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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 90 39
Rank change year-on-year +39 -51 +14
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,249 964 1,758
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 2.92% 4.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.90% 9.23% 15.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,642 680 1,145
10th Percentile £463 £460 £425
25th Percentile £513 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +2.13%
75th Percentile £700 £669 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 33 90
10th Percentile £48.45 - £49.90
25th Percentile £58.82 £25.15 £58.49
Median hourly rate £74.32 £45.00 £67.41
Median % change year-on-year +65.16% -33.24% -5.28%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.00 £80.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £87.45 £97.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.50 £70.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year +6.43% +6.87% -9.44%

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 17,434 10,440 11,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.75% 31.58% 29.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,583 6,528 6,719
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £444 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £635
90th Percentile £713 £711 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,409 875 610
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.99
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £25.26
Median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year +86.08% -48.44% -8.82%
75th Percentile £71.50 £42.63 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.49
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -3.64%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 +33 2,124 £600 +4.35% 1,247
UK excluding London +19 1,624 £600 +4.35% 1,027
South East +6 847 £600 +4.35% 324
South West +7 526 £575 -4.17% 291
London +54 481 £625 - 227
Work from Home +56 355 £555 -7.50% 574
East of England +23 115 £663 +20.45% 153
North of England -27 55 £525 -2.33% 113
Midlands -81 44 £613 +3.16% 55
North West -17 38 £775 +55.00% 86
West Midlands -72 38 £600 +1.05% 30
Scotland 0 36 £669 +27.33% 93
Yorkshire -29 12 £510 - 11
East Midlands - 6 £631 - 25
Northern Ireland +8 5 £638 +6.25% 5
North East -33 5 £463 -26.00% 16
Wales -13 4 - - 10

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 74 (3.29%) Confluence
2 59 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 43 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 21 (0.93%) Apache
5 12 (0.53%) Apache Spark
6 9 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.36%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 7 (0.31%) IIS
9 5 (0.22%) nginx
10 4 (0.18%) Camunda
11 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
12 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.089%) Mule
12 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
12 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
12 2 (0.089%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
Applications
1 65 (2.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (2.13%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.84%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.76%) Revit
6 17 (0.76%) SOLIDWORKS
7 10 (0.44%) MS Visio
7 10 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.044%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Oracle ERP
2 19 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (0.80%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.76%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 17 (0.76%) Teamcenter
5 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.18%) Primavera
6 4 (0.18%) SAP EWM
6 4 (0.18%) SAP PP
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.089%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.044%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 307 (13.65%) Azure
2 295 (13.12%) AWS
3 115 (5.11%) GCP
4 60 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
5 57 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (2.13%) GitHub
7 43 (1.91%) Entra ID
8 41 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
9 38 (1.69%) Serverless
10 37 (1.65%) Power Platform
11 35 (1.56%) OpenShift
12 30 (1.33%) OCI
13 29 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
14 23 (1.02%) Amazon S3
15 21 (0.93%) Amazon ECS
16 18 (0.80%) Amazon SQS
16 18 (0.80%) IaaS
17 17 (0.76%) Azure Monitor
