Data Protection Act Contract Job Trends in England

Data Protection Act (DPA)
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Data Protection Act in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Data Protection Act over the 6 months leading up to 4 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 168 159
Rank change year-on-year +7 -9 +25
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 561 396 567
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.68% 1.52% 1.49%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.88% 4.59% 4.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 254 179 307
10th Percentile £220 £269 £218
25th Percentile £352 £363 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.90% -0.10% -9.09%
75th Percentile £584 £601 £584
90th Percentile £650 £715 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 8 12
10th Percentile £25.73 £20.30 -
25th Percentile £26.06 £23.38 £11.95
Median hourly rate £27.75 £24.50 £32.56
Median % change year-on-year +13.27% -24.75% +49.69%
75th Percentile £32.77 £31.76 £44.54
90th Percentile £39.99 - £60.70
UK median hourly rate £27.75 £24.50 £25.12
% change year-on-year +13.27% -2.45% +19.60%

All Generic Skills
England

Data Protection Act falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 11,493 8,626 11,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.47% 33.03% 31.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,348 5,198 7,836
10th Percentile £275 £266 £252
25th Percentile £406 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £545
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% +0.92% -5.22%
75th Percentile £630 £675 £662
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 565 248 739
10th Percentile £15.40 £18.51 £13.40
25th Percentile £18.82 £24.23 £17.00
Median hourly rate £31.65 £37.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.60% +15.38% +44.49%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.13 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.20 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £32.22
% change year-on-year -14.29% +8.64% +43.28%

Data Protection Act
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Protection Act relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Data Protection Act job vacancy trend in England

Data Protection Act
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection Act.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection Act

Data Protection Act
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Protection Act in England over the 6 months to 4 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Protection Act in England

Data Protection Act
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection Act.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection Act

Data Protection Act
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Protection Act in England over the 6 months to 4 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Protection Act in England

Data Protection Act
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 Data Protection Act within the England region over the 6 months to 4 February 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 +22 307 £505 +1.00% 8
North of England -33 124 £450 -10.00% 6
Yorkshire -20 69 £475 -12.64% 2
South East -21 57 £325 -27.78% 6
North West -23 42 £450 -10.00% 4
Midlands -41 31 £450 - 9
West Midlands -32 26 £463 -7.50% 2
South West -6 20 £525 +7.69% 6
East of England -20 15 £475 +1.33% 1
North East -21 13 £250 -44.44%
East Midlands -26 5 £448 +19.33% 7
Data Protection Act
UK

