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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 201 171 179
Rank change year-on-year -30 +8 -38
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 630 463 469
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.38% 1.67% 1.41%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.11% 4.70% 4.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 191 227
10th Percentile £256 £300 £213
25th Percentile £354 £380 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £566 £613
90th Percentile £638 £630 £718
UK median daily rate £425 £450 £500
% change year-on-year -5.56% -10.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 11 17
10th Percentile £12.83 - £17.94
25th Percentile £18.23 £15.13 £20.50
Median hourly rate £28.00 £15.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.61% -44.55% -41.92%
75th Percentile £36.03 £28.32 £28.75
90th Percentile £60.00 £40.46 £70.56
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £15.25 £27.50
% change year-on-year +83.61% -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 15,313 9,854 10,215
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.51% 35.45% 30.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,390 6,209 6,628
10th Percentile £325 £306 £300
25th Percentile £425 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £682
90th Percentile £750 £775 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 915 498 528
10th Percentile £14.97 £15.48 £12.68
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £31.18 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.31% -34.36% +11.76%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £29.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +47.46% -34.44% +10.86%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -26 293 £450 -0.83% 67
North of England -26 183 £475 +5.56% 24
Yorkshire +4 112 £475 -5.00% 11
North West 0 71 £463 +8.82% 12
South East -34 68 £388 -9.77% 23
Midlands -37 55 £450 - 11
West Midlands -52 46 £450 - 5
South West -44 14 £425 - 10
East Midlands - 9 £425 - 6
East of England -23 8 £300 -33.33% 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 (3.02%) Confluence
2 9 (1.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.27%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.79%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.79%) SAS
5 4 (0.63%) Apache
5 4 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
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%) CICS
8 1 (0.16%) nginx
8 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 17 (2.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.16%) Maya
6 1 (0.16%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.16%) Trello
6 1 (0.16%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 9 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.63%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.32%) ION MarketView
3 2 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.32%) SAP GRC
3 2 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.16%) Actimize
4 1 (0.16%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.16%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.16%) Endur
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle BRM
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FI-CA
4 1 (0.16%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.16%) SAP HR
4 1 (0.16%) SAP PLM
4 1 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.16%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 101 (16.03%) Azure
2 80 (12.70%) AWS
3 50 (7.94%) GCP
4 28 (4.44%) GitHub
5 24 (3.81%) SaaS
6 23 (3.65%) Power Platform
7 17 (2.70%) Microsoft 365
8 15 (2.38%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (2.22%) Serverless
10 11 (1.75%) Entra ID
10 11 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (1.75%) Snowflake
11 7 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (1.11%) OCI
12 6 (0.95%) Dynamics 365
12 6 (0.95%) Microsoft Copilot
13 5 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (0.79%) IaaS
13 5 (0.79%) OpenShift
13 5 (0.79%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (3.97%) Firewall
