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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 72 31
Rank change year-on-year +17 -41 +50
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,787 961 2,376
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.02% 3.28% 5.37%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.02% 10.70% 17.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,245 663 1,724
10th Percentile £425 £413 £413
25th Percentile £513 £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 £717 £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 14,867 8,981 13,556
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.48% 30.66% 30.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,794 5,724 8,418
10th Percentile £341 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -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% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,090 490 1,010
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £13.83
25th Percentile £20.46 £24.18 £17.72
Median hourly rate £36.00 £42.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.29% +13.33% -28.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.63 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £47.81 £37.50
% change year-on-year -26.79% +27.48% -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 30 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 30 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 30 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 1,630 £575 -4.17% 411
UK excluding London +8 1,269 £600 - 355
South East +10 688 £600 +2.13% 151
London +11 359 £575 -3.04% 80
South West -2 327 £563 -6.25% 104
Work from Home +24 227 £560 -2.61% 131
North of England -10 82 £680 +231.71% 40
Midlands -28 69 £575 -17.86% 17
North West +11 67 £690 +236.59% 35
East of England -2 66 £575 +4.55% 34
West Midlands -28 52 £575 -17.86% 15
Scotland -4 42 £653 +26.80% 6
East Midlands -23 17 £638 +15.91% 1
Yorkshire -50 13 £613 -2.00% 4
Northern Ireland - 7 £600 -
Wales -9 3 - - 8
North East -16 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 (2.01%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.51%) Confluence
4 24 (1.34%) 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 58 (3.25%) Microsoft Office
2 44 (2.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 23 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (0.67%) 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 (9.23%) 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 35 (1.96%) 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
1 128 (7.16%) Firewall
2 101 (5.65%) 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 (1.73%) OSPF
10 27 (1.51%) Junos
11 21 (1.18%) Cisco ISE
11 21 (1.18%) Skype
12 20 (1.12%) VLAN
13 19 (1.06%) Cisco IOS
13 19 (1.06%) Ethernet VPN
14 18 (1.01%) MPLS
14 18 (1.01%) VXLAN
15 16 (0.90%) BIG-IP
15 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 (3.41%) JIRA
2 29 (1.62%) GitLab
3 27 (1.51%) Git
3 27 (1.51%) Jenkins
4 10 (0.56%) Artifactory
4 10 (0.56%) Maven
5 9 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.34%) Cypress.io
6 6 (0.34%) Robot Framework
6 6 (0.34%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.28%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.22%) Oracle APEX
9 3 (0.17%) MLflow
9 3 (0.17%) Postman
9 3 (0.17%) Selenium
9 3 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) CircleCI
10 2 (0.11%) Gradle
10 2 (0.11%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.11%) Snyk
General
1 321 (17.96%) Social Skills
2 204 (11.42%) Public Sector
3 127 (7.11%) Analytical Skills
4 84 (4.70%) Finance
5 63 (3.53%) Military
6 54 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.91%) Legal
8 29 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.45%) Telecoms
10 24 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 23 (1.29%) Aerospace
12 20 (1.12%) Law
13 19 (1.06%) Police
14 16 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 14 (0.78%) Marketing
16 13 (0.73%) Electronics
17 10 (0.56%) Banking
18 6 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 5 (0.28%) Influencing Skills
20 2 (0.11%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 326 (18.24%) Architect
2 122 (6.83%) Senior
3 109 (6.10%) Lead
4 108 (6.04%) Analyst
5 91 (5.09%) Consultant
5 91 (5.09%) Network Engineer
6 77 (4.31%) Technical Architect
7 74 (4.14%) Developer
8 62 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 57 (3.19%) Tester
10 54 (3.02%) SOC Analyst
11 53 (2.97%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 52 (2.91%) DevOps Engineer
13 48 (2.69%) Security Architect
14 45 (2.52%) Project Manager
15 38 (2.13%) Support Engineer
16 37 (2.07%) Software Engineer
16 37 (2.07%) Solutions Architect
17 36 (2.01%) Infrastructure Architect
18 34 (1.90%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (2.24%) REST
2 26 (1.45%) Apache NiFi
2 26 (1.45%) OAuth
