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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 87 39
Rank change year-on-year +38 -48 +14
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,244 952 1,769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 2.92% 4.67%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.96% 9.26% 15.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,648 672 1,157
10th Percentile £456 £460 £425
25th Percentile £513 £515 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £663 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £588
% change year-on-year +4.35% -2.13% +2.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 32 89
10th Percentile £48.19 - £49.80
25th Percentile £60.00 £25.15 £58.49
Median hourly rate £74.50 £45.00 £67.81
Median % change year-on-year +65.56% -33.64% -4.71%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.34 £80.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £87.48 £98.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £70.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year +6.69% +6.87% -9.44%

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 17,321 10,276 11,062
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.71% 31.52% 29.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,524 6,433 6,726
10th Percentile £350 £282 £313
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £709 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,394 866 615
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.73
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -48.21% -9.54%
75th Percentile £72.25 £42.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -4.21%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +33 2,119 £600 +4.35% 1,124
UK excluding London +20 1,616 £600 +4.35% 904
South East +6 844 £600 +4.35% 291
South West +7 519 £575 -4.17% 262
London +52 484 £625 - 211
Work from Home +53 348 £555 -7.50% 507
East of England +24 114 £663 +20.45% 117
North of England -26 57 £600 +11.63% 101
Midlands -72 43 £600 +1.05% 54
North West -19 38 £775 +55.00% 71
West Midlands -77 37 £600 +1.05% 28
Scotland -5 36 £669 +27.33% 86
Yorkshire -27 14 £510 - 11
East Midlands - 6 £631 - 26
Northern Ireland +4 5 £638 +6.25% 5
North East -36 5 £463 -26.00% 19
Wales -12 4 - - 6

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 72 (3.21%) Confluence
2 59 (2.63%) SharePoint
3 43 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.67%) Apache
5 9 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.36%) Apache Spark
6 8 (0.36%) CMS
7 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 5 (0.22%) IIS
8 5 (0.22%) nginx
9 4 (0.18%) Camunda
10 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.089%) Mule
11 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
11 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.045%) Mattermost
Applications
1 67 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (2.14%) Microsoft Project
3 35 (1.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 24 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.85%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.76%) Revit
6 17 (0.76%) SOLIDWORKS
7 10 (0.45%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.045%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Oracle ERP
2 19 (0.85%) Remedy ITSM
2 19 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.71%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 16 (0.71%) Teamcenter
4 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.18%) Primavera
5 4 (0.18%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.13%) SAP PP
7 2 (0.089%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
8 1 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.045%) Oracle Payroll
8 1 (0.045%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 309 (13.77%) Azure
2 300 (13.37%) AWS
3 113 (5.04%) GCP
4 61 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
5 58 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
6 47 (2.09%) GitHub
7 43 (1.92%) Entra ID
8 40 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
9 38 (1.69%) Serverless
10 37 (1.65%) Power Platform
11 30 (1.34%) OCI
11 30 (1.34%) OpenShift
12 28 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
13 24 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
14 21 (0.94%) Amazon ECS
15 20 (0.89%) IaaS
16 18 (0.80%) Amazon S3
16 18 (0.80%) Amazon SQS
16 18 (0.80%) SaaS
17 17 (0.76%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 171 (7.62%) DNS
