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 14 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 85 38
Rank change year-on-year +33 -47 +14
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,278 983 1,742
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.12% 2.96% 4.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.91% 9.31% 15.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,639 696 1,125
10th Percentile £459 £464 £415
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £691 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 35 78
10th Percentile £48.82 - £48.18
25th Percentile £60.25 £25.15 £56.55
Median hourly rate £74.50 £32.00 £64.47
Median % change year-on-year +132.81% -50.36% -7.91%
75th Percentile £92.22 £73.00 £75.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £86.35 £100.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £70.00 £63.15
% change year-on-year +6.69% +10.85% -9.79%

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 17,645 10,563 10,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.93% 31.84% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,668 6,616 6,647
10th Percentile £355 £283 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £630
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,491 890 568
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.54 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.47
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.52%
75th Percentile £72.25 £40.19 £68.00
90th Percentile £89.08 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.65%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 2,156 £600 +3.45% 892
UK excluding London +20 1,644 £600 +4.35% 636
South East +7 863 £600 +4.35% 229
South West +8 537 £575 -8.00% 199
London +37 491 £625 - 205
Work from Home +52 357 £558 -7.08% 305
East of England +18 110 £650 +18.18% 80
North of England -25 55 £525 -2.33% 65
Midlands -89 43 £625 +6.38% 44
North West -17 39 £600 +20.00% 50
Scotland -3 36 £597 +13.67% 18
West Midlands -88 36 £600 +2.13% 20
Yorkshire -23 11 £510 - 7
East Midlands - 7 £644 - 24
Northern Ireland +7 5 £638 +6.25% 5
North East -38 5 £463 -26.00% 8
Wales -12 4 - - 4

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 (3.16%) Confluence
2 62 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 39 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 24 (1.05%) Apache
5 14 (0.61%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.44%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 7 (0.31%) IIS
9 6 (0.26%) nginx
10 4 (0.18%) Camunda
10 4 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
11 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.088%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.088%) Mule
12 2 (0.088%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.088%) Oracle Service Bus
12 2 (0.088%) WebLogic
13 1 (0.044%) SharePoint 2010
Applications
1 70 (3.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (2.28%) Microsoft Project
3 36 (1.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.83%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.75%) Revit
6 17 (0.75%) SOLIDWORKS
7 12 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.44%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.044%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.27%) Oracle ERP
2 22 (0.97%) Teamcenter
3 16 (0.70%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 15 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
4 15 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
5 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.18%) Primavera
6 4 (0.18%) SAP PP
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 EWM
8 2 (0.088%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.088%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.044%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 327 (14.35%) Azure
2 295 (12.95%) AWS
3 121 (5.31%) GCP
4 65 (2.85%) Azure DevOps
5 55 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
6 51 (2.24%) GitHub
7 46 (2.02%) Entra ID
8 45 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
9 40 (1.76%) Serverless
10 39 (1.71%) OpenShift
11 36 (1.58%) Power Platform
12 30 (1.32%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.32%) OCI
13 24 (1.05%) Amazon S3
14 23 (1.01%) Amazon EKS
15 22 (0.97%) Amazon ECS
15 22 (0.97%) Azure Monitor
16 19 (0.83%) Amazon SQS
17 17 (0.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 16 (0.70%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 166 (7.29%) DNS
