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 13 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 80 37
Rank change year-on-year +33 -43 +16
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,238 998 1,854
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.12% 3.03% 4.81%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.07% 9.68% 16.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,677 704 1,244
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £515 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £650 £688
90th Percentile £763 £721 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £586
% change year-on-year +4.35% -1.92% +2.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 32 92
10th Percentile £41.25 - £50.00
25th Percentile £58.43 £25.15 £58.24
Median hourly rate £74.68 £45.00 £70.20
Median % change year-on-year +65.96% -35.89% -2.95%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.34 £80.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.48 £89.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £70.00 £70.20
% change year-on-year +6.69% -0.28% -3.04%

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 17,120 10,307 11,327
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.49% 31.31% 29.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,434 6,417 7,008
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £439 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,313 822 674
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.88 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -9.09%
75th Percentile £71.50 £45.00 £67.95
90th Percentile £86.85 £71.00 £75.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.55% +0.95%

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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 2,115 £600 +2.35% 876
UK excluding London +14 1,609 £600 +4.35% 709
South East +3 894 £600 +2.13% 221
London +42 478 £605 -3.20% 220
South West +5 477 £588 -2.08% 228
Work from Home +46 351 £560 -4.88% 394
East of England +17 102 £675 +22.73% 123
North of England -23 56 £775 +34.78% 69
Midlands -64 44 £600 +1.05% 19
West Midlands -73 39 £600 +1.05% 13
North West -27 36 £900 +80.00% 51
Scotland -8 31 £669 +27.33% 64
Yorkshire -26 15 £510 -18.40% 7
Northern Ireland +5 5 £638 -1.92% 3
North East -37 5 £463 -26.00% 11
East Midlands - 5 £625 - 6
Wales -13 4 - - 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 69 (3.08%) Confluence
2 54 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.70%) Microsoft Exchange
4 16 (0.71%) Apache
5 8 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.31%) Apache Spark
6 7 (0.31%) Documentum
7 6 (0.27%) CMS
8 5 (0.22%) IIS
9 4 (0.18%) Camunda
9 4 (0.18%) nginx
10 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.089%) Mule
11 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
11 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.045%) JBoss
Applications
1 61 (2.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.01%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
5 15 (0.67%) AutoCAD
5 15 (0.67%) Revit
5 15 (0.67%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.36%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.089%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 28 (1.25%) Oracle ERP
1 28 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 21 (0.94%) Remedy ITSM
3 18 (0.80%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 14 (0.63%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.27%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.18%) Primavera
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.13%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.13%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.045%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.045%) SAP GRC
10 1 (0.045%) SAP PLM
10 1 (0.045%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 301 (13.45%) Azure
2 297 (13.27%) AWS
3 108 (4.83%) GCP
4 59 (2.64%) Azure DevOps
5 55 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (2.19%) GitHub
7 41 (1.83%) Entra ID
8 40 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
9 38 (1.70%) Power Platform
10 37 (1.65%) Serverless
11 33 (1.47%) OCI
12 27 (1.21%) AWS Lambda
12 27 (1.21%) OpenShift
13 26 (1.16%) IaaS
14 23 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
14 23 (1.03%) PaaS
15 21 (0.94%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (0.85%) Amazon S3
16 19 (0.85%) SaaS