2 126 (5.61%) Firewall
3 84 (3.74%) DHCP
4 76 (3.39%) Network Security
5 60 (2.67%) WAN
6 58 (2.58%) TCP/IP
7 53 (2.36%) VPN
8 52 (2.32%) BGP
9 50 (2.23%) LAN
10 37 (1.65%) MPLS
10 37 (1.65%) VSAN
11 32 (1.43%) IPsec
12 28 (1.25%) VLAN
13 24 (1.07%) SSL
14 18 (0.80%) OSPF
14 18 (0.80%) SAN
14 18 (0.80%) SD-WAN
15 16 (0.71%) Cisco ASA
16 15 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
17 14 (0.62%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (2.27%) SQL Server
2 45 (2.01%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.07%) Metadata
5 23 (1.02%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.98%) Power BI
7 20 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
8 19 (0.85%) Data Lake
9 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (0.67%) MongoDB
10 10 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
11 9 (0.40%) Big Data
11 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 11g
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
12 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.31%) MySQL
14 6 (0.27%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 110 (4.90%) JIRA
2 85 (3.79%) GitLab
3 81 (3.61%) Jenkins
4 80 (3.57%) Git
5 31 (1.38%) Selenium
6 16 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 12 (0.53%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.45%) MSI
9 8 (0.36%) JUnit
9 8 (0.36%) Postman
9 8 (0.36%) REST Assured
9 8 (0.36%) SonarQube
10 7 (0.31%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.31%) JMeter
10 7 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
10 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.27%) Gatling
12 5 (0.22%) Maven
13 4 (0.18%) TestNG
General
1 503 (22.42%) Social Skills
2 274 (12.21%) Public Sector
3 170 (7.58%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (6.19%) Finance
5 70 (3.12%) Documentation Skills
6 69 (3.07%) Military
7 50 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (1.60%) Aerospace
8 36 (1.60%) Police
9 35 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 35 (1.56%) Law
9 35 (1.56%) Manufacturing
10 33 (1.47%) Legal
11 30 (1.34%) Telecoms
12 11 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (0.40%) Local Government
14 7 (0.31%) Marketing
15 6 (0.27%) Automotive
16 5 (0.22%) Back Office
17 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 393 (17.51%) Architect
2 226 (10.07%) Lead
3 191 (8.51%) Senior
4 159 (7.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 152 (6.77%) Developer
6 150 (6.68%) Consultant
7 129 (5.75%) Analyst
8 94 (4.19%) Security Architect
9 78 (3.48%) Network Engineer
10 74 (3.30%) Cloud Engineer
11 65 (2.90%) Support Engineer
12 63 (2.81%) SOC Analyst
13 58 (2.58%) DevOps Engineer
14 54 (2.41%) Project Manager
15 51 (2.27%) Technical Architect
16 50 (2.23%) DBA
17 48 (2.14%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 48 (2.14%) Solutions Architect
18 42 (1.87%) Network Architect
19 41 (1.83%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (9.27%) Terraform
2 75 (3.34%) REST
3 40 (1.78%) LDAP
4 32 (1.43%) Elastic Stack
5 30 (1.34%) React
6 27 (1.20%) Kafka
7 26 (1.16%) SOAP
8 25 (1.11%) RESTful
9 19 (0.85%) Apache NiFi
10 18 (0.80%) Node.js
11 17 (0.76%) XML
12 16 (0.71%) AngularJS
12 16 (0.71%) JSON
12 16 (0.71%) OAuth
13 15 (0.67%) FastAPI
13 15 (0.67%) Keycloak
13 15 (0.67%) Spring
14 14 (0.62%) Spring Boot
15 13 (0.58%) .NET
15 13 (0.58%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 106 (4.72%) Cloud Native
2 102 (4.55%) Data Centre
3 101 (4.50%) PKI
4 84 (3.74%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 41 (1.83%) Product Ownership
7 40 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
8 39 (1.74%) Private Cloud
9 37 (1.65%) Security Operations Centre
10 36 (1.60%) Cyber Threat
11 31 (1.38%) Security Posture
12 26 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
13 25 (1.11%) Public Cloud
14 20 (0.89%) Clustering
15 18 (0.80%) CMDB
15 18 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
15 18 (0.80%) Virtual Team
16 14 (0.62%) Replication
17 13 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
18 12 (0.53%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 392 (17.47%) Windows
2 250 (11.14%) Linux
3 187 (8.33%) Windows Server
4 44 (1.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.38%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
7 21 (0.94%) Ubuntu
8 20 (0.89%) Unix
9 18 (0.80%) CentOS
10 13 (0.58%) 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 2016
