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 26 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 80 33
Rank change year-on-year +32 -47 +24
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,175 1,006 2,199
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 3.06% 5.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.06% 9.91% 18.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,647 694 1,583
10th Percentile £430 £458 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -
75th Percentile £691 £663 £688
90th Percentile £750 £716 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +3.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 38 108
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.15 £48.82
25th Percentile £41.25 £31.00 £57.20
Median hourly rate £63.14 £63.25 £71.17
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% -11.13% +1.66%
75th Percentile £86.50 £82.08 £85.00
90th Percentile £98.94 £87.91 £92.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -22.07% +15.09% -5.06%

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 16,651 10,147 12,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 30.82% 29.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,121 6,299 7,676
10th Percentile £350 £280 £313
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,218 758 929
10th Percentile £17.73 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.19
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -24.15%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £76.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 26 July 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 26 July 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 26 July 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 +27 2,031 £600 +1.69% 466
UK excluding London +7 1,548 £600 +4.35% 375
South East +6 886 £600 - 161
London +46 461 £600 -4.00% 111
South West -1 389 £575 -2.34% 132
Work from Home +48 330 £575 -2.34% 168
East of England +8 97 £650 +18.18% 23
North of England -12 76 £775 +24.00% 34
Midlands -49 57 £600 - 20
North West -3 51 £825 +82.32% 27
West Midlands -62 45 £600 - 14
Scotland +15 40 £669 +30.44% 6
Yorkshire -28 20 £510 -18.40% 3
East Midlands -3 12 £631 +14.77% 6
Northern Ireland +6 5 £619 - 1
North East -39 5 £463 -26.00% 4
Wales -12 4 - - 2

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 58 (2.67%) Confluence
2 40 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
2 40 (1.84%) SharePoint
3 9 (0.41%) Apache
3 9 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 7 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (0.32%) Documentum
5 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
6 5 (0.23%) CMS
7 3 (0.14%) nginx
8 2 (0.092%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
8 2 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.092%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.092%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.046%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.046%) JBoss
9 1 (0.046%) Mule
9 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 53 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.93%) Microsoft Project
3 21 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.51%) AutoCAD
6 11 (0.51%) Revit
6 11 (0.51%) SOLIDWORKS
7 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.092%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 33 (1.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 21 (0.97%) Oracle ERP
4 19 (0.87%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.32%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.14%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle General Ledger
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
10 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
11 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
11 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 259 (11.91%) Azure
2 255 (11.72%) AWS
3 104 (4.78%) GCP
4 58 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (2.25%) GitHub
6 41 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
7 40 (1.84%) IaaS
8 39 (1.79%) PaaS
9 38 (1.75%) Power Platform
10 37 (1.70%) Serverless
11 32 (1.47%) Entra ID
12 28 (1.29%) OCI
13 27 (1.24%) OpenShift
14 24 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
16 20 (0.92%) SaaS
17 18 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
17 18 (0.83%) Amazon S3
18 17 (0.78%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 146 (6.71%) DNS
2 127 (5.84%) Firewall
3 79 (3.63%) Network Security
4 76 (3.49%) WAN
5 74 (3.40%) DHCP
6 71 (3.26%) LAN
7 59 (2.71%) BGP
8 54 (2.48%) VPN
9 42 (1.93%) TCP/IP
10 34 (1.56%) VSAN
11 32 (1.47%) IPsec
12 31 (1.43%) MPLS
12 31 (1.43%) OSPF
13 28 (1.29%) VLAN
14 23 (1.06%) VXLAN
15 21 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
16 19 (0.87%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.78%) SD-WAN
18 17 (0.78%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (2.16%) SQL Server
2 39 (1.79%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 24 (1.10%) Power BI
6 20 (0.92%) Metadata
7 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (0.55%) Data Lake
9 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.41%) MongoDB
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (0.32%) Big Data
12 7 (0.32%) BigQuery
12 7 (0.32%) Hadoop
12 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
13 6 (0.28%) MariaDB
13 6 (0.28%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 6 (0.28%) Redis
14 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 95 (4.37%) JIRA
2 52 (2.39%) GitLab
3 48 (2.21%) Jenkins
4 41 (1.89%) Git
5 14 (0.64%) Cypress.io
6 10 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.28%) Visual Studio
8 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.23%) Postman
8 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.18%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.18%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) ERwin
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 384 (17.66%) Social Skills
2 284 (13.06%) Public Sector
3 145 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
4 131 (6.02%) Finance
5 82 (3.77%) Military
6 53 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.16%) Legal
8 37 (1.70%) Organisational Skills
9 27 (1.24%) Law
10 24 (1.10%) Police
11 23 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (1.01%) Telecoms
13 17 (0.78%) Manufacturing
14 16 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
