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 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 77 45 51
Rank change year-on-year -32 +6 +86
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,207 1,577 1,861
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.34% 4.30% 4.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 10.03% 14.60% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 835 992 1,250
10th Percentile £465 £413 £384
25th Percentile £513 £504 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £688 £688 £688
90th Percentile £750 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £578 £598 £580
% change year-on-year -3.43% +3.10% -1.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 63 110
10th Percentile £20.02 £46.25 £53.82
25th Percentile - £55.87 £58.81
Median hourly rate £25.15 £63.15 £67.75
Median % change year-on-year -60.17% -6.79% -3.90%
75th Percentile £71.00 £74.65 £77.50
90th Percentile £86.65 £100.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £63.15 £68.65
% change year-on-year +9.26% -8.01% -4.19%

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 12,030 10,800 13,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.30% 29.44% 29.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,752 6,504 8,446
10th Percentile £305 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,029 532 758
10th Percentile £17.59 £18.73 £17.74
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £27.56
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.94 £53.68
Median % change year-on-year -41.43% -20.01% +19.29%
75th Percentile £45.46 £67.01 £68.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.25 £52.50
% change year-on-year -46.77% -10.01% +19.32%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025. 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 -28 1,107 £600 - 492
UK excluding London -22 815 £578 -3.43% 452
South East -4 405 £575 -2.13% 247
London -35 292 £625 +4.17% 96
South West -7 266 £625 +4.17% 129
Work from Home -11 174 £600 - 166
Midlands -18 86 £588 -2.08% 22
West Midlands -18 82 £575 -8.00% 19
East of England -18 28 £538 -2.23% 29
North of England -54 23 £500 -9.09% 18
Scotland -47 22 £580 +12.35% 9
North West -19 15 £500 - 15
Northern Ireland -2 7 £588 - 1
Yorkshire -49 6 £521 -5.23% 3
Wales -12 5 £600 -14.29% 11
East Midlands -12 4 £725 +55.91% 3
North East -16 2 £625 +11.11%

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 50 (4.14%) SharePoint
2 47 (3.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 40 (3.31%) Apache
4 32 (2.65%) Skype for Business
5 25 (2.07%) Confluence
6 11 (0.91%) SharePoint Server
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2003
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2007
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2010
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2013
7 10 (0.83%) Office Communications Server
8 6 (0.50%) IIS
9 5 (0.41%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.33%) CMS
11 3 (0.25%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.25%) Documentum
11 3 (0.25%) nginx
12 1 (0.083%) Mattermost
Applications
1 57 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.83%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.83%) SAP EWM
2 10 (0.83%) SAP WM
3 7 (0.58%) Primavera
4 5 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.25%) Maximo
5 3 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Payroll
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.083%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 134 (11.10%) Azure
2 124 (10.27%) AWS
3 60 (4.97%) Microsoft 365
4 43 (3.56%) GitHub
5 42 (3.48%) Serverless
6 34 (2.82%) GCP
7 29 (2.40%) OpenShift
8 28 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
9 20 (1.66%) Amazon S3
9 20 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
10 17 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
10 17 (1.41%) Azure Sentinel
11 15 (1.24%) Amazon ECS
11 15 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (1.24%) Entra ID
12 14 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (1.16%) Power Platform
13 11 (0.91%) npm
14 10 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
14 10 (0.83%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 84 (6.96%) Firewall
2 75 (6.21%) DNS
3 48 (3.98%) Network Security
