BPSS Clearance Contract Job Trends

Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) Clearance
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for BPSS Clearance qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 11 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 160 271
Rank change year-on-year +74 +111 -40
Contract jobs citing BPSS Clearance 1,675 599 338
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.07% 1.81% 0.89%
As % of the Qualifications category 9.62% 5.68% 3.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,221 423 190
10th Percentile £367 £313 £213
25th Percentile £434 £405 £355
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.68%
75th Percentile £600 £602 £589
90th Percentile £671 £715 £651
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £500 £447
% change year-on-year -2.75% +11.86% -18.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 238 52 20
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.00 £19.85
25th Percentile £40.18 £22.63 £20.12
Median hourly rate £43.96 £31.39 £28.30
Median % change year-on-year +40.07% +10.92% -48.55%
75th Percentile £44.25 £48.13 £59.06
90th Percentile £65.50 £71.14 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £33.50 £28.30
% change year-on-year +31.22% +18.40% -48.55%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 17,403 10,553 11,090
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.89% 31.87% 29.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,517 6,598 6,716
10th Percentile £355 £285 £313
25th Percentile £448 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £631
90th Percentile £713 £704 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,459 892 589
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.55 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.36
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.49%
75th Percentile £72.25 £40.65 £68.75
90th Percentile £89.08 £70.00 £75.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.64%

BPSS Clearance
Job Vacancy Trend

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

BPSS Clearance job vacancy trend in the UK

BPSS Clearance
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

BPSS Clearance
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing BPSS Clearance over the 6 months to 11 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for BPSS Clearance in the UK

BPSS Clearance
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

BPSS Clearance
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing BPSS Clearance over the 6 months to 11 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for BPSS Clearance in the UK

BPSS Clearance
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 BPSS Clearance within the UK over the 6 months to 11 October 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 +81 1,271 £500 - 1,022
UK excluding London +57 955 £486 -2.75% 801
Work from Home +57 584 £518 +9.05% 623
London +105 382 £530 +6.00% 255
North of England +20 337 £490 - 147
Midlands +64 312 £488 -6.34% 120
West Midlands +70 301 £488 -7.14% 80
North West -2 183 £530 +13.01% 80
North East +18 95 £463 -8.64% 34
South East -14 90 £474 -7.79% 161
South West +11 77 £525 +16.67% 112
Yorkshire +9 76 £473 -5.45% 33
Scotland +20 67 £450 +4.96% 102
East of England +19 62 £566 -6.29% 139
Northern Ireland +16 20 - - 16
Wales -2 13 £419 - 10
East Midlands -20 11 £600 +29.03% 40

