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 14 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 80 37
Rank change year-on-year +31 -43 +16
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,221 987 1,846
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 3.02% 4.81%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.03% 9.63% 16.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,666 696 1,237
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £517 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% +4.35%
75th Percentile £700 £650 £688
90th Percentile £763 £723 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £585
% change year-on-year +4.35% -1.71% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 32 92
10th Percentile £41.25 - £50.00
25th Percentile £58.43 £25.15 £58.49
Median hourly rate £74.68 £45.00 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +65.96% -36.07% -2.68%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.34 £80.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.48 £89.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £70.00 £70.39
% change year-on-year +6.69% -0.55% -2.77%

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 17,050 10,245 11,275
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.50% 31.34% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,384 6,379 6,977
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,315 820 666
10th Percentile £17.17 £17.98 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -9.09%
75th Percentile £71.47 £45.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £86.70 £71.00 £75.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.55% +0.95%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 14 September 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 +29 2,099 £600 +2.13% 1,353
UK excluding London +14 1,596 £600 +4.35% 1,100
South East +4 879 £600 +2.78% 301
South West +6 480 £588 -2.08% 353
London +53 476 £609 -2.60% 319
Work from Home +45 352 £560 -5.08% 687
East of England +14 102 £675 +22.73% 191
North of England -30 55 £763 +32.61% 134
Midlands -67 44 £600 - 32
West Midlands -72 39 £600 - 19
North West -24 35 £863 +72.50% 106
Scotland -5 31 £669 +27.33% 97
Yorkshire -21 15 £510 -18.40% 18
Northern Ireland +6 5 £638 -1.92% 6
North East -35 5 £463 -26.00% 16
East Midlands - 5 £625 - 13
Wales -11 4 - - 9

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 69 (3.11%) Confluence
2 54 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.68%) Apache
5 7 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.27%) Apache Spark
6 6 (0.27%) CMS
7 5 (0.23%) IIS
8 4 (0.18%) Camunda
8 4 (0.18%) nginx
9 3 (0.14%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.090%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.090%) Mule
10 2 (0.090%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.090%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.090%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.090%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.045%) JBoss
Applications
1 61 (2.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.03%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
5 15 (0.68%) AutoCAD
5 15 (0.68%) Revit
5 15 (0.68%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.36%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.090%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 28 (1.26%) Oracle ERP
1 28 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 20 (0.90%) Remedy ITSM
3 17 (0.77%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 14 (0.63%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.27%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.18%) Primavera
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.090%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.045%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.045%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.045%) SAP GRC
10 1 (0.045%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 300 (13.51%) Azure
2 296 (13.33%) AWS
3 108 (4.86%) GCP
4 59 (2.66%) Azure DevOps
5 55 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (2.16%) GitHub
7 41 (1.85%) Entra ID
8 40 (1.80%) GitHub Actions
9 37 (1.67%) Power Platform
9 37 (1.67%) Serverless
10 33 (1.49%) OCI
11 27 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
11 27 (1.22%) OpenShift
12 23 (1.04%) Amazon EKS
12 23 (1.04%) IaaS
13 21 (0.95%) Amazon ECS
14 20 (0.90%) PaaS
15 19 (0.86%) SaaS
16 18 (0.81%) Amazon S3