3 24 (1.34%) React
4 20 (1.12%) OpenID
5 19 (1.06%) OAuth2
5 19 (1.06%) SAML
6 18 (1.01%) Kafka
7 16 (0.90%) Node.js
7 16 (0.90%) Web Services
8 15 (0.84%) 802.1X
9 14 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
9 14 (0.78%) Flask
10 13 (0.73%) FastAPI
10 13 (0.73%) LDAP
11 11 (0.62%) .NET
11 11 (0.62%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.62%) SOAP
11 11 (0.62%) Spring
12 10 (0.56%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 104 (5.82%) PKI
2 66 (3.69%) Data Centre
3 45 (2.52%) Security Operations Centre
4 37 (2.07%) Management Information System
5 26 (1.45%) Cloud Native
6 25 (1.40%) Clustering
7 24 (1.34%) Product Ownership
8 23 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
9 22 (1.23%) Onboarding
10 21 (1.18%) Cyber Threat
11 20 (1.12%) Cyberattack
11 20 (1.12%) Replication
12 19 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
13 14 (0.78%) Driving Licence
14 13 (0.73%) Insider Threat
14 13 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
14 13 (0.73%) Private Cloud
14 13 (0.73%) Security Posture
15 12 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
15 12 (0.67%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 252 (14.10%) Windows
2 187 (10.46%) Linux
3 78 (4.36%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 28 (1.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.84%) Windows 7
7 14 (0.78%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.62%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.56%) Android
10 7 (0.39%) Unix
10 7 (0.39%) VMS
11 6 (0.34%) CentOS
11 6 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.22%) Debian
12 4 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.11%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 294 (16.45%) Agile
2 213 (11.92%) Problem-Solving
3 164 (9.18%) Cybersecurity
4 151 (8.45%) DevOps
5 150 (8.39%) ITIL
6 133 (7.44%) CI/CD
7 131 (7.33%) Service Management
8 111 (6.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 110 (6.16%) Continuous Improvement
10 108 (6.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 103 (5.76%) Stakeholder Management
12 97 (5.43%) ITSM
13 81 (4.53%) Risk Management
14 79 (4.42%) Infrastructure as Code
14 79 (4.42%) Project Delivery
15 74 (4.14%) Containerisation
16 73 (4.09%) Incident Response
17 72 (4.03%) SIEM
18 70 (3.92%) Project Management
19 69 (3.86%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 149 (8.34%) Python
2 121 (6.77%) PowerShell
3 58 (3.25%) SQL
4 47 (2.63%) Java
5 30 (1.68%) JavaScript
6 27 (1.51%) Bash
7 20 (1.12%) TypeScript
8 16 (0.90%) C#
8 16 (0.90%) Go
8 16 (0.90%) Shell Script
9 10 (0.56%) C++
10 9 (0.50%) Bicep
11 8 (0.45%) C
11 8 (0.45%) VB
12 7 (0.39%) PL/SQL
12 7 (0.39%) VBScript
13 6 (0.34%) ABAP
13 6 (0.34%) Embedded C
13 6 (0.34%) Rust
14 4 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,787 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 569 (31.84%) SC Cleared
3 63 (3.53%) CISSP
4 61 (3.41%) Degree
5 49 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
6 41 (2.29%) 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 84 (4.70%) NIST
2 69 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (3.02%) NCSC
4 42 (2.35%) PMO
5 41 (2.29%) QA
6 38 (2.13%) JSP 440
7 22 (1.23%) GRC
8 18 (1.01%) RMADS
9 17 (0.95%) GDPR
10 15 (0.84%) NIST 800
11 13 (0.73%) Data Quality
11 13 (0.73%) SLA
12 12 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 11 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
14 6 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 6 (0.34%) P3O
15 5 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 4 (0.22%) Accessibility
17 3 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 115 (6.44%) Active Directory
2 91 (5.09%) Docker
3 89 (4.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 51 (2.85%) 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%) NFS
16 2 (0.11%) Squid
Systems Management
1 137 (7.67%) Kubernetes
2 113 (6.32%) Terraform
3 82 (4.59%) Ansible
4 52 (2.91%) vCenter Server
5 35 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
6 33 (1.85%) SCCM
7 32 (1.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 32 (1.79%) Grafana
8 27 (1.51%) Prometheus
9 16 (0.90%) FortiGate
10 14 (0.78%) Puppet
11 13 (0.73%) Progress Chef
11 13 (0.73%) WMI
12 10 (0.56%) Podman
12 10 (0.56%) SCOM
13 9 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 9 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 9 (0.50%) VxRail
14 8 (0.45%) Argo
15 7 (0.39%) vRealize
Vendors
1 212 (11.86%) Microsoft
2 180 (10.07%) VMware
3 109 (6.10%) Cisco
4 58 (3.25%) Juniper
5 57 (3.19%) Splunk
6 54 (3.02%) SAP
7 53 (2.97%) ServiceNow
8 48 (2.69%) Oracle
9 44 (2.46%) Red Hat
10 43 (2.41%) NetApp
11 27 (1.51%) F5
11 27 (1.51%) SolarWinds
12 25 (1.40%) Remedy
13 24 (1.34%) Dell
14 22 (1.23%) Fortinet
14 22 (1.23%) Palo Alto
15 17 (0.95%) Sparx
16 16 (0.90%) Citrix
16 16 (0.90%) Google
16 16 (0.90%) Veeam