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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 71 31
Rank change year-on-year +16 -40 +49
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,801 955 2,376
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.04% 3.28% 5.37%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.09% 10.70% 17.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,260 660 1,724
10th Percentile £425 £413 £413
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 £713 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £600 £600
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 24 104
10th Percentile £16.45 £32.75 £49.26
25th Percentile £20.82 £54.40 £57.16
Median hourly rate £54.00 £63.75 £63.15
Median % change year-on-year -15.29% +0.95% -9.79%
75th Percentile £76.75 £81.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £90.80 £83.51 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.75 £73.75 £63.29
% change year-on-year -25.76% +16.53% -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 14,900 8,922 13,557
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.46% 30.69% 30.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,833 5,681 8,418
10th Percentile £340 £296 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.87% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £618 £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 1,094 488 1,011
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £13.85
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.18 £17.72
Median hourly rate £36.70 £42.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.65% +13.33% -28.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £84.70 £80.72 £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 31 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 31 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 31 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 1,643 £575 -4.17% 411
UK excluding London +8 1,282 £600 - 355
South East +10 691 £600 +2.13% 151
London +9 358 £575 -4.17% 80
South West -2 330 £561 -6.46% 104
Work from Home +28 232 £560 -2.61% 131
North of England -4 88 £685 +234.15% 40
North West +21 71 £700 +241.46% 35
Midlands -26 68 £575 -17.86% 17
East of England -4 66 £575 +4.55% 34
West Midlands -29 51 £569 -18.75% 15
Scotland -9 42 £653 +26.80% 6
East Midlands -24 17 £638 +15.91% 1
Yorkshire -40 15 £550 -12.00% 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 38 (2.11%) Microsoft Exchange
2 35 (1.94%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.50%) Confluence
4 24 (1.33%) Apache
5 19 (1.05%) Skype for Business
6 13 (0.72%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.44%) 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 (3.22%) Microsoft Office
2 45 (2.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 23 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (0.72%) 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 24 (1.33%) Remedy ITSM
2 23 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.89%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 7 (0.39%) Maximo
5 5 (0.28%) SAP EWM
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 3 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 3 (0.17%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.11%) Primavera
8 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.11%) SAP WM
9 1 (0.056%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.056%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.056%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.056%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 174 (9.66%) AWS
2 142 (7.88%) Azure
3 54 (3.00%) GCP
4 45 (2.50%) GitHub
5 44 (2.44%) IaaS
6 43 (2.39%) Microsoft 365
7 41 (2.28%) PaaS
8 35 (1.94%) OpenShift
9 34 (1.89%) Serverless
10 33 (1.83%) Azure DevOps
11 27 (1.50%) GitHub Actions
12 21 (1.17%) Amazon S3
13 19 (1.05%) Amazon EC2
14 16 (0.89%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
15 15 (0.83%) OCI
16 14 (0.78%) Azure Sentinel
17 13 (0.72%) Amazon ECS
17 13 (0.72%) Azure AKS
18 12 (0.67%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 129 (7.16%) Firewall
