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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 79 32
Rank change year-on-year +30 -47 +26
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,109 976 2,410
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.01% 3.02% 5.58%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.77% 9.82% 18.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,608 681 1,713
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 £766
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £585 £600
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 33 125
10th Percentile £20.15 £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 £74.64 £82.10 £85.00
90th Percentile £91.63 £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 16,512 9,934 12,917
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.37% 30.70% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,029 6,174 8,038
10th Percentile £350 £279 £310
25th Percentile £429 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% -0.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,197 699 1,106
10th Percentile £17.54 £17.87 £14.03
25th Percentile £25.24 £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 £73.00 £58.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.30 £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 10 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 10 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 10 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 1,961 £600 +1.22% 517
UK excluding London +11 1,494 £600 +2.56% 426
South East +6 812 £600 - 194
London +70 439 £600 - 100
South West -2 395 £575 -4.17% 154
Work from Home +53 315 £560 -4.27% 155
East of England +10 102 £650 +18.18% 27
North of England -10 87 £775 +86.75% 32
North West +11 65 £775 +278.05% 29
Midlands -51 58 £600 - 19
West Midlands -71 46 £600 - 16
Scotland +16 38 £669 +33.70% 7
Yorkshire -31 19 £518 -17.20% 2
East Midlands -4 12 £625 +13.64% 3
Northern Ireland +8 5 £619 -
Wales -10 4 - -
North East -35 3 £569 -9.00% 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 56 (2.66%) Confluence
2 43 (2.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 37 (1.75%) 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 (0.095%) nginx
10 2 (0.095%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.095%) 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 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.47%) Microsoft Project
3 28 (1.33%) 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 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.095%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 30 (1.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.23%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.90%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 18 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
5 9 (0.43%) 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 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 2 (0.095%) Primavera
9 2 (0.095%) 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
1 243 (11.52%) AWS
2 235 (11.14%) Azure
3 93 (4.41%) GCP
4 54 (2.56%) GitHub
5 52 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
6 43 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
7 38 (1.80%) Microsoft 365
8 37 (1.75%) IaaS
8 37 (1.75%) PaaS
9 32 (1.52%) Serverless
10 27 (1.28%) OpenShift
10 27 (1.28%) Power Platform
11 25 (1.19%) OCI
12 24 (1.14%) Entra ID
13 18 (0.85%) AWS Lambda
13 18 (0.85%) SaaS
14 17 (0.81%) Amazon EKS
15 16 (0.76%) Amazon ECS
16 14 (0.66%) Amazon S3
16 14 (0.66%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 130 (6.16%) DNS
2 113 (5.36%) Firewall
3 78 (3.70%) Network Security
4 68 (3.22%) WAN
5 67 (3.18%) LAN
6 61 (2.89%) DHCP
7 50 (2.37%) BGP
8 48 (2.28%) VPN
9 33 (1.56%) OSPF
10 32 (1.52%) TCP/IP
11 30 (1.42%) VLAN
12 25 (1.19%) IPsec
12 25 (1.19%) MPLS
12 25 (1.19%) VSAN
13 20 (0.95%) VXLAN
14 19 (0.90%) BIG-IP
15 18 (0.85%) Ethernet VPN
16 17 (0.81%) SD-WAN
17 16 (0.76%) Cisco ASA
17 16 (0.76%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (1.99%) SQL Server
2 37 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.61%) PostgreSQL
4 27 (1.28%) Elasticsearch
5 21 (1.00%) Power BI
6 14 (0.66%) Metadata
7 12 (0.57%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (0.47%) MongoDB
9 9 (0.43%) 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
13 5 (0.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 4 (0.19%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 91 (4.31%) JIRA
2 47 (2.23%) GitLab
3 44 (2.09%) Jenkins
4 37 (1.75%) Git
5 13 (0.62%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.43%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.24%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.24%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.19%) Postman
9 4 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.19%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) ERwin
10 3 (0.14%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
11 2 (0.095%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 353 (16.74%) Social Skills
2 272 (12.90%) Public Sector
3 130 (6.16%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (4.93%) Finance
5 77 (3.65%) Military
6 60 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 47 (2.23%) Legal
8 26 (1.23%) Law
9 25 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
10 24 (1.14%) Aerospace
11 23 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 21 (1.00%) Police
13 17 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
14 15 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (0.62%) Manufacturing
16 8 (0.38%) Marketing
17 6 (0.28%) Local Government
18 4 (0.19%) Advertising
19 3 (0.14%) Banking
