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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 83 31
Rank change year-on-year +33 -52 +28
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,967 886 2,475
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.89% 2.97% 5.64%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.43% 9.60% 18.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,491 606 1,788
10th Percentile £428 £450 £425
25th Percentile £513 £516 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £578 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -
75th Percentile £675 £650 £688
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 50 29 116
10th Percentile £19.03 £29.83 £52.21
25th Percentile £35.00 £50.00 £57.33
Median hourly rate £45.77 £80.68 £72.33
Median % change year-on-year -43.26% +11.54% +1.64%
75th Percentile £67.96 £83.75 £85.65
90th Percentile £82.41 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.60 £81.35 £71.75
% change year-on-year -47.63% +13.38% -4.34%

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 15,823 9,233 13,084
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.96% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,544 5,740 8,094
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £614 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.40% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,167 599 1,124
10th Percentile £17.22 £17.76 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.72 £20.00 £19.13
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%
75th Percentile £72.52 £63.13 £63.88
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £75.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.84 £28.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +74.43% -32.53% -20.95%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +27 1,823 £600 +2.48% 423
UK excluding London +12 1,403 £600 +4.35% 373
South East +6 765 £600 +4.35% 146
London +62 404 £600 - 73
South West -2 359 £575 -4.17% 150
Work from Home +53 297 £560 -2.61% 121
East of England +7 104 £650 +18.18% 26
North of England -5 80 £775 +24.00% 43
North West +15 64 £775 +278.05% 32
Midlands -54 51 £600 - 10
Scotland +24 40 £669 +33.70% 7
West Midlands -65 40 £600 - 9
Yorkshire -48 13 £525 -16.00% 5
East Midlands -8 11 £518 -5.91% 1
Northern Ireland +6 6 £619 - 3
Wales -12 4 - -
North East -33 3 £569 -9.00% 6

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 (2.08%) Confluence
2 37 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
3 28 (1.42%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.31%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.31%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.25%) CMS
5 5 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.20%) Apache
6 4 (0.20%) Documentum
6 4 (0.20%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.10%) nginx
7 2 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.051%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.051%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.051%) Mule
Applications
1 33 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
1 33 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.41%) AutoCAD
4 8 (0.41%) Revit
4 8 (0.41%) SOLIDWORKS
5 6 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.10%) Lectora
7 2 (0.10%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 28 (1.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.22%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (1.02%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 15 (0.76%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.25%) Maximo
5 5 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
6 4 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.20%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.15%) SAP FI
7 3 (0.15%) SAP GRC
8 2 (0.10%) Primavera
8 2 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.051%) Oracle Applications
9 1 (0.051%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.051%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.051%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.051%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 219 (11.13%) AWS
2 191 (9.71%) Azure
3 88 (4.47%) GCP
4 50 (2.54%) GitHub
5 45 (2.29%) PaaS
6 44 (2.24%) Azure DevOps
6 44 (2.24%) IaaS
7 39 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
8 33 (1.68%) Serverless
9 27 (1.37%) OpenShift
10 24 (1.22%) Microsoft 365
11 23 (1.17%) OCI
11 23 (1.17%) Power Platform
12 20 (1.02%) AWS Lambda
13 19 (0.97%) Amazon ECS
14 18 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
