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 6 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 87 39
Rank change year-on-year +35 -48 +14
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,236 964 1,756
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.09% 2.94% 4.66%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.89% 9.25% 15.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,627 680 1,140
10th Percentile £462 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £517 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £589 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.91% -1.88% -
75th Percentile £700 £675 £688
90th Percentile £761 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 36 84
10th Percentile £48.64 - £48.43
25th Percentile £60.00 £25.15 £56.65
Median hourly rate £74.16 £34.75 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year +113.41% -46.95% -9.44%
75th Percentile £92.53 £76.25 £80.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £87.38 £99.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.41 £70.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year +6.30% +6.87% -9.44%

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 17,350 10,423 11,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.75% 31.76% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,514 6,507 6,697
10th Percentile £351 £283 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,440 885 603
10th Percentile £16.80 £17.87 £18.01
25th Percentile £25.20 £18.87 £25.36
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -47.05% -11.69%
75th Percentile £71.43 £41.94 £68.38
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -4.49%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 +34 2,113 £600 +3.45% 1,305
UK excluding London +18 1,613 £600 +4.35% 1,038
South East +7 835 £600 +4.35% 350
South West +7 528 £575 -8.00% 276
London +46 483 £625 - 257
Work from Home +51 354 £555 -9.76% 573
East of England +17 111 £650 +18.18% 169
North of England -24 57 £525 -2.33% 101
Midlands -74 44 £613 +4.26% 53
North West -13 41 £775 +55.00% 78
West Midlands -81 38 £600 +2.13% 25
Scotland -1 37 £669 +27.33% 80
Yorkshire -26 11 £510 - 10
East Midlands - 6 £631 - 28
Northern Ireland +7 5 £638 +6.25% 4
North East -33 5 £463 -26.00% 13
Wales -13 4 - - 11

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 74 (3.31%) Confluence
2 59 (2.64%) SharePoint
3 40 (1.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 22 (0.98%) Apache
5 12 (0.54%) Apache Spark
6 9 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.36%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 7 (0.31%) IIS
9 5 (0.22%) nginx
10 4 (0.18%) Camunda
11 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.089%) Mule
12 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
12 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
12 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
Applications
1 66 (2.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (2.19%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.85%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.76%) Revit
6 17 (0.76%) SOLIDWORKS
7 11 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.45%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.045%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.30%) Oracle ERP
2 19 (0.85%) Teamcenter
3 16 (0.72%) Remedy ITSM
3 16 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.72%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.18%) Primavera
5 4 (0.18%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.13%) SAP EWM
7 2 (0.089%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
8 1 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.045%) Oracle Payroll
8 1 (0.045%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 311 (13.91%) Azure
2 294 (13.15%) AWS
3 119 (5.32%) GCP
4 64 (2.86%) Azure DevOps
5 57 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
6 50 (2.24%) GitHub
7 43 (1.92%) Entra ID
7 43 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
8 39 (1.74%) Serverless
9 36 (1.61%) OpenShift
10 35 (1.57%) Power Platform
11 30 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
11 30 (1.34%) OCI
12 24 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
12 24 (1.07%) Amazon S3
13 22 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
14 19 (0.85%) Amazon SQS
15 17 (0.76%) Azure Monitor
15 17 (0.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 16 (0.72%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 164 (7.33%) DNS
