Entra ID
8 41 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
9 37 (1.65%) Power Platform
9 37 (1.65%) Serverless
10 32 (1.43%) OCI
11 30 (1.34%) OpenShift
12 27 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
14 21 (0.94%) Amazon ECS
14 21 (0.94%) IaaS
15 19 (0.85%) SaaS
16 17 (0.76%) Amazon S3
16 17 (0.76%) Amazon SQS
16 17 (0.76%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 169 (7.53%) DNS
2 120 (5.35%) Firewall
3 84 (3.74%) DHCP
4 72 (3.21%) Network Security
5 59 (2.63%) WAN
6 55 (2.45%) TCP/IP
7 52 (2.32%) VPN
8 49 (2.18%) BGP
9 47 (2.10%) LAN
10 37 (1.65%) VSAN
11 36 (1.60%) MPLS
12 32 (1.43%) IPsec
13 30 (1.34%) VLAN
14 21 (0.94%) SSL
15 18 (0.80%) SAN
15 18 (0.80%) SD-WAN
16 16 (0.71%) Cisco ASA
16 16 (0.71%) OSPF
17 14 (0.62%) Cisco Firepower
17 14 (0.62%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (2.36%) SQL Server
2 45 (2.01%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.07%) Metadata
5 23 (1.03%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.98%) Power BI
7 20 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
8 19 (0.85%) Data Lake
9 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (0.67%) MongoDB
10 10 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
11 9 (0.40%) Big Data
11 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
11 9 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
12 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.31%) MySQL
14 6 (0.27%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 111 (4.95%) JIRA
2 82 (3.66%) GitLab
3 80 (3.57%) Git
3 80 (3.57%) Jenkins
4 30 (1.34%) Selenium
5 15 (0.67%) Cypress.io
6 11 (0.49%) Cucumber
7 9 (0.40%) MSI
8 8 (0.36%) JUnit
8 8 (0.36%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.31%) Postman
9 7 (0.31%) REST Assured
9 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 6 (0.27%) Gatling
10 6 (0.27%) JMeter
10 6 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.27%) SpecFlow
11 5 (0.22%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.22%) Maven
12 4 (0.18%) Gradle
General
1 496 (22.11%) Social Skills
2 276 (12.30%) Public Sector
3 168 (7.49%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (6.20%) Finance
5 69 (3.08%) Military
6 67 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (1.60%) Aerospace
8 36 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
8 36 (1.60%) Police
9 34 (1.52%) Law
9 34 (1.52%) Legal
10 32 (1.43%) Telecoms
11 31 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 11 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (0.40%) Local Government
14 7 (0.31%) Marketing
15 6 (0.27%) Automotive
16 5 (0.22%) Back Office
17 4 (0.18%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 389 (17.34%) Architect
2 232 (10.34%) Lead
3 193 (8.60%) Senior
4 157 (7.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 156 (6.95%) Developer
6 150 (6.69%) Consultant
7 131 (5.84%) Analyst
8 90 (4.01%) Security Architect
9 75 (3.34%) Network Engineer
10 74 (3.30%) Cloud Engineer
11 65 (2.90%) SOC Analyst
12 63 (2.81%) Support Engineer
13 57 (2.54%) DevOps Engineer
13 57 (2.54%) Project Manager
14 54 (2.41%) Technical Architect
15 51 (2.27%) DBA
16 47 (2.10%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 47 (2.10%) Solutions Architect
17 41 (1.83%) Network Architect
18 40 (1.78%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (9.27%) Terraform
2 76 (3.39%) REST
3 40 (1.78%) LDAP
4 32 (1.43%) Elastic Stack
5 31 (1.38%) React
6 28 (1.25%) SOAP
7 26 (1.16%) Kafka
8 25 (1.11%) RESTful
9 19 (0.85%) Node.js
10 18 (0.80%) Apache NiFi
11 17 (0.76%) AngularJS
11 17 (0.76%) XML
12 16 (0.71%) JSON
13 15 (0.67%) .NET
13 15 (0.67%) FastAPI
13 15 (0.67%) Keycloak
13 15 (0.67%) OAuth
13 15 (0.67%) Spring
14 14 (0.62%) Spring Boot
15 13 (0.58%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.64%) Cloud Native
2 101 (4.50%) PKI
3 99 (4.41%) Data Centre
4 84 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 41 (1.83%) Product Ownership
7 40 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
7 40 (1.78%) Private Cloud
7 40 (1.78%) Security Operations Centre
8 36 (1.60%) Cyber Threat
9 32 (1.43%) Security Posture
10 27 (1.20%) Public Cloud
11 25 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
12 19 (0.85%) Clustering
12 19 (0.85%) CMDB
13 18 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
14 17 (0.76%) Virtual Team
15 15 (0.67%) Replication
16 14 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (0.58%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 385 (17.16%) Windows
2 251 (11.19%) Linux
3 182 (8.11%) Windows Server
