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 2 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 74 46 51
Rank change year-on-year -28 +5 +81
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,208 1,501 1,849
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.36% 4.21% 4.07%
As % of the Qualifications category 10.09% 14.30% 13.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 858 950 1,251
10th Percentile £465 £413 £375
25th Percentile £513 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £589 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -
75th Percentile £688 £676 £688
90th Percentile £750 £750 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £588 £575
% change year-on-year +2.13% +2.13% -1.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 52 102
10th Percentile £19.82 £46.25 £52.43
25th Percentile - £54.06 £58.19
Median hourly rate £25.15 £62.35 £65.81
Median % change year-on-year -59.66% -5.26% -5.98%
75th Percentile £71.00 £73.56 £77.50
90th Percentile £85.63 £84.97 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.00 £61.50 £67.00
% change year-on-year +8.95% -8.22% -4.83%

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 11,978 10,493 13,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.29% 29.40% 29.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,758 6,347 8,439
10th Percentile £305 £309 £300
25th Percentile £413 £421 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,016 505 754
10th Percentile £17.50 £18.94 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.36 £24.18 £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -39.40% -22.43% +18.89%
75th Percentile £45.88 £66.00 £67.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £52.05
% change year-on-year -44.11% -13.55% +15.67%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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 1,109 £600 +0.33% 509
UK excluding London -21 811 £600 +2.13% 476
South East -4 419 £600 +2.13% 234
London -23 295 £625 +6.61% 93
South West -7 256 £625 +4.17% 132
Work from Home -12 162 £600 - 183
Midlands -6 85 £581 -7.00% 21
West Midlands -7 80 £575 -14.02% 13
East of England -15 27 £550 - 39
North of England -67 22 £513 -6.82% 50
Scotland -44 18 £628 +21.55% 7
North West -21 16 £513 +2.50% 39
Northern Ireland -2 7 £594 -
East Midlands -15 5 £725 +55.91% 8
Yorkshire -45 5 £521 -5.23% 11
Wales -14 4 £600 -14.29% 9
North East -16 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 48 (3.97%) SharePoint
2 44 (3.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 38 (3.15%) Apache
4 32 (2.65%) Skype for Business
5 25 (2.07%) Confluence
6 11 (0.91%) SharePoint Server
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2003
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2007
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2010
7 10 (0.83%) Exchange Server 2013
7 10 (0.83%) Office Communications Server
8 5 (0.41%) IIS
8 5 (0.41%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.33%) CMS
10 3 (0.25%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.25%) Documentum
11 1 (0.083%) Mattermost
11 1 (0.083%) nginx
Applications
1 59 (4.88%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.083%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 17 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.91%) Remedy ITSM
3 10 (0.83%) SAP EWM
3 10 (0.83%) SAP WM
4 7 (0.58%) Primavera
4 7 (0.58%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.25%) Maximo
5 3 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Payroll
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.083%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.083%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 129 (10.68%) Azure
2 121 (10.02%) AWS
3 61 (5.05%) Microsoft 365
4 43 (3.56%) Serverless
5 39 (3.23%) GitHub
6 33 (2.73%) GCP
7 29 (2.40%) OpenShift
8 28 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
9 21 (1.74%) Amazon S3
10 20 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
11 17 (1.41%) Entra ID
12 15 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (1.24%) Amazon ECS
12 15 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (1.08%) Azure Sentinel
13 13 (1.08%) IaaS
14 12 (0.99%) Power Platform
15 11 (0.91%) npm
16 10 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 80 (6.62%) Firewall
2 73 (6.04%) DNS
