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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 87 39
Rank change year-on-year +35 -48 +13
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,240 970 1,759
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 2.93% 4.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.90% 9.22% 15.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,630 681 1,142
10th Percentile £462 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £697 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 36 84
10th Percentile £48.68 - £48.43
25th Percentile £60.00 £25.15 £56.65
Median hourly rate £74.32 £34.75 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year +113.87% -46.95% -9.44%
75th Percentile £92.53 £76.25 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.76 £87.38 £99.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.59 £70.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year +6.56% +6.87% -9.44%

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 17,368 10,519 11,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.84% 31.82% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,521 6,557 6,724
10th Percentile £355 £282 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,440 884 592
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.87 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.47
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.84
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.43% -10.88%
75th Percentile £71.43 £42.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £76.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.66%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 +33 2,117 £600 +2.13% 1,182
UK excluding London +18 1,616 £600 +4.35% 909
South East +7 838 £600 +4.35% 300
South West +7 533 £575 -8.00% 251
London +47 482 £625 - 239
Work from Home +48 353 £555 -13.28% 516
East of England +12 109 £650 +18.18% 136
North of England -14 55 £525 -2.33% 84
Midlands -83 43 £625 +5.26% 59
North West -11 39 £600 +20.00% 63
Scotland +4 37 £669 +27.33% 72
West Midlands -79 37 £600 +1.05% 33
Yorkshire -24 11 £510 - 8
East Midlands - 6 £644 - 26
Northern Ireland +10 5 £638 +6.25% 4
North East -36 5 £463 -26.00% 13
Wales -6 4 - - 9

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 74 (3.30%) Confluence
2 58 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.70%) Microsoft Exchange
4 23 (1.03%) Apache
5 13 (0.58%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.36%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 7 (0.31%) IIS
9 6 (0.27%) nginx
10 4 (0.18%) Camunda
11 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.089%) Mule
12 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
12 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
12 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
Applications
1 66 (2.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (2.19%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.85%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.76%) Revit
6 17 (0.76%) SOLIDWORKS
7 11 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.45%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.045%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Oracle ERP
2 20 (0.89%) Teamcenter
3 16 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
3 16 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.71%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.18%) Primavera
5 4 (0.18%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.13%) SAP EWM
7 2 (0.089%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
8 1 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.045%) Oracle Payroll
8 1 (0.045%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 317 (14.15%) Azure
2 296 (13.21%) AWS
3 120 (5.36%) GCP
4 62 (2.77%) Azure DevOps
5 56 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (2.19%) GitHub
7 46 (2.05%) Entra ID
8 43 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
9 40 (1.79%) Serverless
10 36 (1.61%) OpenShift
10 36 (1.61%) Power Platform
11 30 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
11 30 (1.34%) OCI
12 24 (1.07%) Amazon S3
13 23 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
14 22 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
14 22 (0.98%) Azure Monitor
15 19 (0.85%) Amazon SQS
16 17 (0.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 16 (0.71%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 165 (7.37%) DNS
2 129 (5.76%) Firewall