2 103 (5.72%) DNS
3 77 (4.28%) Network Security
4 63 (3.50%) LAN
5 60 (3.33%) WAN
6 57 (3.16%) VPN
7 41 (2.28%) BGP
7 41 (2.28%) DHCP
8 38 (2.11%) TCP/IP
9 31 (1.72%) OSPF
10 27 (1.50%) Junos
11 21 (1.17%) Cisco ISE
12 20 (1.11%) Skype
12 20 (1.11%) VLAN
13 19 (1.05%) Cisco IOS
14 18 (1.00%) Ethernet VPN
14 18 (1.00%) MPLS
15 17 (0.94%) VXLAN
16 16 (0.89%) BIG-IP
16 16 (0.89%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (1.39%) Elasticsearch
3 19 (1.05%) SQL Server
4 16 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (0.83%) Oracle Database
6 14 (0.78%) Big Data
6 14 (0.78%) MongoDB
7 13 (0.72%) Hadoop
8 10 (0.56%) Power BI
9 9 (0.50%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.44%) MySQL
10 8 (0.44%) Redis
10 8 (0.44%) 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%) Amazon Aurora
13 4 (0.22%) DynamoDB
13 4 (0.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 62 (3.44%) JIRA
2 28 (1.55%) Git
2 28 (1.55%) GitLab
3 27 (1.50%) Jenkins
4 10 (0.56%) Artifactory
4 10 (0.56%) Maven
5 9 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.33%) Cypress.io
6 6 (0.33%) Robot Framework
7 5 (0.28%) Bitbucket
7 5 (0.28%) SonarQube
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%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.11%) Snyk
10 2 (0.11%) webpack
General
1 321 (17.82%) Social Skills
2 205 (11.38%) Public Sector
3 128 (7.11%) Analytical Skills
4 84 (4.66%) Finance
5 64 (3.55%) Military
6 55 (3.05%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.89%) Legal
8 30 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.44%) Telecoms
10 25 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
11 23 (1.28%) Aerospace
12 21 (1.17%) Law
13 19 (1.05%) Police
14 16 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 14 (0.78%) Marketing
16 13 (0.72%) Electronics
17 9 (0.50%) Banking
18 6 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 6 (0.33%) Influencing Skills
19 2 (0.11%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 327 (18.16%) Architect
2 122 (6.77%) Senior
3 111 (6.16%) Lead
4 108 (6.00%) Analyst
5 92 (5.11%) Network Engineer
6 91 (5.05%) Consultant
7 78 (4.33%) Technical Architect
8 73 (4.05%) Developer
9 65 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 58 (3.22%) Tester
11 55 (3.05%) DevOps Engineer
12 54 (3.00%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 54 (3.00%) SOC Analyst
13 48 (2.67%) Security Architect
14 45 (2.50%) Project Manager
15 38 (2.11%) Software Engineer
16 37 (2.05%) Solutions Architect
16 37 (2.05%) Support Engineer
17 36 (2.00%) Infrastructure Architect
18 34 (1.89%) 3rd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (2.17%) REST
2 26 (1.44%) Apache NiFi
2 26 (1.44%) OAuth
3 23 (1.28%) React
4 20 (1.11%) OpenID
5 19 (1.05%) OAuth2
5 19 (1.05%) SAML
6 18 (1.00%) Kafka
7 16 (0.89%) Node.js
7 16 (0.89%) Web Services
8 15 (0.83%) 802.1X
9 13 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
9 13 (0.72%) Flask
9 13 (0.72%) LDAP
10 12 (0.67%) .NET
10 12 (0.67%) FastAPI
10 12 (0.67%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.61%) SOAP
11 11 (0.61%) Spring
12 10 (0.56%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 103 (5.72%) PKI
2 64 (3.55%) Data Centre
3 46 (2.55%) Security Operations Centre
4 37 (2.05%) Management Information System
5 28 (1.55%) Cloud Native
6 25 (1.39%) Clustering
7 24 (1.33%) Product Ownership
8 23 (1.28%) Hybrid Cloud
9 22 (1.22%) Onboarding
10 21 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
11 20 (1.11%) Cyberattack
11 20 (1.11%) Replication
12 19 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
13 15 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
14 14 (0.78%) Driving Licence
14 14 (0.78%) Public Cloud
15 13 (0.72%) Insider Threat
15 13 (0.72%) Private Cloud
15 13 (0.72%) Security Posture
16 12 (0.67%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 254 (14.10%) Windows
2 190 (10.55%) Linux
3 78 (4.33%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.67%) Windows 10
5 28 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.83%) Windows 7
7 13 (0.72%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.56%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.50%) Android