2 131 (5.75%) Firewall
3 85 (3.73%) DHCP
4 82 (3.60%) Network Security
5 64 (2.81%) TCP/IP
6 57 (2.50%) VPN
6 57 (2.50%) WAN
7 52 (2.28%) BGP
8 48 (2.11%) LAN
9 37 (1.62%) MPLS
10 35 (1.54%) VSAN
11 32 (1.40%) IPsec
12 29 (1.27%) VLAN
13 25 (1.10%) SSL
14 18 (0.79%) OSPF
14 18 (0.79%) SD-WAN
15 16 (0.70%) Cisco ASA
15 16 (0.70%) SAN
16 15 (0.66%) Software-Defined Networking
17 14 (0.61%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (2.41%) SQL Server
2 49 (2.15%) Oracle Database
3 36 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
4 31 (1.36%) Metadata
5 27 (1.19%) Relational Database
6 21 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
6 21 (0.92%) Power BI
7 20 (0.88%) MongoDB
8 19 (0.83%) Data Lake
9 15 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (0.57%) Big Data
11 12 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (0.44%) Hadoop
12 10 (0.44%) NoSQL
13 9 (0.40%) MySQL
13 9 (0.40%) Parquet
14 8 (0.35%) BigQuery
14 8 (0.35%) Oracle Database 11g
14 8 (0.35%) Oracle Database 12c
14 8 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 110 (4.83%) JIRA
2 98 (4.30%) GitLab
3 95 (4.17%) Jenkins
4 91 (3.99%) Git
5 32 (1.40%) Selenium
6 16 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 15 (0.66%) Cucumber
8 11 (0.48%) JUnit
9 10 (0.44%) MSI
9 10 (0.44%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.35%) JMeter
10 8 (0.35%) Postman
10 8 (0.35%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.31%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.31%) Gatling
11 7 (0.31%) Maven
11 7 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.26%) Gradle
General
1 538 (23.62%) Social Skills
2 270 (11.85%) Public Sector
3 178 (7.81%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (6.67%) Finance
5 68 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
6 64 (2.81%) Military
7 52 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
8 45 (1.98%) Aerospace
9 43 (1.89%) Manufacturing
10 41 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
10 41 (1.80%) Police
11 36 (1.58%) Legal
12 31 (1.36%) Law
13 28 (1.23%) Telecoms
14 9 (0.40%) Local Government
14 9 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.31%) Marketing
16 6 (0.26%) Automotive
17 5 (0.22%) Back Office
18 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 395 (17.34%) Architect
2 225 (9.88%) Lead
3 211 (9.26%) Senior
4 154 (6.76%) Consultant
4 154 (6.76%) Developer
4 154 (6.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 139 (6.10%) Analyst
6 94 (4.13%) Security Architect
7 77 (3.38%) Network Engineer
8 73 (3.20%) SOC Analyst
9 69 (3.03%) Cloud Engineer
10 68 (2.99%) Support Engineer
11 56 (2.46%) DevOps Engineer
12 54 (2.37%) DBA
13 49 (2.15%) Solutions Architect
14 46 (2.02%) Project Manager
15 45 (1.98%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 45 (1.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 44 (1.93%) Enterprise Architect
17 43 (1.89%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (9.53%) Terraform
2 80 (3.51%) REST
3 41 (1.80%) LDAP
4 32 (1.40%) React
5 30 (1.32%) Kafka
6 29 (1.27%) Elastic Stack
7 28 (1.23%) SOAP
8 25 (1.10%) RESTful
9 24 (1.05%) Apache NiFi
10 21 (0.92%) XML
11 20 (0.88%) Node.js
12 18 (0.79%) JSON
12 18 (0.79%) Keycloak
13 17 (0.75%) AngularJS
13 17 (0.75%) ARM Templates
13 17 (0.75%) FastAPI
14 16 (0.70%) OAuth
14 16 (0.70%) Spring
15 15 (0.66%) Spring Boot
16 14 (0.61%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.57%) Cloud Native
2 100 (4.39%) Data Centre
2 100 (4.39%) PKI
3 89 (3.91%) Onboarding
4 51 (2.24%) Management Information System
5 43 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
5 43 (1.89%) Product Ownership
6 39 (1.71%) Cyber Threat
7 36 (1.58%) Private Cloud
7 36 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
8 30 (1.32%) Security Posture
9 24 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
10 20 (0.88%) Public Cloud
10 20 (0.88%) Virtual Team
11 19 (0.83%) Clustering
11 19 (0.83%) CMDB
11 19 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
12 16 (0.70%) Replication
13 15 (0.66%) Video Conferencing
14 12 (0.53%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 389 (17.08%) Windows
2 257 (11.28%) Linux
3 184 (8.08%) Windows Server
4 50 (2.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.36%) Windows 10
6 30 (1.32%) Windows Server 2019
7 24 (1.05%) Ubuntu
7 24 (1.05%) Unix
8 19 (0.83%) CentOS