3 85 (3.79%) DHCP
4 80 (3.57%) Network Security
5 64 (2.86%) TCP/IP
6 57 (2.54%) VPN
6 57 (2.54%) WAN
7 52 (2.32%) BGP
8 48 (2.14%) LAN
9 37 (1.65%) MPLS
10 36 (1.61%) VSAN
11 32 (1.43%) IPsec
12 29 (1.29%) VLAN
13 25 (1.12%) SSL
14 18 (0.80%) OSPF
14 18 (0.80%) SD-WAN
15 16 (0.71%) Cisco ASA
15 16 (0.71%) SAN
16 15 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
17 14 (0.63%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (2.46%) SQL Server
2 46 (2.05%) Oracle Database
3 36 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
4 30 (1.34%) Metadata
5 26 (1.16%) Relational Database
6 21 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
6 21 (0.94%) Power BI
7 19 (0.85%) MongoDB
8 18 (0.80%) Data Lake
9 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (0.58%) Big Data
11 12 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (0.45%) Hadoop
13 9 (0.40%) MySQL
13 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
13 9 (0.40%) Parquet
14 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 112 (5.00%) JIRA
2 96 (4.29%) GitLab
3 92 (4.11%) Jenkins
4 88 (3.93%) Git
5 32 (1.43%) Selenium
6 16 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 14 (0.63%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.45%) JUnit
8 10 (0.45%) MSI
9 9 (0.40%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.36%) JMeter
10 8 (0.36%) Postman
10 8 (0.36%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.31%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.31%) Gatling
11 7 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.27%) Maven
13 5 (0.22%) TestNG
General
1 516 (23.04%) Social Skills
2 271 (12.10%) Public Sector
3 174 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (6.43%) Finance
5 67 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
5 67 (2.99%) Military
6 50 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
7 42 (1.88%) Aerospace
8 39 (1.74%) Manufacturing
9 38 (1.70%) Police
10 36 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
11 35 (1.56%) Legal
12 31 (1.38%) Law
13 28 (1.25%) Telecoms
14 9 (0.40%) Local Government
14 9 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.31%) Marketing
16 6 (0.27%) Automotive
17 5 (0.22%) Back Office
18 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 385 (17.19%) Architect
2 224 (10.00%) Lead
3 202 (9.02%) Senior
4 156 (6.96%) Developer
5 153 (6.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 148 (6.61%) Consultant
7 135 (6.03%) Analyst
8 92 (4.11%) Security Architect
9 78 (3.48%) Network Engineer
10 69 (3.08%) Cloud Engineer
10 69 (3.08%) SOC Analyst
11 68 (3.04%) Support Engineer
12 56 (2.50%) DevOps Engineer
13 53 (2.37%) DBA
14 48 (2.14%) Solutions Architect
15 47 (2.10%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 47 (2.10%) Project Manager
16 44 (1.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 42 (1.88%) Enterprise Architect
18 41 (1.83%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (9.51%) Terraform
2 80 (3.57%) REST
3 41 (1.83%) LDAP
4 32 (1.43%) React
5 30 (1.34%) Elastic Stack
6 29 (1.29%) Kafka
7 27 (1.21%) RESTful
7 27 (1.21%) SOAP
8 24 (1.07%) Apache NiFi
9 20 (0.89%) Node.js
9 20 (0.89%) XML
10 18 (0.80%) JSON
11 17 (0.76%) AngularJS
11 17 (0.76%) ARM Templates
11 17 (0.76%) FastAPI
11 17 (0.76%) Keycloak
12 16 (0.71%) OAuth
12 16 (0.71%) Spring
13 15 (0.67%) Spring Boot
14 14 (0.63%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 105 (4.69%) Cloud Native
2 100 (4.46%) Data Centre
2 100 (4.46%) PKI
3 90 (4.02%) Onboarding
4 49 (2.19%) Management Information System
5 43 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (1.88%) Product Ownership
7 38 (1.70%) Cyber Threat
8 36 (1.61%) Security Operations Centre
9 35 (1.56%) Private Cloud
10 30 (1.34%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 20 (0.89%) Public Cloud
13 19 (0.85%) Virtual Team
14 18 (0.80%) Clustering
14 18 (0.80%) CMDB
15 17 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
16 15 (0.67%) Replication
16 15 (0.67%) Video Conferencing
17 12 (0.54%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 388 (17.32%) Windows
2 253 (11.29%) Linux
3 183 (8.17%) Windows Server
4 45 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.38%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
7 23 (1.03%) Unix
8 22 (0.98%) Ubuntu
9 18 (0.80%) CentOS
10 12 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.31%) Android
11 7 (0.31%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.27%) AIX
