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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 80 32
Rank change year-on-year +32 -48 +26
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,104 961 2,421
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.03% 3.01% 5.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.86% 9.78% 18.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,604 669 1,728
10th Percentile £430 £450 £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 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 32 123
10th Percentile £19.68 £25.15 £49.20
25th Percentile £35.00 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £54.00 £76.85 £71.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.73% +8.24% +1.43%
75th Percentile £71.00 £82.32 £85.00
90th Percentile £80.36 £88.73 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.42 £81.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -36.79% +15.57% -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 16,366 9,826 12,879
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.76% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,937 6,100 7,990
10th Percentile £350 £277 £310
25th Percentile £426 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £704 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £512 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.38% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,181 674 1,097
10th Percentile £17.40 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.00 £20.04 £20.12
Median hourly rate £52.00 £27.50 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +89.09% -32.83% -25.56%
75th Percentile £72.54 £58.75 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.10
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 8 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 8 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 8 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 1,957 £600 +2.13% 546
UK excluding London +8 1,501 £600 +4.35% 454
South East +6 831 £600 +1.61% 199
London +60 430 £600 - 107
South West -3 383 £575 -4.17% 156
Work from Home +57 317 £560 -4.27% 159
East of England +15 102 £650 +18.18% 34
North of England -8 87 £775 +24.00% 40
North West +4 65 £775 +278.05% 35
Midlands -56 56 £600 - 21
West Midlands -63 44 £600 - 17
Scotland +20 39 £669 +33.70% 10
Yorkshire -24 19 £518 -17.20% 4
East Midlands -3 12 £625 +13.64% 4
Northern Ireland +9 5 £619 - 1
Wales -13 4 - -
North East -35 3 £569 -9.00% 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 50 (2.38%) Confluence
2 43 (2.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 36 (1.71%) SharePoint
4 7 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 7 (0.33%) Documentum
5 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
6 5 (0.24%) Apache
6 5 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.24%) CMS
7 4 (0.19%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.095%) nginx
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.095%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.048%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.048%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.048%) Mule
10 1 (0.048%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 40 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
3 28 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
4 14 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.48%) AutoCAD
5 10 (0.48%) Revit
5 10 (0.48%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.33%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.095%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 30 (1.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.24%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (0.95%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 18 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
5 9 (0.43%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP EWM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 2 (0.095%) Primavera
9 2 (0.095%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.048%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.048%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 231 (10.98%) AWS
2 218 (10.36%) Azure
3 93 (4.42%) GCP
4 54 (2.57%) GitHub
5 51 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
