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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 84 39
Rank change year-on-year +34 -45 +14
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,255 962 1,793
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 2.91% 4.68%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.97% 9.23% 16.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,659 679 1,176
10th Percentile £456 £460 £425
25th Percentile £513 £516 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £663 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £764
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £588
% change year-on-year +4.35% -2.13% +3.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 32 90
10th Percentile £46.20 - £49.90
25th Percentile £59.22 £25.15 £58.49
Median hourly rate £74.50 £45.00 £68.91
Median % change year-on-year +65.56% -34.69% -3.18%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.34 £80.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £87.48 £97.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.59 £70.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year +6.56% +5.66% -8.41%

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 17,388 10,419 11,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.69% 31.50% 29.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,578 6,521 6,821
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £444 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £633 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £708 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,396 864 627
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.58
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.34
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -48.67% -9.26%
75th Percentile £72.54 £43.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £51.72
% change year-on-year +86.88% -51.37% -1.49%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +31 2,128 £600 +4.35% 1,320
UK excluding London +19 1,625 £600 +4.35% 1,091
South East +5 854 £600 +4.35% 352
South West +7 515 £575 -4.17% 313
London +52 484 £625 - 246
Work from Home +58 355 £555 -7.50% 618
East of England +15 115 £675 +22.73% 161
North of England -25 56 £600 +4.35% 128
Midlands -74 44 £600 +1.05% 51
Scotland 0 38 £669 +27.33% 94
West Midlands -77 38 £600 +1.05% 31
North West -14 37 £775 +55.00% 95
Yorkshire -29 14 £510 -18.40% 12
East Midlands - 6 £631 - 20
Northern Ireland +1 5 £638 +6.25% 4
North East -35 5 £463 -26.00% 21
Wales -9 4 - - 6

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 (3.19%) Confluence
2 59 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 43 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.67%) Apache
5 9 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.35%) Apache Spark
6 8 (0.35%) CMS
7 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 5 (0.22%) IIS
8 5 (0.22%) nginx
9 4 (0.18%) Camunda
10 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.089%) Mule
11 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
11 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.044%) JBoss
Applications
1 66 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (2.08%) Microsoft Project
3 35 (1.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 24 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.84%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.75%) Revit
6 17 (0.75%) SOLIDWORKS
7 10 (0.44%) MS Visio
8 9 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.089%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Oracle ERP
2 22 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.89%) Remedy ITSM
4 16 (0.71%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.62%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.22%) Primavera
6 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
6 5 (0.22%) SAP EWM
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 FI
7 3 (0.13%) SAP PP
8 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.044%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.044%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.044%) SAP GRC
9 1 (0.044%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 311 (13.79%) Azure
2 298 (13.22%) AWS
3 112 (4.97%) GCP
4 63 (2.79%) Azure DevOps
5 58 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (2.13%) GitHub
7 43 (1.91%) Entra ID
8 41 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
9 38 (1.69%) Serverless
10 37 (1.64%) Power Platform
11 30 (1.33%) OCI
11 30 (1.33%) OpenShift
12 28 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
