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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 69 31
Rank change year-on-year +16 -38 +51
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,766 966 2,367
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.02% 3.32% 5.35%
As % of the Qualifications category 11.95% 10.84% 17.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,230 664 1,720
10th Percentile £425 £415 £410
25th Percentile £510 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £584 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.75% - -
75th Percentile £680 £675 £691
90th Percentile £738 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £588 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -2.08% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 25 105
10th Percentile £16.40 £33.25 £49.54
25th Percentile £20.32 £55.87 £57.33
Median hourly rate £48.35 £63.75 £63.29
Median % change year-on-year -24.15% +0.72% -9.59%
75th Percentile £76.94 £81.01 £80.00
90th Percentile £91.03 £83.43 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.75 £72.50 £63.29
% change year-on-year -24.48% +14.55% -15.61%

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 14,780 8,912 13,552
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.61% 30.66% 30.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,725 5,670 8,406
10th Percentile £340 £295 £300
25th Percentile £422 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,082 484 1,012
10th Percentile £16.25 £18.51 £13.87
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.18 £17.74
Median hourly rate £35.00 £42.50 £38.45
Median % change year-on-year -17.65% +10.53% -25.70%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £80.89 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £50.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -35.00% +33.33% -23.47%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 +7 1,610 £575 -4.17% 411
UK excluding London +8 1,254 £588 -2.08% 355
South East +10 678 £600 - 151
London +9 354 £575 -4.17% 80
South West -3 324 £560 -6.67% 104
Work from Home +11 221 £560 -2.61% 131
North of England -8 82 £680 +231.71% 40
Midlands -22 70 £575 -17.86% 17
North West +11 67 £690 +236.59% 35
East of England +1 65 £575 +4.55% 34
West Midlands -34 53 £569 -18.75% 15
Scotland -7 40 £652 +26.50% 6
East Midlands -20 17 £638 +15.91% 1
Yorkshire - 13 £613 - 4
Northern Ireland - 7 £600 -
Wales -10 3 - - 8
North East -19 2 - - 1

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 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 38 (2.15%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.53%) Confluence
4 25 (1.42%) Apache
5 20 (1.13%) Skype for Business
6 13 (0.74%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.45%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.28%) Mattermost
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 58 (3.28%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 23 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.28%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.11%) Lectora
8 1 (0.057%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 23 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 20 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.91%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 7 (0.40%) Maximo
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.23%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.11%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.11%) SAP WM
8 1 (0.057%) Primavera
8 1 (0.057%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.057%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.057%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 165 (9.34%) AWS
2 137 (7.76%) Azure
3 54 (3.06%) GCP
4 46 (2.60%) GitHub
4 46 (2.60%) Microsoft 365
5 41 (2.32%) IaaS
6 38 (2.15%) PaaS
7 36 (2.04%) OpenShift
8 34 (1.93%) Serverless
9 31 (1.76%) Azure DevOps
10 27 (1.53%) GitHub Actions
11 22 (1.25%) Amazon S3
12 19 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
13 16 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (0.85%) OCI
15 14 (0.79%) Azure Sentinel
15 14 (0.79%) Entra ID
16 13 (0.74%) Amazon ECS
16 13 (0.74%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 128 (7.25%) Firewall
2 101 (5.72%) DNS
