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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 80 31
Rank change year-on-year +32 -49 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,150 970 2,381
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.09% 2.99% 5.59%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.02% 9.73% 18.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,630 670 1,676
10th Percentile £430 £459 £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 £650 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £772
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £578 £600
% change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% +1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 37 123
10th Percentile £26.68 £25.15 £49.20
25th Percentile £35.00 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £56.00 £65.00 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -7.66% +0.56%
75th Percentile £76.75 £82.10 £85.00
90th Percentile £94.75 £88.05 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.00 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -29.64% +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 16,512 9,968 12,720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 30.68% 29.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,042 6,170 7,955
10th Percentile £350 £281 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £707 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 729 1,082
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.75 £20.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +105.88% -38.55% -24.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £57.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £75.00 £75.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -19.87%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +28 1,997 £600 +2.13% 485
UK excluding London +10 1,528 £600 +3.90% 413
South East +6 852 £600 - 183
London +67 446 £600 - 93
South West -1 395 £575 -4.17% 141
Work from Home +51 327 £570 -2.98% 155
East of England +14 101 £650 +18.18% 30
North of England -15 78 £775 +24.00% 33
Midlands -56 59 £600 - 22
North West -5 54 £800 +18.52% 27
West Midlands -62 46 £600 - 17
Scotland +20 41 £659 +31.85% 8
Yorkshire -34 20 £510 -18.40% 2
East Midlands 0 13 £631 +14.77% 5
Northern Ireland +5 5 £619 - 1
Wales -5 4 - - 2
North East -35 4 £463 -26.00% 4

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 (2.70%) Confluence
2 42 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
3 39 (1.81%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.37%) Apache
4 8 (0.37%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
7 5 (0.23%) CMS
8 2 (0.093%) nginx
8 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
8 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.093%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.093%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.047%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.047%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.047%) Mule
9 1 (0.047%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 44 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
3 24 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
4 16 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.47%) AutoCAD
5 10 (0.47%) Revit
5 10 (0.47%) SOLIDWORKS
6 9 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.093%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 32 (1.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
3 19 (0.88%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 13 (0.60%) Teamcenter
5 7 (0.33%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.093%) Primavera
9 2 (0.093%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 1 (0.047%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.047%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.047%) SAP PLM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 243 (11.30%) AWS
2 240 (11.16%) Azure
3 97 (4.51%) GCP
4 55 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
5 52 (2.42%) GitHub
6 43 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
7 39 (1.81%) Microsoft 365
8 38 (1.77%) IaaS
9 37 (1.72%) PaaS
10 35 (1.63%) Serverless
11 30 (1.40%) Power Platform
12 28 (1.30%) OpenShift
13 25 (1.16%) Entra ID
14 24 (1.12%) OCI
15 20 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
16 18 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
16 18 (0.84%) SaaS
17 17 (0.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 16 (0.74%) Amazon S3
19 15 (0.70%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 134 (6.23%) DNS
2 121 (5.63%) Firewall
3 80 (3.72%) Network Security
4 72 (3.35%) WAN
5 68 (3.16%) LAN
6 64 (2.98%) DHCP
7 55 (2.56%) BGP
8 49 (2.28%) VPN
9 35 (1.63%) TCP/IP
10 33 (1.53%) OSPF
11 29 (1.35%) VLAN
11 29 (1.35%) VSAN
12 28 (1.30%) IPsec
13 27 (1.26%) MPLS
14 22 (1.02%) VXLAN
15 20 (0.93%) Ethernet VPN
16 18 (0.84%) BIG-IP
16 18 (0.84%) Cisco ASA
17 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.74%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (2.09%) SQL Server
2 39 (1.81%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.58%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
5 22 (1.02%) Power BI
6 16 (0.74%) Metadata
7 13 (0.60%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (0.42%) Data Lake
8 9 (0.42%) MongoDB
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
10 7 (0.33%) Hadoop
10 7 (0.33%) Redis
11 6 (0.28%) Big Data
11 6 (0.28%) BigQuery
11 6 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 5 (0.23%) MariaDB
12 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 4 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 93 (4.33%) JIRA
2 47 (2.19%) GitLab
3 44 (2.05%) Jenkins
4 37 (1.72%) Git
5 13 (0.60%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.42%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.19%) MLflow
9 4 (0.19%) Postman
9 4 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.19%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.14%) ERwin
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
11 2 (0.093%) MSI
General
1 359 (16.70%) Social Skills
2 279 (12.98%) Public Sector
3 136 (6.33%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (5.21%) Finance
5 78 (3.63%) Military
6 53 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.14%) Legal
8 29 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
9 25 (1.16%) Law
10 23 (1.07%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.07%) Telecoms
11 20 (0.93%) Police
12 19 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (0.74%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.37%) Marketing
