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 23 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 80 32
Rank change year-on-year +32 -48 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,160 986 2,269
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 3.02% 5.52%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.09% 9.79% 18.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,638 681 1,609
10th Percentile £430 £458 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -
75th Percentile £688 £663 £688
90th Percentile £750 £715 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 38 112
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.15 £49.10
25th Percentile £41.25 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £63.14 £63.25 £70.78
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% -10.64% +1.11%
75th Percentile £83.13 £82.08 £85.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.91 £89.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -22.07% +15.09% -6.15%

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 16,505 10,067 12,307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.30% 30.82% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,025 6,245 7,756
10th Percentile £350 £277 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -0.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 744 971
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £20.75
Median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.75% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 +27 2,015 £600 +1.69% 533
UK excluding London +10 1,534 £600 +4.35% 428
South East +6 873 £600 - 187
London +62 456 £600 -4.00% 116
South West -1 389 £575 -2.54% 151
Work from Home +45 328 £575 -2.54% 182
East of England +10 97 £650 +18.18% 26
North of England -5 76 £775 +24.00% 42
Midlands -53 57 £600 - 20
North West -1 51 £825 +82.32% 29
West Midlands -68 45 £600 - 16
Scotland +26 39 £669 +33.70% 5
Yorkshire -31 20 £510 -18.40% 8
East Midlands -2 12 £631 +14.77% 4
Northern Ireland +10 5 £619 - 1
North East -34 5 £463 -26.00% 5
Wales -13 4 - - 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 58 (2.69%) Confluence
2 40 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 38 (1.76%) SharePoint
4 9 (0.42%) Apache
4 9 (0.42%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
7 5 (0.23%) CMS
8 3 (0.14%) nginx
9 2 (0.093%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.093%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.093%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.046%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.046%) JBoss
10 1 (0.046%) Mule
10 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 48 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (1.85%) Microsoft Project
3 22 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.51%) AutoCAD
5 11 (0.51%) Revit
5 11 (0.51%) SOLIDWORKS
5 11 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.14%) Simulink
8 2 (0.093%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 33 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
3 19 (0.88%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
5 7 (0.32%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.093%) Primavera
9 2 (0.093%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Payables
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.046%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.046%) SAP PLM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 256 (11.85%) Azure
2 250 (11.57%) AWS
3 101 (4.68%) GCP
4 58 (2.69%) Azure DevOps
5 50 (2.31%) GitHub
6 42 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
7 41 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
8 38 (1.76%) IaaS
9 37 (1.71%) PaaS
10 36 (1.67%) Serverless
11 34 (1.57%) Power Platform
12 32 (1.48%) Entra ID
13 28 (1.30%) OpenShift
14 24 (1.11%) OCI
15 23 (1.06%) AWS Lambda
16 20 (0.93%) Amazon EKS
17 18 (0.83%) Amazon S3
17 18 (0.83%) SaaS
18 17 (0.79%) Amazon ECS
18 17 (0.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 145 (6.71%) DNS
2 125 (5.79%) Firewall
3 80 (3.70%) Network Security
4 75 (3.47%) WAN
5 74 (3.43%) DHCP
6 70 (3.24%) LAN
7 57 (2.64%) BGP
8 55 (2.55%) VPN
9 42 (1.94%) TCP/IP
10 33 (1.53%) VSAN
11 32 (1.48%) OSPF
12 31 (1.44%) IPsec
13 29 (1.34%) MPLS
14 28 (1.30%) VLAN
15 23 (1.06%) VXLAN
16 21 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
17 19 (0.88%) Cisco ASA
18 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
19 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
20 16 (0.74%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (2.13%) SQL Server
2 39 (1.81%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 23 (1.06%) Power BI
6 19 (0.88%) Metadata
7 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
8 11 (0.51%) Data Lake
9 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.42%) MongoDB
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (0.32%) Big Data
12 7 (0.32%) BigQuery
12 7 (0.32%) Hadoop
12 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
13 6 (0.28%) Redis
14 5 (0.23%) MariaDB
14 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 4 (0.19%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 92 (4.26%) JIRA
2 49 (2.27%) GitLab
3 46 (2.13%) Jenkins
4 39 (1.81%) Git
5 14 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 10 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.23%) Postman
8 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
8 5 (0.23%) Visual Studio
9 4 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.19%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) ERwin
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 370 (17.13%) Social Skills
2 278 (12.87%) Public Sector
3 139 (6.44%) Analytical Skills
4 121 (5.60%) Finance
5 80 (3.70%) Military
6 52 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.18%) Legal
8 34 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
9 26 (1.20%) Law
10 24 (1.11%) Police
11 22 (1.02%) Telecoms
12 21 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (0.79%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.69%) Aerospace
14 15 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.32%) Local Government
15 7 (0.32%) Marketing
16 5 (0.23%) Advertising
17 4 (0.19%) Aviation
18 3 (0.14%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 336 (15.56%) Architect
2 228 (10.56%) Lead
3 196 (9.07%) Senior
