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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 79 33
Rank change year-on-year +31 -46 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,160 1,006 2,157
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 3.07% 5.41%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.13% 9.89% 18.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,644 695 1,553
10th Percentile £430 £458 £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 £700 £663 £688
90th Percentile £754 £714 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 39 106
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.15 £48.70
25th Percentile £41.25 £28.08 £56.83
Median hourly rate £63.14 £61.50 £70.78
Median % change year-on-year +2.67% -13.12% +1.11%
75th Percentile £89.13 £82.05 £83.75
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.77 £93.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -22.07% +15.09% -3.58%

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 16,453 10,167 11,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.98% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,025 6,305 7,540
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £618 £638
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,204 773 901
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.19
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -23.30%
75th Percentile £74.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £75.00 £76.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +102.78% -41.51% -21.19%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 2,024 £600 +1.22% 551
UK excluding London +10 1,546 £600 +4.35% 439
South East +6 893 £600 - 206
London +50 454 £600 -4.00% 134
South West -1 388 £588 -0.21% 130
Work from Home +34 321 £575 -2.34% 214
East of England +13 98 £650 +18.18% 40
North of England -9 74 £775 +24.00% 37
Midlands -62 54 £600 - 21
North West -7 49 £825 +82.32% 29
West Midlands -70 43 £600 - 14
Scotland +8 37 £669 +30.44% 11
Yorkshire -26 20 £518 -17.20% 3
East Midlands -3 11 £631 +14.77% 7
North East -42 5 £463 -26.00% 5
Northern Ireland +3 4 £638 - 2
Wales -11 4 - - 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 59 (2.73%) Confluence
2 39 (1.81%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.42%) Apache
4 9 (0.42%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
7 5 (0.23%) CMS
8 3 (0.14%) nginx
9 2 (0.093%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.093%) Mule
9 2 (0.093%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.093%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.046%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 55 (2.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.08%) Microsoft Project
3 20 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.51%) AutoCAD
6 11 (0.51%) Revit
6 11 (0.51%) SOLIDWORKS
7 5 (0.23%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.093%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 31 (1.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 23 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
4 19 (0.88%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.14%) Primavera
8 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle General Ledger
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Receivables
9 2 (0.093%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
10 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 262 (12.13%) Azure
2 256 (11.85%) AWS
3 103 (4.77%) GCP
4 59 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
5 50 (2.31%) GitHub
6 41 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
6 41 (1.90%) IaaS
7 39 (1.81%) Microsoft 365
7 39 (1.81%) PaaS
8 38 (1.76%) Power Platform
9 37 (1.71%) Serverless
10 32 (1.48%) Entra ID
10 32 (1.48%) OCI
11 25 (1.16%) OpenShift
12 24 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
13 21 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
14 20 (0.93%) SaaS
15 18 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
15 18 (0.83%) Amazon S3
16 17 (0.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 149 (6.90%) DNS
2 127 (5.88%) Firewall
3 77 (3.56%) WAN
4 75 (3.47%) DHCP
5 74 (3.43%) Network Security
6 72 (3.33%) LAN
7 58 (2.69%) BGP
8 52 (2.41%) VPN
9 42 (1.94%) TCP/IP
10 36 (1.67%) VSAN
11 33 (1.53%) IPsec
12 31 (1.44%) OSPF
13 30 (1.39%) MPLS
14 27 (1.25%) VLAN
15 23 (1.06%) VXLAN
16 21 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
17 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.79%) Cisco ASA
18 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
18 17 (0.79%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (1.99%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.76%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 24 (1.11%) Power BI
6 17 (0.79%) Metadata
7 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (0.56%) Data Lake
9 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.42%) MongoDB
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (0.32%) Big Data
12 7 (0.32%) BigQuery
12 7 (0.32%) Hadoop
12 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
13 6 (0.28%) MariaDB
13 6 (0.28%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 6 (0.28%) Redis
14 5 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 99 (4.58%) JIRA
2 52 (2.41%) GitLab
3 47 (2.18%) Jenkins
4 41 (1.90%) Git
5 14 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 10 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.28%) Visual Studio
8 5 (0.23%) Postman
8 5 (0.23%) REST Assured
8 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.19%) Cucumber
9 4 (0.19%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
11 2 (0.093%) JUnit
General
1 391 (18.10%) Social Skills
2 282 (13.06%) Public Sector
3 146 (6.76%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (6.20%) Finance
5 77 (3.56%) Military
6 53 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (2.04%) Legal
8 38 (1.76%) Organisational Skills
9 28 (1.30%) Law
10 27 (1.25%) Police
11 24 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (1.02%) Telecoms
13 17 (0.79%) Manufacturing
14 16 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (0.56%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.37%) Local Government
17 7 (0.32%) Marketing
18 5 (0.23%) Advertising
19 4 (0.19%) Aviation
20 3 (0.14%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 335 (15.51%) Architect
