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 26 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 82 32
Rank change year-on-year +32 -50 +24
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,997 906 2,456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.92% 3.00% 5.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.54% 9.69% 18.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,517 622 1,767
10th Percentile £430 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £688 £650 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 29 120
10th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £49.90
25th Percentile £35.00 £36.25 £56.65
Median hourly rate £48.84 £80.00 £71.75
Median % change year-on-year -38.95% +11.50% +0.82%
75th Percentile £68.00 £82.96 £85.65
90th Percentile £81.96 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.77 £81.35 £71.17
% change year-on-year -43.73% +14.31% -5.11%

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 15,931 9,348 12,944
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.91% 29.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,644 5,798 7,991
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £527
% change year-on-year +1.40% -5.12% -0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,165 614 1,119
10th Percentile £17.43 £17.67 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.78 £20.00 £20.06
Median hourly rate £50.49 £28.34 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +78.14% -30.78% -25.90%
75th Percentile £72.54 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.35 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.38 £43.00
% change year-on-year +82.65% -36.34% -19.87%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 1,856 £600 +2.13% 370
UK excluding London +11 1,422 £600 +4.35% 319
South East +6 771 £600 +3.45% 138
London +61 413 £600 - 77
South West -2 370 £575 -4.17% 107
Work from Home +50 309 £560 -2.61% 120
East of England +14 103 £650 +18.18% 30
North of England +1 84 £775 +24.00% 30
North West +8 65 £775 +278.05% 24
Midlands -60 52 £600 - 13
West Midlands -64 41 £600 - 9
Scotland +21 38 £669 +33.70% 5
Yorkshire -33 16 £525 -16.00% 4
East Midlands 0 11 £518 -5.91% 4
Northern Ireland +8 6 £619 - 3
Wales -10 4 - - 1
North East -29 3 £569 -9.00% 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 43 (2.15%) Confluence
2 41 (2.05%) Microsoft Exchange
3 30 (1.50%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.30%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.30%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.25%) CMS
5 5 (0.25%) Documentum
5 5 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.20%) Apache
6 4 (0.20%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.10%) nginx
7 2 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.050%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.050%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.050%) Mule
Applications
1 36 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (0.45%) AutoCAD
5 9 (0.45%) Revit
5 9 (0.45%) SOLIDWORKS
6 6 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.10%) Lectora
8 2 (0.10%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (1.00%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
5 7 (0.35%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 4 (0.20%) SAP EWM
7 4 (0.20%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.10%) Maximo
9 2 (0.10%) Primavera
9 2 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.050%) Oracle Applications
10 1 (0.050%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.050%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.050%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.050%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 224 (11.22%) AWS
2 202 (10.12%) Azure
3 92 (4.61%) GCP
4 51 (2.55%) GitHub
5 45 (2.25%) Azure DevOps
6 41 (2.05%) IaaS
6 41 (2.05%) PaaS
7 40 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
8 32 (1.60%) Serverless
9 31 (1.55%) Microsoft 365
10 26 (1.30%) OpenShift
11 24 (1.20%) OCI
11 24 (1.20%) Power Platform
12 19 (0.95%) SaaS
13 18 (0.90%) AWS Lambda
13 18 (0.90%) Entra ID
14 17 (0.85%) Amazon ECS
14 17 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
15 14 (0.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (0.60%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 112 (5.61%) DNS
2 102 (5.11%) Firewall
