BPSS Clearance Contract Job Trends in England

Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) Clearance
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for BPSS Clearance qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 18 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 242 226
Rank change year-on-year +102 -16 +8
Contract jobs citing BPSS Clearance 723 251 379
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.83% 1.02% 1.02%
As % of the Qualifications category 5.56% 3.25% 3.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 163 288
10th Percentile £313 £236 £300
25th Percentile £382 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £582 £623
90th Percentile £673 £669 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £507
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.28% -7.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 21 52
10th Percentile £19.63 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £23.00 £24.50 -
Median hourly rate £47.50 £52.50 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +226.90% -59.30%
75th Percentile £73.00 £75.00 £42.64
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.50 £76.50
UK median hourly rate £43.69 £45.00 £16.06
% change year-on-year -2.91% +180.20% -58.12%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

BPSS Clearance 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 in England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,011 7,714 11,668
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.00% 31.50% 31.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,729 4,938 7,202
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £417 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £621 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 979 429 952
10th Percentile £17.00 £18.19 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.66 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.00 £50.00 £39.96
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +25.13% -20.08%
75th Percentile £71.04 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.25 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £42.75 £39.92
% change year-on-year +6.34% +7.09% -23.96%

BPSS Clearance
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing BPSS Clearance relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

BPSS Clearance job vacancy trend in England

BPSS Clearance
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BPSS Clearance.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BPSS Clearance

BPSS Clearance
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BPSS Clearance in England over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for BPSS Clearance in England

BPSS Clearance
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BPSS Clearance.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing BPSS Clearance

BPSS Clearance
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing BPSS Clearance in England over the 6 months to 18 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for BPSS Clearance in England

BPSS Clearance
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing BPSS Clearance within the England region over the 6 months to 18 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
London +108 236 £512 -2.88% 48
North of England +18 200 £445 -11.00% 62
North West +20 137 £397 -26.23% 42
Midlands +5 118 £438 -2.34% 18
West Midlands -11 89 £447 +2.41% 17
South East +12 88 £469 -14.10% 60
South West +3 50 £525 +61.54% 61
Yorkshire -32 35 £481 +78.24% 7
North East +7 30 £478 +17.18% 13
East Midlands -8 28 £395 -35.56% 1
East of England -21 27 £450 +125.00% 38
BPSS Clearance
UK

