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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 79 33
Rank change year-on-year +30 -46 +24
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,161 1,012 2,044
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.05% 3.05% 5.27%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.93% 9.80% 17.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,658 703 1,457
10th Percentile £450 £461 £425
25th Percentile £513 £522 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year - - +1.69%
75th Percentile £700 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £715 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £585 £600
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 39 100
10th Percentile £35.00 - £48.94
25th Percentile £41.25 £25.15 £57.20
Median hourly rate £68.00 £61.50 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year +10.58% -12.64% +0.56%
75th Percentile £92.53 £82.05 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.29 £87.77 £90.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £81.35 £70.39
% change year-on-year -16.41% +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 16,716 10,328 11,628
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.34% 31.15% 29.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,172 6,378 7,405
10th Percentile £350 £290 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £715 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,263 804 850
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £15.08
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.14 £21.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £73.23 £53.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £73.75 £77.50
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 10 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 10 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 10 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 2,025 £600 - 1,032
UK excluding London +13 1,546 £600 +2.56% 808
South East +5 907 £600 - 273
London +44 454 £600 -4.00% 276
South West 0 392 £588 -2.08% 261
Work from Home +54 326 £575 -2.54% 501
East of England +15 93 £650 +18.18% 122
North of England -1 68 £775 +24.00% 91
Midlands -60 47 £600 - 22
North West -1 46 £825 - 75
West Midlands -67 41 £600 - 14
Scotland +15 37 £669 +30.44% 40
Yorkshire -26 17 £518 -17.20% 14
East Midlands -3 6 £631 +14.77% 8
North East -38 5 £463 -26.00% 6
Northern Ireland +9 4 £638 - 6
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 58 (2.68%) Confluence
2 39 (1.80%) SharePoint
3 38 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.42%) Apache
5 8 (0.37%) Apache Spark
6 7 (0.32%) Documentum
7 6 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
8 5 (0.23%) CMS
9 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
9 3 (0.14%) nginx
10 2 (0.093%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.093%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.093%) Mule
10 2 (0.093%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
10 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.093%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.046%) JBoss
Applications
1 57 (2.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (2.17%) Microsoft Project
3 22 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 19 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
5 13 (0.60%) AutoCAD
5 13 (0.60%) Revit
5 13 (0.60%) SOLIDWORKS
5 13 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.19%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.14%) Simulink
8 2 (0.093%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 31 (1.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 25 (1.16%) Oracle ERP
4 18 (0.83%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 14 (0.65%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.28%) SAP EWM
7 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
8 4 (0.19%) Primavera
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 3 (0.14%) SAP FI
9 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 2 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
10 2 (0.093%) 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
1 272 (12.59%) Azure
2 261 (12.08%) AWS
3 109 (5.04%) GCP
4 56 (2.59%) Azure DevOps
5 47 (2.17%) GitHub
6 41 (1.90%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
