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 23 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 83 32
Rank change year-on-year +33 -51 +26
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,968 893 2,461
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.88% 2.98% 5.64%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.40% 9.60% 18.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,493 615 1,777
10th Percentile £429 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £515
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £580 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
75th Percentile £688 £650 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £771
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 29 118
10th Percentile £19.03 £25.15 £51.44
25th Percentile £35.00 £42.50 £57.34
Median hourly rate £45.77 £80.00 £72.33
Median % change year-on-year -42.78% +10.60% +1.64%
75th Percentile £67.96 £82.96 £85.65
90th Percentile £81.96 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.60 £81.35 £71.75
% change year-on-year -47.63% +13.38% -4.34%

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 15,865 9,299 12,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.24% 31.03% 29.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,601 5,774 8,010
10th Percentile £350 £275 £312
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £618 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £533
% change year-on-year +1.20% -6.19% +1.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,166 618 1,129
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £20.24 £19.17
Median hourly rate £50.00 £29.26 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +70.88% -27.30% -26.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £62.44 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.25 £76.25 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.84 £27.94 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.80% -34.26% -20.80%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 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 +26 1,827 £600 +2.39% 352
UK excluding London +9 1,406 £600 +4.35% 299
South East +5 764 £600 +4.35% 135
London +66 401 £600 - 69
South West -2 365 £575 -4.17% 108
Work from Home +63 298 £560 -2.61% 100
East of England +10 104 £650 +18.18% 22
North of England -9 81 £775 +24.00% 28
North West +10 65 £775 +278.05% 21
Midlands -48 51 £600 - 8
West Midlands -64 40 £600 - 7
Scotland +16 37 £669 +33.70% 4
Yorkshire -41 13 £525 -16.00% 5
East Midlands -8 11 £518 -5.91% 1
Northern Ireland +5 6 £619 - 2
Wales -11 4 - -
North East -33 3 £569 -9.00% 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 42 (2.13%) Confluence
2 39 (1.98%) Microsoft Exchange
3 28 (1.42%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.30%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.30%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.25%) CMS
5 5 (0.25%) Documentum
5 5 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.20%) Apache
6 4 (0.20%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.10%) nginx
7 2 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.051%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.051%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 37 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.41%) AutoCAD
5 8 (0.41%) Revit
5 8 (0.41%) SOLIDWORKS
6 6 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.10%) Lectora
8 2 (0.10%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 28 (1.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.22%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.97%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 16 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.25%) Maximo
5 5 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.20%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.15%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.10%) Primavera
8 2 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
9 1 (0.051%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.051%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.051%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.051%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 220 (11.18%) AWS
2 197 (10.01%) Azure
3 88 (4.47%) GCP
4 50 (2.54%) GitHub
5 46 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
6 41 (2.08%) IaaS
6 41 (2.08%) PaaS
7 39 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
8 31 (1.58%) Serverless
9 28 (1.42%) Microsoft 365
10 27 (1.37%) OpenShift
11 24 (1.22%) Power Platform
12 23 (1.17%) OCI
13 18 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
