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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 152 167
Rank change year-on-year -72 +15 -21
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 576 514 497
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.25% 1.84% 1.53%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.64% 5.06% 4.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 229 213 253
10th Percentile £250 £295 £214
25th Percentile £350 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.53% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £600
90th Percentile £638 £650 £713
UK median daily rate £425 £463 £488
% change year-on-year -8.11% -5.13% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 10 7
10th Percentile £12.92 £14.95 £17.94
25th Percentile £13.69 £15.13 £19.06
Median hourly rate £17.60 £15.25 £27.84
Median % change year-on-year +15.41% -45.22% -17.27%
75th Percentile £25.00 £34.19 £70.78
90th Percentile £27.70 £40.90 £71.88
UK median hourly rate £18.00 £15.25 £27.84
% change year-on-year +18.03% -45.22% -34.01%

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 15,836 10,154 10,035
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.34% 36.36% 30.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,511 6,358 6,064
10th Percentile £325 £300 £294
25th Percentile £425 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.27% -1.32%
75th Percentile £644 £645 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £527
% change year-on-year +0.96% -1.28% -4.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,155 528 372
10th Percentile £13.95 £15.13 £15.75
25th Percentile £17.57 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £33.99 £30.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +13.30% -47.69% +24.59%
75th Percentile £67.77 £56.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.32 £73.75 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £28.13 £49.75
% change year-on-year +28.00% -43.47% +11.17%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 -93 252 £425 -15.00% 78
North of England -12 182 £475 +5.56% 28
Yorkshire +25 106 £475 -3.31% 13
North West -14 70 £463 +3.93% 14
South East -36 66 £375 -9.09% 26
Midlands -37 47 £406 -12.16% 33
West Midlands -51 39 £388 -16.22% 13
South West -41 14 £425 -10.53% 14
East Midlands - 8 £425 - 20
North East -58 6 - - 1
East of England -33 5 £300 -36.84% 6
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 18 (3.13%) Confluence
2 11 (1.91%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.56%) SAS
4 7 (1.22%) Apache
5 6 (1.04%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.52%) CICS
7 3 (0.52%) CMS
7 3 (0.52%) nginx
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.17%) Camunda
8 1 (0.17%) IIS
8 1 (0.17%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.17%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.17%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.17%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 14 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.17%) Maya
6 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.17%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 9 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.87%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.35%) Cloudability
3 2 (0.35%) ION MarketView
3 2 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.17%) Actimize
4 1 (0.17%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.17%) Eloqua
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle BRM
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.17%) Sage 50
4 1 (0.17%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FI-CA
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.17%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 94 (16.32%) Azure
2 77 (13.37%) AWS
3 53 (9.20%) GCP
4 27 (4.69%) GitHub
5 23 (3.99%) SaaS
6 17 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
6 17 (2.95%) Power Platform
7 16 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (2.26%) Serverless
9 10 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (1.56%) Snowflake
11 7 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (1.22%) Azure AKS
11 7 (1.22%) OpenShift
12 6 (1.04%) Amazon S3
12 6 (1.04%) Entra ID
12 6 (1.04%) IaaS
