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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 158 188 183
Rank change year-on-year +30 -5 -19
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 609 361 484
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.67% 1.41% 1.28%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.95% 4.21% 4.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 256 168 244
10th Percentile £213 £284 £221
25th Percentile £347 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £653 £675 £725
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 16
10th Percentile - £20.45 £11.95
25th Percentile - £24.25 £19.86
Median hourly rate £25.50 £24.50 £26.31
Median % change year-on-year +4.08% -6.87% +17.58%
75th Percentile £28.00 £31.76 £40.88
90th Percentile £28.45 £32.09 £53.52
UK median hourly rate £25.50 £24.50 £25.12
% change year-on-year +4.08% -2.45% +12.88%

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 12,311 8,582 11,654
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.83% 33.59% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,799 5,391 7,624
10th Percentile £290 £281 £258
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £547 £546
Median % change year-on-year -6.31% +0.14% -5.00%
75th Percentile £628 £669 £658
90th Percentile £750 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £527
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.28% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 608 275 763
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.83 £12.89
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.55 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.75 £35.89 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% +19.00% +34.04%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £84.36 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.08
% change year-on-year +3.08% +8.05% +33.78%

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 6 March 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
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 6 March 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 +45 316 £500 +8.23% 6
North of England -22 145 £475 -5.00% 9
Yorkshire -21 82 £475 -11.63% 4
South East -22 71 £350 -22.22% 1
North West -3 53 £425 -15.00% 5
Midlands -39 39 £468 -4.10% 5
West Midlands -40 28 £494 -3.66% 1
South West -16 16 £525 +7.69% 7
East of England -21 15 £413 -12.00% 3
East Midlands -16 11 £336 -10.33% 4
North East -23 10 £250 -44.44%
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 26 (4.27%) Confluence
2 12 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.48%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (0.99%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.82%) Apache
7 4 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.49%) CMS
9 2 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.33%) Drupal
9 2 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.33%) SAS
9 2 (0.33%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.16%) Camunda
10 1 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.16%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 18 (2.96%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.66%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.49%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.49%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.49%) Sketch
6 3 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.33%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.33%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.33%) InVision
7 2 (0.33%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.16%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.16%) Blender
8 1 (0.16%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.16%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (1.64%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.49%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.49%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 3 (0.49%) SAP GRC
4 2 (0.33%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.33%) Workfront
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe Campaign
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.16%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 65 (10.67%) AWS
2 63 (10.34%) Azure
3 28 (4.60%) GCP
3 28 (4.60%) Power Platform
4 25 (4.11%) Snowflake
5 22 (3.61%) Microsoft 365
6 18 (2.96%) Amazon S3