15 15 (0.69%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.37%) Local Government
17 7 (0.32%) Marketing
18 5 (0.23%) Advertising
19 4 (0.18%) Aviation
19 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 342 (15.72%) Architect
2 233 (10.71%) Lead
3 199 (9.15%) Senior
4 149 (6.85%) Analyst
4 149 (6.85%) Developer
5 141 (6.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 138 (6.34%) Consultant
7 93 (4.28%) Network Engineer
8 83 (3.82%) Security Architect
9 77 (3.54%) SOC Analyst
10 75 (3.45%) Technical Architect
11 58 (2.67%) Project Manager
12 52 (2.39%) DBA
13 51 (2.34%) Cloud Engineer
13 51 (2.34%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
14 50 (2.30%) DevOps Engineer
15 45 (2.07%) Senior Network Engineer
16 44 (2.02%) Network Architect
17 43 (1.98%) Support Engineer
18 42 (1.93%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (3.36%) REST
2 32 (1.47%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.24%) React
4 26 (1.20%) SOAP
5 22 (1.01%) Kafka
6 19 (0.87%) RESTful
7 18 (0.83%) 802.1X
8 17 (0.78%) Node.js
9 15 (0.69%) .NET
9 15 (0.69%) Spring
9 15 (0.69%) Spring Boot
10 14 (0.64%) AngularJS
10 14 (0.64%) Apache NiFi
10 14 (0.64%) FastAPI
10 14 (0.64%) Flask
11 12 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
12 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
12 11 (0.51%) Web Services
13 10 (0.46%) OAuth
13 10 (0.46%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.69%) Data Centre
2 100 (4.60%) PKI
3 79 (3.63%) Cloud Native
4 60 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.30%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.75%) Clustering
7 35 (1.61%) Private Cloud
8 34 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
9 33 (1.52%) Management Information System
10 32 (1.47%) Product Ownership
11 28 (1.29%) Cyber Threat
12 26 (1.20%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.15%) CMDB
13 25 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
13 25 (1.15%) Public Cloud
14 23 (1.06%) Legacy Systems
15 19 (0.87%) Virtual Team
16 15 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
17 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 304 (13.98%) Windows
2 228 (10.48%) Linux
3 137 (6.30%) Windows Server
4 28 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.87%) Windows 10
6 16 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 7 (0.32%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) CentOS
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) VMS
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.092%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 372 (17.10%) Agile
2 222 (10.21%) Problem-Solving
3 207 (9.52%) CI/CD
3 207 (9.52%) ITIL
4 203 (9.33%) Continuous Improvement
5 202 (9.29%) Cybersecurity
6 201 (9.24%) Stakeholder Management
7 196 (9.01%) DevOps
8 189 (8.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 177 (8.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 159 (7.31%) Service Management
11 144 (6.62%) Infrastructure as Code
12 128 (5.89%) Technical Leadership
13 124 (5.70%) ITSM
14 113 (5.20%) Project Delivery
15 108 (4.97%) Containerisation
15 108 (4.97%) Risk Management
16 103 (4.74%) Service Delivery
17 102 (4.69%) Decision-Making
17 102 (4.69%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 198 (9.10%) Python
2 140 (6.44%) PowerShell
3 110 (5.06%) SQL
4 65 (2.99%) Bash
5 64 (2.94%) Java
6 47 (2.16%) JavaScript
7 33 (1.52%) C#
8 30 (1.38%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.87%) Go
10 16 (0.74%) Bicep
11 14 (0.64%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.60%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.41%) Rust
15 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Groovy
16 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,175 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 736 (33.84%) SC Cleared
3 78 (3.59%) Degree
4 55 (2.53%) CISSP
5 50 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (1.38%) CISM
7 28 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 25 (1.15%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 21 (0.97%) PMI Certification
11 19 (0.87%) CCNP
11 19 (0.87%) PMP
12 18 (0.83%) CCNA
12 18 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
13 16 (0.74%) MCSE
13 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 15 (0.69%) VCAP
15 14 (0.64%) Azure Certification
15 14 (0.64%) ISTQB
16 13 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.49%) NCSC
2 75 (3.45%) NIST
3 72 (3.31%) PMO
4 56 (2.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 54 (2.48%) QA
6 35 (1.61%) JSP 440
7 28 (1.29%) GDPR
8 24 (1.10%) Data Quality
9 23 (1.06%) SLA
10 22 (1.01%) GRC
11 17 (0.78%) RMADS
12 16 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 14 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.60%) Accessibility
14 13 (0.60%) Government Security Classifications
15 8 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 8 (0.37%) WCAG
16 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
16 7 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 176 (8.09%) VMware Infrastructure
2 172 (7.91%) Active Directory
3 126 (5.79%) Docker
4 85 (3.91%) VMware NSX
5 68 (3.13%) VMware ESXi
6 56 (2.57%) Hyper-V
7 41 (1.89%) vSphere
8 22 (1.01%) vCloud
9 17 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) BitLocker
11 8 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.18%) Ceph
13 4 (0.18%) Firmware
13 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.18%) UAG
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 177 (8.14%) Kubernetes
1 177 (8.14%) Terraform
2 112 (5.15%) Ansible
3 82 (3.77%) vCenter Server
4 42 (1.93%) SCOM
5 32 (1.47%) SCCM
6 25 (1.15%) Prometheus
7 23 (1.06%) Grafana
7 23 (1.06%) Puppet
8 15 (0.69%) Nagios
8 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
8 15 (0.69%) Podman
9 13 (0.60%) Avamar
9 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
9 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
9 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.51%) VxRail
11 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 10 (0.46%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.46%) WSUS
Vendors
1 250 (11.49%) Microsoft
2 246 (11.31%) VMware
3 118 (5.43%) ServiceNow
4 104 (4.78%) Cisco
5 91 (4.18%) Oracle
6 61 (2.80%) Splunk
7 55 (2.53%) SAP
8 50 (2.30%) Juniper
9 48 (2.21%) Google
10 45 (2.07%) SolarWinds
11 34 (1.56%) NetApp
12 33 (1.52%) Red Hat
13 29 (1.33%) Remedy
14 28 (1.29%) F5
15 27 (1.24%) Palo Alto
16 26 (1.20%) Citrix
17 24 (1.10%) Dell
18 21 (0.97%) BMC
18 21 (0.97%) Fortinet
19 19 (0.87%) Sparx