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 27 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 81 32
Rank change year-on-year +31 -49 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,005 910 2,456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.93% 3.00% 5.66%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.59% 9.70% 18.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,522 625 1,762
10th Percentile £430 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £586 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -2.33% -
75th Percentile £688 £656 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 29 121
10th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £50.00
25th Percentile £35.00 £36.25 £56.65
Median hourly rate £48.84 £80.00 £72.33
Median % change year-on-year -38.95% +10.60% +1.64%
75th Percentile £68.00 £82.96 £85.65
90th Percentile £81.96 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.77 £81.35 £71.17
% change year-on-year -43.73% +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 15,929 9,377 12,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.25% 30.92% 29.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,644 5,812 7,975
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.77% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £526
% change year-on-year +1.40% -4.85% -0.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,162 619 1,118
10th Percentile £17.63 £17.76 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.21 £20.24 £20.00
Median hourly rate £50.74 £28.55 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +77.73% -30.26% -26.23%
75th Percentile £72.54 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.10 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.39 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.57% -36.31% -21.19%

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 27 June 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 27 June 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 27 June 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 +25 1,863 £600 +2.13% 388
UK excluding London +11 1,429 £600 +4.35% 332
South East +5 777 £600 +2.78% 155
London +60 412 £600 - 79
South West -2 371 £575 -4.17% 103
Work from Home +46 313 £560 -2.61% 121
East of England +12 103 £650 +18.18% 29
North of England -1 84 £775 +24.00% 30
North West +3 65 £775 +278.05% 25
Midlands -58 52 £600 - 17
West Midlands -68 41 £600 - 14
Scotland +26 38 £669 +33.70% 5
Yorkshire -26 16 £525 -16.00% 3
East Midlands -4 11 £518 -5.91% 3
Northern Ireland +6 6 £619 - 1
Wales -11 4 - -
North East -34 3 £569 -9.00% 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 43 (2.14%) Confluence
2 41 (2.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 29 (1.45%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.30%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.30%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.25%) CMS
5 5 (0.25%) Documentum
5 5 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.20%) Apache
6 4 (0.20%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.100%) nginx
7 2 (0.100%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.050%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.050%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.050%) Mule
Applications
1 35 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.60%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (0.45%) AutoCAD
5 9 (0.45%) Revit
5 9 (0.45%) SOLIDWORKS
6 6 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.100%) Lectora
8 2 (0.100%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (1.00%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
5 7 (0.35%) 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 (0.100%) Maximo
9 2 (0.100%) Primavera
9 2 (0.100%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.050%) Oracle Applications
10 1 (0.050%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.050%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.050%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.050%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 225 (11.22%) AWS
2 202 (10.07%) Azure
3 92 (4.59%) GCP
4 52 (2.59%) GitHub
5 45 (2.24%) Azure DevOps
6 41 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
