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 10 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 180 184
Rank change year-on-year +19 +4 -17
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 589 352 480
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.63% 1.42% 1.26%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.85% 4.23% 4.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 255 163 244
10th Percentile £213 £270 £225
25th Percentile £350 £358 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £656 £675 £725
UK median daily rate £456 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -3.95% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 20
10th Percentile - £20.45 £11.95
25th Percentile - £24.25 £22.50
Median hourly rate £25.50 £24.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.08% -10.91% +22.91%
75th Percentile £28.00 £31.76 £32.50
90th Percentile £28.45 £32.09 £46.33
UK median hourly rate £25.50 £24.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +4.08% -10.91% +23.60%

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 12,155 8,316 11,774
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.59% 33.59% 30.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,717 5,311 7,674
10th Percentile £290 £288 £256
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £626 £674 £662
90th Percentile £750 £784 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 598 285 805
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.83 £12.79
25th Percentile £19.00 £22.72 £15.75
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% +13.33% +33.33%
75th Percentile £67.06 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £83.76 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% +33.42%

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 10 March 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
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 10 March 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 +44 300 £500 +11.11% 8
North of England -16 145 £475 -5.00% 6
Yorkshire -18 82 £475 -11.63% 3
South East -19 67 £363 -19.44% 3
North West -11 53 £425 -15.00% 3
Midlands -48 41 £468 -4.10% 6
West Midlands -49 30 £494 -3.66% 1
South West -17 16 £525 +7.69% 6
East of England -27 13 £413 +15.79% 3
East Midlands -24 11 £336 -10.33% 5
North East -21 10 £250 -44.44%
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 23 (3.90%) Confluence
2 13 (2.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.87%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.02%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.85%) Apache
7 3 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 3 (0.51%) CMS
8 2 (0.34%) Drupal
8 2 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.34%) SAS
8 2 (0.34%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.17%) Camunda
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.17%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 17 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.68%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.51%) Sketch
7 2 (0.34%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.34%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.34%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.34%) InVision
7 2 (0.34%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.17%) Blender
8 1 (0.17%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.17%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (1.70%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.51%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.51%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 3 (0.51%) SAP GRC
4 2 (0.34%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.34%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.34%) Workfront
5 1 (0.17%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.17%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 67 (11.38%) Azure
2 62 (10.53%) AWS
3 29 (4.92%) Power Platform
4 27 (4.58%) GCP
5 24 (4.07%) Microsoft 365
5 24 (4.07%) Snowflake
6 17 (2.89%) GitHub
6 17 (2.89%) SaaS
7 16 (2.72%) Amazon S3
7 16 (2.72%) Entra ID
8 15 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
8 15 (2.55%) Serverless
9 11 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (1.53%) Figma
11 8 (1.36%) Dynamics 365
11 8 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (1.36%) OpenShift
12 7 (1.19%) Power Automate
13 6 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
13 6 (1.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.40%) Firewall
2 15 (2.55%) MPLS
3 11 (1.87%) Network Security
4 10 (1.70%) LAN
5 8 (1.36%) VPN
5 8 (1.36%) WAN
5 8 (1.36%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.19%) BGP
7 5 (0.85%) Ethernet
7 5 (0.85%) NetScaler
7 5 (0.85%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.85%) Wireshark
8 4 (0.68%) Cisco Nexus
8 4 (0.68%) DNS
8 4 (0.68%) HTTP
8 4 (0.68%) Kerberos
8 4 (0.68%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.68%) SSH
8 4 (0.68%) VLAN
9 3 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.41%) Power BI
2 19 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (1.87%) Metadata
4 10 (1.70%) SQL Server
4 10 (1.70%) Tableau
5 8 (1.36%) Data Lake
5 8 (1.36%) NoSQL
6 7 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (1.19%) Hadoop
7 6 (1.02%) MongoDB
8 5 (0.85%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.85%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.68%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.51%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (0.51%) Big Data
10 3 (0.51%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (0.34%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.34%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 45 (7.64%) JIRA
2 19 (3.23%) Git
3 12 (2.04%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.87%) SpecFlow
5 8 (1.36%) Gradle
5 8 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (1.19%) Maven
7 6 (1.02%) GitLab
8 5 (0.85%) JUnit
8 5 (0.85%) Postman
9 4 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.68%) Fiddler
10 3 (0.51%) IntelliJ
10 3 (0.51%) Katalon Studio
10 3 (0.51%) TestNG
10 3 (0.51%) webpack
11 2 (0.34%) JMeter
11 2 (0.34%) MSI
11 2 (0.34%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 154 (26.15%) Social Skills
2 126 (21.39%) Finance
3 70 (11.88%) Banking
4 59 (10.02%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (5.26%) Telecoms