3 77 (4.36%) Network Security
4 63 (3.57%) LAN
5 60 (3.40%) WAN
6 57 (3.23%) VPN
7 42 (2.38%) BGP
7 42 (2.38%) DHCP
8 39 (2.21%) TCP/IP
9 31 (1.76%) OSPF
10 29 (1.64%) Junos
11 23 (1.30%) Cisco ISE
12 22 (1.25%) Skype
13 21 (1.19%) Cisco IOS
14 19 (1.08%) Ethernet VPN
14 19 (1.08%) VLAN
15 18 (1.02%) MPLS
15 18 (1.02%) VXLAN
16 16 (0.91%) BIG-IP
16 16 (0.91%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (1.42%) Elasticsearch
3 18 (1.02%) SQL Server
4 16 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
5 14 (0.79%) Big Data
5 14 (0.79%) MongoDB
5 14 (0.79%) Oracle Database
6 13 (0.74%) Hadoop
7 11 (0.62%) Power BI
8 10 (0.57%) Redis
9 9 (0.51%) Relational Database
10 8 (0.45%) MySQL
11 7 (0.40%) InfluxDB
11 7 (0.40%) Metadata
11 7 (0.40%) SAP HANA
12 5 (0.28%) MariaDB
12 5 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
13 4 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
13 4 (0.23%) DynamoDB
13 4 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 60 (3.40%) JIRA
2 30 (1.70%) GitLab
3 27 (1.53%) Git
3 27 (1.53%) Jenkins
4 11 (0.62%) Artifactory
5 10 (0.57%) Maven
6 9 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.34%) Cypress.io
7 6 (0.34%) Robot Framework
7 6 (0.34%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.23%) Oracle APEX
10 3 (0.17%) MLflow
10 3 (0.17%) Postman
10 3 (0.17%) Selenium
10 3 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.11%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.11%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.11%) Snyk
11 2 (0.11%) webpack
General
1 323 (18.29%) Social Skills
2 204 (11.55%) Public Sector
3 127 (7.19%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (4.70%) Finance
5 62 (3.51%) Military
6 54 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
7 51 (2.89%) Legal
8 29 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
9 24 (1.36%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 21 (1.19%) Aerospace
12 19 (1.08%) Law
12 19 (1.08%) Police
13 16 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.79%) Marketing
15 13 (0.74%) Electronics
16 10 (0.57%) Banking
17 6 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 5 (0.28%) Influencing Skills
19 2 (0.11%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 324 (18.35%) Architect
2 120 (6.80%) Senior
3 108 (6.12%) Analyst
4 102 (5.78%) Lead
5 92 (5.21%) Network Engineer
6 88 (4.98%) Consultant
7 75 (4.25%) Technical Architect
8 71 (4.02%) Developer
9 61 (3.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 57 (3.23%) Tester
11 54 (3.06%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 53 (3.00%) DevOps Engineer
12 53 (3.00%) SOC Analyst
13 48 (2.72%) Security Architect
14 45 (2.55%) Project Manager
15 40 (2.27%) Support Engineer
16 37 (2.10%) Solutions Architect
17 36 (2.04%) 3rd Line Engineer
17 36 (2.04%) Infrastructure Architect
18 35 (1.98%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (2.32%) REST
2 27 (1.53%) Apache NiFi
3 26 (1.47%) OAuth
4 23 (1.30%) React
5 20 (1.13%) OpenID
6 19 (1.08%) OAuth2
6 19 (1.08%) SAML
7 18 (1.02%) Kafka
8 16 (0.91%) Node.js
8 16 (0.91%) Web Services
9 15 (0.85%) 802.1X
10 14 (0.79%) Flask
11 13 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
11 13 (0.74%) FastAPI
11 13 (0.74%) LDAP
12 11 (0.62%) ModSecurity
12 11 (0.62%) SOAP
12 11 (0.62%) Spring
13 10 (0.57%) AngularJS
13 10 (0.57%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 106 (6.00%) PKI
2 65 (3.68%) Data Centre
3 44 (2.49%) Security Operations Centre
4 38 (2.15%) Management Information System
5 26 (1.47%) Cloud Native
6 25 (1.42%) Clustering
7 23 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
7 23 (1.30%) Product Ownership
8 21 (1.19%) Cyber Threat
9 20 (1.13%) Cyberattack
9 20 (1.13%) Onboarding
10 19 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
10 19 (1.08%) Replication
11 14 (0.79%) Driving Licence
12 13 (0.74%) Insider Threat
12 13 (0.74%) Legacy Systems
12 13 (0.74%) Private Cloud
12 13 (0.74%) Security Posture
13 12 (0.68%) Enterprise Storage
13 12 (0.68%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 258 (14.61%) Windows
2 186 (10.53%) Linux
3 80 (4.53%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.70%) Windows 10
5 29 (1.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.91%) Windows 7
7 14 (0.79%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.62%) Mac OS