Data Protection Act
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 24 (4.28%) Confluence
2 9 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.60%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.07%) Apache
5 5 (0.89%) Apache Spark
5 5 (0.89%) CMS
6 4 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
7 3 (0.53%) SAS
8 2 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.36%) CICS
8 2 (0.36%) Drupal
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.36%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.18%) Luigi
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.18%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 18 (3.21%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (2.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.71%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.53%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.53%) Sketch
6 3 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.36%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.36%) InVision
7 2 (0.36%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.18%) Blender
8 1 (0.18%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.18%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.18%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 9 (1.60%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.53%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (0.53%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.36%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.36%) VisionPLUS
5 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.18%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
5 1 (0.18%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 63 (11.23%) AWS
2 48 (8.56%) Azure
3 24 (4.28%) GCP
4 23 (4.10%) Power Platform
5 22 (3.92%) Snowflake
6 18 (3.21%) Microsoft 365
7 17 (3.03%) Amazon S3
8 16 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
8 16 (2.85%) Serverless
9 15 (2.67%) GitHub
10 13 (2.32%) SaaS
11 12 (2.14%) Amazon EC2
12 8 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
12 8 (1.43%) Entra ID
13 7 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (1.25%) Azure DevOps
13 7 (1.25%) Figma
13 7 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
13 7 (1.25%) OpenShift
14 6 (1.07%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 16 (2.85%) Firewall
2 15 (2.67%) MPLS
3 11 (1.96%) LAN
4 10 (1.78%) Network Security
5 8 (1.43%) WAN
5 8 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.25%) VPN
7 6 (1.07%) Ethernet
8 5 (0.89%) BGP
8 5 (0.89%) Wireshark
9 4 (0.71%) DNS
9 4 (0.71%) Kerberos
9 4 (0.71%) NetScaler
9 4 (0.71%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.71%) SSH
9 4 (0.71%) TCP/IP
9 4 (0.71%) VLAN
10 3 (0.53%) DWDM
10 3 (0.53%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.92%) Power BI
2 16 (2.85%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (1.96%) NoSQL
4 10 (1.78%) SQL Server
5 9 (1.60%) Tableau
6 8 (1.43%) Hadoop
7 7 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (1.25%) Metadata
8 6 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (1.07%) MongoDB
8 6 (1.07%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.89%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (0.89%) Data Lake
10 4 (0.71%) Big Data
10 4 (0.71%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.53%) Apache Iceberg
11 3 (0.53%) MySQL
11 3 (0.53%) Neo4j
12 2 (0.36%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.36%) TigerGraph
Development Applications
1 42 (7.49%) JIRA
2 11 (1.96%) Git
3 10 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.60%) SpecFlow
5 6 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.89%) GitLab
6 5 (0.89%) Gradle
6 5 (0.89%) JUnit
6 5 (0.89%) Maven
7 4 (0.71%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.71%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.53%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.36%) ChangeMan
9 2 (0.36%) DBeaver
9 2 (0.36%) IntelliJ
9 2 (0.36%) Katalon Studio
9 2 (0.36%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.36%) webpack
10 1 (0.18%) Postman
10 1 (0.18%) PyCharm
General
1 150 (26.74%) Social Skills
2 121 (21.57%) Finance
3 76 (13.55%) Banking
4 61 (10.87%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (5.17%) Telecoms
6 21 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
6 21 (3.74%) Front Office
7 17 (3.03%) Legal
8 15 (2.67%) Public Sector
9 11 (1.96%) Marketing
9 11 (1.96%) Organisational Skills
10 9 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
11 7 (1.25%) Investment Banking
11 7 (1.25%) Publishing
12 6 (1.07%) Aerospace
12 6 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 5 (0.89%) General Ledger
13 5 (0.89%) Retail Banking
14 4 (0.71%) Retail
Job Titles
1 75 (13.37%) Analyst
2 67 (11.94%) Developer
3 41 (7.31%) Architect
4 40 (7.13%) Business Analyst
5 38 (6.77%) Project Manager
6 33 (5.88%) Lead
7 27 (4.81%) Senior
8 25 (4.46%) Consultant
9 19 (3.39%) Network Engineer
10 15 (2.67%) Support Engineer
11 14 (2.50%) Data Engineer
11 14 (2.50%) Java Developer
11 14 (2.50%) Software Engineer
11 14 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
12 13 (2.32%) Data Analyst
12 13 (2.32%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 12 (2.14%) Python Developer
13 12 (2.14%) Tester
