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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 81 33
Rank change year-on-year +33 -48 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,164 991 2,247
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 3.03% 5.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.08% 9.83% 18.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,640 684 1,601
10th Percentile £430 £457 £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 £714 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 38 111
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.15 £48.40
25th Percentile £41.25 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £63.14 £63.25 £71.17
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% -11.13% +1.66%
75th Percentile £85.00 £82.08 £85.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.91 £90.00
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 16,550 10,081 12,235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.36% 30.84% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,044 6,256 7,729
10th Percentile £350 £278 £311
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.86% -0.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,211 751 962
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.05
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £76.92
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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +25 2,020 £600 +1.69% 547
UK excluding London +9 1,535 £600 +4.35% 467
South East +6 873 £600 - 198
London +55 462 £600 -2.04% 111
South West -1 391 £575 -2.34% 157
Work from Home +50 333 £575 -2.54% 216
East of England +13 96 £650 +18.18% 38
North of England 0 76 £775 +24.00% 35
Midlands -51 57 £600 - 22
North West 0 51 £825 +82.32% 26
West Midlands -68 45 £600 - 14
Scotland +20 39 £669 +33.70% 18
Yorkshire -27 20 £510 -18.40% 4
East Midlands -1 12 £631 +14.77% 8
Northern Ireland +8 5 £619 - 1
North East -31 5 £463 -26.00% 5
Wales -12 4 - - 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 58 (2.68%) Confluence
2 40 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 37 (1.71%) 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 (0.092%) 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
10 1 (0.046%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.046%) JBoss
10 1 (0.046%) Mule
10 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 49 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (1.89%) Microsoft Project
3 22 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.51%) AutoCAD
6 11 (0.51%) Revit
6 11 (0.51%) SOLIDWORKS
7 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.092%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 33 (1.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.29%) 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 (0.18%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) Primavera
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.092%) 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
1 258 (11.92%) Azure
2 254 (11.74%) AWS
3 103 (4.76%) GCP
4 58 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
5 50 (2.31%) GitHub
6 42 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
7 41 (1.89%) GitHub Actions
8 38 (1.76%) IaaS
8 38 (1.76%) Power Platform
9 37 (1.71%) PaaS
9 37 (1.71%) Serverless
10 32 (1.48%) Entra ID
11 27 (1.25%) OpenShift
12 24 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
12 24 (1.11%) OCI
13 21 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
14 18 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
14 18 (0.83%) Amazon S3
14 18 (0.83%) SaaS
15 17 (0.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 145 (6.70%) DNS
2 125 (5.78%) Firewall
3 79 (3.65%) Network Security
4 75 (3.47%) WAN
5 74 (3.42%) DHCP
6 70 (3.23%) LAN
7 56 (2.59%) BGP
8 54 (2.50%) VPN
9 42 (1.94%) TCP/IP
10 34 (1.57%) VSAN
11 31 (1.43%) IPsec
11 31 (1.43%) OSPF
12 28 (1.29%) MPLS
12 28 (1.29%) VLAN
13 23 (1.06%) VXLAN
14 21 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
15 19 (0.88%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.74%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (2.13%) SQL Server
2 39 (1.80%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 24 (1.11%) Power BI
6 20 (0.92%) Metadata
7 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (0.55%) 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 (0.18%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 92 (4.25%) JIRA
2 51 (2.36%) GitLab
3 47 (2.17%) Jenkins
4 39 (1.80%) Git
5 14 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 10 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.28%) Visual Studio
8 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.23%) Postman
8 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.18%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.18%) 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
1 375 (17.33%) Social Skills
2 281 (12.99%) Public Sector
3 137 (6.33%) Analytical Skills
4 124 (5.73%) Finance
5 80 (3.70%) Military
6 51 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.17%) Legal
8 34 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
9 27 (1.25%) Law
10 24 (1.11%) Police
11 22 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.02%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.79%) Manufacturing
13 16 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (0.69%) Aerospace
15 7 (0.32%) Local Government
15 7 (0.32%) Marketing
16 5 (0.23%) Advertising
17 4 (0.18%) Aviation
17 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 339 (15.67%) Architect
2 231 (10.67%) Lead
3 199 (9.20%) Senior
4 149 (6.89%) Analyst
5 147 (6.79%) Developer
6 140 (6.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 133 (6.15%) Consultant
8 92 (4.25%) Network Engineer
9 83 (3.84%) Security Architect
10 76 (3.51%) SOC Analyst
10 76 (3.51%) Technical Architect
11 58 (2.68%) Project Manager