17 17 (0.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 164 (7.33%) DNS
2 114 (5.09%) Firewall
3 79 (3.53%) DHCP
4 69 (3.08%) Network Security
5 58 (2.59%) WAN
6 53 (2.37%) VPN
7 51 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 46 (2.06%) LAN
9 43 (1.92%) BGP
10 40 (1.79%) VSAN
11 35 (1.56%) MPLS
12 31 (1.39%) IPsec
13 28 (1.25%) VLAN
14 20 (0.89%) SSL
15 17 (0.76%) SAN
16 15 (0.67%) SD-WAN
17 14 (0.63%) Cisco ASA
17 14 (0.63%) Cisco Nexus
18 13 (0.58%) Cisco Firepower
18 13 (0.58%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (2.46%) SQL Server
2 44 (1.97%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.03%) Power BI
5 21 (0.94%) Metadata
5 21 (0.94%) Relational Database
6 19 (0.85%) Data Lake
7 18 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
7 18 (0.80%) MongoDB
8 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
9 11 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
10 9 (0.40%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.36%) Big Data
11 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
11 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
11 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
12 7 (0.31%) MariaDB
13 5 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 107 (4.78%) JIRA
2 78 (3.49%) GitLab
3 72 (3.22%) Jenkins
4 71 (3.17%) Git
5 29 (1.30%) Selenium
6 15 (0.67%) Cypress.io
7 9 (0.40%) Cucumber
8 8 (0.36%) MSI
9 7 (0.31%) Postman
9 7 (0.31%) REST Assured
9 7 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
10 6 (0.27%) JUnit
10 6 (0.27%) SpecFlow
11 5 (0.22%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.22%) Gatling
11 5 (0.22%) JMeter
11 5 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.18%) Maven
13 3 (0.13%) Toad
General
1 495 (22.12%) Social Skills
2 281 (12.56%) Public Sector
3 168 (7.51%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (6.12%) Finance
5 66 (2.95%) Military
6 63 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
8 37 (1.65%) Legal
9 35 (1.56%) Law
10 34 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (1.43%) Police
12 30 (1.34%) Telecoms
13 29 (1.30%) Manufacturing
14 24 (1.07%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (0.40%) Local Government
17 7 (0.31%) Marketing
18 5 (0.22%) Advertising
18 5 (0.22%) Back Office
19 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 379 (16.93%) Architect
2 240 (10.72%) Lead
3 200 (8.94%) Senior
4 157 (7.02%) Developer
5 154 (6.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 150 (6.70%) Consultant
7 130 (5.81%) Analyst
8 89 (3.98%) Security Architect
9 73 (3.26%) Network Engineer
10 72 (3.22%) Cloud Engineer
11 67 (2.99%) SOC Analyst
12 61 (2.73%) Support Engineer
13 58 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
13 58 (2.59%) Project Manager
14 57 (2.55%) Technical Architect
15 51 (2.28%) DBA
16 44 (1.97%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 43 (1.92%) Network Architect
18 42 (1.88%) Lead Architect
18 42 (1.88%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 203 (9.07%) Terraform
2 76 (3.40%) REST
3 35 (1.56%) LDAP
4 32 (1.43%) React
5 31 (1.39%) Elastic Stack
6 27 (1.21%) SOAP
7 24 (1.07%) RESTful
8 21 (0.94%) Kafka
9 18 (0.80%) Node.js
10 17 (0.76%) Apache NiFi
11 16 (0.71%) AngularJS
11 16 (0.71%) XML
12 15 (0.67%) .NET
12 15 (0.67%) Spring
12 15 (0.67%) Spring Boot
13 14 (0.63%) FastAPI
13 14 (0.63%) JSON
14 12 (0.54%) ARM Templates
14 12 (0.54%) Flask
14 12 (0.54%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 101 (4.51%) Cloud Native
1 101 (4.51%) PKI
2 97 (4.33%) Data Centre
3 82 (3.66%) Onboarding
4 43 (1.92%) Security Operations Centre
5 40 (1.79%) Management Information System
5 40 (1.79%) Private Cloud
6 39 (1.74%) Product Ownership
7 38 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
8 34 (1.52%) Cyber Threat
9 29 (1.30%) Public Cloud
10 27 (1.21%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 20 (0.89%) Clustering
13 19 (0.85%) CMDB
13 19 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
14 16 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
14 16 (0.71%) Virtual Team
15 14 (0.63%) Replication
16 12 (0.54%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 373 (16.67%) Windows
2 252 (11.26%) Linux
3 174 (7.77%) Windows Server
4 41 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.39%) Windows 10
6 27 (1.21%) Windows Server 2019
7 21 (0.94%) Unix
8 18 (0.80%) Ubuntu
9 15 (0.67%) CentOS
10 12 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.31%) AIX