BPSS Clearance
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 71 (4.24%) Confluence
2 39 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 13 (0.78%) CMS
4 12 (0.72%) SharePoint Server
5 11 (0.66%) Apache Spark
6 9 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
7 8 (0.48%) SAS
8 7 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
9 6 (0.36%) Headless CMS
9 6 (0.36%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.30%) WordPress
11 4 (0.24%) IIS
12 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.18%) SAP Portal
13 2 (0.12%) Cloud Foundry
13 2 (0.12%) Ethereum
13 2 (0.12%) Hyperledger
13 2 (0.12%) nginx
13 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
14 1 (0.060%) Jupyter
Applications
1 44 (2.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.54%) Windchill
5 8 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.24%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.18%) Navisworks
8 2 (0.12%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.12%) Revit
8 2 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
9 1 (0.060%) Civil 3D
9 1 (0.060%) ProjectWise
9 1 (0.060%) PTC Creo
9 1 (0.060%) Siemens NX
9 1 (0.060%) Trello
Business Applications
1 67 (4.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (1.37%) SAP HR
2 23 (1.37%) SAP Payroll
3 16 (0.96%) SAP BRIM
3 16 (0.96%) SAP HCM
3 16 (0.96%) SAP PSCD
4 11 (0.66%) SAP FI
5 9 (0.54%) SAP PP
6 7 (0.42%) SAP FI-CA
6 7 (0.42%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.42%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.36%) SAP GRC
8 5 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
8 5 (0.30%) Exchequer
8 5 (0.30%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.30%) SAP Hybris
9 4 (0.24%) SAP Convergent Charging
9 4 (0.24%) SAP EHS
9 4 (0.24%) SAP IBP
9 4 (0.24%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 303 (18.09%) AWS
2 277 (16.54%) Azure
3 92 (5.49%) GitHub
4 84 (5.01%) Power Platform
5 65 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
6 59 (3.52%) GCP
6 59 (3.52%) Serverless
7 58 (3.46%) GitHub Actions
8 50 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
9 47 (2.81%) Amazon S3
9 47 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
10 45 (2.69%) Entra ID
11 30 (1.79%) SuccessFactors
12 26 (1.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 26 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
13 25 (1.49%) Azure Monitor
14 24 (1.43%) Power Automate
14 24 (1.43%) PowerApps
15 22 (1.31%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (1.07%) DNS
2 13 (0.78%) SSL
2 13 (0.78%) WAN
3 12 (0.72%) Network Security
4 10 (0.60%) WebEx
5 9 (0.54%) Cisco IPT
5 9 (0.54%) Firewall
5 9 (0.54%) Radio Access Network
5 9 (0.54%) Wireshark
6 8 (0.48%) 5G
6 8 (0.48%) Intranet
7 7 (0.42%) 3GPP
7 7 (0.42%) VPN
8 6 (0.36%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.36%) LAN
8 6 (0.36%) MPLS
9 5 (0.30%) HTTP
9 5 (0.30%) NGN
9 5 (0.30%) tcpdump
10 4 (0.24%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (3.34%) MongoDB
2 54 (3.22%) Power BI
3 53 (3.16%) PostgreSQL
4 44 (2.63%) Metadata
5 38 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
6 31 (1.85%) SQL Server
7 25 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
7 25 (1.49%) MySQL
8 24 (1.43%) NoSQL
9 22 (1.31%) Data Lake
10 20 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 19 (1.13%) Relational Database
12 18 (1.07%) Oracle Database
13 16 (0.96%) DynamoDB
14 14 (0.84%) Amazon Aurora
14 14 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
15 11 (0.66%) Redis
16 10 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
16 10 (0.60%) Big Data
17 8 (0.48%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 123 (7.34%) Git
2 116 (6.93%) JIRA
3 111 (6.63%) GitLab
4 64 (3.82%) Jenkins
5 46 (2.75%) JUnit
6 36 (2.15%) Selenium
7 34 (2.03%) Cucumber
8 30 (1.79%) Maven
9 23 (1.37%) SonarQube
10 22 (1.31%) Gatling
11 21 (1.25%) Mockito
12 19 (1.13%) Postman
13 14 (0.84%) Team Foundation Server
13 14 (0.84%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.78%) Cypress.io
15 12 (0.72%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 11 (0.66%) Rational DOORS
17 10 (0.60%) Bitbucket
17 10 (0.60%) REST Assured
18 7 (0.42%) Gradle
General
1 580 (34.63%) Social Skills
2 448 (26.75%) Public Sector
3 257 (15.34%) Finance
4 164 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
5 142 (8.48%) Legal
5 142 (8.48%) Organisational Skills
6 58 (3.46%) Aerospace
7 41 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
9 38 (2.27%) Manufacturing
10 32 (1.91%) Telecoms
11 31 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 29 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
13 22 (1.31%) Banking
13 22 (1.31%) Billing
14 21 (1.25%) Aviation
15 16 (0.96%) Local Government
15 16 (0.96%) Military
15 16 (0.96%) Publishing
16 13 (0.78%) Avionics
Job Titles
1 225 (13.43%) Developer
2 202 (12.06%) Architect
3 185 (11.04%) Senior
4 169 (10.09%) Lead
5 112 (6.69%) Analyst
6 108 (6.45%) Consultant
7 76 (4.54%) Java Developer
8 63 (3.76%) SAP Consultant
9 62 (3.70%) Technical Architect
10 60 (3.58%) Data Engineer
11 56 (3.34%) Designer
11 56 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
12 55 (3.28%) DevOps Engineer
13 48 (2.87%) Business Analyst
14 39 (2.33%) Delivery Manager
14 39 (2.33%) Product Manager
15 36 (2.15%) Data Architect
16 34 (2.03%) Administrator
16 34 (2.03%) User Researcher
17 33 (1.97%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (7.28%) Terraform