2 125 (5.59%) Firewall
3 83 (3.71%) DHCP
4 78 (3.49%) Network Security
5 60 (2.68%) TCP/IP
6 58 (2.59%) WAN
7 52 (2.33%) BGP
7 52 (2.33%) VPN
8 49 (2.19%) LAN
9 37 (1.65%) MPLS
10 36 (1.61%) VSAN
11 32 (1.43%) IPsec
12 29 (1.30%) VLAN
13 25 (1.12%) SSL
14 18 (0.81%) OSPF
14 18 (0.81%) SAN
14 18 (0.81%) SD-WAN
15 16 (0.72%) Cisco ASA
16 15 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
17 14 (0.63%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (2.46%) SQL Server
2 46 (2.06%) Oracle Database
3 37 (1.65%) PostgreSQL
4 30 (1.34%) Metadata
5 26 (1.16%) Relational Database
6 20 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
6 20 (0.89%) Power BI
7 18 (0.81%) Data Lake
7 18 (0.81%) MongoDB
8 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
9 13 (0.58%) Big Data
10 12 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
11 10 (0.45%) Hadoop
12 9 (0.40%) MySQL
12 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
12 9 (0.40%) Parquet
13 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
13 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
13 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 111 (4.96%) JIRA
2 94 (4.20%) GitLab
3 90 (4.03%) Jenkins
4 86 (3.85%) Git
5 32 (1.43%) Selenium
6 16 (0.72%) Cypress.io
7 14 (0.63%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.45%) JUnit
8 10 (0.45%) MSI
9 9 (0.40%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.36%) JMeter
10 8 (0.36%) Postman
10 8 (0.36%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.31%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.31%) Gatling
11 7 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.27%) Maven
13 5 (0.22%) TestNG
General
1 514 (22.99%) Social Skills
2 272 (12.16%) Public Sector
3 172 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (6.40%) Finance
5 69 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
6 67 (3.00%) Military
7 50 (2.24%) Organisational Skills
8 39 (1.74%) Aerospace
9 38 (1.70%) Manufacturing
10 36 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
10 36 (1.61%) Police
11 32 (1.43%) Legal
12 31 (1.39%) Law
13 28 (1.25%) Telecoms
14 9 (0.40%) Local Government
14 9 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.31%) Marketing
16 6 (0.27%) Automotive
17 5 (0.22%) Back Office
18 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 386 (17.26%) Architect
2 225 (10.06%) Lead
3 201 (8.99%) Senior
4 154 (6.89%) Developer
5 150 (6.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 146 (6.53%) Consultant
7 137 (6.13%) Analyst
8 93 (4.16%) Security Architect
9 78 (3.49%) Network Engineer
10 70 (3.13%) Cloud Engineer
10 70 (3.13%) SOC Analyst
11 66 (2.95%) Support Engineer
12 58 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
13 53 (2.37%) DBA
14 52 (2.33%) Project Manager
15 48 (2.15%) Solutions Architect
16 47 (2.10%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 43 (1.92%) Technical Architect
18 42 (1.88%) Network Architect
19 41 (1.83%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 208 (9.30%) Terraform
2 80 (3.58%) REST
3 41 (1.83%) LDAP
4 32 (1.43%) React
5 30 (1.34%) Elastic Stack
6 29 (1.30%) Kafka
7 27 (1.21%) RESTful
7 27 (1.21%) SOAP
8 24 (1.07%) Apache NiFi
9 19 (0.85%) Node.js
9 19 (0.85%) XML
10 17 (0.76%) AngularJS
10 17 (0.76%) FastAPI
10 17 (0.76%) JSON
10 17 (0.76%) Keycloak
11 16 (0.72%) OAuth
11 16 (0.72%) Spring
12 15 (0.67%) Spring Boot
13 14 (0.63%) Flask
14 13 (0.58%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 105 (4.70%) Cloud Native
2 102 (4.56%) Data Centre
3 101 (4.52%) PKI
4 85 (3.80%) Onboarding
5 46 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 40 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 40 (1.79%) Product Ownership
7 38 (1.70%) Cyber Threat
8 36 (1.61%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.61%) Security Operations Centre
9 30 (1.34%) Security Posture
10 25 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
11 21 (0.94%) Public Cloud
12 20 (0.89%) Virtual Team
13 18 (0.81%) Clustering
13 18 (0.81%) CMDB
14 16 (0.72%) Legacy Systems
15 15 (0.67%) Replication
16 14 (0.63%) Video Conferencing
17 12 (0.54%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 384 (17.17%) Windows
2 249 (11.14%) Linux
3 180 (8.05%) Windows Server
4 46 (2.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.39%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.30%) Windows Server 2019
7 22 (0.98%) Ubuntu
7 22 (0.98%) Unix
8 18 (0.81%) CentOS
9 12 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
10 7 (0.31%) Android
