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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 79 32
Rank change year-on-year +31 -47 +26
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,125 978 2,434
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.05% 3.03% 5.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.89% 9.85% 18.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,620 682 1,734
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 £585 £600
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 33 125
10th Percentile £20.03 £25.15 £48.64
25th Percentile £35.00 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £55.00 £75.00 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year -26.67% +6.55% +0.56%
75th Percentile £74.50 £82.10 £85.00
90th Percentile £88.70 £88.60 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £81.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -32.39% +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 16,480 9,928 12,965
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.40% 30.74% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,007 6,162 8,061
10th Percentile £350 £278 £310
25th Percentile £429 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 695 1,107
10th Percentile £17.69 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.19 £20.00 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.00 £27.38 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +82.65% -33.13% -25.56%
75th Percentile £72.54 £58.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.00
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 9 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 9 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 9 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 1,978 £600 +1.65% 604
UK excluding London +9 1,515 £600 +2.56% 506
South East +6 834 £600 - 208
London +62 436 £600 - 116
South West -2 394 £575 -4.17% 187
Work from Home +54 316 £560 -4.27% 202
East of England +16 102 £650 +18.18% 44
North of England -8 87 £775 +24.00% 41
North West +11 65 £775 +278.05% 33
Midlands -56 58 £600 - 20
West Midlands -68 46 £600 - 16
Scotland +24 38 £669 +33.70% 13
Yorkshire -33 19 £518 -17.20% 5
East Midlands -3 12 £625 +13.64% 4
Northern Ireland +10 5 £619 -
Wales -11 4 - -
North East -30 3 £569 -9.00% 3

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 56 (2.64%) Confluence
2 43 (2.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 37 (1.74%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.38%) Apache
5 7 (0.33%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.33%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
7 5 (0.24%) CMS
8 4 (0.19%) Skype for Business
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.094%) nginx
10 2 (0.094%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.094%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.047%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.047%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.047%) Mule
11 1 (0.047%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 41 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
3 28 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
4 14 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.47%) AutoCAD
5 10 (0.47%) Revit
5 10 (0.47%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.33%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.094%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 30 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.22%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (0.94%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 18 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
5 9 (0.42%) 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 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.094%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.094%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 2 (0.094%) Primavera
9 2 (0.094%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.047%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.047%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 241 (11.34%) AWS
2 231 (10.87%) Azure
