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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 80 33
Rank change year-on-year +32 -47 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,169 1,005 2,146
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.09% 3.06% 5.40%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.04% 9.88% 18.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,655 695 1,543
10th Percentile £430 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £590 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -1.67% -
75th Percentile £700 £666 £688
90th Percentile £755 £714 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £600
% change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 39 106
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.15 £48.70
25th Percentile £41.25 £28.08 £56.83
Median hourly rate £63.14 £61.50 £70.78
Median % change year-on-year +2.67% -13.12% +1.11%
75th Percentile £89.77 £82.05 £83.75
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.77 £93.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -22.07% +15.09% -3.58%

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 16,639 10,172 11,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.34% 31.02% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,121 6,306 7,536
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,239 775 893
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.31
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £52.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +106.76% -41.51% -23.21%
75th Percentile £73.75 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.03 £75.00 £77.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -19.87%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 2,035 £600 +0.42% 486
UK excluding London +12 1,552 £600 +4.35% 384
South East +6 896 £600 - 182
London +54 458 £600 -4.00% 118
South West 0 392 £588 -0.21% 116
Work from Home +48 322 £575 -2.34% 173
East of England +12 97 £650 +18.18% 32
North of England -6 74 £775 +24.00% 34
Midlands -55 54 £600 - 18
North West -10 49 £825 - 28
West Midlands -72 43 £600 - 11
Scotland +15 37 £672 +31.07% 8
Yorkshire -34 20 £518 -17.20% 3
East Midlands -3 11 £631 +14.77% 7
North East -39 5 £463 -26.00% 3
Northern Ireland +3 4 £638 - 2
Wales -12 4 - - 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 57 (2.63%) Confluence
2 38 (1.75%) Microsoft Exchange
3 37 (1.71%) SharePoint
4 9 (0.41%) Apache
4 9 (0.41%) 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%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.092%) Mule
9 2 (0.092%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.092%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.046%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.046%) JBoss
Applications
1 55 (2.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.07%) Microsoft Project
3 20 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
4 18 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.55%) AutoCAD
6 12 (0.55%) Revit
6 12 (0.55%) SOLIDWORKS
7 5 (0.23%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.092%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 31 (1.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 23 (1.06%) Oracle ERP
4 19 (0.88%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.14%) Primavera
8 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle General Ledger
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
9 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
10 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 262 (12.08%) Azure
2 260 (11.99%) AWS
3 106 (4.89%) GCP
4 57 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (2.26%) GitHub
6 41 (1.89%) GitHub Actions
6 41 (1.89%) IaaS
7 40 (1.84%) Microsoft 365
8 39 (1.80%) PaaS
9 38 (1.75%) Power Platform
10 37 (1.71%) Serverless
11 32 (1.48%) Entra ID
11 32 (1.48%) OCI
12 25 (1.15%) OpenShift
13 24 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
14 21 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
15 20 (0.92%) SaaS
16 18 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
16 18 (0.83%) Amazon S3
16 18 (0.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 152 (7.01%) DNS
2 131 (6.04%) Firewall
3 78 (3.60%) WAN
4 77 (3.55%) DHCP
5 74 (3.41%) Network Security
6 73 (3.37%) LAN
7 59 (2.72%) BGP
8 52 (2.40%) VPN
9 44 (2.03%) TCP/IP
10 38 (1.75%) VSAN
11 34 (1.57%) IPsec
12 31 (1.43%) MPLS
12 31 (1.43%) OSPF
13 27 (1.24%) VLAN
14 23 (1.06%) VXLAN
15 21 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
16 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.78%) Cisco ASA
17 17 (0.78%) SD-WAN
17 17 (0.78%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (1.98%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 24 (1.11%) Power BI
6 17 (0.78%) Metadata
7 15 (0.69%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (0.55%) Data Lake
9 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
10 9 (0.41%) MongoDB
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
11 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (0.32%) Big Data
12 7 (0.32%) BigQuery
12 7 (0.32%) Hadoop
12 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
13 6 (0.28%) MariaDB
13 6 (0.28%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 6 (0.28%) Redis
14 5 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 97 (4.47%) JIRA
2 53 (2.44%) GitLab
3 48 (2.21%) Jenkins
4 41 (1.89%) Git
5 14 (0.65%) Cypress.io
6 10 (0.46%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.28%) Visual Studio
8 5 (0.23%) Postman
8 5 (0.23%) REST Assured
8 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.18%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.18%) Cucumber
9 4 (0.18%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
11 2 (0.092%) MSI
General
1 397 (18.30%) Social Skills
2 284 (13.09%) Public Sector
3 147 (6.78%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (6.18%) Finance
5 76 (3.50%) Military
6 56 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.07%) Legal
8 38 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
9 28 (1.29%) Law
10 27 (1.24%) Police
11 24 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (0.97%) Telecoms
13 18 (0.83%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (0.55%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.37%) Local Government
17 7 (0.32%) Marketing
18 5 (0.23%) Advertising
19 4 (0.18%) Aviation
20 3 (0.14%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 337 (15.54%) Architect