3 48 (3.97%) Network Security
4 43 (3.56%) LAN
5 36 (2.98%) VPN
6 33 (2.73%) DHCP
7 29 (2.40%) WAN
8 28 (2.32%) Cisco IOS
9 27 (2.24%) Junos
10 26 (2.15%) Skype
10 26 (2.15%) TCP/IP
11 24 (1.99%) Cisco ISE
12 23 (1.90%) Cisco Firepower
13 21 (1.74%) BGP
13 21 (1.74%) SAN
13 21 (1.74%) Wireless
14 13 (1.08%) VLAN
15 12 (0.99%) iSCSI
15 12 (0.99%) OSPF
15 12 (0.99%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (2.15%) Big Data
2 23 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (1.49%) Elasticsearch
4 17 (1.41%) Hadoop
5 12 (0.99%) Oracle Database
5 12 (0.99%) SQL Server
6 11 (0.91%) Redis
7 10 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (0.83%) Relational Database
8 8 (0.66%) MongoDB
9 7 (0.58%) InfluxDB
10 6 (0.50%) Power BI
10 6 (0.50%) SAP HANA
11 5 (0.41%) RDBMS
12 4 (0.33%) Metadata
13 3 (0.25%) Apache Hive
13 3 (0.25%) MySQL
13 3 (0.25%) NoSQL
13 3 (0.25%) SAP Data Services
14 2 (0.17%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 43 (3.56%) Jenkins
2 40 (3.31%) GitLab
3 38 (3.15%) JIRA
4 33 (2.73%) Git
5 18 (1.49%) SonarQube
6 14 (1.16%) Maven
7 11 (0.91%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
9 8 (0.66%) Bitbucket
10 7 (0.58%) Cypress.io
11 6 (0.50%) Selenium
12 5 (0.41%) JUnit
12 5 (0.41%) Postman
13 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
13 4 (0.33%) Gradle
13 4 (0.33%) Snyk
13 4 (0.33%) webpack
14 3 (0.25%) MSI
14 3 (0.25%) Robot Framework
14 3 (0.25%) SoapUI
General
1 251 (20.78%) Social Skills
2 191 (15.81%) Public Sector
3 89 (7.37%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (5.71%) Finance
5 44 (3.64%) Military
5 44 (3.64%) Telecoms
6 38 (3.15%) Manufacturing
7 26 (2.15%) Legal
8 25 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.07%) Electronics
8 25 (2.07%) Marketing
9 24 (1.99%) Law
10 21 (1.74%) Banking
11 17 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
12 12 (0.99%) Aerospace
12 12 (0.99%) Police
13 10 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
14 7 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 7 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
15 2 (0.17%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 227 (18.79%) Architect
2 82 (6.79%) Consultant
3 66 (5.46%) Network Engineer
4 65 (5.38%) Analyst
5 61 (5.05%) Support Engineer
6 54 (4.47%) Developer
6 54 (4.47%) Senior
7 53 (4.39%) Solutions Architect
8 51 (4.22%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
9 49 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
10 48 (3.97%) Lead
11 39 (3.23%) Technical Architect
12 38 (3.15%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 35 (2.90%) Cloud Engineer
14 34 (2.81%) Infrastructure Architect
15 32 (2.65%) Project Manager
16 28 (2.32%) Network Architect
17 27 (2.24%) Administrator
17 27 (2.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 25 (2.07%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.06%) Apache NiFi
2 29 (2.40%) REST
3 26 (2.15%) Kafka
4 21 (1.74%) React
5 18 (1.49%) OAuth
6 17 (1.41%) Elastic Stack
7 16 (1.32%) Node.js
7 16 (1.32%) OpenID
7 16 (1.32%) YAML
8 15 (1.24%) .NET
8 15 (1.24%) OAuth2
8 15 (1.24%) SAML
9 14 (1.16%) RabbitMQ
10 13 (1.08%) RESTful
11 10 (0.83%) Web Services
12 9 (0.75%) Spring
13 8 (0.66%) Flask
13 8 (0.66%) JSON
13 8 (0.66%) SOAP
13 8 (0.66%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 76 (6.29%) PKI
2 43 (3.56%) Data Centre
3 34 (2.81%) Management Information System
4 28 (2.32%) Onboarding
5 25 (2.07%) Cyber Threat
6 21 (1.74%) Security Operations Centre
7 20 (1.66%) Cloud Native
7 20 (1.66%) Replication
8 19 (1.57%) Private Cloud
9 16 (1.32%) Driving Licence
10 13 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
10 13 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
11 12 (0.99%) Cyber Defence
11 12 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (0.83%) CSOC
12 10 (0.83%) Fat Client
12 10 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
12 10 (0.83%) Thin Client
13 9 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
13 9 (0.75%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 200 (16.56%) Windows
2 112 (9.27%) Linux
3 73 (6.04%) Windows Server
4 31 (2.57%) Windows 10
5 25 (2.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (1.57%) Android
6 19 (1.57%) Mac OS
7 16 (1.32%) Windows Server 2019
8 15 (1.24%) Windows 7
9 13 (1.08%) Unix