2 18 (2.86%) Network Security
3 11 (1.75%) LAN
4 9 (1.43%) WAN
5 8 (1.27%) DNS
5 8 (1.27%) MPLS
5 8 (1.27%) VoIP
6 7 (1.11%) Cisco Nexus
6 7 (1.11%) VPN
6 7 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.95%) DHCP
7 6 (0.95%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
8 5 (0.79%) BGP
9 4 (0.63%) BIG-IP
9 4 (0.63%) Cisco IPT
9 4 (0.63%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.48%) EIGRP
10 3 (0.48%) OSPF
10 3 (0.48%) SAN
10 3 (0.48%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (3.33%) Metadata
3 20 (3.17%) Power BI
4 13 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
5 11 (1.75%) Relational Database
5 11 (1.75%) SQL Server
6 8 (1.27%) Tableau
7 7 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 6 (0.95%) Oracle Database
8 6 (0.95%) Redis
9 5 (0.79%) Big Data
9 5 (0.79%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.79%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.63%) MySQL
11 3 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (0.48%) BigQuery
11 3 (0.48%) Db2
11 3 (0.48%) KDB
11 3 (0.48%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 41 (6.51%) JIRA
2 25 (3.97%) Jenkins
3 23 (3.65%) Git
4 9 (1.43%) Maven
5 7 (1.11%) GitLab
6 6 (0.95%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (0.63%) Gradle
9 3 (0.48%) Selenium
10 2 (0.32%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.32%) CMake
10 2 (0.32%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.32%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.32%) ERwin
10 2 (0.32%) Flyway
10 2 (0.32%) Liquibase
10 2 (0.32%) MSI
10 2 (0.32%) Postman
10 2 (0.32%) SpecFlow
10 2 (0.32%) XCUITest
General
1 215 (34.13%) Social Skills
2 157 (24.92%) Finance
3 79 (12.54%) Banking
4 77 (12.22%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
5 23 (3.65%) Legal
5 23 (3.65%) Public Sector
6 22 (3.49%) Front Office
6 22 (3.49%) Influencing Skills
7 21 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
8 17 (2.70%) Telecoms
9 14 (2.22%) Marketing
10 13 (2.06%) Retail
11 12 (1.90%) Billing
11 12 (1.90%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.43%) Publishing
13 8 (1.27%) Investment Banking
13 8 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
13 8 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.79%) Police
Job Titles
1 95 (15.08%) Architect
2 71 (11.27%) Analyst
3 54 (8.57%) Developer
4 43 (6.83%) Business Analyst
5 42 (6.67%) Senior
6 38 (6.03%) Lead
7 32 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
8 29 (4.60%) Consultant
9 22 (3.49%) Project Manager
10 18 (2.86%) Java Developer
11 15 (2.38%) DevOps Engineer
12 14 (2.22%) Support Engineer
13 13 (2.06%) Software Engineer
14 12 (1.90%) Data Engineer
14 12 (1.90%) Product Manager
14 12 (1.90%) Product Owner
15 11 (1.75%) Python Engineer
16 10 (1.59%) Data Protection Officer
16 10 (1.59%) Designer
17 9 (1.43%) Data Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (6.19%) REST
2 22 (3.49%) React
3 20 (3.17%) Spring
4 18 (2.86%) Kafka
5 17 (2.70%) Spring Boot
6 15 (2.38%) JSON
7 13 (2.06%) .NET
8 12 (1.90%) YAML
9 11 (1.75%) GraphQL
9 11 (1.75%) Node.js
10 10 (1.59%) RESTful
11 8 (1.27%) Middleware
12 7 (1.11%) AngularJS
12 7 (1.11%) Vue
13 6 (0.95%) CSS
13 6 (0.95%) Pandas
13 6 (0.95%) SLSA
14 5 (0.79%) HTML
14 5 (0.79%) OAuth
14 5 (0.79%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 48 (7.62%) Product Ownership
2 35 (5.56%) Cloud Native
3 32 (5.08%) Virtual Team
4 25 (3.97%) Distributed Systems
5 24 (3.81%) Onboarding
6 21 (3.33%) Data Centre
7 16 (2.54%) Mobile App
8 12 (1.90%) Derivative
8 12 (1.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 11 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
10 10 (1.59%) Management Information System
11 9 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
11 9 (1.43%) Mainframe
12 8 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
13 7 (1.11%) Data Structures
13 7 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
13 7 (1.11%) Replication
13 7 (1.11%) Security Posture
14 6 (0.95%) Fixed Income
14 6 (0.95%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 30 (4.76%) Linux
