BPSS Clearance Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) Clearance
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London with a requirement for BPSS Clearance qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 132 195 190
Rank change year-on-year +63 -5 -65
Contract jobs citing BPSS Clearance 350 167 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.91% 1.14% 1.23%
As % of the Qualifications category 5.18% 3.30% 3.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 239 105 178
10th Percentile £250 £210 £387
25th Percentile £350 £260 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% -13.64% -
75th Percentile £577 £575 £633
90th Percentile £672 £651 £705
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -3.75% -9.09% -0.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 12 28
10th Percentile £18.19 £20.01 £21.60
25th Percentile £22.63 £20.25 £33.14
Median hourly rate £33.50 £38.85 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year -13.77% -27.72% -10.42%
75th Percentile £56.69 £64.06 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.25 £84.36
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £38.85 £53.75
% change year-on-year -13.77% -27.72% -10.42%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK excluding London

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 the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 6,756 5,065 7,144
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 36.93% 34.65% 36.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,242 3,026 4,331
10th Percentile £256 £225 £250
25th Percentile £405 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.22% -7.20% +2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £649
90th Percentile £705 £700 £703
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 853 394 614
10th Percentile £16.00 £18.50 £15.83
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £26.24
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £51.89
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -18.10% +16.87%
75th Percentile £51.53 £67.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £79.35
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

BPSS Clearance
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

BPSS Clearance job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

BPSS Clearance
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing BPSS Clearance.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing BPSS Clearance

BPSS Clearance
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BPSS Clearance in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for BPSS Clearance in the UK excluding London

BPSS Clearance
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing BPSS Clearance.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing BPSS Clearance

BPSS Clearance
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing BPSS Clearance in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for BPSS Clearance in the UK excluding London

BPSS Clearance
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 31 December 2025. 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
North of England +39 180 £448 -10.50% 146
North West +49 129 £427 -20.63% 88
Midlands +2 59 £446 -4.90% 94
West Midlands -8 44 £478 +1.95% 55
Yorkshire -32 39 £481 +118.75% 40
South East -10 35 £492 -0.61% 214
South West +9 34 £555 +8.29% 117
Scotland +32 26 £429 -32.75% 24
East of England -23 18 £500 +127.39% 176
East Midlands -1 15 £372 - 34
North East +3 14 £480 +2.13% 18
Northern Ireland - 6 £375 - 5
Wales -2 5 £458 +108.00% 13
South Coast - 1 £500 -
BPSS Clearance
UK

