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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 79 33
Rank change year-on-year +29 -46 +22
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,176 1,001 2,047
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.06% 3.04% 5.27%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.94% 9.70% 17.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,659 697 1,455
10th Percentile £455 £459 £425
25th Percentile £515 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £591 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.61% -1.58% +2.13%
75th Percentile £700 £670 £688
90th Percentile £760 £715 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £580 £600
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 38 103
10th Percentile £35.00 - £49.20
25th Percentile £41.35 £25.15 £57.44
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -25.42% +0.56%
75th Percentile £92.53 £81.84 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.53 £87.91 £89.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £81.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -13.95% +15.57% -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 16,821 10,321 11,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.35% 31.32% 30.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,266 6,349 7,395
10th Percentile £350 £289 £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 £514 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.80% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,259 819 848
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.98 £15.03
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% -21.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £53.95 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.96 £73.75 £76.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +98.81% -47.05% -8.46%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +25 2,042 £600 +0.42% 981
UK excluding London +15 1,569 £600 +3.45% 770
South East +5 918 £600 - 282
London +51 449 £609 -2.60% 271
South West 0 406 £588 -2.08% 236
Work from Home +46 330 £580 -1.49% 482
East of England +9 94 £650 +18.18% 111
North of England -8 67 £775 +24.00% 84
North West -11 45 £863 +50.00% 66
Midlands -57 45 £600 +2.13% 19
West Midlands -61 40 £600 +1.05% 13
Scotland +9 37 £669 +30.44% 41
Yorkshire -28 17 £518 -17.20% 14
East Midlands -11 5 £631 +14.77% 6
North East -39 5 £463 -26.00% 8
Northern Ireland +6 4 £638 -8.93% 5
Wales -10 4 - - 2

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 62 (2.85%) Confluence
2 42 (1.93%) SharePoint
3 37 (1.70%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.41%) Apache
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.28%) Apache Spark
6 6 (0.28%) CMS
6 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
7 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
7 3 (0.14%) nginx
8 2 (0.092%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.092%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.092%) Mule
8 2 (0.092%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.092%) Oracle Service Bus
8 2 (0.092%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.092%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.092%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 56 (2.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
3 24 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
5 14 (0.64%) AutoCAD
5 14 (0.64%) Revit
5 14 (0.64%) SOLIDWORKS
6 11 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.18%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.092%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 28 (1.29%) Remedy ITSM
1 28 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 26 (1.19%) Oracle ERP
3 18 (0.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
7 4 (0.18%) Primavera
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
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
1 279 (12.82%) Azure
2 264 (12.13%) AWS
3 105 (4.83%) GCP
4 58 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (2.16%) GitHub
6 46 (2.11%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (1.84%) GitHub Actions
7 40 (1.84%) Serverless
8 39 (1.79%) Power Platform
9 38 (1.75%) Entra ID
10 37 (1.70%) IaaS
11 34 (1.56%) OCI
11 34 (1.56%) PaaS
12 27 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
13 24 (1.10%) OpenShift
14 21 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
15 20 (0.92%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (0.87%) Amazon S3
16 19 (0.87%) SaaS
