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 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 162 170 157
Rank change year-on-year +8 -13 +30
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 552 429 580
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.74% 1.52% 1.60%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.93% 4.67% 5.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 243 206 322
10th Percentile £250 £264 £219
25th Percentile £400 £368 £316
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £622 £601
90th Percentile £673 £713 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -8.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 5 6
10th Percentile £29.09 £22.15 £24.67
25th Percentile £33.36 £24.25 £28.71
Median hourly rate £40.46 £24.50 £41.10
Median % change year-on-year +65.14% -40.38% +183.41%
75th Percentile £42.64 £24.75 £44.28
90th Percentile £43.94 £28.96 £44.54
UK median hourly rate £33.98 £24.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +38.69% -38.75% +166.67%

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 11,202 9,191 11,491
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.38% 32.48% 31.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,085 5,541 7,760
10th Percentile £287 £277 £263
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £784 £775
UK median daily rate £503 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -4.82% -3.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 266 474
10th Percentile £14.25 £17.16 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.90 £20.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £37.00 £43.42
Median % change year-on-year -21.62% -14.78% +28.98%
75th Percentile £63.53 £66.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.73 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £27.33 £33.65 £42.19
% change year-on-year -18.77% -20.25% +27.85%

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025.

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 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
London +30 305 £510 +2.00% 13
North of England -34 110 £450 -10.00% 12
South East -16 52 £325 -30.67% 6
Yorkshire -33 49 £475 -9.52% 4
North West -13 46 £450 -10.00% 7
Midlands -19 35 £450 -12.20% 5
West Midlands -15 33 £450 -12.20% 2
South West +5 20 £525 +7.69% 9
East of England -7 20 £475 +1.33%
North East -13 15 £450 +5.88% 1
East Midlands -15 2 - - 3
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 (4.35%) Confluence
2 10 (1.81%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (1.27%) CMS
4 7 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (1.09%) Apache
6 5 (0.91%) CICS
7 4 (0.72%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.72%) nginx
8 3 (0.54%) SAS
8 3 (0.54%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.36%) Drupal
9 2 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.18%) Luigi
10 1 (0.18%) Skype for Business
10 1 (0.18%) Tomcat
Applications
1 15 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
1 15 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.45%) Chatbot
3 6 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.54%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.54%) Sketch
4 3 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.36%) Adobe After Effects
5 2 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
5 2 (0.36%) InVision
5 2 (0.36%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.18%) Blender
6 1 (0.18%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.18%) Final Cut Pro
6 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.18%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.18%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 7 (1.27%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.72%) Oracle Receivables
3 4 (0.72%) VisionPLUS
4 3 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.54%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.54%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.36%) Fidessa
5 2 (0.36%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle FAH
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.18%) Endur
6 1 (0.18%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 81 (14.67%) AWS
2 54 (9.78%) Azure
3 28 (5.07%) Power Platform
4 25 (4.53%) GCP
4 25 (4.53%) GitHub
