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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 85 32
Rank change year-on-year +35 -53 +31
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,935 847 2,435
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.92% 2.92% 5.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.43% 9.40% 18.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,450 582 1,760
10th Percentile £425 £450 £425
25th Percentile £513 £516 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £678 £655 £691
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 59 27 111
10th Percentile £18.15 £34.15 £51.52
25th Percentile £35.00 £60.75 £57.33
Median hourly rate £55.00 £80.00 £71.17
Median % change year-on-year -31.25% +12.41% +1.66%
75th Percentile £75.00 £82.53 £85.65
90th Percentile £88.25 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £80.68 £71.17
% change year-on-year -31.83% +13.36% -5.11%

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 15,564 9,013 12,867
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.51% 31.04% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,327 5,626 7,986
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £620 £619 £644
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £534
% change year-on-year +0.10% -6.30% +1.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,137 543 1,105
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.65 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.25 £18.32
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.05 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.01% -19.88% -27.27%
75th Percentile £72.54 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £32.00 £41.00
% change year-on-year +48.56% -21.95% -21.90%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 1,788 £600 +2.56% 495
UK excluding London +12 1,391 £600 +4.35% 399
South East +8 764 £600 +4.35% 182
London +70 389 £600 - 85
South West -2 334 £563 -6.25% 142
Work from Home +42 273 £560 -2.61% 155
East of England +9 109 £650 +18.18% 40
North of England -10 83 £770 +275.61% 20
North West +9 67 £775 +278.05% 18
Midlands -42 54 £600 - 8
West Midlands -53 43 £600 -4.00% 7
Scotland +25 41 £669 +33.70% 5
Yorkshire -51 14 £525 -16.00% 1
East Midlands -15 11 £518 -5.91% 1
Northern Ireland +10 6 £619 - 4
Wales -15 5 - -
North East -25 2 £675 +8.00% 1

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 41 (2.12%) Confluence
2 38 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
3 28 (1.45%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.41%) Apache
5 6 (0.31%) Apache Spark
5 6 (0.31%) Mattermost
6 5 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.26%) CMS
6 5 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
7 4 (0.21%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.10%) Documentum
9 2 (0.10%) nginx
10 1 (0.052%) OpenStack
Applications
1 33 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 15 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.36%) AutoCAD
5 7 (0.36%) Revit
5 7 (0.36%) 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 27 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.24%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (1.03%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 8 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.26%) Maximo
5 5 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
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 (0.16%) SAP GRC
7 3 (0.16%) Teamcenter
8 2 (0.10%) Primavera
8 2 (0.10%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
9 1 (0.052%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.052%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.052%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.052%) SAP QM
9 1 (0.052%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 197 (10.18%) AWS
2 176 (9.10%) Azure
3 75 (3.88%) GCP
4 47 (2.43%) GitHub
4 47 (2.43%) PaaS
5 46 (2.38%) IaaS
6 41 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
7 35 (1.81%) GitHub Actions
8 29 (1.50%) OpenShift
9 28 (1.45%) Serverless
10 25 (1.29%) Microsoft 365
11 21 (1.09%) Power Platform
12 20 (1.03%) OCI
13 16 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
13 16 (0.83%) SaaS
14 15 (0.78%) Amazon EKS
14 15 (0.78%) AWS Lambda
15 14 (0.72%) Entra ID
16 11 (0.57%) Amazon S3
