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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 79 36
Rank change year-on-year +30 -43 +16
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,235 1,009 1,850
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 3.06% 4.83%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.01% 9.78% 16.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,682 708 1,246
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £518 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £593 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.22% -1.21% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £650 £688
90th Percentile £763 £723 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £580 £595
% change year-on-year +3.45% -2.52% +4.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 37 93
10th Percentile £38.13 - £50.00
25th Percentile £55.86 £25.15 £58.49
Median hourly rate £74.68 £47.48 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +57.30% -32.55% -2.68%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.00 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.41 £87.35 £89.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £74.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year +0.44% +5.63% -2.77%

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 17,176 10,322 11,238
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.52% 31.29% 29.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,481 6,406 6,958
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,308 824 674
10th Percentile £17.18 £17.97 £16.90
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -9.09%
75th Percentile £72.54 £48.13 £67.69
90th Percentile £87.96 £71.39 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.55% +2.14%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +26 2,106 £600 +2.13% 968
UK excluding London +13 1,606 £600 +3.45% 798
South East +4 891 £600 - 257
London +55 475 £600 -4.00% 244
South West +4 465 £588 -2.08% 257
Work from Home +44 346 £560 -5.08% 500
East of England +13 102 £650 +18.18% 151
North of England -16 64 £775 +34.78% 83
Midlands -76 45 £600 - 21
North West -17 44 £863 +72.50% 69
West Midlands -69 39 £600 - 14
Scotland -21 34 £669 +27.33% 49
Yorkshire -31 15 £510 -18.40% 9
East Midlands - 6 £625 - 7
Northern Ireland +6 5 £638 -1.92% 4
North East -42 5 £463 -26.00% 8
Wales -10 4 - - 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 67 (3.00%) Confluence
2 52 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.70%) Microsoft Exchange
4 16 (0.72%) Apache
5 7 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.31%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.31%) Documentum
6 6 (0.27%) CMS
7 5 (0.22%) IIS
8 4 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.13%) Camunda
9 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.089%) Mule
10 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.045%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 60 (2.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.01%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
5 15 (0.67%) AutoCAD
5 15 (0.67%) Revit
5 15 (0.67%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.36%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.13%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.25%) Oracle ERP
3 22 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.81%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.63%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.27%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.13%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
11 1 (0.045%) SAP CCM
11 1 (0.045%) SAP FI-GL
11 1 (0.045%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.045%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 299 (13.38%) Azure
2 295 (13.20%) AWS
3 108 (4.83%) GCP
4 57 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
5 51 (2.28%) Microsoft 365
6 46 (2.06%) GitHub
7 40 (1.79%) Entra ID
8 39 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
9 38 (1.70%) Power Platform
10 36 (1.61%) Serverless
11 34 (1.52%) OCI
12 27 (1.21%) IaaS
13 26 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
14 24 (1.07%) PaaS
15 23 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
15 23 (1.03%) OpenShift
16 21 (0.94%) Amazon ECS
17 19 (0.85%) Amazon S3
17 19 (0.85%) SaaS
