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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 157 170 163
Rank change year-on-year +13 -7 +25
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 560 402 580
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.69% 1.52% 1.53%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.89% 4.61% 4.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 182 318
10th Percentile £218 £270 £213
25th Percentile £356 £363 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £586
90th Percentile £656 £713 £725
UK median daily rate £450 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -9.91% -0.10% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 8 12
10th Percentile £26.60 £20.30 -
25th Percentile £27.13 £23.38 £11.95
Median hourly rate £28.00 £24.50 £32.56
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -24.75% +49.69%
75th Percentile £36.78 £31.76 £44.54
90th Percentile £41.60 - £60.70
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £24.50 £25.12
% change year-on-year +14.29% -2.45% +19.60%

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 11,451 8,726 11,858
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.63% 32.89% 31.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,316 5,260 7,882
10th Percentile £275 £267 £252
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £632 £675 £665
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 248 707
10th Percentile £15.25 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.18 £17.57
Median hourly rate £30.30 £37.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% +6.43% +55.66%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.13 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.90 £83.20 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -18.56% - +56.18%

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 January 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 31 January 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 31 January 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 +28 308 £500 - 9
North of England -31 120 £450 -10.00% 5
Yorkshire -19 64 £475 -13.64% 1
South East -18 58 £325 -27.78% 7
North West -24 43 £438 -12.46% 2
Midlands -35 31 £449 -12.44% 11
West Midlands -35 27 £450 -12.20% 1
South West -10 20 £525 +7.69% 4
East of England -8 16 £475 +1.33% 2
North East -24 13 £250 -44.44% 2
East Midlands -21 4 £448 +19.73% 10
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 25 (4.46%) Confluence
2 8 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.25%) SharePoint
4 6 (1.07%) Apache
4 6 (1.07%) CMS
5 5 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.71%) CICS
6 4 (0.71%) nginx
6 4 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
7 3 (0.54%) SAS
7 3 (0.54%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.36%) Drupal
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.18%) Luigi
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.18%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.18%) Tomcat
Applications
1 16 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (2.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.71%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.54%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.54%) Sketch
6 3 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.36%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.36%) InVision
7 2 (0.36%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.18%) Blender
8 1 (0.18%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.18%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.18%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 9 (1.61%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.54%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.54%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (0.54%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 3 (0.54%) VisionPLUS
4 2 (0.36%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.18%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
5 1 (0.18%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 68 (12.14%) AWS
2 49 (8.75%) Azure
3 24 (4.29%) GCP
3 24 (4.29%) Power Platform
4 23 (4.11%) Snowflake
5 20 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
5 20 (3.57%) GitHub
