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 16 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 77 42 52
Rank change year-on-year -35 +10 +91
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,145 1,641 1,929
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.24% 4.49% 4.09%
As % of the Qualifications category 9.80% 15.30% 14.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 793 1,046 1,282
10th Percentile £465 £413 £385
25th Percentile £513 £507 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £675 £687 £675
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £588 £575
% change year-on-year -2.13% +2.17% -1.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 70 109
10th Percentile £19.82 £46.25 £51.75
25th Percentile - £55.97 £59.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £63.15 £68.67
Median % change year-on-year -60.17% -8.03% -3.02%
75th Percentile £71.00 £74.33 £78.00
90th Percentile £85.63 £100.00 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £61.80 £70.00
% change year-on-year -2.90% -11.72% -3.45%

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 11,681 10,728 13,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.08% 29.33% 29.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,488 6,492 8,730
10th Percentile £300 £312 £300
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £716 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £535
% change year-on-year -3.85% -2.71% +1.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,018 509 773
10th Percentile £17.43 £19.23 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.26 £24.18 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.11% -15.89% +18.89%
75th Percentile £44.94 £67.02 £68.75
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £52.05
% change year-on-year -47.05% -8.75% +15.67%

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 16 November 2025.

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 16 November 2025.

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 16 November 2025. 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 -35 1,054 £600 - 642
UK excluding London -23 780 £575 -2.13% 529
South East -8 379 £575 -2.13% 245
London -47 271 £625 +4.17% 149
South West -7 255 £625 +4.17% 185
Work from Home -22 163 £630 +5.00% 251
Midlands -33 82 £575 -4.17% 23
West Midlands -20 80 £575 -4.76% 23
East of England -22 34 £550 - 43
North of England -52 24 £500 -9.09% 33
Scotland -48 21 £580 +12.35% 5
North West -19 16 £500 - 27
Northern Ireland -9 7 £588 -4.08% 3
Yorkshire -50 6 £521 -5.23% 6
Wales -7 4 £600 -14.29% 2
East Midlands -12 2 £725 +55.91%
North East -19 2 £625 +11.11%

