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 22 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 220 244
Rank change year-on-year +81 +24 +1
Contract jobs citing BPSS Clearance 745 272 354
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.80% 1.13% 0.97%
As % of the Qualifications category 5.65% 3.61% 3.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 532 185 258
10th Percentile £315 £239 £200
25th Percentile £392 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.90% - -7.88%
75th Percentile £571 £585 £600
90th Percentile £688 £685 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £503
% change year-on-year -5.00% -0.65% -8.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 25 50
10th Percentile £16.01 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £24.50 -
Median hourly rate £47.00 £50.00 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +211.33% -58.12%
75th Percentile £73.00 £75.00 £30.75
90th Percentile £86.04 £77.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £47.00 £44.50 £16.06
% change year-on-year +5.62% +177.09% -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 13,176 7,535 11,156
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.90% 31.42% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,843 4,792 6,918
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -2.32% -2.28%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £530
% change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 974 428 972
10th Percentile £17.06 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.45 £18.10
Median hourly rate £47.54 £37.25 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.62% -6.88% -25.02%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £81.35 £76.82
UK median hourly rate £48.05 £36.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year +32.55% -9.38% -27.27%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 +90 242 £500 -6.10% 44
North of England +14 194 £450 -10.00% 50
Midlands +6 126 £438 -2.56% 24
North West +14 120 £394 -26.81% 29
West Midlands +2 94 £449 +9.39% 19
South East -3 92 £483 -9.04% 38
South West +7 54 £516 +79.57% 55
North East +3 44 £480 +33.33% 15
Yorkshire -27 36 £481 +37.50% 6
East Midlands -1 31 £395 -43.57% 5
East of England -18 27 £450 +125.00% 31
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 36 (4.83%) Confluence
2 17 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.21%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.81%) Apache
4 6 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.40%) CMS
5 3 (0.40%) LiveCycle
5 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.27%) CICS
6 2 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
6 2 (0.27%) SAS
7 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.13%) ArcGIS
7 1 (0.13%) Camunda
7 1 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
7 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.13%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 37 (4.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (1.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (1.88%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.74%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.40%) Simulink
6 2 (0.27%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.27%) Trello
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) CATIA
7 1 (0.13%) InVision
7 1 (0.13%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.13%) PTC Creo
7 1 (0.13%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 30 (4.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.61%) SAP Travel Management
3 10 (1.34%) SAP IBP
4 8 (1.07%) SAP EWM
4 8 (1.07%) SAP PSCD
5 6 (0.81%) SAP BRIM
6 5 (0.67%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.67%) SAP HR
7 4 (0.54%) iTrent
7 4 (0.54%) Loan IQ
8 3 (0.40%) Exchequer
8 3 (0.40%) Primavera
8 3 (0.40%) ProductWriter
8 3 (0.40%) SAP Convergent Charging
8 3 (0.40%) SAP HCM
8 3 (0.40%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.27%) BASE24
9 2 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
9 2 (0.27%) SAP MM
9 2 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 121 (16.24%) AWS
2 104 (13.96%) Azure
3 44 (5.91%) Power Platform
4 33 (4.43%) GitHub
5 29 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
6 27 (3.62%) Serverless
7 23 (3.09%) GCP
