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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 88 39
Rank change year-on-year +36 -49 +13
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,240 977 1,769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.11% 2.95% 4.66%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.90% 9.25% 15.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,625 688 1,144
10th Percentile £463 £463 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £600
75th Percentile £691 £675 £688
90th Percentile £760 £738 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £575 £598
% change year-on-year +4.35% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 35 85
10th Percentile £48.70 - £48.51
25th Percentile £60.08 £25.15 £56.65
Median hourly rate £74.41 £32.00 £65.50
Median % change year-on-year +132.53% -51.15% -9.44%
75th Percentile £92.43 £73.00 £80.00
90th Percentile £99.65 £86.35 £99.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.68 £70.00 £64.47
% change year-on-year +6.69% +8.59% -10.87%

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 17,360 10,559 11,139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.85% 31.84% 29.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,510 6,590 6,740
10th Percentile £356 £282 £311
25th Percentile £448 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £631
90th Percentile £713 £704 £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 1,448 891 595
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.69 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.43
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.52%
75th Percentile £71.69 £41.71 £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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +29 2,119 £600 +2.13% 1,214
UK excluding London +20 1,618 £600 +4.35% 931
South East +6 841 £600 +4.35% 305
South West +7 534 £575 -8.00% 245
London +40 481 £625 - 264
Work from Home +54 351 £560 -12.50% 551
East of England +17 109 £650 +18.18% 166
North of England -19 54 £525 -2.33% 82
Midlands -78 43 £625 +5.26% 48
North West -18 38 £600 +20.00% 61
West Midlands -82 37 £600 +1.05% 25
Scotland -5 36 £597 +13.67% 81
Yorkshire -24 11 £510 - 8
East Midlands - 6 £644 - 23
Northern Ireland +7 5 £638 +6.25% 4
North East -37 5 £463 -26.00% 13
Wales -9 4 - - 7

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 72 (3.21%) Confluence
2 58 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 39 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 23 (1.03%) Apache
5 13 (0.58%) Apache Spark
6 11 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 9 (0.40%) CMS
8 7 (0.31%) Documentum
8 7 (0.31%) IIS
9 6 (0.27%) nginx
10 4 (0.18%) Camunda
10 4 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
11 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
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 (2.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (2.19%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
5 19 (0.85%) AutoCAD
6 17 (0.76%) Revit
6 17 (0.76%) SOLIDWORKS
7 11 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.45%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.045%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Oracle ERP
2 20 (0.89%) 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 (0.045%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.045%) Oracle Payroll
8 1 (0.045%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 320 (14.29%) Azure
2 294 (13.13%) AWS
3 120 (5.36%) GCP
4 63 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
5 55 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
6 49 (2.19%) GitHub
7 46 (2.05%) Entra ID
8 43 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
9 40 (1.79%) Serverless
10 36 (1.61%) OpenShift
10 36 (1.61%) Power Platform
11 30 (1.34%) AWS Lambda
11 30 (1.34%) OCI
12 24 (1.07%) Amazon S3
13 23 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
14 22 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
14 22 (0.98%) Azure Monitor
15 19 (0.85%) Amazon SQS
16 17 (0.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 16 (0.71%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 166 (7.41%) DNS