6 22 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (3.40%) Front Office
8 18 (3.06%) Legal
9 17 (2.89%) Public Sector
10 16 (2.72%) Organisational Skills
11 13 (2.21%) Marketing
11 13 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (1.36%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (1.19%) Manufacturing
14 6 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (1.02%) Publishing
15 5 (0.85%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.85%) Private Banking
16 4 (0.68%) Police
Job Titles
1 75 (12.73%) Analyst
2 62 (10.53%) Architect
2 62 (10.53%) Developer
3 40 (6.79%) Business Analyst
4 39 (6.62%) Lead
5 32 (5.43%) Consultant
6 31 (5.26%) Project Manager
7 24 (4.07%) Senior
8 22 (3.74%) Network Engineer
9 19 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
10 16 (2.72%) Java Developer
11 15 (2.55%) Data Engineer
11 15 (2.55%) Software Engineer
12 13 (2.21%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 13 (2.21%) Tester
13 12 (2.04%) Python Developer
13 12 (2.04%) Support Engineer
14 11 (1.87%) Data Analyst
15 10 (1.70%) Automation Tester
15 10 (1.70%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (5.77%) React
2 20 (3.40%) REST
3 15 (2.55%) Playwright
4 13 (2.21%) Kafka
5 12 (2.04%) .NET
6 10 (1.70%) OAuth
6 10 (1.70%) RESTful
6 10 (1.70%) Spring
7 9 (1.53%) PySpark
8 8 (1.36%) AngularJS
8 8 (1.36%) HTML
8 8 (1.36%) Oracle Fusion
8 8 (1.36%) SAML
8 8 (1.36%) Spring Boot
9 7 (1.19%) JSON
9 7 (1.19%) LangChain
9 7 (1.19%) Middleware
9 7 (1.19%) Model Context Protocol
9 7 (1.19%) XML
10 5 (0.85%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 26 (4.41%) Onboarding
2 23 (3.90%) Product Ownership
3 19 (3.23%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 11 (1.87%) Derivative
5 10 (1.70%) Data Centre
6 9 (1.53%) Equities
6 9 (1.53%) Management Information System
7 8 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (1.36%) Mobile App
8 7 (1.19%) AI Agents
8 7 (1.19%) Algorithms
8 7 (1.19%) Fixed Income
8 7 (1.19%) Freedom of Information
8 7 (1.19%) Replication
9 6 (1.02%) Virtual Team
10 5 (0.85%) Hedge funds
10 5 (0.85%) Operational Technology
11 4 (0.68%) Data Structures
11 4 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 31 (5.26%) Windows
2 25 (4.24%) Linux
3 6 (1.02%) Unix
4 5 (0.85%) zOS
5 4 (0.68%) AIX
5 4 (0.68%) Android
5 4 (0.68%) Solaris
5 4 (0.68%) Windows 10
5 4 (0.68%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.34%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 589 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 110 (18.68%) Stakeholder Management
3 103 (17.49%) Problem-Solving
4 90 (15.28%) Agile
5 75 (12.73%) Migration
6 64 (10.87%) AI
7 57 (9.68%) CI/CD
8 54 (9.17%) Roadmaps
9 53 (9.00%) DevOps
10 52 (8.83%) Project Management
11 50 (8.49%) Analytics
12 47 (7.98%) Continuous Improvement
13 41 (6.96%) Decision-Making
13 41 (6.96%) Software Engineering
14 36 (6.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 33 (5.60%) Test Automation
16 32 (5.43%) Observability
17 31 (5.26%) Machine Learning
18 30 (5.09%) Business Intelligence
19 29 (4.92%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 106 (18.00%) Python
2 74 (12.56%) SQL
3 53 (9.00%) Java
4 34 (5.77%) C#
5 32 (5.43%) JavaScript
6 22 (3.74%) PowerShell
7 19 (3.23%) TypeScript
8 10 (1.70%) Bash
8 10 (1.70%) C++
9 6 (1.02%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.68%) Go
10 4 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.68%) PHP
10 4 (0.68%) Scala
11 3 (0.51%) Groovy
12 2 (0.34%) ActionScript
12 2 (0.34%) Bicep
12 2 (0.34%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.34%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 50 (8.49%) Degree
2 45 (7.64%) Security Cleared
3 38 (6.45%) SC Cleared
4 18 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (1.70%) AWS Certification
5 10 (1.70%) Master's Degree
6 8 (1.36%) PMI Certification
6 8 (1.36%) PMP
7 6 (1.02%) CISSP
8 5 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.68%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.68%) CCNP
9 4 (0.68%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.51%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 3 (0.51%) PhD
11 2 (0.34%) CCNA
11 2 (0.34%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (5.94%) QA
2 30 (5.09%) GDPR
3 18 (3.06%) Data Quality
4 15 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (2.04%) NIST
5 12 (2.04%) PMO
6 11 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 7 (1.19%) SLA
8 6 (1.02%) GRC
9 3 (0.51%) IFRS
9 3 (0.51%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.34%) Basel III
10 2 (0.34%) GAAP
10 2 (0.34%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.34%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.34%) NCSC
10 2 (0.34%) SEPA
10 2 (0.34%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 28 (4.75%) Docker
2 22 (3.74%) Active Directory
3 12 (2.04%) Virtual Desktop
4 11 (1.87%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.68%) KVM
5 4 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.51%) IAG
6 3 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.51%) vSphere
7 2 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
7 2 (0.34%) NFS
7 2 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.17%) Firmware
8 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.17%) XenApp
8 1 (0.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 38 (6.45%) Kubernetes
2 23 (3.90%) Terraform
3 16 (2.72%) Ansible
4 8 (1.36%) Grafana
4 8 (1.36%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (0.85%) Control-M
5 5 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (0.51%) Puppet
7 3 (0.51%) SCCM
7 3 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.51%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.34%) IBM Guardium
8 2 (0.34%) Nessus
8 2 (0.34%) PingFederate
8 2 (0.34%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.17%) Argo
9 1 (0.17%) Istio
9 1 (0.17%) SCOM
9 1 (0.17%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 55 (9.34%) Microsoft
2 27 (4.58%) Cisco
3 24 (4.07%) Databricks
4 18 (3.06%) SAP
4 18 (3.06%) ServiceNow
5 17 (2.89%) Oracle
6 14 (2.38%) Adobe
7 11 (1.87%) Salesforce
7 11 (1.87%) VMware
8 10 (1.70%) Citrix
9 9 (1.53%) Google
10 8 (1.36%) CyberArk
10 8 (1.36%) F5
10 8 (1.36%) Nokia
11 7 (1.19%) ADVA
11 7 (1.19%) Informatica
12 6 (1.02%) Meraki
12 6 (1.02%) Workday
13 5 (0.85%) Palo Alto
13 5 (0.85%) Splunk