17 17 (0.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 169 (7.51%) DNS
2 126 (5.60%) Firewall
3 85 (3.78%) DHCP
4 76 (3.38%) Network Security
5 60 (2.67%) WAN
6 59 (2.62%) TCP/IP
7 53 (2.36%) VPN
8 52 (2.31%) BGP
9 50 (2.22%) LAN
10 37 (1.65%) MPLS
10 37 (1.65%) VSAN
11 32 (1.42%) IPsec
12 29 (1.29%) VLAN
13 24 (1.07%) SSL
14 18 (0.80%) OSPF
14 18 (0.80%) SAN
14 18 (0.80%) SD-WAN
15 16 (0.71%) Cisco ASA
16 15 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
17 14 (0.62%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (2.27%) SQL Server
2 45 (2.00%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
4 28 (1.24%) Metadata
5 24 (1.07%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.98%) Power BI
7 21 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
8 19 (0.84%) Data Lake
9 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (0.67%) MongoDB
10 13 (0.58%) Big Data
11 11 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (0.44%) Hadoop
13 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
14 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 11g
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
14 8 (0.36%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 111 (4.94%) JIRA
2 91 (4.05%) GitLab
3 84 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 79 (3.51%) Git
5 31 (1.38%) Selenium
6 16 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 12 (0.53%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.44%) MSI
9 8 (0.36%) JUnit
9 8 (0.36%) Postman
9 8 (0.36%) REST Assured
9 8 (0.36%) SonarQube
10 7 (0.31%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.31%) JMeter
10 7 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
10 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
11 6 (0.27%) Gatling
12 5 (0.22%) Maven
13 4 (0.18%) TestNG
General
1 507 (22.54%) Social Skills
2 273 (12.14%) Public Sector
3 173 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
4 144 (6.40%) Finance
5 69 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
6 67 (2.98%) Military
7 50 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
8 39 (1.73%) Aerospace
9 37 (1.65%) Police
10 36 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
10 36 (1.60%) Manufacturing
11 33 (1.47%) Law
11 33 (1.47%) Legal
12 30 (1.33%) Telecoms
13 10 (0.44%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (0.40%) Local Government
15 7 (0.31%) Marketing
16 6 (0.27%) Automotive
17 5 (0.22%) Back Office
18 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 393 (17.47%) Architect
2 224 (9.96%) Lead
3 195 (8.67%) Senior
4 158 (7.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 153 (6.80%) Developer
6 149 (6.63%) Consultant
7 130 (5.78%) Analyst
8 94 (4.18%) Security Architect
9 79 (3.51%) Network Engineer
10 71 (3.16%) Cloud Engineer
11 66 (2.93%) Support Engineer
12 64 (2.85%) SOC Analyst
13 55 (2.45%) DevOps Engineer
14 54 (2.40%) Project Manager
15 50 (2.22%) DBA
16 49 (2.18%) Technical Architect
17 48 (2.13%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 48 (2.13%) Solutions Architect
18 42 (1.87%) Network Architect
19 41 (1.82%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 209 (9.29%) Terraform
2 79 (3.51%) REST
3 41 (1.82%) LDAP
4 32 (1.42%) Elastic Stack
5 30 (1.33%) React
6 28 (1.24%) Kafka
7 26 (1.16%) SOAP
8 25 (1.11%) RESTful
9 23 (1.02%) Apache NiFi
10 18 (0.80%) Node.js
10 18 (0.80%) XML
11 17 (0.76%) JSON
12 16 (0.71%) AngularJS
12 16 (0.71%) Keycloak
12 16 (0.71%) OAuth
13 15 (0.67%) FastAPI
13 15 (0.67%) Spring
14 14 (0.62%) Spring Boot
15 13 (0.58%) Flask
16 12 (0.53%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.62%) Cloud Native
2 102 (4.54%) Data Centre
3 101 (4.49%) PKI
4 84 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 45 (2.00%) Management Information System
6 41 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
7 40 (1.78%) Product Ownership
8 39 (1.73%) Private Cloud
9 36 (1.60%) Cyber Threat
9 36 (1.60%) Security Operations Centre
10 31 (1.38%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
12 23 (1.02%) Public Cloud
13 20 (0.89%) Clustering
14 18 (0.80%) CMDB
14 18 (0.80%) Virtual Team
15 16 (0.71%) Legacy Systems
16 14 (0.62%) Replication
17 13 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
18 12 (0.53%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 392 (17.43%) Windows
2 250 (11.12%) Linux
3 186 (8.27%) Windows Server
4 44 (1.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.38%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
7 21 (0.93%) Ubuntu
7 21 (0.93%) Unix