10 7 (0.31%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.27%) AIX
11 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.22%) Rocky
13 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
13 4 (0.18%) Debian
13 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 388 (17.35%) Agile
2 296 (13.24%) Continuous Improvement
3 282 (12.61%) Stakeholder Management
4 277 (12.39%) CI/CD
5 246 (11.00%) DevOps
6 235 (10.51%) Problem-Solving
7 225 (10.06%) Cybersecurity
8 215 (9.62%) Infrastructure as Code
8 215 (9.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 215 (9.62%) Technical Leadership
9 200 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 185 (8.27%) ITIL
11 158 (7.07%) Containerisation
12 150 (6.71%) Service Management
13 148 (6.62%) ITSM
14 133 (5.95%) Project Delivery
15 131 (5.86%) SIEM
16 126 (5.64%) Decision-Making
17 123 (5.50%) Risk Management
18 117 (5.23%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 254 (11.36%) Python
2 191 (8.54%) PowerShell
3 137 (6.13%) SQL
4 99 (4.43%) Bash
5 77 (3.44%) Java
6 41 (1.83%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.70%) C#
8 29 (1.30%) TypeScript
9 21 (0.94%) Go
10 15 (0.67%) Bicep
11 13 (0.58%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.54%) Search Processing Language
12 12 (0.54%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.49%) C++
14 7 (0.31%) Groovy
15 6 (0.27%) C
15 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.27%) Perl
15 6 (0.27%) X++
16 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,236 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 693 (30.99%) SC Cleared
3 93 (4.16%) Degree
4 69 (3.09%) CISSP
5 40 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
5 40 (1.79%) CISM
6 28 (1.25%) AWS Certification
7 25 (1.12%) CCNP
7 25 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
8 24 (1.07%) ISTQB
8 24 (1.07%) PMI Certification
9 23 (1.03%) VCAP
9 23 (1.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 21 (0.94%) Azure Certification
11 20 (0.89%) PMP
11 20 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
12 13 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
12 13 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
13 12 (0.54%) CCNA
13 12 (0.54%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (4.16%) NCSC
2 89 (3.98%) NIST
3 84 (3.76%) PMO
4 77 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 67 (3.00%) QA
6 36 (1.61%) JSP 440
7 35 (1.57%) SLA
8 32 (1.43%) GDPR
9 31 (1.39%) Data Quality
10 24 (1.07%) GRC
11 20 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 17 (0.76%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
14 11 (0.49%) NIST 800
15 10 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
16 8 (0.36%) WCAG
17 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
17 7 (0.31%) RMADS
18 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 247 (11.05%) Active Directory
2 195 (8.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 146 (6.53%) Docker
4 85 (3.80%) VMware NSX
5 71 (3.18%) VMware ESXi
6 61 (2.73%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.37%) vSphere
8 24 (1.07%) vCloud
9 19 (0.85%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.63%) NFS
11 12 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
12 11 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
13 10 (0.45%) Firmware
14 5 (0.22%) KVM
15 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
16 2 (0.089%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 2 (0.089%) Squid
Systems Management
1 233 (10.42%) Kubernetes
2 162 (7.25%) Ansible
3 80 (3.58%) vCenter Server
4 59 (2.64%) SCOM
5 33 (1.48%) SCCM
6 31 (1.39%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.25%) Grafana
8 21 (0.94%) Nagios
8 21 (0.94%) Puppet
9 20 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
10 17 (0.76%) VxRail
11 16 (0.72%) WMI
12 15 (0.67%) Avamar
12 15 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
13 14 (0.63%) Podman
14 13 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 13 (0.58%) Data Guard
14 13 (0.58%) Progress Chef
14 13 (0.58%) WSUS
15 12 (0.54%) Istio
Vendors
1 317 (14.18%) Microsoft
2 264 (11.81%) VMware
3 122 (5.46%) Oracle
4 89 (3.98%) ServiceNow
5 72 (3.22%) Cisco
6 65 (2.91%) Google
7 53 (2.37%) Splunk
8 49 (2.19%) SAP
9 46 (2.06%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.97%) CyberArk
11 35 (1.57%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.03%) Juniper
14 22 (0.98%) Dell
15 19 (0.85%) Remedy
16 18 (0.81%) Atlassian
16 18 (0.81%) Broadcom
16 18 (0.81%) Citrix
16 18 (0.81%) Thales
17 17 (0.76%) BMC