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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 69 33
Rank change year-on-year +10 -36 +59
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,590 1,012 2,259
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 3.39% 5.07%
As % of the Qualifications category 11.22% 11.30% 16.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,113 658 1,606
10th Percentile £423 £398 £397
25th Percentile £500 £508 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% - -
75th Percentile £675 £675 £700
90th Percentile £738 £725 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £590 £600
% change year-on-year -2.54% -1.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 28 111
10th Percentile £16.35 £34.75 £48.40
25th Percentile £18.50 £55.87 £56.65
Median hourly rate £42.71 £63.45 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.69% +0.71% -9.35%
75th Percentile £79.75 £81.28 £78.00
90th Percentile £90.80 £92.50 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.50 £63.45 £63.15
% change year-on-year -12.53% +0.48% -15.81%

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 14,173 8,953 13,521
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.97% 29.98% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,358 5,531 8,335
10th Percentile £331 £285 £288
25th Percentile £420 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £628 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,042 446 998
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.06 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.50 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.21 £40.28
Median % change year-on-year -38.94% +4.79% -19.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.50 £82.18 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.81 £40.97
% change year-on-year -47.39% +16.68% -8.96%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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 3 March 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 +2 1,449 £575 -4.17% 427
UK excluding London 0 1,110 £575 -2.54% 378
South East +9 564 £575 -1.71% 157
South West -2 332 £566 -5.63% 124
London -10 329 £575 -4.17% 82
Work from Home +13 200 £560 - 161
Midlands -24 74 £569 -18.75% 24
North of England -25 64 £606 +21.25% 26
East of England +1 58 £575 - 36
West Midlands -30 58 £563 -19.64% 22
North West -3 51 £600 +192.68% 20
Scotland -18 26 £652 +26.50% 13
East Midlands -19 16 £650 +18.18% 2
Yorkshire -52 11 £613 +11.36% 6
Northern Ireland - 9 £600 - 1
Wales -6 3 - - 4
North East -21 2 - -

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 49 (3.08%) Microsoft Exchange
2 48 (3.02%) SharePoint
3 28 (1.76%) Apache
4 24 (1.51%) Confluence
5 23 (1.45%) Skype for Business
6 15 (0.94%) Palantir Foundry
7 7 (0.44%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.31%) Mattermost
9 4 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 1 (0.063%) Apache Airflow
11 1 (0.063%) Documentum
11 1 (0.063%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 58 (3.65%) Microsoft Office
2 42 (2.64%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.13%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 20 (1.26%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.75%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 7 (0.44%) Maximo
5 5 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
5 5 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.25%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.19%) SAP WM
8 2 (0.13%) Primavera
8 2 (0.13%) SAP GRC
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Cash Management
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle General Ledger
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Receivables
9 1 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.063%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 147 (9.25%) AWS
2 130 (8.18%) Azure
3 54 (3.40%) Microsoft 365
4 49 (3.08%) GCP
4 49 (3.08%) GitHub
5 41 (2.58%) OpenShift
6 38 (2.39%) Serverless
7 34 (2.14%) Azure DevOps
8 30 (1.89%) IaaS
9 29 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
10 26 (1.64%) PaaS
11 20 (1.26%) Amazon S3
12 18 (1.13%) Amazon EC2
13 17 (1.07%) Entra ID
14 16 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (0.94%) Power Platform
16 14 (0.88%) Azure AKS
16 14 (0.88%) Azure Sentinel
