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 20 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 80 35
Rank change year-on-year +30 -45 +21
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,173 1,002 2,008
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.06% 3.05% 5.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.97% 9.73% 17.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,665 698 1,424
10th Percentile £458 £459 £425
25th Percentile £515 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +4.17%
75th Percentile £700 £663 £688
90th Percentile £760 £713 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 40 98
10th Percentile £35.00 - £49.70
25th Percentile £49.38 £25.15 £57.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -25.42% +0.92%
75th Percentile £92.53 £81.51 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.88 £87.64 £92.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £80.68 £70.39
% change year-on-year -13.23% +14.61% -3.06%

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 16,752 10,297 11,620
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 31.36% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,227 6,345 7,361
10th Percentile £350 £288 £313
25th Percentile £433 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £528
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,249 827 815
10th Percentile £17.70 £17.97 £14.65
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.81 £65.50
90th Percentile £87.32 £73.75 £76.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.77 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +93.90% -47.05% -6.40%

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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 August 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 2,037 £600 +2.13% 556
UK excluding London +12 1,556 £600 +4.35% 471
South East +3 908 £600 - 178
London +53 459 £600 -4.00% 123
South West +1 404 £590 -1.67% 163
Work from Home +39 329 £575 -2.00% 186
East of England +16 94 £650 +18.18% 61
North of England -2 65 £775 +34.78% 40
Midlands -63 45 £600 +3.23% 15
North West 0 44 £863 +72.50% 27
West Midlands -66 41 £600 +3.23% 10
Scotland +12 37 £669 +30.44% 21
Yorkshire -26 16 £518 -17.20% 8
North East -34 5 £463 -26.00% 5
Northern Ireland +8 4 £638 -8.93% 2
Wales -12 4 - - 1
East Midlands - 4 £631 - 5

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 62 (2.85%) Confluence
2 42 (1.93%) SharePoint
3 39 (1.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.41%) Apache
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.28%) 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%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.092%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.092%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
Applications
1 56 (2.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (2.12%) Microsoft Project
3 24 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
5 14 (0.64%) AutoCAD
5 14 (0.64%) Revit
5 14 (0.64%) SOLIDWORKS
6 11 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.18%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.24%) Oracle ERP
3 23 (1.06%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
11 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 288 (13.25%) Azure
2 267 (12.29%) AWS
3 107 (4.92%) GCP
4 59 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (2.16%) GitHub
6 46 (2.12%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
8 39 (1.79%) Entra ID
8 39 (1.79%) Power Platform
8 39 (1.79%) Serverless
9 37 (1.70%) IaaS
10 34 (1.56%) PaaS
11 32 (1.47%) OCI
12 26 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (1.06%) Amazon EKS
13 23 (1.06%) OpenShift
14 20 (0.92%) Amazon ECS
15 19 (0.87%) Amazon S3
15 19 (0.87%) SaaS
16 18 (0.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 160 (7.36%) DNS
2 125 (5.75%) Firewall
3 80 (3.68%) DHCP
4 68 (3.13%) Network Security
5 66 (3.04%) WAN
6 61 (2.81%) LAN
7 53 (2.44%) VPN
8 51 (2.35%) TCP/IP
9 48 (2.21%) BGP
10 44 (2.02%) VSAN
11 33 (1.52%) IPsec
12 31 (1.43%) MPLS
13 26 (1.20%) VLAN
14 18 (0.83%) OSPF
14 18 (0.83%) SSL
15 16 (0.74%) Cisco ASA
16 15 (0.69%) Cisco Firepower
16 15 (0.69%) SD-WAN
17 14 (0.64%) Skype
