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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 79 36
Rank change year-on-year +29 -43 +17
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,190 996 1,871
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.08% 3.08% 4.91%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.99% 9.89% 16.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,658 699 1,291
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £515 £519 £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 £716 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £578 £593
% change year-on-year +3.90% -2.53% +3.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 97 37 93
10th Percentile £35.00 - £50.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £60.00
Median hourly rate £74.68 £47.48 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +57.30% -32.55% +0.56%
75th Percentile £92.53 £80.00 £80.00
90th Percentile £98.82 £87.35 £89.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £74.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year +0.44% +5.63% -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 16,856 10,071 11,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.42% 31.17% 29.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,303 6,240 7,066
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £629 £622 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,260 801 703
10th Percentile £17.39 £18.13 £15.75
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.54
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -48.21% -11.71%
75th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £67.78
90th Percentile £87.02 £71.45 £76.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £51.72
% change year-on-year +88.87% -51.37% +3.44%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +25 2,058 £600 +2.13% 1,069
UK excluding London +11 1,562 £600 +3.90% 902
South East +4 872 £600 - 280
London +45 473 £600 -4.00% 257
South West +3 443 £589 -1.88% 291
Work from Home +38 338 £563 -4.46% 571
East of England +16 97 £663 +20.45% 173
North of England -20 65 £775 +34.78% 85
Midlands -66 45 £600 - 24
North West -9 44 £863 +72.50% 68
West Midlands -70 39 £600 - 14
Scotland -1 35 £669 +27.33% 69
Yorkshire -27 16 £518 -17.20% 12
East Midlands - 6 £625 - 10
Northern Ireland +7 5 £638 -8.93% 3
North East -33 5 £463 -26.00% 8
Wales -13 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 66 (3.01%) Confluence
2 48 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.68%) Apache
5 7 (0.32%) Documentum
6 6 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.27%) CMS
7 5 (0.23%) Apache Spark
8 4 (0.18%) IIS
9 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
9 3 (0.14%) nginx
10 2 (0.091%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.091%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.091%) Camunda
10 2 (0.091%) Mule
10 2 (0.091%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.091%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.091%) Palantir Foundry
10 2 (0.091%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.046%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 56 (2.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.05%) Microsoft Project
3 28 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
5 15 (0.68%) AutoCAD
5 15 (0.68%) Revit
5 15 (0.68%) SOLIDWORKS
6 8 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.23%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.28%) Oracle ERP
3 22 (1.00%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.82%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.64%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.27%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.18%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.091%) Siebel CRM
11 1 (0.046%) Oracle Assets
11 1 (0.046%) SAP CCM
11 1 (0.046%) SAP FI-GL
11 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
11 1 (0.046%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 292 (13.33%) Azure
2 286 (13.06%) AWS
3 106 (4.84%) GCP
4 58 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (2.24%) Microsoft 365
6 47 (2.15%) GitHub
7 40 (1.83%) GitHub Actions
8 38 (1.74%) Entra ID
9 37 (1.69%) Power Platform
9 37 (1.69%) Serverless
10 33 (1.51%) OCI
11 28 (1.28%) IaaS
12 26 (1.19%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (1.14%) PaaS
14 23 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