9 13 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
10 11 (0.48%) macOS
11 7 (0.31%) Android
12 6 (0.26%) AIX
12 6 (0.26%) Rocky
12 6 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.22%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) OpenVMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 391 (17.16%) Agile
2 309 (13.56%) Continuous Improvement
3 296 (12.99%) Stakeholder Management
4 284 (12.47%) CI/CD
5 258 (11.33%) DevOps
6 240 (10.54%) Problem-Solving
7 230 (10.10%) Cybersecurity
8 223 (9.79%) Infrastructure as Code
9 222 (9.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 220 (9.66%) Technical Leadership
11 201 (8.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 194 (8.52%) ITIL
13 163 (7.16%) Service Management
14 162 (7.11%) Containerisation
15 150 (6.58%) ITSM
16 132 (5.79%) Project Delivery
17 129 (5.66%) Decision-Making
17 129 (5.66%) Risk Management
17 129 (5.66%) SIEM
18 117 (5.14%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 259 (11.37%) Python
2 195 (8.56%) PowerShell
3 147 (6.45%) SQL
4 104 (4.57%) Bash
5 78 (3.42%) Java
6 41 (1.80%) JavaScript
7 36 (1.58%) C#
8 29 (1.27%) TypeScript
9 20 (0.88%) Bicep
9 20 (0.88%) Go
10 14 (0.61%) PL/SQL
11 13 (0.57%) Shell Script
12 12 (0.53%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.48%) C++
14 8 (0.35%) Groovy
15 6 (0.26%) C
15 6 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.26%) Perl
15 6 (0.26%) X++
16 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,278 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 699 (30.68%) SC Cleared
3 98 (4.30%) Degree
4 73 (3.20%) CISSP
5 42 (1.84%) CISM
6 39 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
7 30 (1.32%) AWS Certification
8 26 (1.14%) PMI Certification
9 25 (1.10%) CCNP
10 24 (1.05%) ISTQB
11 23 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
12 22 (0.97%) Azure Certification
12 22 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
12 22 (0.97%) VCAP
13 21 (0.92%) PMP
14 19 (0.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 16 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
16 13 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.48%) CCNA
17 11 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 94 (4.13%) NCSC
2 89 (3.91%) PMO
3 88 (3.86%) NIST
4 76 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 69 (3.03%) QA
6 37 (1.62%) SLA
7 36 (1.58%) Data Quality
8 34 (1.49%) JSP 440
9 32 (1.40%) GDPR
10 24 (1.05%) GRC
11 22 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 18 (0.79%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.57%) Government Security Classifications
14 11 (0.48%) NIST 800
15 10 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.35%) WCAG
17 7 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
17 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.26%) RMADS
19 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 250 (10.97%) Active Directory
2 192 (8.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 151 (6.63%) Docker
4 83 (3.64%) VMware NSX
5 69 (3.03%) VMware ESXi
6 61 (2.68%) Hyper-V
7 54 (2.37%) vSphere
8 24 (1.05%) vCloud
9 18 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.61%) NFS
11 12 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
11 12 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
12 10 (0.44%) Firmware
13 5 (0.22%) KVM
14 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
15 2 (0.088%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.088%) Squid
Systems Management
1 239 (10.49%) Kubernetes
2 169 (7.42%) Ansible
3 77 (3.38%) vCenter Server
4 59 (2.59%) SCOM
5 38 (1.67%) SCCM
6 31 (1.36%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.23%) Grafana
8 24 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
9 22 (0.97%) Nagios
10 21 (0.92%) Puppet
11 17 (0.75%) VxRail
12 16 (0.70%) WMI
13 15 (0.66%) Avamar
13 15 (0.66%) Oracle RMAN
14 13 (0.57%) Data Guard
14 13 (0.57%) Podman
14 13 (0.57%) Progress Chef
15 12 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.53%) Istio
15 12 (0.53%) WSUS
Vendors
1 331 (14.53%) Microsoft
2 260 (11.41%) VMware
3 128 (5.62%) Oracle
4 87 (3.82%) ServiceNow
5 70 (3.07%) Cisco
6 67 (2.94%) Google
7 57 (2.50%) SAP
8 53 (2.33%) Splunk
9 47 (2.06%) SolarWinds
10 45 (1.98%) CyberArk
11 37 (1.62%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.01%) Juniper
14 22 (0.97%) Dell
15 19 (0.83%) Remedy
16 18 (0.79%) BMC
16 18 (0.79%) Thales
17 17 (0.75%) Atlassian
17 17 (0.75%) Broadcom
17 17 (0.75%) Citrix