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 21 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 79 35
Rank change year-on-year +29 -44 +20
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,167 1,004 2,014
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.05% 3.06% 5.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.93% 9.77% 17.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,660 701 1,422
10th Percentile £463 £459 £425
25th Percentile £515 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £663 £688
90th Percentile £763 £715 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £578 £600
% change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 40 98
10th Percentile £35.00 - £49.70
25th Percentile £49.38 £25.15 £57.75
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -25.42% +0.56%
75th Percentile £92.53 £81.51 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.88 £87.64 £92.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £80.68 £70.39
% change year-on-year -13.23% +14.61% -2.77%

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 16,756 10,280 11,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.28% 31.36% 30.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,216 6,335 7,385
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £434 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,262 829 816
10th Percentile £17.51 £17.98 £14.75
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £48.77 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +93.90% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £75.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +89.03% -47.05% -6.40%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 +25 2,032 £600 +1.65% 430
UK excluding London +15 1,554 £600 +3.90% 369
South East +3 907 £600 - 152
London +52 457 £600 -4.00% 81
South West +1 405 £590 -1.67% 124
Work from Home +35 331 £575 -2.13% 141
East of England +14 93 £650 +18.18% 43
North of England -22 65 £775 +34.78% 33
North West -6 44 £863 +72.50% 25
Midlands -64 44 £600 - 16
West Midlands -67 40 £600 - 12
Scotland +9 37 £669 +30.44% 9
Yorkshire -27 16 £518 -17.20% 4
North East -32 5 £463 -26.00% 4
Northern Ireland +4 4 £638 -8.93% 2
Wales -14 4 - - 1
East Midlands - 4 £631 - 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 62 (2.86%) Confluence
2 42 (1.94%) SharePoint
3 39 (1.80%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.42%) Apache
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.28%) CMS
7 5 (0.23%) Apache Spark
8 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
8 3 (0.14%) nginx
9 2 (0.092%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.092%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.092%) Camunda
9 2 (0.092%) Mule
9 2 (0.092%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.092%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.092%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
Applications
1 55 (2.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.08%) Microsoft Project
3 24 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
5 14 (0.65%) AutoCAD
5 14 (0.65%) Revit
5 14 (0.65%) SOLIDWORKS
6 10 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.18%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.25%) Oracle ERP
3 23 (1.06%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Payroll
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
11 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 287 (13.24%) Azure
2 268 (12.37%) AWS
3 105 (4.85%) GCP
4 57 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (2.17%) GitHub
6 46 (2.12%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
8 39 (1.80%) Entra ID
8 39 (1.80%) Power Platform
8 39 (1.80%) Serverless
9 37 (1.71%) IaaS
10 34 (1.57%) PaaS
11 32 (1.48%) OCI
12 26 (1.20%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (1.06%) Amazon EKS
14 22 (1.02%) OpenShift
15 20 (0.92%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (0.88%) Amazon S3
16 19 (0.88%) SaaS
17 17 (0.78%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 161 (7.43%) DNS
2 125 (5.77%) Firewall
3 80 (3.69%) DHCP
4 68 (3.14%) Network Security
5 67 (3.09%) WAN
6 61 (2.81%) LAN
7 53 (2.45%) VPN
8 52 (2.40%) TCP/IP
9 49 (2.26%) BGP
10 43 (1.98%) VSAN
11 33 (1.52%) IPsec
12 31 (1.43%) MPLS
13 27 (1.25%) VLAN
14 18 (0.83%) OSPF
14 18 (0.83%) SSL
15 16 (0.74%) Cisco ASA