15 22 (1.00%) OpenShift
16 21 (0.96%) Amazon ECS
17 19 (0.87%) Amazon S3
17 19 (0.87%) SaaS
18 17 (0.78%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 163 (7.44%) DNS
2 121 (5.53%) Firewall
3 80 (3.65%) DHCP
4 66 (3.01%) Network Security
5 60 (2.74%) WAN
6 54 (2.47%) TCP/IP
7 53 (2.42%) VPN
8 50 (2.28%) LAN
9 47 (2.15%) BGP
10 41 (1.87%) VSAN
11 33 (1.51%) IPsec
11 33 (1.51%) MPLS
12 27 (1.23%) VLAN
13 18 (0.82%) SSL
14 17 (0.78%) Cisco ASA
15 16 (0.73%) SAN
16 15 (0.68%) Cisco Firepower
16 15 (0.68%) OSPF
17 14 (0.64%) Cisco Nexus
17 14 (0.64%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (2.47%) SQL Server
2 43 (1.96%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
4 22 (1.00%) Power BI
5 21 (0.96%) Metadata
6 19 (0.87%) Data Lake
7 18 (0.82%) MongoDB
8 16 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
9 15 (0.68%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (0.59%) Relational Database
11 12 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
12 9 (0.41%) NoSQL
12 9 (0.41%) Oracle Database 11g
13 8 (0.37%) BigQuery
13 8 (0.37%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
14 7 (0.32%) MariaDB
14 7 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
15 6 (0.27%) Big Data
16 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 104 (4.75%) JIRA
2 73 (3.33%) GitLab
3 64 (2.92%) Jenkins
4 61 (2.79%) Git
5 24 (1.10%) Selenium
6 15 (0.68%) Cypress.io
7 8 (0.37%) Cucumber
8 7 (0.32%) MSI
8 7 (0.32%) Postman
8 7 (0.32%) REST Assured
8 7 (0.32%) Visual Studio
9 6 (0.27%) SonarQube
9 6 (0.27%) SpecFlow
10 5 (0.23%) Artifactory
10 5 (0.23%) Gatling
10 5 (0.23%) JMeter
10 5 (0.23%) JUnit
10 5 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.14%) Appium
11 3 (0.14%) MLflow
General
1 459 (20.96%) Social Skills
2 277 (12.65%) Public Sector
3 158 (7.21%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (6.26%) Finance
5 63 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
6 62 (2.83%) Military
7 42 (1.92%) Organisational Skills
8 39 (1.78%) Legal
9 34 (1.55%) Law
10 32 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
11 31 (1.42%) Police
12 29 (1.32%) Telecoms
13 27 (1.23%) Manufacturing
14 23 (1.05%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (0.41%) Local Government
17 7 (0.32%) Marketing
18 5 (0.23%) Advertising
19 4 (0.18%) Back Office
19 4 (0.18%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 355 (16.21%) Architect
2 240 (10.96%) Lead
3 194 (8.86%) Senior
4 153 (6.99%) Consultant
5 152 (6.94%) Developer
6 150 (6.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 135 (6.16%) Analyst
8 89 (4.06%) Security Architect
9 78 (3.56%) Network Engineer
10 71 (3.24%) SOC Analyst
11 68 (3.11%) Cloud Engineer
12 59 (2.69%) Project Manager
12 59 (2.69%) Technical Architect
13 58 (2.65%) Support Engineer
14 55 (2.51%) DevOps Engineer
15 51 (2.33%) DBA
16 46 (2.10%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
17 41 (1.87%) DV Cleared Project Manager
17 41 (1.87%) Lead Architect
18 39 (1.78%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 195 (8.90%) Terraform
2 77 (3.52%) REST
3 29 (1.32%) Elastic Stack
4 28 (1.28%) React
4 28 (1.28%) SOAP
5 24 (1.10%) LDAP
6 22 (1.00%) RESTful
7 18 (0.82%) Kafka
8 17 (0.78%) Node.js
9 16 (0.73%) Apache NiFi
10 15 (0.68%) .NET
11 14 (0.64%) AngularJS
11 14 (0.64%) Spring
11 14 (0.64%) Spring Boot
11 14 (0.64%) XML
12 12 (0.55%) ARM Templates
12 12 (0.55%) FastAPI
12 12 (0.55%) Flask
12 12 (0.55%) OAuth
12 12 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.66%) Cloud Native
2 98 (4.47%) Data Centre
2 98 (4.47%) PKI
3 76 (3.47%) Onboarding
4 45 (2.05%) Security Operations Centre
5 40 (1.83%) Private Cloud
6 37 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 37 (1.69%) Management Information System
7 36 (1.64%) Product Ownership
8 32 (1.46%) Cyber Threat
9 29 (1.32%) Public Cloud
10 27 (1.23%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
12 22 (1.00%) Clustering
12 22 (1.00%) CMDB
13 17 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
13 17 (0.78%) Virtual Team
14 14 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
14 14 (0.64%) Replication
15 12 (0.55%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 360 (16.44%) Windows
2 245 (11.19%) Linux
3 171 (7.81%) Windows Server
4 37 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (1.32%) Windows 10
6 25 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
7 20 (0.91%) Unix
8 16 (0.73%) Ubuntu
