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 18 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 68 32
Rank change year-on-year +11 -36 +50
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,706 987 2,323
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.94% 3.37% 5.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 11.67% 11.04% 17.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,185 669 1,687
10th Percentile £423 £410 £406
25th Percentile £506 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% - -
75th Percentile £688 £676 £689
90th Percentile £738 £725 £776
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -4.17% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 30 103
10th Percentile £16.35 £35.75 £48.40
25th Percentile £19.32 £59.44 £56.65
Median hourly rate £48.35 £68.12 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.02% +9.88% -11.43%
75th Percentile £77.31 £81.91 £78.64
90th Percentile £91.63 £92.50 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.75 £72.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year -24.48% +16.00% -16.67%

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 14,619 8,939 13,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.79% 30.49% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,613 5,637 8,379
10th Percentile £333 £288 £300
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £715 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,077 474 1,019
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.72 £24.50 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.61 £42.50 £38.16
Median % change year-on-year -30.33% +11.39% -23.69%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £61.82
90th Percentile £84.00 £81.88 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £48.82 £39.92
% change year-on-year -43.66% +22.28% -17.79%

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 18 March 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 18 March 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 18 March 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 +2 1,554 £575 -4.17% 450
UK excluding London +5 1,196 £575 -4.17% 403
South East +8 628 £594 -1.04% 173
London +5 354 £575 -4.17% 86
South West -3 327 £564 -6.04% 108
Work from Home +19 216 £560 -2.61% 142
North of England -11 77 £675 +91.49% 49
Midlands -28 71 £575 -17.86% 25
East of England +1 64 £575 +2.22% 34
North West +12 63 £680 +231.71% 38
West Midlands -35 54 £569 -18.75% 19
Scotland -9 36 £652 +26.50% 14
East Midlands -26 17 £638 +15.91% 6
Yorkshire - 12 £644 - 8
Northern Ireland - 7 £600 - 1
Wales -5 3 - - 6
North East -20 2 - - 3

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 47 (2.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 44 (2.58%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.58%) Apache
4 25 (1.47%) Confluence
5 24 (1.41%) Skype for Business
6 15 (0.88%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.47%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.29%) Mattermost
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 58 (3.40%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.52%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.35%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.12%) Lectora
8 1 (0.059%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 22 (1.29%) Remedy ITSM
2 17 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.82%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 7 (0.41%) Maximo
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Applications
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.23%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.18%) SAP WM
7 2 (0.12%) SAP GRC
8 1 (0.059%) Oracle Payroll
8 1 (0.059%) Primavera
8 1 (0.059%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.059%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 154 (9.03%) AWS
2 128 (7.50%) Azure
3 50 (2.93%) GCP
3 50 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (2.70%) GitHub
5 38 (2.23%) IaaS
6 37 (2.17%) OpenShift
6 37 (2.17%) Serverless
7 35 (2.05%) PaaS
8 30 (1.76%) Azure DevOps
9 27 (1.58%) GitHub Actions
10 22 (1.29%) Amazon S3
11 19 (1.11%) Amazon EC2
12 16 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
12 16 (0.94%) Entra ID
13 15 (0.88%) Power Platform
14 14 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
14 14 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
15 13 (0.76%) Azure AKS
