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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 227 242
Rank change year-on-year +86 +15 +12
Contract jobs citing BPSS Clearance 763 280 359
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.82% 1.17% 0.98%
As % of the Qualifications category 5.72% 3.72% 3.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 548 191 261
10th Percentile £332 £250 £200
25th Percentile £394 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% - -8.68%
75th Percentile £569 £584 £599
90th Percentile £687 £671 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 25 49
10th Percentile £16.01 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £27.11 -
Median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -11.00% +211.33% -23.52%
75th Percentile £73.00 £75.00 £24.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £43.69 £45.00 £16.06
% change year-on-year -2.91% +180.20% -23.52%

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 13,348 7,517 11,216
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.92% 31.42% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,953 4,781 6,985
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £624 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £748
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £530
% change year-on-year +0.91% -1.84% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,014 437 989
10th Percentile £17.11 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.27 £18.32
Median hourly rate £47.52 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.22% -18.75% -25.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £81.01 £75.60
UK median hourly rate £48.05 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +47.85% -18.75% -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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +76 248 £510 -2.86% 27
North of England +15 200 £450 -10.00% 27
Midlands +16 129 £438 -3.10% 12
North West +14 115 £393 -26.95% 18
West Midlands +2 97 £449 +9.39% 10
South East +1 91 £483 -10.06% 22
South West +3 52 £525 +82.61% 47
North East +4 47 £475 +25.00% 6
Yorkshire -21 44 £480 +37.14% 3
East Midlands -4 31 £395 -39.83% 2
East of England -19 27 £450 +125.00% 28
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 37 (4.85%) Confluence
2 18 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.18%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.79%) Apache
4 6 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.52%) SAS
6 3 (0.39%) CMS
6 3 (0.39%) LiveCycle
6 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.26%) CICS
7 2 (0.26%) Cloud Foundry
7 2 (0.26%) Ethereum
7 2 (0.26%) Hyperledger
7 2 (0.26%) WordPress
8 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.13%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.13%) Camunda
8 1 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.13%) WebLogic
Applications
1 37 (4.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (1.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 14 (1.83%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (1.70%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.39%) Simulink
6 2 (0.26%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.26%) 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 (3.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 12 (1.57%) SAP Travel Management
3 10 (1.31%) SAP IBP
4 8 (1.05%) SAP EWM
4 8 (1.05%) SAP PSCD
5 7 (0.92%) SAP BRIM
6 5 (0.66%) Payment Gateway
6 5 (0.66%) SAP HR
7 4 (0.52%) Loan IQ
7 4 (0.52%) SAP Convergent Charging
8 3 (0.39%) Exchequer
8 3 (0.39%) iTrent
8 3 (0.39%) Primavera
8 3 (0.39%) ProductWriter
8 3 (0.39%) SAP HCM
9 2 (0.26%) BASE24
9 2 (0.26%) Quorum
9 2 (0.26%) R3 Corda
9 2 (0.26%) Ripple
9 2 (0.26%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 124 (16.25%) AWS
2 115 (15.07%) Azure
3 45 (5.90%) Power Platform
4 36 (4.72%) Azure DevOps
5 33 (4.33%) GitHub
6 23 (3.01%) GCP
6 23 (3.01%) Serverless
7 22 (2.88%) GitHub Actions
8 16 (2.10%) AWS Lambda
9 15 (1.97%) Microsoft 365
10 13 (1.70%) Entra ID
11 12 (1.57%) Amazon S3
12 11 (1.44%) Azure Data Factory
13 10 (1.31%) Amazon ECS