17 18 (0.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 159 (7.31%) DNS
2 129 (5.93%) Firewall
3 82 (3.77%) DHCP
4 74 (3.40%) WAN
5 69 (3.17%) LAN
6 67 (3.08%) Network Security
7 56 (2.57%) BGP
8 51 (2.34%) VPN
9 49 (2.25%) TCP/IP
10 42 (1.93%) VSAN
11 33 (1.52%) IPsec
12 31 (1.42%) MPLS
13 26 (1.19%) OSPF
13 26 (1.19%) VLAN
14 20 (0.92%) VXLAN
15 18 (0.83%) SSL
16 17 (0.78%) Ethernet VPN
17 16 (0.74%) BIG-IP
17 16 (0.74%) Cisco ASA
18 15 (0.69%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (2.11%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.75%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.10%) Power BI
5 18 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
5 18 (0.83%) Metadata
6 14 (0.64%) Data Lake
6 14 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
7 13 (0.60%) MongoDB
8 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
9 8 (0.37%) BigQuery
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
10 7 (0.32%) Big Data
10 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
10 7 (0.32%) NoSQL
10 7 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
11 5 (0.23%) Amazon Redshift
11 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 104 (4.78%) JIRA
2 61 (2.80%) GitLab
3 52 (2.39%) Jenkins
4 44 (2.02%) Git
5 14 (0.64%) Cypress.io
6 11 (0.51%) Selenium
7 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 6 (0.28%) Postman
8 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
9 5 (0.23%) MSI
9 5 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
10 4 (0.18%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.18%) Cucumber
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
11 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
11 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 423 (19.44%) Social Skills
2 282 (12.96%) Public Sector
3 153 (7.03%) Analytical Skills
4 135 (6.20%) Finance
5 65 (2.99%) Military
6 59 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (1.93%) Legal
8 41 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
9 29 (1.33%) Law
10 28 (1.29%) Police
11 24 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.10%) Telecoms
12 20 (0.92%) Aerospace
12 20 (0.92%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.37%) Local Government
15 7 (0.32%) Marketing
16 5 (0.23%) Advertising
17 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
17 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 352 (16.18%) Architect
2 244 (11.21%) Lead
3 205 (9.42%) Senior
4 148 (6.80%) Analyst
4 148 (6.80%) Consultant
4 148 (6.80%) Developer
5 144 (6.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 93 (4.27%) Security Architect
7 91 (4.18%) Network Engineer
8 76 (3.49%) SOC Analyst
9 65 (2.99%) Technical Architect
10 60 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
10 60 (2.76%) Project Manager
11 53 (2.44%) DevOps Engineer
12 51 (2.34%) Support Engineer
13 49 (2.25%) DBA
14 48 (2.21%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 47 (2.16%) Senior Network Engineer
16 43 (1.98%) DV Cleared Project Manager
17 42 (1.93%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (3.40%) REST
2 32 (1.47%) Elastic Stack
3 26 (1.19%) SOAP
4 25 (1.15%) React
5 19 (0.87%) RESTful
6 18 (0.83%) Kafka
7 17 (0.78%) .NET
7 17 (0.78%) 802.1X
8 16 (0.74%) Node.js
9 15 (0.69%) Oracle Fusion
10 14 (0.64%) FastAPI
10 14 (0.64%) Flask
10 14 (0.64%) OAuth
11 13 (0.60%) AngularJS
12 12 (0.55%) Spring
12 12 (0.55%) Spring Boot
13 11 (0.51%) Apache NiFi
13 11 (0.51%) ARM Templates
13 11 (0.51%) LDAP
13 11 (0.51%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 104 (4.78%) PKI
2 102 (4.69%) Data Centre
3 86 (3.95%) Cloud Native
4 67 (3.08%) Onboarding
5 50 (2.30%) Security Operations Centre
6 38 (1.75%) Product Ownership
7 37 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 37 (1.70%) Private Cloud
8 34 (1.56%) Clustering
9 33 (1.52%) Management Information System
10 31 (1.42%) Cyber Threat
11 29 (1.33%) Public Cloud
12 26 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
13 25 (1.15%) Security Posture
14 24 (1.10%) CMDB
15 19 (0.87%) Virtual Team
16 18 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
17 16 (0.74%) Replication
18 14 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
19 12 (0.55%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 332 (15.26%) Windows
2 233 (10.71%) Linux
3 154 (7.08%) Windows Server
4 30 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 25 (1.15%) Windows 10
6 23 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
7 14 (0.64%) Unix
8 9 (0.41%) CentOS
8 9 (0.41%) Mac OS