15 13 (0.76%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 127 (7.44%) Firewall
2 103 (6.04%) DNS
3 77 (4.51%) Network Security
4 61 (3.58%) LAN
5 58 (3.40%) WAN
6 55 (3.22%) VPN
7 46 (2.70%) DHCP
8 43 (2.52%) TCP/IP
9 42 (2.46%) BGP
10 31 (1.82%) OSPF
11 29 (1.70%) Junos
12 26 (1.52%) Skype
13 23 (1.35%) Cisco ISE
14 21 (1.23%) Cisco IOS
15 19 (1.11%) Ethernet VPN
16 18 (1.06%) MPLS
16 18 (1.06%) VLAN
16 18 (1.06%) VXLAN
17 16 (0.94%) BIG-IP
17 16 (0.94%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
2 26 (1.52%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (1.06%) SQL Server
4 16 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
4 16 (0.94%) Big Data
5 14 (0.82%) Hadoop
5 14 (0.82%) Oracle Database
6 12 (0.70%) Power BI
7 11 (0.64%) MongoDB
7 11 (0.64%) Redis
8 10 (0.59%) Relational Database
9 8 (0.47%) Metadata
9 8 (0.47%) MySQL
10 7 (0.41%) InfluxDB
10 7 (0.41%) SAP HANA
11 5 (0.29%) SAP Data Services
12 4 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
12 4 (0.23%) DynamoDB
12 4 (0.23%) Metadata Repository
12 4 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 58 (3.40%) JIRA
2 28 (1.64%) GitLab
3 27 (1.58%) Git
4 25 (1.47%) Jenkins
5 11 (0.64%) Maven
6 10 (0.59%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.41%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.35%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.35%) Robot Framework
10 5 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.23%) Oracle APEX
12 3 (0.18%) Postman
12 3 (0.18%) Selenium
12 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 2 (0.12%) CircleCI
13 2 (0.12%) MLflow
13 2 (0.12%) REST Assured
13 2 (0.12%) Snyk
13 2 (0.12%) webpack
General
1 312 (18.29%) Social Skills
2 204 (11.96%) Public Sector
3 130 (7.62%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (4.63%) Finance
5 65 (3.81%) Military
6 53 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.87%) Legal
8 29 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
9 23 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
9 23 (1.35%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.29%) Aerospace
11 18 (1.06%) Law
11 18 (1.06%) Police
12 17 (1.00%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.82%) Marketing
14 13 (0.76%) Electronics
15 10 (0.59%) Banking
16 6 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 3 (0.18%) Influencing Skills
18 2 (0.12%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 308 (18.05%) Architect
2 109 (6.39%) Senior
3 103 (6.04%) Analyst
4 92 (5.39%) Lead
5 86 (5.04%) Network Engineer
6 85 (4.98%) Consultant
7 74 (4.34%) Technical Architect
8 71 (4.16%) Developer
9 57 (3.34%) Tester
10 56 (3.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 51 (2.99%) DevOps Engineer
11 51 (2.99%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 48 (2.81%) SOC Analyst
13 45 (2.64%) Security Architect
13 45 (2.64%) Support Engineer
14 41 (2.40%) Project Manager
15 37 (2.17%) 3rd Line Engineer
15 37 (2.17%) Solutions Architect
16 36 (2.11%) Infrastructure Architect
16 36 (2.11%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (2.23%) REST
2 28 (1.64%) Apache NiFi
3 26 (1.52%) OAuth
4 23 (1.35%) React
5 20 (1.17%) OpenID
6 19 (1.11%) Kafka
6 19 (1.11%) OAuth2
6 19 (1.11%) SAML
7 15 (0.88%) 802.1X
7 15 (0.88%) Flask
7 15 (0.88%) Node.js
8 14 (0.82%) FastAPI
8 14 (0.82%) Web Services
9 13 (0.76%) LDAP
10 12 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
11 11 (0.64%) .NET
11 11 (0.64%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (0.59%) ModSecurity
12 10 (0.59%) Spring
13 9 (0.53%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 104 (6.10%) PKI
2 65 (3.81%) Data Centre
3 40 (2.34%) Security Operations Centre
4 38 (2.23%) Management Information System
5 26 (1.52%) Cloud Native
6 24 (1.41%) Clustering
7 22 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
8 21 (1.23%) Cyber Threat
9 20 (1.17%) Cyberattack
9 20 (1.17%) Product Ownership
10 18 (1.06%) Onboarding
11 17 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
11 17 (1.00%) Replication
12 14 (0.82%) Driving Licence
12 14 (0.82%) Legacy Systems
12 14 (0.82%) Private Cloud
13 13 (0.76%) Insider Threat
14 11 (0.64%) CSOC
14 11 (0.64%) Cyber Defence
14 11 (0.64%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 252 (14.77%) Windows
2 174 (10.20%) Linux
3 78 (4.57%) Windows Server
4 31 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 27 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.94%) Windows 7