4 45 (3.73%) LAN
5 37 (3.07%) VPN
6 34 (2.82%) DHCP
7 31 (2.57%) WAN
8 28 (2.32%) TCP/IP
9 27 (2.24%) Cisco IOS
10 26 (2.15%) Junos
10 26 (2.15%) Skype
11 24 (1.99%) Cisco ISE
12 23 (1.91%) BGP
12 23 (1.91%) Cisco Firepower
13 21 (1.74%) SAN
14 20 (1.66%) Wireless
15 15 (1.24%) VLAN
16 14 (1.16%) OSPF
17 12 (0.99%) iSCSI
17 12 (0.99%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (2.15%) Big Data
2 24 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.49%) Elasticsearch
4 17 (1.41%) Hadoop
5 13 (1.08%) SQL Server
6 12 (0.99%) Oracle Database
7 11 (0.91%) Redis
8 10 (0.83%) Relational Database
9 9 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
9 9 (0.75%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.66%) Power BI
11 7 (0.58%) InfluxDB
12 6 (0.50%) SAP HANA
13 5 (0.41%) RDBMS
14 4 (0.33%) Metadata
15 3 (0.25%) Apache Hive
15 3 (0.25%) Looker
15 3 (0.25%) MySQL
15 3 (0.25%) NoSQL
15 3 (0.25%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 44 (3.65%) GitLab
1 44 (3.65%) Jenkins
2 39 (3.23%) JIRA
3 36 (2.98%) Git
4 18 (1.49%) SonarQube
5 14 (1.16%) Maven
6 12 (0.99%) Bitbucket
7 11 (0.91%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
9 7 (0.58%) Cypress.io
10 6 (0.50%) Selenium
11 5 (0.41%) JUnit
11 5 (0.41%) Postman
12 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
12 4 (0.33%) Gradle
12 4 (0.33%) Snyk
12 4 (0.33%) SoapUI
12 4 (0.33%) webpack
13 3 (0.25%) MSI
13 3 (0.25%) Robot Framework
General
1 256 (21.21%) Social Skills
2 183 (15.16%) Public Sector
3 84 (6.96%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (5.63%) Finance
5 45 (3.73%) Military
5 45 (3.73%) Telecoms
6 39 (3.23%) Manufacturing
7 26 (2.15%) Electronics
7 26 (2.15%) Marketing
8 25 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
9 23 (1.91%) Law
9 23 (1.91%) Legal
10 20 (1.66%) Banking
11 17 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
12 12 (0.99%) Aerospace
12 12 (0.99%) Police
13 10 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
14 8 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 1 (0.083%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 217 (17.98%) Architect
2 91 (7.54%) Consultant
3 67 (5.55%) Analyst
4 63 (5.22%) Network Engineer
5 59 (4.89%) Support Engineer
6 57 (4.72%) Senior
7 56 (4.64%) Developer
8 52 (4.31%) Solutions Architect
9 48 (3.98%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
10 47 (3.89%) DevOps Engineer
10 47 (3.89%) Lead
11 38 (3.15%) Technical Architect
12 35 (2.90%) 3rd Line Engineer
12 35 (2.90%) Cloud Engineer
13 34 (2.82%) Network Architect
14 33 (2.73%) Infrastructure Architect
14 33 (2.73%) Project Manager
15 30 (2.49%) Administrator
16 27 (2.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 24 (1.99%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.07%) Apache NiFi
2 31 (2.57%) REST
3 26 (2.15%) Kafka
4 21 (1.74%) React
5 19 (1.57%) Elastic Stack
6 18 (1.49%) OAuth
7 17 (1.41%) Node.js
7 17 (1.41%) YAML
8 16 (1.33%) .NET
8 16 (1.33%) OpenID
9 15 (1.24%) OAuth2
9 15 (1.24%) SAML
10 14 (1.16%) RabbitMQ
11 13 (1.08%) RESTful
12 9 (0.75%) JSON
12 9 (0.75%) SOAP
12 9 (0.75%) Spring
12 9 (0.75%) Web Services
13 8 (0.66%) Flask
13 8 (0.66%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 71 (5.88%) PKI
2 46 (3.81%) Data Centre
3 36 (2.98%) Management Information System
4 31 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 26 (2.15%) Cyber Threat
6 21 (1.74%) Private Cloud
6 21 (1.74%) Security Operations Centre
7 20 (1.66%) Cloud Native
7 20 (1.66%) Replication
8 17 (1.41%) Driving Licence
9 13 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
9 13 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
10 12 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
11 11 (0.91%) Cyber Defence
12 10 (0.83%) CSOC
12 10 (0.83%) Fat Client
12 10 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
12 10 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
12 10 (0.83%) Thin Client
13 9 (0.75%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 205 (16.98%) Windows
2 116 (9.61%) Linux
3 74 (6.13%) Windows Server
4 30 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 26 (2.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (1.49%) Android
6 18 (1.49%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.41%) Windows Server 2019
8 15 (1.24%) Windows 7