7 17 (2.79%) AWS Lambda
7 17 (2.79%) Serverless
8 16 (2.63%) GitHub
9 15 (2.46%) SaaS
10 14 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 12 (1.97%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (1.48%) Figma
13 8 (1.31%) Dynamics 365
13 8 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (1.31%) OpenShift
14 7 (1.15%) Power Automate
15 6 (0.99%) Amazon EKS
15 6 (0.99%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.28%) Firewall
2 15 (2.46%) MPLS
3 11 (1.81%) LAN
3 11 (1.81%) Network Security
4 8 (1.31%) WAN
4 8 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
5 7 (1.15%) BGP
5 7 (1.15%) VPN
6 6 (0.99%) Ethernet
7 5 (0.82%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.82%) Wireshark
8 4 (0.66%) Cisco Nexus
8 4 (0.66%) DNS
8 4 (0.66%) HTTP
8 4 (0.66%) Kerberos
8 4 (0.66%) NetScaler
8 4 (0.66%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.66%) SSH
8 4 (0.66%) VLAN
9 3 (0.49%) DWDM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.27%) Power BI
2 19 (3.12%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (1.97%) Tableau
4 11 (1.81%) Metadata
5 10 (1.64%) SQL Server
6 8 (1.31%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.31%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.15%) Hadoop
8 6 (0.99%) MongoDB
9 5 (0.82%) Amazon Aurora
9 5 (0.82%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.82%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.49%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (0.49%) Big Data
10 3 (0.49%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (0.33%) MySQL
11 2 (0.33%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 48 (7.88%) JIRA
2 18 (2.96%) Git
3 12 (1.97%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.81%) SpecFlow
5 8 (1.31%) Gradle
5 8 (1.31%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (1.15%) Maven
7 6 (0.99%) GitLab
8 5 (0.82%) JUnit
8 5 (0.82%) Postman
9 4 (0.66%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.66%) Fiddler
10 3 (0.49%) IntelliJ
10 3 (0.49%) Katalon Studio
10 3 (0.49%) TestNG
10 3 (0.49%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.49%) webpack
11 2 (0.33%) JMeter
11 2 (0.33%) Liquibase
11 2 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 162 (26.60%) Social Skills
2 132 (21.67%) Finance
3 76 (12.48%) Banking
4 63 (10.34%) Analytical Skills
5 33 (5.42%) Telecoms
6 22 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (3.28%) Front Office
8 18 (2.96%) Legal
9 17 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
9 17 (2.79%) Public Sector
10 15 (2.46%) Marketing
11 13 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (1.64%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.15%) Manufacturing
13 7 (1.15%) Publishing
14 6 (0.99%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.82%) Influencing Skills
15 5 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
15 5 (0.82%) Private Banking
16 4 (0.66%) Police
Job Titles
1 78 (12.81%) Analyst
2 64 (10.51%) Developer
3 59 (9.69%) Architect
4 40 (6.57%) Business Analyst
5 39 (6.40%) Lead
6 35 (5.75%) Project Manager
7 33 (5.42%) Consultant
8 28 (4.60%) Senior
9 22 (3.61%) Network Engineer
10 19 (3.12%) Solutions Architect
11 17 (2.79%) Software Engineer
12 16 (2.63%) Java Developer
13 15 (2.46%) Data Engineer
14 14 (2.30%) Support Engineer
15 13 (2.13%) Data Analyst
15 13 (2.13%) Full-Stack Engineer
15 13 (2.13%) Python Developer
15 13 (2.13%) Tester
16 10 (1.64%) Designer
16 10 (1.64%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (5.58%) React
2 22 (3.61%) REST
3 15 (2.46%) Playwright
4 13 (2.13%) Kafka
5 12 (1.97%) .NET
5 12 (1.97%) PySpark
6 10 (1.64%) OAuth
6 10 (1.64%) RESTful
7 9 (1.48%) Spring
8 8 (1.31%) AngularJS
8 8 (1.31%) HTML
8 8 (1.31%) OpenTelemetry
8 8 (1.31%) Oracle Fusion
8 8 (1.31%) SAML
8 8 (1.31%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.31%) XML
9 7 (1.15%) JSON
9 7 (1.15%) LangChain
9 7 (1.15%) Middleware
9 7 (1.15%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 26 (4.27%) Onboarding
2 24 (3.94%) Product Ownership
3 19 (3.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 18 (2.96%) Cloud Native
5 12 (1.97%) Derivative
6 10 (1.64%) Data Centre
6 10 (1.64%) Management Information System
7 9 (1.48%) Equities
8 8 (1.31%) Algorithms
8 8 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (1.31%) Fixed Income
8 8 (1.31%) Freedom of Information
8 8 (1.31%) Mobile App
9 7 (1.15%) AI Agents
10 6 (0.99%) Replication