16 11 (0.57%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 114 (5.89%) DNS
2 103 (5.32%) Firewall
3 75 (3.88%) Network Security
4 66 (3.41%) WAN
5 65 (3.36%) LAN
6 54 (2.79%) VPN
7 51 (2.64%) DHCP
8 42 (2.17%) BGP
9 28 (1.45%) OSPF
10 25 (1.29%) TCP/IP
11 20 (1.03%) Ethernet VPN
11 20 (1.03%) MPLS
11 20 (1.03%) VLAN
11 20 (1.03%) VXLAN
12 19 (0.98%) VSAN
13 18 (0.93%) IPsec
14 17 (0.88%) SSL
15 16 (0.83%) BIG-IP
15 16 (0.83%) SAN
15 16 (0.83%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (1.71%) SQL Server
2 31 (1.60%) PostgreSQL
3 29 (1.50%) Oracle Database
4 28 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
5 16 (0.83%) Power BI
6 14 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
7 13 (0.67%) MongoDB
8 8 (0.41%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (0.41%) Metadata
9 7 (0.36%) Data Lake
9 7 (0.36%) Redis
10 6 (0.31%) Big Data
10 6 (0.31%) Hadoop
10 6 (0.31%) MariaDB
10 6 (0.31%) NoSQL
11 5 (0.26%) DynamoDB
11 5 (0.26%) MySQL
11 5 (0.26%) Oracle Database 11g
11 5 (0.26%) Relational Database
12 4 (0.21%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 74 (3.82%) JIRA
2 39 (2.02%) GitLab
3 30 (1.55%) Git
3 30 (1.55%) Jenkins
4 12 (0.62%) Cypress.io
5 8 (0.41%) Selenium
5 8 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.31%) Artifactory
6 6 (0.31%) Robot Framework
7 5 (0.26%) Maven
8 4 (0.21%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.21%) Oracle APEX
8 4 (0.21%) REST Assured
8 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.21%) Visual Studio
9 3 (0.16%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.16%) MLflow
9 3 (0.16%) Postman
10 2 (0.10%) SoapUI
10 2 (0.10%) SpecFlow
General
1 289 (14.94%) Social Skills
2 220 (11.37%) Public Sector
3 113 (5.84%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (4.08%) Finance
5 67 (3.46%) Military
6 55 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.58%) Legal
8 22 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
8 22 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
8 22 (1.14%) Telecoms
9 21 (1.09%) Law
10 20 (1.03%) Aerospace
11 15 (0.78%) Police
12 13 (0.67%) Manufacturing
13 11 (0.57%) Marketing
14 6 (0.31%) Electronics
15 5 (0.26%) Influencing Skills
16 3 (0.16%) Advertising
17 2 (0.10%) Banking
17 2 (0.10%) Retail
Job Titles
1 297 (15.35%) Architect
2 161 (8.32%) Senior
3 158 (8.17%) Lead
4 129 (6.67%) Analyst
5 113 (5.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 106 (5.48%) Developer
7 105 (5.43%) Consultant
8 85 (4.39%) Network Engineer
9 81 (4.19%) SOC Analyst
10 72 (3.72%) Technical Architect
11 62 (3.20%) Security Architect
12 57 (2.95%) Project Manager
12 57 (2.95%) Tester
13 54 (2.79%) DevOps Engineer
14 49 (2.53%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 44 (2.27%) Software Engineer
16 42 (2.17%) Service Manager
17 40 (2.07%) Administrator
17 40 (2.07%) DBA
18 39 (2.02%) DV Cleared Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (2.64%) REST
2 29 (1.50%) React
3 26 (1.34%) Elastic Stack
4 20 (1.03%) 802.1X
5 18 (0.93%) Kafka
6 17 (0.88%) Node.js
6 17 (0.88%) SOAP
7 16 (0.83%) AngularJS
7 16 (0.83%) Spring
8 15 (0.78%) LDAP
8 15 (0.78%) RESTful
9 14 (0.72%) Apache NiFi
9 14 (0.72%) Flask
9 14 (0.72%) Spring Boot
10 13 (0.67%) FastAPI
11 12 (0.62%) .NET
12 11 (0.57%) ModSecurity
13 10 (0.52%) Oracle Fusion
13 10 (0.52%) SailPoint
14 9 (0.47%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 98 (5.06%) PKI
2 75 (3.88%) Data Centre
3 57 (2.95%) Security Operations Centre
4 52 (2.69%) Cloud Native
5 35 (1.81%) Clustering
6 33 (1.71%) Management Information System
6 33 (1.71%) Onboarding
7 28 (1.45%) Product Ownership
8 24 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
9 23 (1.19%) Cyber Threat
9 23 (1.19%) Private Cloud
10 20 (1.03%) Cyberattack
10 20 (1.03%) Security Posture
11 18 (0.93%) Public Cloud
12 17 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
13 16 (0.83%) Virtual Team
14 15 (0.78%) Enterprise Storage
15 14 (0.72%) CMDB
16 13 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
16 13 (0.67%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 267 (13.80%) Windows
2 209 (10.80%) Linux
3 104 (5.37%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (1.03%) Windows 10
6 9 (0.47%) Unix
6 9 (0.47%) Windows Server 2003
7 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (0.31%) AIX
8 6 (0.31%) Android