5 21 (3.80%) Amazon S3
5 21 (3.80%) Snowflake
6 20 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
6 20 (3.62%) Serverless
7 16 (2.90%) SaaS
8 15 (2.72%) Microsoft 365
9 12 (2.17%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (1.81%) Dynamics 365
11 9 (1.63%) Amazon ECS
11 9 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
12 7 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (1.09%) Amazon Bedrock
13 6 (1.09%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (1.09%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (1.09%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.62%) Firewall
2 10 (1.81%) MPLS
3 8 (1.45%) LAN
3 8 (1.45%) Wireshark
4 7 (1.27%) Network Security
4 7 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
5 6 (1.09%) BGP
5 6 (1.09%) VPN
6 5 (0.91%) HTTP
6 5 (0.91%) Kerberos
6 5 (0.91%) SSH
6 5 (0.91%) WAN
7 4 (0.72%) NetScaler
7 4 (0.72%) SD-WAN
7 4 (0.72%) Wireless
8 3 (0.54%) Cisco Nexus
8 3 (0.54%) DNS
8 3 (0.54%) Ethernet
8 3 (0.54%) Software-Defined Networking
9 2 (0.36%) SDH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (4.89%) Power BI
2 21 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (2.90%) SQL Server
4 11 (1.99%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (1.99%) NoSQL
5 10 (1.81%) Relational Database
5 10 (1.81%) Tableau
6 9 (1.63%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (1.09%) Hadoop
8 5 (0.91%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.91%) Metadata
8 5 (0.91%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
9 4 (0.72%) Big Data
9 4 (0.72%) BigQuery
9 4 (0.72%) DynamoDB
9 4 (0.72%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.54%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.54%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 46 (8.33%) JIRA
2 13 (2.36%) Git
3 12 (2.17%) GitLab
3 12 (2.17%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.27%) SpecFlow
5 5 (0.91%) JUnit
6 4 (0.72%) Bitbucket
6 4 (0.72%) ChangeMan
6 4 (0.72%) Fiddler
6 4 (0.72%) Gradle
7 3 (0.54%) CircleCI
7 3 (0.54%) Maven
7 3 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.36%) DBeaver
8 2 (0.36%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.36%) Katalon Studio
8 2 (0.36%) Postman
8 2 (0.36%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.36%) webpack
9 1 (0.18%) Storybook
General
1 155 (28.08%) Social Skills
2 119 (21.56%) Finance
3 70 (12.68%) Banking
4 59 (10.69%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (4.35%) Telecoms
6 20 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
7 19 (3.44%) Legal
8 17 (3.08%) Front Office
8 17 (3.08%) Public Sector
9 12 (2.17%) Organisational Skills
10 11 (1.99%) Aerospace
10 11 (1.99%) Marketing
10 11 (1.99%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.45%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (1.27%) Investment Banking
12 7 (1.27%) Publishing
13 5 (0.91%) Back Office
13 5 (0.91%) Retail Banking
14 4 (0.72%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 79 (14.31%) Developer
2 72 (13.04%) Analyst
3 36 (6.52%) Architect
4 34 (6.16%) Business Analyst
5 33 (5.98%) Project Manager
6 30 (5.43%) Lead
7 28 (5.07%) Senior
8 24 (4.35%) Consultant
9 18 (3.26%) Support Engineer
10 16 (2.90%) Java Developer
10 16 (2.90%) Software Engineer
11 15 (2.72%) Data Analyst
12 14 (2.54%) Network Engineer
13 13 (2.36%) Full-Stack Engineer
14 10 (1.81%) Data Engineer
14 10 (1.81%) Python Developer
14 10 (1.81%) Python Engineer
14 10 (1.81%) Tester
15 9 (1.63%) Designer
15 9 (1.63%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (4.89%) React
2 22 (3.99%) REST
3 17 (3.08%) OAuth
4 16 (2.90%) RESTful
5 13 (2.36%) HTML
6 11 (1.99%) .NET
6 11 (1.99%) AngularJS
6 11 (1.99%) Spring
7 10 (1.81%) LangChain
7 10 (1.81%) SAML
8 9 (1.63%) JSON
8 9 (1.63%) Kafka
8 9 (1.63%) Middleware
8 9 (1.63%) Playwright
8 9 (1.63%) XML
9 8 (1.45%) Spring Boot
10 7 (1.27%) FIX Protocol
10 7 (1.27%) PySpark
11 6 (1.09%) CSS
11 6 (1.09%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 22 (3.99%) Onboarding
2 18 (3.26%) Cloud Native
3 14 (2.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 11 (1.99%) Data Centre
4 11 (1.99%) Derivative
4 11 (1.99%) Freedom of Information
4 11 (1.99%) Product Ownership
5 8 (1.45%) Management Information System
6 7 (1.27%) AI Agents
6 7 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (1.27%) Equities
