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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 79 32
Rank change year-on-year +31 -47 +27
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,061 939 2,443
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.00% 3.00% 5.62%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.78% 9.75% 18.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,562 647 1,755
10th Percentile £430 £458 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £514
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 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +1.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 30 120
10th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £48.94
25th Percentile £35.00 £32.31 £56.65
Median hourly rate £54.00 £79.35 £71.17
Median % change year-on-year -31.95% +11.50% +1.66%
75th Percentile £68.00 £82.75 £85.65
90th Percentile £80.36 £88.87 £90.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.84 £81.35 £71.08
% change year-on-year -39.96% +14.44% -5.22%

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 16,122 9,629 12,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.29% 30.79% 29.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,754 5,982 8,029
10th Percentile £350 £278 £311
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.43% -0.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £527
% change year-on-year +2.00% -5.03% +0.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,177 647 1,108
10th Percentile £17.36 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.19 £20.19 £20.00
Median hourly rate £51.00 £27.94 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +82.53% -31.75% -26.70%
75th Percentile £72.54 £59.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +97.47% -41.12% -20.54%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +26 1,915 £600 +2.13% 577
UK excluding London +11 1,464 £600 +4.35% 481
South East +5 799 £600 +1.65% 201
London +61 426 £600 - 104
South West -3 379 £575 -4.17% 179
Work from Home +54 314 £560 -2.61% 179
East of England +16 104 £650 +18.18% 34
North of England -1 87 £775 +24.00% 40
North West +10 66 £775 +278.05% 34
Midlands -56 53 £600 - 28
West Midlands -68 41 £600 - 24
Scotland +26 39 £669 +33.70% 6
Yorkshire -36 18 £525 -16.00% 3
East Midlands -4 12 £625 +13.64% 4
Northern Ireland +7 5 £619 - 2
Wales -15 4 - - 1
North East -35 3 £569 -9.00% 3

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 46 (2.23%) Confluence
2 43 (2.09%) Microsoft Exchange
3 33 (1.60%) SharePoint
4 7 (0.34%) Documentum
5 6 (0.29%) Apache Spark
5 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
6 5 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.24%) CMS
7 4 (0.19%) Apache
7 4 (0.19%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.097%) nginx
9 2 (0.097%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.049%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.049%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.049%) Mule
10 1 (0.049%) Oracle Service Bus
10 1 (0.049%) WebLogic
Applications
1 37 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.50%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.49%) AutoCAD
5 10 (0.49%) Revit
5 10 (0.49%) SOLIDWORKS
6 7 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.29%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.097%) Lectora
8 2 (0.097%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 30 (1.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (0.97%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.82%) Oracle ERP
5 8 (0.39%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP EWM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.097%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.097%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.097%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 2 (0.097%) Primavera
9 2 (0.097%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.049%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.049%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.049%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.049%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 229 (11.11%) AWS
2 211 (10.24%) Azure
3 94 (4.56%) GCP
4 53 (2.57%) GitHub
5 48 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
6 42 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
7 41 (1.99%) IaaS
7 41 (1.99%) PaaS
8 33 (1.60%) Microsoft 365
9 32 (1.55%) Serverless
10 25 (1.21%) OCI
11 24 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 24 (1.16%) Power Platform