17 13 (0.82%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 118 (7.42%) Firewall
2 101 (6.35%) DNS
3 71 (4.47%) Network Security
4 50 (3.14%) LAN
5 49 (3.08%) VPN
5 49 (3.08%) WAN
6 43 (2.70%) DHCP
7 41 (2.58%) TCP/IP
8 38 (2.39%) BGP
9 31 (1.95%) Junos
10 27 (1.70%) OSPF
11 26 (1.64%) Cisco ISE
11 26 (1.64%) Skype
12 25 (1.57%) Cisco IOS
13 18 (1.13%) Ethernet VPN
14 17 (1.07%) MPLS
14 17 (1.07%) SAN
14 17 (1.07%) VLAN
14 17 (1.07%) VXLAN
15 16 (1.01%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (1.51%) Elasticsearch
3 19 (1.19%) SQL Server
4 16 (1.01%) Big Data
5 14 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
5 14 (0.88%) Hadoop
5 14 (0.88%) Oracle Database
6 11 (0.69%) Power BI
6 11 (0.69%) Redis
6 11 (0.69%) Relational Database
7 9 (0.57%) MongoDB
8 8 (0.50%) Metadata
8 8 (0.50%) MySQL
9 7 (0.44%) InfluxDB
9 7 (0.44%) SAP HANA
10 4 (0.25%) DynamoDB
10 4 (0.25%) Metadata Repository
10 4 (0.25%) RDBMS
10 4 (0.25%) SAP Data Services
10 4 (0.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 53 (3.33%) JIRA
2 29 (1.82%) GitLab
3 28 (1.76%) Git
3 28 (1.76%) Jenkins
4 13 (0.82%) Maven
5 11 (0.69%) Artifactory
6 10 (0.63%) SonarQube
6 10 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.44%) Cypress.io
8 6 (0.38%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.31%) Robot Framework
10 4 (0.25%) Oracle APEX
10 4 (0.25%) Postman
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.19%) Gradle
11 3 (0.19%) JUnit
11 3 (0.19%) Snyk
11 3 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 3 (0.19%) webpack
General
1 292 (18.36%) Social Skills
2 194 (12.20%) Public Sector
3 123 (7.74%) Analytical Skills
4 72 (4.53%) Finance
5 66 (4.15%) Military
6 48 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 44 (2.77%) Legal
8 25 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
9 24 (1.51%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.45%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
11 17 (1.07%) Manufacturing
12 16 (1.01%) Law
13 14 (0.88%) Marketing
13 14 (0.88%) Police
14 13 (0.82%) Electronics
15 10 (0.63%) Banking
16 6 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 3 (0.19%) Influencing Skills
18 2 (0.13%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 282 (17.74%) Architect
2 95 (5.97%) Senior
3 92 (5.79%) Analyst
4 77 (4.84%) Consultant
5 73 (4.59%) Network Engineer
6 70 (4.40%) Developer
6 70 (4.40%) Lead
7 66 (4.15%) Technical Architect
8 56 (3.52%) DevOps Engineer
9 52 (3.27%) Tester
10 50 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 49 (3.08%) Support Engineer
12 45 (2.83%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
13 41 (2.58%) SOC Analyst
14 40 (2.52%) Infrastructure Architect
15 39 (2.45%) 3rd Line Engineer
15 39 (2.45%) Project Manager
16 38 (2.39%) Security Architect
17 36 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
18 31 (1.95%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (2.14%) REST
2 30 (1.89%) Apache NiFi
3 26 (1.64%) OAuth
4 23 (1.45%) React
5 21 (1.32%) OpenID
6 19 (1.19%) Kafka
6 19 (1.19%) OAuth2
6 19 (1.19%) SAML
7 15 (0.94%) Flask
7 15 (0.94%) Node.js
8 14 (0.88%) 802.1X
8 14 (0.88%) FastAPI
9 12 (0.75%) .NET
9 12 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
10 11 (0.69%) LDAP
10 11 (0.69%) RabbitMQ
10 11 (0.69%) Web Services
11 10 (0.63%) gRPC
11 10 (0.63%) Spring
11 10 (0.63%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 102 (6.42%) PKI
2 58 (3.65%) Data Centre
3 37 (2.33%) Security Operations Centre
4 36 (2.26%) Management Information System
5 26 (1.64%) Cloud Native
6 21 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
7 20 (1.26%) Clustering
8 19 (1.19%) Cyber Threat
8 19 (1.19%) Cyberattack
9 17 (1.07%) Onboarding
9 17 (1.07%) Product Ownership
10 16 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
10 16 (1.01%) Replication
11 15 (0.94%) Private Cloud
12 13 (0.82%) Insider Threat
13 11 (0.69%) CSOC
13 11 (0.69%) Cyber Defence
13 11 (0.69%) Fat Client
13 11 (0.69%) Legacy Systems
13 11 (0.69%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 252 (15.85%) Windows
2 172 (10.82%) Linux
3 79 (4.97%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.08%) Windows 10
5 27 (1.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (1.07%) Windows 7
7 14 (0.88%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.63%) Android
9 8 (0.50%) CentOS
