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 15 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 161 165
Rank change year-on-year -64 +4 -15
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 602 519 505
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.29% 1.84% 1.57%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.71% 5.05% 5.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 218 251
10th Percentile £250 £291 £215
25th Percentile £350 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £597
90th Percentile £641 £650 £713
UK median daily rate £425 £458 £488
% change year-on-year -7.10% -6.15% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 10 8
10th Percentile £12.83 £14.95 £18.14
25th Percentile £13.26 £15.13 £19.22
Median hourly rate £15.06 £15.25 £24.67
Median % change year-on-year -1.25% -38.18% -41.53%
75th Percentile £21.50 £34.19 £70.23
90th Percentile £26.80 £40.90 £71.88
UK median hourly rate £17.60 £15.25 £24.67
% change year-on-year +15.41% -38.18% -41.53%

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 16,228 10,275 9,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.64% 36.50% 31.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,749 6,441 6,007
10th Percentile £325 £300 £294
25th Percentile £425 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -1.36%
75th Percentile £644 £644 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £820
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £530
% change year-on-year +1.94% -2.83% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,218 538 352
10th Percentile £13.79 £14.91 £16.87
25th Percentile £17.48 £18.51 £24.18
Median hourly rate £33.99 £29.50 £52.75
Median % change year-on-year +15.20% -44.08% +14.23%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.13 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £35.80 £27.33 £46.18
% change year-on-year +30.99% -40.82% +2.62%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 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
London -77 254 £463 -7.50% 2
North of England -11 200 £475 +5.56% 4
Yorkshire +23 119 £485 -6.51% 2
North West -13 75 £475 +6.74% 2
South East -44 69 £375 -9.09% 5
Midlands -39 50 £425 -5.56% 4
West Midlands -45 40 £425 -5.56% 2
South West -42 14 £425 - 3
East Midlands - 10 £425 - 2
East of England -37 6 £450 -5.26% 2
North East -57 6 - -
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 20 (3.32%) Confluence
2 13 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.50%) Apache
3 9 (1.50%) SAS
4 7 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
7 4 (0.66%) CICS
7 4 (0.66%) nginx
8 2 (0.33%) CMS
8 2 (0.33%) IIS
8 2 (0.33%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.33%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.33%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.17%) Camunda
9 1 (0.17%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.17%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.17%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 17 (2.82%) Microsoft Excel
1 17 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.17%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 10 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.83%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.33%) Cloudability
3 2 (0.33%) ION MarketView
3 2 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.17%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle BRM
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.17%) Sage 50
4 1 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.17%) SAP CX
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FI-CA
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.17%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 99 (16.45%) Azure
2 75 (12.46%) AWS
3 50 (8.31%) GCP
4 30 (4.98%) GitHub
5 23 (3.82%) Microsoft 365
6 19 (3.16%) SaaS
7 18 (2.99%) Power Platform
8 17 (2.82%) Azure DevOps
9 13 (2.16%) Serverless
10 12 (1.99%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (1.66%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.33%) Azure AKS
12 8 (1.33%) OneDrive
13 7 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
