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 19 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 189 186
Rank change year-on-year +16 -3 -32
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 627 352 448
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.53% 1.45% 1.23%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.79% 4.24% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 272 147 217
10th Percentile £213 £300 £217
25th Percentile £325 £371 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.53% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £605
90th Percentile £638 £633 £738
UK median daily rate £431 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -9.21% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 10 22
10th Percentile £19.88 £23.75 £11.95
25th Percentile £25.50 £24.25 £21.00
Median hourly rate £27.75 £28.32 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.01% +2.98% -26.67%
75th Percentile £34.67 £31.76 £29.69
90th Percentile £57.88 £31.92 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £27.75 £28.32 £27.50
% change year-on-year -2.01% +2.98% -29.03%

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 13,103 8,301 11,172
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.93% 34.12% 30.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,284 5,429 7,323
10th Percentile £313 £300 £267
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% -2.27% -3.93%
75th Percentile £626 £673 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £510 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 657 335 817
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.67 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.88 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £34.00 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.35% - +51.21%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £84.30 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £32.05 £31.50
% change year-on-year +30.86% +1.75% +41.51%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 +31 313 £459 -0.70% 8
North of England -13 165 £475 - 6
Yorkshire -9 104 £475 -9.52% 4
South East -29 70 £368 -2.00% 1
North West -3 57 £463 -7.50%
Midlands -40 53 £436 -14.88% 5
West Midlands -44 40 £450 -14.29% 2
East Midlands -20 13 £425 +13.71% 3
South West -22 11 £425 +13.33% 7
East of England -27 8 £413 +37.50% 3
North East -40 4 £250 -39.39% 2
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 16 (2.55%) Confluence
2 12 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.75%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.80%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 5 (0.80%) SAS
5 3 (0.48%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.48%) CMS
6 2 (0.32%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.32%) Apache
6 2 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.32%) Drupal
6 2 (0.32%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.32%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.16%) Camunda
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 17 (2.71%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.32%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.16%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.16%) Adobe Premiere
7 1 (0.16%) Blender
7 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.16%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.16%) Maya
7 1 (0.16%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.16%) Trello
7 1 (0.16%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 12 (1.91%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.48%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 3 (0.48%) SAP GRC
4 2 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.32%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.16%) Eloqua
5 1 (0.16%) Endur
5 1 (0.16%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.16%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.16%) Odoo
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.16%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 70 (11.16%) Azure
2 57 (9.09%) AWS
3 34 (5.42%) GCP
4 23 (3.67%) Power Platform
5 19 (3.03%) Microsoft 365
5 19 (3.03%) SaaS
6 18 (2.87%) Snowflake
7 17 (2.71%) GitHub
8 16 (2.55%) Entra ID