7 40 (1.85%) IaaS
8 38 (1.76%) Serverless
9 37 (1.71%) PaaS
9 37 (1.71%) Power Platform
10 35 (1.62%) OCI
11 34 (1.57%) Entra ID
12 25 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
13 24 (1.11%) OpenShift
14 21 (0.97%) Amazon EKS
15 20 (0.93%) SaaS
16 19 (0.88%) Amazon S3
16 19 (0.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 18 (0.83%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 156 (7.22%) DNS
2 131 (6.06%) Firewall
3 79 (3.66%) DHCP
4 77 (3.56%) WAN
5 73 (3.38%) LAN
6 72 (3.33%) Network Security
7 57 (2.64%) BGP
8 49 (2.27%) VPN
9 47 (2.17%) TCP/IP
10 41 (1.90%) VSAN
11 34 (1.57%) IPsec
12 30 (1.39%) MPLS
12 30 (1.39%) OSPF
13 27 (1.25%) VLAN
14 23 (1.06%) VXLAN
15 20 (0.93%) Ethernet VPN
16 18 (0.83%) BIG-IP
16 18 (0.83%) SSL
17 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.74%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (1.99%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.76%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.48%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.06%) Power BI
5 21 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
6 18 (0.83%) Metadata
7 14 (0.65%) Data Lake
7 14 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (0.46%) MongoDB
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 6 (0.28%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.23%) Redis
Development Applications
1 101 (4.67%) JIRA
2 54 (2.50%) GitLab
3 49 (2.27%) Jenkins
4 41 (1.90%) Git
5 13 (0.60%) 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 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.19%) Cucumber
9 4 (0.19%) MSI
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
10 3 (0.14%) Toad
General
1 411 (19.02%) Social Skills
2 285 (13.19%) Public Sector
3 149 (6.89%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (6.34%) Finance
5 69 (3.19%) Military
6 54 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
7 42 (1.94%) Legal
8 41 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
9 28 (1.30%) Law
9 28 (1.30%) Police
10 25 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (0.97%) Telecoms
12 19 (0.88%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
14 13 (0.60%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.37%) Local Government
16 7 (0.32%) Marketing
17 5 (0.23%) Advertising
18 4 (0.19%) Aviation
18 4 (0.19%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 337 (15.59%) Architect
2 247 (11.43%) Lead
3 206 (9.53%) Senior
4 152 (7.03%) Developer
5 149 (6.89%) Analyst
6 146 (6.76%) Consultant
7 141 (6.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 90 (4.16%) Network Engineer
9 87 (4.03%) Security Architect
10 77 (3.56%) SOC Analyst
11 67 (3.10%) Technical Architect
12 62 (2.87%) Project Manager
13 57 (2.64%) Cloud Engineer
14 49 (2.27%) DBA
14 49 (2.27%) DevOps Engineer
14 49 (2.27%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 48 (2.22%) Support Engineer
16 47 (2.17%) Senior Network Engineer
17 44 (2.04%) DV Cleared Project Manager
18 43 (1.99%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (3.33%) REST
2 33 (1.53%) Elastic Stack
3 26 (1.20%) SOAP
4 25 (1.16%) React
5 20 (0.93%) Kafka
6 19 (0.88%) RESTful
7 18 (0.83%) 802.1X
8 16 (0.74%) Node.js
9 15 (0.69%) .NET
9 15 (0.69%) Oracle Fusion
10 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
10 14 (0.65%) Spring
10 14 (0.65%) Spring Boot
11 13 (0.60%) AngularJS
11 13 (0.60%) Apache NiFi
11 13 (0.60%) Flask
12 11 (0.51%) OAuth
12 11 (0.51%) XML
13 10 (0.46%) ModSecurity
13 10 (0.46%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 106 (4.91%) Data Centre
2 101 (4.67%) PKI
3 80 (3.70%) Cloud Native
4 63 (2.92%) Onboarding
5 51 (2.36%) Security Operations Centre
6 37 (1.71%) Private Cloud
6 37 (1.71%) Product Ownership
7 36 (1.67%) Clustering
7 36 (1.67%) Hybrid Cloud
8 33 (1.53%) Management Information System
9 31 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
10 28 (1.30%) Public Cloud
11 25 (1.16%) CMDB
11 25 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
11 25 (1.16%) Security Posture
12 20 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
12 20 (0.93%) Virtual Team
13 15 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
14 14 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
15 13 (0.60%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 319 (14.76%) Windows
