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 15 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 80 31
Rank change year-on-year +33 -49 +26
Contract jobs citing DV Cleared 2,146 972 2,396
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.08% 3.00% 5.60%
As % of the Qualifications category 13.02% 9.75% 18.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,630 674 1,685
10th Percentile £430 £459 £425
25th Percentile £513 £519 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -2.08% -
75th Percentile £688 £650 £688
90th Percentile £750 £713 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £580 £600
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% +1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 37 125
10th Percentile £26.68 £25.15 £48.64
25th Percentile £35.00 £31.00 £56.65
Median hourly rate £56.00 £65.00 £70.39
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -7.66% +0.56%
75th Percentile £76.75 £82.10 £85.00
90th Percentile £94.75 £88.05 £87.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.00 £81.01 £70.39
% change year-on-year -29.64% +15.09% -6.15%

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 16,487 9,965 12,767
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.33% 30.71% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,019 6,179 7,959
10th Percentile £350 £281 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,190 716 1,085
10th Percentile £17.86 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.44 £20.47
Median hourly rate £52.50 £26.81 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +95.80% -35.39% -24.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £58.34 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.41 £75.00 £75.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +108.75% -41.51% -19.87%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 1,992 £600 +1.69% 457
UK excluding London +9 1,526 £600 +3.45% 381
South East +6 849 £600 - 174
London +68 444 £600 - 91
South West -1 396 £575 -4.17% 128
Work from Home +47 328 £565 -3.83% 145
East of England +14 102 £650 +18.18% 29
North of England -7 78 £775 +24.00% 26
Midlands -51 58 £600 - 22
North West +1 54 £800 +18.52% 21
West Midlands -70 46 £600 - 16
Scotland +24 41 £659 +31.85% 8
Yorkshire -36 20 £510 -18.40% 2
East Midlands -2 12 £625 +13.64% 6
Northern Ireland +6 5 £619 -
Wales -8 4 - - 1
North East -36 4 £463 -26.00% 3

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 (2.70%) Confluence
2 43 (2.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 40 (1.86%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.37%) Apache
4 8 (0.37%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.33%) Documentum
6 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
7 5 (0.23%) CMS
8 2 (0.093%) nginx
8 2 (0.093%) Oracle Service Bus
8 2 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.093%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.093%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.093%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.047%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.047%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.047%) Mule
9 1 (0.047%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 44 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 34 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
3 24 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
4 16 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.47%) AutoCAD
5 10 (0.47%) Revit
5 10 (0.47%) SOLIDWORKS
6 9 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 6 (0.28%) MS Visio
8 3 (0.14%) Simulink
9 2 (0.093%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 31 (1.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 27 (1.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 19 (0.89%) Oracle ERP
3 19 (0.89%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 13 (0.61%) Teamcenter
5 7 (0.33%) SAP EWM
6 5 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 4 (0.19%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.14%) SAP GRC
8 3 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 2 (0.093%) Primavera
9 2 (0.093%) Siebel CRM
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 1 (0.047%) SAP CCM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP FI-GL
10 1 (0.047%) SAP HR
10 1 (0.047%) SAP PLM
10 1 (0.047%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 243 (11.32%) AWS
2 239 (11.14%) Azure
3 95 (4.43%) GCP
4 55 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
5 53 (2.47%) GitHub
6 44 (2.05%) GitHub Actions
7 39 (1.82%) Microsoft 365
8 38 (1.77%) IaaS
9 37 (1.72%) PaaS