12 6 (0.27%) Android
12 6 (0.27%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.22%) Debian
13 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.18%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 393 (17.56%) Agile
2 283 (12.65%) Continuous Improvement
3 271 (12.11%) Stakeholder Management
4 260 (11.62%) CI/CD
5 229 (10.23%) Cybersecurity
6 224 (10.01%) DevOps
7 223 (9.96%) Problem-Solving
8 214 (9.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 206 (9.20%) Technical Leadership
10 204 (9.12%) Infrastructure as Code
11 202 (9.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 183 (8.18%) ITIL
13 150 (6.70%) Service Management
14 147 (6.57%) Containerisation
15 146 (6.52%) ITSM
16 131 (5.85%) SIEM
17 122 (5.45%) Decision-Making
17 122 (5.45%) Project Delivery
17 122 (5.45%) Risk Management
18 115 (5.14%) AI
Programming Languages
1 240 (10.72%) Python
2 187 (8.36%) PowerShell
3 136 (6.08%) SQL
4 94 (4.20%) Bash
5 72 (3.22%) Java
6 41 (1.83%) JavaScript
7 37 (1.65%) C#
8 29 (1.30%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.80%) Bicep
10 17 (0.76%) Go
11 15 (0.67%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.49%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.45%) C++
15 8 (0.36%) C
16 7 (0.31%) Groovy
17 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.27%) Perl
17 6 (0.27%) X++
18 4 (0.18%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,238 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 713 (31.86%) SC Cleared
3 81 (3.62%) Degree
4 71 (3.17%) CISSP
5 44 (1.97%) CISM
6 38 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 27 (1.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 25 (1.12%) AWS Certification
10 24 (1.07%) VCAP
11 21 (0.94%) ISTQB
11 21 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 20 (0.89%) CCNP
13 19 (0.85%) PMP
13 19 (0.85%) TOGAF Certification
14 16 (0.71%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.67%) MCSE
16 12 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.49%) CHECK Team Leader
17 11 (0.49%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (4.07%) NIST
2 89 (3.98%) NCSC
3 81 (3.62%) PMO
4 79 (3.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 62 (2.77%) QA
6 40 (1.79%) JSP 440
7 32 (1.43%) GDPR
8 30 (1.34%) SLA
9 27 (1.21%) Data Quality
10 23 (1.03%) GRC
11 18 (0.80%) Accessibility
12 17 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 14 (0.63%) Government Security Classifications
14 11 (0.49%) RMADS
15 10 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
15 10 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.36%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.36%) WCAG
17 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
System Software
1 235 (10.50%) Active Directory
2 200 (8.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 135 (6.03%) Docker
4 90 (4.02%) VMware NSX
5 79 (3.53%) VMware ESXi
6 67 (2.99%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.19%) vSphere
8 27 (1.21%) vCloud
9 18 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.63%) NFS
11 13 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
11 13 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
12 9 (0.40%) Firmware
13 5 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 5 (0.22%) Ceph
13 5 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.18%) KVM
14 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
16 2 (0.089%) UAG
Systems Management
1 216 (9.65%) Kubernetes
2 151 (6.75%) Ansible
3 88 (3.93%) vCenter Server
4 58 (2.59%) SCOM
5 34 (1.52%) SCCM
6 27 (1.21%) Prometheus
7 25 (1.12%) Grafana
8 22 (0.98%) Puppet
9 18 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
10 17 (0.76%) Nagios
11 16 (0.71%) Oracle RMAN
12 15 (0.67%) Podman
12 15 (0.67%) VxRail
13 14 (0.63%) Avamar
13 14 (0.63%) Data Guard
13 14 (0.63%) WMI
14 13 (0.58%) WSUS
15 12 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.54%) Istio
16 11 (0.49%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 297 (13.27%) Microsoft
2 283 (12.65%) VMware
3 117 (5.23%) Oracle
4 100 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 78 (3.49%) Cisco
6 60 (2.68%) SAP
7 58 (2.59%) Google
7 58 (2.59%) Splunk
8 42 (1.88%) SolarWinds
9 41 (1.83%) CyberArk
10 37 (1.65%) Red Hat
11 27 (1.21%) Juniper
12 23 (1.03%) Palo Alto
12 23 (1.03%) Remedy
13 22 (0.98%) Dell
14 21 (0.94%) BMC
15 20 (0.89%) Citrix
15 20 (0.89%) NetApp
16 19 (0.85%) Broadcom
17 18 (0.80%) Sparx