6 43 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
7 41 (1.95%) IaaS
7 41 (1.95%) PaaS
8 35 (1.66%) Microsoft 365
9 32 (1.52%) Serverless
10 27 (1.28%) OpenShift
11 25 (1.19%) OCI
11 25 (1.19%) Power Platform
12 22 (1.05%) Entra ID
13 20 (0.95%) SaaS
14 18 (0.86%) AWS Lambda
15 17 (0.81%) Amazon EKS
16 16 (0.76%) Amazon ECS
17 14 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 12 (0.57%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 125 (5.94%) DNS
2 109 (5.18%) Firewall
3 78 (3.71%) Network Security
4 69 (3.28%) WAN
5 67 (3.18%) LAN
6 57 (2.71%) DHCP
7 50 (2.38%) VPN
8 48 (2.28%) BGP
9 30 (1.43%) OSPF
10 28 (1.33%) VLAN
11 25 (1.19%) TCP/IP
12 24 (1.14%) IPsec
12 24 (1.14%) MPLS
13 22 (1.05%) VXLAN
14 21 (1.00%) VSAN
15 20 (0.95%) Ethernet VPN
16 19 (0.90%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.81%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.76%) Cisco Nexus
18 16 (0.76%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (2.00%) SQL Server
2 37 (1.76%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
4 28 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
5 20 (0.95%) Power BI
6 11 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
6 11 (0.52%) Metadata
7 10 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
7 10 (0.48%) MongoDB
8 8 (0.38%) Oracle Database 11g
9 7 (0.33%) Data Lake
9 7 (0.33%) Redis
10 6 (0.29%) Hadoop
10 6 (0.29%) NoSQL
11 5 (0.24%) Big Data
11 5 (0.24%) BigQuery
11 5 (0.24%) MariaDB
11 5 (0.24%) Oracle Database 12c
12 4 (0.19%) Relational Database
12 4 (0.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 85 (4.04%) JIRA
2 47 (2.23%) GitLab
3 44 (2.09%) Jenkins
4 37 (1.76%) Git
5 13 (0.62%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.43%) Selenium
7 7 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.29%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.24%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.24%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.19%) Postman
10 4 (0.19%) Robot Framework
10 4 (0.19%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.19%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.14%) ERwin
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
12 2 (0.095%) MSI
General
1 352 (16.73%) Social Skills
2 266 (12.64%) Public Sector
3 124 (5.89%) Analytical Skills
4 105 (4.99%) Finance
5 77 (3.66%) Military
6 61 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.28%) Legal
8 26 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (1.14%) Aerospace
9 24 (1.14%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.09%) Law
11 22 (1.05%) Police
12 18 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (0.67%) Manufacturing
15 9 (0.43%) Marketing
16 6 (0.29%) Local Government
17 4 (0.19%) Electronics
18 3 (0.14%) Advertising
18 3 (0.14%) Banking
Job Titles
1 325 (15.45%) Architect
2 205 (9.74%) Lead
3 182 (8.65%) Senior
4 145 (6.89%) Analyst
5 135 (6.42%) Developer
6 131 (6.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 117 (5.56%) Consultant
8 82 (3.90%) Technical Architect
9 81 (3.85%) Network Engineer
10 79 (3.75%) Security Architect
11 77 (3.66%) SOC Analyst
12 63 (2.99%) Project Manager
13 50 (2.38%) DBA
14 49 (2.33%) Service Manager
14 49 (2.33%) Tester
15 47 (2.23%) DevOps Engineer
16 44 (2.09%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 43 (2.04%) Cloud Engineer
17 43 (2.04%) DV Cleared Project Manager
18 42 (2.00%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (3.09%) REST
2 30 (1.43%) Elastic Stack
2 30 (1.43%) React
3 24 (1.14%) SOAP
4 20 (0.95%) Node.js
5 19 (0.90%) 802.1X
5 19 (0.90%) Kafka
6 18 (0.86%) RESTful
6 18 (0.86%) Spring
7 15 (0.71%) Spring Boot
8 14 (0.67%) AngularJS
8 14 (0.67%) Flask
9 13 (0.62%) .NET
9 13 (0.62%) FastAPI
10 12 (0.57%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.52%) Apache NiFi
12 10 (0.48%) Playwright
13 9 (0.43%) LDAP
13 9 (0.43%) Web Services
13 9 (0.43%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 92 (4.37%) Data Centre
2 91 (4.33%) PKI
3 64 (3.04%) Cloud Native
4 52 (2.47%) Security Operations Centre
5 44 (2.09%) Onboarding
6 37 (1.76%) Clustering
7 35 (1.66%) Private Cloud
8 33 (1.57%) Product Ownership
9 30 (1.43%) Security Posture
10 27 (1.28%) Management Information System
11 26 (1.24%) CMDB
11 26 (1.24%) Cyber Threat
12 25 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