12 52 (2.40%) DBA
13 51 (2.36%) Cloud Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DevOps Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 45 (2.08%) Senior Network Engineer
16 44 (2.03%) Network Architect
17 43 (1.99%) Support Engineer
18 41 (1.89%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (3.28%) REST
2 32 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.25%) React
4 24 (1.11%) SOAP
5 21 (0.97%) Kafka
6 20 (0.92%) 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%) FastAPI
11 14 (0.65%) Flask
12 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
13 12 (0.55%) 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 (4.71%) Data Centre
2 98 (4.53%) PKI
3 78 (3.60%) Cloud Native
4 59 (2.73%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.31%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.76%) Clustering
7 36 (1.66%) Private Cloud
8 34 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
9 33 (1.52%) Management Information System
10 32 (1.48%) Product Ownership
11 28 (1.29%) Cyber Threat
12 26 (1.20%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.16%) CMDB
13 25 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
13 25 (1.16%) Public Cloud
14 22 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
15 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
16 15 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
16 15 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
17 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 303 (14.00%) Windows
2 228 (10.54%) Linux
3 136 (6.28%) Windows Server
4 28 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.88%) Windows 10
6 16 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 7 (0.32%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) CentOS
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) VMS
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.092%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 372 (17.19%) Agile
2 217 (10.03%) Problem-Solving
3 207 (9.57%) CI/CD
4 205 (9.47%) ITIL
5 201 (9.29%) Cybersecurity
6 197 (9.10%) Continuous Improvement
7 195 (9.01%) DevOps
8 192 (8.87%) Stakeholder Management
9 188 (8.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 171 (7.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 154 (7.12%) Service Management
12 143 (6.61%) Infrastructure as Code
13 127 (5.87%) Technical Leadership
14 122 (5.64%) ITSM
15 112 (5.18%) Project Delivery
16 107 (4.94%) Containerisation
16 107 (4.94%) Risk Management
17 102 (4.71%) Roadmaps
18 101 (4.67%) Service Delivery
19 100 (4.62%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 197 (9.10%) Python
2 140 (6.47%) PowerShell
3 109 (5.04%) SQL
4 65 (3.00%) Bash
5 63 (2.91%) Java
6 45 (2.08%) JavaScript
7 32 (1.48%) C#
8 30 (1.39%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.88%) Go
10 16 (0.74%) Bicep
11 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.60%) PL/SQL
13 12 (0.55%) C++
14 11 (0.51%) C
15 9 (0.42%) Rust
16 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
17 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
17 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.28%) Perl
17 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,164 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 736 (34.01%) SC Cleared
3 77 (3.56%) Degree
4 56 (2.59%) CISSP
5 50 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (1.39%) CISM
7 29 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 25 (1.16%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 21 (0.97%) PMI Certification
11 19 (0.88%) CCNP
11 19 (0.88%) PMP
12 18 (0.83%) CCNA
12 18 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
13 16 (0.74%) MCSE
13 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 15 (0.69%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.69%) VCAP
15 14 (0.65%) Azure Certification
15 14 (0.65%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.51%) NCSC
2 75 (3.47%) NIST
3 68 (3.14%) PMO
4 56 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 54 (2.50%) QA
6 35 (1.62%) JSP 440
7 28 (1.29%) GDPR
8 24 (1.11%) Data Quality
9 22 (1.02%) GRC
10 21 (0.97%) SLA
11 17 (0.79%) RMADS
12 14 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
12 14 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 13 (0.60%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.60%) Government Security Classifications
14 8 (0.37%) 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
1 177 (8.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 172 (7.95%) Active Directory
3 126 (5.82%) Docker
4 84 (3.88%) VMware NSX
5 67 (3.10%) VMware ESXi
6 56 (2.59%) Hyper-V
7 41 (1.89%) vSphere
8 21 (0.97%) vCloud
9 17 (0.79%) 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 (0.18%) Ceph
13 4 (0.18%) Firmware
13 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.18%) UAG
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 176 (8.13%) Kubernetes
1 176 (8.13%) Terraform
2 111 (5.13%) Ansible
3 81 (3.74%) vCenter Server
4 41 (1.89%) SCOM
5 32 (1.48%) SCCM
6 25 (1.16%) Prometheus
7 23 (1.06%) Grafana
8 22 (1.02%) Puppet
9 15 (0.69%) Nagios
9 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
9 15 (0.69%) Podman
10 13 (0.60%) Avamar
10 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
10 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
11 11 (0.51%) VxRail
12 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 10 (0.46%) WSUS
13 9 (0.42%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 246 (11.37%) Microsoft
2 244 (11.28%) VMware
3 114 (5.27%) ServiceNow
4 102 (4.71%) Cisco
5 86 (3.97%) Oracle
6 61 (2.82%) Splunk
7 54 (2.50%) SAP
8 48 (2.22%) Google
8 48 (2.22%) Juniper
9 45 (2.08%) SolarWinds
10 34 (1.57%) NetApp
11 33 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 29 (1.34%) Remedy
13 28 (1.29%) F5
14 27 (1.25%) Palo Alto
15 26 (1.20%) Citrix
16 24 (1.11%) Dell
17 21 (0.97%) BMC
17 21 (0.97%) Fortinet
18 19 (0.88%) Sparx