14 18 (0.92%) SaaS
15 16 (0.81%) Entra ID
16 14 (0.71%) Amazon S3
17 12 (0.61%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 109 (5.54%) DNS
2 98 (4.98%) Firewall
3 72 (3.66%) Network Security
4 63 (3.20%) LAN
5 62 (3.15%) WAN
6 52 (2.64%) DHCP
7 51 (2.59%) VPN
8 40 (2.03%) BGP
9 26 (1.32%) OSPF
10 21 (1.07%) VXLAN
11 20 (1.02%) Ethernet VPN
11 20 (1.02%) VLAN
12 19 (0.97%) TCP/IP
13 18 (0.92%) IPsec
13 18 (0.92%) MPLS
13 18 (0.92%) VSAN
14 16 (0.81%) BIG-IP
15 15 (0.76%) Junos
16 14 (0.71%) Cisco ISE
16 14 (0.71%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (1.83%) SQL Server
2 33 (1.68%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
4 27 (1.37%) Elasticsearch
5 18 (0.92%) Power BI
6 15 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
7 13 (0.66%) MongoDB
8 10 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.51%) Metadata
9 7 (0.36%) Data Lake
9 7 (0.36%) Redis
10 6 (0.31%) NoSQL
10 6 (0.31%) Oracle Database 11g
11 5 (0.25%) Big Data
11 5 (0.25%) BigQuery
11 5 (0.25%) DynamoDB
11 5 (0.25%) Hadoop
11 5 (0.25%) MariaDB
11 5 (0.25%) MySQL
12 4 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 73 (3.71%) JIRA
2 43 (2.19%) GitLab
3 38 (1.93%) Jenkins
4 30 (1.53%) Git
5 13 (0.66%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.31%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.25%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.25%) Robot Framework
9 4 (0.20%) Oracle APEX
9 4 (0.20%) Postman
9 4 (0.20%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.20%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.20%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.15%) Appium
10 3 (0.15%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.15%) ERwin
10 3 (0.15%) MLflow
General
1 307 (15.61%) Social Skills
2 253 (12.86%) Public Sector
3 114 (5.80%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (4.68%) Finance
5 71 (3.61%) Military
6 59 (3.00%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.54%) Legal
8 24 (1.22%) Law
9 22 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
9 22 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
10 21 (1.07%) Aerospace
10 21 (1.07%) Telecoms
11 19 (0.97%) Police
12 13 (0.66%) Manufacturing
13 10 (0.51%) Marketing
14 6 (0.31%) Influencing Skills
14 6 (0.31%) Local Government
15 5 (0.25%) Electronics
16 3 (0.15%) Advertising
16 3 (0.15%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 293 (14.90%) Architect
2 173 (8.80%) Lead
3 165 (8.39%) Senior
4 131 (6.66%) Analyst
5 119 (6.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 113 (5.74%) Developer
7 107 (5.44%) Consultant
8 83 (4.22%) Network Engineer
9 75 (3.81%) SOC Analyst
10 73 (3.71%) Technical Architect
11 65 (3.30%) Security Architect
12 62 (3.15%) Project Manager
13 53 (2.69%) Tester
14 51 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
15 47 (2.39%) DBA
15 47 (2.39%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 46 (2.34%) Service Manager
17 45 (2.29%) Software Engineer
18 43 (2.19%) Administrator
18 43 (2.19%) DV Cleared Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (2.85%) REST
2 29 (1.47%) React
3 27 (1.37%) Elastic Stack
4 20 (1.02%) SOAP
5 19 (0.97%) 802.1X
6 18 (0.92%) Kafka
6 18 (0.92%) Node.js
7 16 (0.81%) AngularJS
7 16 (0.81%) Flask
7 16 (0.81%) RESTful
8 15 (0.76%) FastAPI
8 15 (0.76%) Spring
9 13 (0.66%) Spring Boot
10 12 (0.61%) .NET
11 11 (0.56%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
12 10 (0.51%) Apache NiFi
12 10 (0.51%) Playwright
13 9 (0.46%) OAuth
13 9 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 94 (4.78%) PKI
2 73 (3.71%) Data Centre
3 58 (2.95%) Cloud Native
4 50 (2.54%) Security Operations Centre
5 35 (1.78%) Clustering
6 34 (1.73%) Onboarding
7 28 (1.42%) Management Information System
8 27 (1.37%) Product Ownership
9 26 (1.32%) Security Posture
10 25 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (1.17%) Private Cloud
12 19 (0.97%) CMDB
12 19 (0.97%) Public Cloud
13 18 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
14 17 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
15 16 (0.81%) Virtual Team
16 14 (0.71%) Enterprise Storage
17 13 (0.66%) Greenfield Project
17 13 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
18 12 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 257 (13.07%) Windows
2 204 (10.37%) Linux
3 105 (5.34%) Windows Server
4 25 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.86%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.51%) Unix
7 8 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
8 7 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.31%) AIX