12 20 (0.97%) Entra ID
12 20 (0.97%) SaaS
13 18 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (0.78%) Amazon ECS
14 16 (0.78%) Amazon EKS
15 14 (0.68%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (0.58%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 119 (5.77%) DNS
2 105 (5.09%) Firewall
3 78 (3.78%) Network Security
4 67 (3.25%) WAN
5 65 (3.15%) LAN
6 54 (2.62%) DHCP
7 49 (2.38%) VPN
8 45 (2.18%) BGP
9 29 (1.41%) OSPF
10 27 (1.31%) VLAN
11 22 (1.07%) IPsec
11 22 (1.07%) MPLS
11 22 (1.07%) VXLAN
12 21 (1.02%) TCP/IP
13 20 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
14 19 (0.92%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.87%) VSAN
16 17 (0.82%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.78%) Cisco Nexus
17 16 (0.78%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (1.99%) SQL Server
2 36 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 35 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
4 27 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
5 19 (0.92%) Power BI
6 13 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
6 13 (0.63%) MongoDB
7 11 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
7 11 (0.53%) Metadata
8 7 (0.34%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.34%) Oracle Database 11g
8 7 (0.34%) Redis
9 6 (0.29%) NoSQL
10 5 (0.24%) Big Data
10 5 (0.24%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.24%) DynamoDB
10 5 (0.24%) Hadoop
10 5 (0.24%) MariaDB
10 5 (0.24%) MySQL
11 4 (0.19%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 81 (3.93%) JIRA
2 45 (2.18%) GitLab
3 42 (2.04%) Jenkins
4 36 (1.75%) Git
5 13 (0.63%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.44%) Selenium
7 7 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.29%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.24%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.24%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.19%) Oracle APEX
10 4 (0.19%) Postman
10 4 (0.19%) Robot Framework
10 4 (0.19%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.19%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.15%) Appium
11 3 (0.15%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.15%) ERwin
11 3 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 339 (16.45%) Social Skills
2 267 (12.95%) Public Sector
3 121 (5.87%) Analytical Skills
4 102 (4.95%) Finance
5 76 (3.69%) Military
6 62 (3.01%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.33%) Legal
8 26 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
9 23 (1.12%) Law
9 23 (1.12%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.07%) Aerospace
11 21 (1.02%) Police
12 19 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
13 14 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
13 14 (0.68%) Manufacturing
14 9 (0.44%) Marketing
15 6 (0.29%) Local Government
16 4 (0.19%) Electronics
17 3 (0.15%) Advertising
17 3 (0.15%) Banking
Job Titles
1 316 (15.33%) Architect
2 195 (9.46%) Lead
3 174 (8.44%) Senior
4 143 (6.94%) Analyst
5 129 (6.26%) Developer
6 126 (6.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 114 (5.53%) Consultant
8 82 (3.98%) Technical Architect
9 81 (3.93%) Network Engineer
10 76 (3.69%) SOC Analyst
11 74 (3.59%) Security Architect
12 62 (3.01%) Project Manager
13 52 (2.52%) DBA
14 50 (2.43%) Tester
15 49 (2.38%) Service Manager
16 47 (2.28%) DevOps Engineer
17 45 (2.18%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
18 44 (2.13%) Software Engineer
19 43 (2.09%) DV Cleared Project Manager
20 42 (2.04%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (3.15%) REST
2 28 (1.36%) Elastic Stack
2 28 (1.36%) React
3 25 (1.21%) SOAP
4 20 (0.97%) Node.js
5 19 (0.92%) 802.1X
6 18 (0.87%) Kafka
6 18 (0.87%) RESTful
6 18 (0.87%) Spring
7 15 (0.73%) Spring Boot
8 14 (0.68%) AngularJS
8 14 (0.68%) Flask
9 13 (0.63%) .NET
9 13 (0.63%) FastAPI
9 13 (0.63%) ModSecurity
10 10 (0.49%) Apache NiFi
10 10 (0.49%) Playwright
11 9 (0.44%) OAuth
11 9 (0.44%) Web Services
11 9 (0.44%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 90 (4.37%) Data Centre
2 88 (4.27%) PKI
3 64 (3.11%) Cloud Native
4 52 (2.52%) Security Operations Centre
5 38 (1.84%) Onboarding
6 36 (1.75%) Clustering
7 33 (1.60%) Private Cloud
7 33 (1.60%) Product Ownership
8 30 (1.46%) Security Posture
9 28 (1.36%) Management Information System
10 26 (1.26%) CMDB
10 26 (1.26%) Cyber Threat
11 25 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 21 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
13 20 (0.97%) Public Cloud
14 17 (0.82%) Virtual Team