14 8 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (0.92%) Amazon SQS
15 7 (0.92%) Azure Monitor
15 7 (0.92%) Figma
15 7 (0.92%) Google Workspace
15 7 (0.92%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.57%) DNS
2 11 (1.44%) Firewall
2 11 (1.44%) Network Security
3 6 (0.79%) DHCP
3 6 (0.79%) HTTPS
4 5 (0.66%) WAN
5 4 (0.52%) VPN
6 3 (0.39%) Ethernet
6 3 (0.39%) Internet
6 3 (0.39%) LAN
6 3 (0.39%) Reverse Proxy
6 3 (0.39%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.39%) VSAN
6 3 (0.39%) WebEx
7 2 (0.26%) NAS
7 2 (0.26%) SAN
7 2 (0.26%) SSH
7 2 (0.26%) SSL
7 2 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.26%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (4.72%) Power BI
2 24 (3.15%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (2.75%) SQL Server
4 15 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
5 12 (1.57%) DynamoDB
6 11 (1.44%) Metadata
6 11 (1.44%) MongoDB
6 11 (1.44%) NoSQL
7 8 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (0.92%) Delta Lake
8 7 (0.92%) Geospatial Data
9 6 (0.79%) Power Query
9 6 (0.79%) Relational Database
9 6 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (0.79%) Tableau
10 5 (0.66%) Big Data
10 5 (0.66%) Oracle Database
10 5 (0.66%) Redis
10 5 (0.66%) Spark SQL
11 4 (0.52%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 70 (9.17%) JIRA
2 40 (5.24%) Git
3 29 (3.80%) GitLab
4 25 (3.28%) Jenkins
5 14 (1.83%) Selenium
6 12 (1.57%) Cucumber
7 10 (1.31%) JUnit
8 9 (1.18%) Team Foundation Server
9 5 (0.66%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.66%) Gatling
9 5 (0.66%) Visual Studio
10 4 (0.52%) Artifactory
10 4 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 4 (0.52%) Mockito
10 4 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 4 (0.52%) WebDriver
11 3 (0.39%) Maven
11 3 (0.39%) Postman
12 2 (0.26%) ClearCase
12 2 (0.26%) MLflow
General
1 231 (30.28%) Social Skills
2 129 (16.91%) Finance
3 118 (15.47%) Public Sector
4 96 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
5 42 (5.50%) Banking
6 35 (4.59%) Aerospace
7 19 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (2.10%) Legal
9 15 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
10 13 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.57%) Billing
11 12 (1.57%) Telecoms
12 11 (1.44%) Manufacturing
13 10 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (1.18%) Aviation
14 9 (1.18%) Local Government
15 8 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 8 (1.05%) Law
16 7 (0.92%) Publishing
16 7 (0.92%) Retail
Job Titles
1 110 (14.42%) Analyst
2 93 (12.19%) Senior
3 80 (10.48%) Developer
4 77 (10.09%) Lead
5 72 (9.44%) Architect
6 63 (8.26%) Consultant
7 51 (6.68%) Business Analyst
8 48 (6.29%) SAP Consultant
9 32 (4.19%) Designer
10 31 (4.06%) Data Engineer
11 30 (3.93%) Administrator
12 24 (3.15%) Delivery Manager
13 22 (2.88%) Senior Analyst
14 20 (2.62%) Solutions Architect
15 19 (2.49%) Service Designer
16 18 (2.36%) Senior Business Analyst
17 17 (2.23%) Senior Manager
18 16 (2.10%) Data Analyst
18 16 (2.10%) Data Architect
18 16 (2.10%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (3.54%) Node.js
2 26 (3.41%) REST
3 22 (2.88%) Spring Boot
4 21 (2.75%) RESTful
4 21 (2.75%) Spring
5 18 (2.36%) .NET
6 17 (2.23%) React
7 16 (2.10%) HTML
8 15 (1.97%) JSON
8 15 (1.97%) Kafka
9 13 (1.70%) AngularJS
9 13 (1.70%) XML
10 12 (1.57%) CSS
10 12 (1.57%) SAP TM
11 11 (1.44%) OAuth
11 11 (1.44%) OpenAPI
11 11 (1.44%) Playwright
12 10 (1.31%) Middleware
12 10 (1.31%) Swagger
13 9 (1.18%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 62 (8.13%) Product Ownership
2 44 (5.77%) Onboarding
3 35 (4.59%) Cloud Native
4 18 (2.36%) Management Information System
5 17 (2.23%) NHS
6 16 (2.10%) Distributed Systems
7 12 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
8 11 (1.44%) Algorithms
9 9 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.05%) Public Cloud
11 7 (0.92%) Data Centre
12 6 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (0.66%) Data Structures
13 5 (0.66%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (0.66%) Replication
13 5 (0.66%) Tandem
14 4 (0.52%) BYOD
14 4 (0.52%) Mobile App
14 4 (0.52%) PMI