12 6 (1.04%) Microsoft Copilot
12 6 (1.04%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 22 (3.82%) Firewall
2 15 (2.60%) Network Security
3 12 (2.08%) LAN
4 11 (1.91%) WAN
5 10 (1.74%) MPLS
6 9 (1.56%) DNS
7 8 (1.39%) VoIP
8 7 (1.22%) Cisco IPT
8 7 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (1.04%) Cisco Nexus
9 6 (1.04%) VPN
10 5 (0.87%) DHCP
10 5 (0.87%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 5 (0.87%) SDH
10 5 (0.87%) Unified Communications
11 4 (0.69%) BGP
11 4 (0.69%) Cisco ISE
11 4 (0.69%) Multicast
11 4 (0.69%) OSPF
11 4 (0.69%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.95%) Metadata
1 17 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (2.78%) Power BI
3 12 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (1.74%) BigQuery
4 10 (1.74%) Relational Database
5 7 (1.22%) Oracle Database
5 7 (1.22%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.04%) Big Data
7 5 (0.87%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (0.87%) Redis
8 4 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.69%) Db2
8 4 (0.69%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.69%) Tableau
9 3 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.52%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.52%) MySQL
9 3 (0.52%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 35 (6.08%) JIRA
2 23 (3.99%) Jenkins
3 20 (3.47%) Git
4 7 (1.22%) Maven
5 6 (1.04%) GitLab
6 4 (0.69%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.52%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.52%) Selenium
7 3 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.52%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.35%) CMake
8 2 (0.35%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.35%) ER Studio
8 2 (0.35%) ERwin
8 2 (0.35%) Gradle
8 2 (0.35%) JUnit
8 2 (0.35%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.17%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.17%) Postman
9 1 (0.17%) Vite
General
1 237 (41.15%) Social Skills
2 170 (29.51%) Finance
3 84 (14.58%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (13.89%) Banking
5 32 (5.56%) Public Sector
6 29 (5.03%) Legal
7 25 (4.34%) Organisational Skills
8 22 (3.82%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (3.13%) Front Office
11 16 (2.78%) Telecoms
12 14 (2.43%) Retail
13 12 (2.08%) Billing
13 12 (2.08%) Investment Banking
14 11 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (1.74%) Marketing
16 9 (1.56%) Financial Institution
17 6 (1.04%) Publishing
18 5 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
19 4 (0.69%) Law
Job Titles
1 79 (13.72%) Architect
2 66 (11.46%) Analyst
3 42 (7.29%) Lead
4 41 (7.12%) Business Analyst
5 39 (6.77%) Developer
6 30 (5.21%) Senior
7 29 (5.03%) Solutions Architect
8 25 (4.34%) Consultant
8 25 (4.34%) Project Manager
9 14 (2.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 14 (2.43%) Support Engineer
10 12 (2.08%) Java Developer
10 12 (2.08%) Software Engineer
11 10 (1.74%) Data Protection Officer
11 10 (1.74%) Tester
12 9 (1.56%) Data Engineer
12 9 (1.56%) Designer
12 9 (1.56%) Product Manager
12 9 (1.56%) Product Owner
13 8 (1.39%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (6.42%) REST
1 37 (6.42%) Terraform
2 19 (3.30%) Kafka
3 15 (2.60%) Spring
4 14 (2.43%) React
4 14 (2.43%) Spring Boot
5 12 (2.08%) JSON
6 11 (1.91%) GraphQL
6 11 (1.91%) Node.js
7 10 (1.74%) .NET
7 10 (1.74%) YAML
8 9 (1.56%) Middleware
9 8 (1.39%) OAuth
9 8 (1.39%) Pandas
10 7 (1.22%) HTML
10 7 (1.22%) OAuth2
11 6 (1.04%) OpenID
11 6 (1.04%) RESTful
12 5 (0.87%) AngularJS
12 5 (0.87%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (6.60%) Product Ownership
2 37 (6.42%) Cloud Native
3 27 (4.69%) Onboarding
4 26 (4.51%) Distributed Systems
5 22 (3.82%) Virtual Team
6 19 (3.30%) Data Centre
6 19 (3.30%) Management Information System
7 15 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (2.43%) Data Structures
8 14 (2.43%) Freedom of Information
9 12 (2.08%) Mainframe
9 12 (2.08%) Mobile App
10 11 (1.91%) Derivative
11 9 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
11 9 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (1.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 9 (1.56%) Freedom of Information Act
11 9 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.39%) AI Agents