2 222 (10.27%) Linux
3 148 (6.85%) Windows Server
4 28 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
6 21 (0.97%) Windows 10
7 14 (0.65%) Unix
8 9 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
9 8 (0.37%) VMS
10 7 (0.32%) Mac OS
11 6 (0.28%) AIX
11 6 (0.28%) Android
11 6 (0.28%) CentOS
11 6 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.23%) Debian
12 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
12 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
13 4 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 375 (17.35%) Agile
2 221 (10.23%) Stakeholder Management
3 219 (10.13%) Continuous Improvement
4 214 (9.90%) Problem-Solving
5 212 (9.81%) CI/CD
6 207 (9.58%) Cybersecurity
7 199 (9.21%) ITIL
8 191 (8.84%) DevOps
9 186 (8.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 180 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 154 (7.13%) Infrastructure as Code
12 151 (6.99%) Service Management
13 144 (6.66%) Technical Leadership
14 131 (6.06%) ITSM
15 119 (5.51%) Project Delivery
16 114 (5.28%) Risk Management
17 112 (5.18%) Decision-Making
18 110 (5.09%) Containerisation
19 109 (5.04%) Service Delivery
20 104 (4.81%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 195 (9.02%) Python
2 154 (7.13%) PowerShell
3 109 (5.04%) SQL
4 73 (3.38%) Bash
5 61 (2.82%) Java
6 43 (1.99%) JavaScript
7 34 (1.57%) C#
8 25 (1.16%) TypeScript
9 17 (0.79%) Bicep
9 17 (0.79%) Go
10 14 (0.65%) PL/SQL
10 14 (0.65%) 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 2,161 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 732 (33.87%) SC Cleared
3 74 (3.42%) Degree
4 59 (2.73%) CISSP
5 44 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
6 34 (1.57%) CISM
7 29 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 23 (1.06%) AWS Certification
8 23 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 22 (1.02%) PMI Certification
10 20 (0.93%) PMP
11 19 (0.88%) VCAP
12 17 (0.79%) ISTQB
12 17 (0.79%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.69%) Azure Certification
13 15 (0.69%) CCNP
13 15 (0.69%) MCSE
14 14 (0.65%) BPSS Clearance
14 14 (0.65%) CCNA
15 13 (0.60%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (3.75%) PMO
2 77 (3.56%) NCSC
3 71 (3.29%) NIST
4 55 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 53 (2.45%) QA
6 33 (1.53%) JSP 440
7 28 (1.30%) GDPR
8 24 (1.11%) Data Quality
8 24 (1.11%) SLA
9 19 (0.88%) GRC
10 17 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 17 (0.79%) RMADS
11 16 (0.74%) Government Security Classifications
12 14 (0.65%) Accessibility
13 11 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 10 (0.46%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 8 (0.37%) WCAG
16 7 (0.32%) ISO 9000
17 6 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 5 (0.23%) Def Stans
System Software
1 186 (8.61%) VMware Infrastructure
2 181 (8.38%) Active Directory
3 123 (5.69%) Docker
4 94 (4.35%) VMware NSX
5 65 (3.01%) VMware ESXi
6 59 (2.73%) Hyper-V
7 46 (2.13%) vSphere
8 23 (1.06%) vCloud
9 17 (0.79%) 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
13 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
14 5 (0.23%) Ceph
14 5 (0.23%) Firmware
15 4 (0.19%) Squid
15 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.14%) KVM
16 3 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 184 (8.51%) Terraform
2 181 (8.38%) Kubernetes
3 123 (5.69%) Ansible
4 80 (3.70%) vCenter Server
5 46 (2.13%) SCOM
6 32 (1.48%) SCCM
7 24 (1.11%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.02%) Grafana
8 22 (1.02%) Puppet
9 15 (0.69%) Nagios
9 15 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
9 15 (0.69%) Podman
10 14 (0.65%) Avamar
10 14 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
10 14 (0.65%) VxRail
11 13 (0.60%) Data Guard
11 13 (0.60%) FortiGate
12 12 (0.56%) WSUS
13 10 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.46%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 261 (12.08%) Microsoft
2 256 (11.85%) VMware
3 115 (5.32%) ServiceNow
4 100 (4.63%) Oracle
5 94 (4.35%) Cisco
6 61 (2.82%) Splunk
7 57 (2.64%) SAP
8 52 (2.41%) Google
9 51 (2.36%) Juniper
10 46 (2.13%) SolarWinds
11 32 (1.48%) Red Hat
12 30 (1.39%) Remedy
13 28 (1.30%) F5
14 26 (1.20%) Palo Alto
15 25 (1.16%) Citrix
16 24 (1.11%) Dell
16 24 (1.11%) NetApp
17 20 (0.93%) BMC
17 20 (0.93%) CyberArk
18 18 (0.83%) Sparx