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

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 84 32
Rank change year-on-year +34 -52 +27
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,992 892 2,488
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.93% 2.98% 5.67%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.57% 9.62% 19.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,512 615 1,795
10th Percentile £430 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £517
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £580 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
75th Percentile £688 £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 51 28 119
10th Percentile £19.33 £29.25 £51.46
25th Percentile £35.00 £48.13 £57.33
Median hourly rate £48.84 £80.34 £72.33
Median % change year-on-year -39.21% +11.07% +1.64%
75th Percentile £70.00 £83.16 £85.65
90th Percentile £82.50 £88.87 £95.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.71 £81.35 £71.17
% change year-on-year -47.50% +14.31% -5.11%

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 15,850 9,277 13,081
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.27% 31.01% 29.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,577 5,766 8,070
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £618 £638
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £507 £500 £533
% change year-on-year +1.40% -6.19% +0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,164 606 1,136
10th Percentile £17.24 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £20.43 £19.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.29
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.54% -27.13%
75th Percentile £72.54 £62.88 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.25 £76.25 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +78.57% -34.12% -20.80%

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 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 21 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 21 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 +26 1,848 £600 +2.39% 329
UK excluding London +9 1,424 £600 +4.35% 288
South East +5 779 £600 +4.35% 127
London +72 407 £600 - 59
South West -2 365 £575 -4.17% 109
Work from Home +60 303 £560 -2.61% 91
East of England +9 104 £650 +18.18% 21
North of England -6 81 £775 +24.00% 27
North West +12 65 £775 +278.05% 20
Midlands -55 51 £600 - 6
Scotland +27 40 £669 +33.70% 4
West Midlands -64 40 £600 - 5
Yorkshire -44 13 £525 -16.00% 5
East Midlands -8 11 £518 -5.91% 1
Northern Ireland +4 6 £619 - 2
Wales -11 4 - -
North East -34 3 £569 -9.00% 2

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 (2.06%) Confluence
2 37 (1.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 28 (1.41%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.30%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.30%) Mattermost
5 5 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.25%) CMS
5 5 (0.25%) Documentum
5 5 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.20%) Apache
6 4 (0.20%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.10%) nginx
7 2 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.050%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.050%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.050%) Mule
Applications
1 36 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 24 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (0.40%) AutoCAD
5 8 (0.40%) Revit
5 8 (0.40%) SOLIDWORKS
6 6 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.25%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.10%) Lectora
8 2 (0.10%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 28 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 24 (1.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (1.00%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 16 (0.80%) 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 (0.050%) Oracle Applications
9 1 (0.050%) SAP CCM
9 1 (0.050%) SAP FI-GL
9 1 (0.050%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.050%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 224 (11.24%) AWS
2 199 (9.99%) Azure
3 90 (4.52%) GCP
4 50 (2.51%) GitHub
5 46 (2.31%) Azure DevOps
6 45 (2.26%) PaaS
7 44 (2.21%) IaaS
8 39 (1.96%) GitHub Actions
9 33 (1.66%) Serverless
10 27 (1.36%) Microsoft 365
10 27 (1.36%) OpenShift
