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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 80 36
Rank change year-on-year +30 -44 +17
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,184 1,004 1,900
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.07% 3.09% 4.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.97% 9.87% 16.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,659 705 1,313
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £515 £519 £510
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £590 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -1.67% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £651 £688
90th Percentile £763 £716 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £580 £585
% change year-on-year +3.45% -0.85% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 96 39 93
10th Percentile £35.00 - £50.25
25th Percentile £54.75 £25.15 £60.00
Median hourly rate £74.16 £50.00 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +48.32% -28.97% +0.56%
75th Percentile £92.53 £81.18 £80.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.30 £89.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.32 £79.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -6.34% +12.73% -2.77%

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 16,845 10,168 11,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.41% 31.28% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,289 6,291 7,134
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £628 £622 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,265 820 723
10th Percentile £17.40 £17.98 £15.18
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.18
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -47.80% -12.40%
75th Percentile £72.50 £50.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £86.70 £72.50 £76.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +25 2,052 £600 +2.13% 1,068
UK excluding London +11 1,558 £600 +3.45% 901
South East +4 877 £600 - 283
London +52 471 £600 -4.00% 256
South West +3 436 £590 -1.67% 292
Work from Home +44 335 £561 -4.67% 569
East of England +11 93 £663 +20.45% 173
North of England -3 65 £775 +34.78% 82
Midlands -64 47 £600 - 24
North West -8 44 £863 +72.50% 67
West Midlands -70 41 £600 - 14
Scotland -3 35 £669 +27.33% 68
Yorkshire -26 16 £518 -17.20% 11
East Midlands - 6 £625 - 10
Northern Ireland +6 5 £638 -8.93% 3
North East -38 5 £463 -26.00% 7
Wales -14 4 - - 1

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 66 (3.02%) Confluence
2 48 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (0.64%) Apache
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.27%) CMS
7 5 (0.23%) Apache Spark
8 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
8 3 (0.14%) nginx
9 2 (0.092%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.092%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.092%) Camunda
9 2 (0.092%) Mule
9 2 (0.092%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.092%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.046%) JBoss
10 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 56 (2.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
3 28 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
5 15 (0.69%) AutoCAD
5 15 (0.69%) Revit
5 15 (0.69%) SOLIDWORKS
6 9 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.23%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.28%) Oracle ERP
3 22 (1.01%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.82%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.27%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Assets
11 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
11 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.046%) SAP PLM
11 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 292 (13.37%) Azure
2 286 (13.10%) AWS
3 107 (4.90%) GCP
4 56 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
5 48 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
6 47 (2.15%) GitHub
7 40 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
8 38 (1.74%) Entra ID
9 37 (1.69%) Power Platform
9 37 (1.69%) Serverless
10 33 (1.51%) OCI
11 28 (1.28%) IaaS
12 26 (1.19%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (1.14%) PaaS
14 23 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
15 22 (1.01%) OpenShift
16 21 (0.96%) Amazon ECS
17 19 (0.87%) Amazon S3
17 19 (0.87%) SaaS
18 17 (0.78%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 163 (7.46%) DNS
