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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 79 31
Rank change year-on-year +29 -48 +28
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,036 922 2,442
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.96% 3.00% 5.66%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.67% 9.72% 18.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,544 635 1,757
10th Percentile £430 £458 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £519
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £586 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -2.33% -
75th Percentile £688 £653 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +1.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 30 120
10th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £49.90
25th Percentile £35.00 £32.31 £56.65
Median hourly rate £54.00 £79.35 £71.75
Median % change year-on-year -31.95% +10.60% +2.50%
75th Percentile £68.00 £82.75 £85.65
90th Percentile £80.87 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.84 £81.35 £71.17
% change year-on-year -39.96% +14.31% -5.11%

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 16,068 9,487 12,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.26% 30.85% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,724 5,881 7,948
10th Percentile £350 £275 £311
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £528
% change year-on-year +2.00% -5.21% +0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,171 641 1,116
10th Percentile £17.40 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.19 £20.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +78.57% -31.61% -26.47%
75th Percentile £72.52 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £26.28 £43.00
% change year-on-year +90.26% -38.88% -20.54%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 +27 1,894 £600 +2.13% 619
UK excluding London +11 1,449 £600 +4.35% 519
South East +6 789 £600 +2.13% 216
London +51 419 £600 - 118
South West -3 377 £575 -4.17% 185
Work from Home +58 315 £560 -2.61% 185
East of England +15 104 £650 +18.18% 34
North of England -4 87 £775 +24.00% 48
North West +14 66 £775 +278.05% 39
Midlands -55 52 £600 - 32
West Midlands -57 41 £600 - 28
Scotland +25 37 £669 +33.70% 7
Yorkshire -34 18 £525 -16.00% 5
East Midlands -3 11 £518 -5.91% 4
Northern Ireland +6 5 £619 - 3
Wales -10 4 - - 4
North East -30 3 £569 -9.00% 4

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 46 (2.26%) Confluence
2 43 (2.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 33 (1.62%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.29%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.29%) Documentum
4 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.25%) CMS
5 5 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.20%) Apache
6 4 (0.20%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.098%) nginx
7 2 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.049%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.049%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.049%) Mule
Applications
1 36 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.47%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (1.33%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (0.44%) AutoCAD
5 9 (0.44%) Revit
5 9 (0.44%) SOLIDWORKS
6 7 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.25%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.098%) Lectora
8 2 (0.098%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.23%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (0.98%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 18 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
5 7 (0.34%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 4 (0.20%) SAP EWM
7 4 (0.20%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.098%) Maximo
9 2 (0.098%) Primavera
9 2 (0.098%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.049%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.049%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.049%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.049%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 228 (11.20%) AWS
2 210 (10.31%) Azure
3 93 (4.57%) GCP
4 53 (2.60%) GitHub
5 49 (2.41%) Azure DevOps
6 42 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
7 41 (2.01%) IaaS
7 41 (2.01%) PaaS
8 33 (1.62%) Microsoft 365
8 33 (1.62%) Serverless
9 26 (1.28%) OpenShift
10 24 (1.18%) OCI
10 24 (1.18%) Power Platform
11 20 (0.98%) Entra ID
12 19 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
12 19 (0.93%) SaaS
13 17 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