3 93 (4.38%) GCP
4 55 (2.59%) GitHub
5 52 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
6 44 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
7 41 (1.93%) IaaS
7 41 (1.93%) PaaS
8 36 (1.69%) Microsoft 365
9 32 (1.51%) Serverless
10 27 (1.27%) OpenShift
11 26 (1.22%) Power Platform
12 25 (1.18%) OCI
13 23 (1.08%) Entra ID
14 20 (0.94%) SaaS
15 18 (0.85%) AWS Lambda
16 17 (0.80%) Amazon EKS
17 16 (0.75%) Amazon ECS
18 14 (0.66%) Amazon S3
18 14 (0.66%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 128 (6.02%) DNS
2 114 (5.36%) Firewall
3 79 (3.72%) Network Security
4 70 (3.29%) WAN
5 68 (3.20%) LAN
6 60 (2.82%) DHCP
7 52 (2.45%) VPN
8 51 (2.40%) BGP
9 32 (1.51%) OSPF
10 30 (1.41%) TCP/IP
10 30 (1.41%) VLAN
11 25 (1.18%) IPsec
11 25 (1.18%) MPLS
11 25 (1.18%) VSAN
12 22 (1.04%) VXLAN
13 20 (0.94%) Ethernet VPN
14 19 (0.89%) BIG-IP
15 17 (0.80%) SD-WAN
16 16 (0.75%) Cisco Nexus
16 16 (0.75%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (1.98%) SQL Server
2 37 (1.74%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
4 28 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
5 21 (0.99%) Power BI
6 14 (0.66%) Metadata
7 12 (0.56%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (0.47%) MongoDB
9 9 (0.42%) Data Lake
10 8 (0.38%) Oracle Database 11g
11 7 (0.33%) Redis
12 6 (0.28%) Hadoop
12 6 (0.28%) NoSQL
13 5 (0.24%) Big Data
13 5 (0.24%) BigQuery
13 5 (0.24%) MariaDB
13 5 (0.24%) Oracle Database 12c
14 4 (0.19%) Relational Database
14 4 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 91 (4.28%) JIRA
2 47 (2.21%) GitLab
3 44 (2.07%) Jenkins
4 37 (1.74%) Git
5 13 (0.61%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.42%) Selenium
7 7 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.28%) 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 (0.094%) SoapUI
General
1 361 (16.99%) Social Skills
2 269 (12.66%) Public Sector
3 130 (6.12%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (4.89%) Finance
5 77 (3.62%) Military
6 60 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.26%) Legal
8 25 (1.18%) Law
8 25 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (1.13%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.08%) Telecoms
11 21 (0.99%) Police
12 17 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (0.61%) Manufacturing
14 8 (0.38%) Marketing
15 6 (0.28%) Local Government
16 4 (0.19%) Advertising
17 3 (0.14%) Banking
17 3 (0.14%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 325 (15.29%) Architect
2 212 (9.98%) Lead
3 185 (8.71%) Senior
4 145 (6.82%) Analyst
5 140 (6.59%) Developer
6 133 (6.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 119 (5.60%) Consultant
8 83 (3.91%) Network Engineer
9 82 (3.86%) Technical Architect
10 79 (3.72%) Security Architect
11 77 (3.62%) SOC Analyst
12 63 (2.96%) Project Manager
13 50 (2.35%) DBA
13 50 (2.35%) Tester
14 49 (2.31%) Service Manager
15 48 (2.26%) DevOps Engineer
16 45 (2.12%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 44 (2.07%) Cloud Engineer
18 43 (2.02%) DV Cleared Project Manager
19 42 (1.98%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (3.06%) REST
2 30 (1.41%) Elastic Stack
2 30 (1.41%) React
3 24 (1.13%) SOAP
4 21 (0.99%) Kafka
4 21 (0.99%) Node.js
5 19 (0.89%) 802.1X
6 18 (0.85%) RESTful
6 18 (0.85%) Spring
7 15 (0.71%) Spring Boot
8 14 (0.66%) .NET
8 14 (0.66%) AngularJS
8 14 (0.66%) Flask
9 13 (0.61%) Apache NiFi
9 13 (0.61%) FastAPI
10 11 (0.52%) ModSecurity
11 10 (0.47%) Playwright
12 9 (0.42%) LDAP
12 9 (0.42%) Oracle Fusion
12 9 (0.42%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 94 (4.42%) Data Centre
1 94 (4.42%) PKI
2 70 (3.29%) Cloud Native
3 52 (2.45%) Security Operations Centre
4 45 (2.12%) Onboarding
5 37 (1.74%) Clustering
6 35 (1.65%) Private Cloud
7 33 (1.55%) Product Ownership
8 30 (1.41%) Security Posture
9 28 (1.32%) Management Information System
10 26 (1.22%) CMDB
10 26 (1.22%) Cyber Threat
11 25 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
13 20 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
13 20 (0.94%) Public Cloud
14 18 (0.85%) Virtual Team
15 14 (0.66%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 288 (13.55%) Windows
2 221 (10.40%) Linux
