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

6 months to
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 68 33
Rank change year-on-year +6 -35 +57
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,581 1,027 2,268
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.82% 3.40% 5.08%
As % of the Qualifications category 11.23% 11.33% 16.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,105 667 1,606
10th Percentile £423 £397 £394
25th Percentile £500 £507 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% - -
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £738 £725 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £590 £600
% change year-on-year -2.54% -1.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 28 111
10th Percentile £16.35 £34.75 £48.40
25th Percentile £18.50 £55.87 £56.65
Median hourly rate £42.71 £63.45 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.69% +0.71% -9.35%
75th Percentile £79.75 £81.28 £78.00
90th Percentile £90.80 £92.50 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £63.45 £63.15
% change year-on-year -12.53% +0.48% -15.81%

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 14,084 9,061 13,536
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.03% 30.02% 30.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,294 5,576 8,351
10th Percentile £331 £285 £288
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.55% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £628 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,039 447 1,000
10th Percentile £16.15 £20.07 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.50 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £40.63
Median % change year-on-year -39.36% +4.62% -17.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.50 £82.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.81 £41.37
% change year-on-year -47.39% +15.57% -8.08%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +1 1,440 £575 -4.17% 452
UK excluding London +1 1,103 £575 -2.54% 402
South East +9 559 £575 -1.71% 180
South West -2 331 £565 -5.83% 122
London -15 328 £575 -4.17% 80
Work from Home +20 199 £560 - 162
Midlands -28 73 £563 -19.64% 27
North of England -26 64 £606 +21.25% 28
East of England -1 57 £575 - 36
West Midlands -31 57 £563 -19.64% 21
North West 0 51 £600 +192.68% 22
Scotland -18 26 £652 +26.50% 11
East Midlands -21 16 £650 +18.18% 6
Yorkshire -52 11 £613 +11.36% 6
Northern Ireland - 9 £600 -
Wales -5 3 - - 5
North East -20 2 - -

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 49 (3.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 48 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 28 (1.77%) Apache
4 24 (1.52%) Confluence
5 23 (1.45%) Skype for Business
6 15 (0.95%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.44%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.32%) Mattermost
9 4 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 1 (0.063%) Apache Airflow
11 1 (0.063%) Documentum
11 1 (0.063%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 58 (3.67%) Microsoft Office
2 42 (2.66%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (1.33%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.13%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 20 (1.27%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.76%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 7 (0.44%) Maximo
5 5 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
5 5 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.25%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.19%) SAP WM
8 2 (0.13%) Primavera
8 2 (0.13%) SAP GRC
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle General Ledger
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
9 1 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.063%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 146 (9.23%) AWS
2 128 (8.10%) Azure
3 54 (3.42%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (3.04%) GCP
4 48 (3.04%) GitHub
5 41 (2.59%) OpenShift
6 37 (2.34%) Serverless
7 33 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
8 29 (1.83%) IaaS
9 28 (1.77%) GitHub Actions
10 25 (1.58%) PaaS
11 20 (1.27%) Amazon S3
12 18 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
13 17 (1.08%) Entra ID
14 16 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (0.95%) Power Platform
16 14 (0.89%) Azure AKS
16 14 (0.89%) Azure Sentinel