18 13 (0.60%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (2.35%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 31 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.10%) Power BI
5 19 (0.87%) Metadata
6 18 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
7 16 (0.74%) Data Lake
8 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
8 15 (0.69%) MongoDB
9 12 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.41%) NoSQL
11 8 (0.37%) BigQuery
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (0.32%) Big Data
12 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
12 7 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (0.23%) Amazon Redshift
13 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 100 (4.60%) JIRA
2 65 (2.99%) GitLab
3 56 (2.58%) Jenkins
4 43 (1.98%) Git
5 15 (0.69%) Cypress.io
6 13 (0.60%) Selenium
7 7 (0.32%) Postman
7 7 (0.32%) REST Assured
7 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 6 (0.28%) SpecFlow
9 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.23%) MSI
9 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.18%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.14%) Gatling
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
11 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
General
1 428 (19.70%) Social Skills
2 287 (13.21%) Public Sector
3 150 (6.90%) Analytical Skills
4 136 (6.26%) Finance
5 62 (2.85%) Military
6 61 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (1.93%) Legal
8 41 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
9 30 (1.38%) Law
9 30 (1.38%) Police
10 27 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
11 25 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 23 (1.06%) Aerospace
13 21 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.37%) Local Government
16 7 (0.32%) Marketing
17 5 (0.23%) Advertising
18 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
18 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 357 (16.43%) Architect
2 245 (11.27%) Lead
3 199 (9.16%) Senior
4 150 (6.90%) Consultant
4 150 (6.90%) Developer
5 146 (6.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 143 (6.58%) Analyst
7 93 (4.28%) Security Architect
8 85 (3.91%) Network Engineer
9 76 (3.50%) SOC Analyst
10 64 (2.95%) Technical Architect
11 61 (2.81%) Cloud Engineer
12 60 (2.76%) Project Manager
13 52 (2.39%) DevOps Engineer
13 52 (2.39%) Support Engineer
14 49 (2.25%) DBA
15 47 (2.16%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 43 (1.98%) DV Cleared Project Manager
17 41 (1.89%) Network Architect
17 41 (1.89%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (8.93%) Terraform
2 76 (3.50%) REST
3 32 (1.47%) Elastic Stack
4 26 (1.20%) React
4 26 (1.20%) SOAP
5 19 (0.87%) RESTful
6 18 (0.83%) Kafka
7 15 (0.69%) .NET
7 15 (0.69%) Node.js
8 14 (0.64%) FastAPI
8 14 (0.64%) Flask
8 14 (0.64%) OAuth
8 14 (0.64%) Oracle Fusion
9 13 (0.60%) AngularJS
9 13 (0.60%) LDAP
9 13 (0.60%) Spring
9 13 (0.60%) Spring Boot
10 12 (0.55%) ARM Templates
11 11 (0.51%) XML
12 10 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 100 (4.60%) PKI
2 97 (4.46%) Data Centre
3 93 (4.28%) Cloud Native
4 68 (3.13%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.30%) Security Operations Centre
6 41 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
7 37 (1.70%) Private Cloud
7 37 (1.70%) Product Ownership
8 32 (1.47%) Management Information System
9 31 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
10 28 (1.29%) Public Cloud
11 26 (1.20%) Clustering
12 25 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
12 25 (1.15%) Security Posture
13 24 (1.10%) CMDB
14 19 (0.87%) Virtual Team
15 18 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
15 18 (0.83%) Replication
16 15 (0.69%) Enterprise Storage
17 14 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 331 (15.23%) Windows
2 235 (10.81%) Linux
3 159 (7.32%) Windows Server
4 32 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (1.20%) Windows 10
6 23 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
7 14 (0.64%) Unix
8 12 (0.55%) CentOS
8 12 (0.55%) Ubuntu
9 11 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
10 9 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 7 (0.32%) VMS
12 6 (0.28%) AIX