9 10 (0.57%) Android
10 7 (0.40%) VMS
11 6 (0.34%) CentOS
11 6 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.28%) Unix
13 4 (0.23%) Debian
13 4 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 3 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.11%) Rocky
16 1 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 295 (16.70%) Agile
2 212 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
3 162 (9.17%) Cybersecurity
4 151 (8.55%) DevOps
5 150 (8.49%) ITIL
6 133 (7.53%) CI/CD
7 132 (7.47%) Service Management
8 112 (6.34%) Continuous Improvement
9 110 (6.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 110 (6.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 103 (5.83%) Stakeholder Management
11 98 (5.55%) ITSM
12 80 (4.53%) Risk Management
13 79 (4.47%) Infrastructure as Code
14 77 (4.36%) Project Delivery
15 74 (4.19%) Containerisation
16 72 (4.08%) Incident Response
17 71 (4.02%) Project Management
17 71 (4.02%) SIEM
18 69 (3.91%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 152 (8.61%) Python
2 123 (6.96%) PowerShell
3 56 (3.17%) SQL
4 47 (2.66%) Java
5 29 (1.64%) JavaScript
6 27 (1.53%) Bash
7 20 (1.13%) TypeScript
8 16 (0.91%) Go
9 15 (0.85%) C#
9 15 (0.85%) Shell Script
10 11 (0.62%) C++
11 9 (0.51%) Bicep
12 8 (0.45%) C
12 8 (0.45%) VB
13 7 (0.40%) VBScript
14 6 (0.34%) ABAP
14 6 (0.34%) Embedded C
14 6 (0.34%) Rust
15 5 (0.28%) PL/SQL
16 4 (0.23%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,766 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 559 (31.65%) SC Cleared
3 61 (3.45%) CISSP
4 60 (3.40%) Degree
5 49 (2.77%) Cisco Certification
6 39 (2.21%) CISM
7 33 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
8 27 (1.53%) CompTIA Security+
9 24 (1.36%) CCNP
10 22 (1.25%) CESG Certified Professional
11 20 (1.13%) CCNA
11 20 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (1.08%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.02%) BPSS Clearance
13 18 (1.02%) GIAC
14 16 (0.91%) CompTIA CySA+
14 16 (0.91%) CTC Cleared
15 14 (0.79%) Azure Certification
15 14 (0.79%) JNCIS
16 11 (0.62%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.81%) NIST
2 70 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 55 (3.11%) NCSC
4 42 (2.38%) QA
5 40 (2.27%) PMO
6 38 (2.15%) JSP 440
7 21 (1.19%) GRC
8 18 (1.02%) RMADS
9 16 (0.91%) GDPR
10 15 (0.85%) NIST 800
11 13 (0.74%) Data Quality
11 13 (0.74%) SLA
12 12 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 11 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
14 6 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 6 (0.34%) P3O
15 5 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
16 4 (0.23%) Accessibility
17 3 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 118 (6.68%) Active Directory
2 90 (5.10%) Docker
3 87 (4.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 52 (2.94%) VMware NSX
5 35 (1.98%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (1.25%) Hyper-V
7 20 (1.13%) vSphere
8 14 (0.79%) BitLocker
9 11 (0.62%) vCloud
10 9 (0.51%) Firmware
11 7 (0.40%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
14 3 (0.17%) Ceph
14 3 (0.17%) GPFS
14 3 (0.17%) Lustre
14 3 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.11%) UAG
15 2 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 139 (7.87%) Kubernetes
2 113 (6.40%) Terraform
3 84 (4.76%) Ansible
4 52 (2.94%) vCenter Server
5 35 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
6 32 (1.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 32 (1.81%) Grafana
6 32 (1.81%) SCCM
7 27 (1.53%) Prometheus
8 16 (0.91%) FortiGate
9 14 (0.79%) Puppet
9 14 (0.79%) WMI
10 13 (0.74%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.57%) Podman
11 10 (0.57%) SCOM
12 9 (0.51%) Forefront Identity Manager
12 9 (0.51%) NetIQ Identity Manager
12 9 (0.51%) VxRail
13 8 (0.45%) Argo
14 7 (0.40%) vMotion
Vendors
1 212 (12.00%) Microsoft
2 177 (10.02%) VMware
3 111 (6.29%) Cisco
4 60 (3.40%) Juniper
5 57 (3.23%) Splunk
6 50 (2.83%) SAP
6 50 (2.83%) ServiceNow
7 47 (2.66%) Oracle
8 46 (2.60%) Red Hat
9 42 (2.38%) NetApp
10 29 (1.64%) SolarWinds
11 27 (1.53%) F5
12 25 (1.42%) Remedy
13 24 (1.36%) Dell
14 22 (1.25%) Fortinet
14 22 (1.25%) Palo Alto
15 17 (0.96%) Palantir
15 17 (0.96%) Sparx
16 16 (0.91%) Citrix
16 16 (0.91%) Google