8 22 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (2.68%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
11 12 (1.61%) Amazon ECS
11 12 (1.61%) Amazon S3
12 11 (1.48%) Azure Data Factory
12 11 (1.48%) Entra ID
13 10 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (1.21%) Amazon SQS
15 8 (1.07%) SuccessFactors
16 7 (0.94%) Google Workspace
16 7 (0.94%) Power Automate
17 6 (0.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 13 (1.74%) DNS
2 11 (1.48%) Firewall
3 10 (1.34%) Network Security
4 6 (0.81%) DHCP
5 5 (0.67%) HTTPS
5 5 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
6 4 (0.54%) VPN
6 4 (0.54%) WAN
7 3 (0.40%) Ethernet
7 3 (0.40%) Internet
7 3 (0.40%) LAN
7 3 (0.40%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.40%) VSAN
7 3 (0.40%) WebEx
8 2 (0.27%) NAS
8 2 (0.27%) SAN
8 2 (0.27%) SNMP
8 2 (0.27%) SSH
8 2 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
8 2 (0.27%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (4.83%) Power BI
2 24 (3.22%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (2.82%) SQL Server
4 15 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
5 12 (1.61%) DynamoDB
6 11 (1.48%) Metadata
6 11 (1.48%) MongoDB
6 11 (1.48%) NoSQL
7 8 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (0.94%) Big Data
8 7 (0.94%) Delta Lake
8 7 (0.94%) Geospatial Data
8 7 (0.94%) Redis
9 6 (0.81%) DocumentDB
9 6 (0.81%) Power Query
9 6 (0.81%) Relational Database
9 6 (0.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (0.81%) Tableau
10 5 (0.67%) DataStage
10 5 (0.67%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 71 (9.53%) JIRA
2 45 (6.04%) Git
3 27 (3.62%) GitLab
4 24 (3.22%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.48%) Selenium
6 10 (1.34%) JUnit
7 9 (1.21%) Cucumber
7 9 (1.21%) Team Foundation Server
8 6 (0.81%) Gatling
9 5 (0.67%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.67%) Visual Studio
10 4 (0.54%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 4 (0.54%) Mockito
10 4 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 3 (0.40%) Maven
11 3 (0.40%) Postman
12 2 (0.27%) ClearCase
12 2 (0.27%) JMeter
12 2 (0.27%) TestNG
General
1 226 (30.34%) Social Skills
2 126 (16.91%) Finance
3 115 (15.44%) Public Sector
4 96 (12.89%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (5.23%) Banking
6 33 (4.43%) Aerospace
7 18 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
8 15 (2.01%) Presentation Skills
9 14 (1.88%) Legal
10 13 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.61%) Telecoms
12 11 (1.48%) Billing
13 10 (1.34%) Manufacturing
13 10 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (1.21%) Aviation
15 7 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 7 (0.94%) Law
15 7 (0.94%) Local Government
15 7 (0.94%) Publishing
15 7 (0.94%) Retail
Job Titles
1 109 (14.63%) Analyst
2 86 (11.54%) Senior
3 80 (10.74%) Developer
4 75 (10.07%) Lead
5 71 (9.53%) Architect
6 62 (8.32%) Consultant
7 50 (6.71%) Business Analyst
8 48 (6.44%) SAP Consultant
9 30 (4.03%) Administrator
9 30 (4.03%) Data Engineer
9 30 (4.03%) Designer
10 24 (3.22%) Delivery Manager
11 21 (2.82%) Senior Analyst
12 18 (2.42%) Solutions Architect
13 17 (2.28%) Senior Business Analyst
13 17 (2.28%) Senior Manager
13 17 (2.28%) Service Designer
14 16 (2.15%) Data Analyst
14 16 (2.15%) Data Architect
15 15 (2.01%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (3.36%) Node.js
1 25 (3.36%) REST
2 19 (2.55%) React
2 19 (2.55%) Spring
3 18 (2.42%) .NET
3 18 (2.42%) RESTful
3 18 (2.42%) Spring Boot
4 15 (2.01%) HTML
4 15 (2.01%) JSON
4 15 (2.01%) Kafka
4 15 (2.01%) XML
5 13 (1.74%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.61%) SAP TM
7 11 (1.48%) CSS
7 11 (1.48%) OAuth
7 11 (1.48%) OpenAPI
7 11 (1.48%) Playwright
8 10 (1.34%) Middleware
8 10 (1.34%) Swagger
9 9 (1.21%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 58 (7.79%) Product Ownership
2 44 (5.91%) Onboarding
3 33 (4.43%) Cloud Native
4 19 (2.55%) Management Information System
5 16 (2.15%) NHS
6 15 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
7 12 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (1.34%) Algorithms
9 8 (1.07%) Public Cloud
10 7 (0.94%) Data Centre
11 6 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (0.67%) Data Structures