12 8 (1.39%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 31 (5.38%) Linux
2 28 (4.86%) Windows
3 12 (2.08%) Android
3 12 (2.08%) Unix
4 9 (1.56%) Apple iOS
4 9 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (1.39%) zOS
6 6 (1.04%) Windows Server
7 5 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.52%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.17%) CentOS
9 1 (0.17%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 576 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 163 (28.30%) Stakeholder Management
3 115 (19.97%) Agile
4 106 (18.40%) Continuous Improvement
5 104 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
6 99 (17.19%) AI
7 88 (15.28%) Migration
8 85 (14.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 82 (14.24%) CI/CD
10 67 (11.63%) Decision-Making
11 63 (10.94%) Analytics
12 61 (10.59%) DevOps
13 59 (10.24%) Roadmaps
14 53 (9.20%) Risk Management
15 50 (8.68%) Software Engineering
16 47 (8.16%) Data Modelling
17 46 (7.99%) Project Management
18 44 (7.64%) Cybersecurity
18 44 (7.64%) Test Automation
19 41 (7.12%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 81 (14.06%) Python
2 61 (10.59%) SQL
3 50 (8.68%) Java
4 17 (2.95%) TypeScript
5 16 (2.78%) JavaScript
6 12 (2.08%) Kotlin
6 12 (2.08%) PowerShell
7 11 (1.91%) Go
8 10 (1.74%) Bash
9 9 (1.56%) C#
10 7 (1.22%) C++
11 5 (0.87%) Bicep
11 5 (0.87%) COBOL
11 5 (0.87%) Perl
12 4 (0.69%) Apex Code
12 4 (0.69%) C
12 4 (0.69%) Groovy
13 2 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.35%) R
13 2 (0.35%) REXX
Qualifications
1 38 (6.60%) Security Cleared
2 35 (6.08%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.51%) Degree
4 8 (1.39%) PMI Certification
4 8 (1.39%) PMP
5 7 (1.22%) AWS Certification
5 7 (1.22%) Azure Certification
5 7 (1.22%) CISSP
6 6 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
7 4 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (0.69%) CCNP
7 4 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (0.69%) CRISC
8 3 (0.52%) CISA
8 3 (0.52%) CISM
8 3 (0.52%) FFIEC
9 2 (0.35%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.35%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.35%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (8.16%) Data Quality
2 42 (7.29%) GDPR
3 31 (5.38%) QA
4 9 (1.56%) PMO
5 7 (1.22%) NIST
6 6 (1.04%) Accessibility
6 6 (1.04%) PERC
7 4 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.52%) EMIR
8 3 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.52%) MiFID
9 2 (0.35%) COBIT
9 2 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.35%) GRC
9 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.35%) SEPA
9 2 (0.35%) SLA
10 1 (0.17%) CDISC
System Software
1 18 (3.13%) Active Directory
1 18 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (2.78%) Docker
3 8 (1.39%) Virtual Desktop
4 7 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.69%) NFS
6 2 (0.35%) GPFS
6 2 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.35%) vSphere
7 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.17%) KVM
7 1 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
7 1 (0.17%) Varnish
7 1 (0.17%) XenApp
7 1 (0.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 44 (7.64%) Kubernetes
2 28 (4.86%) Ansible
3 6 (1.04%) Grafana
3 6 (1.04%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (0.69%) Cisco CUCM
6 3 (0.52%) Kustomize
6 3 (0.52%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.35%) Argo
7 2 (0.35%) Control-M
7 2 (0.35%) Istio
7 2 (0.35%) Packer
7 2 (0.35%) Puppet
7 2 (0.35%) QRadar
7 2 (0.35%) SCCM
7 2 (0.35%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.35%) Tivoli Storage Manager
7 2 (0.35%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.17%) PingFederate
8 1 (0.17%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 72 (12.50%) Microsoft
2 28 (4.86%) Cisco
3 25 (4.34%) Google
4 22 (3.82%) Databricks
5 20 (3.47%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.13%) VMware
7 17 (2.95%) Oracle
7 17 (2.95%) SAP
8 11 (1.91%) F5
8 11 (1.91%) IBM
8 11 (1.91%) Red Hat
8 11 (1.91%) Salesforce
9 9 (1.56%) Citrix
10 6 (1.04%) CheckPoint
11 5 (0.87%) Murex
11 5 (0.87%) Palo Alto
12 4 (0.69%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.69%) Informatica
12 4 (0.69%) SolarWinds
12 4 (0.69%) Splunk