4 147 (6.81%) Analyst
5 145 (6.71%) Developer
6 140 (6.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 133 (6.16%) Consultant
8 91 (4.21%) Network Engineer
9 81 (3.75%) Security Architect
10 76 (3.52%) SOC Analyst
10 76 (3.52%) Technical Architect
11 58 (2.69%) Project Manager
12 52 (2.41%) DBA
13 51 (2.36%) DevOps Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) Cloud Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 44 (2.04%) Network Architect
15 44 (2.04%) Senior Network Engineer
16 43 (1.99%) Support Engineer
17 42 (1.94%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (3.24%) REST
2 32 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.25%) React
4 24 (1.11%) SOAP
5 21 (0.97%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 18 (0.83%) 802.1X
8 17 (0.79%) Node.js
9 16 (0.74%) Spring
10 15 (0.69%) .NET
10 15 (0.69%) Spring Boot
11 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.65%) Flask
12 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
12 13 (0.60%) FastAPI
13 12 (0.56%) ModSecurity
14 9 (0.42%) ARM Templates
14 9 (0.42%) LDAP
14 9 (0.42%) Web Services
15 8 (0.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.72%) Data Centre
2 97 (4.49%) PKI
3 75 (3.47%) Cloud Native
4 59 (2.73%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.31%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.76%) Clustering
7 36 (1.67%) Private Cloud
8 34 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
9 32 (1.48%) Product Ownership
10 31 (1.44%) Management Information System
11 28 (1.30%) Cyber Threat
12 26 (1.20%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.16%) CMDB
13 25 (1.16%) Public Cloud
14 24 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
15 22 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
16 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
17 15 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
18 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
18 13 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 302 (13.98%) Windows
2 228 (10.56%) Linux
3 136 (6.30%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.88%) Windows 10
6 16 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 8 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) CentOS
9 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) VMS
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 370 (17.13%) Agile
2 219 (10.14%) Problem-Solving
3 206 (9.54%) CI/CD
3 206 (9.54%) ITIL
4 203 (9.40%) Cybersecurity
5 196 (9.07%) Continuous Improvement
6 194 (8.98%) DevOps
7 189 (8.75%) Stakeholder Management
8 187 (8.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 168 (7.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 155 (7.18%) Service Management
11 139 (6.44%) Infrastructure as Code
12 125 (5.79%) Technical Leadership
13 122 (5.65%) ITSM
14 110 (5.09%) Project Delivery
15 107 (4.95%) Containerisation
15 107 (4.95%) Risk Management
16 101 (4.68%) Service Delivery
17 100 (4.63%) Roadmaps
18 99 (4.58%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 195 (9.03%) Python
2 139 (6.44%) PowerShell
3 109 (5.05%) SQL
4 64 (2.96%) Bash
5 62 (2.87%) Java
6 45 (2.08%) JavaScript
7 30 (1.39%) C#
7 30 (1.39%) TypeScript
8 19 (0.88%) Go
9 16 (0.74%) Bicep
10 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.56%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.42%) Rust
15 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.28%) Perl
17 5 (0.23%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,160 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 727 (33.66%) SC Cleared
3 73 (3.38%) Degree
4 57 (2.64%) CISSP
5 51 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
6 31 (1.44%) CISM
7 27 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
8 24 (1.11%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 20 (0.93%) CCNP
11 18 (0.83%) CCNA
11 18 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
11 18 (0.83%) PMI Certification
12 16 (0.74%) MCSE
12 16 (0.74%) PMP
12 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.69%) ISTQB
14 14 (0.65%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.65%) VCAP
15 13 (0.60%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 78 (3.61%) NCSC
2 76 (3.52%) NIST
3 68 (3.15%) PMO
4 57 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 54 (2.50%) QA
6 35 (1.62%) JSP 440
7 28 (1.30%) GDPR
8 23 (1.06%) Data Quality
8 23 (1.06%) GRC
9 21 (0.97%) SLA
10 18 (0.83%) RMADS
11 14 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
11 14 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 13 (0.60%) Accessibility
12 13 (0.60%) Government Security Classifications
13 9 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 8 (0.37%) WCAG
15 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
15 7 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 176 (8.15%) VMware Infrastructure
2 170 (7.87%) Active Directory
3 125 (5.79%) Docker
4 83 (3.84%) VMware NSX
5 67 (3.10%) VMware ESXi
6 56 (2.59%) Hyper-V
7 40 (1.85%) vSphere
8 21 (0.97%) vCloud
9 16 (0.74%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) BitLocker
11 8 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.19%) Ceph
13 4 (0.19%) Firmware
13 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.19%) UAG
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 174 (8.06%) Terraform
2 173 (8.01%) Kubernetes
3 111 (5.14%) Ansible
4 81 (3.75%) vCenter Server
5 41 (1.90%) SCOM
6 32 (1.48%) SCCM
7 25 (1.16%) Prometheus
8 23 (1.06%) Grafana
9 22 (1.02%) Puppet
10 15 (0.69%) Nagios
10 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
10 15 (0.69%) Podman
11 13 (0.60%) Avamar
11 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
11 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
11 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
12 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 10 (0.46%) VxRail
12 10 (0.46%) WSUS
13 9 (0.42%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 243 (11.25%) VMware
2 242 (11.20%) Microsoft
3 114 (5.28%) ServiceNow
4 103 (4.77%) Cisco
5 86 (3.98%) Oracle
6 61 (2.82%) Splunk
7 54 (2.50%) SAP
8 49 (2.27%) Juniper
9 46 (2.13%) Google
10 45 (2.08%) SolarWinds
11 34 (1.57%) NetApp
12 33 (1.53%) Red Hat
13 29 (1.34%) Remedy
14 28 (1.30%) F5
14 28 (1.30%) Palo Alto
15 25 (1.16%) Citrix
16 24 (1.11%) Dell
17 22 (1.02%) Fortinet
18 21 (0.97%) BMC
19 19 (0.88%) Sparx