12 6 (0.28%) Android
12 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.23%) Debian
13 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 375 (17.26%) Agile
2 237 (10.91%) Stakeholder Management
3 226 (10.40%) Continuous Improvement
4 222 (10.22%) CI/CD
5 221 (10.17%) Cybersecurity
6 205 (9.43%) Problem-Solving
7 195 (8.97%) DevOps
8 192 (8.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 190 (8.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 182 (8.38%) ITIL
11 168 (7.73%) Infrastructure as Code
12 163 (7.50%) Technical Leadership
13 145 (6.67%) Service Management
14 125 (5.75%) ITSM
15 119 (5.48%) Containerisation
16 118 (5.43%) Risk Management
17 115 (5.29%) Project Delivery
18 114 (5.25%) Decision-Making
19 107 (4.92%) SIEM
20 105 (4.83%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 204 (9.39%) Python
2 172 (7.92%) PowerShell
3 113 (5.20%) SQL
4 84 (3.87%) Bash
5 62 (2.85%) Java
6 42 (1.93%) JavaScript
7 36 (1.66%) C#
8 25 (1.15%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.87%) Bicep
10 17 (0.78%) Go
11 14 (0.64%) C++
11 14 (0.64%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
12 11 (0.51%) C
13 7 (0.32%) Groovy
13 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
14 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
14 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
14 6 (0.28%) Perl
14 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,173 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 719 (33.09%) SC Cleared
3 76 (3.50%) Degree
4 69 (3.18%) CISSP
5 44 (2.02%) CISM
6 37 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 26 (1.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 23 (1.06%) VCAP
10 22 (1.01%) AWS Certification
11 21 (0.97%) PMI Certification
12 20 (0.92%) ISTQB
13 19 (0.87%) PMP
14 17 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
15 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
15 15 (0.69%) MCSE
16 14 (0.64%) CCNP
17 13 (0.60%) CCNA
17 13 (0.60%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (3.91%) NCSC
2 80 (3.68%) PMO
3 78 (3.59%) NIST
4 59 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 56 (2.58%) QA
6 37 (1.70%) JSP 440
7 30 (1.38%) GDPR
8 26 (1.20%) SLA
9 25 (1.15%) Data Quality
10 19 (0.87%) GRC
10 19 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 18 (0.83%) Accessibility
12 17 (0.78%) Government Security Classifications
12 17 (0.78%) RMADS
13 11 (0.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 10 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 8 (0.37%) WCAG
16 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
17 6 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 195 (8.97%) Active Directory
2 190 (8.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 124 (5.71%) Docker
4 97 (4.46%) VMware NSX
5 72 (3.31%) VMware ESXi
6 61 (2.81%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.44%) vSphere
8 25 (1.15%) vCloud
9 16 (0.74%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 7 (0.32%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
13 5 (0.23%) Ceph
13 5 (0.23%) Firmware
14 4 (0.18%) Squid
14 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.14%) KVM
15 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 200 (9.20%) Kubernetes
2 137 (6.30%) Ansible
3 85 (3.91%) vCenter Server
4 49 (2.25%) SCOM
5 34 (1.56%) SCCM
6 26 (1.20%) Prometheus
7 23 (1.06%) Grafana
8 22 (1.01%) Puppet
9 16 (0.74%) Nagios
10 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
10 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
10 15 (0.69%) VxRail
11 14 (0.64%) Avamar
11 14 (0.64%) Podman
11 14 (0.64%) WSUS
12 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
13 12 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.51%) Progress Chef
14 11 (0.51%) WMI
15 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 288 (13.25%) Microsoft
2 268 (12.33%) VMware
3 109 (5.02%) ServiceNow
4 103 (4.74%) Oracle
5 83 (3.82%) Cisco
6 57 (2.62%) SAP
6 57 (2.62%) Splunk
7 53 (2.44%) Google
8 37 (1.70%) Juniper
8 37 (1.70%) SolarWinds
9 33 (1.52%) Red Hat
10 25 (1.15%) CyberArk
10 25 (1.15%) Remedy
11 24 (1.10%) Dell
11 24 (1.10%) Palo Alto
12 23 (1.06%) Citrix
12 23 (1.06%) NetApp
13 20 (0.92%) BMC
14 19 (0.87%) F5
15 18 (0.83%) Sparx