2 102 (6.09%) REST
3 97 (5.79%) Spring
4 78 (4.66%) Spring Boot
5 59 (3.52%) RESTful
6 57 (3.40%) React
7 56 (3.34%) Node.js
8 48 (2.87%) HTML
8 48 (2.87%) Playwright
9 44 (2.63%) Kafka
10 39 (2.33%) OpenAPI
11 37 (2.21%) CSS
12 29 (1.73%) OAuth
13 28 (1.67%) JSON
13 28 (1.67%) Swagger
14 26 (1.55%) .NET
14 26 (1.55%) OAuth2
14 26 (1.55%) XML
15 22 (1.31%) Web Services
16 21 (1.25%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 119 (7.10%) Virtual Team
1 119 (7.10%) Web Conferencing
2 115 (6.87%) Onboarding
3 109 (6.51%) Podcast
4 89 (5.31%) Product Ownership
5 87 (5.19%) Cloud Native
6 38 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
7 27 (1.61%) Management Information System
8 26 (1.55%) Replication
9 24 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
10 23 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (1.37%) Mobile App
11 22 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
12 18 (1.07%) NHS
13 17 (1.01%) Driving Licence
14 14 (0.84%) BYOD
14 14 (0.84%) Low-Code
15 13 (0.78%) AI Agents
16 12 (0.72%) Taxonomies
17 11 (0.66%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 76 (4.54%) Windows
2 53 (3.16%) Linux
3 28 (1.67%) Unix
4 21 (1.25%) Android
5 19 (1.13%) Windows Server
6 14 (0.84%) Apple iOS
7 11 (0.66%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.60%) VMS
9 8 (0.48%) macOS
10 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 1 (0.060%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.060%) Robot Operating System
11 1 (0.060%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.060%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.060%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 525 (31.34%) Agile
2 356 (21.25%) Stakeholder Management
3 296 (17.67%) CI/CD
4 249 (14.87%) DevOps
5 218 (13.01%) Continuous Improvement
6 202 (12.06%) Problem-Solving
7 182 (10.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 178 (10.63%) Scrum
9 157 (9.37%) Test Automation
10 138 (8.24%) Customer Service
10 138 (8.24%) Microservices
11 137 (8.18%) Decision-Making
12 132 (7.88%) Roadmaps
13 127 (7.58%) Infrastructure as Code
14 124 (7.40%) Migration
15 123 (7.34%) AI
15 123 (7.34%) Analytics
16 120 (7.16%) Digital Transformation Programme
17 108 (6.45%) Mentoring
18 91 (5.43%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 203 (12.12%) Java
2 177 (10.57%) SQL
3 129 (7.70%) Python
4 82 (4.90%) JavaScript
5 43 (2.57%) TypeScript
6 40 (2.39%) PowerShell
7 34 (2.03%) Scala
8 27 (1.61%) Bash
9 26 (1.55%) Shell Script
10 22 (1.31%) C#
11 20 (1.19%) PL/SQL
12 18 (1.07%) ABAP
13 14 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 11 (0.66%) VB
14 11 (0.66%) VB6
14 11 (0.66%) VBA
15 9 (0.54%) VBScript
16 8 (0.48%) C++
16 8 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 8 (0.48%) R
Qualifications
1 585 (34.93%) Security Cleared
2 459 (27.40%) SC Cleared
3 83 (4.96%) Degree
4 27 (1.61%) AWS Certification
5 21 (1.25%) Azure Certification
6 19 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
7 15 (0.90%) DBS Check
8 13 (0.78%) DV Cleared
9 12 (0.72%) A+ Certification
10 11 (0.66%) PMI Certification
11 9 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 9 (0.54%) HNC
11 9 (0.54%) HND
11 9 (0.54%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 8 (0.48%) ISTQB
13 7 (0.42%) Master's Degree
14 6 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 6 (0.36%) CCNA
14 6 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
14 6 (0.36%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 119 (7.10%) Accessibility
2 111 (6.63%) QA
3 70 (4.18%) Data Quality
4 47 (2.81%) WCAG
5 30 (1.79%) GDPR
6 23 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 20 (1.19%) PMO
8 17 (1.01%) SLA
9 14 (0.84%) NCSC
10 12 (0.72%) NIST
11 11 (0.66%) GRC
12 9 (0.54%) IEC 61508
13 8 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
14 5 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 5 (0.30%) GMP
14 5 (0.30%) GxP
14 5 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 17025
14 5 (0.30%) PERC
15 4 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
15 4 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 113 (6.75%) Docker
2 36 (2.15%) Active Directory
3 13 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 6 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
6 5 (0.30%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.24%) Firmware
8 1 (0.060%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.060%) IAG
8 1 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 128 (7.64%) Kubernetes
2 41 (2.45%) Grafana
3 27 (1.61%) Kibana
4 24 (1.43%) Prometheus
5 20 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (0.84%) Ansible
7 12 (0.72%) SCCM
8 10 (0.60%) Argo
8 10 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
9 9 (0.54%) Functional Safety
9 9 (0.54%) SCOM
10 4 (0.24%) Istio
10 4 (0.24%) Packer
10 4 (0.24%) Podman
10 4 (0.24%) Puppet
11 3 (0.18%) HAProxy
11 3 (0.18%) Karpenter
12 2 (0.12%) Data Guard
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 207 (12.36%) Microsoft
2 162 (9.67%) SAP
3 97 (5.79%) Oracle
4 63 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 48 (2.87%) Google
6 25 (1.49%) BeyondTrust
7 19 (1.13%) Databricks
7 19 (1.13%) Splunk
8 17 (1.01%) Atlassian
8 17 (1.01%) Talend
9 13 (0.78%) IBM
10 12 (0.72%) Cisco
10 12 (0.72%) Dell
10 12 (0.72%) Informatica
11 11 (0.66%) CyberArk
11 11 (0.66%) Salesforce
12 10 (0.60%) Okta
13 9 (0.54%) MuleSoft
13 9 (0.54%) Siemens
14 8 (0.48%) EMC