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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 81 34
Rank change year-on-year +32 -47 +23
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,162 1,004 2,047
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.05% 3.05% 5.26%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.92% 9.75% 17.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,659 697 1,455
10th Percentile £450 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year - - +1.69%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £715 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £585 £600
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 37 100
10th Percentile £35.00 - £48.94
25th Percentile £41.30 £25.15 £57.20
Median hourly rate £68.00 £55.00 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +23.64% -21.86% +0.56%
75th Percentile £92.53 £82.00 £80.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.05 £90.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £81.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -16.41% +15.57% -3.58%

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 16,734 10,294 11,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.35% 31.23% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,212 6,355 7,404
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £715 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,261 806 851
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +104.77% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.75 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -8.11%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 2,029 £600 - 971
UK excluding London +14 1,553 £600 +2.56% 764
South East +6 912 £600 - 268
London +46 451 £603 -3.60% 266
South West 0 393 £588 -2.08% 242
Work from Home +42 326 £575 -2.54% 487
East of England +11 94 £650 +18.18% 116
North of England -11 69 £775 +24.00% 76
North West -4 47 £825 - 63
Midlands -63 46 £600 - 23
West Midlands -62 41 £600 - 15
Scotland +18 37 £669 +30.44% 40
Yorkshire -28 17 £518 -17.20% 12
East Midlands -3 5 £631 +14.77% 8
North East -38 5 £463 -26.00% 5
Northern Ireland +10 4 £638 - 7
Wales -8 4 - - 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 60 (2.78%) Confluence
2 40 (1.85%) SharePoint
3 37 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.42%) Apache
5 8 (0.37%) Apache Spark
6 7 (0.32%) Documentum
7 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
8 5 (0.23%) CMS
9 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
9 3 (0.14%) nginx
10 2 (0.093%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.093%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.093%) Mule
10 2 (0.093%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.093%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.046%) JBoss
Applications
1 56 (2.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (2.13%) Microsoft Project
3 22 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
5 13 (0.60%) AutoCAD
5 13 (0.60%) Revit
5 13 (0.60%) SOLIDWORKS
6 12 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.19%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.093%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 29 (1.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 26 (1.20%) Oracle ERP
4 18 (0.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.19%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.093%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
11 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 272 (12.58%) Azure
2 262 (12.12%) AWS
3 107 (4.95%) GCP
4 56 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (2.17%) GitHub
6 41 (1.90%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
7 40 (1.85%) Serverless
8 38 (1.76%) IaaS
8 38 (1.76%) Power Platform
9 36 (1.67%) OCI
10 35 (1.62%) PaaS
11 34 (1.57%) Entra ID
12 27 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (1.16%) OpenShift
14 20 (0.93%) Amazon ECS
14 20 (0.93%) Amazon EKS
15 19 (0.88%) Amazon S3
15 19 (0.88%) SaaS
16 18 (0.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 155 (7.17%) DNS
2 130 (6.01%) Firewall
3 79 (3.65%) DHCP
4 75 (3.47%) WAN
5 71 (3.28%) LAN
6 70 (3.24%) Network Security
7 57 (2.64%) BGP
8 48 (2.22%) VPN
9 47 (2.17%) TCP/IP
10 41 (1.90%) VSAN
11 33 (1.53%) IPsec
12 30 (1.39%) MPLS
13 28 (1.30%) OSPF
14 26 (1.20%) VLAN
15 22 (1.02%) VXLAN
16 19 (0.88%) Ethernet VPN
17 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
17 18 (0.83%) SSL
18 16 (0.74%) Cisco ASA
18 16 (0.74%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (2.04%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.76%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.48%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.06%) Power BI
5 21 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
6 18 (0.83%) Metadata
7 14 (0.65%) Data Lake
7 14 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (0.46%) MongoDB
9 8 (0.37%) BigQuery
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
10 7 (0.32%) Big Data
10 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
10 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
11 6 (0.28%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 102 (4.72%) JIRA
2 56 (2.59%) GitLab
3 50 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 42 (1.94%) Git
5 14 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 11 (0.51%) Selenium
7 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 6 (0.28%) Postman
8 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.19%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.19%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.19%) MSI
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
11 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
11 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 412 (19.06%) Social Skills
2 284 (13.14%) Public Sector
3 150 (6.94%) Analytical Skills
4 135 (6.24%) Finance
5 68 (3.15%) Military
6 57 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (1.94%) Legal
8 40 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
9 29 (1.34%) Law
10 27 (1.25%) Police
11 25 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 23 (1.06%) Telecoms
13 19 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
15 14 (0.65%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.37%) Local Government
17 7 (0.32%) Marketing
18 5 (0.23%) Advertising
19 4 (0.19%) Aviation
19 4 (0.19%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 342 (15.82%) Architect