5 20 (3.57%) Serverless
6 17 (3.04%) Amazon S3
7 15 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (2.32%) SaaS
9 12 (2.14%) Amazon EC2
10 8 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
11 7 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (1.25%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (1.25%) Entra ID
11 7 (1.25%) Figma
11 7 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (1.07%) Power Automate
13 5 (0.89%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (2.86%) Firewall
2 15 (2.68%) MPLS
3 11 (1.96%) LAN
4 9 (1.61%) Network Security
4 9 (1.61%) Wi-Fi
5 8 (1.43%) WAN
6 7 (1.25%) VPN
7 6 (1.07%) BGP
7 6 (1.07%) Ethernet
8 5 (0.89%) Wireshark
9 4 (0.71%) DNS
9 4 (0.71%) Kerberos
9 4 (0.71%) NetScaler
9 4 (0.71%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.71%) SSH
9 4 (0.71%) TCP/IP
9 4 (0.71%) VLAN
9 4 (0.71%) Wireless
10 3 (0.54%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (4.11%) Power BI
2 16 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (2.14%) NoSQL
3 12 (2.14%) SQL Server
4 10 (1.79%) Relational Database
5 9 (1.61%) Tableau
6 8 (1.43%) Hadoop
7 7 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.25%) Metadata
8 6 (1.07%) MongoDB
9 5 (0.89%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (0.71%) Big Data
10 4 (0.71%) Data Lake
10 4 (0.71%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.54%) Apache Iceberg
11 3 (0.54%) MySQL
11 3 (0.54%) Neo4j
11 3 (0.54%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 46 (8.21%) JIRA
2 12 (2.14%) Git
3 11 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.61%) SpecFlow
5 6 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.89%) GitLab
6 5 (0.89%) Gradle
6 5 (0.89%) JUnit
6 5 (0.89%) Maven
7 4 (0.71%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.71%) Fiddler
8 3 (0.54%) ChangeMan
8 3 (0.54%) CircleCI
9 2 (0.36%) DBeaver
9 2 (0.36%) IntelliJ
9 2 (0.36%) Katalon Studio
9 2 (0.36%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.36%) webpack
10 1 (0.18%) Postman
10 1 (0.18%) PyCharm
General
1 151 (26.96%) Social Skills
2 118 (21.07%) Finance
3 74 (13.21%) Banking
4 62 (11.07%) Analytical Skills
5 30 (5.36%) Telecoms
6 20 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.57%) Front Office
7 18 (3.21%) Public Sector
8 16 (2.86%) Legal
9 12 (2.14%) Organisational Skills
10 10 (1.79%) Marketing
11 9 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.25%) Financial Institution
12 7 (1.25%) Investment Banking
12 7 (1.25%) Publishing
13 6 (1.07%) Aerospace
14 5 (0.89%) General Ledger
14 5 (0.89%) Retail Banking
15 4 (0.71%) Retail
Job Titles
1 75 (13.39%) Analyst
2 70 (12.50%) Developer
3 41 (7.32%) Architect
4 38 (6.79%) Business Analyst
5 37 (6.61%) Project Manager
6 33 (5.89%) Lead
7 27 (4.82%) Senior
8 25 (4.46%) Consultant
9 18 (3.21%) Network Engineer
10 15 (2.68%) Support Engineer
11 14 (2.50%) Software Engineer
11 14 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
12 13 (2.32%) Data Analyst
12 13 (2.32%) Data Engineer
12 13 (2.32%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 13 (2.32%) Java Developer
13 12 (2.14%) Python Developer
13 12 (2.14%) Tester
14 9 (1.61%) Network Architect
14 9 (1.61%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (4.64%) React
2 21 (3.75%) REST
3 17 (3.04%) RESTful
4 15 (2.68%) OAuth
5 12 (2.14%) HTML
6 11 (1.96%) Playwright
7 10 (1.79%) .NET
7 10 (1.79%) XML
8 9 (1.61%) PySpark
8 9 (1.61%) SAML
8 9 (1.61%) Spring
9 8 (1.43%) Kafka
9 8 (1.43%) LangChain
9 8 (1.43%) Spring Boot
10 7 (1.25%) AngularJS
10 7 (1.25%) JSON
10 7 (1.25%) Middleware
11 6 (1.07%) FIX Protocol
11 6 (1.07%) Model Context Protocol
11 6 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 21 (3.75%) Onboarding
2 18 (3.21%) Cloud Native
3 16 (2.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 12 (2.14%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.96%) Derivative
5 11 (1.96%) Freedom of Information
6 10 (1.79%) Data Centre
7 9 (1.61%) Equities
8 8 (1.43%) Management Information System
9 7 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.07%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.07%) Algorithms
10 6 (1.07%) Fixed Income
11 5 (0.89%) Credit Risk
11 5 (0.89%) Mainframe
11 5 (0.89%) Replication