9 8 (0.50%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.31%) Unix
11 5 (0.31%) VMS
12 4 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.19%) Debian
13 3 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.13%) Rocky
15 1 (0.063%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 264 (16.60%) Agile
2 205 (12.89%) Problem-Solving
3 151 (9.50%) Cybersecurity
3 151 (9.50%) DevOps
4 134 (8.43%) ITIL
5 128 (8.05%) CI/CD
6 118 (7.42%) Service Management
7 100 (6.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 99 (6.23%) Continuous Improvement
9 94 (5.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 87 (5.47%) ITSM
11 80 (5.03%) Stakeholder Management
12 76 (4.78%) Infrastructure as Code
13 74 (4.65%) Project Delivery
14 72 (4.53%) Risk Management
15 71 (4.47%) Containerisation
16 70 (4.40%) Incident Response
16 70 (4.40%) SIEM
17 64 (4.03%) Project Management
18 62 (3.90%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 141 (8.87%) Python
2 116 (7.30%) PowerShell
3 59 (3.71%) SQL
4 49 (3.08%) Java
5 31 (1.95%) JavaScript
6 23 (1.45%) Bash
7 20 (1.26%) TypeScript
8 19 (1.19%) C#
8 19 (1.19%) Go
9 15 (0.94%) Shell Script
10 11 (0.69%) C++
11 9 (0.57%) Bicep
12 8 (0.50%) VB
13 7 (0.44%) VBScript
14 6 (0.38%) ABAP
14 6 (0.38%) C
14 6 (0.38%) Rust
15 5 (0.31%) PL/SQL
16 4 (0.25%) PHP
17 3 (0.19%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,590 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 495 (31.13%) SC Cleared
3 56 (3.52%) Degree
4 55 (3.46%) CISSP
5 46 (2.89%) Cisco Certification
6 35 (2.20%) CISM
7 34 (2.14%) Microsoft Certification
8 26 (1.64%) CompTIA Security+
9 25 (1.57%) CCNP
10 20 (1.26%) CESG Certified Professional
11 19 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 18 (1.13%) GIAC
13 17 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.01%) CCNA
15 15 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
15 15 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
15 15 (0.94%) CTC Cleared
16 14 (0.88%) Azure Certification
16 14 (0.88%) JNCIS
17 10 (0.63%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (4.84%) NIST
2 60 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 51 (3.21%) NCSC
4 42 (2.64%) QA
5 33 (2.08%) PMO
6 31 (1.95%) JSP 440
7 21 (1.32%) GRC
8 15 (0.94%) Data Quality
8 15 (0.94%) NIST 800
9 14 (0.88%) GDPR
10 13 (0.82%) SLA
11 11 (0.69%) RMADS
12 9 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
13 7 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 6 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.38%) P3O
15 5 (0.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 4 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 3 (0.19%) EU AI Act
17 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 121 (7.61%) Active Directory
2 91 (5.72%) Docker
3 74 (4.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (2.83%) VMware NSX
5 31 (1.95%) VMware ESXi
6 17 (1.07%) vSphere
7 14 (0.88%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.69%) BitLocker
9 9 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
10 8 (0.50%) Firmware
10 8 (0.50%) vCloud
11 5 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.25%) NFS
12 4 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.19%) GPFS
13 3 (0.19%) Lustre
13 3 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 2 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.063%) UAG
Systems Management
1 142 (8.93%) Kubernetes
2 113 (7.11%) Terraform
3 75 (4.72%) Ansible
4 51 (3.21%) vCenter Server
5 36 (2.26%) Grafana
6 34 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
7 32 (2.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 30 (1.89%) Prometheus
9 27 (1.70%) SCCM
10 15 (0.94%) FortiGate
10 15 (0.94%) WMI
11 13 (0.82%) Progress Chef
12 12 (0.75%) Puppet
13 10 (0.63%) Podman
13 10 (0.63%) SCOM
14 9 (0.57%) VxRail
15 8 (0.50%) Argo
16 7 (0.44%) Nessus
17 6 (0.38%) NetIQ Identity Manager
17 6 (0.38%) Rancher
Vendors
1 218 (13.71%) Microsoft
2 156 (9.81%) VMware
3 112 (7.04%) Cisco
4 58 (3.65%) Splunk
5 57 (3.58%) Juniper
6 48 (3.02%) Oracle
7 41 (2.58%) Red Hat
8 40 (2.52%) ServiceNow
9 39 (2.45%) SAP
10 38 (2.39%) NetApp
11 34 (2.14%) SolarWinds
12 22 (1.38%) F5
12 22 (1.38%) Fortinet
12 22 (1.38%) Remedy
13 21 (1.32%) Dell
14 20 (1.26%) Palantir
15 19 (1.19%) Palo Alto
16 16 (1.01%) Google
17 15 (0.94%) Foundry
18 14 (0.88%) Sparx