14 9 (1.60%) Network Architect
14 9 (1.60%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (4.81%) React
2 17 (3.03%) REST
3 14 (2.50%) RESTful
4 11 (1.96%) OAuth
4 11 (1.96%) Playwright
5 10 (1.78%) .NET
6 9 (1.60%) PySpark
6 9 (1.60%) SAML
6 9 (1.60%) Spring
7 8 (1.43%) HTML
7 8 (1.43%) Kafka
7 8 (1.43%) LangChain
7 8 (1.43%) Spring Boot
8 7 (1.25%) AngularJS
9 6 (1.07%) FIX Protocol
9 6 (1.07%) Middleware
9 6 (1.07%) Model Context Protocol
9 6 (1.07%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
9 6 (1.07%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 21 (3.74%) Onboarding
2 16 (2.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 14 (2.50%) Cloud Native
4 12 (2.14%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.96%) Derivative
5 11 (1.96%) Freedom of Information
6 10 (1.78%) Equities
7 9 (1.60%) Data Centre
7 9 (1.60%) Management Information System
8 8 (1.43%) Fixed Income
9 7 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.07%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.07%) Algorithms
11 5 (0.89%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.71%) Credit Risk
12 4 (0.71%) Data Structures
12 4 (0.71%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (0.71%) Equity Derivative
12 4 (0.71%) Mobile App
12 4 (0.71%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 32 (5.70%) Linux
2 25 (4.46%) Windows
3 8 (1.43%) Unix
4 6 (1.07%) zOS
5 5 (0.89%) Android
6 4 (0.71%) AIX
6 4 (0.71%) Solaris
6 4 (0.71%) Windows 10
7 3 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.53%) VMS
7 3 (0.53%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.18%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 561 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 103 (18.36%) Stakeholder Management
3 94 (16.76%) Problem-Solving
4 91 (16.22%) Agile
5 70 (12.48%) Migration
6 63 (11.23%) AI
7 57 (10.16%) Project Management
8 47 (8.38%) Analytics
8 47 (8.38%) CI/CD
9 43 (7.66%) DevOps
10 41 (7.31%) Roadmaps
11 40 (7.13%) Software Engineering
12 36 (6.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 35 (6.24%) Decision-Making
14 32 (5.70%) Business Analysis
15 31 (5.53%) Continuous Improvement
15 31 (5.53%) Machine Learning
16 28 (4.99%) LLM
17 27 (4.81%) Full-Stack Development
18 26 (4.63%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 110 (19.61%) Python
2 78 (13.90%) SQL
3 39 (6.95%) Java
4 34 (6.06%) C#
5 29 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 19 (3.39%) PowerShell
6 19 (3.39%) TypeScript
7 13 (2.32%) C++
8 9 (1.60%) Bash
8 9 (1.60%) Shell Script
9 5 (0.89%) Scala
10 4 (0.71%) PHP
11 3 (0.53%) COBOL
11 3 (0.53%) Go
11 3 (0.53%) Groovy
11 3 (0.53%) Kotlin
11 3 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.36%) Bicep
12 2 (0.36%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.36%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 53 (9.45%) Degree
2 40 (7.13%) Security Cleared
3 33 (5.88%) SC Cleared
4 17 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (2.32%) Master's Degree
6 9 (1.60%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.07%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.07%) PMI Certification
7 6 (1.07%) PMP
8 5 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.71%) CCNP
9 4 (0.71%) CISSP
10 3 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.36%) CCIE
11 2 (0.36%) CCNA
11 2 (0.36%) ISEB
11 2 (0.36%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.36%) MBA
11 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.36%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.35%) GDPR
2 25 (4.46%) QA
3 18 (3.21%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (1.78%) PMO
6 8 (1.43%) NIST
7 7 (1.25%) Accessibility
8 4 (0.71%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.71%) SLA
9 3 (0.53%) IFRS
9 3 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.36%) Basel III
10 2 (0.36%) GAAP
10 2 (0.36%) GRC
10 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.36%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.36%) SEPA
10 2 (0.36%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (3.57%) Docker
2 14 (2.50%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.36%) KVM
6 2 (0.36%) NFS
6 2 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.36%) vSphere
7 1 (0.18%) Firmware
7 1 (0.18%) HDFS
7 1 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 28 (4.99%) Kubernetes
2 20 (3.57%) Terraform
3 13 (2.32%) Ansible
4 4 (0.71%) Control-M
4 4 (0.71%) Grafana
4 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (0.53%) PingFederate
5 3 (0.53%) Puppet
5 3 (0.53%) vCenter Server
6 2 (0.36%) CA Endevor
6 2 (0.36%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.36%) SCCM
6 2 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.18%) Argo
7 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.18%) Nessus
7 1 (0.18%) SCOM
7 1 (0.18%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 45 (8.02%) Microsoft
2 24 (4.28%) Cisco
3 20 (3.57%) Databricks
4 16 (2.85%) Oracle
5 14 (2.50%) Google
5 14 (2.50%) ServiceNow
6 12 (2.14%) SAP
7 10 (1.78%) Adobe
7 10 (1.78%) Salesforce
8 9 (1.60%) Nokia
9 8 (1.43%) VMware
10 7 (1.25%) ADVA
10 7 (1.25%) Citrix
10 7 (1.25%) Informatica
11 6 (1.07%) F5
11 6 (1.07%) Juniper
11 6 (1.07%) Workday
12 5 (0.89%) Foundry
12 5 (0.89%) ION Trading
12 5 (0.89%) Meraki