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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 79 32
Rank change year-on-year +31 -47 +26
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,098 959 2,427
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.03% 3.01% 5.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.87% 9.78% 18.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,596 666 1,733
10th Percentile £430 £450 £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% +1.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 32 123
10th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £49.20
25th Percentile £35.00 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £54.00 £76.85 £71.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.73% +8.24% +1.43%
75th Percentile £70.00 £82.32 £85.00
90th Percentile £79.84 £88.73 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.84 £81.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -39.96% +15.57% -6.15%

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 16,303 9,801 12,902
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 30.80% 29.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,883 6,087 8,007
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £428 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,183 667 1,099
10th Percentile £17.26 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.36 £20.24 £20.12
Median hourly rate £50.49 £27.50 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +83.58% -32.83% -25.56%
75th Percentile £72.54 £58.88 £64.63
90th Percentile £85.25 £75.00 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -18.75%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +27 1,951 £600 +2.13% 574
UK excluding London +11 1,494 £600 +4.35% 483
South East +6 826 £600 +1.65% 199
London +55 431 £600 - 110
South West -2 380 £575 -4.17% 180
Work from Home +51 318 £560 -4.27% 170
East of England +9 104 £650 +18.18% 32
North of England +1 86 £775 +24.00% 48
North West +10 65 £775 +278.05% 42
Midlands -54 56 £600 - 23
West Midlands -66 44 £600 - 18
Scotland +18 39 £669 +33.70% 7
Yorkshire -32 18 £525 -16.00% 5
East Midlands -5 12 £625 +13.64% 5
Northern Ireland +9 5 £619 - 1
Wales -14 4 - - 1
North East -35 3 £569 -9.00% 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 49 (2.34%) Confluence
2 43 (2.05%) Microsoft Exchange
3 35 (1.67%) SharePoint
4 7 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 7 (0.33%) Documentum
5 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
6 5 (0.24%) Apache
6 5 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.24%) CMS
7 4 (0.19%) Skype for Business
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.095%) nginx
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.095%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.048%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.048%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.048%) Mule
10 1 (0.048%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 41 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 32 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
3 30 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
4 14 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.48%) AutoCAD
5 10 (0.48%) Revit
5 10 (0.48%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.33%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.095%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 30 (1.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.24%) Remedy ITSM
3 20 (0.95%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 18 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
5 8 (0.38%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP EWM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Payables
9 2 (0.095%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 2 (0.095%) Primavera
9 2 (0.095%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.048%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.048%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.048%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 229 (10.92%) AWS
2 215 (10.25%) Azure
3 94 (4.48%) GCP
4 54 (2.57%) GitHub
5 51 (2.43%) Azure DevOps
6 43 (2.05%) GitHub Actions
7 41 (1.95%) IaaS
7 41 (1.95%) PaaS
8 35 (1.67%) Microsoft 365
9 32 (1.53%) Serverless
10 27 (1.29%) OpenShift
11 25 (1.19%) OCI
11 25 (1.19%) Power Platform
12 20 (0.95%) Entra ID
12 20 (0.95%) SaaS