9 9 (1.44%) Figma
9 9 (1.44%) Serverless
10 8 (1.28%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (1.28%) OpenShift
11 7 (1.12%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (1.12%) Microsoft Purview
11 7 (1.12%) PaaS
12 6 (0.96%) Microsoft Copilot
13 5 (0.80%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (0.80%) OCI
13 5 (0.80%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 21 (3.35%) Firewall
2 17 (2.71%) MPLS
3 16 (2.55%) Network Security
4 12 (1.91%) LAN
5 9 (1.44%) Wi-Fi
6 8 (1.28%) VPN
6 8 (1.28%) WAN
7 7 (1.12%) DNS
7 7 (1.12%) Ethernet
8 6 (0.96%) BGP
8 6 (0.96%) Cisco Nexus
8 6 (0.96%) TCP/IP
9 5 (0.80%) NetScaler
10 4 (0.64%) DHCP
10 4 (0.64%) SDH
10 4 (0.64%) VLAN
10 4 (0.64%) VoIP
11 3 (0.48%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 3 (0.48%) Internet
12 2 (0.32%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (3.35%) Power BI
2 17 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (2.55%) Metadata
4 10 (1.59%) Relational Database
4 10 (1.59%) Tableau
5 9 (1.44%) Data Lake
5 9 (1.44%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (1.28%) SQL Server
7 7 (1.12%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.64%) DynamoDB
8 4 (0.64%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.64%) Pinecone
8 4 (0.64%) Weaviate
9 3 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.48%) Big Data
9 3 (0.48%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.48%) MySQL
9 3 (0.48%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.32%) KDB
Development Applications
1 41 (6.54%) JIRA
2 18 (2.87%) Git
3 11 (1.75%) SpecFlow
4 10 (1.59%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.96%) Maven
5 6 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.64%) Bitbucket
6 4 (0.64%) GitLab
6 4 (0.64%) Gradle
6 4 (0.64%) JUnit
6 4 (0.64%) Postman
7 3 (0.48%) Katalon Studio
7 3 (0.48%) Liquibase
7 3 (0.48%) TestNG
8 2 (0.32%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.32%) Flyway
8 2 (0.32%) Gatling
8 2 (0.32%) IntelliJ
8 2 (0.32%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.32%) webpack
General
1 188 (29.98%) Social Skills
2 144 (22.97%) Finance
3 73 (11.64%) Banking
4 58 (9.25%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (4.47%) Front Office
6 26 (4.15%) Telecoms
7 25 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (3.35%) Organisational Skills
9 20 (3.19%) Public Sector
10 18 (2.87%) Marketing
11 14 (2.23%) Legal
12 12 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (1.28%) Investment Banking
15 7 (1.12%) Financial Institution
15 7 (1.12%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (1.12%) Private Banking
16 5 (0.80%) Police
16 5 (0.80%) Publishing
16 5 (0.80%) Retail
Job Titles
1 72 (11.48%) Architect
2 68 (10.85%) Analyst
3 65 (10.37%) Developer
4 41 (6.54%) Senior
5 39 (6.22%) Business Analyst
6 38 (6.06%) Consultant
7 36 (5.74%) Project Manager
8 34 (5.42%) Lead
9 27 (4.31%) Solutions Architect
10 23 (3.67%) Java Developer
11 22 (3.51%) Network Engineer
12 14 (2.23%) Data Engineer
13 13 (2.07%) Software Engineer
13 13 (2.07%) Tester
14 12 (1.91%) Automation Tester
14 12 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
14 12 (1.91%) Product Manager
14 12 (1.91%) Python Developer
15 11 (1.75%) Support Engineer
16 10 (1.59%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.94%) React
2 24 (3.83%) REST
3 14 (2.23%) Playwright
4 13 (2.07%) RESTful
4 13 (2.07%) Spring
5 12 (1.91%) Spring Boot
6 11 (1.75%) .NET
6 11 (1.75%) Kafka
7 10 (1.59%) JSON
8 8 (1.28%) GraphQL
8 8 (1.28%) Middleware
8 8 (1.28%) PySpark
8 8 (1.28%) Vue
9 7 (1.12%) XML
10 6 (0.96%) AngularJS
10 6 (0.96%) HTML
10 6 (0.96%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
11 5 (0.80%) Model Context Protocol
11 5 (0.80%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 34 (5.42%) Product Ownership
2 26 (4.15%) Cloud Native
2 26 (4.15%) Onboarding
3 22 (3.51%) Virtual Team
4 20 (3.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 17 (2.71%) Distributed Systems
6 15 (2.39%) Derivative
7 13 (2.07%) Mobile App
8 11 (1.75%) Data Centre
9 10 (1.59%) Equities
10 7 (1.12%) AI Agents
10 7 (1.12%) Algorithms
10 7 (1.12%) Replication
11 6 (0.96%) Equity Derivative
11 6 (0.96%) Fixed Income
11 6 (0.96%) Mainframe
11 6 (0.96%) Management Information System