13 24 (1.06%) Amazon EKS
14 21 (0.93%) Amazon ECS
14 21 (0.93%) IaaS
15 18 (0.80%) Amazon S3
15 18 (0.80%) Amazon SQS
15 18 (0.80%) SaaS
16 17 (0.75%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 170 (7.54%) DNS
2 127 (5.63%) Firewall
3 84 (3.73%) DHCP
4 75 (3.33%) Network Security
5 59 (2.62%) WAN
6 57 (2.53%) TCP/IP
7 52 (2.31%) BGP
7 52 (2.31%) VPN
8 50 (2.22%) LAN
9 38 (1.69%) VSAN
10 36 (1.60%) MPLS
11 32 (1.42%) IPsec
12 29 (1.29%) VLAN
13 23 (1.02%) SSL
14 18 (0.80%) OSPF
14 18 (0.80%) SAN
15 17 (0.75%) SD-WAN
16 16 (0.71%) Cisco ASA
17 15 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
18 14 (0.62%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (2.35%) SQL Server
2 45 (2.00%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.06%) Metadata
5 23 (1.02%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.98%) Power BI
7 20 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
8 19 (0.84%) Data Lake
9 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (0.67%) MongoDB
10 10 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
11 9 (0.40%) Big Data
11 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
11 9 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
12 8 (0.35%) BigQuery
12 8 (0.35%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 8 (0.35%) Oracle Database 12c
12 8 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.31%) MySQL
14 6 (0.27%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 110 (4.88%) JIRA
2 84 (3.73%) GitLab
3 80 (3.55%) Jenkins
4 79 (3.50%) Git
5 31 (1.37%) Selenium
6 16 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 12 (0.53%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.44%) MSI
9 8 (0.35%) JUnit
9 8 (0.35%) Postman
9 8 (0.35%) REST Assured
9 8 (0.35%) SonarQube
10 7 (0.31%) JMeter
10 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
10 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.27%) Artifactory
11 6 (0.27%) Gatling
11 6 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.22%) Maven
13 4 (0.18%) TestNG
General
1 502 (22.26%) Social Skills
2 277 (12.28%) Public Sector
3 169 (7.49%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (6.16%) Finance
5 69 (3.06%) Military
6 68 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (1.60%) Aerospace
8 36 (1.60%) Police
9 35 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
9 35 (1.55%) Law
10 34 (1.51%) Legal
11 32 (1.42%) Manufacturing
12 31 (1.37%) Telecoms
13 11 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (0.40%) Local Government
15 7 (0.31%) Marketing
16 6 (0.27%) Automotive
17 5 (0.22%) Back Office
18 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 391 (17.34%) Architect
2 233 (10.33%) Lead
3 191 (8.47%) Senior
4 156 (6.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 155 (6.87%) Developer
6 149 (6.61%) Consultant
7 131 (5.81%) Analyst
8 93 (4.12%) Security Architect
9 78 (3.46%) Network Engineer
10 74 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
11 65 (2.88%) SOC Analyst
11 65 (2.88%) Support Engineer
12 59 (2.62%) DevOps Engineer
13 55 (2.44%) Project Manager
14 52 (2.31%) Technical Architect
15 51 (2.26%) DBA
16 49 (2.17%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 48 (2.13%) Solutions Architect
18 41 (1.82%) Network Architect
19 40 (1.77%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (9.22%) Terraform
2 75 (3.33%) REST
3 40 (1.77%) LDAP
4 32 (1.42%) Elastic Stack
5 31 (1.37%) React
6 26 (1.15%) Kafka
6 26 (1.15%) SOAP
7 25 (1.11%) RESTful
8 18 (0.80%) Apache NiFi
8 18 (0.80%) Node.js
9 17 (0.75%) XML
10 16 (0.71%) AngularJS
10 16 (0.71%) JSON
11 15 (0.67%) .NET
11 15 (0.67%) FastAPI
11 15 (0.67%) Keycloak
11 15 (0.67%) OAuth
11 15 (0.67%) Spring
12 14 (0.62%) Spring Boot
13 13 (0.58%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 106 (4.70%) Cloud Native
2 103 (4.57%) Data Centre
3 100 (4.43%) PKI
4 85 (3.77%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.00%) Management Information System
6 40 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
6 40 (1.77%) Private Cloud
6 40 (1.77%) Product Ownership
7 39 (1.73%) Security Operations Centre
8 36 (1.60%) Cyber Threat
9 31 (1.37%) Security Posture
10 26 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 25 (1.11%) Public Cloud
12 20 (0.89%) Clustering
13 18 (0.80%) CMDB
13 18 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
14 17 (0.75%) Virtual Team
15 15 (0.67%) Replication
16 13 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.58%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 391 (17.34%) Windows
2 252 (11.18%) Linux
3 187 (8.29%) Windows Server