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 49 (4.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 47 (4.10%) SharePoint
3 40 (3.49%) Apache
4 32 (2.79%) Skype for Business
5 25 (2.18%) Confluence
6 11 (0.96%) SharePoint Server
7 10 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2003
7 10 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2007
7 10 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2010
7 10 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2013
7 10 (0.87%) Office Communications Server
8 7 (0.61%) IIS
9 5 (0.44%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.35%) CMS
10 4 (0.35%) nginx
11 3 (0.26%) Documentum
12 2 (0.17%) Apache Spark
13 1 (0.087%) Mattermost
Applications
1 55 (4.80%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.35%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 16 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.87%) SAP EWM
2 10 (0.87%) SAP WM
3 9 (0.79%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.52%) Primavera
5 4 (0.35%) Maximo
5 4 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.26%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle Cash Management
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle Payroll
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.087%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.087%) SAP QM
7 1 (0.087%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 131 (11.44%) Azure
2 116 (10.13%) AWS
3 56 (4.89%) Microsoft 365
4 41 (3.58%) GitHub
5 35 (3.06%) Serverless
6 34 (2.97%) GCP
7 27 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
8 26 (2.27%) OpenShift
9 17 (1.48%) Amazon S3
9 17 (1.48%) Azure Sentinel
9 17 (1.48%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
10 15 (1.31%) Entra ID
11 14 (1.22%) Power Platform
12 13 (1.14%) Amazon ECS
13 11 (0.96%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
14 10 (0.87%) npm
15 9 (0.79%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (0.61%) Cohesity
Communications & Networking
1 81 (7.07%) Firewall
2 77 (6.72%) DNS
3 47 (4.10%) Network Security
4 44 (3.84%) LAN
5 36 (3.14%) VPN
6 33 (2.88%) DHCP
7 30 (2.62%) WAN
8 27 (2.36%) Cisco IOS
8 27 (2.36%) Skype
8 27 (2.36%) TCP/IP
9 26 (2.27%) Junos
10 25 (2.18%) Cisco ISE
10 25 (2.18%) SAN
11 24 (2.10%) Cisco Firepower
12 23 (2.01%) BGP
13 19 (1.66%) Wireless
14 15 (1.31%) VLAN
15 14 (1.22%) OSPF
16 13 (1.14%) Fibre Channel
16 13 (1.14%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (2.10%) Big Data
1 24 (2.10%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
3 16 (1.40%) Hadoop
4 12 (1.05%) SQL Server
5 11 (0.96%) Oracle Database
5 11 (0.96%) Redis
6 10 (0.87%) MongoDB
7 8 (0.70%) Power BI
7 8 (0.70%) Relational Database
8 6 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (0.52%) SAP HANA
9 5 (0.44%) RDBMS
10 4 (0.35%) InfluxDB
10 4 (0.35%) Metadata
11 3 (0.26%) Apache Hive
11 3 (0.26%) Looker
11 3 (0.26%) MySQL
11 3 (0.26%) NoSQL
12 2 (0.17%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 40 (3.49%) Jenkins
2 39 (3.41%) GitLab
3 38 (3.32%) JIRA
4 31 (2.71%) Git
5 19 (1.66%) SonarQube
6 12 (1.05%) Maven
7 11 (0.96%) Bitbucket
8 10 (0.87%) Artifactory
8 10 (0.87%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (0.52%) Cypress.io
9 6 (0.52%) Selenium
10 5 (0.44%) JUnit
10 5 (0.44%) Postman
10 5 (0.44%) SoapUI
11 4 (0.35%) CircleCI
11 4 (0.35%) Gradle
11 4 (0.35%) MSI
11 4 (0.35%) Robot Framework
11 4 (0.35%) Snyk
11 4 (0.35%) webpack
General
1 245 (21.40%) Social Skills
2 174 (15.20%) Public Sector
3 80 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (5.33%) Finance
5 47 (4.10%) Telecoms
6 43 (3.76%) Military
7 41 (3.58%) Manufacturing
8 28 (2.45%) Electronics
8 28 (2.45%) Marketing
9 22 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (1.92%) Law
9 22 (1.92%) Legal
10 19 (1.66%) Banking
11 16 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
12 11 (0.96%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 8 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
13 8 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (0.52%) Police
15 1 (0.087%) Environmental Health
Job Titles
1 198 (17.29%) Architect
2 89 (7.77%) Consultant
3 69 (6.03%) Analyst
4 61 (5.33%) Senior
5 59 (5.15%) Network Engineer
5 59 (5.15%) Support Engineer
6 56 (4.89%) Developer
7 45 (3.93%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
8 44 (3.84%) DevOps Engineer
8 44 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
9 39 (3.41%) Lead
10 36 (3.14%) Network Architect
11 34 (2.97%) 3rd Line Engineer
11 34 (2.97%) Cloud Engineer
12 32 (2.79%) Administrator
12 32 (2.79%) Infrastructure Architect
13 30 (2.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 30 (2.62%) Project Manager
14 29 (2.53%) Technical Architect
15 23 (2.01%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (2.97%) Apache NiFi
2 28 (2.45%) REST
3 23 (2.01%) Kafka
4 20 (1.75%) Elastic Stack
4 20 (1.75%) React
5 18 (1.57%) YAML
6 15 (1.31%) Node.js
6 15 (1.31%) OAuth
7 14 (1.22%) .NET
7 14 (1.22%) OpenID
8 13 (1.14%) OAuth2
8 13 (1.14%) SAML
9 12 (1.05%) RESTful
10 11 (0.96%) RabbitMQ
11 9 (0.79%) SOAP
11 9 (0.79%) Spring
12 8 (0.70%) JSON
12 8 (0.70%) Web Services
12 8 (0.70%) WebSockets
12 8 (0.70%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 69 (6.03%) PKI
2 40 (3.49%) Data Centre
