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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 86 39
Rank change year-on-year +34 -47 +14
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,250 972 1,757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.10% 2.94% 4.67%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.90% 9.26% 15.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,638 685 1,140
10th Percentile £459 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £517 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £590 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -1.67% -
75th Percentile £700 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 36 84
10th Percentile £48.64 - £48.43
25th Percentile £60.00 £25.15 £56.65
Median hourly rate £74.32 £34.75 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year +113.87% -46.95% -9.44%
75th Percentile £92.53 £76.25 £80.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £87.38 £99.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.50 £70.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year +6.43% +6.87% -9.48%

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 17,448 10,498 11,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.78% 31.80% 29.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,584 6,552 6,692
10th Percentile £354 £282 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,444 883 595
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.87 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.53
Median hourly rate £44.48 £25.15 £48.18
Median % change year-on-year +76.86% -47.80% -10.25%
75th Percentile £71.43 £42.05 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.66%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 +32 2,126 £600 +3.45% 1,263
UK excluding London +20 1,624 £600 +4.35% 1,001
South East +7 842 £600 +4.35% 341
South West +7 532 £575 -8.00% 271
London +50 484 £625 - 245
Work from Home +51 356 £558 -11.51% 560
East of England +18 110 £650 +18.18% 161
North of England -21 57 £525 -2.33% 95
Midlands -76 45 £625 +6.38% 52
North West -5 41 £650 +30.00% 73
West Midlands -83 38 £600 +2.13% 25
Scotland -1 37 £669 +27.33% 75
Yorkshire -24 11 £510 - 9
East Midlands - 7 £638 - 27
Northern Ireland +7 5 £638 +6.25% 4
North East -36 5 £463 -26.00% 13
Wales -10 4 - - 9

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 74 (3.29%) Confluence
2 59 (2.62%) SharePoint
3 40 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 23 (1.02%) Apache
5 13 (0.58%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (0.36%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 7 (0.31%) IIS
9 6 (0.27%) nginx
10 4 (0.18%) Camunda
11 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
11 3 (0.13%) Tomcat
12 2 (0.089%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.089%) Mule
12 2 (0.089%) OpenStack
12 2 (0.089%) Oracle Service Bus
12 2 (0.089%) Palantir Foundry
12 2 (0.089%) WebLogic
Applications
1 66 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (2.18%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.84%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.76%) Revit
6 17 (0.76%) SOLIDWORKS
7 11 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.44%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.044%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Oracle ERP
2 19 (0.84%) Teamcenter
3 16 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
3 16 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.71%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 5 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.18%) Primavera
5 4 (0.18%) SAP PP
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
6 3 (0.13%) SAP EWM
7 2 (0.089%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.089%) Siebel CRM
8 1 (0.044%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.044%) Oracle Payroll
8 1 (0.044%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 316 (14.04%) Azure
2 297 (13.20%) AWS
3 119 (5.29%) GCP
4 63 (2.80%) Azure DevOps
5 58 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
6 50 (2.22%) GitHub
7 45 (2.00%) Entra ID
8 43 (1.91%) GitHub Actions
9 39 (1.73%) Serverless
10 36 (1.60%) OpenShift
11 35 (1.56%) Power Platform
12 30 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (1.33%) OCI
13 24 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
13 24 (1.07%) Amazon S3
14 22 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
15 19 (0.84%) Amazon SQS
15 19 (0.84%) Azure Monitor
16 17 (0.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 16 (0.71%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 166 (7.38%) DNS