3 71 (3.56%) Network Security
4 64 (3.20%) LAN
5 63 (3.15%) WAN
6 52 (2.60%) DHCP
7 49 (2.45%) VPN
8 43 (2.15%) BGP
9 29 (1.45%) OSPF
10 24 (1.20%) VLAN
11 21 (1.05%) IPsec
11 21 (1.05%) MPLS
11 21 (1.05%) VXLAN
12 19 (0.95%) BIG-IP
12 19 (0.95%) Ethernet VPN
12 19 (0.95%) TCP/IP
13 18 (0.90%) VSAN
14 16 (0.80%) Cisco Nexus
14 16 (0.80%) Junos
14 16 (0.80%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (1.95%) SQL Server
2 35 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.30%) Elasticsearch
5 19 (0.95%) Power BI
6 13 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
6 13 (0.65%) MongoDB
7 10 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
7 10 (0.50%) Metadata
8 7 (0.35%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.35%) Redis
9 6 (0.30%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.30%) Oracle Database 11g
10 5 (0.25%) Big Data
10 5 (0.25%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.25%) DynamoDB
10 5 (0.25%) Hadoop
10 5 (0.25%) MariaDB
10 5 (0.25%) MySQL
11 4 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 76 (3.81%) JIRA
2 44 (2.20%) GitLab
3 40 (2.00%) Jenkins
4 32 (1.60%) Git
5 13 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.45%) Selenium
7 7 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.30%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.25%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.25%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.20%) Oracle APEX
10 4 (0.20%) Postman
10 4 (0.20%) Robot Framework
10 4 (0.20%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.20%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.15%) Appium
11 3 (0.15%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.15%) ERwin
11 3 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 318 (15.92%) Social Skills
2 262 (13.12%) Public Sector
3 114 (5.71%) Analytical Skills
4 96 (4.81%) Finance
5 73 (3.66%) Military
6 63 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.40%) Legal
8 25 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.15%) Law
11 22 (1.10%) Aerospace
12 21 (1.05%) Police
13 20 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
14 14 (0.70%) Manufacturing
15 12 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
16 10 (0.50%) Marketing
17 7 (0.35%) Local Government
18 5 (0.25%) Electronics
19 3 (0.15%) Advertising
19 3 (0.15%) Banking
Job Titles
1 298 (14.92%) Architect
2 187 (9.36%) Lead
3 170 (8.51%) Senior
4 133 (6.66%) Analyst
5 121 (6.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 119 (5.96%) Developer
7 113 (5.66%) Consultant
8 83 (4.16%) Network Engineer
9 79 (3.96%) Technical Architect
10 74 (3.71%) SOC Analyst
11 67 (3.36%) Security Architect
12 61 (3.05%) Project Manager
13 50 (2.50%) DBA
13 50 (2.50%) Tester
14 48 (2.40%) DevOps Engineer
15 47 (2.35%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 47 (2.35%) Service Manager
16 43 (2.15%) Software Engineer
17 42 (2.10%) DV Cleared Project Manager
18 40 (2.00%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (3.05%) REST
2 28 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
2 28 (1.40%) React
3 23 (1.15%) SOAP
4 19 (0.95%) 802.1X
4 19 (0.95%) Node.js
5 18 (0.90%) Kafka
6 16 (0.80%) RESTful
6 16 (0.80%) Spring
7 15 (0.75%) AngularJS
7 15 (0.75%) Flask
8 14 (0.70%) FastAPI
9 13 (0.65%) .NET
9 13 (0.65%) Spring Boot
10 11 (0.55%) ModSecurity
10 11 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
11 10 (0.50%) Apache NiFi
11 10 (0.50%) Playwright
12 9 (0.45%) OAuth
12 9 (0.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 88 (4.41%) PKI
2 81 (4.06%) Data Centre
3 64 (3.20%) Cloud Native
4 50 (2.50%) Security Operations Centre
5 38 (1.90%) Onboarding
6 35 (1.75%) Clustering
7 31 (1.55%) Private Cloud
8 30 (1.50%) Product Ownership
9 29 (1.45%) Management Information System
9 29 (1.45%) Security Posture
10 27 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (1.15%) CMDB
12 20 (1.00%) Cyber Threat
12 20 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
13 19 (0.95%) Public Cloud
14 16 (0.80%) Virtual Team
15 14 (0.70%) Legacy Systems
16 13 (0.65%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
17 11 (0.55%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 259 (12.97%) Windows
2 206 (10.32%) Linux
3 108 (5.41%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.85%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.50%) Unix
