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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 83 31
Rank change year-on-year +31 -52 +37
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 1,853 859 2,417
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.94% 2.94% 5.58%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.13% 9.58% 18.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,347 595 1,729
10th Percentile £416 £425 £412
25th Percentile £513 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £588 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -2.08% -
75th Percentile £680 £663 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £588 £598
% change year-on-year +2.13% -1.67% -0.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 25 113
10th Percentile £16.70 £45.50 £51.30
25th Percentile £32.54 £60.75 £57.33
Median hourly rate £55.25 £78.70 £67.81
Median % change year-on-year -29.80% +16.06% -1.72%
75th Percentile £75.44 £82.10 £85.00
90th Percentile £90.13 £88.32 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.25 £80.68 £68.67
% change year-on-year -31.52% +17.49% -8.45%

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 15,272 8,969 13,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.44% 30.74% 30.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,150 5,666 8,172
10th Percentile £350 £289 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.33% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £707 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £507 £530
% change year-on-year -1.38% -4.34% +0.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,116 512 1,072
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.86
Median hourly rate £47.50 £42.21 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.55% +5.51% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.09 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.00 £45.00 £40.31
% change year-on-year +4.44% +11.63% -18.64%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 +21 1,708 £581 -1.11% 339
UK excluding London +13 1,340 £600 +2.13% 288
South East +9 731 £600 +2.35% 132
London +34 368 £575 -4.17% 70
South West -4 318 £550 -8.33% 89
Work from Home +39 244 £560 -2.61% 127
East of England +11 93 £650 +18.18% 31
North of England -4 90 £690 +236.59% 28
North West +23 74 £760 +270.73% 18
Midlands -31 64 £563 -19.64% 18
West Midlands -39 48 £569 -18.75% 18
Scotland +33 41 £661 +20.14%
East Midlands -25 16 £550 -
Yorkshire -47 14 £538 -14.00% 9
Wales -8 5 - - 1
Northern Ireland - 4 £625 -
North East -16 2 £675 +22.73% 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 39 (2.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 33 (1.78%) Confluence
3 27 (1.46%) SharePoint
4 15 (0.81%) Apache
5 9 (0.49%) Apache Spark
5 9 (0.49%) Skype for Business
6 7 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
7 6 (0.32%) Mattermost
8 4 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
8 4 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.11%) nginx
10 1 (0.054%) OpenStack
Applications
1 51 (2.75%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
4 15 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.27%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.22%) Revit
7 4 (0.22%) SOLIDWORKS
8 2 (0.11%) Lectora
8 2 (0.11%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 27 (1.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (1.35%) Remedy ITSM
3 18 (0.97%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 6 (0.32%) Maximo
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.22%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.16%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.11%) Primavera
7 2 (0.11%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.054%) Oracle Applications
8 1 (0.054%) SAP CCM
8 1 (0.054%) SAP FI-GL
8 1 (0.054%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.054%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 176 (9.50%) AWS
2 141 (7.61%) Azure
3 52 (2.81%) GCP
4 46 (2.48%) IaaS
5 43 (2.32%) PaaS
6 40 (2.16%) GitHub
7 35 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
7 35 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
8 30 (1.62%) OpenShift
9 29 (1.57%) Serverless
10 26 (1.40%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (0.92%) Amazon S3
12 15 (0.81%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (0.81%) OCI
13 14 (0.76%) AWS Lambda
13 14 (0.76%) Power Platform
14 12 (0.65%) Amazon ECS
14 12 (0.65%) Amazon EKS
14 12 (0.65%) Azure AKS