2 122 (5.59%) Firewall
3 80 (3.66%) DHCP
4 67 (3.07%) Network Security
5 61 (2.79%) WAN
6 54 (2.47%) TCP/IP
6 54 (2.47%) VPN
7 53 (2.43%) LAN
8 48 (2.20%) BGP
9 41 (1.88%) VSAN
10 34 (1.56%) MPLS
11 33 (1.51%) IPsec
12 28 (1.28%) VLAN
13 18 (0.82%) SSL
14 17 (0.78%) Cisco ASA
15 16 (0.73%) OSPF
15 16 (0.73%) SAN
16 15 (0.69%) Cisco Firepower
17 14 (0.64%) Cisco Nexus
17 14 (0.64%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (2.47%) SQL Server
2 43 (1.97%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (1.01%) Power BI
5 20 (0.92%) Metadata
6 18 (0.82%) Data Lake
6 18 (0.82%) MongoDB
7 16 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
8 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
9 12 (0.55%) Relational Database
10 9 (0.41%) NoSQL
10 9 (0.41%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.37%) BigQuery
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
12 7 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (0.27%) Big Data
14 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 104 (4.76%) JIRA
2 71 (3.25%) GitLab
3 61 (2.79%) Jenkins
4 57 (2.61%) Git
5 22 (1.01%) Selenium
6 15 (0.69%) Cypress.io
7 7 (0.32%) Cucumber
7 7 (0.32%) MSI
7 7 (0.32%) Postman
7 7 (0.32%) REST Assured
7 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 6 (0.27%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.27%) SpecFlow
9 5 (0.23%) Artifactory
9 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.18%) Gatling
10 4 (0.18%) JMeter
10 4 (0.18%) JUnit
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 457 (20.92%) Social Skills
2 278 (12.73%) Public Sector
3 158 (7.23%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (6.27%) Finance
5 64 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
6 62 (2.84%) Military
7 42 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
8 39 (1.79%) Legal
9 33 (1.51%) Law
10 32 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (1.42%) Police
12 29 (1.33%) Telecoms
13 27 (1.24%) Manufacturing
14 23 (1.05%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (0.41%) Local Government
17 7 (0.32%) Marketing
18 5 (0.23%) Advertising
19 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
19 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 353 (16.16%) Architect
2 239 (10.94%) Lead
3 193 (8.84%) Senior
4 154 (7.05%) Consultant
5 152 (6.96%) Developer
6 149 (6.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 135 (6.18%) Analyst
8 89 (4.08%) Security Architect
9 79 (3.62%) Network Engineer
10 72 (3.30%) SOC Analyst
11 68 (3.11%) Cloud Engineer
12 59 (2.70%) Project Manager
12 59 (2.70%) Technical Architect
13 57 (2.61%) Support Engineer
14 54 (2.47%) DevOps Engineer
15 51 (2.34%) DBA
16 46 (2.11%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 41 (1.88%) DV Cleared Project Manager
17 41 (1.88%) Lead Architect
18 39 (1.79%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (8.93%) Terraform
2 76 (3.48%) REST
3 29 (1.33%) Elastic Stack
4 28 (1.28%) React
5 27 (1.24%) SOAP
6 21 (0.96%) RESTful
7 20 (0.92%) LDAP
8 18 (0.82%) Kafka
9 17 (0.78%) Node.js
10 15 (0.69%) .NET
10 15 (0.69%) Apache NiFi
11 14 (0.64%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.64%) Spring
11 14 (0.64%) Spring Boot
12 13 (0.60%) XML
13 12 (0.55%) ARM Templates
13 12 (0.55%) FastAPI
13 12 (0.55%) Flask
13 12 (0.55%) OAuth
13 12 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.67%) Cloud Native
2 98 (4.49%) PKI
3 97 (4.44%) Data Centre
4 75 (3.43%) Onboarding
5 44 (2.01%) Security Operations Centre
6 40 (1.83%) Private Cloud
7 37 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
7 37 (1.69%) Management Information System
8 36 (1.65%) Product Ownership
9 29 (1.33%) Public Cloud
10 28 (1.28%) Cyber Threat
11 27 (1.24%) Security Posture
12 25 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
13 22 (1.01%) Clustering
13 22 (1.01%) CMDB
14 17 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
14 17 (0.78%) Virtual Team
15 14 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (0.64%) Replication
16 12 (0.55%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 356 (16.30%) Windows
2 244 (11.17%) Linux
3 171 (7.83%) Windows Server
4 37 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (1.33%) Windows 10
6 25 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
7 20 (0.92%) Unix
8 16 (0.73%) Ubuntu
9 13 (0.60%) CentOS
10 11 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
