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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 84 38
Rank change year-on-year +32 -46 +14
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,276 992 1,755
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 2.98% 4.67%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.85% 9.36% 15.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,628 698 1,137
10th Percentile £459 £463 £413
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £688 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £588
% change year-on-year +4.35% -2.13% +2.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 36 78
10th Percentile £48.94 - £47.60
25th Percentile £62.40 £25.15 £56.55
Median hourly rate £74.68 £34.75 £64.47
Median % change year-on-year +114.91% -46.09% -7.91%
75th Percentile £92.53 £76.25 £75.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £86.75 £100.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £70.00 £63.15
% change year-on-year +6.69% +10.85% -9.79%

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 17,713 10,602 11,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.02% 31.87% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,690 6,649 6,691
10th Percentile £351 £285 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £631
90th Percentile £713 £706 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.75% -3.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,522 901 570
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.55 £18.13
25th Percentile £24.73 £18.87 £25.26
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.49%
75th Percentile £72.25 £40.25 £68.00
90th Percentile £89.08 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.65%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +31 2,155 £600 +2.13% 304
UK excluding London +21 1,646 £600 +4.35% 252
South East +9 864 £600 +4.35% 110
South West +8 542 £575 -8.00% 83
London +41 488 £625 - 62
Work from Home +46 356 £560 -6.67% 84
East of England +18 108 £650 +18.18% 25
North of England -19 55 £525 -2.33% 19
Midlands -89 42 £625 +5.26% 18
North West -12 39 £600 +20.00% 13
Scotland -8 35 £525 - 2
West Midlands -91 35 £600 +1.05% 12
Yorkshire -23 11 £510 -
East Midlands - 7 £644 - 6
Northern Ireland +5 5 £638 +6.25% 2
North East -35 5 £463 -26.00% 6
Wales -11 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 67 (2.94%) Confluence
2 63 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 37 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 24 (1.05%) Apache
5 14 (0.62%) Apache Spark
6 10 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (0.44%) CMS
7 7 (0.31%) Documentum
7 7 (0.31%) IIS
8 4 (0.18%) Camunda
8 4 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
8 4 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.088%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.088%) Mule
10 2 (0.088%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.088%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.088%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.044%) Mattermost
Applications
1 70 (3.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (2.28%) Microsoft Project
3 36 (1.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 20 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.83%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.75%) Revit
6 17 (0.75%) SOLIDWORKS
7 12 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.44%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.044%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.27%) Oracle ERP
2 23 (1.01%) Teamcenter
3 16 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 16 (0.70%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 15 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
5 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.18%) Primavera
6 4 (0.18%) SAP PP
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
7 3 (0.13%) SAP EWM
8 2 (0.088%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.088%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.044%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 327 (14.37%) Azure
2 292 (12.83%) AWS
3 118 (5.18%) GCP
4 67 (2.94%) Azure DevOps
5 55 (2.42%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (2.11%) GitHub
7 47 (2.07%) Entra ID
8 43 (1.89%) GitHub Actions
9 40 (1.76%) OpenShift
9 40 (1.76%) Serverless
10 36 (1.58%) Power Platform
11 31 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.32%) OCI
13 24 (1.05%) Amazon S3
14 23 (1.01%) Amazon EKS
15 22 (0.97%) Amazon ECS