12 5 (0.80%) Freedom of Information
12 5 (0.80%) Hedge funds
12 5 (0.80%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 27 (4.31%) Windows
2 26 (4.15%) Linux
3 12 (1.91%) Android
4 8 (1.28%) Apple iOS
4 8 (1.28%) zOS
5 6 (0.96%) Unix
5 6 (0.96%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.16%) CentOS
7 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.16%) Rocky
7 1 (0.16%) Solaris
7 1 (0.16%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 627 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 120 (19.14%) Agile
3 117 (18.66%) Stakeholder Management
4 105 (16.75%) Problem-Solving
5 76 (12.12%) Migration
6 75 (11.96%) Continuous Improvement
7 73 (11.64%) AI
8 70 (11.16%) DevOps
9 66 (10.53%) Analytics
10 65 (10.37%) CI/CD
11 57 (9.09%) Project Management
11 57 (9.09%) Roadmaps
12 46 (7.34%) Decision-Making
12 46 (7.34%) Test Automation
13 40 (6.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 39 (6.22%) Risk Management
15 37 (5.90%) Observability
16 36 (5.74%) Software Engineering
17 35 (5.58%) Data Modelling
18 31 (4.94%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 108 (17.22%) Python
2 69 (11.00%) SQL
3 63 (10.05%) Java
4 30 (4.78%) JavaScript
5 29 (4.63%) C#
6 22 (3.51%) TypeScript
7 18 (2.87%) PowerShell
8 13 (2.07%) C++
9 12 (1.91%) Bash
10 9 (1.44%) Kotlin
11 6 (0.96%) Go
11 6 (0.96%) Kusto Query Language
12 5 (0.80%) R
12 5 (0.80%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.64%) JCL
13 4 (0.64%) PL/SQL
14 3 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 2 (0.32%) ActionScript
15 2 (0.32%) Scala
15 2 (0.32%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 48 (7.66%) Security Cleared
2 45 (7.18%) Degree
2 45 (7.18%) SC Cleared
3 15 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
4 9 (1.44%) PMI Certification
4 9 (1.44%) PMP
5 6 (0.96%) Azure Certification
5 6 (0.96%) CCNP
5 6 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (0.80%) AWS Certification
6 5 (0.80%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.64%) CISSP
8 3 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.32%) CCNA
9 2 (0.32%) JNCIA
9 2 (0.32%) JNCIS
9 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 2 (0.32%) PhD
10 1 (0.16%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (5.26%) QA
2 30 (4.78%) GDPR
3 20 (3.19%) Data Quality
4 15 (2.39%) PMO
5 11 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 10 (1.59%) Accessibility
7 8 (1.28%) NIST
7 8 (1.28%) SLA
8 6 (0.96%) GRC
9 5 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.48%) IFRS
10 3 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.32%) Basel III
11 2 (0.32%) GAAP
11 2 (0.32%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.32%) IFRS 9
11 2 (0.32%) ISO 20022
11 2 (0.32%) SEPA
11 2 (0.32%) WCAG
12 1 (0.16%) FINRA
System Software
1 26 (4.15%) Docker
2 19 (3.03%) Active Directory
3 13 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 6 (0.96%) KVM
6 5 (0.80%) NFS
7 4 (0.64%) Time Sharing Option
8 3 (0.48%) IAG
8 3 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.48%) Virtual Servers
8 3 (0.48%) vSphere
8 3 (0.48%) XenApp
8 3 (0.48%) XenDesktop
9 2 (0.32%) GPFS
9 2 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.16%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 36 (5.74%) Kubernetes
2 29 (4.63%) Terraform
3 22 (3.51%) Ansible
4 8 (1.28%) Grafana
5 6 (0.96%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.80%) Tivoli Storage Manager
7 4 (0.64%) Control-M
8 3 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.32%) Data Guard
9 2 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
9 2 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.32%) Nessus
9 2 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.32%) Packer
9 2 (0.32%) QRadar
9 2 (0.32%) SCCM
10 1 (0.16%) Kibana
10 1 (0.16%) SELinux
Vendors
1 57 (9.09%) Microsoft
2 29 (4.63%) Cisco
3 27 (4.31%) Databricks
4 23 (3.67%) Oracle
4 23 (3.67%) SAP
5 16 (2.55%) ServiceNow
6 13 (2.07%) Informatica
6 13 (2.07%) Salesforce
6 13 (2.07%) VMware
7 12 (1.91%) Citrix
7 12 (1.91%) Google
8 11 (1.75%) Workday
9 10 (1.59%) IBM
10 9 (1.44%) Adobe
11 8 (1.28%) Red Hat
12 7 (1.12%) ADVA
12 7 (1.12%) Nokia
12 7 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 6 (0.96%) F5
14 5 (0.80%) Splunk