2 238 (10.97%) Lead
3 202 (9.31%) Senior
4 154 (7.10%) Developer
5 147 (6.78%) Analyst
6 141 (6.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 140 (6.45%) Consultant
8 93 (4.29%) Network Engineer
9 85 (3.92%) Security Architect
10 75 (3.46%) SOC Analyst
11 71 (3.27%) Technical Architect
12 60 (2.77%) Project Manager
13 56 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
14 50 (2.31%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 49 (2.26%) DBA
15 49 (2.26%) DevOps Engineer
16 46 (2.12%) Senior Network Engineer
16 46 (2.12%) Support Engineer
17 43 (1.98%) Network Architect
17 43 (1.98%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (3.41%) REST
2 32 (1.48%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.24%) React
4 26 (1.20%) SOAP
5 22 (1.01%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 18 (0.83%) 802.1X
8 17 (0.78%) Node.js
9 15 (0.69%) .NET
9 15 (0.69%) Spring
9 15 (0.69%) Spring Boot
10 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
10 14 (0.65%) Apache NiFi
10 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
11 13 (0.60%) Flask
11 13 (0.60%) Oracle Fusion
12 12 (0.55%) OAuth
13 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
13 11 (0.51%) XML
14 10 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 106 (4.89%) Data Centre
2 104 (4.79%) PKI
3 80 (3.69%) Cloud Native
4 60 (2.77%) Onboarding
5 48 (2.21%) Security Operations Centre
6 37 (1.71%) Clustering
6 37 (1.71%) Private Cloud
7 35 (1.61%) Product Ownership
8 33 (1.52%) Hybrid Cloud
8 33 (1.52%) Management Information System
9 30 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
10 27 (1.24%) Public Cloud
11 25 (1.15%) CMDB
11 25 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 25 (1.15%) Security Posture
12 21 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
13 20 (0.92%) Virtual Team
14 15 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
14 15 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
15 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 311 (14.34%) Windows
2 224 (10.33%) Linux
3 142 (6.55%) Windows Server
4 27 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
6 20 (0.92%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.60%) Unix
8 8 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.32%) VMS
10 6 (0.28%) AIX
10 6 (0.28%) Android
10 6 (0.28%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.23%) CentOS
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
11 5 (0.23%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 373 (17.20%) Agile
2 221 (10.19%) Problem-Solving
3 211 (9.73%) CI/CD
4 210 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
5 208 (9.59%) Stakeholder Management
6 200 (9.22%) ITIL
7 199 (9.17%) Cybersecurity
8 195 (8.99%) DevOps
9 186 (8.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 181 (8.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 152 (7.01%) Service Management
12 151 (6.96%) Infrastructure as Code
13 135 (6.22%) Technical Leadership
14 127 (5.86%) ITSM
15 116 (5.35%) Project Delivery
16 108 (4.98%) Containerisation
16 108 (4.98%) Risk Management
16 108 (4.98%) Service Delivery
17 104 (4.79%) Decision-Making
18 103 (4.75%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 199 (9.17%) Python
2 144 (6.64%) PowerShell
3 107 (4.93%) SQL
4 69 (3.18%) Bash
5 65 (3.00%) Java
6 47 (2.17%) JavaScript
7 34 (1.57%) C#
8 29 (1.34%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.88%) Go
10 16 (0.74%) Bicep
11 14 (0.65%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.60%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.41%) Rust
15 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Groovy
16 6 (0.28%) Perl
16 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,169 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 723 (33.33%) SC Cleared
3 75 (3.46%) Degree
4 56 (2.58%) CISSP
5 47 (2.17%) Cisco Certification
6 31 (1.43%) CISM
7 28 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 26 (1.20%) AWS Certification
9 23 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 21 (0.97%) PMI Certification
11 19 (0.88%) PMP
12 18 (0.83%) CCNP
12 18 (0.83%) VCAP
13 17 (0.78%) CCNA
14 16 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
15 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
15 15 (0.69%) ISTQB
15 15 (0.69%) MCSE
16 14 (0.65%) CompTIA Security+
17 13 (0.60%) CESG Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.46%) NCSC
1 75 (3.46%) PMO
2 72 (3.32%) NIST
3 54 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 50 (2.31%) QA
5 34 (1.57%) JSP 440
6 27 (1.24%) GDPR
7 24 (1.11%) SLA
8 23 (1.06%) Data Quality
9 19 (0.88%) GRC
10 17 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 17 (0.78%) RMADS
11 15 (0.69%) Government Security Classifications
12 14 (0.65%) Accessibility
13 12 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
14 10 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 8 (0.37%) WCAG
16 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
16 7 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 181 (8.34%) VMware Infrastructure
2 179 (8.25%) Active Directory
3 128 (5.90%) Docker
4 89 (4.10%) VMware NSX
5 67 (3.09%) VMware ESXi
6 58 (2.67%) Hyper-V
7 44 (2.03%) vSphere
8 22 (1.01%) vCloud
9 17 (0.78%) 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 5 (0.23%) Firmware
14 4 (0.18%) Ceph
14 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.18%) UAG
15 3 (0.14%) KVM
15 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 184 (8.48%) Terraform
2 182 (8.39%) Kubernetes
3 117 (5.39%) Ansible
4 82 (3.78%) vCenter Server
5 43 (1.98%) SCOM
6 32 (1.48%) SCCM
7 25 (1.15%) Prometheus
8 23 (1.06%) Grafana
8 23 (1.06%) Puppet
9 15 (0.69%) Nagios
9 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
9 15 (0.69%) Podman
10 14 (0.65%) Avamar
10 14 (0.65%) VxRail
11 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
11 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
11 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (0.51%) WSUS
13 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.46%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 251 (11.57%) VMware
2 248 (11.43%) Microsoft
3 120 (5.53%) ServiceNow
4 100 (4.61%) Cisco
5 95 (4.38%) Oracle
6 60 (2.77%) Splunk
7 54 (2.49%) SAP
8 51 (2.35%) Juniper
9 48 (2.21%) Google
10 45 (2.07%) SolarWinds
11 33 (1.52%) NetApp
12 31 (1.43%) Red Hat
13 29 (1.34%) Remedy
14 28 (1.29%) F5
15 26 (1.20%) Citrix
15 26 (1.20%) Palo Alto
16 24 (1.11%) Dell
17 21 (0.97%) BMC
18 20 (0.92%) Fortinet
19 19 (0.88%) Sparx