13 18 (0.91%) SaaS
14 17 (0.86%) Amazon ECS
14 17 (0.86%) Amazon EKS
14 17 (0.86%) Entra ID
15 14 (0.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (0.61%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 110 (5.59%) DNS
2 100 (5.08%) Firewall
3 70 (3.56%) Network Security
4 62 (3.15%) LAN
5 61 (3.10%) WAN
6 52 (2.64%) DHCP
7 50 (2.54%) VPN
8 41 (2.08%) BGP
9 27 (1.37%) OSPF
10 22 (1.12%) VLAN
11 21 (1.07%) VXLAN
12 19 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
12 19 (0.97%) IPsec
12 19 (0.97%) MPLS
13 18 (0.91%) VSAN
14 17 (0.86%) BIG-IP
14 17 (0.86%) TCP/IP
15 16 (0.81%) Junos
16 15 (0.76%) Cisco ISE
17 14 (0.71%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (1.98%) SQL Server
2 34 (1.73%) Oracle Database
2 34 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
3 26 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
4 19 (0.97%) Power BI
5 13 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
5 13 (0.66%) MongoDB
6 10 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
6 10 (0.51%) Metadata
7 7 (0.36%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.36%) Redis
8 6 (0.30%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.30%) Oracle Database 11g
9 5 (0.25%) Big Data
9 5 (0.25%) BigQuery
9 5 (0.25%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.25%) Hadoop
9 5 (0.25%) MariaDB
9 5 (0.25%) MySQL
10 4 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 75 (3.81%) JIRA
2 43 (2.18%) GitLab
3 39 (1.98%) Jenkins
4 32 (1.63%) Git
5 13 (0.66%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.30%) REST Assured
8 5 (0.25%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (0.20%) Oracle APEX
9 4 (0.20%) Postman
9 4 (0.20%) Robot Framework
9 4 (0.20%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.20%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.20%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.15%) Appium
10 3 (0.15%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.15%) ERwin
10 3 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 312 (15.85%) Social Skills
2 254 (12.91%) Public Sector
3 114 (5.79%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (4.67%) Finance
5 72 (3.66%) Military
6 61 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.44%) Legal
8 24 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
9 23 (1.17%) Law
10 22 (1.12%) Aerospace
10 22 (1.12%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.02%) Police
11 20 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
12 13 (0.66%) Manufacturing
13 10 (0.51%) Marketing
14 8 (0.41%) Local Government
15 7 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.25%) Electronics
17 3 (0.15%) Advertising
17 3 (0.15%) Banking
Job Titles
1 293 (14.89%) Architect
2 177 (8.99%) Lead
3 167 (8.49%) Senior
4 129 (6.55%) Analyst
5 120 (6.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 112 (5.69%) Consultant
6 112 (5.69%) Developer
7 84 (4.27%) Network Engineer
8 75 (3.81%) Technical Architect
9 73 (3.71%) SOC Analyst
10 65 (3.30%) Security Architect
11 61 (3.10%) Project Manager
12 52 (2.64%) Tester
13 51 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
14 49 (2.49%) DBA
15 48 (2.44%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 47 (2.39%) Service Manager
17 43 (2.18%) Software Engineer
18 42 (2.13%) Administrator
18 42 (2.13%) DV Cleared Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (2.95%) REST
2 27 (1.37%) Elastic Stack
2 27 (1.37%) React
3 21 (1.07%) SOAP
4 19 (0.97%) 802.1X
5 18 (0.91%) Kafka
5 18 (0.91%) Node.js
6 16 (0.81%) RESTful
7 15 (0.76%) Flask
7 15 (0.76%) Spring
8 14 (0.71%) AngularJS
8 14 (0.71%) FastAPI
9 13 (0.66%) Spring Boot
10 11 (0.56%) .NET
10 11 (0.56%) ModSecurity
10 11 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
11 10 (0.51%) Apache NiFi
11 10 (0.51%) Playwright
12 9 (0.46%) LDAP
12 9 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 89 (4.52%) PKI
2 76 (3.86%) Data Centre
3 58 (2.95%) Cloud Native
4 49 (2.49%) Security Operations Centre
5 37 (1.88%) Onboarding
6 35 (1.78%) Clustering
7 29 (1.47%) Management Information System
8 28 (1.42%) Hybrid Cloud
9 27 (1.37%) Private Cloud
9 27 (1.37%) Product Ownership
9 27 (1.37%) Security Posture
10 22 (1.12%) CMDB
11 19 (0.97%) Public Cloud
12 18 (0.91%) Cyber Threat
13 17 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
14 16 (0.81%) Virtual Team
15 13 (0.66%) Enterprise Storage
15 13 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
15 13 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
16 11 (0.56%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 256 (13.01%) Windows
2 203 (10.32%) Linux