2 127 (5.64%) Firewall
3 85 (3.78%) DHCP
4 80 (3.56%) Network Security
5 62 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 58 (2.58%) WAN
7 54 (2.40%) VPN
8 52 (2.31%) BGP
9 49 (2.18%) LAN
10 37 (1.64%) MPLS
11 36 (1.60%) VSAN
12 32 (1.42%) IPsec
13 29 (1.29%) VLAN
14 25 (1.11%) SSL
15 18 (0.80%) OSPF
15 18 (0.80%) SAN
15 18 (0.80%) SD-WAN
16 16 (0.71%) Cisco ASA
17 15 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
18 14 (0.62%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (2.49%) SQL Server
2 46 (2.04%) Oracle Database
3 37 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
4 30 (1.33%) Metadata
5 26 (1.16%) Relational Database
6 21 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
7 20 (0.89%) Power BI
8 19 (0.84%) MongoDB
9 18 (0.80%) Data Lake
10 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
11 13 (0.58%) Big Data
12 12 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (0.44%) Hadoop
14 9 (0.40%) MySQL
14 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
14 9 (0.40%) Parquet
15 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
15 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
15 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 112 (4.98%) JIRA
2 95 (4.22%) GitLab
3 91 (4.04%) Jenkins
4 87 (3.87%) Git
5 32 (1.42%) Selenium
6 16 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 14 (0.62%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.44%) JUnit
8 10 (0.44%) MSI
9 9 (0.40%) SonarQube
10 8 (0.36%) JMeter
10 8 (0.36%) Postman
10 8 (0.36%) REST Assured
11 7 (0.31%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.31%) Gatling
11 7 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.31%) SpecFlow
11 7 (0.31%) Visual Studio
12 6 (0.27%) Maven
13 5 (0.22%) TestNG
General
1 517 (22.98%) Social Skills
2 272 (12.09%) Public Sector
3 174 (7.73%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (6.36%) Finance
5 69 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
6 68 (3.02%) Military
7 50 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
8 39 (1.73%) Aerospace
9 38 (1.69%) Manufacturing
10 36 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
10 36 (1.60%) Police
11 33 (1.47%) Legal
12 31 (1.38%) Law
13 28 (1.24%) Telecoms
14 9 (0.40%) Local Government
14 9 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.31%) Marketing
16 6 (0.27%) Automotive
17 5 (0.22%) Back Office
18 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 387 (17.20%) Architect
2 225 (10.00%) Lead
3 205 (9.11%) Senior
4 155 (6.89%) Developer
5 154 (6.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 147 (6.53%) Consultant
7 138 (6.13%) Analyst
8 92 (4.09%) Security Architect
9 78 (3.47%) Network Engineer
10 71 (3.16%) SOC Analyst
11 70 (3.11%) Cloud Engineer
12 67 (2.98%) Support Engineer
13 58 (2.58%) DevOps Engineer
14 54 (2.40%) DBA
15 52 (2.31%) Project Manager
16 48 (2.13%) Solutions Architect
17 47 (2.09%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
18 44 (1.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 43 (1.91%) Technical Architect
20 42 (1.87%) Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 211 (9.38%) Terraform
2 80 (3.56%) REST
3 41 (1.82%) LDAP
4 32 (1.42%) React
5 30 (1.33%) Elastic Stack
6 29 (1.29%) Kafka
7 27 (1.20%) RESTful
7 27 (1.20%) SOAP
8 24 (1.07%) Apache NiFi
9 19 (0.84%) Node.js
9 19 (0.84%) XML
10 17 (0.76%) AngularJS
10 17 (0.76%) FastAPI
10 17 (0.76%) JSON
10 17 (0.76%) Keycloak
11 16 (0.71%) OAuth
11 16 (0.71%) Spring
12 15 (0.67%) Spring Boot
13 14 (0.62%) ARM Templates
13 14 (0.62%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 105 (4.67%) Cloud Native
2 102 (4.53%) Data Centre
3 101 (4.49%) PKI
4 89 (3.96%) Onboarding
5 47 (2.09%) Management Information System
6 42 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (1.87%) Product Ownership
7 38 (1.69%) Cyber Threat
8 37 (1.64%) Private Cloud
9 36 (1.60%) Security Operations Centre
10 30 (1.33%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
12 21 (0.93%) Public Cloud
13 20 (0.89%) Virtual Team
14 18 (0.80%) Clustering
14 18 (0.80%) CMDB
15 16 (0.71%) Legacy Systems
16 15 (0.67%) Replication
16 15 (0.67%) Video Conferencing
17 12 (0.53%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 390 (17.33%) Windows
2 254 (11.29%) Linux
3 183 (8.13%) Windows Server
4 46 (2.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.38%) Windows 10
6 29 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
7 23 (1.02%) Unix
8 22 (0.98%) Ubuntu
9 18 (0.80%) CentOS
10 12 (0.53%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (0.31%) Android
11 7 (0.31%) Mac OS
12 6 (0.27%) AIX