11 8 (0.37%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.32%) AIX
13 6 (0.27%) Android
14 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
14 5 (0.23%) Debian
14 5 (0.23%) VMS
14 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.18%) Rocky
15 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 373 (17.08%) Agile
2 259 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
3 256 (11.72%) Stakeholder Management
4 240 (10.99%) CI/CD
5 226 (10.35%) Cybersecurity
6 213 (9.75%) Problem-Solving
7 208 (9.52%) DevOps
8 201 (9.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 195 (8.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 185 (8.47%) Technical Leadership
11 184 (8.42%) Infrastructure as Code
12 180 (8.24%) ITIL
13 147 (6.73%) Service Management
14 137 (6.27%) ITSM
15 132 (6.04%) Containerisation
16 123 (5.63%) Risk Management
17 120 (5.49%) Project Delivery
18 118 (5.40%) Decision-Making
19 117 (5.36%) SIEM
20 106 (4.85%) AI
Programming Languages
1 224 (10.26%) Python
2 179 (8.20%) PowerShell
3 127 (5.82%) SQL
4 91 (4.17%) Bash
5 67 (3.07%) Java
6 38 (1.74%) JavaScript
7 36 (1.65%) C#
8 26 (1.19%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.82%) Bicep
10 16 (0.73%) Go
11 15 (0.69%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
13 12 (0.55%) C++
14 11 (0.50%) Shell Script
15 10 (0.46%) C
16 7 (0.32%) Groovy
17 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.27%) Perl
17 6 (0.27%) X++
18 5 (0.23%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,184 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 708 (32.42%) SC Cleared
3 76 (3.48%) Degree
4 71 (3.25%) CISSP
5 46 (2.11%) CISM
6 37 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 27 (1.24%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 24 (1.10%) AWS Certification
9 24 (1.10%) VCAP
10 21 (0.96%) ISTQB
10 21 (0.96%) PMI Certification
11 19 (0.87%) PMP
11 19 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
12 18 (0.82%) CCNP
13 15 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
13 15 (0.69%) MCSE
14 14 (0.64%) Azure Certification
15 12 (0.55%) CompTIA Security+
16 11 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.08%) NCSC
2 85 (3.89%) NIST
3 82 (3.75%) PMO
4 71 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 58 (2.66%) QA
6 41 (1.88%) JSP 440
7 32 (1.47%) GDPR
8 30 (1.37%) SLA
9 25 (1.14%) Data Quality
10 21 (0.96%) GRC
11 17 (0.78%) Accessibility
12 16 (0.73%) Government Security Classifications
12 16 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 15 (0.69%) RMADS
14 11 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 10 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
16 8 (0.37%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.37%) WCAG
17 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
System Software
1 213 (9.75%) Active Directory
2 195 (8.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 125 (5.72%) Docker
4 92 (4.21%) VMware NSX
5 78 (3.57%) VMware ESXi
6 62 (2.84%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.43%) vSphere
8 27 (1.24%) vCloud
9 17 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
10 13 (0.60%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.41%) NFS
12 8 (0.37%) Firmware
12 8 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
13 6 (0.27%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.23%) Ceph
15 4 (0.18%) KVM
15 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 204 (9.34%) Kubernetes
2 143 (6.55%) Ansible
3 87 (3.98%) vCenter Server
4 55 (2.52%) SCOM
5 33 (1.51%) SCCM
6 26 (1.19%) Prometheus
7 24 (1.10%) Grafana
8 22 (1.01%) Puppet
9 17 (0.78%) Nagios
10 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
10 16 (0.73%) Oracle RMAN
11 15 (0.69%) Podman
11 15 (0.69%) VxRail
12 14 (0.64%) Avamar
12 14 (0.64%) Data Guard
13 13 (0.60%) WMI
13 13 (0.60%) WSUS
14 12 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.55%) Istio
15 11 (0.50%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 286 (13.10%) Microsoft
2 279 (12.77%) VMware
3 113 (5.17%) Oracle
4 103 (4.72%) ServiceNow
5 83 (3.80%) Cisco
6 62 (2.84%) SAP
7 60 (2.75%) Splunk
8 57 (2.61%) Google
9 40 (1.83%) SolarWinds
10 35 (1.60%) Red Hat
11 33 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 30 (1.37%) Juniper
13 25 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 24 (1.10%) Remedy
15 23 (1.05%) Citrix
15 23 (1.05%) Dell
16 20 (0.92%) BMC
16 20 (0.92%) NetApp
17 18 (0.82%) Sparx
18 17 (0.78%) Thales