8 9 (0.41%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.32%) VMS
10 6 (0.28%) AIX
10 6 (0.28%) Android
11 5 (0.23%) Debian
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
11 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
12 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 377 (17.33%) Agile
2 233 (10.71%) Stakeholder Management
3 223 (10.25%) Continuous Improvement
4 217 (9.97%) CI/CD
5 215 (9.88%) Cybersecurity
6 210 (9.65%) Problem-Solving
7 198 (9.10%) DevOps
8 197 (9.05%) ITIL
9 195 (8.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 189 (8.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 161 (7.40%) Infrastructure as Code
12 157 (7.22%) Technical Leadership
13 154 (7.08%) Service Management
14 133 (6.11%) ITSM
15 119 (5.47%) Risk Management
16 117 (5.38%) Project Delivery
17 115 (5.28%) Containerisation
18 109 (5.01%) Decision-Making
19 106 (4.87%) Service Delivery
19 106 (4.87%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 204 (9.38%) Python
2 167 (7.67%) PowerShell
3 112 (5.15%) SQL
4 82 (3.77%) Bash
5 60 (2.76%) Java
6 43 (1.98%) JavaScript
7 36 (1.65%) C#
8 25 (1.15%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.83%) Bicep
9 18 (0.83%) Go
10 14 (0.64%) PL/SQL
10 14 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
11 13 (0.60%) C++
12 11 (0.51%) C
13 7 (0.32%) Groovy
13 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
14 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
14 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
14 6 (0.28%) Rust
14 6 (0.28%) X++
Qualifications
1 2,176 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 724 (33.27%) SC Cleared
3 75 (3.45%) Degree
4 68 (3.13%) CISSP
5 43 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
5 43 (1.98%) CISM
6 29 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
7 23 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 21 (0.97%) AWS Certification
8 21 (0.97%) PMI Certification
9 20 (0.92%) ISTQB
9 20 (0.92%) VCAP
10 19 (0.87%) PMP
11 17 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
12 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
12 15 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
12 15 (0.69%) MCSE
13 14 (0.64%) CCNP
14 13 (0.60%) CCNA
14 13 (0.60%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (3.91%) NCSC
2 80 (3.68%) PMO
3 77 (3.54%) NIST
4 57 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 53 (2.44%) QA
6 37 (1.70%) JSP 440
7 29 (1.33%) GDPR
8 26 (1.19%) SLA
9 25 (1.15%) Data Quality
10 18 (0.83%) GRC
10 18 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 17 (0.78%) Government Security Classifications
11 17 (0.78%) RMADS
12 15 (0.69%) Accessibility
13 11 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 11 (0.51%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 8 (0.37%) WCAG
15 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
16 6 (0.28%) NIST 800
17 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 195 (8.96%) Active Directory
2 186 (8.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 120 (5.51%) Docker
4 96 (4.41%) VMware NSX
5 67 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
6 60 (2.76%) Hyper-V
7 48 (2.21%) vSphere
8 25 (1.15%) vCloud
9 18 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 7 (0.32%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
13 5 (0.23%) Ceph
13 5 (0.23%) Firmware
14 4 (0.18%) Squid
14 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.14%) KVM
15 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 191 (8.78%) Kubernetes
2 189 (8.69%) Terraform
3 131 (6.02%) Ansible
4 82 (3.77%) vCenter Server
5 48 (2.21%) SCOM
6 33 (1.52%) SCCM
7 25 (1.15%) Prometheus
8 23 (1.06%) Grafana
9 22 (1.01%) Puppet
10 15 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
10 15 (0.69%) Nagios
10 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
10 15 (0.69%) VxRail
11 14 (0.64%) Avamar
11 14 (0.64%) Podman
11 14 (0.64%) WSUS
12 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
13 11 (0.51%) FortiGate
14 10 (0.46%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.46%) WMI
Vendors
1 278 (12.78%) Microsoft
2 263 (12.09%) VMware
3 113 (5.19%) ServiceNow
4 101 (4.64%) Oracle
5 89 (4.09%) Cisco
6 62 (2.85%) Splunk
7 55 (2.53%) SAP
8 52 (2.39%) Google
9 46 (2.11%) Juniper
10 44 (2.02%) SolarWinds
11 33 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 30 (1.38%) Remedy
13 26 (1.19%) F5
14 25 (1.15%) Citrix
15 24 (1.10%) CyberArk
15 24 (1.10%) Dell
16 23 (1.06%) Palo Alto
17 22 (1.01%) NetApp
18 20 (0.92%) BMC
19 18 (0.83%) Sparx