15 16 (0.74%) SD-WAN
16 15 (0.69%) Cisco Firepower
17 14 (0.65%) Skype
18 13 (0.60%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (2.35%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 31 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.11%) Power BI
5 19 (0.88%) Metadata
6 18 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
7 16 (0.74%) Data Lake
8 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
8 15 (0.69%) MongoDB
9 12 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.42%) NoSQL
11 8 (0.37%) BigQuery
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (0.32%) Big Data
12 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
12 7 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (0.23%) Amazon Redshift
13 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 99 (4.57%) JIRA
2 63 (2.91%) GitLab
3 55 (2.54%) Jenkins
4 42 (1.94%) Git
5 15 (0.69%) Cypress.io
6 13 (0.60%) Selenium
7 7 (0.32%) Postman
7 7 (0.32%) REST Assured
7 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 6 (0.28%) SpecFlow
9 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.23%) MSI
9 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (0.18%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.14%) Gatling
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
11 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
General
1 428 (19.75%) Social Skills
2 286 (13.20%) Public Sector
3 152 (7.01%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (6.32%) Finance
5 61 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
5 61 (2.81%) Military
6 42 (1.94%) Legal
7 41 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
8 31 (1.43%) Law
8 31 (1.43%) Police
9 27 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
10 24 (1.11%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.06%) Aerospace
12 22 (1.02%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.37%) Local Government
15 7 (0.32%) Marketing
16 5 (0.23%) Advertising
17 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
17 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 355 (16.38%) Architect
2 246 (11.35%) Lead
3 199 (9.18%) Senior
4 152 (7.01%) Consultant
5 149 (6.88%) Developer
6 148 (6.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 142 (6.55%) Analyst
8 93 (4.29%) Security Architect
9 84 (3.88%) Network Engineer
10 76 (3.51%) SOC Analyst
11 65 (3.00%) Technical Architect
12 61 (2.81%) Cloud Engineer
13 60 (2.77%) Project Manager
14 52 (2.40%) DevOps Engineer
14 52 (2.40%) Support Engineer
15 49 (2.26%) DBA
16 47 (2.17%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 43 (1.98%) DV Cleared Project Manager
18 42 (1.94%) Technical Leader
19 41 (1.89%) Lead Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (8.91%) Terraform
2 75 (3.46%) REST
3 32 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
4 26 (1.20%) React
5 25 (1.15%) SOAP
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 18 (0.83%) Kafka
8 15 (0.69%) .NET
8 15 (0.69%) Node.js
9 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
9 14 (0.65%) Flask
10 13 (0.60%) AngularJS
10 13 (0.60%) LDAP
10 13 (0.60%) OAuth
10 13 (0.60%) Oracle Fusion
10 13 (0.60%) Spring
10 13 (0.60%) Spring Boot
11 12 (0.55%) ARM Templates
12 11 (0.51%) XML
13 10 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.71%) PKI
2 96 (4.43%) Data Centre
3 94 (4.34%) Cloud Native
4 68 (3.14%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.31%) Security Operations Centre
6 40 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
7 38 (1.75%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.66%) Product Ownership
9 32 (1.48%) Management Information System
10 31 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
11 29 (1.34%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.20%) Clustering
13 25 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
13 25 (1.15%) Security Posture
14 24 (1.11%) CMDB
15 18 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
15 18 (0.83%) Replication
15 18 (0.83%) Virtual Team
16 16 (0.74%) Enterprise Storage
17 15 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 335 (15.46%) Windows
2 236 (10.89%) Linux
3 161 (7.43%) Windows Server
4 33 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (1.20%) Windows 10
6 23 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
7 15 (0.69%) Unix
8 13 (0.60%) Ubuntu
9 12 (0.55%) CentOS