11 24 (1.20%) Power Platform
12 23 (1.15%) OCI
13 20 (1.00%) AWS Lambda
14 19 (0.95%) Amazon ECS
14 19 (0.95%) Amazon EKS
15 18 (0.90%) SaaS
16 17 (0.85%) Entra ID
17 14 (0.70%) Amazon S3
18 13 (0.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 113 (5.67%) DNS
2 102 (5.12%) Firewall
3 74 (3.71%) Network Security
4 65 (3.26%) LAN
4 65 (3.26%) WAN
5 54 (2.71%) VPN
6 52 (2.61%) DHCP
7 41 (2.06%) BGP
8 27 (1.36%) OSPF
9 23 (1.15%) VLAN
10 21 (1.05%) TCP/IP
10 21 (1.05%) VXLAN
11 19 (0.95%) Ethernet VPN
11 19 (0.95%) IPsec
11 19 (0.95%) MPLS
12 18 (0.90%) VSAN
13 17 (0.85%) BIG-IP
14 15 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
14 15 (0.75%) Junos
15 14 (0.70%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (1.86%) SQL Server
2 33 (1.66%) Oracle Database
2 33 (1.66%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (1.36%) Elasticsearch
4 19 (0.95%) Power BI
5 15 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
6 13 (0.65%) MongoDB
7 10 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
7 10 (0.50%) Metadata
8 7 (0.35%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.35%) Redis
9 6 (0.30%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.30%) Oracle Database 11g
10 5 (0.25%) Big Data
10 5 (0.25%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.25%) DynamoDB
10 5 (0.25%) Hadoop
10 5 (0.25%) MariaDB
10 5 (0.25%) MySQL
11 4 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 74 (3.71%) JIRA
2 43 (2.16%) GitLab
3 39 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 32 (1.61%) Git
5 13 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.45%) Selenium
7 6 (0.30%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.30%) 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
1 318 (15.96%) Social Skills
2 258 (12.95%) Public Sector
3 115 (5.77%) Analytical Skills
4 94 (4.72%) Finance
5 72 (3.61%) Military
6 60 (3.01%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.51%) Legal
8 24 (1.20%) Law
8 24 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
9 22 (1.10%) Aerospace
9 22 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
9 22 (1.10%) Telecoms
10 19 (0.95%) Police
11 13 (0.65%) Manufacturing
12 10 (0.50%) Marketing
13 7 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (0.35%) Local Government
14 5 (0.25%) Electronics
15 3 (0.15%) Advertising
15 3 (0.15%) Banking
Job Titles
1 303 (15.21%) Architect
2 179 (8.99%) Lead
3 168 (8.43%) Senior
4 131 (6.58%) Analyst
5 121 (6.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 114 (5.72%) Developer
7 111 (5.57%) Consultant
8 84 (4.22%) Network Engineer
9 76 (3.82%) Technical Architect
10 75 (3.77%) SOC Analyst
11 68 (3.41%) Security Architect
12 63 (3.16%) Project Manager
13 53 (2.66%) Tester
14 51 (2.56%) DevOps Engineer
15 48 (2.41%) DBA
15 48 (2.41%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 46 (2.31%) Service Manager
17 45 (2.26%) Software Engineer
18 44 (2.21%) DV Cleared Project Manager
19 43 (2.16%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (2.91%) REST
2 29 (1.46%) React
3 27 (1.36%) Elastic Stack
4 21 (1.05%) SOAP
5 19 (0.95%) 802.1X
6 18 (0.90%) Kafka
6 18 (0.90%) Node.js
7 17 (0.85%) Flask
8 16 (0.80%) AngularJS
8 16 (0.80%) FastAPI
8 16 (0.80%) RESTful
9 15 (0.75%) Spring
10 13 (0.65%) Spring Boot
11 11 (0.55%) .NET
11 11 (0.55%) ModSecurity
11 11 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
12 10 (0.50%) Apache NiFi
12 10 (0.50%) Playwright
13 9 (0.45%) LDAP
13 9 (0.45%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 94 (4.72%) PKI
2 78 (3.92%) Data Centre
3 61 (3.06%) Cloud Native
4 52 (2.61%) Security Operations Centre
5 36 (1.81%) Onboarding
6 35 (1.76%) Clustering
7 28 (1.41%) Hybrid Cloud
7 28 (1.41%) Management Information System
8 27 (1.36%) Private Cloud
8 27 (1.36%) Product Ownership
8 27 (1.36%) Security Posture
9 20 (1.00%) CMDB
10 19 (0.95%) Public Cloud
11 18 (0.90%) Cyber Threat
12 17 (0.85%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (0.80%) Virtual Team
14 14 (0.70%) Enterprise Storage
15 13 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
15 13 (0.65%) Legacy Systems
16 12 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 264 (13.25%) Windows
2 207 (10.39%) Linux
3 107 (5.37%) Windows Server
4 25 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.85%) Windows 10
6 10 (0.50%) Unix
7 8 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
