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

6 months to
20 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 2,163 980 2,313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 2.99% 5.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.07% 9.71% 18.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,636 677 1,640
10th Percentile £430 £457 £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% +1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 37 115
10th Percentile £28.53 £25.15 £48.64
25th Percentile £35.00 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £56.00 £65.00 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -7.66% +0.56%
75th Percentile £78.04 £82.10 £84.70
90th Percentile £94.26 £88.05 £89.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.67 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -27.59% +15.09% -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 16,553 10,093 12,514
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.36% 30.77% 29.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,051 6,266 7,874
10th Percentile £350 £278 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £704 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,198 736 1,011
10th Percentile £17.73 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.25 £20.76
Median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +107.75% -40.82% -25.74%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.50 £75.00 £75.00
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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +26 2,009 £600 +2.13% 411
UK excluding London +10 1,531 £600 +4.35% 356
South East +6 871 £600 - 164
London +61 454 £600 - 76
South West -1 382 £575 -4.17% 123
Work from Home +52 327 £575 -2.13% 134
East of England +19 101 £650 +18.18% 27
North of England -9 77 £775 +24.00% 27
Midlands -41 58 £600 - 17
North West -3 53 £825 +82.32% 21
West Midlands -69 45 £600 - 13
Scotland +15 40 £669 +33.70% 5
Yorkshire -34 20 £510 -18.40% 3
East Midlands -2 13 £631 +14.77% 4
Northern Ireland +7 5 £619 - 1
Wales -12 4 - - 1
North East -33 4 £463 -26.00% 3

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%) Anypoint
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
1 253 (11.70%) Azure
2 248 (11.47%) AWS
3 101 (4.67%) GCP
4 56 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
5 51 (2.36%) GitHub
6 42 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
7 40 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
8 38 (1.76%) IaaS
9 37 (1.71%) PaaS
10 34 (1.57%) Serverless
11 32 (1.48%) Power Platform
12 30 (1.39%) Entra ID
13 27 (1.25%) OpenShift
14 24 (1.11%) OCI
15 20 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
16 18 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
16 18 (0.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 18 (0.83%) SaaS
17 16 (0.74%) Amazon S3
18 15 (0.69%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 142 (6.56%) DNS
2 124 (5.73%) Firewall
3 80 (3.70%) Network Security
4 75 (3.47%) WAN
5 72 (3.33%) DHCP
6 71 (3.28%) LAN
7 57 (2.64%) BGP
8 55 (2.54%) VPN
9 40 (1.85%) TCP/IP
10 33 (1.53%) OSPF
11 32 (1.48%) VSAN
12 31 (1.43%) IPsec
13 29 (1.34%) MPLS
13 29 (1.34%) 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%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (2.08%) SQL Server
2 39 (1.80%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.57%) 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
11 7 (0.32%) Redis
12 6 (0.28%) Big Data
12 6 (0.28%) BigQuery
12 6 (0.28%) NoSQL
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 44 (2.03%) 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%) Bitbucket
General
1 366 (16.92%) Social Skills
2 277 (12.81%) Public Sector
3 138 (6.38%) 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 23 (1.06%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.06%) Police
10 23 (1.06%) Telecoms
11 20 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
12 16 (0.74%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.32%) Marketing
15 6 (0.28%) Local Government
16 5 (0.23%) Advertising
17 4 (0.18%) Aviation
18 3 (0.14%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 330 (15.26%) Architect
2 225 (10.40%) Lead
3 196 (9.06%) Senior
4 148 (6.84%) Developer
5 146 (6.75%) Analyst
6 137 (6.33%) 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%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 49 (2.27%) Cloud Engineer
15 49 (2.27%) DevOps Engineer
16 46 (2.13%) Service Manager
16 46 (2.13%) Tester
17 43 (1.99%) Network Architect
17 43 (1.99%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (3.14%) REST
2 31 (1.43%) 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%) Flask