10 35 (1.63%) Serverless
11 30 (1.40%) Power Platform
12 28 (1.30%) OpenShift
13 25 (1.16%) Entra ID
14 24 (1.12%) OCI
15 20 (0.93%) AWS Lambda
16 18 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
16 18 (0.84%) SaaS
17 16 (0.75%) Amazon ECS
17 16 (0.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
18 15 (0.70%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 134 (6.24%) DNS
2 121 (5.64%) Firewall
3 81 (3.77%) Network Security
4 72 (3.36%) WAN
5 68 (3.17%) LAN
6 64 (2.98%) DHCP
7 56 (2.61%) BGP
8 50 (2.33%) VPN
9 35 (1.63%) TCP/IP
10 33 (1.54%) OSPF
11 29 (1.35%) VLAN
12 28 (1.30%) IPsec
12 28 (1.30%) MPLS
12 28 (1.30%) VSAN
13 22 (1.03%) VXLAN
14 20 (0.93%) Ethernet VPN
15 19 (0.89%) Cisco ASA
16 18 (0.84%) BIG-IP
17 17 (0.79%) SD-WAN
18 16 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (2.10%) SQL Server
2 38 (1.77%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
4 26 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
5 22 (1.03%) Power BI
6 15 (0.70%) Metadata
7 13 (0.61%) Data Warehouse
8 9 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (0.42%) Data Lake
8 9 (0.42%) MongoDB
9 8 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
10 7 (0.33%) Hadoop
10 7 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
10 7 (0.33%) Redis
11 6 (0.28%) Big Data
11 6 (0.28%) BigQuery
11 6 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 5 (0.23%) MariaDB
12 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 4 (0.19%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 94 (4.38%) JIRA
2 47 (2.19%) GitLab
3 45 (2.10%) Jenkins
4 36 (1.68%) Git
5 13 (0.61%) Cypress.io
6 9 (0.42%) Selenium
7 6 (0.28%) REST Assured
7 6 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.23%) SpecFlow
9 4 (0.19%) Postman
9 4 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.19%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.14%) Appium
10 3 (0.14%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.14%) ERwin
10 3 (0.14%) MLflow
10 3 (0.14%) Robot Framework
11 2 (0.093%) SoapUI
General
1 358 (16.68%) Social Skills
2 277 (12.91%) Public Sector
3 136 (6.34%) Analytical Skills
4 110 (5.13%) Finance
5 78 (3.63%) Military
6 54 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.14%) Legal
8 29 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
9 25 (1.16%) Law
10 23 (1.07%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.07%) Telecoms
11 20 (0.93%) Police
12 18 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (0.75%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.37%) Marketing
16 6 (0.28%) Local Government
17 4 (0.19%) Advertising
18 3 (0.14%) Aviation
18 3 (0.14%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 325 (15.14%) Architect
2 223 (10.39%) Lead
3 189 (8.81%) Senior
4 150 (6.99%) Analyst
5 142 (6.62%) Developer
6 137 (6.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 129 (6.01%) Consultant
8 87 (4.05%) Network Engineer
9 79 (3.68%) Security Architect
9 79 (3.68%) SOC Analyst
10 77 (3.59%) Technical Architect
11 57 (2.66%) Project Manager
12 51 (2.38%) DBA
13 49 (2.28%) DevOps Engineer
13 49 (2.28%) Tester
14 48 (2.24%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
15 47 (2.19%) Service Manager
16 46 (2.14%) Cloud Engineer
17 44 (2.05%) Network Architect
18 42 (1.96%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (3.12%) REST
2 31 (1.44%) Elastic Stack
3 27 (1.26%) React
4 24 (1.12%) SOAP
5 20 (0.93%) Kafka
6 19 (0.89%) 802.1X
7 18 (0.84%) Node.js
7 18 (0.84%) RESTful
8 16 (0.75%) Spring
9 15 (0.70%) Flask
9 15 (0.70%) Spring Boot
10 14 (0.65%) .NET
10 14 (0.65%) AngularJS
10 14 (0.65%) FastAPI
11 13 (0.61%) Apache NiFi
12 11 (0.51%) ModSecurity
13 10 (0.47%) LDAP
14 9 (0.42%) Web Services
14 9 (0.42%) XML
15 8 (0.37%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 102 (4.75%) Data Centre
2 91 (4.24%) PKI
3 73 (3.40%) Cloud Native
4 53 (2.47%) Security Operations Centre
5 52 (2.42%) Onboarding
6 38 (1.77%) Clustering
7 34 (1.58%) Private Cloud
8 31 (1.44%) Product Ownership
8 31 (1.44%) Security Posture
9 28 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
10 27 (1.26%) Management Information System
11 26 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
12 25 (1.16%) CMDB
13 24 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
14 22 (1.03%) Legacy Systems
15 20 (0.93%) Public Cloud
16 19 (0.89%) Virtual Team
17 13 (0.61%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (0.61%) Enterprise Storage
17 13 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 288 (13.42%) Windows
2 223 (10.39%) Linux
3 124 (5.78%) Windows Server
4 29 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (0.79%) Windows 10