8 6 (0.31%) CentOS
8 6 (0.31%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.26%) Debian
9 5 (0.26%) VMS
9 5 (0.26%) Windows 7
9 5 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.21%) Data ONTAP
11 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.16%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 324 (16.74%) Agile
2 190 (9.82%) Problem-Solving
3 168 (8.68%) ITIL
4 167 (8.63%) Cybersecurity
5 164 (8.48%) CI/CD
6 162 (8.37%) DevOps
7 150 (7.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 147 (7.60%) Continuous Improvement
9 124 (6.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 123 (6.36%) Service Management
11 114 (5.89%) Stakeholder Management
12 106 (5.48%) ITSM
13 104 (5.37%) Infrastructure as Code
14 96 (4.96%) Project Delivery
15 89 (4.60%) Decision-Making
16 87 (4.50%) Security Operations
17 85 (4.39%) SIEM
18 83 (4.29%) Risk Management
18 83 (4.29%) Technical Leadership
19 81 (4.19%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 155 (8.01%) Python
2 116 (5.99%) PowerShell
3 87 (4.50%) SQL
4 45 (2.33%) Java
5 37 (1.91%) JavaScript
6 31 (1.60%) Bash
7 26 (1.34%) TypeScript
8 23 (1.19%) C#
9 16 (0.83%) Go
10 14 (0.72%) Search Processing Language
11 12 (0.62%) PL/SQL
12 10 (0.52%) Bicep
12 10 (0.52%) C++
13 9 (0.47%) C
14 8 (0.41%) Rust
15 7 (0.36%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.31%) Embedded C
17 5 (0.26%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
18 4 (0.21%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,935 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 637 (32.92%) SC Cleared
3 64 (3.31%) Degree
4 50 (2.58%) CISSP
5 49 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
6 33 (1.71%) CISM
7 23 (1.19%) CompTIA Security+
8 22 (1.14%) CCNA
8 22 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 20 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
10 19 (0.98%) CCNP
11 17 (0.88%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.88%) CESG Certified Professional
12 15 (0.78%) BPSS Clearance
13 14 (0.72%) GIAC
13 14 (0.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 13 (0.67%) CompTIA CySA+
14 13 (0.67%) ISTQB
14 13 (0.67%) PMP
15 11 (0.57%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.77%) NIST
2 61 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (2.79%) QA
4 52 (2.69%) NCSC
5 48 (2.48%) PMO
6 39 (2.02%) JSP 440
7 25 (1.29%) RMADS
8 23 (1.19%) SLA
9 22 (1.14%) GRC
10 21 (1.09%) GDPR
11 12 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
12 9 (0.47%) Accessibility
13 8 (0.41%) Data Quality
13 8 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 7 (0.36%) Government Security Classifications
15 6 (0.31%) WCAG
16 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 4 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 3 (0.16%) Def Stans
System Software
1 133 (6.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 128 (6.61%) Active Directory
3 100 (5.17%) Docker
4 61 (3.15%) VMware NSX
5 52 (2.69%) VMware ESXi
6 46 (2.38%) Hyper-V
7 22 (1.14%) vSphere
8 21 (1.09%) vCloud
9 12 (0.62%) BitLocker
10 10 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
11 9 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.41%) Firmware
13 7 (0.36%) NFS
14 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
15 4 (0.21%) Ceph
15 4 (0.21%) UAG
15 4 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
16 3 (0.16%) Squid
16 3 (0.16%) Terminal Services
17 2 (0.10%) KVM
Systems Management
1 135 (6.98%) Kubernetes
2 133 (6.87%) Terraform
3 86 (4.44%) Ansible
4 65 (3.36%) vCenter Server
5 31 (1.60%) SCOM
6 24 (1.24%) SCCM
7 20 (1.03%) Grafana
8 18 (0.93%) Prometheus
9 17 (0.88%) Puppet
10 16 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 13 (0.67%) FortiGate
13 12 (0.62%) Nagios
13 12 (0.62%) Podman
14 11 (0.57%) Data Guard
15 10 (0.52%) vMotion
16 9 (0.47%) Forefront Identity Manager
16 9 (0.47%) NetIQ Identity Manager
16 9 (0.47%) WMI
16 9 (0.47%) WSUS
Vendors
1 212 (10.96%) VMware
2 177 (9.15%) Microsoft
3 103 (5.32%) Cisco
4 81 (4.19%) ServiceNow
5 69 (3.57%) Splunk
6 63 (3.26%) Oracle
7 45 (2.33%) NetApp
8 43 (2.22%) Juniper
9 38 (1.96%) SAP
10 37 (1.91%) Red Hat
11 30 (1.55%) SolarWinds
12 29 (1.50%) F5
13 25 (1.29%) Google
14 24 (1.24%) Remedy
15 22 (1.14%) Dell
15 22 (1.14%) Fortinet
15 22 (1.14%) Palo Alto
16 21 (1.09%) Citrix
17 20 (1.03%) Sparx
18 18 (0.93%) BMC