19 3 (0.14%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 316 (14.98%) Architect
2 212 (10.05%) Lead
3 181 (8.58%) Senior
4 147 (6.97%) Analyst
5 141 (6.69%) Developer
6 133 (6.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 120 (5.69%) Consultant
8 81 (3.84%) Network Engineer
9 79 (3.75%) Technical Architect
10 78 (3.70%) Security Architect
11 77 (3.65%) SOC Analyst
12 62 (2.94%) Project Manager
13 50 (2.37%) DBA
14 49 (2.32%) Service Manager
14 49 (2.32%) Tester
15 48 (2.28%) DevOps Engineer
16 44 (2.09%) Cloud Engineer
16 44 (2.09%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 42 (1.99%) DV Cleared Project Manager
17 42 (1.99%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (3.08%) REST
2 30 (1.42%) Elastic Stack
2 30 (1.42%) React
3 24 (1.14%) SOAP
4 21 (1.00%) Kafka
4 21 (1.00%) Node.js
5 19 (0.90%) 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 (0.62%) Apache NiFi
9 13 (0.62%) FastAPI
10 11 (0.52%) ModSecurity
11 10 (0.47%) Playwright
12 9 (0.43%) LDAP
12 9 (0.43%) OAuth
12 9 (0.43%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 91 (4.31%) Data Centre
2 90 (4.27%) PKI
3 72 (3.41%) Cloud Native
4 52 (2.47%) Security Operations Centre
5 46 (2.18%) Onboarding
6 36 (1.71%) Clustering
7 35 (1.66%) Private Cloud
8 30 (1.42%) Security Posture
9 29 (1.38%) Product Ownership
10 28 (1.33%) Management Information System
11 26 (1.23%) CMDB
11 26 (1.23%) Cyber Threat
11 26 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
13 22 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
14 20 (0.95%) Public Cloud
15 18 (0.85%) Virtual Team
16 13 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.62%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 284 (13.47%) Windows
2 223 (10.57%) Linux
3 120 (5.69%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.90%) Windows 10
6 13 (0.62%) Unix
7 11 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
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
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.14%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 352 (16.69%) Agile
2 215 (10.19%) Problem-Solving
3 200 (9.48%) ITIL
4 192 (9.10%) Cybersecurity
5 191 (9.06%) CI/CD
6 185 (8.77%) Continuous Improvement
7 180 (8.53%) DevOps
8 177 (8.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 170 (8.06%) Stakeholder Management
10 153 (7.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 145 (6.88%) Service Management
12 125 (5.93%) Infrastructure as Code
13 121 (5.74%) ITSM
14 112 (5.31%) Project Delivery
15 107 (5.07%) Technical Leadership
16 100 (4.74%) Containerisation
16 100 (4.74%) Service Delivery
17 97 (4.60%) Risk Management
18 93 (4.41%) Decision-Making
18 93 (4.41%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 186 (8.82%) Python
2 122 (5.78%) PowerShell
3 103 (4.88%) SQL
4 64 (3.03%) Java
5 51 (2.42%) Bash
6 46 (2.18%) JavaScript
7 32 (1.52%) TypeScript
8 28 (1.33%) C#
9 20 (0.95%) Go
10 15 (0.71%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.62%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.57%) C++
13 11 (0.52%) C
14 9 (0.43%) Rust
15 8 (0.38%) Bicep
15 8 (0.38%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.28%) Perl
17 5 (0.24%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,109 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 700 (33.19%) SC Cleared
3 65 (3.08%) Degree
4 54 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (2.42%) CISSP
6 28 (1.33%) CISM
7 25 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
8 23 (1.09%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.04%) CCNP
10 21 (1.00%) CompTIA Security+
11 19 (0.90%) CCNA
11 19 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
12 17 (0.81%) PMI Certification
13 16 (0.76%) ISTQB
14 15 (0.71%) MCSE
14 15 (0.71%) PMP
15 14 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 13 (0.62%) CESG Certified Professional
16 13 (0.62%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.60%) NIST
2 75 (3.56%) NCSC
3 63 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 63 (2.99%) QA
4 61 (2.89%) PMO
5 41 (1.94%) JSP 440
6 26 (1.23%) GDPR
7 22 (1.04%) GRC
7 22 (1.04%) SLA
8 21 (1.00%) RMADS
9 19 (0.90%) Data Quality
10 13 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
10 13 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 12 (0.57%) Accessibility
12 10 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
13 8 (0.38%) WCAG
14 7 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 7 (0.33%) ISO 9000
14 7 (0.33%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 155 (7.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 144 (6.83%) Active Directory
3 120 (5.69%) Docker
4 75 (3.56%) VMware NSX
5 57 (2.70%) VMware ESXi
6 53 (2.51%) Hyper-V
7 35 (1.66%) vSphere
8 20 (0.95%) vCloud
9 15 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
10 10 (0.47%) BitLocker
11 9 (0.43%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.38%) Microsoft App-V
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 (7.78%) Kubernetes
2 158 (7.49%) Terraform
3 100 (4.74%) Ansible
4 67 (3.18%) vCenter Server
5 37 (1.75%) SCOM
6 29 (1.38%) SCCM
7 25 (1.19%) Prometheus
8 24 (1.14%) Grafana
9 21 (1.00%) Puppet
10 13 (0.62%) FortiGate
11 12 (0.57%) Nagios
11 12 (0.57%) Oracle RMAN
11 12 (0.57%) Podman
11 12 (0.57%) 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 (0.43%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 227 (10.76%) VMware
2 215 (10.19%) Microsoft
3 112 (5.31%) ServiceNow
4 99 (4.69%) Cisco
5 83 (3.94%) Oracle
6 63 (2.99%) Splunk
7 46 (2.18%) Juniper
8 41 (1.94%) SAP
9 40 (1.90%) SolarWinds
10 39 (1.85%) Google
11 35 (1.66%) NetApp
12 30 (1.42%) Red Hat
13 28 (1.33%) F5
14 26 (1.23%) Remedy
15 25 (1.19%) Citrix
15 25 (1.19%) Palo Alto
16 24 (1.14%) Dell
17 23 (1.09%) Fortinet
18 19 (0.90%) BMC
18 19 (0.90%) Sparx