14 20 (0.95%) Public Cloud
15 18 (0.86%) Virtual Team
16 14 (0.67%) Enterprise Storage
16 14 (0.67%) Legacy Systems
17 13 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 284 (13.50%) Windows
2 216 (10.27%) Linux
3 122 (5.80%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (0.86%) Windows 10
6 13 (0.62%) Unix
7 11 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.33%) 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%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 356 (16.92%) Agile
2 207 (9.84%) Problem-Solving
3 203 (9.65%) ITIL
4 188 (8.94%) Continuous Improvement
5 183 (8.70%) CI/CD
6 182 (8.65%) Cybersecurity
7 176 (8.37%) DevOps
8 175 (8.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 167 (7.94%) Stakeholder Management
10 155 (7.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 147 (6.99%) Service Management
12 122 (5.80%) ITSM
13 119 (5.66%) Infrastructure as Code
14 113 (5.37%) Project Delivery
15 102 (4.85%) Technical Leadership
16 99 (4.71%) Service Delivery
17 97 (4.61%) Containerisation
17 97 (4.61%) Risk Management
18 96 (4.56%) Decision-Making
19 90 (4.28%) AI
Programming Languages
1 178 (8.46%) Python
2 121 (5.75%) PowerShell
3 100 (4.75%) SQL
4 59 (2.80%) Java
5 46 (2.19%) Bash
5 46 (2.19%) JavaScript
6 32 (1.52%) TypeScript
7 27 (1.28%) C#
8 20 (0.95%) Go
9 14 (0.67%) Search Processing Language
10 12 (0.57%) C++
11 11 (0.52%) C
11 11 (0.52%) PL/SQL
12 9 (0.43%) Rust
13 8 (0.38%) Shell Script
14 7 (0.33%) Bicep
15 6 (0.29%) Embedded C
15 6 (0.29%) Perl
16 5 (0.24%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.24%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,104 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 687 (32.65%) SC Cleared
3 66 (3.14%) Degree
4 53 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (2.42%) CISSP
6 28 (1.33%) CISM
7 23 (1.09%) AWS Certification
7 23 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.05%) CCNP
9 21 (1.00%) CompTIA Security+
10 20 (0.95%) CCNA
11 19 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
12 17 (0.81%) PMI Certification
13 16 (0.76%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.76%) PMP
14 15 (0.71%) MCSE
15 14 (0.67%) CESG Certified Professional
15 14 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
16 12 (0.57%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.61%) NIST
2 69 (3.28%) NCSC
3 65 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 61 (2.90%) PMO
5 55 (2.61%) QA
6 42 (2.00%) JSP 440
7 26 (1.24%) GDPR
8 22 (1.05%) GRC
8 22 (1.05%) RMADS
8 22 (1.05%) SLA
9 13 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 12 (0.57%) Accessibility
10 12 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
11 11 (0.52%) Data Quality
12 9 (0.43%) Government Security Classifications
13 8 (0.38%) WCAG
14 7 (0.33%) ISO 9000
15 6 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 6 (0.29%) NIST 800
System Software
1 151 (7.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 140 (6.65%) Active Directory
3 117 (5.56%) Docker
4 73 (3.47%) VMware NSX
5 58 (2.76%) VMware ESXi
6 49 (2.33%) Hyper-V
7 31 (1.47%) vSphere
8 23 (1.09%) vCloud
9 15 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.52%) BitLocker
11 9 (0.43%) Microsoft App-V
11 9 (0.43%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.38%) 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 (0.14%) KVM
15 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 158 (7.51%) Kubernetes
2 149 (7.08%) Terraform
3 94 (4.47%) Ansible
4 69 (3.28%) vCenter Server
5 37 (1.76%) SCOM
6 29 (1.38%) SCCM
7 25 (1.19%) Prometheus
8 24 (1.14%) Grafana
9 22 (1.05%) Puppet
10 13 (0.62%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.62%) Nagios
11 12 (0.57%) Oracle RMAN
11 12 (0.57%) Podman
11 12 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 11 (0.52%) Data Guard
13 10 (0.48%) Avamar
13 10 (0.48%) WSUS
14 9 (0.43%) vMotion
14 9 (0.43%) VxRail
Vendors
1 226 (10.74%) VMware
2 210 (9.98%) Microsoft
3 112 (5.32%) ServiceNow
4 100 (4.75%) Cisco
5 83 (3.94%) Oracle
6 61 (2.90%) Splunk
7 48 (2.28%) Juniper
8 42 (2.00%) SAP
9 41 (1.95%) SolarWinds
10 39 (1.85%) Google
11 36 (1.71%) NetApp
12 30 (1.43%) Red Hat
13 28 (1.33%) F5
14 26 (1.24%) Citrix
14 26 (1.24%) Remedy
15 24 (1.14%) Dell
15 24 (1.14%) Palo Alto
16 22 (1.05%) Fortinet
17 20 (0.95%) Sparx
18 19 (0.90%) BMC