12 6 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.22%) Rocky
14 4 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 4 (0.18%) Debian
14 4 (0.18%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 388 (17.24%) Agile
2 298 (13.24%) Continuous Improvement
3 284 (12.62%) Stakeholder Management
4 281 (12.49%) CI/CD
5 249 (11.07%) DevOps
6 235 (10.44%) Problem-Solving
7 227 (10.09%) Cybersecurity
8 220 (9.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 219 (9.73%) Infrastructure as Code
10 215 (9.56%) Technical Leadership
11 200 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 189 (8.40%) ITIL
13 160 (7.11%) Containerisation
14 154 (6.84%) Service Management
15 150 (6.67%) ITSM
16 133 (5.91%) Project Delivery
17 131 (5.82%) SIEM
18 126 (5.60%) Decision-Making
19 123 (5.47%) Risk Management
20 117 (5.20%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 256 (11.38%) Python
2 193 (8.58%) PowerShell
3 140 (6.22%) SQL
4 101 (4.49%) Bash
5 77 (3.42%) Java
6 41 (1.82%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.69%) C#
8 29 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 21 (0.93%) Go
10 17 (0.76%) Bicep
11 13 (0.58%) PL/SQL
12 12 (0.53%) Search Processing Language
12 12 (0.53%) Shell Script
13 11 (0.49%) C++
14 8 (0.36%) Groovy
15 6 (0.27%) C
15 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.27%) Perl
15 6 (0.27%) X++
16 4 (0.18%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,250 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 698 (31.02%) SC Cleared
3 96 (4.27%) Degree
4 71 (3.16%) CISSP
5 40 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
5 40 (1.78%) CISM
6 30 (1.33%) AWS Certification
7 25 (1.11%) CCNP
7 25 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
8 24 (1.07%) ISTQB
8 24 (1.07%) PMI Certification
9 23 (1.02%) Azure Certification
9 23 (1.02%) VCAP
9 23 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 22 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
11 20 (0.89%) PMP
12 15 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
13 13 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
14 12 (0.53%) CCNA
14 12 (0.53%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (4.13%) NCSC
2 89 (3.96%) NIST
3 84 (3.73%) PMO
4 77 (3.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 68 (3.02%) QA
6 36 (1.60%) JSP 440
7 35 (1.56%) SLA
8 32 (1.42%) GDPR
9 31 (1.38%) Data Quality
10 24 (1.07%) GRC
11 20 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 17 (0.76%) Accessibility
13 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
14 11 (0.49%) NIST 800
15 10 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 8 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
16 8 (0.36%) WCAG
17 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
17 7 (0.31%) RMADS
18 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 250 (11.11%) Active Directory
2 196 (8.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 149 (6.62%) Docker
4 85 (3.78%) VMware NSX
5 71 (3.16%) VMware ESXi
6 62 (2.76%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.36%) vSphere
8 24 (1.07%) vCloud
9 19 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.62%) NFS
11 12 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
12 11 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
13 10 (0.44%) Firmware
14 5 (0.22%) KVM
15 3 (0.13%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 3 (0.13%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.13%) VirtualBox
16 2 (0.089%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 2 (0.089%) Squid
Systems Management
1 236 (10.49%) Kubernetes
2 164 (7.29%) Ansible
3 80 (3.56%) vCenter Server
4 59 (2.62%) SCOM
5 35 (1.56%) SCCM
6 31 (1.38%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.24%) Grafana
8 22 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
9 21 (0.93%) Nagios
9 21 (0.93%) Puppet
10 17 (0.76%) VxRail
11 16 (0.71%) WMI
12 15 (0.67%) Avamar
12 15 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
13 14 (0.62%) Podman
14 13 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 13 (0.58%) Data Guard
14 13 (0.58%) Progress Chef
14 13 (0.58%) WSUS
15 12 (0.53%) Istio
Vendors
1 322 (14.31%) Microsoft
2 265 (11.78%) VMware
3 123 (5.47%) Oracle
4 89 (3.96%) ServiceNow
5 72 (3.20%) Cisco
6 65 (2.89%) Google
7 54 (2.40%) Splunk
8 50 (2.22%) SAP
9 46 (2.04%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.96%) CyberArk
11 35 (1.56%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.02%) Juniper
14 22 (0.98%) Dell
15 19 (0.84%) Remedy
16 18 (0.80%) Atlassian
16 18 (0.80%) BMC
16 18 (0.80%) Broadcom
16 18 (0.80%) Citrix
16 18 (0.80%) Thales