13 7 (1.16%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (1.16%) Dynamics 365
13 7 (1.16%) Entra ID
13 7 (1.16%) OpenShift
14 6 (1.00%) Amazon S3
14 6 (1.00%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.32%) Firewall
2 16 (2.66%) Network Security
3 11 (1.83%) LAN
4 10 (1.66%) VoIP
4 10 (1.66%) WAN
5 9 (1.50%) DNS
5 9 (1.50%) MPLS
6 7 (1.16%) Cisco IPT
7 6 (1.00%) SDH
7 6 (1.00%) Unified Communications
7 6 (1.00%) VPN
7 6 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.83%) Cisco Nexus
8 5 (0.83%) DHCP
8 5 (0.83%) TCP/IP
9 4 (0.66%) BGP
9 4 (0.66%) EIGRP
9 4 (0.66%) Ethernet
9 4 (0.66%) Intrusion Detection
9 4 (0.66%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.99%) Metadata
2 17 (2.82%) Power BI
3 13 (2.16%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (1.66%) BigQuery
6 7 (1.16%) Relational Database
6 7 (1.16%) SQL Server
7 6 (1.00%) Big Data
7 6 (1.00%) Oracle Database
8 5 (0.83%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.83%) Db2
8 5 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
8 5 (0.83%) Redis
9 4 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (0.66%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.66%) Tableau
10 3 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.50%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.50%) MySQL
10 3 (0.50%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 38 (6.31%) JIRA
2 24 (3.99%) Jenkins
3 23 (3.82%) Git
4 8 (1.33%) Maven
5 7 (1.16%) GitLab
6 4 (0.66%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.50%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.50%) Gradle
7 3 (0.50%) JUnit
7 3 (0.50%) Selenium
7 3 (0.50%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.33%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.33%) CMake
8 2 (0.33%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.33%) ER Studio
8 2 (0.33%) ERwin
8 2 (0.33%) SpecFlow
8 2 (0.33%) XCTest
8 2 (0.33%) XCUITest
General
1 253 (42.03%) Social Skills
2 181 (30.07%) Finance
3 88 (14.62%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (13.29%) Banking
5 34 (5.65%) Legal
6 32 (5.32%) Public Sector
7 29 (4.82%) Organisational Skills
8 23 (3.82%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
10 19 (3.16%) Front Office
11 16 (2.66%) Telecoms
12 14 (2.33%) Retail
13 13 (2.16%) Marketing
14 12 (1.99%) Billing
14 12 (1.99%) Investment Banking
15 11 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (1.50%) Financial Institution
17 6 (1.00%) Law
17 6 (1.00%) Police
17 6 (1.00%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 83 (13.79%) Architect
2 66 (10.96%) Analyst
3 46 (7.64%) Lead
4 42 (6.98%) Business Analyst
5 39 (6.48%) Developer
6 30 (4.98%) Project Manager
7 29 (4.82%) Solutions Architect
8 25 (4.15%) Senior
9 22 (3.65%) Consultant
10 14 (2.33%) DevOps Engineer
11 13 (2.16%) Support Engineer
12 12 (1.99%) Java Developer
12 12 (1.99%) Product Owner
13 11 (1.83%) Software Engineer
14 10 (1.66%) Product Manager
14 10 (1.66%) Tester
15 9 (1.50%) Data Engineer
15 9 (1.50%) Designer
15 9 (1.50%) Technical Manager
16 8 (1.33%) Data Protection Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (6.48%) REST
1 39 (6.48%) Terraform
2 20 (3.32%) Kafka
3 16 (2.66%) React
4 15 (2.49%) Spring
5 14 (2.33%) Spring Boot
6 13 (2.16%) JSON
7 12 (1.99%) Node.js
8 10 (1.66%) .NET
8 10 (1.66%) Middleware
8 10 (1.66%) OAuth
8 10 (1.66%) YAML
9 9 (1.50%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.33%) OAuth2
10 8 (1.33%) Pandas
11 7 (1.16%) HTML
11 7 (1.16%) OpenID
11 7 (1.16%) RESTful
11 7 (1.16%) SAML
12 5 (0.83%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 47 (7.81%) Product Ownership
2 41 (6.81%) Cloud Native
3 29 (4.82%) Onboarding
4 26 (4.32%) Distributed Systems
5 25 (4.15%) Virtual Team
6 22 (3.65%) Management Information System
7 19 (3.16%) Data Centre
8 16 (2.66%) Data Structures
9 15 (2.49%) Freedom of Information
9 15 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (2.49%) Mainframe
10 13 (2.16%) Mobile App
11 11 (1.83%) Derivative
11 11 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (1.66%) AI Agents
12 10 (1.66%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.66%) Freedom of Information Act
