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 21 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 70 31
Rank change year-on-year +14 -39 +51
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,736 965 2,343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.96% 3.29% 5.29%
As % of the Qualifications category 11.74% 10.77% 17.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,210 655 1,703
10th Percentile £424 £413 £408
25th Percentile £509 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% - -
75th Percentile £680 £675 £689
90th Percentile £738 £725 £776
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -4.17% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 26 102
10th Percentile £16.35 £33.75 £48.69
25th Percentile £19.82 £56.65 £57.33
Median hourly rate £42.71 £63.75 £63.15
Median % change year-on-year -33.01% +0.95% -9.79%
75th Percentile £77.13 £81.27 £79.94
90th Percentile £91.25 £84.91 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.00 £73.75 £63.29
% change year-on-year -26.78% +16.53% -15.61%

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 14,787 8,957 13,551
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.73% 30.54% 30.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,750 5,664 8,396
10th Percentile £335 £288 £298
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £714 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,086 476 1,001
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £19.93 £24.42 £17.80
Median hourly rate £30.00 £42.50 £38.16
Median % change year-on-year -29.41% +11.39% -26.63%
75th Percentile £67.84 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £81.01 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £48.82 £37.50
% change year-on-year -41.62% +30.17% -23.47%

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 21 March 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 21 March 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 21 March 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 +7 1,581 £575 -4.17% 406
UK excluding London +9 1,225 £575 -4.17% 353
South East +8 649 £600 - 162
London +2 355 £575 -4.17% 74
South West -1 330 £568 -5.42% 95
Work from Home +27 222 £560 -2.61% 136
North of England -15 79 £675 +229.27% 38
Midlands -25 72 £575 -17.12% 21
North West +19 64 £680 +231.71% 33
East of England +5 63 £575 +4.55% 31
West Midlands -37 55 £563 -19.64% 19
Scotland -8 39 £652 +26.50% 5
East Midlands -20 17 £638 +15.91% 1
Yorkshire - 13 £613 - 4
Northern Ireland - 7 £600 -
Wales -5 3 - - 6
North East -23 2 - - 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 47 (2.71%) Microsoft Exchange
2 44 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.50%) Apache
3 26 (1.50%) Confluence
4 24 (1.38%) Skype for Business
5 13 (0.75%) Palantir Foundry
6 8 (0.46%) Apache Spark
7 5 (0.29%) Mattermost
8 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 58 (3.34%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 23 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.35%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.12%) Lectora
8 1 (0.058%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 22 (1.27%) Remedy ITSM
2 17 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.81%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 7 (0.40%) Maximo
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Applications
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 3 (0.17%) SAP EWM
7 2 (0.12%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.12%) SAP WM
8 1 (0.058%) Primavera
8 1 (0.058%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.058%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 163 (9.39%) AWS
2 136 (7.83%) Azure
3 53 (3.05%) GCP
4 51 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
5 47 (2.71%) GitHub
6 39 (2.25%) IaaS
7 36 (2.07%) OpenShift
7 36 (2.07%) PaaS
8 35 (2.02%) Serverless
9 32 (1.84%) Azure DevOps
10 28 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
11 22 (1.27%) Amazon S3
12 19 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
13 16 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
13 16 (0.92%) Entra ID
14 15 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (0.86%) Power Platform
15 14 (0.81%) Azure Sentinel
16 13 (0.75%) Amazon ECS
16 13 (0.75%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 127 (7.32%) Firewall