15 22 (0.97%) Azure Monitor
16 19 (0.83%) Amazon SQS
17 17 (0.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 16 (0.70%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 165 (7.25%) DNS
2 132 (5.80%) Firewall
3 84 (3.69%) DHCP
3 84 (3.69%) Network Security
4 64 (2.81%) TCP/IP
5 57 (2.50%) VPN
6 56 (2.46%) WAN
7 52 (2.28%) BGP
8 48 (2.11%) LAN
9 37 (1.63%) MPLS
10 34 (1.49%) VSAN
11 32 (1.41%) IPsec
12 29 (1.27%) VLAN
13 25 (1.10%) SSL
14 18 (0.79%) OSPF
14 18 (0.79%) SD-WAN
15 16 (0.70%) Cisco ASA
15 16 (0.70%) SAN
16 15 (0.66%) Software-Defined Networking
17 14 (0.62%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (2.46%) SQL Server
2 48 (2.11%) Oracle Database
3 37 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
4 31 (1.36%) Metadata
5 29 (1.27%) Relational Database
6 21 (0.92%) Elasticsearch
6 21 (0.92%) Power BI
7 20 (0.88%) Data Lake
8 19 (0.83%) MongoDB
9 15 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
10 13 (0.57%) Big Data
11 10 (0.44%) Hadoop
12 9 (0.40%) MySQL
12 9 (0.40%) Parquet
13 8 (0.35%) BigQuery
13 8 (0.35%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 8 (0.35%) Oracle Database 11g
13 8 (0.35%) Oracle Database 12c
13 8 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 104 (4.57%) JIRA
2 99 (4.35%) GitLab
3 97 (4.26%) Jenkins
4 90 (3.95%) Git
5 31 (1.36%) Selenium
6 16 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 15 (0.66%) Cucumber
8 11 (0.48%) JUnit
9 10 (0.44%) MSI
9 10 (0.44%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.35%) JMeter
10 8 (0.35%) Postman
10 8 (0.35%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.31%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.31%) Gatling
11 7 (0.31%) Maven
11 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.26%) Gradle
12 6 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 543 (23.86%) Social Skills
2 265 (11.64%) Public Sector
3 181 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (6.68%) Finance
5 67 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
6 64 (2.81%) Military
7 52 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
8 49 (2.15%) Aerospace
9 43 (1.89%) Manufacturing
10 42 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
11 41 (1.80%) Police
12 36 (1.58%) Legal
13 31 (1.36%) Law
14 27 (1.19%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.40%) Local Government
15 9 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.31%) Marketing
17 6 (0.26%) Automotive
18 5 (0.22%) Back Office
19 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 398 (17.49%) Architect
2 227 (9.97%) Lead
3 212 (9.31%) Senior
4 154 (6.77%) Consultant
5 152 (6.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 148 (6.50%) Developer
7 140 (6.15%) Analyst
8 94 (4.13%) Security Architect
9 76 (3.34%) Network Engineer
10 73 (3.21%) SOC Analyst
11 70 (3.08%) Cloud Engineer
12 68 (2.99%) Support Engineer
13 56 (2.46%) DevOps Engineer
14 54 (2.37%) DBA
15 50 (2.20%) Solutions Architect
16 47 (2.07%) Project Manager
17 45 (1.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 44 (1.93%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
18 44 (1.93%) Enterprise Architect
19 43 (1.89%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 218 (9.58%) Terraform
2 80 (3.51%) REST
3 42 (1.85%) LDAP
4 30 (1.32%) Kafka
5 29 (1.27%) Elastic Stack
5 29 (1.27%) React
6 28 (1.23%) SOAP
7 25 (1.10%) RESTful
8 24 (1.05%) Apache NiFi
9 22 (0.97%) XML
10 19 (0.83%) JSON
11 18 (0.79%) Keycloak
12 17 (0.75%) ARM Templates
12 17 (0.75%) FastAPI
13 16 (0.70%) Node.js
13 16 (0.70%) OAuth
13 16 (0.70%) Spring
14 15 (0.66%) Spring Boot
15 14 (0.62%) AngularJS
15 14 (0.62%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.57%) Cloud Native
2 100 (4.39%) PKI
3 99 (4.35%) Data Centre
4 86 (3.78%) Onboarding
5 54 (2.37%) Management Information System
6 43 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 43 (1.89%) Product Ownership
7 39 (1.71%) Cyber Threat
8 36 (1.58%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
9 31 (1.36%) Security Posture
10 24 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
11 21 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
12 19 (0.83%) Clustering
12 19 (0.83%) CMDB
12 19 (0.83%) Virtual Team
13 18 (0.79%) Public Cloud
14 17 (0.75%) Replication
15 16 (0.70%) Video Conferencing
16 12 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 385 (16.92%) Windows
2 257 (11.29%) Linux
3 182 (8.00%) Windows Server
4 50 (2.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (1.32%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
7 25 (1.10%) Unix