18 17 (0.76%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 164 (7.34%) DNS
2 119 (5.32%) Firewall
3 80 (3.58%) DHCP
4 67 (3.00%) Network Security
5 58 (2.60%) WAN
6 54 (2.42%) VPN
7 53 (2.37%) TCP/IP
8 47 (2.10%) LAN
9 44 (1.97%) BGP
10 41 (1.83%) VSAN
11 34 (1.52%) MPLS
12 32 (1.43%) IPsec
13 28 (1.25%) VLAN
14 18 (0.81%) SSL
15 17 (0.76%) SAN
16 15 (0.67%) Cisco ASA
17 14 (0.63%) Cisco Firepower
17 14 (0.63%) Cisco Nexus
17 14 (0.63%) SD-WAN
18 13 (0.58%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (2.46%) SQL Server
2 43 (1.92%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.03%) Power BI
5 21 (0.94%) Metadata
6 19 (0.85%) Data Lake
7 18 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
7 18 (0.81%) MongoDB
8 17 (0.76%) Relational Database
9 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
10 12 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
11 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
11 9 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
12 8 (0.36%) Big Data
12 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
13 7 (0.31%) MariaDB
13 7 (0.31%) Oracle Reports
14 5 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 105 (4.70%) JIRA
2 75 (3.36%) GitLab
3 66 (2.95%) Jenkins
4 65 (2.91%) Git
5 28 (1.25%) Selenium
6 15 (0.67%) Cypress.io
7 8 (0.36%) Cucumber
7 8 (0.36%) MSI
8 7 (0.31%) Postman
8 7 (0.31%) REST Assured
8 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
9 6 (0.27%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.27%) SpecFlow
10 5 (0.22%) Artifactory
10 5 (0.22%) Gatling
10 5 (0.22%) JMeter
10 5 (0.22%) JUnit
10 5 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.13%) MLflow
11 3 (0.13%) Toad
General
1 483 (21.61%) Social Skills
2 279 (12.48%) Public Sector
3 162 (7.25%) Analytical Skills
4 135 (6.04%) Finance
5 66 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
6 65 (2.91%) Military
7 43 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
8 37 (1.66%) Legal
9 35 (1.57%) Law
10 33 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (1.43%) Police
12 30 (1.34%) Telecoms
13 28 (1.25%) Manufacturing
14 25 (1.12%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (0.40%) Local Government
17 7 (0.31%) Marketing
18 5 (0.22%) Advertising
18 5 (0.22%) Back Office
19 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 375 (16.78%) Architect
2 244 (10.92%) Lead
3 198 (8.86%) Senior
4 154 (6.89%) Developer
5 153 (6.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 152 (6.80%) Consultant
7 132 (5.91%) Analyst
8 91 (4.07%) Security Architect
9 76 (3.40%) Network Engineer
10 71 (3.18%) Cloud Engineer
11 69 (3.09%) SOC Analyst
12 61 (2.73%) Support Engineer
13 59 (2.64%) Project Manager
14 58 (2.60%) Technical Architect
15 56 (2.51%) DevOps Engineer
16 51 (2.28%) DBA
17 45 (2.01%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
18 42 (1.88%) Technical Leader
19 41 (1.83%) Lead Architect
19 41 (1.83%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 198 (8.86%) Terraform
2 75 (3.36%) REST
3 31 (1.39%) Elastic Stack
4 30 (1.34%) LDAP
5 29 (1.30%) React
6 26 (1.16%) SOAP
7 22 (0.98%) RESTful
8 20 (0.89%) Kafka
9 17 (0.76%) Apache NiFi
9 17 (0.76%) Node.js
10 15 (0.67%) .NET
11 14 (0.63%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.63%) Spring
11 14 (0.63%) Spring Boot
11 14 (0.63%) XML
12 13 (0.58%) JSON
13 12 (0.54%) ARM Templates
13 12 (0.54%) FastAPI
13 12 (0.54%) OAuth
13 12 (0.54%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.56%) Cloud Native
2 101 (4.52%) PKI
3 99 (4.43%) Data Centre
4 79 (3.53%) Onboarding
5 44 (1.97%) Security Operations Centre
6 40 (1.79%) Private Cloud
7 38 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 38 (1.70%) Management Information System
8 37 (1.66%) Product Ownership
9 33 (1.48%) Cyber Threat
10 29 (1.30%) Public Cloud
11 26 (1.16%) Security Posture
12 25 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
13 21 (0.94%) Clustering
14 20 (0.89%) CMDB
15 19 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
16 16 (0.72%) Virtual Team
17 14 (0.63%) Analytical Mindset
17 14 (0.63%) Replication
18 12 (0.54%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 374 (16.73%) Windows
2 251 (11.23%) Linux
3 176 (7.87%) Windows Server
4 39 (1.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.39%) Windows 10
6 27 (1.21%) Windows Server 2019
7 20 (0.89%) Unix
8 17 (0.76%) Ubuntu
9 14 (0.63%) CentOS
