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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 80 32
Rank change year-on-year +32 -48 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,163 975 2,290
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 2.99% 5.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.09% 9.73% 18.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,634 672 1,623
10th Percentile £430 £456 £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 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +2.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 39 112
10th Percentile £31.30 £25.15 £49.10
25th Percentile £38.13 £28.08 £56.65
Median hourly rate £60.33 £61.50 £70.78
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -13.12% +1.11%
75th Percentile £82.20 £82.05 £85.00
90th Percentile £96.53 £87.77 £89.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £80.68 £70.39
% change year-on-year -21.74% +14.61% -6.02%

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 16,518 10,025 12,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.33% 30.76% 29.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,028 6,216 7,798
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 738 985
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £20.75
Median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.75% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.81 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +27 2,009 £600 +1.91% 531
UK excluding London +10 1,529 £600 +4.35% 430
South East +5 872 £600 - 186
London +63 456 £600 - 106
South West -1 381 £575 -4.17% 157
Work from Home +42 329 £575 -2.34% 181
East of England +13 99 £650 +18.18% 30
North of England -7 77 £775 +24.00% 38
Midlands -45 57 £600 - 21
North West -1 53 £825 +82.32% 26
West Midlands -62 44 £600 - 17
Scotland +15 40 £669 +33.70% 5
Yorkshire -35 20 £510 -18.40% 8
East Midlands -1 13 £631 +14.77% 4
Northern Ireland +6 5 £619 - 1
Wales -12 4 - - 1
North East -39 4 £463 -26.00% 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 58 (2.68%) Confluence
2 42 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 37 (1.71%) SharePoint
4 9 (0.42%) Apache
4 9 (0.42%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
7 5 (0.23%) CMS
8 3 (0.14%) nginx
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.092%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.092%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.046%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.046%) JBoss
10 1 (0.046%) Mule
10 1 (0.046%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 44 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
3 23 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
4 15 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.46%) AutoCAD
6 10 (0.46%) Revit
6 10 (0.46%) SOLIDWORKS
7 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.092%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 33 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.25%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.88%) Oracle ERP
3 19 (0.88%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
5 7 (0.32%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.18%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.092%) Primavera
9 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Payables
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.046%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.046%) SAP PLM
10 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 255 (11.79%) Azure
2 247 (11.42%) AWS
3 99 (4.58%) GCP
4 57 (2.64%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (2.27%) GitHub
6 41 (1.90%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
8 38 (1.76%) IaaS
9 37 (1.71%) PaaS
10 33 (1.53%) Serverless
11 32 (1.48%) Entra ID
11 32 (1.48%) Power Platform
12 27 (1.25%) OpenShift
13 24 (1.11%) OCI
14 20 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
15 18 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
15 18 (0.83%) SaaS
16 17 (0.79%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 16 (0.74%) Amazon S3
18 15 (0.69%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 144 (6.66%) DNS
2 124 (5.73%) Firewall
3 80 (3.70%) Network Security
4 74 (3.42%) WAN
5 73 (3.37%) DHCP
6 70 (3.24%) LAN
7 56 (2.59%) BGP
8 55 (2.54%) VPN
9 41 (1.90%) TCP/IP
10 32 (1.48%) OSPF
10 32 (1.48%) VSAN
11 31 (1.43%) IPsec
12 29 (1.34%) MPLS
13 28 (1.29%) VLAN
14 22 (1.02%) VXLAN
15 20 (0.92%) Ethernet VPN
16 19 (0.88%) Cisco ASA
17 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
18 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
19 16 (0.74%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (2.08%) SQL Server
2 39 (1.80%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.53%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 22 (1.02%) Power BI
6 18 (0.83%) Metadata
7 13 (0.60%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.46%) Data Lake
9 9 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
9 9 (0.42%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
11 7 (0.32%) Hadoop
12 6 (0.28%) Big Data
12 6 (0.28%) BigQuery
12 6 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 6 (0.28%) Redis
13 5 (0.23%) MariaDB
13 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 4 (0.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 92 (4.25%) JIRA
2 48 (2.22%) GitLab
3 45 (2.08%) Jenkins
4 38 (1.76%) Git
5 13 (0.60%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.42%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
8 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
8 5 (0.23%) Visual Studio
9 4 (0.18%) MLflow
9 4 (0.18%) Postman
9 4 (0.18%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.14%) ERwin
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
11 2 (0.092%) MSI
General
1 366 (16.92%) Social Skills
2 278 (12.85%) Public Sector
3 137 (6.33%) Analytical Skills
4 115 (5.32%) Finance
5 80 (3.70%) Military
6 53 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.22%) Legal
8 30 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
9 25 (1.16%) Law
10 24 (1.11%) Police
11 23 (1.06%) Aerospace
11 23 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 21 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (0.74%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.32%) Marketing
16 6 (0.28%) Local Government
17 5 (0.23%) Advertising
18 4 (0.18%) Aviation
19 3 (0.14%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 330 (15.26%) Architect