2 244 (11.29%) Lead
3 205 (9.48%) Senior
4 151 (6.98%) Developer
5 150 (6.94%) Analyst
6 148 (6.85%) Consultant
7 144 (6.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 90 (4.16%) Network Engineer
9 89 (4.12%) Security Architect
10 77 (3.56%) SOC Analyst
11 66 (3.05%) Technical Architect
12 61 (2.82%) Project Manager
13 57 (2.64%) Cloud Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DevOps Engineer
15 49 (2.27%) DBA
15 49 (2.27%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 48 (2.22%) Support Engineer
17 47 (2.17%) Senior Network Engineer
18 43 (1.99%) DV Cleared Project Manager
19 42 (1.94%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (3.42%) REST
2 33 (1.53%) Elastic Stack
3 26 (1.20%) SOAP
4 25 (1.16%) React
5 20 (0.93%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 17 (0.79%) 802.1X
8 16 (0.74%) .NET
8 16 (0.74%) Node.js
8 16 (0.74%) Oracle Fusion
9 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
9 14 (0.65%) Flask
9 14 (0.65%) Spring
9 14 (0.65%) Spring Boot
10 13 (0.60%) AngularJS
10 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
11 11 (0.51%) ARM Templates
11 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.51%) OAuth
11 11 (0.51%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.81%) Data Centre
2 103 (4.76%) PKI
3 85 (3.93%) Cloud Native
4 63 (2.91%) Onboarding
5 52 (2.41%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.76%) Hybrid Cloud
6 38 (1.76%) Product Ownership
7 37 (1.71%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.67%) Clustering
9 33 (1.53%) Management Information System
10 31 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
11 28 (1.30%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
13 25 (1.16%) Security Posture
14 24 (1.11%) CMDB
15 19 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
15 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
16 14 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
17 13 (0.60%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 323 (14.94%) Windows
2 229 (10.59%) Linux
3 150 (6.94%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (0.97%) Windows 10
7 14 (0.65%) Unix
8 9 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.32%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.28%) AIX
10 6 (0.28%) Android
10 6 (0.28%) CentOS
10 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.28%) VMS
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 378 (17.48%) Agile
2 228 (10.55%) Stakeholder Management
3 218 (10.08%) Continuous Improvement
4 214 (9.90%) CI/CD
5 211 (9.76%) Problem-Solving
6 208 (9.62%) Cybersecurity
7 197 (9.11%) ITIL
8 195 (9.02%) DevOps
9 186 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 185 (8.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 157 (7.26%) Infrastructure as Code
12 152 (7.03%) Service Management
13 146 (6.75%) Technical Leadership
14 128 (5.92%) ITSM
15 117 (5.41%) Project Delivery
15 117 (5.41%) Risk Management
16 112 (5.18%) Containerisation
17 110 (5.09%) Decision-Making
18 107 (4.95%) Service Delivery
19 104 (4.81%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 197 (9.11%) Python
2 155 (7.17%) PowerShell
3 110 (5.09%) SQL
4 77 (3.56%) Bash
5 61 (2.82%) Java
6 43 (1.99%) JavaScript
7 35 (1.62%) C#
8 25 (1.16%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.83%) Bicep
9 18 (0.83%) Go
10 14 (0.65%) PL/SQL
10 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.60%) C++
12 11 (0.51%) C
13 7 (0.32%) Groovy
13 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
14 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
14 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
14 6 (0.28%) Rust
14 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,162 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 727 (33.63%) SC Cleared
3 75 (3.47%) Degree
4 62 (2.87%) CISSP
5 43 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
6 36 (1.67%) CISM
7 28 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 23 (1.06%) AWS Certification
8 23 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 22 (1.02%) PMI Certification
10 20 (0.93%) ISTQB
11 19 (0.88%) PMP
11 19 (0.88%) VCAP
12 18 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
13 15 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
13 15 (0.69%) MCSE
14 14 (0.65%) CCNP
15 13 (0.60%) CCNA
15 13 (0.60%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (3.70%) PMO
2 77 (3.56%) NCSC
3 71 (3.28%) NIST
4 55 (2.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 54 (2.50%) QA
6 33 (1.53%) JSP 440
7 28 (1.30%) GDPR
8 25 (1.16%) Data Quality
8 25 (1.16%) SLA
9 19 (0.88%) GRC
10 18 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 17 (0.79%) RMADS
12 16 (0.74%) Government Security Classifications
13 14 (0.65%) Accessibility
14 11 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
15 10 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.37%) WCAG
17 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 185 (8.56%) VMware Infrastructure
2 183 (8.46%) Active Directory
3 123 (5.69%) Docker
4 94 (4.35%) VMware NSX
5 65 (3.01%) VMware ESXi
6 59 (2.73%) Hyper-V
7 47 (2.17%) vSphere
8 23 (1.06%) vCloud
9 17 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 7 (0.32%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
14 5 (0.23%) Ceph
14 5 (0.23%) Firmware
15 4 (0.19%) Squid
15 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.14%) KVM
16 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 186 (8.60%) Kubernetes
2 185 (8.56%) Terraform
3 124 (5.74%) Ansible
4 80 (3.70%) vCenter Server
5 46 (2.13%) SCOM
6 33 (1.53%) SCCM
7 25 (1.16%) Prometheus
8 23 (1.06%) Grafana
9 22 (1.02%) Puppet
10 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
10 15 (0.69%) Nagios
10 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
10 15 (0.69%) Podman
11 14 (0.65%) Avamar
11 14 (0.65%) VxRail
11 14 (0.65%) WSUS
12 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
12 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
13 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.46%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 262 (12.12%) Microsoft
2 256 (11.84%) VMware
3 112 (5.18%) ServiceNow
4 102 (4.72%) Oracle
5 91 (4.21%) Cisco
6 61 (2.82%) Splunk
7 56 (2.59%) SAP
8 51 (2.36%) Google
9 48 (2.22%) Juniper
10 45 (2.08%) SolarWinds
11 33 (1.53%) Red Hat
12 30 (1.39%) Remedy
13 28 (1.30%) F5
14 25 (1.16%) Citrix
15 24 (1.11%) Dell
16 23 (1.06%) NetApp
16 23 (1.06%) Palo Alto
17 21 (0.97%) CyberArk
18 20 (0.93%) BMC
19 18 (0.83%) Sparx