12 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.22%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 4 (0.18%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 387 (17.28%) Agile
2 298 (13.30%) Continuous Improvement
3 285 (12.72%) Stakeholder Management
4 281 (12.54%) CI/CD
5 249 (11.12%) DevOps
6 231 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
7 228 (10.18%) Cybersecurity
8 219 (9.78%) Infrastructure as Code
8 219 (9.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 213 (9.51%) Technical Leadership
10 198 (8.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 188 (8.39%) ITIL
12 159 (7.10%) Containerisation
13 157 (7.01%) Service Management
14 150 (6.70%) ITSM
15 130 (5.80%) Project Delivery
15 130 (5.80%) SIEM
16 126 (5.63%) Decision-Making
17 125 (5.58%) Risk Management
18 116 (5.18%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 256 (11.43%) Python
2 194 (8.66%) PowerShell
3 141 (6.29%) SQL
4 102 (4.55%) Bash
5 79 (3.53%) Java
6 41 (1.83%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.70%) C#
8 29 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 22 (0.98%) Go
10 20 (0.89%) Bicep
11 13 (0.58%) PL/SQL
11 13 (0.58%) Shell Script
12 12 (0.54%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.49%) C++
14 8 (0.36%) Groovy
15 6 (0.27%) C
15 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.27%) Perl
15 6 (0.27%) X++
16 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,240 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 693 (30.94%) SC Cleared
3 95 (4.24%) Degree
4 71 (3.17%) CISSP
5 40 (1.79%) CISM
6 38 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 30 (1.34%) AWS Certification
8 25 (1.12%) PMI Certification
9 24 (1.07%) CCNP
9 24 (1.07%) ISTQB
10 23 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.03%) VCAP
11 22 (0.98%) Azure Certification
11 22 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
12 20 (0.89%) PMP
12 20 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 15 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
14 13 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
15 11 (0.49%) CCNA
15 11 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (4.15%) NCSC
2 88 (3.93%) NIST
3 84 (3.75%) PMO
4 76 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 67 (2.99%) QA
6 36 (1.61%) JSP 440
7 34 (1.52%) SLA
8 33 (1.47%) Data Quality
9 32 (1.43%) GDPR
10 24 (1.07%) GRC
11 20 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 17 (0.76%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
14 11 (0.49%) NIST 800
15 10 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.36%) WCAG
17 7 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
17 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
17 7 (0.31%) RMADS
18 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 250 (11.16%) Active Directory
2 193 (8.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 148 (6.61%) Docker
4 84 (3.75%) VMware NSX
5 69 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
6 61 (2.72%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.37%) vSphere
8 24 (1.07%) vCloud
9 18 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.63%) NFS
11 12 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
12 11 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
13 10 (0.45%) Firmware
14 5 (0.22%) KVM
15 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
16 2 (0.089%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 2 (0.089%) Squid
Systems Management
1 235 (10.49%) Kubernetes
2 166 (7.41%) Ansible
3 78 (3.48%) vCenter Server
4 59 (2.63%) SCOM
5 37 (1.65%) SCCM
6 31 (1.38%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.25%) Grafana
8 24 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
9 21 (0.94%) Nagios
9 21 (0.94%) Puppet
10 17 (0.76%) VxRail
11 16 (0.71%) WMI
12 15 (0.67%) Avamar
12 15 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
13 13 (0.58%) Data Guard
13 13 (0.58%) Podman
13 13 (0.58%) Progress Chef
14 12 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.54%) Istio
14 12 (0.54%) WSUS
Vendors
1 320 (14.29%) Microsoft
2 260 (11.61%) VMware
3 123 (5.49%) Oracle
4 88 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 69 (3.08%) Cisco
6 66 (2.95%) Google
7 54 (2.41%) Splunk
8 51 (2.28%) SAP
9 46 (2.05%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.96%) CyberArk
11 34 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.03%) Juniper
14 22 (0.98%) Dell
15 19 (0.85%) Remedy
16 18 (0.80%) BMC
16 18 (0.80%) Broadcom
16 18 (0.80%) Thales
17 17 (0.76%) Atlassian
17 17 (0.76%) Citrix