2 226 (10.45%) Lead
3 198 (9.15%) Senior
4 147 (6.80%) Developer
5 146 (6.75%) Analyst
6 139 (6.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 132 (6.10%) Consultant
8 91 (4.21%) Network Engineer
9 81 (3.74%) Security Architect
10 77 (3.56%) SOC Analyst
11 75 (3.47%) Technical Architect
12 58 (2.68%) Project Manager
13 52 (2.40%) DBA
14 50 (2.31%) Cloud Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DevOps Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 46 (2.13%) Service Manager
16 44 (2.03%) Senior Network Engineer
16 44 (2.03%) Tester
17 43 (1.99%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (3.10%) REST
2 30 (1.39%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.25%) React
4 24 (1.11%) SOAP
5 21 (0.97%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 18 (0.83%) 802.1X
8 17 (0.79%) Node.js
9 16 (0.74%) Spring
10 15 (0.69%) Spring Boot
11 14 (0.65%) .NET
11 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.65%) Flask
12 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
12 13 (0.60%) FastAPI
13 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
14 9 (0.42%) ARM Templates
14 9 (0.42%) LDAP
14 9 (0.42%) Web Services
15 8 (0.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 101 (4.67%) Data Centre
2 94 (4.35%) PKI
3 73 (3.37%) Cloud Native
4 59 (2.73%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.31%) Security Operations Centre
6 37 (1.71%) Clustering
7 35 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
7 35 (1.62%) Private Cloud
8 32 (1.48%) Product Ownership
9 31 (1.43%) Management Information System
10 29 (1.34%) Security Posture
11 26 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
12 25 (1.16%) CMDB
13 24 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
13 24 (1.11%) Public Cloud
14 22 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
15 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
16 13 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
16 13 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 301 (13.92%) Windows
2 228 (10.54%) Linux
3 135 (6.24%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (0.88%) Windows 10
6 16 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 8 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) CentOS
9 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) VMS
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 368 (17.01%) Agile
2 221 (10.22%) Problem-Solving
3 209 (9.66%) ITIL
4 205 (9.48%) CI/CD
5 203 (9.39%) Cybersecurity
6 197 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
7 192 (8.88%) DevOps
8 186 (8.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 185 (8.55%) Stakeholder Management
10 167 (7.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 158 (7.30%) Service Management
12 138 (6.38%) Infrastructure as Code
13 122 (5.64%) ITSM
13 122 (5.64%) Technical Leadership
14 108 (4.99%) Project Delivery
15 105 (4.85%) Containerisation
15 105 (4.85%) Risk Management
16 103 (4.76%) Service Delivery
17 98 (4.53%) Roadmaps
18 96 (4.44%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 192 (8.88%) Python
2 136 (6.29%) PowerShell
3 107 (4.95%) SQL
4 63 (2.91%) Java
5 62 (2.87%) Bash
6 45 (2.08%) JavaScript
7 30 (1.39%) C#
7 30 (1.39%) TypeScript
8 19 (0.88%) Go
9 16 (0.74%) Bicep
10 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.55%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.42%) Rust
15 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.28%) Perl
17 5 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,163 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 729 (33.70%) SC Cleared
3 71 (3.28%) Degree
4 54 (2.50%) CISSP
5 51 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (1.34%) CISM
7 26 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
8 25 (1.16%) AWS Certification
9 21 (0.97%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 20 (0.92%) CCNP
11 18 (0.83%) CCNA
11 18 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
11 18 (0.83%) PMI Certification
12 16 (0.74%) PMP
12 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.69%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.69%) MCSE
14 14 (0.65%) Azure Certification
15 13 (0.60%) VCAP
16 12 (0.55%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.47%) NCSC
1 75 (3.47%) NIST
2 67 (3.10%) PMO
3 56 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 53 (2.45%) QA
5 33 (1.53%) JSP 440
6 27 (1.25%) GDPR
7 23 (1.06%) GRC
8 21 (0.97%) Data Quality
8 21 (0.97%) SLA
9 18 (0.83%) RMADS
10 14 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 13 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
12 12 (0.55%) Accessibility
12 12 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
13 8 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 8 (0.37%) WCAG
14 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
14 7 (0.32%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 175 (8.09%) VMware Infrastructure
2 169 (7.81%) Active Directory
3 124 (5.73%) Docker
4 82 (3.79%) VMware NSX
5 67 (3.10%) VMware ESXi
6 53 (2.45%) Hyper-V
7 39 (1.80%) vSphere
8 21 (0.97%) vCloud
9 16 (0.74%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) BitLocker
11 8 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.18%) Ceph
13 4 (0.18%) Firmware
13 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.18%) UAG
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 174 (8.04%) Kubernetes
2 173 (8.00%) Terraform
3 108 (4.99%) Ansible
4 81 (3.74%) vCenter Server
5 41 (1.90%) SCOM
6 32 (1.48%) SCCM
7 23 (1.06%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.02%) Grafana
9 21 (0.97%) Puppet
10 15 (0.69%) Nagios
10 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
11 13 (0.60%) Avamar
11 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
11 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
11 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
11 13 (0.60%) Podman
12 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 10 (0.46%) WSUS
13 9 (0.42%) VxRail
13 9 (0.42%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 243 (11.23%) Microsoft
2 242 (11.19%) VMware
3 114 (5.27%) ServiceNow
4 102 (4.72%) Cisco
5 85 (3.93%) Oracle
6 60 (2.77%) Splunk
7 53 (2.45%) SAP
8 49 (2.27%) Juniper
9 46 (2.13%) Google
10 45 (2.08%) SolarWinds
11 35 (1.62%) NetApp
12 33 (1.53%) Red Hat
13 28 (1.29%) F5
13 28 (1.29%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.29%) Remedy
14 25 (1.16%) Citrix
15 24 (1.11%) Dell
16 23 (1.06%) Fortinet
17 20 (0.92%) BMC
18 19 (0.88%) Sparx