6 41 (2.04%) IaaS
6 41 (2.04%) PaaS
7 33 (1.65%) Serverless
8 32 (1.60%) Microsoft 365
9 26 (1.30%) OpenShift
10 24 (1.20%) OCI
10 24 (1.20%) Power Platform
11 19 (0.95%) AWS Lambda
11 19 (0.95%) SaaS
12 18 (0.90%) Entra ID
13 17 (0.85%) Amazon ECS
13 17 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
14 14 (0.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 13 (0.65%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 113 (5.64%) DNS
2 104 (5.19%) Firewall
3 74 (3.69%) Network Security
4 65 (3.24%) WAN
5 64 (3.19%) LAN
6 53 (2.64%) DHCP
7 50 (2.49%) VPN
8 44 (2.19%) BGP
9 29 (1.45%) OSPF
10 26 (1.30%) VLAN
11 22 (1.10%) VXLAN
12 21 (1.05%) IPsec
12 21 (1.05%) MPLS
13 20 (1.00%) Ethernet VPN
13 20 (1.00%) TCP/IP
14 19 (0.95%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.90%) VSAN
16 17 (0.85%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.80%) Cisco Nexus
17 16 (0.80%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (1.95%) SQL Server
2 35 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
4 27 (1.35%) Elasticsearch
5 19 (0.95%) Power BI
6 14 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
7 13 (0.65%) MongoDB
8 11 (0.55%) Data Warehouse
8 11 (0.55%) Metadata
9 7 (0.35%) Data Lake
9 7 (0.35%) Redis
10 6 (0.30%) NoSQL
10 6 (0.30%) Oracle Database 11g
11 5 (0.25%) Big Data
11 5 (0.25%) BigQuery
11 5 (0.25%) DynamoDB
11 5 (0.25%) Hadoop
11 5 (0.25%) MariaDB
11 5 (0.25%) MySQL
12 4 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 76 (3.79%) JIRA
2 44 (2.19%) GitLab
3 41 (2.04%) Jenkins
4 32 (1.60%) Git
5 13 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.45%) Selenium
7 7 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.30%) 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
1 320 (15.96%) Social Skills
2 261 (13.02%) Public Sector
3 114 (5.69%) Analytical Skills
4 96 (4.79%) Finance
5 73 (3.64%) Military
6 63 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.39%) Legal
8 25 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.15%) Law
11 22 (1.10%) Aerospace
12 21 (1.05%) Police
13 20 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
14 14 (0.70%) Manufacturing
15 12 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
16 10 (0.50%) Marketing
17 7 (0.35%) Local Government
18 5 (0.25%) Electronics
19 3 (0.15%) Advertising
19 3 (0.15%) Banking
Job Titles
1 302 (15.06%) Architect
2 188 (9.38%) Lead
3 170 (8.48%) Senior
4 134 (6.68%) Analyst
5 122 (6.08%) Developer
5 122 (6.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 113 (5.64%) Consultant
7 83 (4.14%) Network Engineer
8 79 (3.94%) Technical Architect
9 74 (3.69%) SOC Analyst
10 69 (3.44%) Security Architect
11 62 (3.09%) Project Manager
12 50 (2.49%) DBA
12 50 (2.49%) Tester
13 48 (2.39%) DevOps Engineer
14 47 (2.34%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
14 47 (2.34%) Service Manager
15 43 (2.14%) DV Cleared Project Manager
15 43 (2.14%) Software Engineer
16 40 (2.00%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (3.04%) REST
2 28 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
2 28 (1.40%) React
3 23 (1.15%) SOAP
4 19 (0.95%) 802.1X
4 19 (0.95%) Node.js
5 18 (0.90%) Kafka
6 17 (0.85%) RESTful
6 17 (0.85%) Spring
7 15 (0.75%) AngularJS
7 15 (0.75%) Flask
8 14 (0.70%) FastAPI
8 14 (0.70%) Spring Boot
9 13 (0.65%) .NET
10 12 (0.60%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
12 10 (0.50%) Apache NiFi
12 10 (0.50%) Playwright
13 9 (0.45%) LDAP
13 9 (0.45%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 88 (4.39%) PKI
2 84 (4.19%) Data Centre
3 64 (3.19%) Cloud Native
4 50 (2.49%) Security Operations Centre
5 38 (1.90%) Onboarding
6 35 (1.75%) Clustering
7 32 (1.60%) Product Ownership
8 31 (1.55%) Private Cloud
9 29 (1.45%) Security Posture
10 28 (1.40%) Management Information System
11 27 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.15%) CMDB
13 21 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
14 20 (1.00%) Cyber Threat
15 19 (0.95%) Public Cloud
16 16 (0.80%) Virtual Team
17 14 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
18 13 (0.65%) Enterprise Storage
18 13 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
19 11 (0.55%) FPGA
Operating Systems
1 260 (12.97%) Windows
2 206 (10.27%) Linux