4 44 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.37%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
7 22 (0.98%) Unix
8 21 (0.93%) Ubuntu
9 18 (0.80%) CentOS
10 13 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.31%) AIX
12 6 (0.27%) Android
12 6 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Debian
14 4 (0.18%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 391 (17.34%) Agile
2 292 (12.95%) Continuous Improvement
3 280 (12.42%) Stakeholder Management
4 270 (11.97%) CI/CD
5 240 (10.64%) DevOps
6 227 (10.07%) Cybersecurity
7 226 (10.02%) Problem-Solving
8 222 (9.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 216 (9.58%) Infrastructure as Code
10 214 (9.49%) Technical Leadership
11 201 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 185 (8.20%) ITIL
13 153 (6.78%) ITSM
14 151 (6.70%) Containerisation
14 151 (6.70%) Service Management
15 136 (6.03%) SIEM
16 132 (5.85%) Project Delivery
17 126 (5.59%) Decision-Making
18 123 (5.45%) Risk Management
19 114 (5.06%) AI
Programming Languages
1 246 (10.91%) Python
2 190 (8.43%) PowerShell
3 132 (5.85%) SQL
4 94 (4.17%) Bash
5 74 (3.28%) Java
6 41 (1.82%) JavaScript
7 39 (1.73%) C#
8 29 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.84%) Go
10 17 (0.75%) Bicep
11 15 (0.67%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.62%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.49%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.40%) C++
15 7 (0.31%) Groovy
16 6 (0.27%) C
16 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.27%) Perl
16 6 (0.27%) X++
17 4 (0.18%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,255 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 712 (31.57%) SC Cleared
3 90 (3.99%) Degree
4 73 (3.24%) CISSP
5 44 (1.95%) CISM
6 41 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
7 27 (1.20%) AWS Certification
7 27 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
8 25 (1.11%) CCNP
8 25 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 23 (1.02%) ISTQB
9 23 (1.02%) PMI Certification
9 23 (1.02%) VCAP
10 20 (0.89%) Azure Certification
10 20 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
11 19 (0.84%) PMP
12 14 (0.62%) BPSS Clearance
13 13 (0.58%) MCSE
14 12 (0.53%) CCNA
14 12 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (4.12%) NCSC
1 93 (4.12%) NIST
2 82 (3.64%) PMO
3 79 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 64 (2.84%) QA
5 38 (1.69%) JSP 440
6 36 (1.60%) SLA
7 32 (1.42%) GDPR
8 30 (1.33%) Data Quality
9 24 (1.06%) GRC
10 19 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 16 (0.71%) Accessibility
12 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
13 11 (0.49%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 8 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
15 8 (0.35%) RMADS
15 8 (0.35%) WCAG
16 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
17 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 256 (11.35%) Active Directory
2 202 (8.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 142 (6.30%) Docker
4 88 (3.90%) VMware NSX
5 75 (3.33%) VMware ESXi
6 65 (2.88%) Hyper-V
7 55 (2.44%) vSphere
8 25 (1.11%) vCloud
9 19 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.62%) NFS
11 13 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
12 12 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
13 11 (0.49%) Firmware
14 4 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.18%) KVM
14 4 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
16 2 (0.089%) Ceph
16 2 (0.089%) Squid
16 2 (0.089%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 222 (9.84%) Kubernetes
2 154 (6.83%) Ansible
3 84 (3.73%) vCenter Server
4 60 (2.66%) SCOM
5 36 (1.60%) SCCM
6 28 (1.24%) Prometheus
7 26 (1.15%) Grafana
8 21 (0.93%) Nagios
8 21 (0.93%) Puppet
9 20 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
10 17 (0.75%) VxRail
11 16 (0.71%) Oracle RMAN
11 16 (0.71%) WMI
12 15 (0.67%) Avamar
13 14 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 14 (0.62%) Data Guard
13 14 (0.62%) Podman
13 14 (0.62%) WSUS
14 12 (0.53%) Istio
15 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 320 (14.19%) Microsoft
2 278 (12.33%) VMware
3 118 (5.23%) Oracle
4 95 (4.21%) ServiceNow
5 76 (3.37%) Cisco
6 61 (2.71%) Google
7 57 (2.53%) Splunk
8 51 (2.26%) SAP
9 47 (2.08%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.95%) CyberArk
11 34 (1.51%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.02%) Juniper
13 23 (1.02%) Remedy
14 22 (0.98%) Dell
15 19 (0.84%) BMC
15 19 (0.84%) Citrix
16 18 (0.80%) Broadcom
16 18 (0.80%) NetApp
16 18 (0.80%) Thales