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 28 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 208 163 170
Rank change year-on-year -45 +7 -22
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 616 467 489
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.35% 1.70% 1.47%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.01% 4.73% 4.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 245 197 239
10th Percentile £243 £313 £211
25th Percentile £350 £400 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% -10.00% -6.98%
75th Percentile £550 £569 £600
90th Percentile £638 £638 £713
UK median daily rate £425 £450 £500
% change year-on-year -5.56% -10.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 11 15
10th Percentile £12.83 - £17.53
25th Percentile £18.23 £15.13 £19.94
Median hourly rate £32.63 £15.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +113.93% -44.55% -41.92%
75th Percentile £36.18 £28.32 £28.75
90th Percentile £60.00 £40.46 £71.00
UK median hourly rate £32.63 £15.25 £27.50
% change year-on-year +113.93% -44.55% -41.92%

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 15,379 9,878 10,199
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.60% 35.85% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,379 6,246 6,504
10th Percentile £325 £301 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £688
90th Percentile £750 £775 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £550
% change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 960 493 502
10th Percentile £14.68 £15.48 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £19.49
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.74 £49.75
Median % change year-on-year +22.19% -34.20% +8.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £77.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.96 £30.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +36.53% -29.41% -2.95%

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 28 August 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 28 August 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 28 August 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 -46 287 £425 -10.53% 78
North of England -29 175 £475 +5.56% 38
Yorkshire -3 104 £475 -1.55% 17
South East -27 72 £375 -14.77% 25
North West -9 69 £450 +5.88% 17
Midlands -43 51 £450 -2.70% 15
West Midlands -55 45 £450 -2.70% 10
South West -33 14 £425 - 16
East of England -24 7 £300 -35.14% 9
East Midlands - 6 £425 - 5
North East -61 2 - - 4
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 19 (3.08%) Confluence
2 11 (1.79%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.81%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.81%) SAS
5 4 (0.65%) Apache
5 4 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.32%) CICS
7 2 (0.32%) CMS
7 2 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.16%) Camunda
8 1 (0.16%) nginx
8 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 18 (2.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.16%) Maya
5 1 (0.16%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.16%) Trello
5 1 (0.16%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 9 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (1.14%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.32%) ION MarketView
3 2 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.16%) Actimize
4 1 (0.16%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.16%) Eloqua
4 1 (0.16%) Endur
4 1 (0.16%) Odoo
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle BRM
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.16%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FI-CA
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.16%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.16%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.16%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 99 (16.07%) Azure
2 78 (12.66%) AWS
3 47 (7.63%) GCP
4 28 (4.55%) GitHub
5 24 (3.90%) SaaS
6 23 (3.73%) Power Platform
7 18 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 16 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
9 15 (2.44%) Serverless
10 12 (1.95%) Entra ID
11 11 (1.79%) Snowflake
12 10 (1.62%) GitHub Actions
13 7 (1.14%) AWS Lambda
13 7 (1.14%) OCI
14 6 (0.97%) Azure AKS