15 14 (0.68%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (0.63%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
16 13 (0.63%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 272 (13.20%) Windows
2 211 (10.24%) Linux
3 114 (5.53%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (0.78%) Windows 10
6 12 (0.58%) Unix
7 10 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.34%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
9 6 (0.29%) AIX
9 6 (0.29%) Android
10 5 (0.24%) CentOS
10 5 (0.24%) Debian
10 5 (0.24%) VMS
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 349 (16.93%) Agile
2 203 (9.85%) Problem-Solving
3 195 (9.46%) ITIL
4 180 (8.73%) Continuous Improvement
5 175 (8.49%) Cybersecurity
6 174 (8.44%) CI/CD
7 172 (8.35%) DevOps
8 169 (8.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 160 (7.76%) Stakeholder Management
10 146 (7.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 139 (6.74%) Service Management
12 119 (5.77%) ITSM
13 114 (5.53%) Infrastructure as Code
14 110 (5.34%) Project Delivery
15 98 (4.75%) Technical Leadership
16 96 (4.66%) Service Delivery
17 94 (4.56%) Containerisation
18 93 (4.51%) Risk Management
19 92 (4.46%) Decision-Making
20 87 (4.22%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 170 (8.25%) Python
2 113 (5.48%) PowerShell
3 100 (4.85%) SQL
4 59 (2.86%) Java
5 45 (2.18%) JavaScript
6 41 (1.99%) Bash
7 30 (1.46%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.31%) C#
9 18 (0.87%) Go
10 14 (0.68%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.53%) C++
13 10 (0.49%) C
14 9 (0.44%) Rust
15 8 (0.39%) Shell Script
16 7 (0.34%) Bicep
17 6 (0.29%) Embedded C
17 6 (0.29%) Perl
18 5 (0.24%) Apex Code
18 5 (0.24%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 2,061 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 681 (33.04%) SC Cleared
3 64 (3.11%) Degree
4 53 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
5 47 (2.28%) CISSP
6 28 (1.36%) CISM
7 23 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.07%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.07%) CCNP
9 21 (1.02%) CompTIA Security+
10 20 (0.97%) CCNA
11 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (0.82%) BPSS Clearance
12 17 (0.82%) PMI Certification
13 16 (0.78%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.78%) PMP
14 15 (0.73%) CESG Certified Professional
14 15 (0.73%) MCSE
15 12 (0.58%) GIAC
16 11 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (3.59%) NIST
2 69 (3.35%) NCSC
3 66 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 57 (2.77%) PMO
5 51 (2.47%) QA
6 42 (2.04%) JSP 440
7 28 (1.36%) GDPR
8 22 (1.07%) GRC
8 22 (1.07%) RMADS
9 20 (0.97%) SLA
10 12 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
11 10 (0.49%) Accessibility
11 10 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 9 (0.44%) Data Quality
12 9 (0.44%) Government Security Classifications
13 7 (0.34%) ISO 9000
14 6 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 6 (0.29%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 143 (6.94%) VMware Infrastructure
2 134 (6.50%) Active Directory
3 111 (5.39%) Docker
4 69 (3.35%) VMware NSX
5 57 (2.77%) VMware ESXi
6 46 (2.23%) Hyper-V
7 26 (1.26%) vSphere
8 22 (1.07%) vCloud
9 12 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 11 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.44%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.39%) NFS
13 5 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
14 4 (0.19%) Ceph
14 4 (0.19%) Firmware
14 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.19%) UAG
15 3 (0.15%) Squid
16 2 (0.097%) KVM
Systems Management
1 152 (7.38%) Kubernetes
2 142 (6.89%) Terraform
3 87 (4.22%) Ansible
4 67 (3.25%) vCenter Server
5 35 (1.70%) SCOM
6 28 (1.36%) SCCM
7 22 (1.07%) Prometheus
8 21 (1.02%) Grafana
9 20 (0.97%) Puppet
10 13 (0.63%) Data Guard
10 13 (0.63%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.63%) Nagios
11 12 (0.58%) Podman
11 12 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 11 (0.53%) Oracle RMAN
13 10 (0.49%) WSUS
14 9 (0.44%) Avamar
14 9 (0.44%) vMotion
14 9 (0.44%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 217 (10.53%) VMware
2 204 (9.90%) Microsoft
3 110 (5.34%) ServiceNow
4 100 (4.85%) Cisco
5 84 (4.08%) Oracle
6 59 (2.86%) Splunk
7 46 (2.23%) Juniper
8 41 (1.99%) SAP
8 41 (1.99%) SolarWinds
9 39 (1.89%) Google
10 36 (1.75%) NetApp
11 30 (1.46%) Red Hat
12 28 (1.36%) F5
13 25 (1.21%) Citrix
13 25 (1.21%) Remedy
14 24 (1.16%) Palo Alto
15 23 (1.12%) Dell
16 22 (1.07%) Fortinet
17 20 (0.97%) Sparx
18 18 (0.87%) BMC