7 6 (1.09%) Algorithms
7 6 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.09%) Freedom of Information Act
7 6 (1.09%) Mainframe
7 6 (1.09%) Mobile App
8 5 (0.91%) Credit Risk
8 5 (0.91%) Fixed Income
8 5 (0.91%) Replication
8 5 (0.91%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 36 (6.52%) Linux
2 29 (5.25%) Windows
3 9 (1.63%) zOS
4 8 (1.45%) Unix
5 6 (1.09%) Android
5 6 (1.09%) Solaris
6 5 (0.91%) AIX
6 5 (0.91%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.72%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.54%) VMS
9 2 (0.36%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.18%) CentOS
10 1 (0.18%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.18%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 552 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 94 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
3 91 (16.49%) Stakeholder Management
4 83 (15.04%) Agile
5 64 (11.59%) Migration
6 59 (10.69%) AI
7 57 (10.33%) DevOps
8 56 (10.14%) CI/CD
9 49 (8.88%) Project Management
10 44 (7.97%) Analytics
11 39 (7.07%) Software Engineering
12 37 (6.70%) Roadmaps
13 34 (6.16%) Decision-Making
14 33 (5.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 32 (5.80%) Computer Science
16 31 (5.62%) Machine Learning
17 30 (5.43%) Business Intelligence
17 30 (5.43%) Microservices
18 29 (5.25%) LLM
19 27 (4.89%) Business Analysis
Programming Languages
1 117 (21.20%) Python
2 82 (14.86%) SQL
3 43 (7.79%) Java
4 35 (6.34%) C#
5 32 (5.80%) JavaScript
6 21 (3.80%) PowerShell
7 19 (3.44%) TypeScript
8 16 (2.90%) C++
9 14 (2.54%) Bash
10 7 (1.27%) Shell Script
11 6 (1.09%) Go
12 5 (0.91%) COBOL
12 5 (0.91%) Kotlin
12 5 (0.91%) Scala
13 4 (0.72%) PHP
13 4 (0.72%) PL/SQL
14 3 (0.54%) Groovy
14 3 (0.54%) PromQL
15 2 (0.36%) Bicep
15 2 (0.36%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 59 (10.69%) Degree
2 31 (5.62%) Security Cleared
3 25 (4.53%) SC Cleared
4 23 (4.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (2.36%) AWS Certification
6 11 (1.99%) Master's Degree
7 7 (1.27%) MCP
8 6 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 6 (1.09%) PMI Certification
8 6 (1.09%) PMP
9 5 (0.91%) DV Cleared
10 4 (0.72%) CISSP
11 3 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.36%) CCIE
12 2 (0.36%) CCNP
12 2 (0.36%) CISA
12 2 (0.36%) CISM
12 2 (0.36%) ISEB Practitioner
12 2 (0.36%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.43%) GDPR
2 24 (4.35%) QA
3 16 (2.90%) Data Quality
4 13 (2.36%) PMO
5 12 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 10 (1.81%) NIST
7 6 (1.09%) PCI DSS
8 5 (0.91%) Accessibility
9 4 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.72%) SLA
10 3 (0.54%) IFRS
10 3 (0.54%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.36%) Basel III
11 2 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.36%) GAAP
11 2 (0.36%) GRC
11 2 (0.36%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.36%) PERC
11 2 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 21 (3.80%) Docker
2 18 (3.26%) Active Directory
3 10 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.36%) NFS
5 2 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.18%) Firmware
6 1 (0.18%) HDFS
6 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.18%) KVM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 28 (5.07%) Kubernetes
2 24 (4.35%) Terraform
3 13 (2.36%) Ansible
4 9 (1.63%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.45%) Grafana
6 5 (0.91%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.72%) CA Endevor
7 4 (0.72%) SCCM
8 3 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.54%) Control-M
8 3 (0.54%) PingFederate
8 3 (0.54%) Puppet
9 2 (0.36%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
9 2 (0.36%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.18%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.18%) SCOM
10 1 (0.18%) yum
Vendors
1 44 (7.97%) Microsoft
2 24 (4.35%) Cisco
3 20 (3.62%) Oracle
4 18 (3.26%) Google
5 16 (2.90%) Databricks
6 14 (2.54%) ServiceNow
7 12 (2.17%) F5
7 12 (2.17%) SAP
8 10 (1.81%) Salesforce
9 9 (1.63%) Adobe
9 9 (1.63%) Juniper
10 8 (1.45%) IBM
11 7 (1.27%) Workday
12 6 (1.09%) Citrix
12 6 (1.09%) Informatica
12 6 (1.09%) ION Trading
12 6 (1.09%) Solace
12 6 (1.09%) VMware
13 5 (0.91%) Foundry
13 5 (0.91%) Splunk