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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 80 33
Rank change year-on-year +33 -47 +25
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,174 1,008 2,104
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.08% 3.06% 5.33%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.00% 9.90% 17.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,658 697 1,517
10th Percentile £432 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £591 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.61% -1.58% -
75th Percentile £700 £670 £688
90th Percentile £755 £714 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £580 £600
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 39 102
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.15 £49.10
25th Percentile £41.25 £28.08 £57.41
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 £80.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.77 £89.75
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 16,721 10,182 11,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.36% 30.96% 29.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,173 6,306 7,464
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 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,247 778 878
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +102.78% -41.51% -22.22%
75th Percentile £73.23 £55.43 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £77.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -44.11% -14.29%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +28 2,039 £600 - 661
UK excluding London +11 1,556 £600 +3.45% 537
South East +6 900 £600 - 238
London +52 458 £600 -4.00% 143
South West 0 392 £588 -0.21% 170
Work from Home +48 323 £575 -2.34% 248
East of England +13 97 £650 +18.18% 48
North of England -4 74 £775 +24.00% 49
Midlands -55 54 £600 - 23
North West -8 49 £825 - 40
West Midlands -72 43 £600 - 16
Scotland +13 37 £669 +30.44% 20
Yorkshire -20 20 £518 -17.20% 2
East Midlands -5 11 £631 +14.77% 7
North East -35 5 £463 -26.00% 7
Northern Ireland +3 4 £638 - 2
Wales -7 4 - -

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 58 (2.67%) Confluence
2 38 (1.75%) Microsoft Exchange
3 37 (1.70%) 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%) JBoss
10 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 55 (2.53%) 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 24 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
4 19 (0.87%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.092%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
11 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.046%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 263 (12.10%) Azure
2 261 (12.01%) AWS
3 107 (4.92%) GCP
4 57 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (2.25%) GitHub
6 41 (1.89%) GitHub Actions
6 41 (1.89%) IaaS
7 40 (1.84%) Microsoft 365
8 39 (1.79%) PaaS
9 38 (1.75%) Power Platform
10 37 (1.70%) Serverless
11 34 (1.56%) OCI
12 32 (1.47%) Entra ID
13 25 (1.15%) OpenShift
14 24 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
16 20 (0.92%) SaaS
17 18 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
17 18 (0.83%) Amazon S3
17 18 (0.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 153 (7.04%) DNS
2 131 (6.03%) Firewall
3 78 (3.59%) WAN
4 77 (3.54%) DHCP
5 75 (3.45%) Network Security
6 73 (3.36%) LAN
7 59 (2.71%) BGP
8 52 (2.39%) VPN
9 44 (2.02%) TCP/IP
10 38 (1.75%) VSAN
11 34 (1.56%) 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
16 18 (0.83%) SSL
17 17 (0.78%) Cisco ASA
17 17 (0.78%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (1.98%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.20%) Elasticsearch
5 24 (1.10%) 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
9 10 (0.46%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
10 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
11 7 (0.32%) Big Data
11 7 (0.32%) BigQuery
11 7 (0.32%) Hadoop
11 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
11 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
12 6 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
12 6 (0.28%) Redis
Development Applications
1 100 (4.60%) JIRA
2 53 (2.44%) GitLab
3 48 (2.21%) Jenkins
4 41 (1.89%) Git
5 14 (0.64%) 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%) Oracle Forms
General
1 401 (18.45%) Social Skills
2 287 (13.20%) Public Sector
3 148 (6.81%) Analytical Skills
4 136 (6.26%) Finance
5 76 (3.50%) Military
6 56 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.12%) Legal
8 38 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
9 28 (1.29%) Law
10 27 (1.24%) Police
11 24 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
12 21 (0.97%) Telecoms
13 18 (0.83%) Manufacturing
14 16 (0.74%) 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
19 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 337 (15.50%) Architect
2 238 (10.95%) Lead
3 202 (9.29%) Senior
4 154 (7.08%) Developer
5 147 (6.76%) Analyst
6 143 (6.58%) Consultant