8 18 (0.80%) CentOS
9 12 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
10 7 (0.31%) AIX
11 6 (0.27%) Android
11 6 (0.27%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
12 5 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.18%) Rocky
13 4 (0.18%) VMS
13 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 390 (17.34%) Agile
2 291 (12.94%) Continuous Improvement
3 281 (12.49%) Stakeholder Management
4 274 (12.18%) CI/CD
5 241 (10.72%) DevOps
6 230 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
7 224 (9.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 222 (9.87%) Cybersecurity
9 216 (9.60%) Infrastructure as Code
10 213 (9.47%) Technical Leadership
11 202 (8.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 187 (8.31%) ITIL
13 153 (6.80%) Containerisation
14 152 (6.76%) Service Management
15 150 (6.67%) ITSM
16 132 (5.87%) Project Delivery
17 131 (5.82%) SIEM
18 127 (5.65%) Decision-Making
19 123 (5.47%) Risk Management
20 116 (5.16%) AI
Programming Languages
1 250 (11.12%) Python
2 190 (8.45%) PowerShell
3 135 (6.00%) SQL
4 96 (4.27%) Bash
5 75 (3.33%) Java
6 41 (1.82%) JavaScript
7 37 (1.65%) C#
8 28 (1.24%) TypeScript
9 21 (0.93%) Go
10 15 (0.67%) Bicep
11 14 (0.62%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.58%) PL/SQL
13 12 (0.53%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.44%) C++
15 7 (0.31%) Groovy
16 6 (0.27%) C
16 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.27%) Perl
16 6 (0.27%) X++
17 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,249 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 698 (31.04%) SC Cleared
3 93 (4.14%) Degree
4 69 (3.07%) CISSP
5 41 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
6 40 (1.78%) CISM
7 27 (1.20%) AWS Certification
7 27 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
8 26 (1.16%) CCNP
9 25 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 24 (1.07%) PMI Certification
11 23 (1.02%) ISTQB
11 23 (1.02%) VCAP
12 21 (0.93%) Azure Certification
13 20 (0.89%) PMP
13 20 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
14 13 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
14 13 (0.58%) MCSE
15 12 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
16 11 (0.49%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (4.09%) NCSC
2 91 (4.05%) NIST
3 84 (3.73%) PMO
4 78 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 65 (2.89%) QA
6 37 (1.65%) JSP 440
7 36 (1.60%) SLA
8 31 (1.38%) GDPR
9 30 (1.33%) Data Quality
10 25 (1.11%) GRC
11 20 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 16 (0.71%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
14 11 (0.49%) NIST 800
15 10 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
16 8 (0.36%) RMADS
16 8 (0.36%) WCAG
17 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
18 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 255 (11.34%) Active Directory
2 201 (8.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 143 (6.36%) Docker
4 88 (3.91%) VMware NSX
5 74 (3.29%) VMware ESXi
6 65 (2.89%) Hyper-V
7 54 (2.40%) vSphere
8 25 (1.11%) vCloud
9 19 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.62%) NFS
11 12 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
12 11 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
13 10 (0.44%) Firmware
14 5 (0.22%) KVM
15 4 (0.18%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
16 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
17 2 (0.089%) Ceph
17 2 (0.089%) UAG
Systems Management
1 230 (10.23%) Kubernetes
2 162 (7.20%) Ansible
3 83 (3.69%) vCenter Server
4 60 (2.67%) SCOM
5 35 (1.56%) SCCM
6 30 (1.33%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.24%) Grafana
8 22 (0.98%) Puppet
9 21 (0.93%) Nagios
10 20 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
11 17 (0.76%) VxRail
12 16 (0.71%) WMI
13 15 (0.67%) Avamar
13 15 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
14 14 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 14 (0.62%) Podman
14 14 (0.62%) WSUS
15 13 (0.58%) Data Guard
15 13 (0.58%) Progress Chef
16 12 (0.53%) Istio
Vendors
1 314 (13.96%) Microsoft
2 275 (12.23%) VMware
3 118 (5.25%) Oracle
4 91 (4.05%) ServiceNow
5 75 (3.33%) Cisco
6 62 (2.76%) Google
7 55 (2.45%) Splunk
8 51 (2.27%) SAP
9 46 (2.05%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.96%) CyberArk
11 34 (1.51%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.02%) Juniper
14 22 (0.98%) Dell
15 21 (0.93%) Remedy
16 19 (0.84%) BMC
16 19 (0.84%) Citrix
17 18 (0.80%) Atlassian
17 18 (0.80%) Broadcom
17 18 (0.80%) NetApp