13 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Debian
14 4 (0.18%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 392 (17.47%) Agile
2 293 (13.06%) Continuous Improvement
3 281 (12.52%) Stakeholder Management
4 270 (12.03%) CI/CD
5 239 (10.65%) DevOps
6 227 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
7 226 (10.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 224 (9.98%) Cybersecurity
9 218 (9.71%) Infrastructure as Code
10 213 (9.49%) Technical Leadership
11 202 (9.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 185 (8.24%) ITIL
13 152 (6.77%) Containerisation
14 151 (6.73%) ITSM
15 149 (6.64%) Service Management
16 134 (5.97%) SIEM
17 132 (5.88%) Project Delivery
18 126 (5.61%) Decision-Making
19 122 (5.44%) Risk Management
20 114 (5.08%) AI
Programming Languages
1 246 (10.96%) Python
2 190 (8.47%) PowerShell
3 130 (5.79%) SQL
4 94 (4.19%) Bash
5 75 (3.34%) Java
6 41 (1.83%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.69%) C#
8 28 (1.25%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.85%) Go
10 17 (0.76%) Bicep
11 14 (0.62%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.58%) PL/SQL
13 10 (0.45%) C++
13 10 (0.45%) Shell Script
14 7 (0.31%) Groovy
15 6 (0.27%) C
15 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.27%) Perl
15 6 (0.27%) X++
16 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,244 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 700 (31.19%) SC Cleared
3 89 (3.97%) Degree
4 72 (3.21%) CISSP
5 42 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
5 42 (1.87%) CISM
6 27 (1.20%) AWS Certification
6 27 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
7 26 (1.16%) CCNP
8 24 (1.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 23 (1.02%) ISTQB
9 23 (1.02%) VCAP
10 22 (0.98%) PMI Certification
11 20 (0.89%) Azure Certification
11 20 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
12 18 (0.80%) PMP
13 13 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
13 13 (0.58%) MCSE
14 12 (0.53%) CCNA
14 12 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (4.14%) NCSC
1 93 (4.14%) NIST
2 81 (3.61%) PMO
3 79 (3.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 65 (2.90%) QA
5 38 (1.69%) JSP 440
6 36 (1.60%) SLA
7 31 (1.38%) GDPR
8 30 (1.34%) Data Quality
9 23 (1.02%) GRC
10 19 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 16 (0.71%) Accessibility
12 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
13 11 (0.49%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 8 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
15 8 (0.36%) RMADS
15 8 (0.36%) WCAG
16 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
17 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 255 (11.36%) Active Directory
2 200 (8.91%) VMware Infrastructure
3 142 (6.33%) Docker
4 87 (3.88%) VMware NSX
5 73 (3.25%) VMware ESXi
6 66 (2.94%) Hyper-V
7 54 (2.41%) vSphere
8 25 (1.11%) vCloud
9 19 (0.85%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.62%) NFS
11 12 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
12 11 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
13 10 (0.45%) Firmware
14 4 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.18%) KVM
14 4 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
16 2 (0.089%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 2 (0.089%) Squid
16 2 (0.089%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 223 (9.94%) Kubernetes
2 155 (6.91%) Ansible
3 82 (3.65%) vCenter Server
4 60 (2.67%) SCOM
5 36 (1.60%) SCCM
6 29 (1.29%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.20%) Grafana
8 22 (0.98%) Puppet
9 21 (0.94%) Nagios
10 20 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
11 17 (0.76%) VxRail
12 16 (0.71%) WMI
13 15 (0.67%) Avamar
13 15 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
14 14 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 14 (0.62%) Podman
14 14 (0.62%) WSUS
15 13 (0.58%) Data Guard
16 12 (0.53%) Istio
16 12 (0.53%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 322 (14.35%) Microsoft
2 274 (12.21%) VMware
3 118 (5.26%) Oracle
4 92 (4.10%) ServiceNow
5 76 (3.39%) Cisco
6 61 (2.72%) Google
7 56 (2.50%) Splunk
8 50 (2.23%) SAP
9 47 (2.09%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.96%) CyberArk
11 34 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.02%) Juniper
14 22 (0.98%) Dell
14 22 (0.98%) Remedy
15 19 (0.85%) BMC
15 19 (0.85%) Citrix
16 18 (0.80%) Broadcom
16 18 (0.80%) Thales
17 17 (0.76%) Atlassian