2 106 (6.11%) DNS
3 77 (4.44%) Network Security
4 61 (3.51%) LAN
5 58 (3.34%) WAN
6 55 (3.17%) VPN
7 46 (2.65%) DHCP
8 43 (2.48%) TCP/IP
9 42 (2.42%) BGP
10 31 (1.79%) OSPF
11 29 (1.67%) Junos
12 26 (1.50%) Skype
13 23 (1.32%) Cisco ISE
14 21 (1.21%) Cisco IOS
15 19 (1.09%) Ethernet VPN
16 18 (1.04%) MPLS
16 18 (1.04%) VLAN
16 18 (1.04%) VXLAN
17 16 (0.92%) BIG-IP
17 16 (0.92%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (1.44%) Elasticsearch
3 17 (0.98%) SQL Server
4 16 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
5 14 (0.81%) Big Data
5 14 (0.81%) MongoDB
5 14 (0.81%) Oracle Database
6 13 (0.75%) Hadoop
7 12 (0.69%) Power BI
8 11 (0.63%) Redis
9 9 (0.52%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.46%) Metadata
10 8 (0.46%) MySQL
11 7 (0.40%) InfluxDB
11 7 (0.40%) SAP HANA
12 5 (0.29%) MariaDB
12 5 (0.29%) SAP Data Services
13 4 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
13 4 (0.23%) DynamoDB
13 4 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 59 (3.40%) JIRA
2 30 (1.73%) GitLab
3 26 (1.50%) Git
3 26 (1.50%) Jenkins
4 11 (0.63%) Artifactory
5 10 (0.58%) Maven
6 9 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.40%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.35%) Cypress.io
8 6 (0.35%) Robot Framework
9 5 (0.29%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.23%) Oracle APEX
11 3 (0.17%) MLflow
11 3 (0.17%) Postman
11 3 (0.17%) Selenium
11 3 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.12%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.12%) REST Assured
12 2 (0.12%) Snyk
12 2 (0.12%) webpack
General
1 316 (18.20%) Social Skills
2 212 (12.21%) Public Sector
3 128 (7.37%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (4.55%) Finance
5 65 (3.74%) Military
6 53 (3.05%) Documentation Skills
7 49 (2.82%) Legal
8 28 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
9 23 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
9 23 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 21 (1.21%) Aerospace
11 18 (1.04%) Law
11 18 (1.04%) Police
12 16 (0.92%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.81%) Marketing
14 13 (0.75%) Electronics
15 10 (0.58%) Banking
16 6 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 4 (0.23%) Influencing Skills
18 2 (0.12%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 315 (18.15%) Architect
2 115 (6.62%) Senior
3 106 (6.11%) Analyst
4 98 (5.65%) Lead
5 88 (5.07%) Network Engineer
6 83 (4.78%) Consultant
7 75 (4.32%) Technical Architect
8 71 (4.09%) Developer
9 58 (3.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 57 (3.28%) Tester
11 53 (3.05%) DevOps Engineer
12 51 (2.94%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 51 (2.94%) SOC Analyst
13 48 (2.76%) Security Architect
14 44 (2.53%) Support Engineer
15 42 (2.42%) Project Manager
16 37 (2.13%) 3rd Line Engineer
16 37 (2.13%) Solutions Architect
17 36 (2.07%) Infrastructure Architect
18 35 (2.02%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (2.25%) REST
2 27 (1.56%) Apache NiFi
3 26 (1.50%) OAuth
4 23 (1.32%) React
5 20 (1.15%) OpenID
6 19 (1.09%) OAuth2
6 19 (1.09%) SAML
7 17 (0.98%) Kafka
8 15 (0.86%) 802.1X
8 15 (0.86%) Flask
8 15 (0.86%) Node.js
9 14 (0.81%) FastAPI
9 14 (0.81%) Web Services
10 13 (0.75%) LDAP
11 12 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
12 11 (0.63%) Spring
13 10 (0.58%) ModSecurity
13 10 (0.58%) RabbitMQ
14 9 (0.52%) gRPC
14 9 (0.52%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 105 (6.05%) PKI
2 64 (3.69%) Data Centre
3 41 (2.36%) Security Operations Centre
4 38 (2.19%) Management Information System
5 27 (1.56%) Cloud Native
6 24 (1.38%) Clustering
7 23 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
8 21 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
8 21 (1.21%) Product Ownership
9 20 (1.15%) Cyberattack
10 19 (1.09%) Replication
11 18 (1.04%) Onboarding
12 17 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
13 14 (0.81%) Driving Licence
13 14 (0.81%) Private Cloud
14 13 (0.75%) Insider Threat
14 13 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (0.69%) Enterprise Storage
16 11 (0.63%) CSOC
16 11 (0.63%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 254 (14.63%) Windows
2 181 (10.43%) Linux
3 78 (4.49%) Windows Server
4 31 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 29 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.92%) Windows 7