2 236 (10.93%) Lead
3 201 (9.31%) Senior
4 153 (7.08%) Developer
5 148 (6.85%) Analyst
6 140 (6.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 138 (6.39%) Consultant
8 93 (4.31%) Network Engineer
9 85 (3.94%) Security Architect
10 75 (3.47%) SOC Analyst
11 72 (3.33%) Technical Architect
12 60 (2.78%) Project Manager
13 55 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 49 (2.27%) DBA
15 49 (2.27%) DevOps Engineer
16 46 (2.13%) Senior Network Engineer
17 44 (2.04%) Network Architect
17 44 (2.04%) Support Engineer
18 42 (1.94%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (3.38%) REST
2 32 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.25%) React
4 26 (1.20%) SOAP
5 22 (1.02%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 18 (0.83%) 802.1X
8 17 (0.79%) Node.js
9 15 (0.69%) .NET
9 15 (0.69%) Spring
9 15 (0.69%) Spring Boot
10 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
10 14 (0.65%) Apache NiFi
10 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
11 13 (0.60%) Flask
11 13 (0.60%) Oracle Fusion
12 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
12 11 (0.51%) OAuth
12 11 (0.51%) XML
13 10 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.81%) Data Centre
2 101 (4.68%) PKI
3 80 (3.70%) Cloud Native
4 60 (2.78%) Onboarding
5 48 (2.22%) Security Operations Centre
6 37 (1.71%) Clustering
7 36 (1.67%) Private Cloud
8 35 (1.62%) Product Ownership
9 32 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
9 32 (1.48%) Management Information System
10 29 (1.34%) Cyber Threat
11 26 (1.20%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.16%) CMDB
12 25 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
12 25 (1.16%) Security Posture
13 22 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
14 20 (0.93%) Virtual Team
15 15 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
15 15 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
16 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 306 (14.17%) Windows
2 222 (10.28%) Linux
3 141 (6.53%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
6 19 (0.88%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 7 (0.32%) VMS
8 7 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) CentOS
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 374 (17.31%) Agile
2 218 (10.09%) Problem-Solving
3 210 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
4 207 (9.58%) CI/CD
5 205 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 202 (9.35%) ITIL
7 199 (9.21%) Cybersecurity
8 196 (9.07%) DevOps
9 186 (8.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 178 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 154 (7.13%) Service Management
12 145 (6.71%) Infrastructure as Code
13 129 (5.97%) Technical Leadership
14 126 (5.83%) ITSM
15 113 (5.23%) Project Delivery
16 107 (4.95%) Service Delivery
17 106 (4.91%) Risk Management
18 105 (4.86%) Containerisation
19 104 (4.81%) Decision-Making
20 101 (4.68%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 197 (9.12%) Python
2 141 (6.53%) PowerShell
3 107 (4.95%) SQL
4 67 (3.10%) Bash
5 64 (2.96%) Java
6 47 (2.18%) JavaScript
7 33 (1.53%) C#
8 29 (1.34%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.88%) Go
10 16 (0.74%) Bicep
11 14 (0.65%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.60%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.42%) Rust
15 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Groovy
16 6 (0.28%) Perl
16 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,160 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 723 (33.47%) SC Cleared
3 75 (3.47%) Degree
4 56 (2.59%) CISSP
5 47 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
6 31 (1.44%) CISM
7 27 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
8 25 (1.16%) AWS Certification
9 23 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 21 (0.97%) PMI Certification
11 19 (0.88%) PMP
12 18 (0.83%) CCNP
13 17 (0.79%) CCNA
14 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 16 (0.74%) VCAP
15 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.69%) MCSE
16 14 (0.65%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (0.65%) ISTQB
17 13 (0.60%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.52%) NCSC
2 75 (3.47%) PMO
3 72 (3.33%) NIST
4 54 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 52 (2.41%) QA
6 34 (1.57%) JSP 440
7 27 (1.25%) GDPR
8 24 (1.11%) SLA
9 23 (1.06%) Data Quality
10 19 (0.88%) GRC
11 17 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 17 (0.79%) RMADS
12 15 (0.69%) Government Security Classifications
13 14 (0.65%) Accessibility
14 12 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
15 10 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.37%) WCAG
17 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
17 7 (0.32%) NIST 800
18 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 179 (8.29%) VMware Infrastructure
2 175 (8.10%) Active Directory
3 126 (5.83%) Docker
4 86 (3.98%) VMware NSX
5 66 (3.06%) VMware ESXi
6 58 (2.69%) Hyper-V
7 42 (1.94%) vSphere
8 22 (1.02%) vCloud
9 17 (0.79%) 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 5 (0.23%) Firmware
14 4 (0.19%) Ceph
14 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.19%) UAG
15 3 (0.14%) KVM
15 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 180 (8.33%) Terraform
2 179 (8.29%) Kubernetes
3 114 (5.28%) Ansible
4 81 (3.75%) vCenter Server
5 42 (1.94%) SCOM
6 32 (1.48%) SCCM
7 25 (1.16%) Prometheus
8 23 (1.06%) Grafana
8 23 (1.06%) Puppet
9 15 (0.69%) Nagios
9 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
9 15 (0.69%) Podman
10 14 (0.65%) Avamar
11 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
11 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
11 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
12 12 (0.56%) VxRail
13 11 (0.51%) WSUS
14 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 10 (0.46%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 248 (11.48%) Microsoft
2 247 (11.44%) VMware
3 120 (5.56%) ServiceNow
4 100 (4.63%) Cisco
5 95 (4.40%) Oracle
6 60 (2.78%) Splunk
7 54 (2.50%) SAP
8 50 (2.31%) Juniper
9 47 (2.18%) Google
10 45 (2.08%) SolarWinds
11 33 (1.53%) NetApp
12 31 (1.44%) Red Hat
13 29 (1.34%) Remedy
14 28 (1.30%) F5
15 26 (1.20%) Citrix
15 26 (1.20%) Palo Alto
16 24 (1.11%) Dell
17 21 (0.97%) BMC
18 20 (0.93%) Fortinet
19 19 (0.88%) Sparx