9 13 (0.59%) CentOS
10 11 (0.50%) 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%) VMS
13 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.18%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 374 (17.08%) Agile
2 260 (11.87%) Continuous Improvement
3 257 (11.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 243 (11.10%) CI/CD
5 229 (10.46%) Cybersecurity
6 211 (9.63%) Problem-Solving
7 210 (9.59%) DevOps
8 203 (9.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 196 (8.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 188 (8.58%) Technical Leadership
11 186 (8.49%) Infrastructure as Code
12 179 (8.17%) ITIL
13 148 (6.76%) Service Management
14 139 (6.35%) ITSM
15 135 (6.16%) Containerisation
16 122 (5.57%) Risk Management
17 121 (5.53%) SIEM
18 120 (5.48%) Project Delivery
19 118 (5.39%) Decision-Making
20 110 (5.02%) AI
Programming Languages
1 227 (10.37%) Python
2 182 (8.31%) PowerShell
3 128 (5.84%) SQL
4 91 (4.16%) Bash
5 68 (3.11%) Java
6 38 (1.74%) JavaScript
7 36 (1.64%) C#
8 26 (1.19%) TypeScript
9 18 (0.82%) Bicep
10 16 (0.73%) Go
11 15 (0.68%) PL/SQL
12 14 (0.64%) Search Processing Language
13 11 (0.50%) C++
13 11 (0.50%) Shell Script
14 9 (0.41%) C
15 7 (0.32%) Groovy
16 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.27%) Perl
16 6 (0.27%) X++
17 5 (0.23%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 2,190 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 711 (32.47%) SC Cleared
3 76 (3.47%) Degree
4 70 (3.20%) CISSP
5 45 (2.05%) CISM
6 37 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
7 29 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 27 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 25 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 24 (1.10%) VCAP
11 21 (0.96%) ISTQB
11 21 (0.96%) PMI Certification
12 19 (0.87%) PMP
12 19 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
13 18 (0.82%) CCNP
14 15 (0.68%) BPSS Clearance
14 15 (0.68%) MCSE
15 14 (0.64%) Azure Certification
16 12 (0.55%) CompTIA Security+
17 11 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (4.11%) NCSC
2 85 (3.88%) NIST
3 82 (3.74%) PMO
4 71 (3.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 60 (2.74%) QA
6 41 (1.87%) JSP 440
7 31 (1.42%) GDPR
8 30 (1.37%) SLA
9 26 (1.19%) Data Quality
10 21 (0.96%) GRC
11 18 (0.82%) Accessibility
12 16 (0.73%) Government Security Classifications
12 16 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 15 (0.68%) RMADS
14 11 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 10 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
16 8 (0.37%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.37%) WCAG
17 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
18 6 (0.27%) Def Stans
System Software
1 217 (9.91%) Active Directory
2 199 (9.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 126 (5.75%) Docker
4 92 (4.20%) VMware NSX
5 78 (3.56%) VMware ESXi
6 66 (3.01%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.42%) vSphere
8 27 (1.23%) vCloud
9 17 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
10 13 (0.59%) NFS
10 13 (0.59%) Oracle RAC
11 12 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
12 8 (0.37%) Firmware
13 6 (0.27%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.23%) Ceph
15 4 (0.18%) KVM
15 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 4 (0.18%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 207 (9.45%) Kubernetes
2 142 (6.48%) Ansible
3 87 (3.97%) vCenter Server
4 55 (2.51%) SCOM
5 33 (1.51%) SCCM
6 26 (1.19%) Prometheus
7 24 (1.10%) Grafana
8 22 (1.00%) Puppet
9 17 (0.78%) Nagios
10 16 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
10 16 (0.73%) Oracle RMAN
11 15 (0.68%) Podman
11 15 (0.68%) VxRail
12 14 (0.64%) Avamar
12 14 (0.64%) Data Guard
13 13 (0.59%) WMI
13 13 (0.59%) WSUS
14 12 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 12 (0.55%) Istio
15 11 (0.50%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 283 (12.92%) Microsoft
2 282 (12.88%) VMware
3 113 (5.16%) Oracle
4 103 (4.70%) ServiceNow
5 82 (3.74%) Cisco
6 61 (2.79%) SAP
7 60 (2.74%) Splunk
8 57 (2.60%) Google
9 40 (1.83%) SolarWinds
10 35 (1.60%) Red Hat
11 33 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 29 (1.32%) Juniper
13 25 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 24 (1.10%) Remedy
15 23 (1.05%) Citrix
15 23 (1.05%) Dell
16 20 (0.91%) BMC
16 20 (0.91%) NetApp
17 18 (0.82%) Sparx
18 17 (0.78%) Thales