13 17 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
14 14 (0.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 13 (0.64%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 116 (5.70%) DNS
2 104 (5.11%) Firewall
3 76 (3.73%) Network Security
4 67 (3.29%) WAN
5 65 (3.19%) LAN
6 54 (2.65%) DHCP
7 51 (2.50%) VPN
8 45 (2.21%) BGP
9 29 (1.42%) OSPF
10 27 (1.33%) VLAN
11 22 (1.08%) IPsec
11 22 (1.08%) MPLS
11 22 (1.08%) VXLAN
12 21 (1.03%) TCP/IP
13 20 (0.98%) Ethernet VPN
14 19 (0.93%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.88%) VSAN
16 17 (0.83%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.79%) Cisco Nexus
17 16 (0.79%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (1.96%) SQL Server
2 34 (1.67%) Oracle Database
2 34 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
4 19 (0.93%) Power BI
5 14 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
6 13 (0.64%) MongoDB
7 11 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
7 11 (0.54%) Metadata
8 7 (0.34%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.34%) Redis
9 6 (0.29%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.29%) Oracle Database 11g
10 5 (0.25%) Big Data
10 5 (0.25%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.25%) DynamoDB
10 5 (0.25%) Hadoop
10 5 (0.25%) MariaDB
10 5 (0.25%) MySQL
11 4 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 81 (3.98%) JIRA
2 45 (2.21%) GitLab
3 42 (2.06%) Jenkins
4 35 (1.72%) Git
5 13 (0.64%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.44%) Selenium
7 7 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.29%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.25%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.25%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle APEX
10 4 (0.20%) Postman
10 4 (0.20%) Robot Framework
10 4 (0.20%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.20%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.15%) Appium
11 3 (0.15%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.15%) ERwin
11 3 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 334 (16.40%) Social Skills
2 266 (13.06%) Public Sector
3 118 (5.80%) Analytical Skills
4 98 (4.81%) Finance
5 76 (3.73%) Military
6 62 (3.05%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.36%) Legal
8 25 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
9 23 (1.13%) Law
9 23 (1.13%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.08%) Aerospace
11 21 (1.03%) Police
12 19 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (0.64%) Manufacturing
14 12 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (0.44%) Marketing
16 7 (0.34%) Local Government
17 4 (0.20%) Electronics
18 3 (0.15%) Advertising
18 3 (0.15%) Banking
Job Titles
1 311 (15.28%) Architect
2 192 (9.43%) Lead
3 174 (8.55%) Senior
4 138 (6.78%) Analyst
5 127 (6.24%) Developer
6 125 (6.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 112 (5.50%) Consultant
8 82 (4.03%) Network Engineer
8 82 (4.03%) Technical Architect
9 74 (3.63%) SOC Analyst
10 72 (3.54%) Security Architect
11 61 (3.00%) Project Manager
12 51 (2.50%) Tester
13 50 (2.46%) DBA
14 49 (2.41%) DevOps Engineer
14 49 (2.41%) Service Manager
15 46 (2.26%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 43 (2.11%) Software Engineer
17 42 (2.06%) DV Cleared Project Manager
18 40 (1.96%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (3.14%) REST
2 28 (1.38%) Elastic Stack
2 28 (1.38%) React
3 25 (1.23%) SOAP
4 19 (0.93%) 802.1X
4 19 (0.93%) Node.js
5 18 (0.88%) Kafka
6 17 (0.83%) RESTful
6 17 (0.83%) Spring
7 15 (0.74%) AngularJS
7 15 (0.74%) Flask
8 14 (0.69%) FastAPI
8 14 (0.69%) Spring Boot
9 13 (0.64%) .NET
10 12 (0.59%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.54%) Oracle Fusion
12 10 (0.49%) Apache NiFi
12 10 (0.49%) Playwright
13 9 (0.44%) LDAP
13 9 (0.44%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 88 (4.32%) PKI
2 87 (4.27%) Data Centre
3 64 (3.14%) Cloud Native
4 50 (2.46%) Security Operations Centre
5 38 (1.87%) Onboarding
6 36 (1.77%) Clustering
7 33 (1.62%) Product Ownership
8 32 (1.57%) Private Cloud
9 29 (1.42%) Security Posture
10 27 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
10 27 (1.33%) Management Information System
11 26 (1.28%) CMDB
12 23 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
13 21 (1.03%) Distributed Systems
14 19 (0.93%) Public Cloud
15 17 (0.83%) Virtual Team
16 13 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.64%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
16 13 (0.64%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 268 (13.16%) Windows
2 209 (10.27%) Linux