10 12 (0.54%) 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 2003
13 5 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.22%) Debian
13 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.18%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 387 (17.32%) Agile
2 276 (12.35%) Continuous Improvement
3 270 (12.08%) Stakeholder Management
4 255 (11.41%) CI/CD
5 232 (10.38%) Cybersecurity
6 216 (9.66%) DevOps
7 214 (9.57%) Problem-Solving
8 209 (9.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 200 (8.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 199 (8.90%) Technical Leadership
11 196 (8.77%) Infrastructure as Code
12 184 (8.23%) ITIL
13 152 (6.80%) Service Management
14 145 (6.49%) ITSM
15 140 (6.26%) Containerisation
16 127 (5.68%) SIEM
17 124 (5.55%) Risk Management
18 121 (5.41%) Decision-Making
18 121 (5.41%) Project Delivery
19 111 (4.97%) AI
Programming Languages
1 236 (10.56%) Python
2 189 (8.46%) PowerShell
3 132 (5.91%) SQL
4 91 (4.07%) Bash
5 69 (3.09%) Java
6 38 (1.70%) JavaScript
7 37 (1.66%) C#
8 27 (1.21%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.81%) Bicep
10 16 (0.72%) Go
11 15 (0.67%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.49%) C++
13 11 (0.49%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.40%) C
15 7 (0.31%) Groovy
16 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.27%) Perl
16 6 (0.27%) X++
17 5 (0.22%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,235 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 716 (32.04%) SC Cleared
3 81 (3.62%) Degree
4 73 (3.27%) CISSP
5 46 (2.06%) CISM
6 37 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 27 (1.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 25 (1.12%) AWS Certification
10 24 (1.07%) VCAP
11 21 (0.94%) ISTQB
11 21 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 20 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
13 19 (0.85%) CCNP
13 19 (0.85%) PMP
14 16 (0.72%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.67%) MCSE
16 14 (0.63%) BPSS Clearance
17 12 (0.54%) CompTIA Security+
18 11 (0.49%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (4.16%) NCSC
2 90 (4.03%) NIST
3 81 (3.62%) PMO
4 77 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 61 (2.73%) QA
6 41 (1.83%) JSP 440
7 32 (1.43%) SLA
8 31 (1.39%) GDPR
9 27 (1.21%) Data Quality
10 22 (0.98%) GRC
11 18 (0.81%) Accessibility
12 17 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 16 (0.72%) Government Security Classifications
14 14 (0.63%) RMADS
15 11 (0.49%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 10 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
17 9 (0.40%) NIST 800
18 8 (0.36%) WCAG
19 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
20 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
System Software
1 233 (10.43%) Active Directory
2 203 (9.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 128 (5.73%) Docker
4 92 (4.12%) VMware NSX
5 80 (3.58%) VMware ESXi
6 67 (3.00%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.37%) vSphere
8 27 (1.21%) vCloud
9 18 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.63%) NFS
11 13 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
11 13 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
12 10 (0.45%) Firmware
13 6 (0.27%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.22%) Ceph
15 4 (0.18%) KVM
15 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.13%) UAG
Systems Management
1 210 (9.40%) Kubernetes
2 146 (6.53%) Ansible
3 89 (3.98%) vCenter Server
4 58 (2.60%) SCOM
5 33 (1.48%) SCCM
6 26 (1.16%) Prometheus
7 24 (1.07%) Grafana
8 22 (0.98%) Puppet
9 17 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 17 (0.76%) Nagios
10 16 (0.72%) Oracle RMAN
11 15 (0.67%) Podman
11 15 (0.67%) VxRail
12 14 (0.63%) Avamar
12 14 (0.63%) Data Guard
12 14 (0.63%) WMI
13 13 (0.58%) WSUS
14 12 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.54%) Istio
15 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 294 (13.15%) Microsoft
2 289 (12.93%) VMware
3 115 (5.15%) Oracle
4 101 (4.52%) ServiceNow
5 79 (3.53%) Cisco
6 61 (2.73%) SAP
7 59 (2.64%) Splunk
8 58 (2.60%) Google
9 42 (1.88%) SolarWinds
10 38 (1.70%) CyberArk
11 37 (1.66%) Red Hat
12 27 (1.21%) Juniper
13 24 (1.07%) Palo Alto
13 24 (1.07%) Remedy
14 23 (1.03%) Citrix
14 23 (1.03%) Dell
15 21 (0.94%) BMC
15 21 (0.94%) NetApp
16 19 (0.85%) Broadcom
17 18 (0.81%) Sparx