16 6 (0.28%) Local Government
17 4 (0.19%) Advertising
17 4 (0.19%) Aviation
18 3 (0.14%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 326 (15.16%) Architect
2 225 (10.47%) Lead
3 189 (8.79%) Senior
4 149 (6.93%) Analyst
5 142 (6.60%) Developer
6 136 (6.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 131 (6.09%) Consultant
8 89 (4.14%) Network Engineer
9 81 (3.77%) Security Architect
10 79 (3.67%) SOC Analyst
11 77 (3.58%) Technical Architect
12 57 (2.65%) Project Manager
13 52 (2.42%) DBA
14 50 (2.33%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 48 (2.23%) DevOps Engineer
15 48 (2.23%) Tester
16 47 (2.19%) Cloud Engineer
16 47 (2.19%) Service Manager
17 43 (2.00%) Network Architect
18 41 (1.91%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (3.12%) REST
2 31 (1.44%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.26%) React
4 24 (1.12%) SOAP
5 20 (0.93%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) 802.1X
7 18 (0.84%) RESTful
8 17 (0.79%) Node.js
9 16 (0.74%) Spring
10 15 (0.70%) Flask
10 15 (0.70%) Spring Boot
11 14 (0.65%) .NET
11 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
12 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
13 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
14 9 (0.42%) LDAP
14 9 (0.42%) Web Services
15 8 (0.37%) Oracle Fusion
15 8 (0.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.74%) Data Centre
2 90 (4.19%) PKI
3 73 (3.40%) Cloud Native
4 54 (2.51%) Onboarding
5 53 (2.47%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.77%) Clustering
7 34 (1.58%) Private Cloud
8 31 (1.44%) Product Ownership
9 30 (1.40%) Security Posture
10 28 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
11 26 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
11 26 (1.21%) Management Information System
12 25 (1.16%) CMDB
13 24 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
14 22 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
14 22 (1.02%) Public Cloud
15 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
16 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
16 13 (0.60%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 290 (13.49%) Windows
2 223 (10.37%) Linux
3 125 (5.81%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.79%) Windows 10
6 14 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 6 (0.28%) AIX
8 6 (0.28%) Android
8 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
8 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
9 5 (0.23%) CentOS
9 5 (0.23%) Debian
9 5 (0.23%) VMS
9 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 361 (16.79%) Agile
2 218 (10.14%) Problem-Solving
3 203 (9.44%) ITIL
4 199 (9.26%) Cybersecurity
5 198 (9.21%) CI/CD
6 194 (9.02%) Continuous Improvement
7 183 (8.51%) DevOps
7 183 (8.51%) Stakeholder Management
8 182 (8.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 159 (7.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 150 (6.98%) Service Management
11 134 (6.23%) Infrastructure as Code
12 120 (5.58%) ITSM
13 118 (5.49%) Technical Leadership
14 115 (5.35%) Project Delivery
15 105 (4.88%) Risk Management
16 103 (4.79%) Containerisation
16 103 (4.79%) Service Delivery
17 95 (4.42%) Roadmaps
18 93 (4.33%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 190 (8.84%) Python
2 125 (5.81%) PowerShell
3 108 (5.02%) SQL
4 62 (2.88%) Java
5 53 (2.47%) Bash
6 45 (2.09%) JavaScript
7 30 (1.40%) TypeScript
8 28 (1.30%) C#
9 20 (0.93%) Go
10 15 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.56%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.42%) Bicep
14 9 (0.42%) Rust
15 8 (0.37%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.28%) Perl
17 5 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,150 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 720 (33.49%) SC Cleared
3 66 (3.07%) Degree
4 52 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
4 52 (2.42%) CISSP
5 27 (1.26%) CISM
6 25 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
7 24 (1.12%) AWS Certification
8 21 (0.98%) CCNP
8 21 (0.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 20 (0.93%) CompTIA Security+
10 18 (0.84%) BPSS Clearance
10 18 (0.84%) CCNA
11 17 (0.79%) PMI Certification
12 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.70%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.70%) MCSE
13 15 (0.70%) PMP
14 13 (0.60%) Azure Certification
15 12 (0.56%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.53%) NCSC
2 74 (3.44%) NIST
3 67 (3.12%) PMO
4 61 (2.84%) QA
5 57 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.58%) JSP 440
7 27 (1.26%) GDPR
8 24 (1.12%) GRC
9 21 (0.98%) SLA
10 20 (0.93%) Data Quality
11 19 (0.88%) RMADS
12 14 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 13 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
14 12 (0.56%) Accessibility
15 10 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
16 8 (0.37%) WCAG
17 7 (0.33%) ISO 9000
17 7 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 6 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 168 (7.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 155 (7.21%) Active Directory
3 123 (5.72%) Docker
4 82 (3.81%) VMware NSX
5 63 (2.93%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (2.42%) Hyper-V
7 37 (1.72%) vSphere
8 21 (0.98%) vCloud
9 16 (0.74%) 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 (0.19%) Ceph
13 4 (0.19%) Firmware
13 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.19%) UAG
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 169 (7.86%) Kubernetes
2 164 (7.63%) Terraform
3 103 (4.79%) Ansible
4 75 (3.49%) vCenter Server
5 40 (1.86%) SCOM
6 27 (1.26%) SCCM
7 25 (1.16%) Prometheus
8 24 (1.12%) Grafana
9 21 (0.98%) Puppet
10 15 (0.70%) Nagios
10 15 (0.70%) Oracle RMAN
11 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
11 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
11 13 (0.60%) Podman
12 12 (0.56%) Avamar
13 10 (0.47%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.47%) WSUS
14 9 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 9 (0.42%) Progress Chef
14 9 (0.42%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 235 (10.93%) VMware
2 227 (10.56%) Microsoft
3 113 (5.26%) ServiceNow
4 102 (4.74%) Cisco
5 85 (3.95%) Oracle
6 63 (2.93%) Splunk
7 53 (2.47%) SAP
8 49 (2.28%) Juniper
9 44 (2.05%) Google
10 43 (2.00%) SolarWinds
11 35 (1.63%) NetApp
12 32 (1.49%) Red Hat
13 28 (1.30%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.30%) Remedy
14 27 (1.26%) F5
15 26 (1.21%) Citrix
16 23 (1.07%) Dell
16 23 (1.07%) Fortinet
17 20 (0.93%) BMC
18 19 (0.88%) Sparx