6 14 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
7 13 (0.61%) Unix
8 7 (0.33%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.28%) AIX
9 6 (0.28%) Android
9 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
10 5 (0.23%) CentOS
10 5 (0.23%) Debian
10 5 (0.23%) VMS
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.19%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 363 (16.92%) Agile
2 218 (10.16%) Problem-Solving
3 201 (9.37%) ITIL
4 200 (9.32%) Cybersecurity
5 197 (9.18%) CI/CD
6 193 (8.99%) Continuous Improvement
7 185 (8.62%) DevOps
8 182 (8.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 178 (8.29%) Stakeholder Management
10 159 (7.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 147 (6.85%) Service Management
12 133 (6.20%) Infrastructure as Code
13 119 (5.55%) ITSM
14 116 (5.41%) Technical Leadership
15 115 (5.36%) Project Delivery
16 103 (4.80%) Risk Management
16 103 (4.80%) Service Delivery
17 102 (4.75%) Containerisation
18 95 (4.43%) Roadmaps
19 93 (4.33%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 190 (8.85%) Python
2 124 (5.78%) PowerShell
3 107 (4.99%) SQL
4 62 (2.89%) Java
5 53 (2.47%) Bash
6 45 (2.10%) JavaScript
7 30 (1.40%) TypeScript
8 28 (1.30%) C#
9 20 (0.93%) Go
10 15 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
11 12 (0.56%) C++
11 12 (0.56%) PL/SQL
12 11 (0.51%) C
13 9 (0.42%) Bicep
13 9 (0.42%) Rust
14 8 (0.37%) Shell Script
15 6 (0.28%) Embedded C
15 6 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.28%) Perl
16 5 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,146 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 713 (33.22%) SC Cleared
3 66 (3.08%) Degree
4 52 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
4 52 (2.42%) CISSP
5 27 (1.26%) CISM
6 25 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
7 24 (1.12%) AWS Certification
8 21 (0.98%) CCNP
8 21 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
9 20 (0.93%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 18 (0.84%) BPSS Clearance
10 18 (0.84%) CCNA
11 17 (0.79%) PMI Certification
12 16 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
13 15 (0.70%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.70%) MCSE
13 15 (0.70%) PMP
14 13 (0.61%) Azure Certification
14 13 (0.61%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 75 (3.49%) NCSC
2 74 (3.45%) NIST
3 67 (3.12%) PMO
4 61 (2.84%) QA
5 59 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 34 (1.58%) JSP 440
7 27 (1.26%) GDPR
8 25 (1.16%) GRC
9 20 (0.93%) Data Quality
9 20 (0.93%) SLA
10 19 (0.89%) RMADS
11 14 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
12 13 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 12 (0.56%) Accessibility
14 10 (0.47%) Government Security Classifications
15 8 (0.37%) WCAG
16 7 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 7 (0.33%) ISO 9000
16 7 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 6 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 168 (7.83%) VMware Infrastructure
2 155 (7.22%) Active Directory
3 122 (5.68%) Docker
4 80 (3.73%) VMware NSX
5 62 (2.89%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (2.42%) Hyper-V
7 37 (1.72%) vSphere
8 20 (0.93%) vCloud
9 16 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
10 10 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
11 8 (0.37%) BitLocker
11 8 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.37%) NFS
12 6 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.19%) Ceph
13 4 (0.19%) Firmware
13 4 (0.19%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.19%) UAG
14 3 (0.14%) KVM
14 3 (0.14%) Squid
Systems Management
1 168 (7.83%) Kubernetes
2 163 (7.60%) Terraform
3 103 (4.80%) Ansible
4 74 (3.45%) vCenter Server
5 40 (1.86%) SCOM
6 26 (1.21%) SCCM
7 25 (1.16%) Prometheus
8 24 (1.12%) Grafana
9 21 (0.98%) Puppet
10 14 (0.65%) Nagios
10 14 (0.65%) Oracle RMAN
11 13 (0.61%) FortiGate
11 13 (0.61%) Podman
12 12 (0.56%) Avamar
12 12 (0.56%) Data Guard
13 10 (0.47%) WSUS
14 9 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 9 (0.42%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 9 (0.42%) Progress Chef
14 9 (0.42%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 234 (10.90%) VMware
2 224 (10.44%) Microsoft
3 113 (5.27%) ServiceNow
4 103 (4.80%) Cisco
5 84 (3.91%) Oracle
6 63 (2.94%) Splunk
7 51 (2.38%) SAP
8 49 (2.28%) Juniper
9 43 (2.00%) Google
9 43 (2.00%) SolarWinds
10 35 (1.63%) NetApp
11 31 (1.44%) Red Hat
12 28 (1.30%) Palo Alto
12 28 (1.30%) Remedy
13 27 (1.26%) F5
14 26 (1.21%) Citrix
15 23 (1.07%) Dell
15 23 (1.07%) Fortinet
16 20 (0.93%) BMC
17 19 (0.89%) Sparx