10 15 (0.69%) Spring Boot
11 14 (0.65%) .NET
11 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
12 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
13 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
14 9 (0.42%) LDAP
14 9 (0.42%) Web Services
15 8 (0.37%) gRPC
15 8 (0.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.72%) Data Centre
2 94 (4.35%) PKI
3 74 (3.42%) Cloud Native
4 58 (2.68%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.31%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.76%) Clustering
7 35 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
7 35 (1.62%) Private Cloud
8 32 (1.48%) Product Ownership
9 30 (1.39%) Management Information System
9 30 (1.39%) Security Posture
10 26 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
11 25 (1.16%) CMDB
12 24 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
12 24 (1.11%) Public Cloud
13 22 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
14 19 (0.88%) Virtual Team
15 13 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
15 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
15 13 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 298 (13.78%) Windows
2 225 (10.40%) Linux
3 133 (6.15%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (0.83%) Windows 10
6 15 (0.69%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 7 (0.32%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) CentOS
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) Mac OS
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
1 367 (16.97%) Agile
2 223 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
3 206 (9.52%) ITIL
4 205 (9.48%) CI/CD
5 200 (9.25%) Cybersecurity
6 197 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
7 190 (8.78%) DevOps
8 185 (8.55%) Stakeholder Management
9 184 (8.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 166 (7.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 156 (7.21%) Service Management
12 139 (6.43%) Infrastructure as Code
13 121 (5.59%) Technical Leadership
14 120 (5.55%) ITSM
15 108 (4.99%) Project Delivery
16 105 (4.85%) Containerisation
17 104 (4.81%) Risk Management
18 102 (4.72%) Service Delivery
19 96 (4.44%) Roadmaps
20 95 (4.39%) AI
Programming Languages
1 193 (8.92%) Python
2 134 (6.20%) PowerShell
3 108 (4.99%) SQL
4 63 (2.91%) Java
5 61 (2.82%) Bash
6 45 (2.08%) JavaScript
7 30 (1.39%) C#
7 30 (1.39%) TypeScript
8 20 (0.92%) Go
9 15 (0.69%) Bicep
9 15 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
10 13 (0.60%) PL/SQL
11 12 (0.55%) C++
12 11 (0.51%) C
13 9 (0.42%) Rust
14 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
15 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
15 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.28%) Perl
16 5 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,163 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 728 (33.66%) SC Cleared
3 70 (3.24%) 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%) BPSS Clearance
15 13 (0.60%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.47%) NCSC
2 74 (3.42%) NIST
3 67 (3.10%) PMO
4 56 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 53 (2.45%) QA
6 33 (1.53%) JSP 440
7 27 (1.25%) GDPR
8 23 (1.06%) GRC
9 21 (0.97%) Data Quality
9 21 (0.97%) SLA
10 18 (0.83%) RMADS
11 14 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 13 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
13 12 (0.55%) Accessibility
13 12 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
14 8 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 8 (0.37%) WCAG
15 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
15 7 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 172 (7.95%) VMware Infrastructure
2 166 (7.67%) Active Directory
3 124 (5.73%) Docker
4 82 (3.79%) VMware NSX
5 66 (3.05%) 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
1 175 (8.09%) Kubernetes
2 173 (8.00%) Terraform
3 107 (4.95%) Ansible
4 80 (3.70%) vCenter Server
5 40 (1.85%) SCOM
6 31 (1.43%) SCCM
7 24 (1.11%) Prometheus
8 23 (1.06%) 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%) Podman
12 12 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
13 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.46%) WSUS
14 9 (0.42%) VxRail
14 9 (0.42%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 241 (11.14%) Microsoft
2 239 (11.05%) VMware
3 114 (5.27%) ServiceNow
4 102 (4.72%) Cisco
5 85 (3.93%) Oracle
6 61 (2.82%) Splunk
7 53 (2.45%) SAP
8 50 (2.31%) Juniper
9 47 (2.17%) Google
10 44 (2.03%) SolarWinds
11 35 (1.62%) NetApp
12 33 (1.53%) Red Hat
13 29 (1.34%) Palo Alto
14 28 (1.29%) F5
14 28 (1.29%) Remedy
15 25 (1.16%) Citrix
16 24 (1.11%) Dell
17 23 (1.06%) Fortinet
18 20 (0.92%) BMC
19 19 (0.88%) Sparx