14 6 (0.97%) Microsoft Copilot
15 5 (0.81%) Azure Functions
15 5 (0.81%) Azure Sentinel
15 5 (0.81%) Dynamics 365
15 5 (0.81%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 24 (3.90%) Firewall
2 16 (2.60%) Network Security
3 11 (1.79%) LAN
4 10 (1.62%) WAN
5 9 (1.46%) MPLS
5 9 (1.46%) VoIP
6 8 (1.30%) DNS
6 8 (1.30%) VPN
7 7 (1.14%) Cisco Nexus
7 7 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.97%) Cisco IPT
8 6 (0.97%) DHCP
8 6 (0.97%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 4 (0.65%) BGP
9 4 (0.65%) BIG-IP
9 4 (0.65%) Unified Communications
10 3 (0.49%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 3 (0.49%) HSRP
10 3 (0.49%) Multicast
10 3 (0.49%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
1 20 (3.25%) Power BI
2 19 (3.08%) Metadata
3 14 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (1.79%) Relational Database
4 11 (1.79%) SQL Server
5 8 (1.30%) Tableau
6 6 (0.97%) NoSQL
6 6 (0.97%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.97%) Redis
7 5 (0.81%) Big Data
7 5 (0.81%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.81%) DynamoDB
8 4 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.65%) MySQL
9 3 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.49%) BigQuery
9 3 (0.49%) Db2
9 3 (0.49%) KDB
9 3 (0.49%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 40 (6.49%) JIRA
2 24 (3.90%) Jenkins
3 22 (3.57%) Git
4 8 (1.30%) Maven
5 6 (0.97%) GitLab
5 6 (0.97%) SonarQube
6 5 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.49%) Gradle
7 3 (0.49%) Selenium
8 2 (0.32%) CMake
8 2 (0.32%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.32%) ER Studio
8 2 (0.32%) ERwin
8 2 (0.32%) MSI
8 2 (0.32%) SpecFlow
8 2 (0.32%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.32%) XCUITest
9 1 (0.16%) Katalon Studio
9 1 (0.16%) Postman
General
1 229 (37.18%) Social Skills
2 163 (26.46%) Finance
3 83 (13.47%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (13.15%) Banking
5 26 (4.22%) Front Office
6 24 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
6 24 (3.90%) Legal
6 24 (3.90%) Organisational Skills
7 23 (3.73%) Public Sector
8 22 (3.57%) Influencing Skills
9 16 (2.60%) Telecoms
10 13 (2.11%) Billing
10 13 (2.11%) Retail
11 12 (1.95%) Marketing
12 11 (1.79%) Financial Institution
13 9 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (1.46%) Publishing
14 8 (1.30%) Investment Banking
14 8 (1.30%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.81%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 90 (14.61%) Architect
2 76 (12.34%) Analyst
3 52 (8.44%) Developer
4 46 (7.47%) Business Analyst
5 39 (6.33%) Lead
5 39 (6.33%) Senior
6 30 (4.87%) Solutions Architect
7 29 (4.71%) Consultant
8 24 (3.90%) Project Manager
9 17 (2.76%) Java Developer
10 15 (2.44%) DevOps Engineer
11 14 (2.27%) Support Engineer
12 13 (2.11%) Product Manager
13 12 (1.95%) Data Engineer
14 11 (1.79%) Product Owner
14 11 (1.79%) Python Engineer
14 11 (1.79%) Software Engineer
15 10 (1.62%) Data Protection Officer
16 9 (1.46%) Designer
16 9 (1.46%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (6.17%) REST
2 31 (5.03%) Terraform
3 19 (3.08%) Spring
4 18 (2.92%) React
5 17 (2.76%) Spring Boot
6 16 (2.60%) Kafka
7 14 (2.27%) JSON
8 12 (1.95%) .NET
8 12 (1.95%) GraphQL
9 11 (1.79%) Node.js
9 11 (1.79%) YAML
10 10 (1.62%) RESTful
11 7 (1.14%) AngularJS
11 7 (1.14%) Pandas
12 6 (0.97%) HTML
12 6 (0.97%) Middleware
12 6 (0.97%) OAuth
12 6 (0.97%) SLSA
12 6 (0.97%) Vue
13 5 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 43 (6.98%) Product Ownership
2 37 (6.01%) Cloud Native
3 30 (4.87%) Virtual Team
4 26 (4.22%) Onboarding
5 25 (4.06%) Distributed Systems
6 20 (3.25%) Data Centre
7 15 (2.44%) Mobile App
8 14 (2.27%) Derivative
9 13 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
10 12 (1.95%) Management Information System
11 11 (1.79%) Mainframe
12 10 (1.62%) Data Structures
12 10 (1.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 8 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (1.30%) Fixed Income
13 8 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
14 7 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
14 7 (1.14%) Security Posture
15 6 (0.97%) AI Agents
16 5 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 31 (5.03%) Windows