3 112 (5.50%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (0.79%) Windows 10
6 11 (0.54%) Unix
7 8 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.34%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
9 6 (0.29%) AIX
9 6 (0.29%) Android
10 5 (0.25%) CentOS
10 5 (0.25%) Debian
10 5 (0.25%) VMS
10 5 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.20%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 348 (17.09%) Agile
2 203 (9.97%) Problem-Solving
3 194 (9.53%) ITIL
4 177 (8.69%) Continuous Improvement
5 174 (8.55%) CI/CD
6 173 (8.50%) DevOps
7 171 (8.40%) Cybersecurity
8 169 (8.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 155 (7.61%) Stakeholder Management
10 146 (7.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 138 (6.78%) Service Management
12 118 (5.80%) ITSM
13 114 (5.60%) Infrastructure as Code
14 108 (5.30%) Project Delivery
15 95 (4.67%) Technical Leadership
16 93 (4.57%) Containerisation
17 92 (4.52%) Service Delivery
18 91 (4.47%) Decision-Making
19 90 (4.42%) Risk Management
20 85 (4.17%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 169 (8.30%) Python
2 111 (5.45%) PowerShell
3 97 (4.76%) SQL
4 56 (2.75%) Java
5 45 (2.21%) JavaScript
6 40 (1.96%) Bash
7 30 (1.47%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.33%) C#
9 17 (0.83%) Go
10 14 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
11 12 (0.59%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.54%) C++
13 10 (0.49%) C
14 9 (0.44%) Bicep
14 9 (0.44%) Rust
15 8 (0.39%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.29%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.29%) Perl
17 5 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 2,036 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 677 (33.25%) SC Cleared
3 63 (3.09%) Degree
4 52 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
5 45 (2.21%) CISSP
6 27 (1.33%) CISM
7 25 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.08%) CCNP
9 20 (0.98%) CCNA
9 20 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
10 18 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 17 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
11 17 (0.83%) PMI Certification
12 16 (0.79%) ISTQB
12 16 (0.79%) PMP
13 15 (0.74%) MCSE
14 14 (0.69%) CESG Certified Professional
15 11 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
15 11 (0.54%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.68%) NIST
2 67 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 66 (3.24%) NCSC
4 57 (2.80%) PMO
5 51 (2.50%) QA
6 40 (1.96%) JSP 440
7 27 (1.33%) GDPR
8 22 (1.08%) GRC
8 22 (1.08%) RMADS
8 22 (1.08%) SLA
9 11 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
10 10 (0.49%) Accessibility
11 9 (0.44%) Data Quality
11 9 (0.44%) Government Security Classifications
11 9 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 7 (0.34%) NIST 800
13 6 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.29%) ISO 9000
13 6 (0.29%) WCAG
14 5 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 140 (6.88%) VMware Infrastructure
2 131 (6.43%) Active Directory
3 111 (5.45%) Docker
4 68 (3.34%) VMware NSX
5 54 (2.65%) VMware ESXi
6 46 (2.26%) Hyper-V
7 26 (1.28%) vSphere
8 21 (1.03%) vCloud
9 12 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.54%) BitLocker
11 10 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
12 9 (0.44%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.39%) NFS
14 5 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
15 4 (0.20%) Ceph
15 4 (0.20%) Firmware
15 4 (0.20%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.20%) UAG
16 3 (0.15%) Squid
17 2 (0.098%) KVM
Systems Management
1 152 (7.47%) Kubernetes
2 144 (7.07%) Terraform
3 86 (4.22%) Ansible
4 64 (3.14%) vCenter Server
5 33 (1.62%) SCOM
6 28 (1.38%) SCCM
7 22 (1.08%) Prometheus
8 21 (1.03%) Grafana
9 19 (0.93%) Puppet
10 13 (0.64%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.64%) Nagios
11 12 (0.59%) Data Guard
11 12 (0.59%) Podman
11 12 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 10 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
13 10 (0.49%) WSUS
14 9 (0.44%) Avamar
14 9 (0.44%) vMotion
14 9 (0.44%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 213 (10.46%) VMware
2 204 (10.02%) Microsoft
3 109 (5.35%) ServiceNow
4 101 (4.96%) Cisco
5 83 (4.08%) Oracle
6 58 (2.85%) Splunk
7 45 (2.21%) Juniper
8 40 (1.96%) SolarWinds
9 39 (1.92%) Google
9 39 (1.92%) SAP
10 35 (1.72%) NetApp
11 32 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 29 (1.42%) F5
13 25 (1.23%) Citrix
13 25 (1.23%) Palo Alto
13 25 (1.23%) Remedy
14 23 (1.13%) Dell
15 22 (1.08%) Fortinet
16 20 (0.98%) Sparx
17 18 (0.88%) BMC