4 42 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.38%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
7 22 (0.98%) Unix
8 21 (0.94%) Ubuntu
9 18 (0.80%) CentOS
10 12 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.31%) AIX
12 6 (0.27%) Android
12 6 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.22%) Debian
13 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 389 (17.34%) Agile
2 286 (12.75%) Continuous Improvement
3 277 (12.35%) Stakeholder Management
4 268 (11.95%) CI/CD
5 234 (10.43%) DevOps
6 227 (10.12%) Cybersecurity
7 223 (9.94%) Problem-Solving
8 221 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 214 (9.54%) Technical Leadership
10 213 (9.50%) Infrastructure as Code
11 199 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 184 (8.20%) ITIL
13 153 (6.82%) ITSM
14 151 (6.73%) Containerisation
15 147 (6.55%) Service Management
16 136 (6.06%) SIEM
17 129 (5.75%) Project Delivery
18 127 (5.66%) Decision-Making
19 123 (5.48%) Risk Management
20 115 (5.13%) AI
Programming Languages
1 246 (10.97%) Python
2 191 (8.52%) PowerShell
3 132 (5.88%) SQL
4 95 (4.24%) Bash
5 74 (3.30%) Java
6 41 (1.83%) JavaScript
7 39 (1.74%) C#
8 29 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.85%) Go
10 17 (0.76%) Bicep
11 15 (0.67%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.62%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.49%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.40%) C++
15 7 (0.31%) Groovy
16 6 (0.27%) C
16 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.27%) Perl
16 6 (0.27%) X++
17 4 (0.18%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,243 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 713 (31.79%) SC Cleared
3 89 (3.97%) Degree
4 73 (3.25%) CISSP
5 44 (1.96%) CISM
6 40 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 26 (1.16%) AWS Certification
9 25 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 23 (1.03%) CCNP
10 23 (1.03%) PMI Certification
11 22 (0.98%) ISTQB
11 22 (0.98%) VCAP
12 20 (0.89%) Azure Certification
12 20 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
13 19 (0.85%) PMP
14 15 (0.67%) MCSE
15 13 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
16 12 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
17 11 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 94 (4.19%) NIST
2 92 (4.10%) NCSC
3 81 (3.61%) PMO
4 80 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 64 (2.85%) QA
6 38 (1.69%) JSP 440
7 34 (1.52%) SLA
8 32 (1.43%) GDPR
9 29 (1.29%) Data Quality
10 24 (1.07%) GRC
11 17 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 16 (0.71%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
14 10 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 10 (0.45%) NIST 800
15 9 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
16 8 (0.36%) RMADS
16 8 (0.36%) WCAG
17 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
System Software
1 250 (11.15%) Active Directory
2 200 (8.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 140 (6.24%) Docker
4 89 (3.97%) VMware NSX
5 76 (3.39%) VMware ESXi
6 65 (2.90%) Hyper-V
7 54 (2.41%) vSphere
8 25 (1.11%) vCloud
9 19 (0.85%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.62%) NFS
11 13 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
11 13 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
12 11 (0.49%) Firmware
13 4 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.18%) KVM
13 4 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
15 2 (0.089%) Ceph
15 2 (0.089%) UAG
15 2 (0.089%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 221 (9.85%) Kubernetes
2 154 (6.87%) Ansible
3 84 (3.74%) vCenter Server
4 60 (2.67%) SCOM
5 34 (1.52%) SCCM
6 27 (1.20%) Prometheus
7 25 (1.11%) Grafana
8 21 (0.94%) Puppet
9 19 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
9 19 (0.85%) Nagios
10 16 (0.71%) Oracle RMAN
10 16 (0.71%) VxRail
11 15 (0.67%) Avamar
11 15 (0.67%) Podman
11 15 (0.67%) WMI
12 14 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 14 (0.62%) Data Guard
13 13 (0.58%) WSUS
14 12 (0.53%) Istio
15 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 314 (14.00%) Microsoft
2 280 (12.48%) VMware
3 119 (5.31%) Oracle
4 98 (4.37%) ServiceNow
5 75 (3.34%) Cisco
6 61 (2.72%) Google
7 57 (2.54%) Splunk
8 51 (2.27%) SAP
9 45 (2.01%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.96%) CyberArk
11 34 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 23 (1.03%) Palo Alto
13 22 (0.98%) Juniper
13 22 (0.98%) Remedy
14 21 (0.94%) Dell
15 20 (0.89%) Citrix
16 19 (0.85%) BMC
17 18 (0.80%) Atlassian
17 18 (0.80%) NetApp
17 18 (0.80%) Thales