7 14 (0.82%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.64%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.59%) Android
10 7 (0.41%) CentOS
10 7 (0.41%) VMS
11 6 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.29%) Unix
13 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.18%) Debian
14 3 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.12%) Rocky
16 1 (0.059%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 285 (16.71%) Agile
2 215 (12.60%) Problem-Solving
3 156 (9.14%) Cybersecurity
4 146 (8.56%) DevOps
4 146 (8.56%) ITIL
5 128 (7.50%) CI/CD
6 126 (7.39%) Service Management
7 106 (6.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 106 (6.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 105 (6.15%) Continuous Improvement
9 95 (5.57%) ITSM
10 93 (5.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 79 (4.63%) Risk Management
12 75 (4.40%) Infrastructure as Code
12 75 (4.40%) Project Delivery
13 71 (4.16%) SIEM
14 70 (4.10%) Incident Response
15 68 (3.99%) Containerisation
15 68 (3.99%) Project Management
16 64 (3.75%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 148 (8.68%) Python
2 123 (7.21%) PowerShell
3 56 (3.28%) SQL
4 46 (2.70%) Java
5 29 (1.70%) JavaScript
6 22 (1.29%) Bash
7 20 (1.17%) TypeScript
8 18 (1.06%) C#
9 17 (1.00%) Go
10 15 (0.88%) Shell Script
11 12 (0.70%) C++
12 8 (0.47%) Bicep
12 8 (0.47%) VB
13 7 (0.41%) C
13 7 (0.41%) VBScript
14 6 (0.35%) ABAP
14 6 (0.35%) Rust
15 5 (0.29%) Embedded C
15 5 (0.29%) PL/SQL
16 4 (0.23%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,706 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 541 (31.71%) SC Cleared
3 59 (3.46%) CISSP
4 58 (3.40%) Degree
5 47 (2.75%) Cisco Certification
6 38 (2.23%) CISM
7 31 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
8 27 (1.58%) CompTIA Security+
9 23 (1.35%) CCNP
10 21 (1.23%) CESG Certified Professional
11 20 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (1.11%) AWS Certification
12 19 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
12 19 (1.11%) CCNA
13 18 (1.06%) GIAC
14 16 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
14 16 (0.94%) CTC Cleared
15 14 (0.82%) Azure Certification
15 14 (0.82%) JNCIS
16 10 (0.59%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (4.75%) NIST
2 66 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (3.28%) NCSC
4 42 (2.46%) QA
5 38 (2.23%) PMO
6 36 (2.11%) JSP 440
7 21 (1.23%) GRC
8 17 (1.00%) RMADS
9 16 (0.94%) GDPR
10 15 (0.88%) NIST 800
11 14 (0.82%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.82%) SLA
12 11 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 9 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
14 6 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 6 (0.35%) P3O
15 5 (0.29%) Government Security Classifications
16 4 (0.23%) Accessibility
17 3 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 118 (6.92%) Active Directory
2 90 (5.28%) Docker
3 79 (4.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (2.64%) VMware NSX
5 30 (1.76%) VMware ESXi
6 19 (1.11%) vSphere
7 18 (1.06%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.82%) BitLocker
9 10 (0.59%) vCloud
10 9 (0.53%) Firmware
11 7 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
14 3 (0.18%) GPFS
14 3 (0.18%) Lustre
14 3 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.12%) NFS
15 2 (0.12%) UAG
15 2 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 138 (8.09%) Kubernetes
2 110 (6.45%) Terraform
3 78 (4.57%) Ansible
4 48 (2.81%) vCenter Server
5 35 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
6 33 (1.93%) Grafana
7 32 (1.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 31 (1.82%) SCCM
9 27 (1.58%) Prometheus
10 16 (0.94%) FortiGate
11 14 (0.82%) WMI
12 13 (0.76%) Puppet
13 12 (0.70%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.59%) SCOM
15 9 (0.53%) Podman
15 9 (0.53%) VxRail
16 8 (0.47%) Forefront Identity Manager
16 8 (0.47%) NetIQ Identity Manager
17 7 (0.41%) Nessus
17 7 (0.41%) vMotion
Vendors
1 218 (12.78%) Microsoft
2 162 (9.50%) VMware
3 107 (6.27%) Cisco
4 57 (3.34%) Juniper
4 57 (3.34%) Splunk
5 48 (2.81%) Oracle
6 46 (2.70%) ServiceNow
7 44 (2.58%) SAP
8 42 (2.46%) Red Hat
9 40 (2.34%) NetApp
10 29 (1.70%) SolarWinds
11 27 (1.58%) F5
12 24 (1.41%) Remedy
13 23 (1.35%) Dell
14 22 (1.29%) Fortinet
15 21 (1.23%) Palo Alto
16 20 (1.17%) Palantir
17 16 (0.94%) Google
17 16 (0.94%) Sparx
18 15 (0.88%) Citrix