13 18 (0.86%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (0.81%) Amazon EKS
15 16 (0.76%) Amazon ECS
16 14 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 12 (0.57%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 122 (5.82%) DNS
2 106 (5.05%) Firewall
3 77 (3.67%) Network Security
4 69 (3.29%) WAN
5 67 (3.19%) LAN
6 54 (2.57%) DHCP
7 49 (2.34%) VPN
8 47 (2.24%) BGP
9 29 (1.38%) OSPF
10 27 (1.29%) VLAN
11 24 (1.14%) IPsec
11 24 (1.14%) MPLS
12 22 (1.05%) VXLAN
13 21 (1.00%) TCP/IP
14 20 (0.95%) Ethernet VPN
15 19 (0.91%) BIG-IP
16 18 (0.86%) VSAN
17 17 (0.81%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.76%) Cisco Nexus
18 16 (0.76%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (2.00%) SQL Server
2 37 (1.76%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
4 28 (1.33%) Elasticsearch
5 20 (0.95%) Power BI
6 11 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
6 11 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
6 11 (0.52%) Metadata
6 11 (0.52%) MongoDB
7 8 (0.38%) Oracle Database 11g
8 7 (0.33%) Data Lake
8 7 (0.33%) Redis
9 6 (0.29%) Hadoop
9 6 (0.29%) NoSQL
10 5 (0.24%) Big Data
10 5 (0.24%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.24%) MariaDB
10 5 (0.24%) Oracle Database 12c
11 4 (0.19%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 84 (4.00%) JIRA
2 47 (2.24%) GitLab
3 44 (2.10%) Jenkins
4 37 (1.76%) Git
5 13 (0.62%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.43%) Selenium
7 7 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.29%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.24%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.24%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.19%) Postman
10 4 (0.19%) Robot Framework
10 4 (0.19%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.19%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.14%) ERwin
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
12 2 (0.095%) MSI
General
1 351 (16.73%) Social Skills
2 267 (12.73%) Public Sector
3 126 (6.01%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (5.05%) Finance
5 77 (3.67%) Military
6 61 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (2.38%) Legal
8 27 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
9 24 (1.14%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.10%) Law
10 23 (1.10%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.00%) Police
12 19 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
13 16 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (0.67%) Manufacturing
15 9 (0.43%) Marketing
16 6 (0.29%) Local Government
17 4 (0.19%) Electronics
18 3 (0.14%) Advertising
18 3 (0.14%) Banking
Job Titles
1 323 (15.40%) Architect
2 204 (9.72%) Lead
3 180 (8.58%) Senior
4 145 (6.91%) Analyst
5 135 (6.43%) Developer
6 129 (6.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 115 (5.48%) Consultant
8 81 (3.86%) Technical Architect
9 80 (3.81%) Network Engineer
9 80 (3.81%) Security Architect
10 77 (3.67%) SOC Analyst
11 64 (3.05%) Project Manager
12 51 (2.43%) DBA
13 49 (2.34%) Service Manager
13 49 (2.34%) Tester
14 47 (2.24%) DevOps Engineer
15 44 (2.10%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 44 (2.10%) DV Cleared Project Manager
16 42 (2.00%) Cloud Engineer
16 42 (2.00%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (3.10%) REST
2 30 (1.43%) Elastic Stack
2 30 (1.43%) React
3 24 (1.14%) SOAP
4 20 (0.95%) Node.js
5 19 (0.91%) 802.1X
5 19 (0.91%) Kafka
6 18 (0.86%) RESTful
6 18 (0.86%) Spring
7 15 (0.71%) Spring Boot
8 14 (0.67%) AngularJS
8 14 (0.67%) Flask
9 13 (0.62%) .NET
9 13 (0.62%) FastAPI
9 13 (0.62%) ModSecurity
10 11 (0.52%) Apache NiFi
11 10 (0.48%) Playwright
12 9 (0.43%) LDAP
12 9 (0.43%) Web Services
12 9 (0.43%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 90 (4.29%) Data Centre
1 90 (4.29%) PKI
2 64 (3.05%) Cloud Native
3 52 (2.48%) Security Operations Centre
4 42 (2.00%) Onboarding
5 37 (1.76%) Clustering
6 35 (1.67%) Private Cloud
7 33 (1.57%) Product Ownership
8 30 (1.43%) Security Posture
9 27 (1.29%) Management Information System
10 26 (1.24%) CMDB
10 26 (1.24%) Cyber Threat
11 25 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
13 20 (0.95%) Public Cloud
14 18 (0.86%) Virtual Team
15 14 (0.67%) Enterprise Storage
15 14 (0.67%) Legacy Systems
16 13 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 278 (13.25%) Windows
2 214 (10.20%) Linux
3 120 (5.72%) Windows Server