2 30 (4.87%) Linux
3 15 (2.44%) Android
4 11 (1.79%) Unix
5 10 (1.62%) Apple iOS
6 8 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (1.30%) zOS
7 7 (1.14%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.65%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.49%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.16%) CentOS
10 1 (0.16%) MVS
10 1 (0.16%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.16%) Rocky
10 1 (0.16%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 616 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 147 (23.86%) Stakeholder Management
3 125 (20.29%) Agile
4 110 (17.86%) Problem-Solving
5 102 (16.56%) Continuous Improvement
6 93 (15.10%) AI
7 82 (13.31%) CI/CD
8 80 (12.99%) Migration
9 75 (12.18%) DevOps
10 73 (11.85%) Analytics
10 73 (11.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 64 (10.39%) Decision-Making
12 63 (10.23%) Roadmaps
13 48 (7.79%) Project Management
13 48 (7.79%) Risk Management
13 48 (7.79%) Test Automation
14 46 (7.47%) Data Modelling
15 44 (7.14%) Software Engineering
16 42 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
17 38 (6.17%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 92 (14.94%) Python
2 61 (9.90%) SQL
3 60 (9.74%) Java
4 16 (2.60%) JavaScript
4 16 (2.60%) TypeScript
5 14 (2.27%) Kotlin
5 14 (2.27%) PowerShell
6 11 (1.79%) Bash
7 8 (1.30%) C#
7 8 (1.30%) C++
8 7 (1.14%) Go
9 6 (0.97%) Apex Code
9 6 (0.97%) Groovy
10 5 (0.81%) Perl
10 5 (0.81%) R
11 4 (0.65%) C
11 4 (0.65%) JCL
12 3 (0.49%) Bicep
12 3 (0.49%) COBOL
12 3 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 44 (7.14%) Security Cleared
2 42 (6.82%) SC Cleared
3 32 (5.19%) Degree
4 9 (1.46%) PMI Certification
4 9 (1.46%) PMP
5 8 (1.30%) Azure Certification
6 6 (0.97%) AWS Certification
7 5 (0.81%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (0.81%) CISSP
8 4 (0.65%) CCNP
8 4 (0.65%) CRISC
9 3 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.49%) CISA
9 3 (0.49%) CISM
9 3 (0.49%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.32%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.32%) FFIEC
10 2 (0.32%) ISEB
10 2 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (6.33%) Data Quality
2 38 (6.17%) GDPR
3 36 (5.84%) QA
4 12 (1.95%) PMO
5 10 (1.62%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.97%) NIST
7 5 (0.81%) Actionable Recommendations
7 5 (0.81%) SLA
8 4 (0.65%) GRC
8 4 (0.65%) PERC
8 4 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.32%) COBIT
9 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.32%) NCSC
10 1 (0.16%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.16%) Software Quality Assurance
10 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 21 (3.41%) Active Directory
2 17 (2.76%) Docker
3 16 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
5 6 (0.97%) NFS
6 4 (0.65%) Time Sharing Option
7 3 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
7 3 (0.49%) XenApp
7 3 (0.49%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.32%) GPFS
8 2 (0.32%) KVM
8 2 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.16%) IAG
9 1 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.16%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 39 (6.33%) Kubernetes
2 25 (4.06%) Ansible
3 6 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (0.65%) Cisco CUCM
4 4 (0.65%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 3 (0.49%) Grafana
5 3 (0.49%) Kustomize
5 3 (0.49%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.49%) SCCM
6 2 (0.32%) Istio
6 2 (0.32%) Packer
6 2 (0.32%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.32%) Puppet
6 2 (0.32%) QRadar
6 2 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.16%) Data Guard
7 1 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
7 1 (0.16%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (0.16%) SELinux
7 1 (0.16%) vRealize
Vendors
1 73 (11.85%) Microsoft
2 30 (4.87%) Cisco
3 23 (3.73%) Databricks
3 23 (3.73%) SAP
4 21 (3.41%) ServiceNow
5 20 (3.25%) Oracle
6 19 (3.08%) Google
7 16 (2.60%) VMware
8 12 (1.95%) F5
8 12 (1.95%) Red Hat
8 12 (1.95%) Salesforce
9 11 (1.79%) Citrix
9 11 (1.79%) IBM
10 7 (1.14%) CheckPoint
10 7 (1.14%) Informatica
10 7 (1.14%) Palo Alto
11 6 (0.97%) Murex
11 6 (0.97%) Sonatype
11 6 (0.97%) Workday
12 5 (0.81%) Atlassian