10 7 (0.39%) Unix
10 7 (0.39%) VMS
11 6 (0.33%) CentOS
11 6 (0.33%) 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
15 1 (0.056%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 299 (16.60%) Agile
2 214 (11.88%) Problem-Solving
3 166 (9.22%) Cybersecurity
4 156 (8.66%) DevOps
5 150 (8.33%) ITIL
6 136 (7.55%) CI/CD
7 131 (7.27%) Service Management
8 115 (6.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 113 (6.27%) Continuous Improvement
10 110 (6.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 104 (5.77%) Stakeholder Management
12 98 (5.44%) ITSM
13 82 (4.55%) Infrastructure as Code
13 82 (4.55%) Risk Management
14 80 (4.44%) Project Delivery
15 76 (4.22%) Incident Response
16 74 (4.11%) Containerisation
16 74 (4.11%) SIEM
17 71 (3.94%) Identity Access Management
18 70 (3.89%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 150 (8.33%) Python
2 122 (6.77%) PowerShell
3 56 (3.11%) SQL
4 49 (2.72%) Java
5 31 (1.72%) JavaScript
6 27 (1.50%) Bash
7 19 (1.05%) TypeScript
8 18 (1.00%) C#
9 16 (0.89%) Shell Script
10 15 (0.83%) Go
11 11 (0.61%) Bicep
12 10 (0.56%) C++
13 8 (0.44%) C
13 8 (0.44%) VB
14 7 (0.39%) PL/SQL
14 7 (0.39%) VBScript
15 6 (0.33%) ABAP
15 6 (0.33%) Embedded C
15 6 (0.33%) Rust
16 4 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,801 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 573 (31.82%) SC Cleared
3 65 (3.61%) CISSP
4 61 (3.39%) Degree
5 49 (2.72%) Cisco Certification
6 43 (2.39%) CISM
7 33 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
8 28 (1.55%) CompTIA Security+
9 23 (1.28%) CCNP
9 23 (1.28%) CESG Certified Professional
10 21 (1.17%) CCNA
11 20 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (1.05%) AWS Certification
12 19 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
12 19 (1.05%) GIAC
13 16 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
13 16 (0.89%) CTC Cleared
14 14 (0.78%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.78%) CEH
14 14 (0.78%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.72%) NIST
2 70 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (3.00%) NCSC
4 42 (2.33%) PMO
4 42 (2.33%) QA
5 39 (2.17%) JSP 440
6 22 (1.22%) GRC
7 18 (1.00%) RMADS
8 17 (0.94%) GDPR
9 14 (0.78%) NIST 800
10 13 (0.72%) Data Quality
10 13 (0.72%) SLA
11 12 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 11 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
13 6 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 6 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.33%) P3O
14 5 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 4 (0.22%) Accessibility
16 3 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 116 (6.44%) Active Directory
2 91 (5.05%) Docker
3 89 (4.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 50 (2.78%) VMware NSX
5 37 (2.05%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (1.28%) Hyper-V
7 21 (1.17%) vSphere
8 14 (0.78%) BitLocker
9 11 (0.61%) vCloud
10 10 (0.56%) Firmware
11 7 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.33%) 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%) Squid
16 2 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 137 (7.61%) Kubernetes
2 118 (6.55%) Terraform
3 82 (4.55%) Ansible
4 52 (2.89%) vCenter Server
5 35 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
6 33 (1.83%) SCCM
7 32 (1.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 30 (1.67%) Grafana
9 25 (1.39%) Prometheus
10 15 (0.83%) FortiGate
11 14 (0.78%) Puppet
12 13 (0.72%) Progress Chef
12 13 (0.72%) WMI
13 10 (0.56%) Podman
13 10 (0.56%) SCOM
14 9 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
14 9 (0.50%) NetIQ Identity Manager
15 8 (0.44%) Argo
15 8 (0.44%) Nessus
15 8 (0.44%) VxRail
Vendors
1 216 (11.99%) Microsoft
2 180 (9.99%) VMware
3 109 (6.05%) Cisco
4 58 (3.22%) Juniper
5 57 (3.16%) Splunk
6 54 (3.00%) SAP
6 54 (3.00%) ServiceNow
7 48 (2.67%) Oracle
8 44 (2.44%) Red Hat
9 43 (2.39%) NetApp
10 28 (1.55%) SolarWinds
11 27 (1.50%) F5
12 26 (1.44%) Remedy
13 23 (1.28%) Fortinet
14 22 (1.22%) Dell
15 21 (1.17%) Palo Alto
16 17 (0.94%) Sparx
17 16 (0.89%) Citrix
17 16 (0.89%) Google
17 16 (0.89%) Palantir