2 129 (5.76%) Firewall
3 85 (3.79%) DHCP
4 80 (3.57%) Network Security
5 64 (2.86%) TCP/IP
6 57 (2.54%) VPN
6 57 (2.54%) WAN
7 52 (2.32%) BGP
8 48 (2.14%) LAN
9 37 (1.65%) MPLS
10 36 (1.61%) VSAN
11 32 (1.43%) IPsec
12 29 (1.29%) VLAN
13 25 (1.12%) SSL
14 18 (0.80%) OSPF
14 18 (0.80%) SD-WAN
15 16 (0.71%) Cisco ASA
15 16 (0.71%) SAN
16 15 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
17 14 (0.63%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (2.41%) SQL Server
2 48 (2.14%) Oracle Database
3 35 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
4 30 (1.34%) Metadata
5 26 (1.16%) Relational Database
6 21 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
6 21 (0.94%) Power BI
7 19 (0.85%) MongoDB
8 18 (0.80%) Data Lake
9 15 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (0.58%) Big Data
11 12 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (0.45%) Hadoop
13 9 (0.40%) NoSQL
13 9 (0.40%) Parquet
14 8 (0.36%) BigQuery
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 11g
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
14 8 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 110 (4.91%) JIRA
2 95 (4.24%) GitLab
3 91 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 88 (3.93%) Git
5 32 (1.43%) Selenium
6 16 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 14 (0.63%) Cucumber
8 10 (0.45%) JUnit
8 10 (0.45%) 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
1 520 (23.21%) Social Skills
2 269 (12.01%) Public Sector
3 174 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (6.47%) Finance
5 67 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
6 65 (2.90%) Military
7 50 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
8 42 (1.88%) Aerospace
9 40 (1.79%) Manufacturing
10 38 (1.70%) Police
11 36 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
12 35 (1.56%) Legal
13 31 (1.38%) Law
14 27 (1.21%) Telecoms
15 9 (0.40%) Local Government
15 9 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.31%) Marketing
17 6 (0.27%) Automotive
18 5 (0.22%) Back Office
19 4 (0.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 385 (17.19%) Architect
2 225 (10.04%) Lead
3 202 (9.02%) Senior
4 156 (6.96%) Developer
5 152 (6.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 150 (6.70%) Consultant
7 136 (6.07%) Analyst
8 92 (4.11%) Security Architect
9 78 (3.48%) Network Engineer
10 70 (3.13%) SOC Analyst
11 69 (3.08%) Cloud Engineer
12 68 (3.04%) Support Engineer
13 54 (2.41%) DevOps Engineer
14 53 (2.37%) DBA
15 48 (2.14%) Solutions Architect
16 47 (2.10%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
16 47 (2.10%) Project Manager
17 44 (1.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 42 (1.88%) Enterprise Architect
19 41 (1.83%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 211 (9.42%) Terraform
2 80 (3.57%) REST
3 41 (1.83%) LDAP
4 32 (1.43%) React
5 30 (1.34%) Elastic Stack
6 29 (1.29%) Kafka
7 27 (1.21%) RESTful
7 27 (1.21%) SOAP
8 24 (1.07%) Apache NiFi
9 20 (0.89%) Node.js
9 20 (0.89%) XML
10 18 (0.80%) JSON
11 17 (0.76%) AngularJS
11 17 (0.76%) ARM Templates
11 17 (0.76%) FastAPI
11 17 (0.76%) Keycloak
12 16 (0.71%) OAuth
12 16 (0.71%) Spring
13 15 (0.67%) Spring Boot
14 14 (0.63%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 103 (4.60%) Cloud Native
2 100 (4.46%) Data Centre
2 100 (4.46%) PKI
3 88 (3.93%) Onboarding
4 49 (2.19%) Management Information System
5 43 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 42 (1.88%) Product Ownership
7 39 (1.74%) Cyber Threat
8 36 (1.61%) Security Operations Centre
9 35 (1.56%) Private Cloud
10 30 (1.34%) Security Posture
11 25 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 20 (0.89%) Public Cloud
13 19 (0.85%) CMDB
13 19 (0.85%) Virtual Team
14 18 (0.80%) Clustering
15 17 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
16 16 (0.71%) Replication
17 15 (0.67%) Video Conferencing
18 12 (0.54%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 389 (17.37%) Windows
2 252 (11.25%) Linux
3 184 (8.21%) Windows Server
4 45 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (1.38%) Windows 10
6 30 (1.34%) Windows Server 2019
7 23 (1.03%) Unix
8 22 (0.98%) Ubuntu
9 18 (0.80%) CentOS