14 12 (0.65%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 114 (6.15%) Firewall
2 98 (5.29%) DNS
3 72 (3.89%) Network Security
4 62 (3.35%) LAN
4 62 (3.35%) WAN
5 54 (2.91%) VPN
6 41 (2.21%) DHCP
7 40 (2.16%) BGP
8 30 (1.62%) OSPF
9 25 (1.35%) TCP/IP
10 22 (1.19%) Junos
11 20 (1.08%) VSAN
12 19 (1.03%) SAN
13 18 (0.97%) Ethernet VPN
14 17 (0.92%) Cisco ISE
14 17 (0.92%) VLAN
14 17 (0.92%) VXLAN
15 16 (0.86%) BIG-IP
15 16 (0.86%) MPLS
15 16 (0.86%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (1.35%) SQL Server
3 23 (1.24%) Elasticsearch
4 16 (0.86%) Oracle Database
5 15 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
6 13 (0.70%) MongoDB
7 11 (0.59%) Power BI
8 10 (0.54%) Hadoop
9 9 (0.49%) Big Data
9 9 (0.49%) MySQL
10 8 (0.43%) Relational Database
11 7 (0.38%) InfluxDB
11 7 (0.38%) Metadata
11 7 (0.38%) Redis
12 6 (0.32%) MariaDB
12 6 (0.32%) NoSQL
13 5 (0.27%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (0.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 4 (0.22%) DynamoDB
14 4 (0.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 73 (3.94%) JIRA
2 25 (1.35%) GitLab
3 24 (1.30%) Git
4 23 (1.24%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.49%) Cypress.io
5 9 (0.49%) Maven
6 8 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.32%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.32%) Robot Framework
8 4 (0.22%) Oracle APEX
9 3 (0.16%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.16%) MLflow
9 3 (0.16%) Selenium
9 3 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) ERwin
10 2 (0.11%) MSI
10 2 (0.11%) Postman
10 2 (0.11%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.11%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.054%) TestDirector
General
1 298 (16.08%) Social Skills
2 213 (11.49%) Public Sector
3 116 (6.26%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (4.37%) Finance
5 64 (3.45%) Military
6 53 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.48%) Legal
8 28 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
9 25 (1.35%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
11 22 (1.19%) Police
12 20 (1.08%) Aerospace
12 20 (1.08%) Law
13 13 (0.70%) Manufacturing
14 10 (0.54%) Electronics
15 9 (0.49%) Banking
15 9 (0.49%) Marketing
16 6 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
17 5 (0.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 3 (0.16%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 332 (17.92%) Architect
2 138 (7.45%) Lead
3 134 (7.23%) Senior
4 112 (6.04%) Analyst
5 97 (5.23%) Consultant
6 95 (5.13%) Network Engineer
7 91 (4.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 87 (4.70%) Technical Architect
9 75 (4.05%) Developer
10 59 (3.18%) SOC Analyst
11 57 (3.08%) Project Manager
11 57 (3.08%) Security Architect
11 57 (3.08%) Tester
12 55 (2.97%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
13 51 (2.75%) DevOps Engineer
14 44 (2.37%) Software Engineer
15 39 (2.10%) Designer
15 39 (2.10%) DV Cleared Project Manager
16 35 (1.89%) Administrator
16 35 (1.89%) Service Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (1.83%) REST
2 29 (1.57%) React
3 19 (1.03%) Elastic Stack
3 19 (1.03%) Node.js
4 17 (0.92%) Apache NiFi
5 16 (0.86%) 802.1X
5 16 (0.86%) Kafka
6 13 (0.70%) .NET
6 13 (0.70%) AngularJS
6 13 (0.70%) LDAP
7 12 (0.65%) ModSecurity
7 12 (0.65%) OAuth
8 11 (0.59%) Web Services
9 10 (0.54%) Flask
9 10 (0.54%) PyTorch
9 10 (0.54%) RESTful
9 10 (0.54%) SailPoint
9 10 (0.54%) SOAP
9 10 (0.54%) Spring
10 9 (0.49%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 96 (5.18%) PKI
2 68 (3.67%) Data Centre
3 50 (2.70%) Security Operations Centre
4 35 (1.89%) Cloud Native
5 31 (1.67%) Onboarding
6 29 (1.57%) Clustering
6 29 (1.57%) Management Information System
7 23 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
7 23 (1.24%) Product Ownership
8 20 (1.08%) Cyberattack
9 19 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
9 19 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
9 19 (1.03%) Public Cloud
10 16 (0.86%) Replication
10 16 (0.86%) Security Posture
11 14 (0.76%) Driving Licence
11 14 (0.76%) Enterprise Storage
11 14 (0.76%) Virtual Team
12 13 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
12 13 (0.70%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 259 (13.98%) Windows
2 205 (11.06%) Linux
3 82 (4.43%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.57%) Windows 10
5 26 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.70%) Ubuntu
7 12 (0.65%) Windows 7
8 11 (0.59%) Android