7 7 (0.35%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
7 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (0.30%) AIX
8 6 (0.30%) Android
9 5 (0.25%) CentOS
9 5 (0.25%) Debian
9 5 (0.25%) VMS
10 4 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.20%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 332 (16.62%) Agile
2 198 (9.91%) Problem-Solving
3 189 (9.46%) ITIL
4 172 (8.61%) Continuous Improvement
4 172 (8.61%) Cybersecurity
5 170 (8.51%) CI/CD
6 164 (8.21%) DevOps
7 163 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 148 (7.41%) Stakeholder Management
9 142 (7.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 136 (6.81%) Service Management
11 111 (5.56%) Infrastructure as Code
11 111 (5.56%) ITSM
12 103 (5.16%) Project Delivery
13 92 (4.61%) Containerisation
13 92 (4.61%) Risk Management
14 90 (4.51%) Decision-Making
14 90 (4.51%) Technical Leadership
15 86 (4.31%) Service Delivery
16 84 (4.21%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 168 (8.41%) Python
2 108 (5.41%) PowerShell
3 97 (4.86%) SQL
4 52 (2.60%) Java
5 44 (2.20%) JavaScript
6 38 (1.90%) Bash
7 30 (1.50%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.35%) C#
9 17 (0.85%) Go
10 14 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.65%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.55%) C++
13 10 (0.50%) C
14 9 (0.45%) Rust
15 8 (0.40%) Bicep
15 8 (0.40%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.30%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.30%) Perl
17 5 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,997 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 669 (33.50%) SC Cleared
3 61 (3.05%) Degree
4 53 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
5 48 (2.40%) CISSP
6 29 (1.45%) CISM
7 25 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.10%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.10%) CCNP
9 21 (1.05%) CompTIA Security+
10 20 (1.00%) CCNA
11 18 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
13 16 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.80%) PMI Certification
14 15 (0.75%) CESG Certified Professional
14 15 (0.75%) MCSE
14 15 (0.75%) PMP
15 12 (0.60%) GIAC
16 11 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.66%) NIST
2 68 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.20%) NCSC
4 55 (2.75%) PMO
5 50 (2.50%) QA
6 39 (1.95%) JSP 440
7 27 (1.35%) GDPR
8 23 (1.15%) RMADS
8 23 (1.15%) SLA
9 22 (1.10%) GRC
10 11 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
11 10 (0.50%) Accessibility
12 9 (0.45%) Data Quality
12 9 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
12 9 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 6 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (0.30%) ISO 9000
13 6 (0.30%) WCAG
14 5 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.25%) NIST 800
System Software
1 133 (6.66%) VMware Infrastructure
2 127 (6.36%) Active Directory
3 109 (5.46%) Docker
4 67 (3.36%) VMware NSX
5 51 (2.55%) VMware ESXi
6 45 (2.25%) Hyper-V
7 24 (1.20%) vSphere
8 21 (1.05%) vCloud
9 11 (0.55%) BitLocker
10 10 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
13 7 (0.35%) NFS
14 5 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
15 4 (0.20%) Ceph
15 4 (0.20%) Firmware
15 4 (0.20%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.20%) UAG
16 3 (0.15%) Squid
17 2 (0.10%) KVM
Systems Management
1 147 (7.36%) Kubernetes
2 140 (7.01%) Terraform
3 84 (4.21%) Ansible
4 60 (3.00%) vCenter Server
5 31 (1.55%) SCOM
6 27 (1.35%) SCCM
7 21 (1.05%) Grafana
7 21 (1.05%) Prometheus
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 13 (0.65%) FortiGate
9 13 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.60%) Data Guard
10 12 (0.60%) Nagios
10 12 (0.60%) Podman
11 11 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 10 (0.50%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.50%) WSUS
13 9 (0.45%) vMotion
14 8 (0.40%) Avamar
14 8 (0.40%) VxRail
Vendors
1 206 (10.32%) VMware
2 197 (9.86%) Microsoft
3 102 (5.11%) Cisco
4 101 (5.06%) ServiceNow
5 83 (4.16%) Oracle
6 59 (2.95%) Splunk
7 44 (2.20%) Juniper
8 40 (2.00%) SAP
9 39 (1.95%) Google
10 38 (1.90%) SolarWinds
11 34 (1.70%) NetApp
12 32 (1.60%) Red Hat
13 30 (1.50%) F5
14 25 (1.25%) Palo Alto
15 24 (1.20%) Remedy
16 22 (1.10%) Citrix
17 21 (1.05%) Dell
17 21 (1.05%) Fortinet
18 20 (1.00%) Sparx
19 18 (0.90%) BMC