13 9 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
13 9 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (1.33%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 36 (5.98%) Linux
2 30 (4.98%) Windows
3 13 (2.16%) Unix
4 12 (1.99%) Android
5 11 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.66%) Apple iOS
6 10 (1.66%) zOS
7 6 (1.00%) macOS
8 5 (0.83%) Windows Server
9 3 (0.50%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.17%) CentOS
10 1 (0.17%) MVS
10 1 (0.17%) SUSE
10 1 (0.17%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 602 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 179 (29.73%) Stakeholder Management
3 128 (21.26%) Agile
4 112 (18.60%) Problem-Solving
5 110 (18.27%) Continuous Improvement
6 100 (16.61%) AI
7 95 (15.78%) Migration
8 88 (14.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 86 (14.29%) CI/CD
10 72 (11.96%) Decision-Making
11 67 (11.13%) Roadmaps
12 64 (10.63%) Analytics
13 61 (10.13%) DevOps
14 57 (9.47%) Software Engineering
15 53 (8.80%) Risk Management
16 49 (8.14%) Project Management
16 49 (8.14%) Test Automation
17 47 (7.81%) Cybersecurity
18 46 (7.64%) Data Modelling
19 40 (6.64%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 79 (13.12%) Python
2 64 (10.63%) SQL
3 52 (8.64%) Java
4 17 (2.82%) JavaScript
5 14 (2.33%) TypeScript
6 13 (2.16%) Go
7 12 (1.99%) Kotlin
7 12 (1.99%) PowerShell
8 11 (1.83%) Bash
9 9 (1.50%) C#
10 7 (1.16%) C++
11 5 (0.83%) Bicep
11 5 (0.83%) COBOL
11 5 (0.83%) Perl
12 4 (0.66%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.66%) C
12 4 (0.66%) Groovy
12 4 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.50%) JCL
13 3 (0.50%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 38 (6.31%) Security Cleared
2 35 (5.81%) SC Cleared
3 33 (5.48%) Degree
4 12 (1.99%) PMI Certification
4 12 (1.99%) PMP
5 9 (1.50%) CISSP
6 7 (1.16%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.00%) Azure Certification
7 6 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.66%) CCNP
9 4 (0.66%) CISM
9 4 (0.66%) CRISC
10 3 (0.50%) CISA
10 3 (0.50%) FFIEC
10 3 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
11 2 (0.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 2 (0.33%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.33%) PgMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (7.31%) Data Quality
2 42 (6.98%) GDPR
3 33 (5.48%) QA
4 8 (1.33%) PMO
5 7 (1.16%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.16%) NIST
6 6 (1.00%) PERC
7 4 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 3 (0.50%) EMIR
8 3 (0.50%) MiFID
8 3 (0.50%) SEPA
9 2 (0.33%) COBIT
9 2 (0.33%) GRC
9 2 (0.33%) NCSC
9 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.33%) SLA
System Software
1 21 (3.49%) Active Directory
2 18 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (2.66%) Docker
4 9 (1.50%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.66%) NFS
7 3 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.50%) vSphere
8 2 (0.33%) GPFS
8 2 (0.33%) KVM
8 2 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.17%) etcd
9 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.17%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 46 (7.64%) Kubernetes
2 29 (4.82%) Ansible
3 6 (1.00%) Grafana
3 6 (1.00%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (0.66%) Cisco CUCM
6 3 (0.50%) Control-M
6 3 (0.50%) Kustomize
6 3 (0.50%) Progress Chef
6 3 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.50%) vCenter Server
7 2 (0.33%) Argo
7 2 (0.33%) Istio
7 2 (0.33%) Packer
7 2 (0.33%) Puppet
7 2 (0.33%) QRadar
7 2 (0.33%) SCCM
8 1 (0.17%) ITRS Geneos
8 1 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 83 (13.79%) Microsoft
2 30 (4.98%) Cisco
3 26 (4.32%) Google
4 22 (3.65%) Databricks
5 20 (3.32%) ServiceNow
6 18 (2.99%) Oracle
6 18 (2.99%) VMware
7 16 (2.66%) SAP
8 14 (2.33%) IBM
9 13 (2.16%) Red Hat
10 11 (1.83%) Salesforce
11 10 (1.66%) F5
12 7 (1.16%) Citrix
13 5 (0.83%) Atlassian
13 5 (0.83%) CheckPoint
13 5 (0.83%) Murex
14 4 (0.66%) Palo Alto
14 4 (0.66%) Sage
14 4 (0.66%) SolarWinds
14 4 (0.66%) Splunk
Data Protection Act jobs