17 13 (0.82%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 117 (7.40%) Firewall
2 100 (6.33%) DNS
3 70 (4.43%) Network Security
4 49 (3.10%) LAN
4 49 (3.10%) VPN
5 48 (3.04%) WAN
6 42 (2.66%) DHCP
7 41 (2.59%) TCP/IP
8 37 (2.34%) BGP
9 30 (1.90%) Junos
10 26 (1.64%) Cisco ISE
10 26 (1.64%) OSPF
10 26 (1.64%) Skype
11 25 (1.58%) Cisco IOS
12 17 (1.08%) Ethernet VPN
12 17 (1.08%) MPLS
12 17 (1.08%) SAN
12 17 (1.08%) VLAN
13 16 (1.01%) Cisco Firepower
13 16 (1.01%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (1.52%) Elasticsearch
3 19 (1.20%) SQL Server
4 15 (0.95%) Big Data
5 14 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
5 14 (0.89%) Hadoop
5 14 (0.89%) Oracle Database
6 11 (0.70%) Power BI
6 11 (0.70%) Relational Database
7 10 (0.63%) Redis
8 9 (0.57%) MongoDB
9 8 (0.51%) Metadata
9 8 (0.51%) MySQL
10 7 (0.44%) InfluxDB
10 7 (0.44%) SAP HANA
11 4 (0.25%) DynamoDB
11 4 (0.25%) Metadata Repository
11 4 (0.25%) RDBMS
11 4 (0.25%) SAP Data Services
11 4 (0.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 53 (3.35%) JIRA
2 29 (1.83%) GitLab
3 28 (1.77%) Git
3 28 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 13 (0.82%) Maven
5 11 (0.70%) Artifactory
6 10 (0.63%) SonarQube
6 10 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.44%) Cypress.io
8 6 (0.38%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.32%) Robot Framework
10 4 (0.25%) Oracle APEX
10 4 (0.25%) Postman
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.19%) Gradle
11 3 (0.19%) JUnit
11 3 (0.19%) Snyk
11 3 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 3 (0.19%) webpack
General
1 291 (18.41%) Social Skills
2 191 (12.08%) Public Sector
3 123 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
4 72 (4.55%) Finance
5 65 (4.11%) Military
6 48 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (2.78%) Legal
8 25 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
9 24 (1.52%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.45%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
11 17 (1.08%) Manufacturing
12 16 (1.01%) Law
13 14 (0.89%) Marketing
13 14 (0.89%) Police
14 13 (0.82%) Electronics
15 10 (0.63%) Banking
16 6 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 3 (0.19%) Influencing Skills
18 2 (0.13%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 280 (17.71%) Architect
2 92 (5.82%) Senior
3 90 (5.69%) Analyst
4 77 (4.87%) Consultant
5 72 (4.55%) Network Engineer
6 69 (4.36%) Developer
6 69 (4.36%) Lead
7 65 (4.11%) Technical Architect
8 56 (3.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 52 (3.29%) Tester
10 49 (3.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 49 (3.10%) Support Engineer
11 44 (2.78%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 40 (2.53%) Infrastructure Architect
13 39 (2.47%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 39 (2.47%) Project Manager
13 39 (2.47%) SOC Analyst
14 38 (2.40%) Security Architect
15 36 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
16 31 (1.96%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (2.09%) REST
2 30 (1.90%) Apache NiFi
3 26 (1.64%) OAuth
4 23 (1.45%) React
5 21 (1.33%) OpenID
6 19 (1.20%) Kafka
6 19 (1.20%) OAuth2
6 19 (1.20%) SAML
7 15 (0.95%) Node.js
8 14 (0.89%) Flask
9 13 (0.82%) 802.1X
9 13 (0.82%) FastAPI
10 12 (0.76%) .NET
10 12 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
11 11 (0.70%) LDAP
11 11 (0.70%) RabbitMQ
11 11 (0.70%) Web Services
12 10 (0.63%) Spring
13 9 (0.57%) WebSockets
13 9 (0.57%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 101 (6.39%) PKI
2 57 (3.61%) Data Centre
3 37 (2.34%) Security Operations Centre
4 36 (2.28%) Management Information System
5 25 (1.58%) Cloud Native
6 21 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
7 19 (1.20%) Clustering
7 19 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
7 19 (1.20%) Cyberattack
8 17 (1.08%) Onboarding
8 17 (1.08%) Product Ownership
9 16 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
9 16 (1.01%) Replication
10 15 (0.95%) Private Cloud
11 13 (0.82%) Insider Threat
12 11 (0.70%) CSOC
12 11 (0.70%) Cyber Defence
12 11 (0.70%) Fat Client
12 11 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (0.70%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 251 (15.88%) Windows
2 171 (10.82%) Linux
3 79 (5.00%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 27 (1.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (1.08%) Windows 7
7 14 (0.89%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.63%) Android