9 6 (0.31%) Android
9 6 (0.31%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.25%) CentOS
10 5 (0.25%) Debian
10 5 (0.25%) VMS
11 4 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.20%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.15%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 323 (16.42%) Agile
2 195 (9.91%) Problem-Solving
3 176 (8.95%) ITIL
4 166 (8.44%) CI/CD
5 165 (8.39%) Cybersecurity
6 164 (8.34%) DevOps
7 162 (8.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 158 (8.03%) Continuous Improvement
9 135 (6.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 134 (6.81%) Stakeholder Management
11 129 (6.56%) Service Management
12 110 (5.59%) Infrastructure as Code
13 108 (5.49%) ITSM
14 99 (5.03%) Project Delivery
15 88 (4.47%) Decision-Making
15 88 (4.47%) Risk Management
16 87 (4.42%) Containerisation
17 85 (4.32%) Security Operations
18 83 (4.22%) SIEM
18 83 (4.22%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 164 (8.34%) Python
2 111 (5.64%) PowerShell
3 93 (4.73%) SQL
4 49 (2.49%) Java
5 42 (2.14%) JavaScript
6 37 (1.88%) Bash
7 29 (1.47%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.37%) C#
9 16 (0.81%) Go
10 14 (0.71%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.66%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.56%) C++
13 10 (0.51%) Bicep
13 10 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.46%) Rust
15 8 (0.41%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.31%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.31%) Perl
17 5 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,967 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 664 (33.76%) SC Cleared
3 60 (3.05%) Degree
4 49 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
5 48 (2.44%) CISSP
6 33 (1.68%) CISM
7 26 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 23 (1.17%) CompTIA Security+
9 21 (1.07%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.07%) CCNA
10 18 (0.92%) CCNP
11 17 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
12 16 (0.81%) CESG Certified Professional
13 15 (0.76%) ISTQB
14 14 (0.71%) CompTIA CySA+
14 14 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
14 14 (0.71%) MCSE
14 14 (0.71%) PMI Certification
14 14 (0.71%) PMP
14 14 (0.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.71%) NIST
2 68 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.90%) NCSC
4 53 (2.69%) PMO
5 50 (2.54%) QA
6 38 (1.93%) JSP 440
7 25 (1.27%) GDPR
8 24 (1.22%) RMADS
8 24 (1.22%) SLA
9 22 (1.12%) GRC
10 11 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
11 10 (0.51%) Accessibility
12 9 (0.46%) Data Quality
13 8 (0.41%) Government Security Classifications
13 8 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 8 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.31%) WCAG
15 5 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 5 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.15%) Def Stans
System Software
1 131 (6.66%) VMware Infrastructure
2 125 (6.35%) Active Directory
3 107 (5.44%) Docker
4 62 (3.15%) VMware NSX
5 51 (2.59%) VMware ESXi
6 45 (2.29%) Hyper-V
7 22 (1.12%) vSphere
8 21 (1.07%) vCloud
9 12 (0.61%) BitLocker
10 10 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
10 10 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.41%) NFS
12 5 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.20%) Ceph
13 4 (0.20%) Firmware
13 4 (0.20%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.20%) UAG
14 3 (0.15%) Squid
15 2 (0.10%) KVM
Systems Management
1 146 (7.42%) Kubernetes
2 141 (7.17%) Terraform
3 83 (4.22%) Ansible
4 62 (3.15%) vCenter Server
5 31 (1.58%) SCOM
6 22 (1.12%) SCCM
7 20 (1.02%) Grafana
7 20 (1.02%) Prometheus
8 17 (0.86%) Puppet
9 14 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.66%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.66%) Nagios
11 12 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 12 (0.61%) Data Guard
11 12 (0.61%) Podman
12 10 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.51%) vMotion
13 9 (0.46%) WSUS
14 8 (0.41%) WMI
14 8 (0.41%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 205 (10.42%) VMware
2 183 (9.30%) Microsoft
3 99 (5.03%) Cisco
4 92 (4.68%) ServiceNow
5 77 (3.91%) Oracle
6 61 (3.10%) Splunk
7 45 (2.29%) Juniper
8 38 (1.93%) SAP
9 36 (1.83%) NetApp
10 35 (1.78%) SolarWinds
11 34 (1.73%) Red Hat
12 32 (1.63%) Google
13 29 (1.47%) F5
14 24 (1.22%) Remedy
15 21 (1.07%) Citrix
15 21 (1.07%) Dell
15 21 (1.07%) Fortinet
15 21 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 20 (1.02%) Sparx
17 18 (0.92%) BMC