9 10 (0.54%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.43%) Unix
11 7 (0.38%) VMS
11 7 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.32%) CentOS
13 5 (0.27%) Data ONTAP
13 5 (0.27%) Debian
13 5 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 4 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.16%) Embedded Linux
16 2 (0.11%) AIX
16 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 305 (16.46%) Agile
2 190 (10.25%) Problem-Solving
3 153 (8.26%) ITIL
4 149 (8.04%) DevOps
5 141 (7.61%) CI/CD
6 139 (7.50%) Cybersecurity
7 132 (7.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 122 (6.58%) Service Management
9 116 (6.26%) Continuous Improvement
10 115 (6.21%) Stakeholder Management
11 113 (6.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 93 (5.02%) ITSM
13 87 (4.70%) Infrastructure as Code
14 86 (4.64%) Project Delivery
15 85 (4.59%) Decision-Making
16 79 (4.26%) Risk Management
17 75 (4.05%) SIEM
18 74 (3.99%) Project Management
19 73 (3.94%) Security Operations
20 72 (3.89%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 138 (7.45%) Python
2 107 (5.77%) PowerShell
3 58 (3.13%) SQL
4 46 (2.48%) Java
5 34 (1.83%) Bash
6 33 (1.78%) JavaScript
7 25 (1.35%) TypeScript
8 23 (1.24%) C#
9 15 (0.81%) Go
10 13 (0.70%) Shell Script
11 11 (0.59%) Bicep
12 10 (0.54%) C
12 10 (0.54%) C++
13 9 (0.49%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.43%) VB
15 7 (0.38%) VBScript
16 6 (0.32%) Embedded C
16 6 (0.32%) Rust
16 6 (0.32%) Search Processing Language
17 4 (0.22%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 1,853 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 589 (31.79%) SC Cleared
3 57 (3.08%) Degree
4 52 (2.81%) CISSP
5 50 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
6 38 (2.05%) CISM
7 26 (1.40%) CCNA
7 26 (1.40%) CompTIA Security+
7 26 (1.40%) Microsoft Certification
8 22 (1.19%) CCNP
9 19 (1.03%) CESG Certified Professional
10 18 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (0.92%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.92%) BPSS Clearance
11 17 (0.92%) GIAC
12 14 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 13 (0.70%) CompTIA CySA+
14 12 (0.65%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.65%) CEH
14 12 (0.65%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (4.37%) NIST
2 62 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.86%) PMO
4 48 (2.59%) NCSC
5 41 (2.21%) QA
6 38 (2.05%) JSP 440
7 23 (1.24%) GRC
8 21 (1.13%) RMADS
9 20 (1.08%) SLA
10 12 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
11 11 (0.59%) GDPR
11 11 (0.59%) NIST 800
12 10 (0.54%) Data Quality
13 9 (0.49%) Accessibility
13 9 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 6 (0.32%) WCAG
15 5 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
16 4 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 4 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 4 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 120 (6.48%) Active Directory
2 107 (5.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 92 (4.96%) Docker
4 54 (2.91%) VMware NSX
5 43 (2.32%) VMware ESXi
6 36 (1.94%) Hyper-V
7 22 (1.19%) vSphere
8 15 (0.81%) BitLocker
9 12 (0.65%) Firmware
9 12 (0.65%) vCloud
10 8 (0.43%) Microsoft App-V
11 7 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.22%) UAG
13 4 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
14 3 (0.16%) Ceph
14 3 (0.16%) GPFS
14 3 (0.16%) Lustre
14 3 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 2 (0.11%) Squid
Systems Management
1 134 (7.23%) Kubernetes
2 119 (6.42%) Terraform
3 81 (4.37%) Ansible
4 55 (2.97%) vCenter Server
5 40 (2.16%) SCCM
6 26 (1.40%) Grafana
7 24 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 24 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
8 21 (1.13%) Prometheus
9 15 (0.81%) FortiGate
9 15 (0.81%) Puppet
10 13 (0.70%) SCOM
11 12 (0.65%) Nessus
11 12 (0.65%) Progress Chef
12 11 (0.59%) Podman
13 10 (0.54%) Forefront Identity Manager
13 10 (0.54%) NetIQ Identity Manager
13 10 (0.54%) WMI
14 9 (0.49%) WSUS
15 8 (0.43%) vMotion
Vendors
1 198 (10.69%) Microsoft
2 196 (10.58%) VMware
3 110 (5.94%) Cisco
4 63 (3.40%) Splunk
5 60 (3.24%) ServiceNow
6 50 (2.70%) NetApp
6 50 (2.70%) SAP
7 49 (2.64%) Juniper
8 47 (2.54%) Oracle
9 37 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 28 (1.51%) F5
11 26 (1.40%) Remedy
12 25 (1.35%) SolarWinds
13 23 (1.24%) Fortinet
14 22 (1.19%) Dell
15 19 (1.03%) Palo Alto
15 19 (1.03%) Sparx
16 17 (0.92%) Google
17 16 (0.86%) Citrix
18 15 (0.81%) Veeam