3 122 (5.74%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.89%) Windows 10
6 13 (0.61%) Unix
7 11 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) 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
1 361 (16.99%) Agile
2 217 (10.21%) Problem-Solving
3 204 (9.60%) ITIL
4 192 (9.04%) Cybersecurity
5 189 (8.89%) CI/CD
5 189 (8.89%) Continuous Improvement
6 182 (8.56%) DevOps
7 177 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 168 (7.91%) Stakeholder Management
9 157 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 148 (6.96%) Service Management
11 123 (5.79%) Infrastructure as Code
12 122 (5.74%) ITSM
13 111 (5.22%) Project Delivery
14 108 (5.08%) Technical Leadership
15 99 (4.66%) Containerisation
15 99 (4.66%) Service Delivery
16 96 (4.52%) Risk Management
17 95 (4.47%) Decision-Making
17 95 (4.47%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 184 (8.66%) Python
2 124 (5.84%) PowerShell
3 103 (4.85%) SQL
4 64 (3.01%) Java
5 49 (2.31%) Bash
6 46 (2.16%) JavaScript
7 32 (1.51%) TypeScript
8 28 (1.32%) C#
9 20 (0.94%) Go
10 14 (0.66%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.61%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.56%) C++
13 11 (0.52%) C
14 9 (0.42%) Rust
15 8 (0.38%) Bicep
15 8 (0.38%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Perl
17 5 (0.24%) Kusto Query Language
17 5 (0.24%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,125 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 700 (32.94%) SC Cleared
3 66 (3.11%) Degree
4 54 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (2.40%) CISSP
6 29 (1.36%) CISM
7 25 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
8 23 (1.08%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.04%) CCNP
10 21 (0.99%) CompTIA Security+
11 20 (0.94%) CCNA
12 19 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 17 (0.80%) BPSS Clearance
13 17 (0.80%) PMI Certification
14 16 (0.75%) ISTQB
14 16 (0.75%) PMP
15 15 (0.71%) MCSE
16 14 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 13 (0.61%) CESG Certified Professional
18 12 (0.56%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.58%) NIST
2 72 (3.39%) NCSC
3 65 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 62 (2.92%) QA
5 61 (2.87%) PMO
6 41 (1.93%) JSP 440
7 26 (1.22%) GDPR
8 22 (1.04%) GRC
8 22 (1.04%) SLA
9 21 (0.99%) RMADS
10 18 (0.85%) Data Quality
11 13 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
11 13 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 12 (0.56%) Accessibility
13 10 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
14 8 (0.38%) WCAG
15 7 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 7 (0.33%) ISO 9000
16 6 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 6 (0.28%) NIST 800
System Software
1 156 (7.34%) VMware Infrastructure
2 145 (6.82%) Active Directory
3 120 (5.65%) Docker
4 77 (3.62%) VMware NSX
5 58 (2.73%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (2.45%) Hyper-V
7 35 (1.65%) vSphere
8 23 (1.08%) vCloud
9 15 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.52%) BitLocker
11 9 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
11 9 (0.42%) 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
1 164 (7.72%) Kubernetes
2 156 (7.34%) Terraform
3 99 (4.66%) Ansible
4 69 (3.25%) vCenter Server
5 37 (1.74%) SCOM
6 29 (1.36%) SCCM
7 25 (1.18%) Prometheus
8 24 (1.13%) Grafana
9 22 (1.04%) Puppet
10 13 (0.61%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.61%) Nagios
11 12 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
11 12 (0.56%) Podman
11 12 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 11 (0.52%) Data Guard
12 11 (0.52%) VxRail
13 10 (0.47%) Avamar
13 10 (0.47%) WSUS
14 9 (0.42%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 231 (10.87%) VMware
2 217 (10.21%) Microsoft
3 112 (5.27%) ServiceNow
4 102 (4.80%) Cisco
5 83 (3.91%) Oracle
6 61 (2.87%) Splunk
7 48 (2.26%) Juniper
8 41 (1.93%) SAP
8 41 (1.93%) SolarWinds
9 39 (1.84%) Google
10 36 (1.69%) NetApp
11 30 (1.41%) Red Hat
12 28 (1.32%) F5
13 26 (1.22%) Citrix
13 26 (1.22%) Remedy
14 24 (1.13%) Dell
14 24 (1.13%) Palo Alto
15 22 (1.04%) Fortinet
16 20 (0.94%) Sparx
17 19 (0.89%) BMC