7 14 (0.81%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.63%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.58%) Android
10 7 (0.40%) VMS
11 6 (0.35%) CentOS
11 6 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.29%) Unix
13 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.17%) Debian
14 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.12%) Rocky
16 1 (0.058%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 288 (16.59%) Agile
2 214 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
3 159 (9.16%) Cybersecurity
4 151 (8.70%) DevOps
5 146 (8.41%) ITIL
6 133 (7.66%) CI/CD
7 128 (7.37%) Service Management
8 108 (6.22%) Continuous Improvement
9 107 (6.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 107 (6.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 95 (5.47%) ITSM
11 94 (5.41%) Stakeholder Management
12 80 (4.61%) Risk Management
13 77 (4.44%) Infrastructure as Code
14 76 (4.38%) Project Delivery
15 74 (4.26%) Containerisation
16 71 (4.09%) Incident Response
16 71 (4.09%) SIEM
17 68 (3.92%) Project Management
18 64 (3.69%) Knowledge Transfer
Programming Languages
1 153 (8.81%) Python
2 125 (7.20%) PowerShell
3 58 (3.34%) SQL
4 47 (2.71%) Java
5 28 (1.61%) JavaScript
6 26 (1.50%) Bash
7 21 (1.21%) TypeScript
8 17 (0.98%) Go
9 16 (0.92%) C#
10 15 (0.86%) Shell Script
11 11 (0.63%) C++
12 9 (0.52%) Bicep
13 8 (0.46%) VB
14 7 (0.40%) C
14 7 (0.40%) VBScript
15 6 (0.35%) ABAP
15 6 (0.35%) Rust
16 5 (0.29%) Embedded C
16 5 (0.29%) PL/SQL
17 4 (0.23%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,736 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 555 (31.97%) SC Cleared
3 59 (3.40%) CISSP
3 59 (3.40%) Degree
4 47 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
5 38 (2.19%) CISM
6 31 (1.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 27 (1.56%) CompTIA Security+
8 23 (1.32%) CCNP
9 21 (1.21%) CESG Certified Professional
10 20 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
11 19 (1.09%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.09%) CCNA
12 18 (1.04%) BPSS Clearance
12 18 (1.04%) GIAC
13 16 (0.92%) CompTIA CySA+
13 16 (0.92%) CTC Cleared
14 14 (0.81%) Azure Certification
14 14 (0.81%) JNCIS
15 10 (0.58%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (4.72%) NIST
2 69 (3.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (3.28%) NCSC
4 42 (2.42%) QA
5 38 (2.19%) PMO
6 36 (2.07%) JSP 440
7 21 (1.21%) GRC
8 17 (0.98%) RMADS
9 16 (0.92%) GDPR
10 15 (0.86%) NIST 800
11 14 (0.81%) SLA
12 13 (0.75%) Data Quality
13 11 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 10 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
15 6 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 6 (0.35%) P3O
16 5 (0.29%) Government Security Classifications
17 4 (0.23%) Accessibility
18 3 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 118 (6.80%) Active Directory
2 91 (5.24%) Docker
3 86 (4.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (2.82%) VMware NSX
5 33 (1.90%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (1.21%) Hyper-V
7 19 (1.09%) vSphere
8 14 (0.81%) BitLocker
9 10 (0.58%) vCloud
10 9 (0.52%) Firmware
11 7 (0.40%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
14 3 (0.17%) Ceph
14 3 (0.17%) GPFS
14 3 (0.17%) Lustre
14 3 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.12%) UAG
15 2 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 141 (8.12%) Kubernetes
2 111 (6.39%) Terraform
3 82 (4.72%) Ansible
4 51 (2.94%) vCenter Server
5 35 (2.02%) Single Sign-On
6 33 (1.90%) Grafana
7 32 (1.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 31 (1.79%) SCCM
9 28 (1.61%) Prometheus
10 16 (0.92%) FortiGate
11 14 (0.81%) Puppet
11 14 (0.81%) WMI
12 13 (0.75%) Progress Chef
13 10 (0.58%) SCOM
14 9 (0.52%) Podman
14 9 (0.52%) VxRail
15 8 (0.46%) Argo
15 8 (0.46%) Forefront Identity Manager
15 8 (0.46%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 7 (0.40%) Nessus
Vendors
1 219 (12.62%) Microsoft
2 170 (9.79%) VMware
3 109 (6.28%) Cisco
4 58 (3.34%) Juniper
5 57 (3.28%) Splunk
6 47 (2.71%) Oracle
7 46 (2.65%) Red Hat
7 46 (2.65%) ServiceNow
8 44 (2.53%) SAP
9 42 (2.42%) NetApp
10 29 (1.67%) SolarWinds
11 27 (1.56%) F5
12 24 (1.38%) Dell
12 24 (1.38%) Remedy
13 22 (1.27%) Fortinet
13 22 (1.27%) Palo Alto
14 18 (1.04%) Palantir
15 16 (0.92%) Google
15 16 (0.92%) Sparx
16 15 (0.86%) Citrix