9 8 (0.51%) CentOS
9 8 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.32%) Unix
11 5 (0.32%) VMS
12 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.19%) Debian
13 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.13%) Rocky
15 1 (0.063%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 264 (16.70%) Agile
2 203 (12.84%) Problem-Solving
3 150 (9.49%) Cybersecurity
3 150 (9.49%) DevOps
4 134 (8.48%) ITIL
5 126 (7.97%) CI/CD
6 118 (7.46%) Service Management
7 99 (6.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 98 (6.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 94 (5.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 87 (5.50%) ITSM
11 80 (5.06%) Stakeholder Management
12 75 (4.74%) Infrastructure as Code
13 74 (4.68%) Project Delivery
14 72 (4.55%) Risk Management
15 70 (4.43%) Incident Response
15 70 (4.43%) SIEM
16 69 (4.36%) Containerisation
17 64 (4.05%) Project Management
18 62 (3.92%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 140 (8.86%) Python
2 116 (7.34%) PowerShell
3 58 (3.67%) SQL
4 49 (3.10%) Java
5 31 (1.96%) JavaScript
6 23 (1.45%) Bash
7 20 (1.27%) TypeScript
8 19 (1.20%) C#
9 18 (1.14%) Go
10 15 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 11 (0.70%) C++
12 9 (0.57%) Bicep
13 8 (0.51%) VB
14 7 (0.44%) VBScript
15 6 (0.38%) ABAP
15 6 (0.38%) C
15 6 (0.38%) Rust
16 5 (0.32%) PL/SQL
17 4 (0.25%) PHP
18 3 (0.19%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,581 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 493 (31.18%) SC Cleared
3 56 (3.54%) Degree
4 55 (3.48%) CISSP
5 45 (2.85%) Cisco Certification
6 35 (2.21%) CISM
7 34 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
8 26 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
9 25 (1.58%) CCNP
10 20 (1.27%) CESG Certified Professional
11 19 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (1.14%) GIAC
13 17 (1.08%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.01%) CCNA
15 15 (0.95%) BPSS Clearance
15 15 (0.95%) CompTIA CySA+
15 15 (0.95%) CTC Cleared
16 14 (0.89%) Azure Certification
16 14 (0.89%) JNCIS
17 10 (0.63%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (4.81%) NIST
2 60 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 51 (3.23%) NCSC
4 42 (2.66%) QA
5 33 (2.09%) PMO
6 31 (1.96%) JSP 440
7 21 (1.33%) GRC
8 15 (0.95%) Data Quality
8 15 (0.95%) NIST 800
9 14 (0.89%) GDPR
10 13 (0.82%) SLA
11 11 (0.70%) RMADS
12 9 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
13 7 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 6 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.38%) P3O
15 5 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 4 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 3 (0.19%) EU AI Act
17 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 120 (7.59%) Active Directory
2 89 (5.63%) Docker
3 74 (4.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (2.85%) VMware NSX
5 31 (1.96%) VMware ESXi
6 17 (1.08%) vSphere
7 14 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.70%) BitLocker
9 9 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
10 8 (0.51%) Firmware
10 8 (0.51%) vCloud
11 5 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.25%) NFS
12 4 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.19%) GPFS
13 3 (0.19%) Lustre
13 3 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 2 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.063%) UAG
Systems Management
1 140 (8.86%) Kubernetes
2 113 (7.15%) Terraform
3 75 (4.74%) Ansible
4 51 (3.23%) vCenter Server
5 35 (2.21%) Grafana
6 34 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
7 32 (2.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 29 (1.83%) Prometheus
9 27 (1.71%) SCCM
10 15 (0.95%) WMI
11 14 (0.89%) FortiGate
12 13 (0.82%) Progress Chef
13 12 (0.76%) Puppet
14 10 (0.63%) Podman
14 10 (0.63%) SCOM
15 9 (0.57%) VxRail
16 8 (0.51%) Argo
17 7 (0.44%) Nessus
18 6 (0.38%) Forefront Identity Manager
18 6 (0.38%) NetIQ Identity Manager
Vendors
1 217 (13.73%) Microsoft
2 156 (9.87%) VMware
3 110 (6.96%) Cisco
4 57 (3.61%) Splunk
5 56 (3.54%) Juniper
6 48 (3.04%) Oracle
7 40 (2.53%) Red Hat
7 40 (2.53%) ServiceNow
8 39 (2.47%) SAP
9 38 (2.40%) NetApp
10 33 (2.09%) SolarWinds
11 22 (1.39%) Fortinet
11 22 (1.39%) Remedy
12 21 (1.33%) F5
13 20 (1.27%) Dell
13 20 (1.27%) Palantir
14 19 (1.20%) Palo Alto
15 16 (1.01%) Google
16 15 (0.95%) Foundry
17 14 (0.89%) Sparx