11 5 (0.82%) Hedge funds
11 5 (0.82%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.66%) BYOD
12 4 (0.66%) Data Structures
12 4 (0.66%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 28 (4.60%) Windows
2 25 (4.11%) Linux
3 6 (0.99%) Unix
4 5 (0.82%) zOS
5 4 (0.66%) AIX
5 4 (0.66%) Android
5 4 (0.66%) Solaris
5 4 (0.66%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.49%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.33%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.33%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 609 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 111 (18.23%) Stakeholder Management
3 104 (17.08%) Problem-Solving
4 93 (15.27%) Agile
5 75 (12.32%) Migration
6 65 (10.67%) AI
7 59 (9.69%) CI/CD
8 56 (9.20%) Project Management
9 54 (8.87%) DevOps
9 54 (8.87%) Roadmaps
10 53 (8.70%) Analytics
11 47 (7.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 42 (6.90%) Software Engineering
13 40 (6.57%) Decision-Making
14 37 (6.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 33 (5.42%) Machine Learning
15 33 (5.42%) Test Automation
16 31 (5.09%) Business Intelligence
16 31 (5.09%) Observability
16 31 (5.09%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 112 (18.39%) Python
2 78 (12.81%) SQL
3 50 (8.21%) Java
4 36 (5.91%) C#
5 34 (5.58%) JavaScript
6 22 (3.61%) TypeScript
7 20 (3.28%) PowerShell
8 11 (1.81%) C++
9 10 (1.64%) Bash
10 6 (0.99%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.66%) Go
11 4 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.66%) PHP
11 4 (0.66%) Scala
12 3 (0.49%) Groovy
13 2 (0.33%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.33%) Bicep
13 2 (0.33%) JCL
13 2 (0.33%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.33%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 53 (8.70%) Degree
2 47 (7.72%) Security Cleared
3 40 (6.57%) SC Cleared
4 18 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (1.64%) AWS Certification
5 10 (1.64%) Master's Degree
6 8 (1.31%) PMI Certification
6 8 (1.31%) PMP
7 6 (0.99%) CISSP
8 5 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (0.82%) DV Cleared
9 4 (0.66%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.66%) CCNP
10 3 (0.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 3 (0.49%) PhD
11 2 (0.33%) CCNA
11 2 (0.33%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.58%) QA
2 31 (5.09%) GDPR
3 20 (3.28%) Data Quality
4 15 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (1.97%) NIST
5 12 (1.97%) PMO
6 10 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 7 (1.15%) SLA
8 6 (0.99%) GRC
9 3 (0.49%) IFRS
9 3 (0.49%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.33%) Basel III
10 2 (0.33%) GAAP
10 2 (0.33%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.33%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.33%) NCSC
10 2 (0.33%) SEPA
10 2 (0.33%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 28 (4.60%) Docker
2 20 (3.28%) Active Directory
3 12 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
4 10 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.66%) KVM
5 4 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.49%) IAG
6 3 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.49%) vSphere
7 2 (0.33%) NFS
7 2 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.16%) Firmware
8 1 (0.16%) HDFS
8 1 (0.16%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.16%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 38 (6.24%) Kubernetes
2 25 (4.11%) Terraform
3 16 (2.63%) Ansible
4 8 (1.31%) Grafana
5 6 (0.99%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (0.82%) Control-M
6 5 (0.82%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.49%) Puppet
8 3 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.49%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
9 2 (0.33%) Nessus
9 2 (0.33%) PingFederate
9 2 (0.33%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.33%) SCCM
10 1 (0.16%) Argo
10 1 (0.16%) Istio
10 1 (0.16%) PowerCLI
10 1 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 52 (8.54%) Microsoft
2 28 (4.60%) Cisco
3 23 (3.78%) Databricks
4 19 (3.12%) Oracle
5 18 (2.96%) ServiceNow
6 17 (2.79%) SAP
7 13 (2.13%) Adobe
8 12 (1.97%) Salesforce
9 10 (1.64%) Google
9 10 (1.64%) VMware
10 9 (1.48%) Nokia
11 8 (1.31%) Citrix
11 8 (1.31%) CyberArk
11 8 (1.31%) F5
12 7 (1.15%) ADVA
12 7 (1.15%) Informatica
13 6 (0.99%) Juniper
13 6 (0.99%) Meraki
13 6 (0.99%) Workday
14 5 (0.82%) Splunk