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 28 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 72 31
Rank change year-on-year +17 -41 +49
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,786 955 2,366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.02% 3.29% 5.35%
As % of the Qualifications category 11.98% 10.71% 17.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,244 657 1,718
10th Percentile £425 £413 £410
25th Percentile £510 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £588 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% - -
75th Percentile £688 £675 £688
90th Percentile £738 £718 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £600 £600
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 25 104
10th Percentile £16.50 £33.25 £49.26
25th Percentile £21.90 £55.87 £57.16
Median hourly rate £48.35 £63.75 £63.15
Median % change year-on-year -24.15% +0.95% -9.79%
75th Percentile £76.31 £81.01 £80.00
90th Percentile £90.58 £83.43 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.75 £72.50 £63.29
% change year-on-year -24.48% +14.55% -15.61%

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 14,912 8,913 13,551
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.55% 30.67% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,822 5,673 8,401
10th Percentile £343 £294 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,092 485 1,006
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £13.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.18 £17.73
Median hourly rate £36.00 £42.50 £37.83
Median % change year-on-year -15.29% +12.35% -27.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.50 £61.90
90th Percentile £84.90 £80.84 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £50.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -30.00% +33.33% -23.47%

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 28 March 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 28 March 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 28 March 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 +10 1,629 £575 -4.17% 411
UK excluding London +8 1,269 £600 - 355
South East +10 688 £600 +2.13% 151
London +14 357 £575 -3.04% 80
South West -2 326 £563 -6.25% 104
Work from Home +24 227 £560 -2.61% 131
North of England -8 82 £680 +231.71% 40
Midlands -34 71 £575 -17.86% 17
North West +13 67 £690 +236.59% 35
East of England -1 66 £575 +4.55% 34
West Midlands -28 54 £563 -19.64% 15
Scotland -11 41 £652 +26.50% 6
East Midlands -20 17 £638 +15.91% 1
Yorkshire -42 13 £613 -2.00% 4
Northern Ireland - 7 £600 -
Wales -12 3 - - 8
North East -14 2 - - 1

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 39 (2.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 36 (2.02%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.51%) Confluence
4 25 (1.40%) Apache
5 20 (1.12%) Skype for Business
6 13 (0.73%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.45%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.28%) Mattermost
9 4 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 57 (3.19%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 23 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.11%) Lectora
7 2 (0.11%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 23 (1.29%) Remedy ITSM
1 23 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 16 (0.90%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 7 (0.39%) Maximo
4 5 (0.28%) SAP EWM
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 3 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
6 3 (0.17%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.11%) Primavera
7 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.11%) SAP WM
8 1 (0.056%) SAP CCM
8 1 (0.056%) SAP FI-GL
8 1 (0.056%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.056%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 165 (9.24%) AWS
2 139 (7.78%) Azure
3 54 (3.02%) GCP
4 47 (2.63%) GitHub
5 44 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
6 42 (2.35%) IaaS
7 39 (2.18%) PaaS
8 36 (2.02%) OpenShift
9 34 (1.90%) Serverless
10 33 (1.85%) Azure DevOps
11 28 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
12 22 (1.23%) Amazon S3
13 19 (1.06%) Amazon EC2
14 16 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (0.84%) AWS CloudFormation
15 15 (0.84%) OCI
16 14 (0.78%) Azure Sentinel
17 13 (0.73%) Amazon ECS
17 13 (0.73%) Azure AKS