10 11 (0.91%) Windows Server 2003
11 9 (0.75%) CentOS
11 9 (0.75%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.17%) Debian
13 2 (0.17%) VMS
14 1 (0.083%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.083%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.083%) Rocky
14 1 (0.083%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (18.21%) Agile
2 130 (10.76%) Cybersecurity
3 128 (10.60%) DevOps
4 125 (10.35%) Problem-Solving
5 117 (9.69%) CI/CD
6 86 (7.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 81 (6.71%) ITIL
8 76 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
9 75 (6.21%) Stakeholder Management
10 67 (5.55%) Containerisation
11 65 (5.38%) Risk Management
12 64 (5.30%) Service Management
13 63 (5.22%) Continuous Improvement
14 62 (5.13%) ITSM
15 57 (4.72%) Scrum
16 56 (4.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 56 (4.64%) Mentoring
16 56 (4.64%) SIEM
17 51 (4.22%) Migration
17 51 (4.22%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 142 (11.75%) Python
2 106 (8.77%) PowerShell
3 66 (5.46%) SQL
4 63 (5.22%) Java
5 38 (3.15%) JavaScript
6 33 (2.73%) Bash
7 19 (1.57%) C#
7 19 (1.57%) Go
8 17 (1.41%) C++
9 16 (1.32%) TypeScript
10 11 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 10 (0.83%) C
12 8 (0.66%) VBScript
13 7 (0.58%) VB
14 5 (0.41%) ABAP
15 4 (0.33%) Bicep
16 3 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
16 3 (0.25%) T-SQL
17 2 (0.17%) PHP
17 2 (0.17%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1,208 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 371 (30.71%) SC Cleared
3 45 (3.73%) CISSP
4 42 (3.48%) Degree
5 34 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 29 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
7 28 (2.32%) CISM
8 20 (1.66%) CCNP
9 15 (1.24%) CEH
10 14 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
10 14 (1.16%) CESG Certified Professional
11 13 (1.08%) GIAC
12 12 (0.99%) CCNA
13 11 (0.91%) MCSE
13 11 (0.91%) PMI Certification
14 10 (0.83%) Azure Certification
14 10 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
15 9 (0.75%) AWS Certification
15 9 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 8 (0.66%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (5.38%) NIST
2 51 (4.22%) NCSC
3 43 (3.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 27 (2.24%) SLA
5 20 (1.66%) NIST 800
6 19 (1.57%) JSP 440
7 18 (1.49%) PMO
8 17 (1.41%) GDPR
8 17 (1.41%) QA
9 14 (1.16%) RMADS
10 11 (0.91%) Data Quality
11 5 (0.41%) GRC
11 5 (0.41%) P3O
12 4 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.33%) Def Stans
12 4 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 3 (0.25%) EU AI Act
13 3 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 101 (8.36%) Active Directory
2 75 (6.21%) Docker
3 67 (5.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (3.31%) VMware ESXi
5 36 (2.98%) VMware NSX
6 27 (2.24%) vSphere
7 12 (0.99%) NFS
7 12 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
8 10 (0.83%) Brightmail
8 10 (0.83%) ISA Server
9 7 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.41%) BitLocker
11 4 (0.33%) Firmware
11 4 (0.33%) Hyper-V
12 2 (0.17%) GPFS
12 2 (0.17%) Lustre
12 2 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
13 1 (0.083%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 116 (9.60%) Kubernetes
2 102 (8.44%) Terraform
3 79 (6.54%) Ansible
4 40 (3.31%) vCenter Server
5 37 (3.06%) Grafana
6 31 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 23 (1.90%) SCCM
8 21 (1.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 21 (1.74%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (1.08%) Progress Chef
9 13 (1.08%) WMI
10 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Clustering
11 10 (0.83%) Podman
11 10 (0.83%) Puppet
12 9 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
13 8 (0.66%) Argo
13 8 (0.66%) SCOM
14 6 (0.50%) Kibana
14 6 (0.50%) Proxmox
14 6 (0.50%) vRealize
Vendors
1 186 (15.40%) Microsoft
2 139 (11.51%) VMware
3 112 (9.27%) Cisco
4 63 (5.22%) Juniper
5 54 (4.47%) SAP
6 48 (3.97%) Splunk
7 33 (2.73%) Palantir
8 32 (2.65%) SolarWinds
9 29 (2.40%) Oracle
10 25 (2.07%) Dell
10 25 (2.07%) Foundry
11 24 (1.99%) Red Hat
12 20 (1.66%) HP
12 20 (1.66%) Veeam
13 19 (1.57%) Apple
14 17 (1.41%) NetApp
15 16 (1.32%) ServiceNow
16 14 (1.16%) Atlassian
17 13 (1.08%) Cloudera
17 13 (1.08%) Google