3 108 (5.39%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.85%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.50%) Unix
7 7 (0.35%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
7 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (0.30%) AIX
8 6 (0.30%) Android
9 5 (0.25%) CentOS
9 5 (0.25%) Debian
9 5 (0.25%) VMS
10 4 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 336 (16.76%) Agile
2 200 (9.98%) Problem-Solving
3 191 (9.53%) ITIL
4 173 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
5 171 (8.53%) CI/CD
6 170 (8.48%) Cybersecurity
7 165 (8.23%) DevOps
8 164 (8.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 149 (7.43%) Stakeholder Management
10 142 (7.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 137 (6.83%) Service Management
12 111 (5.54%) Infrastructure as Code
12 111 (5.54%) ITSM
13 104 (5.19%) Project Delivery
14 92 (4.59%) Containerisation
15 91 (4.54%) Decision-Making
15 91 (4.54%) Risk Management
15 91 (4.54%) Technical Leadership
16 87 (4.34%) Service Delivery
17 84 (4.19%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 168 (8.38%) Python
2 108 (5.39%) PowerShell
3 97 (4.84%) SQL
4 53 (2.64%) Java
5 45 (2.24%) JavaScript
6 38 (1.90%) Bash
7 30 (1.50%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.35%) C#
9 17 (0.85%) Go
10 14 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.65%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.55%) C++
13 10 (0.50%) C
14 9 (0.45%) Rust
15 8 (0.40%) Bicep
15 8 (0.40%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.30%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.30%) Perl
17 5 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 2,005 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 671 (33.47%) SC Cleared
3 61 (3.04%) Degree
4 53 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
5 48 (2.39%) CISSP
6 29 (1.45%) CISM
7 25 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.10%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.10%) CCNP
9 21 (1.05%) CompTIA Security+
10 20 (1.00%) CCNA
11 18 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
13 16 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.80%) PMI Certification
14 15 (0.75%) CESG Certified Professional
14 15 (0.75%) MCSE
14 15 (0.75%) PMP
15 12 (0.60%) GIAC
16 11 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (3.69%) NIST
2 67 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 65 (3.24%) NCSC
4 55 (2.74%) PMO
5 51 (2.54%) QA
6 40 (2.00%) JSP 440
7 27 (1.35%) GDPR
8 23 (1.15%) RMADS
8 23 (1.15%) SLA
9 22 (1.10%) GRC
10 11 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
11 10 (0.50%) Accessibility
12 9 (0.45%) Data Quality
12 9 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
12 9 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.30%) ISO 9000
13 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
13 6 (0.30%) WCAG
14 5 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 133 (6.63%) VMware Infrastructure
2 127 (6.33%) Active Directory
3 110 (5.49%) Docker
4 67 (3.34%) VMware NSX
5 51 (2.54%) VMware ESXi
6 45 (2.24%) Hyper-V
7 24 (1.20%) vSphere
8 21 (1.05%) vCloud
9 11 (0.55%) BitLocker
10 10 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
13 7 (0.35%) 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 (0.100%) KVM
Systems Management
1 148 (7.38%) Kubernetes
2 140 (6.98%) Terraform
3 84 (4.19%) Ansible
4 60 (2.99%) vCenter Server
5 31 (1.55%) SCOM
6 28 (1.40%) SCCM
7 21 (1.05%) Grafana
7 21 (1.05%) Prometheus
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 13 (0.65%) FortiGate
9 13 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.60%) Data Guard
10 12 (0.60%) Nagios
10 12 (0.60%) Podman
11 11 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 10 (0.50%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.50%) WSUS
13 9 (0.45%) vMotion
14 8 (0.40%) Avamar
14 8 (0.40%) VxRail
Vendors
1 206 (10.27%) VMware
2 197 (9.83%) Microsoft
3 103 (5.14%) Cisco
3 103 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 83 (4.14%) Oracle
5 59 (2.94%) Splunk
6 45 (2.24%) Juniper
7 40 (2.00%) SAP
8 39 (1.95%) Google
9 38 (1.90%) SolarWinds
10 34 (1.70%) NetApp
11 32 (1.60%) Red Hat
12 30 (1.50%) F5
13 26 (1.30%) Palo Alto
14 24 (1.20%) Remedy
15 22 (1.10%) Citrix
15 22 (1.10%) Fortinet
16 21 (1.05%) Dell
17 20 (1.00%) Sparx
18 18 (0.90%) BMC