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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 78 32
Rank change year-on-year +30 -46 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,155 987 2,290
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.09% 3.03% 5.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.07% 9.82% 18.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,635 681 1,623
10th Percentile £430 £459 £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 £656 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £578 £600
% change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% +2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 38 112
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.15 £49.10
25th Percentile £41.25 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £63.14 £63.25 £70.78
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% -10.64% +1.11%
75th Percentile £82.20 £82.08 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.53 £87.91 £89.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -22.07% +15.09% -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 16,493 10,054 12,373
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.27% 30.81% 29.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,021 6,237 7,796
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,192 742 985
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £20.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.93 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +28 2,007 £600 +1.22% 561
UK excluding London +10 1,524 £600 +3.90% 458
South East +6 873 £600 - 196
London +60 458 £600 - 120
South West -1 382 £575 -4.17% 159
Work from Home +49 326 £575 -2.54% 207
East of England +12 97 £650 +18.18% 35
North of England -11 73 £775 +24.00% 43
Midlands -53 57 £600 - 20
North West -5 49 £900 +98.90% 30
West Midlands -64 45 £600 - 16
Scotland +13 39 £669 +33.70% 8
Yorkshire -30 20 £510 -18.40% 8
East Midlands -2 12 £631 +14.77% 4
Northern Ireland +8 5 £619 - 1
Wales -13 4 - - 2
North East -33 4 £463 -26.00% 5

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 57 (2.65%) Confluence
2 42 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
3 37 (1.72%) SharePoint
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%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.093%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.093%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.046%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.046%) JBoss
10 1 (0.046%) Mule
10 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 46 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 38 (1.76%) Microsoft Project
3 22 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.46%) AutoCAD
6 10 (0.46%) Revit
6 10 (0.46%) SOLIDWORKS
7 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.093%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 33 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.25%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
3 19 (0.88%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
5 7 (0.32%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.093%) Primavera
9 2 (0.093%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Payables
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.046%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.046%) SAP PLM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 255 (11.83%) Azure
2 246 (11.42%) AWS
3 100 (4.64%) GCP
4 58 (2.69%) Azure DevOps
5 51 (2.37%) GitHub
6 43 (2.00%) Microsoft 365
7 41 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
8 38 (1.76%) IaaS
9 37 (1.72%) PaaS
10 33 (1.53%) Serverless
11 32 (1.48%) Entra ID
11 32 (1.48%) Power Platform
12 28 (1.30%) OpenShift
13 24 (1.11%) OCI
14 20 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
15 19 (0.88%) Amazon EKS
16 18 (0.84%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 18 (0.84%) SaaS
17 16 (0.74%) Amazon S3
18 15 (0.70%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 144 (6.68%) DNS
2 124 (5.75%) Firewall
3 80 (3.71%) Network Security
4 75 (3.48%) WAN
5 73 (3.39%) DHCP
6 70 (3.25%) LAN
7 57 (2.65%) BGP
8 55 (2.55%) VPN
9 41 (1.90%) TCP/IP
10 32 (1.48%) OSPF
10 32 (1.48%) VSAN
11 31 (1.44%) IPsec
12 29 (1.35%) MPLS
13 28 (1.30%) VLAN
14 23 (1.07%) VXLAN
15 21 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
16 19 (0.88%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.84%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
19 16 (0.74%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (2.09%) SQL Server
2 39 (1.81%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
5 22 (1.02%) Power BI
6 18 (0.84%) Metadata
7 13 (0.60%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.46%) Data Lake
9 9 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
9 9 (0.42%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
11 7 (0.32%) Hadoop
12 6 (0.28%) Big Data
12 6 (0.28%) BigQuery
12 6 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 6 (0.28%) Redis
13 5 (0.23%) MariaDB
13 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 4 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 91 (4.22%) JIRA
2 49 (2.27%) GitLab
3 46 (2.13%) Jenkins
4 39 (1.81%) Git
5 14 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 10 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.23%) Postman
8 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
8 5 (0.23%) Visual Studio
9 4 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.19%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) ERwin
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 365 (16.94%) Social Skills
2 276 (12.81%) Public Sector
3 137 (6.36%) Analytical Skills
4 118 (5.48%) Finance
5 79 (3.67%) Military
6 52 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.18%) Legal
8 31 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
9 25 (1.16%) Law
10 24 (1.11%) Police
11 22 (1.02%) Telecoms
12 21 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (0.74%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.70%) Aerospace
14 15 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.32%) Marketing
16 6 (0.28%) Local Government
17 5 (0.23%) Advertising
18 4 (0.19%) Aviation
19 3 (0.14%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 332 (15.41%) Architect
2 226 (10.49%) Lead
3 197 (9.14%) Senior
4 148 (6.87%) Analyst