BPSS Clearance
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 20 (5.71%) Confluence
2 10 (2.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (2.57%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.86%) Apache
5 2 (0.57%) MTS
5 2 (0.57%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.29%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.29%) JBoss
6 1 (0.29%) SAS
6 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
Applications
1 12 (3.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.14%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.29%) Trello
5 1 (0.29%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 25 (7.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.00%) SAP EHS
3 6 (1.71%) SAP HCM
4 5 (1.43%) SAP QM
4 5 (1.43%) SAP VC
5 4 (1.14%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.86%) Oracle Cash Management
6 3 (0.86%) Oracle EBS R12
6 3 (0.86%) Oracle Financials
6 3 (0.86%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.86%) SAP BRIM
6 3 (0.86%) SAP Hybris
6 3 (0.86%) SAP Payroll
6 3 (0.86%) SAP PSCD
7 2 (0.57%) Maximo
7 2 (0.57%) OpenText VIM for SAP
7 2 (0.57%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.57%) SAP MM
7 2 (0.57%) SAP PM
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle ASCP
Cloud Services
1 49 (14.00%) AWS
2 30 (8.57%) Azure
3 12 (3.43%) Microsoft 365
3 12 (3.43%) Serverless
4 11 (3.14%) Power Platform
5 9 (2.57%) AWS Lambda
6 8 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (2.29%) Power Automate
7 7 (2.00%) Amazon SQS
7 7 (2.00%) GCP
7 7 (2.00%) GitHub
7 7 (2.00%) PowerApps
8 5 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (1.43%) SuccessFactors
9 4 (1.14%) Amazon ECS
9 4 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (1.14%) npm
9 4 (1.14%) SaaS
10 3 (0.86%) Amazon EC2
10 3 (0.86%) SAP Commerce Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.57%) WAN
2 7 (2.00%) LAN
3 6 (1.71%) DNS
3 6 (1.71%) MPLS
3 6 (1.71%) SAN
4 4 (1.14%) Firewall
4 4 (1.14%) SDH
4 4 (1.14%) VPN
5 3 (0.86%) SSH
5 3 (0.86%) Unified Communications
5 3 (0.86%) VoIP
5 3 (0.86%) VSAN
6 2 (0.57%) 5G
6 2 (0.57%) NaaS
6 2 (0.57%) OSPF
6 2 (0.57%) Radio Access Network
6 2 (0.57%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
6 2 (0.57%) TETRA
6 2 (0.57%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.86%) MongoDB
2 8 (2.29%) Power BI
2 8 (2.29%) Redis
3 6 (1.71%) Metadata
3 6 (1.71%) NoSQL
4 5 (1.43%) DocumentDB
5 4 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (1.14%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.86%) BigQuery
6 3 (0.86%) Tableau
7 2 (0.57%) Aerospike
7 2 (0.57%) Big Data
7 2 (0.57%) DynamoDB
7 2 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.57%) GIS
7 2 (0.57%) Looker
7 2 (0.57%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.57%) SAP HANA
7 2 (0.57%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 29 (8.29%) JIRA
2 27 (7.71%) Git
3 9 (2.57%) GitLab
4 8 (2.29%) SonarQube
5 7 (2.00%) Jenkins
6 5 (1.43%) Cypress.io
6 5 (1.43%) Mockito
7 3 (0.86%) Android Studio
7 3 (0.86%) Gradle
7 3 (0.86%) JUnit
8 2 (0.57%) Babel
8 2 (0.57%) Gatling
8 2 (0.57%) Grunt
8 2 (0.57%) gulp
8 2 (0.57%) JMeter
8 2 (0.57%) Postman
8 2 (0.57%) Selenium
8 2 (0.57%) Toad
8 2 (0.57%) webpack
9 1 (0.29%) Browser DevTools
General
1 104 (29.71%) Social Skills
2 59 (16.86%) Public Sector
3 55 (15.71%) Finance
4 30 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (7.71%) Banking
6 17 (4.86%) Aerospace
7 15 (4.29%) Telecoms
8 11 (3.14%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (2.29%) Aviation
9 8 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.43%) Legal
10 5 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.86%) Billing
11 3 (0.86%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.86%) Publishing
12 2 (0.57%) Automotive
12 2 (0.57%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.57%) Military
12 2 (0.57%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 51 (14.57%) Developer
2 48 (13.71%) Consultant
3 37 (10.57%) Analyst
4 27 (7.71%) SAP Consultant
5 26 (7.43%) Senior
6 19 (5.43%) Lead
7 18 (5.14%) Architect
8 17 (4.86%) Administrator
9 14 (4.00%) Business Analyst
10 13 (3.71%) Java Developer
11 11 (3.14%) Programmer
12 10 (2.86%) Information Security Advisor
12 10 (2.86%) Project Manager
12 10 (2.86%) Security Advisor
13 9 (2.57%) Delivery Manager
13 9 (2.57%) Management Consultant
14 8 (2.29%) Change Manager
14 8 (2.29%) Senior Developer
14 8 (2.29%) Support Engineer
14 8 (2.29%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.86%) React
2 15 (4.29%) Node.js
3 14 (4.00%) JSON
3 14 (4.00%) REST
4 11 (3.14%) SAP Fiori
5 10 (2.86%) HTML
5 10 (2.86%) Kafka
6 9 (2.57%) Jest
7 7 (2.00%) RESTful
7 7 (2.00%) Spring
7 7 (2.00%) XML
8 6 (1.71%) AngularJS
8 6 (1.71%) CSS
8 6 (1.71%) SOAP
9 5 (1.43%) .NET
9 5 (1.43%) ActiveMQ
9 5 (1.43%) HTML5
9 5 (1.43%) JAX-RS
9 5 (1.43%) Redux
9 5 (1.43%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.43%) Onboarding