14 4 (0.52%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 47 (6.16%) Linux
2 34 (4.46%) Windows
3 17 (2.23%) Unix
4 13 (1.70%) Android
5 11 (1.44%) Windows Server
6 9 (1.18%) Apple iOS
7 8 (1.05%) Mac OS
8 5 (0.66%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.26%) AIX
9 2 (0.26%) Debian
9 2 (0.26%) Solaris
9 2 (0.26%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.13%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.13%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (30.41%) Agile
2 123 (16.12%) Stakeholder Management
3 121 (15.86%) Problem-Solving
4 120 (15.73%) CI/CD
5 112 (14.68%) DevOps
6 82 (10.75%) Continuous Improvement
7 78 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 69 (9.04%) Roadmaps
9 62 (8.13%) Test Automation
10 60 (7.86%) Scrum
11 59 (7.73%) Decision-Making
12 56 (7.34%) Analytics
13 55 (7.21%) Data Modelling
14 50 (6.55%) Infrastructure as Code
14 50 (6.55%) Migration
14 50 (6.55%) Validation
14 50 (6.55%) Workshop Facilitation
15 47 (6.16%) Microservices
16 46 (6.03%) AI
17 43 (5.64%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 94 (12.32%) Python
2 90 (11.80%) SQL
3 77 (10.09%) Java
4 37 (4.85%) JavaScript
5 27 (3.54%) Scala
6 16 (2.10%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.70%) C#
8 12 (1.57%) TypeScript
9 10 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 9 (1.18%) C
11 8 (1.05%) C++
11 8 (1.05%) VB
12 7 (0.92%) Bicep
12 7 (0.92%) VB6
13 5 (0.66%) COBOL
13 5 (0.66%) Shell Script
14 4 (0.52%) ABAP
14 4 (0.52%) Apex Code
14 4 (0.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 4 (0.52%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 254 (33.29%) Security Cleared
2 182 (23.85%) SC Cleared
3 55 (7.21%) Degree
4 12 (1.57%) DV Cleared
5 9 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (1.18%) Master's Degree
6 8 (1.05%) AWS Certification
7 7 (0.92%) Azure Certification
7 7 (0.92%) PMI Certification
8 6 (0.79%) CompTIA CySA+
8 6 (0.79%) PMP
9 5 (0.66%) DBS Check
9 5 (0.66%) GIAC
9 5 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.52%) CompTIA Security+
10 4 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
11 3 (0.39%) ACSP
11 3 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.39%) MBA
11 3 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (6.68%) Data Quality
2 50 (6.55%) QA
3 30 (3.93%) Accessibility
4 16 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.97%) NIST
6 14 (1.83%) PMO
7 12 (1.57%) SLA
8 8 (1.05%) GDPR
8 8 (1.05%) PCI DSS
8 8 (1.05%) WCAG
9 6 (0.79%) GRC
10 5 (0.66%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.66%) IFRS
10 5 (0.66%) IFRS 17
11 4 (0.52%) ISO 20022
11 4 (0.52%) PSD2
12 3 (0.39%) Basel III
12 3 (0.39%) HL7
12 3 (0.39%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.39%) SEPA
System Software
1 46 (6.03%) Docker
2 25 (3.28%) Active Directory
3 17 (2.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.79%) vSphere
5 5 (0.66%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.52%) GPFS
6 4 (0.52%) NFS
6 4 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.39%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.26%) QEMU
9 1 (0.13%) ACF2
9 1 (0.13%) RACF
9 1 (0.13%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 59 (7.73%) Terraform
2 42 (5.50%) Kubernetes
3 13 (1.70%) Grafana
4 11 (1.44%) Ansible
5 8 (1.05%) Kibana
5 8 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 7 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.79%) Istio
8 5 (0.66%) vRealize
9 4 (0.52%) Argo
9 4 (0.52%) HAProxy
9 4 (0.52%) Podman
10 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (0.39%) SCCM
10 3 (0.39%) VxRail
11 2 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (0.26%) Kubeflow
11 2 (0.26%) Packer
12 1 (0.13%) SELinux
12 1 (0.13%) systemd
Vendors
1 90 (11.80%) SAP
2 78 (10.22%) Microsoft
3 42 (5.50%) Oracle
4 21 (2.75%) ServiceNow
5 17 (2.23%) Databricks
5 17 (2.23%) VMware
6 16 (2.10%) Google
7 13 (1.70%) Cisco
7 13 (1.70%) Splunk
8 12 (1.57%) IBM
9 8 (1.05%) CyberArk
9 8 (1.05%) Salesforce
10 7 (0.92%) Apple
10 7 (0.92%) Workday
11 6 (0.79%) Informatica
11 6 (0.79%) Talend
12 5 (0.66%) Atlassian
12 5 (0.66%) BeyondTrust
13 4 (0.52%) Citrix
13 4 (0.52%) Denodo