17 17 (0.77%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 163 (7.34%) DNS
2 112 (5.04%) Firewall
3 78 (3.51%) DHCP
4 69 (3.11%) Network Security
5 57 (2.57%) WAN
6 51 (2.30%) TCP/IP
6 51 (2.30%) VPN
7 44 (1.98%) LAN
8 43 (1.94%) BGP
9 40 (1.80%) VSAN
10 35 (1.58%) MPLS
11 31 (1.40%) IPsec
12 28 (1.26%) VLAN
13 20 (0.90%) SSL
14 17 (0.77%) SAN
15 15 (0.68%) SD-WAN
16 14 (0.63%) Cisco ASA
16 14 (0.63%) Cisco Nexus
17 13 (0.59%) Cisco Firepower
17 13 (0.59%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (2.43%) SQL Server
2 44 (1.98%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (0.99%) Power BI
5 21 (0.95%) Metadata
5 21 (0.95%) Relational Database
6 19 (0.86%) Data Lake
7 17 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
7 17 (0.77%) MongoDB
8 15 (0.68%) Data Warehouse
9 11 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.41%) NoSQL
10 9 (0.41%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.36%) Big Data
11 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
11 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
11 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
11 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
12 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
13 5 (0.23%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 105 (4.73%) JIRA
2 78 (3.51%) GitLab
3 72 (3.24%) Jenkins
4 71 (3.20%) Git
5 29 (1.31%) Selenium
6 15 (0.68%) Cypress.io
7 9 (0.41%) Cucumber
8 8 (0.36%) MSI
9 7 (0.32%) Postman
9 7 (0.32%) REST Assured
9 7 (0.32%) SonarQube
9 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
10 6 (0.27%) JUnit
10 6 (0.27%) SpecFlow
11 5 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.23%) Gatling
11 5 (0.23%) JMeter
11 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.18%) Maven
13 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 488 (21.97%) Social Skills
2 280 (12.61%) Public Sector
3 164 (7.38%) Analytical Skills
4 135 (6.08%) Finance
5 66 (2.97%) Military
6 63 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (1.62%) Legal
9 34 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
9 34 (1.53%) Law
10 32 (1.44%) Police
11 30 (1.35%) Telecoms
12 29 (1.31%) Manufacturing
13 24 (1.08%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
15 9 (0.41%) Local Government
16 7 (0.32%) Marketing
17 5 (0.23%) Advertising
17 5 (0.23%) Back Office
18 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 375 (16.88%) Architect
2 241 (10.85%) Lead
3 198 (8.91%) Senior
4 156 (7.02%) Developer
5 152 (6.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 151 (6.80%) Consultant
7 130 (5.85%) Analyst
8 88 (3.96%) Security Architect
9 73 (3.29%) Network Engineer
10 72 (3.24%) Cloud Engineer
11 67 (3.02%) SOC Analyst
12 61 (2.75%) Support Engineer
13 58 (2.61%) DevOps Engineer
14 57 (2.57%) Project Manager
15 55 (2.48%) Technical Architect
16 51 (2.30%) DBA
17 45 (2.03%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
18 42 (1.89%) Lead Architect
19 41 (1.85%) Network Architect
19 41 (1.85%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 202 (9.10%) Terraform
2 75 (3.38%) REST
3 37 (1.67%) LDAP
4 31 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
4 31 (1.40%) React
5 27 (1.22%) SOAP
6 24 (1.08%) RESTful
7 21 (0.95%) Kafka
8 18 (0.81%) Node.js
9 17 (0.77%) Apache NiFi
10 16 (0.72%) AngularJS
10 16 (0.72%) XML
11 15 (0.68%) .NET
11 15 (0.68%) Spring
11 15 (0.68%) Spring Boot
12 14 (0.63%) FastAPI
12 14 (0.63%) JSON
13 12 (0.54%) ARM Templates
13 12 (0.54%) Flask
13 12 (0.54%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 101 (4.55%) Cloud Native
2 98 (4.41%) PKI
3 95 (4.28%) Data Centre
4 82 (3.69%) Onboarding
5 43 (1.94%) Security Operations Centre
6 40 (1.80%) Management Information System
6 40 (1.80%) Private Cloud
7 39 (1.76%) Product Ownership
8 38 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
9 34 (1.53%) Cyber Threat
10 29 (1.31%) Public Cloud
11 27 (1.22%) Security Posture
12 25 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
13 19 (0.86%) Clustering
13 19 (0.86%) CMDB
13 19 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
14 16 (0.72%) Virtual Team
15 15 (0.68%) Analytical Mindset
16 14 (0.63%) Replication
17 12 (0.54%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 370 (16.66%) Windows
2 250 (11.26%) Linux
3 172 (7.74%) Windows Server
4 41 (1.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.40%) Windows 10
6 27 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
7 21 (0.95%) Unix
8 18 (0.81%) Ubuntu
9 15 (0.68%) CentOS