2 21 (6.00%) Product Ownership
3 15 (4.29%) Management Information System
4 12 (3.43%) Security Posture
5 7 (2.00%) Cloud Native
5 7 (2.00%) SCADA
6 6 (1.71%) Driving Licence
7 5 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
7 5 (1.43%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.43%) Mobile App
8 4 (1.14%) Data Centre
8 4 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.14%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.14%) Public Cloud
9 3 (0.86%) Fibre Optics
9 3 (0.86%) Handset
9 3 (0.86%) Operational Technology
9 3 (0.86%) Replication
10 2 (0.57%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 37 (10.57%) Linux
2 23 (6.57%) Windows
3 16 (4.57%) Unix
4 8 (2.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (1.71%) Mac OS X
6 5 (1.43%) Android
7 4 (1.14%) Windows Server
8 2 (0.57%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.57%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.29%) CentOS
9 1 (0.29%) Debian
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.29%) Robot Operating System
9 1 (0.29%) VME
9 1 (0.29%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.29%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.29%) Windows 8
9 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 89 (25.43%) Agile
2 53 (15.14%) Problem-Solving
3 52 (14.86%) Stakeholder Management
4 38 (10.86%) CI/CD
5 37 (10.57%) DevOps
6 34 (9.71%) Change Management
7 31 (8.86%) Risk Management
8 30 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
9 26 (7.43%) Microservices
9 26 (7.43%) Test Automation
10 25 (7.14%) Roadmaps
11 20 (5.71%) Scrum
11 20 (5.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 19 (5.43%) Computer Science
12 19 (5.43%) Validation
13 18 (5.14%) Mentoring
14 17 (4.86%) Analytics
14 17 (4.86%) Information Security
15 16 (4.57%) Data Modelling
15 16 (4.57%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 35 (10.00%) Java
2 26 (7.43%) Python
3 20 (5.71%) SQL
4 15 (4.29%) JavaScript
5 11 (3.14%) ABAP
6 9 (2.57%) PowerShell
6 9 (2.57%) TypeScript
7 5 (1.43%) C#
8 4 (1.14%) Ruby
8 4 (1.14%) Scala
9 3 (0.86%) Bash
9 3 (0.86%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.86%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.57%) COBOL
10 2 (0.57%) Go
10 2 (0.57%) Perl
10 2 (0.57%) PHP
10 2 (0.57%) Rust
11 1 (0.29%) Ada
11 1 (0.29%) R
Qualifications
1 180 (51.43%) Security Cleared
2 138 (39.43%) SC Cleared
3 35 (10.00%) Degree
4 17 (4.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (4.00%) Master's Degree
6 11 (3.14%) BC Cleared
7 10 (2.86%) DV Cleared
7 10 (2.86%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
8 7 (2.00%) DBS Check
9 5 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.86%) CCNP
10 3 (0.86%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.57%) CISM
11 2 (0.57%) CISSP
11 2 (0.57%) ISEB
11 2 (0.57%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 2 (0.57%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.57%) PMP
11 2 (0.57%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.57%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.29%) Accessibility
1 15 (4.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (4.00%) GRC
3 12 (3.43%) QA
4 10 (2.86%) Def Stans
5 8 (2.29%) SLA
6 7 (2.00%) NIST
7 6 (1.71%) Data Quality
7 6 (1.71%) NCSC
8 5 (1.43%) PMO
9 4 (1.14%) GDPR
9 4 (1.14%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.86%) PSD2
10 3 (0.86%) WCAG
11 2 (0.57%) P3O
11 2 (0.57%) SEPA
12 1 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.29%) IFRS
12 1 (0.29%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 14 (4.00%) Active Directory
1 14 (4.00%) Docker
2 9 (2.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (1.43%) vSphere
4 3 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.57%) GPFS
5 2 (0.57%) NFS
5 2 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.29%) ACF2
6 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.29%) KVM
6 1 (0.29%) Postfix
6 1 (0.29%) QEMU
6 1 (0.29%) RACF
6 1 (0.29%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 14 (4.00%) Terraform
2 12 (3.43%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
4 5 (1.43%) Ansible
4 5 (1.43%) EMC NetWorker
4 5 (1.43%) EMC VPLEX
4 5 (1.43%) vRealize
5 4 (1.14%) Grafana
5 4 (1.14%) VxRail
6 3 (0.86%) PingFederate
6 3 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.57%) FortiGate
7 2 (0.57%) Podman
7 2 (0.57%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.57%) Puppet
7 2 (0.57%) SCCM
8 1 (0.29%) Nagios
8 1 (0.29%) SCOM
8 1 (0.29%) Tivoli
8 1 (0.29%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 54 (15.43%) SAP
2 41 (11.71%) Microsoft
3 21 (6.00%) Cisco
4 19 (5.43%) Oracle
5 15 (4.29%) VMware
6 8 (2.29%) IBM
7 7 (2.00%) Dell
7 7 (2.00%) Red Hat
7 7 (2.00%) ServiceNow
8 5 (1.43%) AppDynamics
8 5 (1.43%) Brocade
8 5 (1.43%) EMC
8 5 (1.43%) Isilon
9 4 (1.14%) Adobe
9 4 (1.14%) CyberArk
9 4 (1.14%) Fortinet
9 4 (1.14%) Google
10 3 (0.86%) Atlassian
10 3 (0.86%) Gemalto
10 3 (0.86%) Thales