10 13 (0.58%) 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
13 5 (0.22%) VMS
14 4 (0.18%) OpenVMS
14 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 385 (17.19%) Agile
2 300 (13.39%) Continuous Improvement
3 286 (12.77%) Stakeholder Management
4 280 (12.50%) CI/CD
5 250 (11.16%) DevOps
6 232 (10.36%) Problem-Solving
7 228 (10.18%) Cybersecurity
8 218 (9.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 217 (9.69%) Infrastructure as Code
10 214 (9.55%) Technical Leadership
11 197 (8.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 189 (8.44%) ITIL
13 158 (7.05%) Containerisation
13 158 (7.05%) Service Management
14 150 (6.70%) ITSM
15 131 (5.85%) Project Delivery
16 130 (5.80%) SIEM
17 125 (5.58%) Decision-Making
17 125 (5.58%) Risk Management
18 115 (5.13%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 256 (11.43%) Python
2 193 (8.62%) PowerShell
3 143 (6.38%) SQL
4 101 (4.51%) Bash
5 79 (3.53%) Java
6 41 (1.83%) JavaScript
7 38 (1.70%) C#
8 29 (1.29%) TypeScript
9 22 (0.98%) Go
10 20 (0.89%) Bicep
11 14 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 13 (0.58%) Shell Script
13 12 (0.54%) Search Processing Language
14 11 (0.49%) C++
15 8 (0.36%) Groovy
16 6 (0.27%) C
16 6 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
16 6 (0.27%) Perl
16 6 (0.27%) X++
17 4 (0.18%) Rust
Qualifications
1 2,240 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 690 (30.80%) SC Cleared
3 95 (4.24%) Degree
4 72 (3.21%) CISSP
5 41 (1.83%) CISM
6 38 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 30 (1.34%) AWS Certification
8 25 (1.12%) PMI Certification
9 24 (1.07%) CCNP
9 24 (1.07%) ISTQB
10 23 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (1.03%) VCAP
11 22 (0.98%) Azure Certification
11 22 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
12 20 (0.89%) PMP
12 20 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 15 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
14 13 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
15 11 (0.49%) CCNA
15 11 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 94 (4.20%) NCSC
2 87 (3.88%) NIST
3 84 (3.75%) PMO
4 76 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 67 (2.99%) QA
6 35 (1.56%) Data Quality
6 35 (1.56%) JSP 440
7 34 (1.52%) SLA
8 32 (1.43%) GDPR
9 24 (1.07%) GRC
10 20 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 17 (0.76%) Accessibility
12 13 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
13 11 (0.49%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 8 (0.36%) WCAG
16 7 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
16 7 (0.31%) ISO 9000
16 7 (0.31%) RMADS
17 5 (0.22%) Def Stans
System Software
1 251 (11.21%) Active Directory
2 193 (8.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 147 (6.56%) Docker
4 84 (3.75%) VMware NSX
5 69 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
6 60 (2.68%) Hyper-V
7 53 (2.37%) vSphere
8 24 (1.07%) vCloud
9 18 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (0.63%) NFS
11 12 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
12 11 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
13 10 (0.45%) 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
1 234 (10.45%) Kubernetes
2 165 (7.37%) Ansible
3 78 (3.48%) vCenter Server
4 59 (2.63%) SCOM
5 37 (1.65%) SCCM
6 31 (1.38%) Prometheus
7 28 (1.25%) Grafana
8 24 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
9 22 (0.98%) Nagios
10 21 (0.94%) Puppet
11 17 (0.76%) VxRail
12 16 (0.71%) WMI
13 15 (0.67%) Avamar
13 15 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
14 13 (0.58%) Data Guard
14 13 (0.58%) Podman
14 13 (0.58%) Progress Chef
15 12 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 12 (0.54%) Istio
15 12 (0.54%) WSUS
Vendors
1 319 (14.24%) Microsoft
2 260 (11.61%) VMware
3 126 (5.63%) Oracle
4 87 (3.88%) ServiceNow
5 69 (3.08%) Cisco
6 66 (2.95%) Google
7 54 (2.41%) Splunk
8 53 (2.37%) SAP
9 47 (2.10%) SolarWinds
10 44 (1.96%) CyberArk
11 34 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 25 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 23 (1.03%) Juniper
14 22 (0.98%) Dell
15 20 (0.89%) Remedy
16 18 (0.80%) BMC
16 18 (0.80%) Broadcom
16 18 (0.80%) Thales
17 17 (0.76%) Atlassian
17 17 (0.76%) Citrix