5 147 (6.82%) Developer
6 140 (6.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 133 (6.17%) Consultant
8 91 (4.22%) Network Engineer
9 81 (3.76%) Security Architect
10 77 (3.57%) SOC Analyst
11 75 (3.48%) Technical Architect
12 55 (2.55%) Project Manager
13 52 (2.41%) DBA
14 51 (2.37%) DevOps Engineer
15 50 (2.32%) Cloud Engineer
15 50 (2.32%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 44 (2.04%) Network Architect
16 44 (2.04%) Senior Network Engineer
17 43 (2.00%) Service Manager
17 43 (2.00%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (3.16%) REST
2 31 (1.44%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.25%) React
4 24 (1.11%) SOAP
5 21 (0.97%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 18 (0.84%) 802.1X
8 17 (0.79%) Node.js
9 16 (0.74%) Spring
10 15 (0.70%) .NET
10 15 (0.70%) Spring Boot
11 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.65%) Flask
12 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
12 13 (0.60%) FastAPI
13 12 (0.56%) ModSecurity
14 9 (0.42%) ARM Templates
14 9 (0.42%) LDAP
14 9 (0.42%) Web Services
15 8 (0.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.73%) Data Centre
2 95 (4.41%) PKI
3 73 (3.39%) Cloud Native
4 59 (2.74%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.32%) Security Operations Centre
6 37 (1.72%) Clustering
7 36 (1.67%) Private Cloud
8 34 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
9 32 (1.48%) Product Ownership
10 31 (1.44%) Management Information System
11 28 (1.30%) Cyber Threat
12 26 (1.21%) Security Posture
13 25 (1.16%) CMDB
14 24 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
14 24 (1.11%) Public Cloud
15 22 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
16 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
17 14 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
18 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
18 13 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 301 (13.97%) Windows
2 229 (10.63%) Linux
3 136 (6.31%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.88%) Windows 10
6 16 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 8 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) CentOS
9 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) VMS
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 366 (16.98%) Agile
2 218 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
3 206 (9.56%) ITIL
4 205 (9.51%) CI/CD
5 201 (9.33%) Cybersecurity
6 195 (9.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 193 (8.96%) DevOps
8 187 (8.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 183 (8.49%) Stakeholder Management
10 165 (7.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 155 (7.19%) Service Management
12 139 (6.45%) Infrastructure as Code
13 122 (5.66%) Technical Leadership
14 121 (5.61%) ITSM
15 109 (5.06%) Project Delivery
16 106 (4.92%) Containerisation
17 103 (4.78%) Risk Management
18 102 (4.73%) Service Delivery
19 98 (4.55%) Roadmaps
20 95 (4.41%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 193 (8.96%) Python
2 137 (6.36%) PowerShell
3 107 (4.97%) SQL
4 63 (2.92%) Bash
4 63 (2.92%) Java
5 45 (2.09%) JavaScript
6 30 (1.39%) C#
6 30 (1.39%) TypeScript
7 19 (0.88%) Go
8 16 (0.74%) Bicep
9 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
10 13 (0.60%) PL/SQL
11 12 (0.56%) C++
12 11 (0.51%) C
13 9 (0.42%) Rust
14 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
15 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
15 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.28%) Perl
16 5 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,155 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 725 (33.64%) SC Cleared
3 73 (3.39%) Degree
4 56 (2.60%) CISSP
5 51 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (1.39%) CISM
7 27 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
8 24 (1.11%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 20 (0.93%) CCNP
11 18 (0.84%) CCNA
11 18 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
11 18 (0.84%) PMI Certification
12 16 (0.74%) MCSE
12 16 (0.74%) PMP
12 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.70%) ISTQB
14 14 (0.65%) Azure Certification
15 13 (0.60%) CESG Certified Professional
15 13 (0.60%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.48%) NCSC
1 75 (3.48%) NIST
2 67 (3.11%) PMO
3 57 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 53 (2.46%) QA
5 34 (1.58%) JSP 440
6 27 (1.25%) GDPR
7 23 (1.07%) GRC
8 21 (0.97%) Data Quality
8 21 (0.97%) SLA
9 18 (0.84%) RMADS
10 14 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
10 14 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 13 (0.60%) Government Security Classifications
12 12 (0.56%) Accessibility
13 9 (0.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 8 (0.37%) WCAG
15 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
15 7 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 175 (8.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 169 (7.84%) Active Directory
3 125 (5.80%) Docker
4 82 (3.81%) VMware NSX
5 67 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
6 55 (2.55%) Hyper-V
7 39 (1.81%) vSphere
8 21 (0.97%) vCloud
9 16 (0.74%) 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 4 (0.19%) Ceph
13 4 (0.19%) Firmware
13 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.19%) UAG
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 174 (8.07%) Kubernetes
1 174 (8.07%) Terraform
2 110 (5.10%) Ansible
3 81 (3.76%) vCenter Server
4 41 (1.90%) SCOM
5 32 (1.48%) SCCM
6 24 (1.11%) Prometheus
7 23 (1.07%) Grafana
8 22 (1.02%) Puppet
9 15 (0.70%) Nagios
9 15 (0.70%) Oracle RMAN
9 15 (0.70%) Podman
10 13 (0.60%) Avamar
10 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
10 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
11 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 10 (0.46%) WSUS
12 9 (0.42%) Progress Chef
12 9 (0.42%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 242 (11.23%) VMware
2 241 (11.18%) Microsoft
3 113 (5.24%) ServiceNow
4 103 (4.78%) Cisco
5 88 (4.08%) Oracle
6 61 (2.83%) Splunk
7 53 (2.46%) SAP
8 49 (2.27%) Juniper
9 46 (2.13%) Google
10 45 (2.09%) SolarWinds
11 34 (1.58%) NetApp
12 33 (1.53%) Red Hat
13 28 (1.30%) F5
13 28 (1.30%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.30%) Remedy
14 25 (1.16%) Citrix
15 24 (1.11%) Dell
16 22 (1.02%) Fortinet
17 20 (0.93%) BMC
18 19 (0.88%) Sparx