12 5 (0.67%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (0.67%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (0.67%) Replication
12 5 (0.67%) Tandem
13 4 (0.54%) Mobile App
13 4 (0.54%) PMI
13 4 (0.54%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 49 (6.58%) Linux
2 34 (4.56%) Windows
3 16 (2.15%) Unix
4 13 (1.74%) Android
5 11 (1.48%) Windows Server
6 9 (1.21%) Apple iOS
7 8 (1.07%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.67%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.27%) AIX
9 2 (0.27%) Debian
9 2 (0.27%) Solaris
9 2 (0.27%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.13%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 228 (30.60%) Agile
2 120 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
3 117 (15.70%) Stakeholder Management
4 116 (15.57%) CI/CD
5 105 (14.09%) DevOps
6 79 (10.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 76 (10.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 66 (8.86%) Roadmaps
9 60 (8.05%) Test Automation
10 58 (7.79%) Decision-Making
11 57 (7.65%) Scrum
12 55 (7.38%) Analytics
13 54 (7.25%) Data Modelling
14 52 (6.98%) Migration
15 49 (6.58%) Infrastructure as Code
16 48 (6.44%) Workshop Facilitation
17 45 (6.04%) Microservices
17 45 (6.04%) Validation
18 42 (5.64%) AI
19 40 (5.37%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 95 (12.75%) Python
2 89 (11.95%) SQL
3 69 (9.26%) Java
4 36 (4.83%) JavaScript
5 26 (3.49%) Scala
6 15 (2.01%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.74%) C#
8 10 (1.34%) TypeScript
9 9 (1.21%) C
9 9 (1.21%) PL/SQL
10 8 (1.07%) Bicep
10 8 (1.07%) C++
10 8 (1.07%) VB
11 7 (0.94%) VB6
12 6 (0.81%) Ruby
13 5 (0.67%) COBOL
14 4 (0.54%) ABAP
14 4 (0.54%) Apex Code
14 4 (0.54%) MATLAB
14 4 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 255 (34.23%) Security Cleared
2 184 (24.70%) SC Cleared
3 53 (7.11%) Degree
4 14 (1.88%) DV Cleared
5 11 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (1.21%) Master's Degree
7 8 (1.07%) AWS Certification
8 7 (0.94%) Azure Certification
8 7 (0.94%) PMI Certification
9 6 (0.81%) CompTIA CySA+
9 6 (0.81%) PMP
10 5 (0.67%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.67%) GIAC
10 5 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (0.54%) CompTIA Security+
11 4 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
12 3 (0.40%) ACSP
12 3 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.40%) MBA
12 3 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (6.58%) Data Quality
2 47 (6.31%) QA
3 26 (3.49%) Accessibility
4 16 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (2.01%) NIST
6 14 (1.88%) PMO
7 12 (1.61%) SLA
8 8 (1.07%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (0.67%) GDPR
9 5 (0.67%) GRC
9 5 (0.67%) IFRS
9 5 (0.67%) IFRS 17
9 5 (0.67%) WCAG
10 4 (0.54%) ISO 20022
10 4 (0.54%) PSD2
11 3 (0.40%) HL7
11 3 (0.40%) ISO 8583
11 3 (0.40%) NCSC
11 3 (0.40%) SEPA
System Software
1 45 (6.04%) Docker
2 25 (3.36%) Active Directory
3 17 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.81%) vSphere
5 5 (0.67%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.54%) GPFS
6 4 (0.54%) NFS
6 4 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.40%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.27%) QEMU
9 1 (0.13%) ACF2
9 1 (0.13%) RACF
9 1 (0.13%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 58 (7.79%) Terraform
2 45 (6.04%) Kubernetes
3 13 (1.74%) Grafana
4 11 (1.48%) Ansible
5 8 (1.07%) Kibana
5 8 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 6 (0.81%) Istio
6 6 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (0.67%) vRealize
8 4 (0.54%) Argo
8 4 (0.54%) HAProxy
8 4 (0.54%) Podman
9 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (0.40%) SCCM
9 3 (0.40%) VxRail
10 2 (0.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.27%) Kubeflow
10 2 (0.27%) Packer
11 1 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
11 1 (0.13%) linkerd
Vendors
1 92 (12.35%) SAP
2 77 (10.34%) Microsoft
3 41 (5.50%) Oracle
4 20 (2.68%) ServiceNow
5 17 (2.28%) Databricks
5 17 (2.28%) VMware
6 16 (2.15%) Google
7 14 (1.88%) IBM
8 13 (1.74%) Cisco
8 13 (1.74%) Splunk
9 8 (1.07%) Salesforce
10 7 (0.94%) Apple
10 7 (0.94%) CyberArk
10 7 (0.94%) Workday
11 5 (0.67%) Atlassian
11 5 (0.67%) BeyondTrust
11 5 (0.67%) Informatica
11 5 (0.67%) Talend
12 4 (0.54%) Citrix
12 4 (0.54%) Denodo