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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 84 30
Rank change year-on-year +34 -54 +30
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,951 869 2,461
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.88% 2.93% 5.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.38% 9.44% 18.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,474 589 1,772
10th Percentile £429 £450 £425
25th Percentile £513 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £678 £650 £690
90th Percentile £750 £713 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 29 114
10th Percentile £18.14 £29.83 £51.93
25th Percentile £35.00 £50.00 £57.34
Median hourly rate £42.50 £80.68 £72.33
Median % change year-on-year -47.32% +11.54% +1.64%
75th Percentile £69.92 £83.75 £85.65
90th Percentile £83.94 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £81.35 £71.75
% change year-on-year -47.76% +13.38% -4.34%

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 15,756 9,203 13,032
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 31.01% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,481 5,704 8,054
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £616 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.20% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,160 598 1,119
10th Percentile £17.20 £17.74 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £21.00 £18.65
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%
75th Percentile £72.50 £63.63 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £28.34 £41.50
% change year-on-year +67.75% -31.71% -20.95%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 1,807 £600 +3.00% 426
UK excluding London +12 1,397 £600 +4.35% 363
South East +8 762 £600 +4.35% 153
London +67 397 £600 - 73
South West -2 356 £575 -4.17% 140
Work from Home +40 288 £560 -1.32% 163
East of England +10 102 £650 +18.18% 27
North of England -4 81 £775 +24.00% 23
North West +13 65 £775 +76.14% 15
Midlands -55 51 £600 - 11
Scotland +23 41 £669 +33.70% 13
West Midlands -60 40 £600 - 8
Yorkshire -45 13 £525 -16.00% 3
East Midlands -11 11 £518 -5.91% 3
Northern Ireland +8 6 £619 - 3
Wales -8 4 - - 1
North East -30 3 £569 -9.00% 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 40 (2.05%) Confluence
2 38 (1.95%) Microsoft Exchange
3 28 (1.44%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.31%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.31%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.26%) CMS
5 5 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.21%) Apache
6 4 (0.21%) Documentum
6 4 (0.21%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.10%) nginx
7 2 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.051%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 33 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (1.64%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.41%) AutoCAD
5 8 (0.41%) Revit
5 8 (0.41%) SOLIDWORKS
6 6 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.21%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.10%) Lectora
8 2 (0.10%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 28 (1.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.23%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.97%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 15 (0.77%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.26%) Maximo
5 5 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.21%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.15%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.10%) Primavera
8 2 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
9 1 (0.051%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.051%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.051%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.051%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 211 (10.81%) AWS
2 185 (9.48%) Azure
3 85 (4.36%) GCP
4 48 (2.46%) GitHub
5 45 (2.31%) PaaS
6 44 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
6 44 (2.26%) IaaS
7 37 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
8 31 (1.59%) Serverless
9 27 (1.38%) OpenShift
10 25 (1.28%) Microsoft 365
11 23 (1.18%) OCI
12 21 (1.08%) Power Platform
13 18 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
13 18 (0.92%) SaaS
14 17 (0.87%) Amazon ECS
15 16 (0.82%) Amazon EKS
16 15 (0.77%) Entra ID
17 14 (0.72%) Amazon S3
18 12 (0.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 108 (5.54%) DNS