10 12 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.32%) AIX
12 6 (0.27%) Android
12 6 (0.27%) Mac OS
13 5 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.23%) Debian
13 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.18%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 384 (17.29%) Agile
2 282 (12.70%) Continuous Improvement
3 269 (12.11%) Stakeholder Management
4 259 (11.66%) CI/CD
5 229 (10.31%) Cybersecurity
6 222 (10.00%) DevOps
7 220 (9.91%) Problem-Solving
8 212 (9.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 206 (9.28%) Technical Leadership
10 202 (9.10%) Infrastructure as Code
11 199 (8.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 180 (8.10%) ITIL
13 147 (6.62%) Containerisation
13 147 (6.62%) ITSM
13 147 (6.62%) Service Management
14 133 (5.99%) SIEM
15 122 (5.49%) Risk Management
16 121 (5.45%) Decision-Making
16 121 (5.45%) Project Delivery
17 114 (5.13%) AI
Programming Languages
1 238 (10.72%) Python
2 184 (8.28%) PowerShell
3 135 (6.08%) SQL
4 94 (4.23%) Bash
5 72 (3.24%) Java
6 40 (1.80%) JavaScript
7 36 (1.62%) C#
8 29 (1.31%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.81%) Bicep
10 17 (0.77%) Go
11 15 (0.68%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.50%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.45%) C++
15 8 (0.36%) C
16 7 (0.32%) Groovy
17 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
17 6 (0.27%) Perl
17 6 (0.27%) X++
18 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,221 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 709 (31.92%) SC Cleared
3 81 (3.65%) Degree
4 71 (3.20%) CISSP
5 44 (1.98%) CISM
6 37 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 27 (1.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 25 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 24 (1.08%) VCAP
11 21 (0.95%) ISTQB
11 21 (0.95%) PMI Certification
12 20 (0.90%) CCNP
13 19 (0.86%) PMP
13 19 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
14 16 (0.72%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.68%) MCSE
16 12 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (0.50%) CHECK Team Leader
17 11 (0.50%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (4.14%) NIST
2 89 (4.01%) NCSC
3 81 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 80 (3.60%) PMO
5 62 (2.79%) QA
6 40 (1.80%) JSP 440
7 32 (1.44%) GDPR
8 30 (1.35%) SLA
9 27 (1.22%) Data Quality
10 23 (1.04%) GRC
11 18 (0.81%) Accessibility
12 16 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 14 (0.63%) Government Security Classifications
14 11 (0.50%) RMADS
15 10 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
15 10 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.36%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.36%) WCAG
17 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
System Software
1 235 (10.58%) Active Directory
2 199 (8.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 133 (5.99%) Docker
4 90 (4.05%) VMware NSX
5 78 (3.51%) VMware ESXi
6 66 (2.97%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.21%) vSphere
8 26 (1.17%) vCloud
9 18 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.63%) NFS
11 13 (0.59%) Oracle RAC
11 13 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
12 9 (0.41%) Firmware
13 5 (0.23%) Ceph
14 4 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.18%) KVM
14 4 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 3 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 2 (0.090%) UAG
Systems Management
1 214 (9.64%) Kubernetes
2 149 (6.71%) Ansible
3 86 (3.87%) vCenter Server
4 58 (2.61%) SCOM
5 35 (1.58%) SCCM
6 27 (1.22%) Prometheus
7 25 (1.13%) Grafana
8 21 (0.95%) Puppet
9 18 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
10 17 (0.77%) Nagios
11 16 (0.72%) Oracle RMAN
12 15 (0.68%) Podman
12 15 (0.68%) VxRail
13 14 (0.63%) Avamar
13 14 (0.63%) Data Guard
13 14 (0.63%) WMI
14 13 (0.59%) WSUS
15 12 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.54%) Istio
16 11 (0.50%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 297 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 280 (12.61%) VMware
3 117 (5.27%) Oracle
4 99 (4.46%) ServiceNow
5 75 (3.38%) Cisco
6 60 (2.70%) SAP
7 58 (2.61%) Google
7 58 (2.61%) Splunk
8 43 (1.94%) CyberArk
9 42 (1.89%) SolarWinds
10 37 (1.67%) Red Hat
11 25 (1.13%) Juniper
12 23 (1.04%) Palo Alto
13 22 (0.99%) Dell
13 22 (0.99%) Remedy
14 20 (0.90%) BMC
15 19 (0.86%) Broadcom
15 19 (0.86%) Citrix
15 19 (0.86%) NetApp
16 17 (0.77%) Sparx