BPSS Clearance
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 44 (6.09%) Confluence
2 14 (1.94%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.24%) Apache Spark
4 7 (0.97%) Apache
4 7 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
5 5 (0.69%) nginx
6 3 (0.41%) CMS
6 3 (0.41%) LiveCycle
6 3 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.41%) SAS
6 3 (0.41%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.28%) CICS
7 2 (0.28%) MTS
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.14%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.14%) Camunda
8 1 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.14%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 36 (4.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.07%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (1.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (1.80%) MS Visio
5 12 (1.66%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.41%) Simulink
7 2 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.28%) Trello
8 1 (0.14%) Autodesk Inventor
8 1 (0.14%) CATIA
8 1 (0.14%) InVision
8 1 (0.14%) MicroStation
8 1 (0.14%) PTC Creo
8 1 (0.14%) Sketch
8 1 (0.14%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 35 (4.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.66%) SAP Travel Management
3 7 (0.97%) SAP IBP
3 7 (0.97%) SAP PSCD
4 6 (0.83%) SAP EWM
5 5 (0.69%) SAP HR
6 4 (0.55%) iTrent
6 4 (0.55%) Loan IQ
6 4 (0.55%) Payment Gateway
6 4 (0.55%) SAP MM
7 3 (0.41%) Exchequer
7 3 (0.41%) ProductWriter
7 3 (0.41%) SAP HCM
7 3 (0.41%) SAP Payroll
7 3 (0.41%) SAP QM
7 3 (0.41%) SAP VC
8 2 (0.28%) BASE24
8 2 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.28%) Primavera
8 2 (0.28%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 126 (17.43%) AWS
2 98 (13.55%) Azure
3 41 (5.67%) Power Platform
4 36 (4.98%) GitHub
5 30 (4.15%) Serverless
6 27 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 25 (3.46%) GCP
8 23 (3.18%) GitHub Actions
9 22 (3.04%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
10 16 (2.21%) Microsoft 365
11 12 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
12 11 (1.52%) Azure Data Factory
13 10 (1.38%) Amazon S3
13 10 (1.38%) Amazon SQS
14 9 (1.24%) Entra ID
14 9 (1.24%) SuccessFactors
15 7 (0.97%) Power Automate
16 6 (0.83%) Azure Functions
16 6 (0.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.52%) DNS
1 11 (1.52%) Firewall
2 10 (1.38%) Network Security
3 5 (0.69%) HTTPS
3 5 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
3 5 (0.69%) WAN
3 5 (0.69%) WebEx
4 4 (0.55%) VPN
4 4 (0.55%) VSAN
5 3 (0.41%) DHCP
5 3 (0.41%) Ethernet
5 3 (0.41%) Internet
5 3 (0.41%) MPLS
5 3 (0.41%) SSH
5 3 (0.41%) TCP/IP
5 3 (0.41%) Unified Communications
5 3 (0.41%) Wireless
6 2 (0.28%) Broadband
6 2 (0.28%) NAS
6 2 (0.28%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (4.56%) Power BI
2 26 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (2.90%) SQL Server
4 15 (2.07%) NoSQL
5 14 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
6 13 (1.80%) Metadata
7 11 (1.52%) MongoDB
8 10 (1.38%) DynamoDB
9 8 (1.11%) DocumentDB
9 8 (1.11%) Redis
10 7 (0.97%) Big Data
10 7 (0.97%) Delta Lake
10 7 (0.97%) Geospatial Data
11 6 (0.83%) Tableau
12 5 (0.69%) DataStage
12 5 (0.69%) Relational Database
12 5 (0.69%) Spark SQL
13 4 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.55%) BigQuery
13 4 (0.55%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 79 (10.93%) JIRA
2 53 (7.33%) Git
3 26 (3.60%) Jenkins
4 25 (3.46%) GitLab
5 10 (1.38%) Selenium
6 8 (1.11%) JUnit
7 7 (0.97%) Cucumber
7 7 (0.97%) Gatling
8 6 (0.83%) Cypress.io
8 6 (0.83%) Mockito
9 4 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
9 4 (0.55%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.41%) JMeter
10 3 (0.41%) Maven
10 3 (0.41%) Toad
10 3 (0.41%) WebDriver
11 2 (0.28%) Eclipse
11 2 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
11 2 (0.28%) Visual Studio
General
1 228 (31.54%) Social Skills
2 128 (17.70%) Finance
3 108 (14.94%) Public Sector
4 98 (13.55%) Analytical Skills
5 43 (5.95%) Banking
6 37 (5.12%) Aerospace
7 18 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 17 (2.35%) Legal
9 14 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
10 13 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
10 13 (1.80%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.24%) Aviation
13 8 (1.11%) Local Government
13 8 (1.11%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.11%) Publishing
14 7 (0.97%) Retail
15 6 (0.83%) Advertising
16 5 (0.69%) Marketing
16 5 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 108 (14.94%) Analyst
2 86 (11.89%) Senior
3 79 (10.93%) Developer
4 68 (9.41%) Lead
5 62 (8.58%) Architect
6 58 (8.02%) Consultant
7 51 (7.05%) Business Analyst
8 43 (5.95%) SAP Consultant
9 28 (3.87%) Administrator
9 28 (3.87%) Data Engineer
10 24 (3.32%) Delivery Manager
11 23 (3.18%) Senior Analyst
12 20 (2.77%) Designer
13 19 (2.63%) Senior Business Analyst
14 18 (2.49%) Senior Manager
15 15 (2.07%) Java Developer
15 15 (2.07%) Systems Engineer
16 14 (1.94%) Project Manager
16 14 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
17 13 (1.80%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (4.01%) Node.js
2 23 (3.18%) React