2 98 (5.02%) Firewall
3 72 (3.69%) Network Security
4 64 (3.28%) WAN
5 63 (3.23%) LAN
6 53 (2.72%) DHCP
7 52 (2.67%) VPN
8 42 (2.15%) BGP
9 28 (1.44%) OSPF
10 20 (1.03%) Ethernet VPN
10 20 (1.03%) MPLS
10 20 (1.03%) TCP/IP
10 20 (1.03%) VLAN
10 20 (1.03%) VXLAN
11 18 (0.92%) IPsec
11 18 (0.92%) VSAN
12 16 (0.82%) BIG-IP
13 15 (0.77%) Junos
14 14 (0.72%) Skype
15 13 (0.67%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (1.85%) SQL Server
2 33 (1.69%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
4 27 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
5 16 (0.82%) Power BI
6 15 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
7 13 (0.67%) MongoDB
8 9 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (0.41%) Metadata
10 7 (0.36%) Redis
11 6 (0.31%) Data Lake
11 6 (0.31%) NoSQL
11 6 (0.31%) Oracle Database 11g
12 5 (0.26%) Big Data
12 5 (0.26%) BigQuery
12 5 (0.26%) DynamoDB
12 5 (0.26%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.26%) MariaDB
12 5 (0.26%) MySQL
13 4 (0.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 71 (3.64%) JIRA
2 38 (1.95%) GitLab
3 33 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 29 (1.49%) Git
5 13 (0.67%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.31%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.26%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.26%) Robot Framework
9 4 (0.21%) Oracle APEX
9 4 (0.21%) Postman
9 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.21%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.21%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.15%) Appium
10 3 (0.15%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.15%) MLflow
11 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 298 (15.27%) Social Skills
2 245 (12.56%) Public Sector
3 112 (5.74%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (4.51%) Finance
5 71 (3.64%) Military
6 58 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.56%) Legal
8 24 (1.23%) Law
9 23 (1.18%) Aerospace
10 22 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
10 22 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
11 20 (1.03%) Telecoms
12 19 (0.97%) Police
13 13 (0.67%) Manufacturing
14 10 (0.51%) Marketing
15 5 (0.26%) Electronics
15 5 (0.26%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.26%) Local Government
16 3 (0.15%) Advertising
17 2 (0.10%) Banking
Job Titles
1 291 (14.92%) Architect
2 173 (8.87%) Lead
3 169 (8.66%) Senior
4 130 (6.66%) Analyst
5 118 (6.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 110 (5.64%) Developer
7 107 (5.48%) Consultant
8 82 (4.20%) Network Engineer
9 76 (3.90%) SOC Analyst
10 73 (3.74%) Technical Architect
11 63 (3.23%) Security Architect
12 62 (3.18%) Project Manager
13 52 (2.67%) Tester
14 50 (2.56%) DevOps Engineer
15 47 (2.41%) DBA
15 47 (2.41%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 45 (2.31%) Administrator
17 44 (2.26%) Service Manager
18 43 (2.20%) DV Cleared Project Manager
19 42 (2.15%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (2.72%) REST
2 29 (1.49%) React
3 26 (1.33%) Elastic Stack
4 19 (0.97%) 802.1X
4 19 (0.97%) SOAP
5 18 (0.92%) Kafka
6 17 (0.87%) Node.js
7 16 (0.82%) AngularJS
7 16 (0.82%) RESTful
8 15 (0.77%) Spring
9 14 (0.72%) Flask
10 13 (0.67%) FastAPI
10 13 (0.67%) Spring Boot
11 12 (0.62%) .NET
12 11 (0.56%) ModSecurity
12 11 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
13 10 (0.51%) Apache NiFi
13 10 (0.51%) Playwright
14 9 (0.46%) LDAP
14 9 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 93 (4.77%) PKI
2 74 (3.79%) Data Centre
3 55 (2.82%) Cloud Native
4 50 (2.56%) Security Operations Centre
5 35 (1.79%) Clustering
6 34 (1.74%) Onboarding
7 28 (1.44%) Management Information System
8 26 (1.33%) Product Ownership
9 25 (1.28%) Security Posture
10 24 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
11 22 (1.13%) Private Cloud
12 20 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
13 19 (0.97%) CMDB
14 18 (0.92%) Public Cloud
15 16 (0.82%) Virtual Team
16 15 (0.77%) Distributed Systems
17 14 (0.72%) Enterprise Storage
18 13 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
18 13 (0.67%) Legacy Systems
19 12 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 256 (13.12%) Windows
2 204 (10.46%) Linux
3 106 (5.43%) Windows Server
4 25 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.87%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.51%) Unix