8 24 (1.05%) Ubuntu
9 19 (0.83%) CentOS
10 12 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
11 11 (0.48%) macOS
12 6 (0.26%) AIX
12 6 (0.26%) Android
12 6 (0.26%) Rocky
13 5 (0.22%) VMS
13 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.18%) OpenVMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 386 (16.96%) Agile
2 313 (13.75%) Continuous Improvement
3 304 (13.36%) Stakeholder Management
4 283 (12.43%) CI/CD
5 262 (11.51%) DevOps
6 242 (10.63%) Problem-Solving
7 230 (10.11%) Cybersecurity
8 224 (9.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 221 (9.71%) Technical Leadership
10 220 (9.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 203 (8.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 193 (8.48%) ITIL
13 163 (7.16%) Service Management
14 161 (7.07%) Containerisation
15 152 (6.68%) ITSM
16 133 (5.84%) Project Delivery
17 130 (5.71%) Risk Management
18 129 (5.67%) Decision-Making
18 129 (5.67%) SIEM
19 117 (5.14%) AI
Programming Languages
1 260 (11.42%) Python
2 192 (8.44%) PowerShell
3 151 (6.63%) SQL
4 100 (4.39%) Bash
5 80 (3.51%) Java
6 38 (1.67%) JavaScript
7 37 (1.63%) C#
8 27 (1.19%) TypeScript
9 21 (0.92%) Go
10 20 (0.88%) Bicep
11 15 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 14 (0.62%) PL/SQL
13 12 (0.53%) C++
13 12 (0.53%) Search Processing Language
14 8 (0.35%) Groovy
15 7 (0.31%) C
16 6 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.26%) Perl
16 6 (0.26%) X++
17 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,276 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 697 (30.62%) SC Cleared
3 95 (4.17%) Degree
4 73 (3.21%) CISSP
5 42 (1.85%) CISM
6 39 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
7 30 (1.32%) AWS Certification
8 25 (1.10%) CCNP
8 25 (1.10%) PMI Certification
9 24 (1.05%) ISTQB
10 23 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.01%) TOGAF Certification
11 22 (0.97%) Azure Certification
11 22 (0.97%) VCAP
12 21 (0.92%) PMP
13 19 (0.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 16 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
15 13 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
16 11 (0.48%) CCNA
16 11 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (4.04%) NCSC
2 89 (3.91%) PMO
3 87 (3.82%) NIST
4 76 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 69 (3.03%) QA
6 38 (1.67%) Data Quality
7 37 (1.63%) SLA
8 34 (1.49%) JSP 440
9 32 (1.41%) GDPR
10 24 (1.05%) GRC
11 22 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 18 (0.79%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.57%) Government Security Classifications
14 10 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 10 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 8 (0.35%) WCAG
16 7 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
16 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
17 6 (0.26%) RMADS
18 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 249 (10.94%) Active Directory
2 191 (8.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 149 (6.55%) Docker
4 82 (3.60%) VMware NSX
5 69 (3.03%) VMware ESXi
6 59 (2.59%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.33%) vSphere
8 24 (1.05%) vCloud
9 18 (0.79%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.62%) NFS
11 12 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
11 12 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
12 10 (0.44%) Firmware
13 5 (0.22%) KVM
14 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
15 2 (0.088%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 2 (0.088%) Squid
Systems Management
1 237 (10.41%) Kubernetes
2 173 (7.60%) Ansible
3 77 (3.38%) vCenter Server
4 58 (2.55%) SCOM
5 37 (1.63%) SCCM
6 32 (1.41%) Prometheus
7 29 (1.27%) Grafana
8 24 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
9 22 (0.97%) Nagios
10 21 (0.92%) Puppet
11 17 (0.75%) VxRail
12 16 (0.70%) WMI
13 15 (0.66%) Avamar
13 15 (0.66%) Oracle RMAN
14 14 (0.62%) Progress Chef
15 13 (0.57%) Data Guard
16 12 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.53%) Istio
16 12 (0.53%) WSUS
17 11 (0.48%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 330 (14.50%) Microsoft
2 259 (11.38%) VMware
3 129 (5.67%) Oracle
4 87 (3.82%) ServiceNow
5 68 (2.99%) Cisco
6 64 (2.81%) Google
7 59 (2.59%) SAP
8 54 (2.37%) Splunk
9 47 (2.07%) SolarWinds
10 45 (1.98%) CyberArk
11 37 (1.63%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.01%) Dell
13 23 (1.01%) Juniper
14 20 (0.88%) Remedy
15 19 (0.83%) BMC
16 18 (0.79%) Thales
17 17 (0.75%) Broadcom
17 17 (0.75%) Citrix
18 16 (0.70%) Atlassian