1 30 (4.76%) Windows
2 16 (2.54%) Android
3 11 (1.75%) Apple iOS
4 10 (1.59%) Unix
5 8 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (1.11%) zOS
7 6 (0.95%) Windows Server
8 4 (0.63%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.48%) 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
1 630 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 134 (21.27%) Stakeholder Management
3 123 (19.52%) Agile
4 109 (17.30%) Problem-Solving
5 99 (15.71%) Continuous Improvement
6 91 (14.44%) AI
7 85 (13.49%) CI/CD
8 81 (12.86%) DevOps
9 77 (12.22%) Migration
10 71 (11.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 70 (11.11%) Analytics
11 70 (11.11%) Roadmaps
12 63 (10.00%) Decision-Making
13 47 (7.46%) Project Management
14 46 (7.30%) Data Modelling
14 46 (7.30%) Test Automation
15 45 (7.14%) Risk Management
16 43 (6.83%) Software Engineering
17 40 (6.35%) Cybersecurity
18 39 (6.19%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 96 (15.24%) Python
2 64 (10.16%) Java
3 61 (9.68%) SQL
4 19 (3.02%) JavaScript
5 18 (2.86%) PowerShell
6 17 (2.70%) TypeScript
7 15 (2.38%) Bash
8 13 (2.06%) Kotlin
9 9 (1.43%) C#
10 8 (1.27%) C++
10 8 (1.27%) Go
11 6 (0.95%) Groovy
12 5 (0.79%) Apex Code
12 5 (0.79%) Perl
12 5 (0.79%) R
13 4 (0.63%) JCL
14 3 (0.48%) Bicep
14 3 (0.48%) C
14 3 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
14 3 (0.48%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 43 (6.83%) Security Cleared
2 41 (6.51%) SC Cleared
3 33 (5.24%) Degree
4 9 (1.43%) Azure Certification
5 7 (1.11%) CISSP
5 7 (1.11%) PMI Certification
5 7 (1.11%) PMP
6 6 (0.95%) AWS Certification
6 6 (0.95%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (0.79%) CCNP
8 4 (0.63%) CISM
8 4 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.63%) CRISC
9 3 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.48%) CISA
10 2 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.32%) FFIEC
10 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.32%) PhD
10 2 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (6.03%) GDPR
2 36 (5.71%) Data Quality
2 36 (5.71%) QA
3 13 (2.06%) PMO
4 10 (1.59%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.27%) NIST
5 8 (1.27%) SLA
6 7 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.95%) Actionable Recommendations
7 6 (0.95%) GRC
8 4 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.48%) PERC
10 2 (0.32%) COBIT
10 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.32%) NCSC
11 1 (0.16%) CDISC
11 1 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.16%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 22 (3.49%) Active Directory
2 19 (3.02%) Docker
3 15 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
5 6 (0.95%) NFS
6 4 (0.63%) KVM
6 4 (0.63%) Time Sharing Option
7 3 (0.48%) Virtual Servers
7 3 (0.48%) XenApp
7 3 (0.48%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.32%) GPFS
8 2 (0.32%) IAG
8 2 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.16%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.16%) Varnish
9 1 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.16%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (6.35%) Kubernetes
2 35 (5.56%) Terraform
3 26 (4.13%) Ansible
4 8 (1.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (0.79%) Grafana
6 4 (0.63%) Tivoli Storage Manager
7 3 (0.48%) Cisco CUCM
7 3 (0.48%) Istio
7 3 (0.48%) Kustomize
7 3 (0.48%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.48%) SCCM
8 2 (0.32%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.32%) Packer
8 2 (0.32%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.32%) Puppet
8 2 (0.32%) QRadar
8 2 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
9 1 (0.16%) SELinux
Vendors
1 74 (11.75%) Microsoft
2 30 (4.76%) Cisco
3 25 (3.97%) Databricks
4 23 (3.65%) Oracle
4 23 (3.65%) SAP
5 20 (3.17%) ServiceNow
6 19 (3.02%) Google
7 15 (2.38%) VMware
8 12 (1.90%) Citrix
8 12 (1.90%) F5
8 12 (1.90%) Red Hat
8 12 (1.90%) Salesforce
9 10 (1.59%) IBM
10 8 (1.27%) Informatica
11 7 (1.11%) Workday
12 6 (0.95%) CheckPoint
12 6 (0.95%) Murex
12 6 (0.95%) Palo Alto
12 6 (0.95%) Sonatype
13 5 (0.79%) Adobe