10 11 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
11 9 (0.42%) Mac OS
12 7 (0.32%) VMS
13 6 (0.28%) AIX
13 6 (0.28%) Android
13 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
14 5 (0.23%) Debian
14 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
15 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 374 (17.26%) Agile
2 239 (11.03%) Stakeholder Management
3 226 (10.43%) Continuous Improvement
4 222 (10.24%) CI/CD
5 221 (10.20%) Cybersecurity
6 207 (9.55%) Problem-Solving
7 196 (9.04%) DevOps
8 194 (8.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 191 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 182 (8.40%) ITIL
11 168 (7.75%) Infrastructure as Code
12 162 (7.48%) Technical Leadership
13 145 (6.69%) Service Management
14 125 (5.77%) ITSM
15 118 (5.45%) Containerisation
15 118 (5.45%) Risk Management
16 115 (5.31%) Project Delivery
17 114 (5.26%) Decision-Making
18 107 (4.94%) SIEM
19 104 (4.80%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 205 (9.46%) Python
2 172 (7.94%) PowerShell
3 114 (5.26%) SQL
4 84 (3.88%) Bash
5 62 (2.86%) Java
6 41 (1.89%) JavaScript
7 36 (1.66%) C#
8 25 (1.15%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.88%) Bicep
10 17 (0.78%) Go
11 14 (0.65%) C++
11 14 (0.65%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
12 11 (0.51%) C
13 7 (0.32%) Groovy
13 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
14 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
14 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
14 6 (0.28%) Perl
14 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,167 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 715 (32.99%) SC Cleared
3 76 (3.51%) Degree
4 69 (3.18%) CISSP
5 44 (2.03%) CISM
6 38 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 26 (1.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 23 (1.06%) VCAP
10 22 (1.02%) AWS Certification
11 21 (0.97%) PMI Certification
12 20 (0.92%) ISTQB
13 19 (0.88%) PMP
14 17 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
15 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
15 15 (0.69%) CCNP
15 15 (0.69%) MCSE
16 13 (0.60%) CCNA
16 13 (0.60%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (3.92%) NCSC
2 80 (3.69%) PMO
3 78 (3.60%) NIST
4 59 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 56 (2.58%) QA
6 37 (1.71%) JSP 440
7 30 (1.38%) GDPR
8 26 (1.20%) SLA
9 25 (1.15%) Data Quality
10 19 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 18 (0.83%) Accessibility
11 18 (0.83%) GRC
12 17 (0.78%) Government Security Classifications
12 17 (0.78%) RMADS
13 11 (0.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 10 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 8 (0.37%) WCAG
16 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
17 6 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 197 (9.09%) Active Directory
2 191 (8.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 123 (5.68%) Docker
4 96 (4.43%) VMware NSX
5 72 (3.32%) VMware ESXi
6 63 (2.91%) Hyper-V
7 52 (2.40%) vSphere
8 25 (1.15%) vCloud
9 16 (0.74%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 7 (0.32%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
13 6 (0.28%) Firmware
14 5 (0.23%) Ceph
15 4 (0.18%) KVM
15 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 198 (9.14%) Kubernetes
2 136 (6.28%) Ansible
3 85 (3.92%) vCenter Server
4 49 (2.26%) SCOM
5 34 (1.57%) SCCM
6 26 (1.20%) Prometheus
7 23 (1.06%) Grafana
8 22 (1.02%) Puppet
9 16 (0.74%) Nagios
10 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
10 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
10 15 (0.69%) VxRail
11 14 (0.65%) Avamar
11 14 (0.65%) Podman
11 14 (0.65%) WSUS
12 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
13 12 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 11 (0.51%) Progress Chef
14 11 (0.51%) WMI
15 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 287 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 270 (12.46%) VMware
3 107 (4.94%) ServiceNow
4 103 (4.75%) Oracle
5 85 (3.92%) Cisco
6 59 (2.72%) SAP
7 58 (2.68%) Splunk
8 52 (2.40%) Google
9 37 (1.71%) SolarWinds
10 36 (1.66%) Juniper
11 32 (1.48%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.15%) CyberArk
12 25 (1.15%) Remedy
13 24 (1.11%) Dell
13 24 (1.11%) NetApp
13 24 (1.11%) Palo Alto
14 23 (1.06%) Citrix
15 21 (0.97%) BMC
16 19 (0.88%) F5
17 18 (0.83%) Sparx