11 5 (0.89%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.71%) Data Structures
12 4 (0.71%) Equity Derivative
12 4 (0.71%) Freedom of Information Act
Operating Systems
1 34 (6.07%) Linux
2 25 (4.46%) Windows
3 9 (1.61%) Unix
4 8 (1.43%) zOS
5 5 (0.89%) Android
5 5 (0.89%) Solaris
6 4 (0.71%) AIX
6 4 (0.71%) Windows 10
7 3 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.54%) VMS
7 3 (0.54%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.18%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.18%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 560 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 103 (18.39%) Stakeholder Management
3 97 (17.32%) Agile
4 93 (16.61%) Problem-Solving
5 66 (11.79%) Migration
6 63 (11.25%) AI
7 57 (10.18%) Project Management
8 51 (9.11%) CI/CD
9 50 (8.93%) DevOps
10 46 (8.21%) Analytics
11 41 (7.32%) Roadmaps
12 39 (6.96%) Software Engineering
13 36 (6.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 35 (6.25%) Decision-Making
15 31 (5.54%) Business Analysis
15 31 (5.54%) Machine Learning
16 30 (5.36%) Continuous Improvement
17 28 (5.00%) LLM
18 27 (4.82%) Business Intelligence
18 27 (4.82%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 115 (20.54%) Python
2 78 (13.93%) SQL
3 43 (7.68%) Java
4 34 (6.07%) C#
5 29 (5.18%) JavaScript
6 19 (3.39%) TypeScript
7 17 (3.04%) PowerShell
8 13 (2.32%) C++
9 10 (1.79%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.61%) Bash
11 5 (0.89%) Scala
12 4 (0.71%) COBOL
12 4 (0.71%) PHP
13 3 (0.54%) Go
13 3 (0.54%) Groovy
13 3 (0.54%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.36%) Bicep
14 2 (0.36%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.36%) SPARQL
15 1 (0.18%) VB
Qualifications
1 57 (10.18%) Degree
2 40 (7.14%) Security Cleared
3 33 (5.89%) SC Cleared
4 20 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (2.32%) Master's Degree
6 9 (1.61%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.07%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.07%) PMI Certification
7 6 (1.07%) PMP
8 5 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.71%) CCNP
9 4 (0.71%) CISSP
10 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.36%) CCIE
11 2 (0.36%) CCNA
11 2 (0.36%) ISEB
11 2 (0.36%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.36%) MBA
11 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.36%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.82%) GDPR
2 25 (4.46%) QA
3 17 (3.04%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 11 (1.96%) PMO
5 8 (1.43%) NIST
6 7 (1.25%) Accessibility
7 4 (0.71%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.71%) SLA
8 3 (0.54%) IFRS
8 3 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.36%) Basel III
9 2 (0.36%) GAAP
9 2 (0.36%) GRC
9 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.36%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.36%) SEPA
9 2 (0.36%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.36%) Software Quality Assurance
9 2 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 23 (4.11%) Docker
2 15 (2.68%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
4 9 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.54%) KVM
6 2 (0.36%) NFS
6 2 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.18%) Firmware
7 1 (0.18%) HDFS
7 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.18%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 26 (4.64%) Kubernetes
2 22 (3.93%) Terraform
3 16 (2.86%) Ansible
4 4 (0.71%) Control-M
4 4 (0.71%) Grafana
4 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (0.54%) CA Endevor
5 3 (0.54%) PingFederate
5 3 (0.54%) Puppet
5 3 (0.54%) vCenter Server
6 2 (0.36%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.36%) SCCM
6 2 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.18%) Argo
7 1 (0.18%) Data Guard
7 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.18%) Nessus
7 1 (0.18%) SCOM
Vendors
1 42 (7.50%) Microsoft
2 26 (4.64%) Cisco
3 20 (3.57%) Databricks
4 18 (3.21%) Oracle
5 14 (2.50%) Google
5 14 (2.50%) ServiceNow
6 12 (2.14%) SAP
7 10 (1.79%) Adobe
7 10 (1.79%) Salesforce
8 9 (1.61%) Nokia
8 9 (1.61%) VMware
9 8 (1.43%) F5
10 7 (1.25%) ADVA
10 7 (1.25%) Citrix
10 7 (1.25%) Informatica
11 6 (1.07%) Juniper
11 6 (1.07%) Meraki
11 6 (1.07%) Workday
12 5 (0.89%) Foundry
12 5 (0.89%) ION Trading