7 8 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
7 8 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (0.31%) AIX
8 6 (0.31%) Android
8 6 (0.31%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.26%) CentOS
9 5 (0.26%) Debian
9 5 (0.26%) VMS
9 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.21%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.21%) Windows 7
11 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 316 (16.20%) Agile
2 192 (9.84%) Problem-Solving
3 176 (9.02%) ITIL
4 163 (8.35%) Cybersecurity
5 161 (8.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 159 (8.15%) CI/CD
6 159 (8.15%) DevOps
7 151 (7.74%) Continuous Improvement
8 132 (6.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 129 (6.61%) Stakeholder Management
10 127 (6.51%) Service Management
11 107 (5.48%) ITSM
12 104 (5.33%) Infrastructure as Code
13 98 (5.02%) Project Delivery
14 88 (4.51%) Decision-Making
15 86 (4.41%) Risk Management
16 85 (4.36%) Containerisation
16 85 (4.36%) Security Operations
17 83 (4.25%) Technical Leadership
18 82 (4.20%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 158 (8.10%) Python
2 110 (5.64%) PowerShell
3 92 (4.72%) SQL
4 46 (2.36%) Java
5 39 (2.00%) JavaScript
6 36 (1.85%) Bash
7 28 (1.44%) TypeScript
8 25 (1.28%) C#
9 16 (0.82%) Go
10 14 (0.72%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.67%) PL/SQL
12 10 (0.51%) Bicep
12 10 (0.51%) C++
13 9 (0.46%) C
13 9 (0.46%) Rust
14 8 (0.41%) Shell Script
15 6 (0.31%) Embedded C
16 5 (0.26%) Apex Code
16 5 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
16 5 (0.26%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,951 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 655 (33.57%) SC Cleared
3 59 (3.02%) Degree
4 48 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
4 48 (2.46%) CISSP
5 33 (1.69%) CISM
6 25 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
7 23 (1.18%) CompTIA Security+
8 21 (1.08%) AWS Certification
8 21 (1.08%) CCNA
9 17 (0.87%) BPSS Clearance
9 17 (0.87%) CCNP
10 16 (0.82%) CESG Certified Professional
11 15 (0.77%) ISTQB
12 14 (0.72%) CompTIA CySA+
12 14 (0.72%) PMP
12 14 (0.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 13 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
13 13 (0.67%) GIAC
13 13 (0.67%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.74%) NIST
2 67 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 56 (2.87%) NCSC
4 52 (2.67%) PMO
4 52 (2.67%) QA
5 38 (1.95%) JSP 440
6 25 (1.28%) GDPR
7 24 (1.23%) RMADS
7 24 (1.23%) SLA
8 22 (1.13%) GRC
9 11 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
10 9 (0.46%) Accessibility
11 8 (0.41%) Data Quality
11 8 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.36%) Government Security Classifications
13 6 (0.31%) WCAG
14 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 4 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.15%) Def Stans
System Software
1 130 (6.66%) VMware Infrastructure
2 126 (6.46%) Active Directory
3 103 (5.28%) Docker
4 62 (3.18%) VMware NSX
5 50 (2.56%) VMware ESXi
6 46 (2.36%) Hyper-V
7 21 (1.08%) vCloud
7 21 (1.08%) vSphere
8 12 (0.62%) BitLocker
9 10 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
9 10 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
10 8 (0.41%) NFS
11 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
12 4 (0.21%) Ceph
12 4 (0.21%) Firmware
12 4 (0.21%) Terminal Services
12 4 (0.21%) UAG
12 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
13 3 (0.15%) Squid
14 2 (0.10%) KVM
Systems Management
1 139 (7.12%) Kubernetes
2 134 (6.87%) Terraform
3 80 (4.10%) Ansible
4 62 (3.18%) vCenter Server
5 31 (1.59%) SCOM
6 23 (1.18%) SCCM
7 18 (0.92%) Grafana
7 18 (0.92%) Prometheus
8 17 (0.87%) Puppet
9 15 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 13 (0.67%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.67%) Nagios
11 12 (0.62%) Data Guard
11 12 (0.62%) Podman
12 10 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.51%) vMotion
13 9 (0.46%) WSUS
14 8 (0.41%) WMI
14 8 (0.41%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 204 (10.46%) VMware
2 181 (9.28%) Microsoft
3 100 (5.13%) Cisco
4 92 (4.72%) ServiceNow
5 77 (3.95%) Oracle
6 62 (3.18%) Splunk
7 45 (2.31%) Juniper
8 38 (1.95%) SAP
9 37 (1.90%) NetApp
10 34 (1.74%) Red Hat
10 34 (1.74%) SolarWinds
11 32 (1.64%) Google
12 29 (1.49%) F5
13 24 (1.23%) Remedy
14 21 (1.08%) Citrix
14 21 (1.08%) Dell
14 21 (1.08%) Fortinet
14 21 (1.08%) Palo Alto
15 19 (0.97%) Sparx
16 18 (0.92%) BMC