7 141 (6.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 93 (4.28%) Network Engineer
9 86 (3.96%) Security Architect
10 75 (3.45%) SOC Analyst
11 70 (3.22%) Technical Architect
12 61 (2.81%) Project Manager
13 56 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
14 50 (2.30%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 49 (2.25%) DBA
15 49 (2.25%) 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 (3.40%) REST
2 33 (1.52%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.24%) React
4 26 (1.20%) SOAP
5 22 (1.01%) Kafka
6 19 (0.87%) 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 (0.64%) AngularJS
10 14 (0.64%) Apache NiFi
10 14 (0.64%) FastAPI
10 14 (0.64%) Oracle Fusion
11 13 (0.60%) Flask
12 12 (0.55%) OAuth
13 11 (0.51%) XML
14 10 (0.46%) ModSecurity
14 10 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 108 (4.97%) Data Centre
2 104 (4.78%) PKI
3 80 (3.68%) Cloud Native
4 60 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 48 (2.21%) Security Operations Centre
6 37 (1.70%) Clustering
6 37 (1.70%) Private Cloud
7 36 (1.66%) Product Ownership
8 34 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
9 33 (1.52%) Management Information System
10 30 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
11 27 (1.24%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.15%) CMDB
12 25 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
12 25 (1.15%) Security Posture
13 21 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
14 20 (0.92%) Virtual Team
15 15 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
15 15 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
16 13 (0.60%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 311 (14.31%) Windows
2 227 (10.44%) Linux
3 142 (6.53%) Windows Server
4 28 (1.29%) 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%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.23%) CentOS
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.14%) Windows 7
13 3 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 375 (17.25%) Agile
2 221 (10.17%) Problem-Solving
3 212 (9.75%) CI/CD
4 211 (9.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 210 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
6 200 (9.20%) Cybersecurity
6 200 (9.20%) ITIL
7 196 (9.02%) DevOps
8 186 (8.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 182 (8.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 154 (7.08%) Service Management
11 151 (6.95%) Infrastructure as Code
12 134 (6.16%) Technical Leadership
13 128 (5.89%) ITSM
14 119 (5.47%) Project Delivery
15 111 (5.11%) Risk Management
16 108 (4.97%) Containerisation
16 108 (4.97%) Service Delivery
17 106 (4.88%) Decision-Making
18 103 (4.74%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 200 (9.20%) Python
2 144 (6.62%) PowerShell
3 108 (4.97%) SQL
4 70 (3.22%) Bash
5 65 (2.99%) Java
6 47 (2.16%) JavaScript
7 34 (1.56%) C#
8 29 (1.33%) TypeScript
9 19 (0.87%) Go
10 16 (0.74%) Bicep
11 14 (0.64%) PL/SQL
11 14 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
12 13 (0.60%) C++
13 11 (0.51%) C
14 9 (0.41%) Rust
15 7 (0.32%) Groovy
15 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
16 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,174 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 725 (33.35%) SC Cleared
3 75 (3.45%) Degree
4 56 (2.58%) CISSP
5 47 (2.16%) 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 (0.87%) 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 (0.64%) CompTIA Security+
17 12 (0.55%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.45%) NCSC
1 75 (3.45%) PMO
2 73 (3.36%) NIST
3 55 (2.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 50 (2.30%) QA
5 34 (1.56%) JSP 440
6 27 (1.24%) GDPR
7 24 (1.10%) SLA
8 23 (1.06%) Data Quality
9 19 (0.87%) GRC
10 17 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 17 (0.78%) RMADS
11 15 (0.69%) Government Security Classifications
12 14 (0.64%) 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
1 183 (8.42%) VMware Infrastructure
2 179 (8.23%) Active Directory
3 128 (5.89%) Docker
4 90 (4.14%) VMware NSX
5 67 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
6 59 (2.71%) Hyper-V
7 44 (2.02%) 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%) Ceph
13 5 (0.23%) Firmware
14 4 (0.18%) Squid
14 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.18%) UAG
15 3 (0.14%) KVM
Systems Management
1 184 (8.46%) Terraform
2 183 (8.42%) Kubernetes
3 118 (5.43%) Ansible
4 82 (3.77%) vCenter Server
5 43 (1.98%) SCOM
6 32 (1.47%) 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 (0.64%) Avamar
10 14 (0.64%) 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
1 253 (11.64%) VMware
2 249 (11.45%) Microsoft
3 122 (5.61%) ServiceNow
4 100 (4.60%) Cisco
5 99 (4.55%) Oracle
6 60 (2.76%) Splunk
7 54 (2.48%) SAP
8 51 (2.35%) Juniper
9 49 (2.25%) Google
10 45 (2.07%) SolarWinds
11 33 (1.52%) NetApp
12 32 (1.47%) Red Hat
13 29 (1.33%) Remedy
14 28 (1.29%) F5
15 26 (1.20%) Citrix
15 26 (1.20%) Palo Alto
16 24 (1.10%) Dell
17 21 (0.97%) BMC
18 20 (0.92%) Fortinet
19 19 (0.87%) Sparx