8 7 (0.35%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.30%) AIX
9 6 (0.30%) Android
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
1 329 (16.52%) Agile
2 198 (9.94%) Problem-Solving
3 183 (9.19%) ITIL
4 171 (8.58%) Cybersecurity
5 168 (8.43%) Continuous Improvement
6 167 (8.38%) CI/CD
7 166 (8.33%) DevOps
8 165 (8.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 142 (7.13%) Stakeholder Management
10 139 (6.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 132 (6.63%) Service Management
12 110 (5.52%) Infrastructure as Code
13 109 (5.47%) ITSM
14 101 (5.07%) Project Delivery
15 91 (4.57%) Decision-Making
15 91 (4.57%) Risk Management
16 89 (4.47%) Containerisation
17 87 (4.37%) Security Operations
17 87 (4.37%) Technical Leadership
18 84 (4.22%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 165 (8.28%) Python
2 112 (5.62%) PowerShell
3 94 (4.72%) SQL
4 50 (2.51%) Java
5 42 (2.11%) JavaScript
6 37 (1.86%) Bash
7 29 (1.46%) TypeScript
8 26 (1.31%) C#
9 16 (0.80%) Go
10 14 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.65%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.55%) C++
13 10 (0.50%) Bicep
13 10 (0.50%) C
14 9 (0.45%) Rust
15 8 (0.40%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.30%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.30%) Perl
17 5 (0.25%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,992 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 667 (33.48%) SC Cleared
3 61 (3.06%) Degree
4 52 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
5 51 (2.56%) CISSP
6 33 (1.66%) CISM
7 28 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
8 24 (1.20%) CompTIA Security+
9 22 (1.10%) AWS Certification
10 21 (1.05%) CCNA
10 21 (1.05%) CCNP
11 17 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
12 16 (0.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 15 (0.75%) CESG Certified Professional
13 15 (0.75%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.75%) MCSE
13 15 (0.75%) PMI Certification
13 15 (0.75%) PMP
14 14 (0.70%) CompTIA CySA+
14 14 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.87%) NIST
2 69 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 60 (3.01%) NCSC
4 54 (2.71%) PMO
5 51 (2.56%) QA
6 38 (1.91%) JSP 440
7 25 (1.26%) GDPR
8 24 (1.20%) SLA
9 23 (1.15%) RMADS
10 22 (1.10%) GRC
11 11 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
12 10 (0.50%) Accessibility
13 9 (0.45%) Data Quality
14 8 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
14 8 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 8 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) WCAG
16 5 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 5 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 4 (0.20%) Def Stans
System Software
1 134 (6.73%) VMware Infrastructure
2 126 (6.33%) Active Directory
3 108 (5.42%) Docker
4 65 (3.26%) VMware NSX
5 52 (2.61%) VMware ESXi
6 45 (2.26%) Hyper-V
7 24 (1.20%) vSphere
8 21 (1.05%) vCloud
9 12 (0.60%) BitLocker
10 10 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
10 10 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.40%) NFS
12 6 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
14 4 (0.20%) Ceph
14 4 (0.20%) Firmware
14 4 (0.20%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.20%) UAG
15 3 (0.15%) Squid
16 2 (0.10%) KVM
Systems Management
1 148 (7.43%) Kubernetes
2 141 (7.08%) Terraform
3 83 (4.17%) Ansible
4 62 (3.11%) vCenter Server
5 31 (1.56%) SCOM
6 25 (1.26%) SCCM
7 20 (1.00%) Grafana
7 20 (1.00%) Prometheus
8 17 (0.85%) Puppet
9 14 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.65%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.65%) Nagios
11 12 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 12 (0.60%) Data Guard
11 12 (0.60%) Podman
12 10 (0.50%) Oracle RMAN
12 10 (0.50%) vMotion
13 9 (0.45%) WSUS
14 8 (0.40%) WMI
14 8 (0.40%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 210 (10.54%) VMware
2 195 (9.79%) Microsoft
3 104 (5.22%) Cisco
4 94 (4.72%) ServiceNow
5 80 (4.02%) Oracle
6 61 (3.06%) Splunk
7 45 (2.26%) Juniper
8 38 (1.91%) SAP
9 37 (1.86%) SolarWinds
10 36 (1.81%) NetApp
11 34 (1.71%) Red Hat
12 33 (1.66%) Google
13 30 (1.51%) F5
14 24 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 24 (1.20%) Remedy
15 21 (1.05%) Citrix
15 21 (1.05%) Dell
15 21 (1.05%) Fortinet
16 20 (1.00%) Sparx
17 18 (0.90%) BMC