3 106 (5.39%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.86%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.51%) Unix
7 7 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
7 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (0.30%) AIX
8 6 (0.30%) Android
9 5 (0.25%) CentOS
9 5 (0.25%) Debian
9 5 (0.25%) VMS
10 4 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 317 (16.11%) Agile
2 196 (9.96%) Problem-Solving
3 184 (9.35%) ITIL
4 169 (8.59%) Cybersecurity
5 167 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 164 (8.33%) CI/CD
6 164 (8.33%) DevOps
6 164 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 143 (7.27%) Stakeholder Management
8 135 (6.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 133 (6.76%) Service Management
10 109 (5.54%) Infrastructure as Code
11 108 (5.49%) ITSM
12 100 (5.08%) Project Delivery
13 91 (4.62%) Risk Management
14 89 (4.52%) Decision-Making
15 88 (4.47%) Containerisation
15 88 (4.47%) Technical Leadership
16 85 (4.32%) Security Operations
17 81 (4.12%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 162 (8.23%) Python
2 107 (5.44%) PowerShell
3 96 (4.88%) SQL
4 50 (2.54%) Java
5 42 (2.13%) JavaScript
6 37 (1.88%) Bash
7 29 (1.47%) TypeScript
8 26 (1.32%) C#
9 16 (0.81%) Go
10 14 (0.71%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.66%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.56%) C++
13 10 (0.51%) Bicep
13 10 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.46%) Rust
15 8 (0.41%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.30%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.30%) Perl
17 5 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,968 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 653 (33.18%) SC Cleared
3 59 (3.00%) Degree
4 51 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
5 49 (2.49%) CISSP
6 31 (1.58%) CISM
7 28 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.12%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.07%) CompTIA Security+
10 20 (1.02%) CCNA
10 20 (1.02%) CCNP
11 17 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
12 16 (0.81%) PMI Certification
12 16 (0.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 15 (0.76%) CESG Certified Professional
13 15 (0.76%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.76%) MCSE
13 15 (0.76%) PMP
14 13 (0.66%) Azure Certification
15 12 (0.61%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.81%) NIST
2 68 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 60 (3.05%) NCSC
4 54 (2.74%) PMO
5 49 (2.49%) QA
6 38 (1.93%) JSP 440
7 25 (1.27%) GDPR
8 24 (1.22%) SLA
9 23 (1.17%) RMADS
10 22 (1.12%) GRC
11 11 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
12 10 (0.51%) Accessibility
13 9 (0.46%) Data Quality
14 8 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
14 8 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) WCAG
16 5 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 5 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 5 (0.25%) ISO 9000
System Software
1 133 (6.76%) VMware Infrastructure
2 126 (6.40%) Active Directory
3 105 (5.34%) Docker
4 65 (3.30%) VMware NSX
5 51 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
6 45 (2.29%) Hyper-V
7 24 (1.22%) vSphere
8 21 (1.07%) vCloud
9 11 (0.56%) BitLocker
10 10 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (0.36%) NFS
13 6 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
14 5 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
15 4 (0.20%) Ceph
15 4 (0.20%) Firmware
15 4 (0.20%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.20%) UAG
16 3 (0.15%) Squid
17 2 (0.10%) KVM
Systems Management
1 146 (7.42%) Kubernetes
2 139 (7.06%) Terraform
3 81 (4.12%) Ansible
4 60 (3.05%) vCenter Server
5 31 (1.58%) SCOM
6 25 (1.27%) SCCM
7 20 (1.02%) Grafana
7 20 (1.02%) Prometheus
8 16 (0.81%) Puppet
9 14 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) FortiGate
11 12 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 12 (0.61%) Data Guard
11 12 (0.61%) Nagios
11 12 (0.61%) Podman
12 10 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.51%) WSUS
13 9 (0.46%) vMotion
14 8 (0.41%) VxRail
14 8 (0.41%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 206 (10.47%) VMware
2 196 (9.96%) Microsoft
3 101 (5.13%) Cisco
4 96 (4.88%) ServiceNow
5 81 (4.12%) Oracle
6 58 (2.95%) Splunk
7 44 (2.24%) Juniper
8 38 (1.93%) SAP
9 36 (1.83%) SolarWinds
10 35 (1.78%) NetApp
10 35 (1.78%) Red Hat
11 34 (1.73%) Google
12 29 (1.47%) F5
13 24 (1.22%) Palo Alto
13 24 (1.22%) Remedy
14 21 (1.07%) Dell
14 21 (1.07%) Fortinet
15 20 (1.02%) Citrix
16 19 (0.97%) Sparx
17 18 (0.91%) BMC