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 11 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 81 34
Rank change year-on-year +33 -47 +22
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,171 1,006 2,047
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.06% 3.06% 5.26%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.97% 9.79% 17.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,665 697 1,455
10th Percentile £450 £462 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year - - +1.69%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £715 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £585 £600
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 39 100
10th Percentile £35.00 - £48.94
25th Percentile £41.28 £25.15 £57.20
Median hourly rate £68.00 £61.50 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +10.58% -12.64% +0.56%
75th Percentile £92.53 £82.05 £80.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £87.77 £90.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £81.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -16.41% +15.57% -3.58%

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 16,739 10,272 11,674
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.34% 31.20% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,202 6,341 7,402
10th Percentile £350 £290 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £716 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,264 805 852
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.78% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.53 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.16 £73.75 £77.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -7.77%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 +24 2,035 £600 - 706
UK excluding London +13 1,554 £600 +2.56% 518
South East +6 914 £600 - 219
London +44 457 £600 -4.00% 190
South West 0 392 £588 -2.08% 182
Work from Home +47 327 £575 -3.36% 239
East of England +8 95 £650 +18.18% 51
North of England -15 68 £775 +24.00% 46
North West +3 46 £825 - 33
Midlands -67 46 £600 - 19
West Midlands -72 41 £600 - 13
Scotland +13 37 £669 +30.44% 8
Yorkshire -30 17 £518 -17.20% 7
East Midlands -6 5 £631 +14.77% 6
North East -38 5 £463 -26.00% 6
Northern Ireland +9 4 £638 - 1
Wales -8 4 - -

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 60 (2.76%) Confluence
2 40 (1.84%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.75%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.41%) Apache
5 8 (0.37%) Apache Spark
6 7 (0.32%) Documentum
7 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
8 5 (0.23%) CMS
9 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
9 3 (0.14%) nginx
10 2 (0.092%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.092%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.092%) Mule
10 2 (0.092%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.092%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.046%) JBoss
Applications
1 56 (2.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (2.12%) Microsoft Project
3 22 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
5 13 (0.60%) AutoCAD
5 13 (0.60%) Revit
5 13 (0.60%) SOLIDWORKS
6 12 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.18%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.092%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 31 (1.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 26 (1.20%) Oracle ERP
4 18 (0.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
11 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 272 (12.53%) Azure
2 262 (12.07%) AWS
3 107 (4.93%) GCP
4 56 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (2.16%) GitHub
6 40 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
6 40 (1.84%) Microsoft 365
6 40 (1.84%) Serverless
7 39 (1.80%) IaaS
8 37 (1.70%) Power Platform
9 36 (1.66%) OCI
9 36 (1.66%) PaaS
10 33 (1.52%) Entra ID
11 27 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
12 24 (1.11%) OpenShift
13 20 (0.92%) Amazon ECS
13 20 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
14 19 (0.88%) Amazon S3
14 19 (0.88%) SaaS
15 18 (0.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 156 (7.19%) DNS
2 131 (6.03%) Firewall
3 79 (3.64%) DHCP
4 76 (3.50%) WAN
5 72 (3.32%) LAN
6 71 (3.27%) Network Security
7 57 (2.63%) BGP
8 48 (2.21%) VPN
9 47 (2.16%) TCP/IP
10 41 (1.89%) VSAN
11 33 (1.52%) IPsec
12 30 (1.38%) MPLS
13 28 (1.29%) OSPF
14 26 (1.20%) VLAN
15 22 (1.01%) VXLAN
16 19 (0.88%) Ethernet VPN
17 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
17 18 (0.83%) SSL
18 16 (0.74%) Cisco ASA
18 16 (0.74%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (2.03%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.06%) Power BI
5 21 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
6 18 (0.83%) Metadata
7 14 (0.64%) Data Lake
7 14 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (0.46%) MongoDB
9 8 (0.37%) BigQuery
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
10 7 (0.32%) Big Data
10 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
10 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
11 6 (0.28%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 102 (4.70%) JIRA
2 56 (2.58%) GitLab
3 50 (2.30%) Jenkins
4 42 (1.93%) Git
5 14 (0.64%) Cypress.io
6 11 (0.51%) Selenium
7 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 6 (0.28%) Postman
8 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.18%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.18%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.18%) MSI
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
11 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
11 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 417 (19.21%) Social Skills
2 285 (13.13%) Public Sector
3 153 (7.05%) Analytical Skills
4 136 (6.26%) Finance
5 68 (3.13%) Military
6 57 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (1.93%) Legal
8 41 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
9 29 (1.34%) Law
10 28 (1.29%) Police
11 25 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
12 23 (1.06%) Telecoms
13 19 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
15 13 (0.60%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.37%) Local Government
17 7 (0.32%) Marketing
18 5 (0.23%) Advertising
19 4 (0.18%) Aviation
19 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 341 (15.71%) Architect
2 247 (11.38%) Lead
3 207 (9.53%) Senior
4 151 (6.96%) Developer