18 12 (0.67%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 129 (7.22%) Firewall
2 101 (5.66%) DNS
3 77 (4.31%) Network Security
4 63 (3.53%) LAN
5 60 (3.36%) WAN
6 57 (3.19%) VPN
7 42 (2.35%) BGP
7 42 (2.35%) DHCP
8 39 (2.18%) TCP/IP
9 31 (1.74%) OSPF
10 28 (1.57%) Junos
11 22 (1.23%) Cisco ISE
12 21 (1.18%) Skype
13 20 (1.12%) Cisco IOS
13 20 (1.12%) VLAN
14 19 (1.06%) Ethernet VPN
15 18 (1.01%) MPLS
15 18 (1.01%) VXLAN
16 16 (0.90%) BIG-IP
16 16 (0.90%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
3 20 (1.12%) SQL Server
4 16 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (0.84%) Oracle Database
6 14 (0.78%) Big Data
6 14 (0.78%) MongoDB
7 13 (0.73%) Hadoop
8 10 (0.56%) Power BI
8 10 (0.56%) Redis
9 9 (0.50%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.45%) MySQL
10 8 (0.45%) SAP HANA
11 7 (0.39%) InfluxDB
11 7 (0.39%) Metadata
12 5 (0.28%) MariaDB
12 5 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
13 4 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
13 4 (0.22%) DynamoDB
13 4 (0.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 61 (3.42%) JIRA
2 30 (1.68%) GitLab
3 27 (1.51%) Git
3 27 (1.51%) Jenkins
4 11 (0.62%) Artifactory
5 10 (0.56%) Maven
6 9 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.34%) Cypress.io
7 6 (0.34%) Robot Framework
7 6 (0.34%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.22%) Oracle APEX
10 3 (0.17%) MLflow
10 3 (0.17%) Postman
10 3 (0.17%) Selenium
10 3 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.11%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.11%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.11%) Snyk
11 2 (0.11%) webpack
General
1 322 (18.03%) Social Skills
2 206 (11.53%) Public Sector
3 127 (7.11%) Analytical Skills
4 84 (4.70%) Finance
5 62 (3.47%) Military
6 54 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.91%) Legal
8 29 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.29%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
11 19 (1.06%) Law
11 19 (1.06%) Police
12 16 (0.90%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.78%) Marketing
14 13 (0.73%) Electronics
15 10 (0.56%) Banking
16 6 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 5 (0.28%) Influencing Skills
18 2 (0.11%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 326 (18.25%) Architect
2 122 (6.83%) Senior
3 109 (6.10%) Lead
4 108 (6.05%) Analyst
5 92 (5.15%) Network Engineer
6 90 (5.04%) Consultant
7 77 (4.31%) Technical Architect
8 74 (4.14%) Developer
9 62 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 57 (3.19%) Tester
11 54 (3.02%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
11 54 (3.02%) SOC Analyst
12 53 (2.97%) DevOps Engineer
13 48 (2.69%) Security Architect
14 46 (2.58%) Project Manager
15 39 (2.18%) Support Engineer
16 37 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
17 36 (2.02%) Infrastructure Architect
18 35 (1.96%) 3rd Line Engineer
18 35 (1.96%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (2.30%) REST
2 27 (1.51%) Apache NiFi
3 26 (1.46%) OAuth
4 24 (1.34%) React
5 20 (1.12%) OpenID
6 19 (1.06%) OAuth2
6 19 (1.06%) SAML
7 18 (1.01%) Kafka
8 16 (0.90%) Node.js
8 16 (0.90%) Web Services
9 15 (0.84%) 802.1X
10 14 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
10 14 (0.78%) Flask
11 13 (0.73%) FastAPI
11 13 (0.73%) LDAP
12 11 (0.62%) .NET
12 11 (0.62%) ModSecurity
12 11 (0.62%) SOAP
12 11 (0.62%) Spring
13 10 (0.56%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 104 (5.82%) PKI
2 66 (3.70%) Data Centre
3 45 (2.52%) Security Operations Centre
4 37 (2.07%) Management Information System
5 26 (1.46%) Cloud Native
6 25 (1.40%) Clustering
7 23 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
7 23 (1.29%) Product Ownership
8 22 (1.23%) Onboarding
9 21 (1.18%) Cyber Threat
10 20 (1.12%) Cyberattack
10 20 (1.12%) Replication
11 19 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (0.78%) Driving Licence
13 13 (0.73%) Insider Threat
13 13 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
13 13 (0.73%) Private Cloud
13 13 (0.73%) Security Posture
14 12 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
14 12 (0.67%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 255 (14.28%) Windows
2 189 (10.58%) Linux
3 79 (4.42%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 29 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 15 (0.84%) Windows 7
6 14 (0.78%) Ubuntu