4 26 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (0.71%) Windows 10
6 13 (0.62%) Unix
7 11 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
9 6 (0.29%) AIX
9 6 (0.29%) Android
10 5 (0.24%) CentOS
10 5 (0.24%) Debian
10 5 (0.24%) VMS
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.14%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 355 (16.92%) Agile
2 208 (9.91%) Problem-Solving
3 201 (9.58%) ITIL
4 188 (8.96%) Continuous Improvement
5 181 (8.63%) CI/CD
6 180 (8.58%) Cybersecurity
7 176 (8.39%) DevOps
8 172 (8.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 166 (7.91%) Stakeholder Management
10 155 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 144 (6.86%) Service Management
12 121 (5.77%) ITSM
13 117 (5.58%) Infrastructure as Code
14 113 (5.39%) Project Delivery
15 100 (4.77%) Technical Leadership
16 99 (4.72%) Service Delivery
17 96 (4.58%) Containerisation
17 96 (4.58%) Decision-Making
17 96 (4.58%) Risk Management
18 90 (4.29%) AI
Programming Languages
1 175 (8.34%) Python
2 117 (5.58%) PowerShell
3 101 (4.81%) SQL
4 59 (2.81%) Java
5 46 (2.19%) JavaScript
6 43 (2.05%) Bash
7 32 (1.53%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.29%) C#
9 20 (0.95%) Go
10 14 (0.67%) Search Processing Language
11 12 (0.57%) C++
11 12 (0.57%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.52%) C
13 9 (0.43%) Rust
14 8 (0.38%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.33%) Bicep
16 6 (0.29%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.29%) Perl
17 5 (0.24%) Apex Code
17 5 (0.24%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,098 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 689 (32.84%) SC Cleared
3 66 (3.15%) Degree
4 53 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
5 52 (2.48%) CISSP
6 28 (1.33%) CISM
7 23 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.05%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.05%) CCNP
9 21 (1.00%) CompTIA Security+
10 20 (0.95%) CCNA
11 18 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 17 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
12 17 (0.81%) PMI Certification
13 16 (0.76%) ISTQB
13 16 (0.76%) PMP
14 15 (0.71%) CESG Certified Professional
14 15 (0.71%) MCSE
15 14 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
16 12 (0.57%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.62%) NIST
2 69 (3.29%) NCSC
3 67 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 61 (2.91%) PMO
5 55 (2.62%) QA
6 42 (2.00%) JSP 440
7 28 (1.33%) GDPR
8 22 (1.05%) GRC
8 22 (1.05%) RMADS
9 21 (1.00%) SLA
10 12 (0.57%) Accessibility
10 12 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
10 12 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 10 (0.48%) Data Quality
12 9 (0.43%) Government Security Classifications
13 8 (0.38%) WCAG
14 7 (0.33%) ISO 9000
15 6 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 6 (0.29%) NIST 800
System Software
1 147 (7.01%) VMware Infrastructure
2 136 (6.48%) Active Directory
3 115 (5.48%) Docker
4 70 (3.34%) VMware NSX
5 58 (2.76%) VMware ESXi
6 46 (2.19%) Hyper-V
7 28 (1.33%) vSphere
8 23 (1.10%) vCloud
9 14 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.52%) BitLocker
11 10 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
12 9 (0.43%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.38%) NFS
14 5 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
15 4 (0.19%) Ceph
15 4 (0.19%) Firmware
15 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.19%) UAG
16 3 (0.14%) Squid
17 2 (0.095%) KVM
Systems Management
1 156 (7.44%) Kubernetes
2 145 (6.91%) Terraform
3 90 (4.29%) Ansible
4 69 (3.29%) vCenter Server
5 37 (1.76%) SCOM
6 29 (1.38%) SCCM
7 25 (1.19%) Prometheus
8 24 (1.14%) Grafana
9 22 (1.05%) Puppet
10 13 (0.62%) FortiGate
10 13 (0.62%) Nagios
11 12 (0.57%) Data Guard
11 12 (0.57%) Oracle RMAN
11 12 (0.57%) Podman
11 12 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 10 (0.48%) Avamar
13 10 (0.48%) WSUS
14 9 (0.43%) Progress Chef
14 9 (0.43%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 222 (10.58%) VMware
2 209 (9.96%) Microsoft
3 112 (5.34%) ServiceNow
4 99 (4.72%) Cisco
5 84 (4.00%) Oracle
6 61 (2.91%) Splunk
7 48 (2.29%) Juniper
8 41 (1.95%) SAP
8 41 (1.95%) SolarWinds
9 39 (1.86%) Google
10 36 (1.72%) NetApp
11 30 (1.43%) Red Hat
12 28 (1.33%) F5
13 26 (1.24%) Remedy
14 25 (1.19%) Citrix
15 24 (1.14%) Dell
15 24 (1.14%) Palo Alto
16 22 (1.05%) Fortinet
17 20 (0.95%) Sparx
18 19 (0.91%) BMC