2 23 (3.18%) REST
3 21 (2.90%) RESTful
3 21 (2.90%) Spring
4 20 (2.77%) Spring Boot
5 15 (2.07%) .NET
5 15 (2.07%) Kafka
6 14 (1.94%) Middleware
7 13 (1.80%) XML
8 12 (1.66%) HTML
8 12 (1.66%) SAP TM
9 11 (1.52%) JSON
10 10 (1.38%) AngularJS
10 10 (1.38%) OpenAPI
11 9 (1.24%) CSS
11 9 (1.24%) OpenTelemetry
11 9 (1.24%) Playwright
11 9 (1.24%) Swagger
12 8 (1.11%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 56 (7.75%) Product Ownership
2 44 (6.09%) Onboarding
3 36 (4.98%) Cloud Native
4 19 (2.63%) Management Information System
5 16 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
6 15 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
6 15 (2.07%) NHS
7 10 (1.38%) Public Cloud
8 7 (0.97%) Algorithms
8 7 (0.97%) Data Centre
8 7 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
8 7 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (0.83%) Replication
10 5 (0.69%) Data Structures
10 5 (0.69%) Fat Client
10 5 (0.69%) Mainframe
10 5 (0.69%) Tandem
10 5 (0.69%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 60 (8.30%) Linux
2 32 (4.43%) Windows
3 14 (1.94%) Unix
4 8 (1.11%) Android
4 8 (1.11%) Windows Server
5 5 (0.69%) Apple iOS
6 4 (0.55%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.41%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.28%) AIX
8 2 (0.28%) Debian
8 2 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.28%) Solaris
8 2 (0.28%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.14%) CentOS
9 1 (0.14%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.14%) VME
9 1 (0.14%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 222 (30.71%) Agile
2 129 (17.84%) Problem-Solving
3 118 (16.32%) CI/CD
4 114 (15.77%) Stakeholder Management
5 110 (15.21%) DevOps
6 75 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
6 75 (10.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 63 (8.71%) Test Automation
8 57 (7.88%) Roadmaps
9 54 (7.47%) Migration
9 54 (7.47%) Scrum
10 53 (7.33%) Data Modelling
11 52 (7.19%) Analytics
12 51 (7.05%) Validation
13 50 (6.92%) Infrastructure as Code
14 48 (6.64%) Microservices
15 47 (6.50%) Workshop Facilitation
16 46 (6.36%) Decision-Making
17 44 (6.09%) AI
17 44 (6.09%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 106 (14.66%) Python
2 86 (11.89%) SQL
3 67 (9.27%) Java
4 33 (4.56%) JavaScript
5 24 (3.32%) Scala
6 20 (2.77%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.80%) Ruby
8 12 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 11 (1.52%) C#
10 8 (1.11%) Bicep
10 8 (1.11%) C
10 8 (1.11%) C++
10 8 (1.11%) PL/SQL
11 7 (0.97%) Bash
11 7 (0.97%) COBOL
12 5 (0.69%) ABAP
13 4 (0.55%) MATLAB
14 3 (0.41%) Apex Code
14 3 (0.41%) Shell Script
14 3 (0.41%) VB
Qualifications
1 277 (38.31%) Security Cleared
2 204 (28.22%) SC Cleared
3 48 (6.64%) Degree
4 16 (2.21%) DV Cleared
5 12 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (1.24%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.24%) Master's Degree
7 7 (0.97%) PMI Certification
8 6 (0.83%) Azure Certification
8 6 (0.83%) CompTIA CySA+
8 6 (0.83%) ISTQB
8 6 (0.83%) PMP
9 5 (0.69%) GIAC
10 4 (0.55%) CompTIA Security+
10 4 (0.55%) CTC Cleared
10 4 (0.55%) DBS Check
10 4 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.41%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.41%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 43 (5.95%) QA
3 24 (3.32%) Accessibility
4 17 (2.35%) NIST
5 15 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (1.94%) SLA
7 10 (1.38%) PMO
8 8 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.97%) NCSC
10 6 (0.83%) GDPR
10 6 (0.83%) ISO 20022
10 6 (0.83%) WCAG
11 5 (0.69%) GRC
11 5 (0.69%) IFRS
11 5 (0.69%) IFRS 17
12 4 (0.55%) PSD2
13 3 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.41%) HL7
13 3 (0.41%) ISO 8583
13 3 (0.41%) SEPA
System Software
1 51 (7.05%) Docker
2 21 (2.90%) Active Directory
3 19 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.24%) vSphere
5 5 (0.69%) GPFS
5 5 (0.69%) NFS
5 5 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.55%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.41%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.28%) ACF2
8 2 (0.28%) QEMU
8 2 (0.28%) RACF
8 2 (0.28%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.14%) Postfix
9 1 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 66 (9.13%) Terraform
2 52 (7.19%) Kubernetes
3 12 (1.66%) Grafana
4 11 (1.52%) Ansible
5 8 (1.11%) vRealize
6 7 (0.97%) Kibana
6 7 (0.97%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.69%) Istio
7 5 (0.69%) VxRail
8 4 (0.55%) Argo
8 4 (0.55%) HAProxy
8 4 (0.55%) Packer
8 4 (0.55%) Podman
9 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (0.41%) SCCM
10 2 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.28%) CA Endevor
10 2 (0.28%) Kubeflow
10 2 (0.28%) Tivoli
10 2 (0.28%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 92 (12.72%) SAP
2 72 (9.96%) Microsoft
3 42 (5.81%) Oracle
4 21 (2.90%) VMware
5 19 (2.63%) Cisco
6 18 (2.49%) ServiceNow
7 17 (2.35%) Databricks
8 16 (2.21%) Google
8 16 (2.21%) IBM
9 14 (1.94%) Splunk
10 10 (1.38%) Atlassian
10 10 (1.38%) Workday
11 7 (0.97%) CyberArk
11 7 (0.97%) Salesforce
12 5 (0.69%) BeyondTrust
12 5 (0.69%) Citrix
13 4 (0.55%) Adobe
13 4 (0.55%) Apple
13 4 (0.55%) HP
13 4 (0.55%) Informatica