7 11 (0.62%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.56%) Android
9 7 (0.39%) Unix
9 7 (0.39%) VMS
10 6 (0.34%) CentOS
10 6 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.22%) Debian
11 4 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.11%) Rocky
14 1 (0.056%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 293 (16.41%) Agile
2 212 (11.87%) Problem-Solving
3 164 (9.18%) Cybersecurity
4 152 (8.51%) DevOps
5 150 (8.40%) ITIL
6 134 (7.50%) CI/CD
7 132 (7.39%) Service Management
8 112 (6.27%) Continuous Improvement
9 111 (6.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 110 (6.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 103 (5.77%) Stakeholder Management
12 98 (5.49%) ITSM
13 81 (4.54%) Risk Management
14 79 (4.42%) Infrastructure as Code
15 78 (4.37%) Project Delivery
16 74 (4.14%) Containerisation
16 74 (4.14%) Incident Response
17 73 (4.09%) SIEM
18 71 (3.98%) Project Management
19 69 (3.86%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 151 (8.45%) Python
2 122 (6.83%) PowerShell
3 59 (3.30%) SQL
4 47 (2.63%) Java
5 30 (1.68%) JavaScript
6 27 (1.51%) Bash
7 21 (1.18%) TypeScript
8 17 (0.95%) C#
9 16 (0.90%) Go
9 16 (0.90%) Shell Script
10 11 (0.62%) C++
11 9 (0.50%) Bicep
12 8 (0.45%) C
12 8 (0.45%) VB
13 7 (0.39%) PL/SQL
13 7 (0.39%) VBScript
14 6 (0.34%) ABAP
14 6 (0.34%) Embedded C
14 6 (0.34%) Rust
15 4 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,786 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 570 (31.91%) SC Cleared
3 63 (3.53%) CISSP
4 61 (3.42%) Degree
5 49 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
6 41 (2.30%) CISM
7 33 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
8 28 (1.57%) CompTIA Security+
9 24 (1.34%) CCNP
10 22 (1.23%) CESG Certified Professional
11 20 (1.12%) CCNA
11 20 (1.12%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (1.06%) AWS Certification
12 19 (1.06%) BPSS Clearance
12 19 (1.06%) GIAC
13 16 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
13 16 (0.90%) CTC Cleared
14 14 (0.78%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.78%) JNCIS
15 12 (0.67%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.76%) NIST
2 70 (3.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (3.02%) NCSC
4 42 (2.35%) PMO
4 42 (2.35%) QA
5 38 (2.13%) JSP 440
6 22 (1.23%) GRC
7 18 (1.01%) RMADS
8 17 (0.95%) GDPR
9 15 (0.84%) NIST 800
10 13 (0.73%) Data Quality
10 13 (0.73%) SLA
11 12 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 11 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
13 6 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 6 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.34%) P3O
14 5 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 4 (0.22%) Accessibility
16 3 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 116 (6.49%) Active Directory
2 91 (5.10%) Docker
3 89 (4.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 52 (2.91%) VMware NSX
5 37 (2.07%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (1.23%) Hyper-V
7 21 (1.18%) vSphere
8 14 (0.78%) BitLocker
9 11 (0.62%) vCloud
10 10 (0.56%) Firmware
11 7 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
13 5 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
15 3 (0.17%) Ceph
15 3 (0.17%) GPFS
15 3 (0.17%) Lustre
15 3 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 2 (0.11%) UAG
16 2 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 138 (7.73%) Kubernetes
2 114 (6.38%) Terraform
3 84 (4.70%) Ansible
4 53 (2.97%) vCenter Server
5 35 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
6 32 (1.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 32 (1.79%) Grafana
6 32 (1.79%) SCCM
7 27 (1.51%) Prometheus
8 16 (0.90%) FortiGate
9 14 (0.78%) Puppet
10 13 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 13 (0.73%) WMI
11 10 (0.56%) Podman
11 10 (0.56%) SCOM
12 9 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 9 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.50%) VxRail
13 8 (0.45%) Argo
14 7 (0.39%) vMotion
Vendors
1 210 (11.76%) Microsoft
2 180 (10.08%) VMware
3 110 (6.16%) Cisco
4 59 (3.30%) Juniper
5 58 (3.25%) Splunk
6 54 (3.02%) SAP
7 53 (2.97%) ServiceNow
8 48 (2.69%) Oracle
9 46 (2.58%) Red Hat
10 43 (2.41%) NetApp
11 28 (1.57%) SolarWinds
12 27 (1.51%) F5
13 25 (1.40%) Remedy
14 24 (1.34%) Dell
15 22 (1.23%) Fortinet
15 22 (1.23%) Palo Alto
16 17 (0.95%) Palantir
16 17 (0.95%) Sparx
17 16 (0.90%) Citrix
17 16 (0.90%) Google