3 35 (3.06%) Management Information System
4 32 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 26 (2.27%) Cyber Threat
6 21 (1.83%) Private Cloud
6 21 (1.83%) Security Operations Centre
7 19 (1.66%) Cloud Native
7 19 (1.66%) Replication
8 16 (1.40%) Driving Licence
9 13 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
10 12 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
10 12 (1.05%) Product Ownership
11 11 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (0.87%) CSOC
12 10 (0.87%) Cyber Defence
12 10 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
12 10 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (0.79%) Fat Client
13 9 (0.79%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 197 (17.21%) Windows
2 105 (9.17%) Linux
3 78 (6.81%) Windows Server
4 29 (2.53%) Windows 10
5 26 (2.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (2.10%) Windows Server 2019
7 17 (1.48%) Android
7 17 (1.48%) Mac OS
8 14 (1.22%) Windows 7
9 13 (1.14%) Unix
10 12 (1.05%) CentOS
11 11 (0.96%) Windows Server 2003
12 9 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.44%) Ubuntu
14 2 (0.17%) Debian
15 1 (0.087%) Mac OS X
15 1 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (18.69%) Agile
2 130 (11.35%) Cybersecurity
3 129 (11.27%) DevOps
4 118 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
5 107 (9.34%) CI/CD
6 76 (6.64%) ITIL
7 75 (6.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 71 (6.20%) Stakeholder Management
9 68 (5.94%) Infrastructure as Code
10 67 (5.85%) Continuous Improvement
11 65 (5.68%) Risk Management
12 62 (5.41%) Containerisation
12 62 (5.41%) ITSM
12 62 (5.41%) SIEM
13 61 (5.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 59 (5.15%) Service Management
15 54 (4.72%) Mentoring
16 52 (4.54%) Scrum
17 50 (4.37%) Migration
18 48 (4.19%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 139 (12.14%) Python
2 116 (10.13%) PowerShell
3 64 (5.59%) SQL
4 55 (4.80%) Java
5 37 (3.23%) JavaScript
6 35 (3.06%) Bash
7 18 (1.57%) Go
8 17 (1.48%) C#
9 16 (1.40%) C++
10 14 (1.22%) TypeScript
11 11 (0.96%) C
12 9 (0.79%) VB
13 8 (0.70%) VBScript
14 7 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
14 7 (0.61%) Shell Script
15 5 (0.44%) ABAP
15 5 (0.44%) PHP
16 4 (0.35%) Bicep
17 2 (0.17%) PL/SQL
17 2 (0.17%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1,145 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 368 (32.14%) SC Cleared
3 46 (4.02%) CISSP
4 44 (3.84%) Degree
5 35 (3.06%) Microsoft Certification
6 25 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
7 24 (2.10%) CISM
8 16 (1.40%) CCNP
9 14 (1.22%) CESG Certified Professional
10 13 (1.14%) CEH
10 13 (1.14%) MCSE
11 12 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
12 11 (0.96%) GIAC
13 10 (0.87%) Azure Certification
13 10 (0.87%) CCNA
13 10 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 9 (0.79%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.79%) CompTIA CySA+
14 9 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 8 (0.70%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (5.33%) NIST
2 51 (4.45%) NCSC
3 41 (3.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 29 (2.53%) SLA
5 20 (1.75%) NIST 800
6 19 (1.66%) QA
7 18 (1.57%) JSP 440
8 16 (1.40%) GDPR
9 15 (1.31%) RMADS
10 13 (1.14%) PMO
11 11 (0.96%) Data Quality
12 5 (0.44%) P3O
13 4 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
13 4 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.35%) Def Stans
14 3 (0.26%) EU AI Act
14 3 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 3 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 3 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
System Software
1 101 (8.82%) Active Directory
2 72 (6.29%) Docker
3 71 (6.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 38 (3.32%) VMware ESXi
5 36 (3.14%) VMware NSX
6 32 (2.79%) vSphere
7 13 (1.14%) NFS
8 10 (0.87%) Brightmail
8 10 (0.87%) ISA Server
8 10 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
9 7 (0.61%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.52%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 6 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.44%) BitLocker
11 5 (0.44%) Firmware
11 5 (0.44%) Hyper-V
12 2 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.087%) Terminal Services
13 1 (0.087%) UAG
Systems Management
1 102 (8.91%) Kubernetes
2 92 (8.03%) Terraform
3 83 (7.25%) Ansible
4 33 (2.88%) vCenter Server
5 32 (2.79%) Grafana
6 29 (2.53%) SCCM
7 27 (2.36%) Prometheus
8 17 (1.48%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (1.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (1.05%) WMI
11 11 (0.96%) Microsoft Clustering
12 10 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
12 10 (0.87%) SCOM
13 9 (0.79%) Podman
14 8 (0.70%) FortiGate
14 8 (0.70%) Progress Chef
15 7 (0.61%) Argo
15 7 (0.61%) Kibana
15 7 (0.61%) WSUS
16 6 (0.52%) logstash
Vendors
1 184 (16.07%) Microsoft
2 141 (12.31%) VMware
3 117 (10.22%) Cisco
4 69 (6.03%) Juniper
5 52 (4.54%) Splunk
6 51 (4.45%) SAP
7 34 (2.97%) SolarWinds
8 28 (2.45%) Oracle
8 28 (2.45%) Palantir
9 24 (2.10%) Dell
10 23 (2.01%) Foundry
10 23 (2.01%) Red Hat
11 22 (1.92%) NetApp
12 19 (1.66%) Veeam
13 18 (1.57%) HP
14 17 (1.48%) Apple
15 14 (1.22%) Atlassian
15 14 (1.22%) ServiceNow
16 13 (1.14%) Cloudera
17 11 (0.96%) Citrix