5 150 (6.91%) Analyst
6 148 (6.82%) Consultant
7 142 (6.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 90 (4.15%) Network Engineer
9 89 (4.10%) Security Architect
10 77 (3.55%) SOC Analyst
11 67 (3.09%) Technical Architect
12 62 (2.86%) Project Manager
13 57 (2.63%) Cloud Engineer
14 49 (2.26%) DBA
14 49 (2.26%) DevOps Engineer
14 49 (2.26%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 48 (2.21%) Support Engineer
16 47 (2.16%) Senior Network Engineer
17 44 (2.03%) DV Cleared Project Manager
18 42 (1.93%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (3.41%) REST
2 33 (1.52%) Elastic Stack
3 26 (1.20%) SOAP
4 25 (1.15%) React
5 20 (0.92%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 17 (0.78%) 802.1X
8 16 (0.74%) .NET
8 16 (0.74%) Node.js
8 16 (0.74%) Oracle Fusion
9 14 (0.64%) FastAPI
9 14 (0.64%) Flask
9 14 (0.64%) Spring
9 14 (0.64%) Spring Boot
10 13 (0.60%) AngularJS
10 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
11 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.51%) OAuth
11 11 (0.51%) XML
12 10 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.79%) Data Centre
2 103 (4.74%) PKI
3 85 (3.92%) Cloud Native
4 63 (2.90%) Onboarding
5 52 (2.40%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.75%) Product Ownership
7 37 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 37 (1.70%) Private Cloud
8 36 (1.66%) Clustering
9 33 (1.52%) Management Information System
10 31 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
11 28 (1.29%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
13 25 (1.15%) CMDB
13 25 (1.15%) Security Posture
14 20 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
15 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
16 14 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
16 14 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
17 13 (0.60%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 323 (14.88%) Windows
2 229 (10.55%) Linux
3 150 (6.91%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (0.97%) Windows 10
7 14 (0.64%) Unix
8 9 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.32%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.32%) VMS
10 6 (0.28%) AIX
10 6 (0.28%) Android
10 6 (0.28%) CentOS
10 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
12 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 378 (17.41%) Agile
2 228 (10.50%) Stakeholder Management
3 219 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
4 214 (9.86%) Problem-Solving
5 213 (9.81%) CI/CD
6 207 (9.53%) Cybersecurity
7 201 (9.26%) ITIL
8 194 (8.94%) DevOps
9 187 (8.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 183 (8.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 156 (7.19%) Infrastructure as Code
12 155 (7.14%) Service Management
13 146 (6.73%) Technical Leadership
14 132 (6.08%) ITSM
15 121 (5.57%) Project Delivery
16 118 (5.44%) Risk Management
17 112 (5.16%) Decision-Making
18 111 (5.11%) Containerisation
19 109 (5.02%) Service Delivery
20 106 (4.88%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 197 (9.07%) Python
2 154 (7.09%) PowerShell
3 110 (5.07%) SQL
4 75 (3.45%) Bash
5 61 (2.81%) Java
6 43 (1.98%) JavaScript
7 35 (1.61%) C#
8 25 (1.15%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.83%) Go
10 17 (0.78%) Bicep
11 14 (0.64%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.60%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 7 (0.32%) Groovy
14 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
15 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
15 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.28%) Rust
15 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,171 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 731 (33.67%) SC Cleared
3 74 (3.41%) Degree
4 62 (2.86%) CISSP
5 43 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
6 36 (1.66%) CISM
7 28 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 23 (1.06%) AWS Certification
8 23 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 22 (1.01%) PMI Certification
10 20 (0.92%) ISTQB
10 20 (0.92%) PMP
11 19 (0.88%) VCAP
12 18 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
13 15 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
13 15 (0.69%) MCSE
14 14 (0.64%) CCNP
15 13 (0.60%) CCNA
15 13 (0.60%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (3.68%) PMO
2 77 (3.55%) NCSC
3 71 (3.27%) NIST
4 54 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 54 (2.49%) QA
5 34 (1.57%) JSP 440
6 28 (1.29%) GDPR
7 25 (1.15%) SLA
8 24 (1.11%) Data Quality
9 19 (0.88%) GRC
10 18 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 17 (0.78%) RMADS
12 16 (0.74%) Government Security Classifications
13 14 (0.64%) Accessibility
14 11 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
15 10 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.37%) WCAG
17 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 185 (8.52%) VMware Infrastructure
2 183 (8.43%) Active Directory
3 123 (5.67%) Docker
4 94 (4.33%) VMware NSX
5 65 (2.99%) VMware ESXi
6 60 (2.76%) Hyper-V
7 47 (2.16%) vSphere
8 23 (1.06%) vCloud
9 17 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 7 (0.32%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
14 5 (0.23%) Ceph
14 5 (0.23%) Firmware
15 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.14%) KVM
16 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 185 (8.52%) Kubernetes
2 184 (8.48%) Terraform
3 123 (5.67%) Ansible
4 80 (3.68%) vCenter Server
5 46 (2.12%) SCOM
6 32 (1.47%) SCCM
7 25 (1.15%) Prometheus
8 23 (1.06%) Grafana
9 22 (1.01%) Puppet
10 15 (0.69%) Nagios
10 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
10 15 (0.69%) Podman
11 14 (0.64%) Avamar
11 14 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
11 14 (0.64%) VxRail
11 14 (0.64%) WSUS
12 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
12 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
13 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.46%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 261 (12.02%) Microsoft
2 256 (11.79%) VMware
3 114 (5.25%) ServiceNow
4 102 (4.70%) Oracle
5 91 (4.19%) Cisco
6 61 (2.81%) Splunk
7 57 (2.63%) SAP
8 51 (2.35%) Google
9 48 (2.21%) Juniper
10 45 (2.07%) SolarWinds
11 33 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 30 (1.38%) Remedy
13 28 (1.29%) F5
14 25 (1.15%) Citrix
15 24 (1.11%) Dell
16 23 (1.06%) NetApp
16 23 (1.06%) Palo Alto
17 21 (0.97%) CyberArk
18 20 (0.92%) BMC
19 18 (0.83%) Sparx