9 13 (1.08%) Unix
10 11 (0.91%) Windows Server 2003
11 10 (0.83%) CentOS
12 7 (0.58%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.17%) Debian
14 2 (0.17%) VMS
15 1 (0.083%) Mac OS X
15 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (17.98%) Agile
2 132 (10.94%) Cybersecurity
3 131 (10.85%) DevOps
4 119 (9.86%) Problem-Solving
5 115 (9.53%) CI/CD
6 84 (6.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 79 (6.55%) ITIL
8 75 (6.21%) Infrastructure as Code
8 75 (6.21%) Stakeholder Management
9 66 (5.47%) Containerisation
9 66 (5.47%) Continuous Improvement
9 66 (5.47%) Risk Management
10 60 (4.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 60 (4.97%) Service Management
11 59 (4.89%) ITSM
12 58 (4.81%) Mentoring
12 58 (4.81%) SIEM
13 57 (4.72%) Scrum
14 56 (4.64%) Migration
15 51 (4.23%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 146 (12.10%) Python
2 106 (8.78%) PowerShell
3 67 (5.55%) SQL
4 62 (5.14%) Java
5 39 (3.23%) JavaScript
6 35 (2.90%) Bash
7 21 (1.74%) C#
8 19 (1.57%) Go
9 16 (1.33%) C++
9 16 (1.33%) TypeScript
10 10 (0.83%) C
10 10 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 8 (0.66%) VB
11 8 (0.66%) VBScript
12 7 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.41%) ABAP
14 4 (0.33%) Bicep
15 3 (0.25%) PHP
15 3 (0.25%) T-SQL
16 2 (0.17%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,207 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 380 (31.48%) SC Cleared
3 46 (3.81%) CISSP
4 43 (3.56%) Degree
5 35 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 26 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
7 25 (2.07%) CISM
8 17 (1.41%) CCNP
9 15 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
10 14 (1.16%) CEH
11 13 (1.08%) CESG Certified Professional
12 12 (0.99%) GIAC
12 12 (0.99%) MCSE
13 11 (0.91%) CCNA
14 10 (0.83%) Azure Certification
14 10 (0.83%) PMI Certification
15 9 (0.75%) AWS Certification
15 9 (0.75%) CompTIA CySA+
15 9 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 8 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (5.05%) NIST
2 51 (4.23%) NCSC
3 42 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 28 (2.32%) SLA
5 20 (1.66%) NIST 800
6 19 (1.57%) JSP 440
6 19 (1.57%) PMO
6 19 (1.57%) QA
7 17 (1.41%) GDPR
8 14 (1.16%) RMADS
9 12 (0.99%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.41%) P3O
11 4 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
11 4 (0.33%) Def Stans
12 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.25%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.25%) GRC
12 3 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 102 (8.45%) Active Directory
2 75 (6.21%) Docker
3 69 (5.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (3.48%) VMware ESXi
5 37 (3.07%) VMware NSX
6 32 (2.65%) vSphere
7 14 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
8 12 (0.99%) NFS
9 10 (0.83%) Brightmail
9 10 (0.83%) ISA Server
10 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.41%) BitLocker
11 5 (0.41%) Firmware
12 4 (0.33%) Hyper-V
13 2 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.083%) GPFS
14 1 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.083%) Terminal Services
14 1 (0.083%) UAG
Systems Management
1 115 (9.53%) Kubernetes
2 101 (8.37%) Terraform
3 82 (6.79%) Ansible
4 37 (3.07%) Grafana
5 36 (2.98%) vCenter Server
6 31 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.82%) SCCM
7 22 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
8 20 (1.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 12 (0.99%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.99%) WMI
10 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Clustering
11 9 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
11 9 (0.75%) Podman
11 9 (0.75%) Puppet
12 8 (0.66%) Argo
12 8 (0.66%) SCOM
13 7 (0.58%) FortiGate
14 6 (0.50%) Kibana
14 6 (0.50%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 185 (15.33%) Microsoft
2 142 (11.76%) VMware
3 118 (9.78%) Cisco
4 68 (5.63%) Juniper
5 54 (4.47%) SAP
6 50 (4.14%) Splunk
7 32 (2.65%) Palantir
7 32 (2.65%) SolarWinds
8 30 (2.49%) Oracle
9 25 (2.07%) Foundry
9 25 (2.07%) Red Hat
10 24 (1.99%) Dell
11 21 (1.74%) Veeam
12 19 (1.57%) HP
13 18 (1.49%) Apple
14 17 (1.41%) NetApp
15 15 (1.24%) Atlassian
16 14 (1.16%) ServiceNow
17 13 (1.08%) Cloudera
17 13 (1.08%) Google