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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 170 185 188
Rank change year-on-year +15 +3 -26
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 591 362 468
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.61% 1.46% 1.24%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 4.78% 4.32% 4.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 257 167 237
10th Percentile £213 £270 £225
25th Percentile £350 £358 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.58% -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £569 £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 7 10 21
10th Percentile £23.00 £20.60 £11.95
25th Percentile - £24.25 £20.50
Median hourly rate £25.50 £26.07 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.19% -5.20% +22.22%
75th Percentile £28.38 £31.76 £30.00
90th Percentile £32.75 £31.92 £44.54
UK median hourly rate £25.50 £26.07 £26.25
% change year-on-year -2.19% -0.69% +16.67%

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 12,366 8,384 11,684
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.63% 33.89% 30.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,845 5,432 7,630
10th Percentile £297 £287 £258
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £545
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% - -5.22%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £663
90th Percentile £749 £787 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 299 786
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.91 £12.56
25th Percentile £19.00 £22.39 £15.45
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.81 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% +17.18% +17.70%
75th Percentile £68.38 £66.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £84.20 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +15.38% +18.18% +22.22%

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 16 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Protection Act in England over the 6 months to 16 March 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 16 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 +36 302 £485 +7.78% 8
North of England -25 143 £475 -5.00% 2
Yorkshire -19 86 £475 -10.59%
South East -18 70 £363 -12.12% 2
North West -18 53 £425 -15.00% 2
Midlands -45 40 £448 -8.21% 4
West Midlands -56 29 £488 -4.88%
South West -18 16 £525 +7.69% 5
East of England -23 13 £413 +50.00% 1
East Midlands -22 11 £336 -10.33% 4
North East -27 4 £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 22 (3.72%) Confluence
2 13 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.86%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.85%) Apache
6 4 (0.68%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.34%) CMS
8 2 (0.34%) Drupal
8 2 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.34%) SAS
8 2 (0.34%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.17%) Camunda
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.17%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 17 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.68%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.51%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.34%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.17%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.17%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.17%) Blender
8 1 (0.17%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.17%) InVision
8 1 (0.17%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.17%) Sketch
8 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (2.03%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.51%) Fidessa
3 3 (0.51%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 3 (0.51%) SAP GRC
4 2 (0.34%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.34%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.34%) Workfront
5 1 (0.17%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.17%) Odoo
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.17%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 68 (11.51%) Azure
2 57 (9.64%) AWS
3 27 (4.57%) GCP
4 26 (4.40%) Power Platform
5 24 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
5 24 (4.06%) Snowflake
6 16 (2.71%) Entra ID
6 16 (2.71%) GitHub
6 16 (2.71%) SaaS
7 15 (2.54%) Amazon S3
8 14 (2.37%) AWS Lambda
8 14 (2.37%) Serverless
9 11 (1.86%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (1.52%) OpenShift
11 8 (1.35%) Dynamics 365
11 8 (1.35%) Figma
11 8 (1.35%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (1.18%) Microsoft Purview
12 7 (1.18%) Power Automate
13 6 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.05%) Firewall
2 13 (2.20%) MPLS
3 11 (1.86%) Network Security
4 10 (1.69%) LAN
5 8 (1.35%) VPN
5 8 (1.35%) WAN
5 8 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.18%) BGP
7 5 (0.85%) DNS
7 5 (0.85%) Ethernet
7 5 (0.85%) NetScaler
7 5 (0.85%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.85%) Wireshark
8 4 (0.68%) Cisco Nexus
8 4 (0.68%) HTTP
8 4 (0.68%) Kerberos
8 4 (0.68%) SAN
8 4 (0.68%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.68%) SSH
8 4 (0.68%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (3.89%) Power BI
2 19 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (1.86%) Metadata
4 10 (1.69%) SQL Server
5 8 (1.35%) NoSQL
5 8 (1.35%) Tableau
6 7 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (1.18%) Data Lake
7 6 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (1.02%) MongoDB
8 5 (0.85%) Amazon Aurora
8 5 (0.85%) Hadoop
8 5 (0.85%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.51%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (0.51%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.51%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (0.34%) MySQL
10 2 (0.34%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 45 (7.61%) JIRA
2 17 (2.88%) Git
3 12 (2.03%) Jenkins
4 11 (1.86%) SpecFlow
5 9 (1.52%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (1.35%) Gradle
7 7 (1.18%) Maven
8 6 (1.02%) GitLab
9 5 (0.85%) JUnit
10 4 (0.68%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.68%) Fiddler
10 4 (0.68%) Postman
11 3 (0.51%) IntelliJ
11 3 (0.51%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.51%) TestNG
11 3 (0.51%) webpack
12 2 (0.34%) DBeaver
12 2 (0.34%) JMeter
12 2 (0.34%) Liquibase
12 2 (0.34%) MSI
General
1 153 (25.89%) Social Skills
2 126 (21.32%) Finance
3 69 (11.68%) Banking
4 59 (9.98%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (4.91%) Telecoms
6 23 (3.89%) Front Office
7 22 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
8 18 (3.05%) Legal
9 17 (2.88%) Organisational Skills
9 17 (2.88%) Public Sector
10 13 (2.20%) Marketing
10 13 (2.20%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (1.35%) Investment Banking
12 7 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (1.18%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.02%) Publishing
14 5 (0.85%) Back Office
14 5 (0.85%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.85%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 75 (12.69%) Analyst
2 60 (10.15%) Architect
3 58 (9.81%) Developer
4 40 (6.77%) Business Analyst
4 40 (6.77%) Lead
5 31 (5.25%) Consultant
5 31 (5.25%) Project Manager
6 25 (4.23%) Senior
7 23 (3.89%) Network Engineer
8 17 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
9 16 (2.71%) Java Developer
10 15 (2.54%) Data Engineer
10 15 (2.54%) Software Engineer
11 13 (2.20%) Python Developer
11 13 (2.20%) Support Engineer
12 12 (2.03%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 12 (2.03%) Tester
13 11 (1.86%) Data Analyst
14 10 (1.69%) Automation Tester
15 9 (1.52%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.41%) React
2 20 (3.38%) REST
3 15 (2.54%) Playwright
4 12 (2.03%) Kafka
5 11 (1.86%) .NET
6 10 (1.69%) OAuth
6 10 (1.69%) RESTful
6 10 (1.69%) Spring
7 8 (1.35%) HTML
7 8 (1.35%) Oracle Fusion
7 8 (1.35%) Spring Boot
8 7 (1.18%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.18%) JSON
8 7 (1.18%) Middleware
8 7 (1.18%) PySpark
8 7 (1.18%) SAML
8 7 (1.18%) XML
9 6 (1.02%) LangChain
9 6 (1.02%) Model Context Protocol
10 5 (0.85%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 26 (4.40%) Onboarding
2 24 (4.06%) Product Ownership
3 20 (3.38%) Cloud Native
4 19 (3.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 12 (2.03%) Derivative
6 10 (1.69%) Data Centre
7 9 (1.52%) Equities
7 9 (1.52%) Management Information System
8 8 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (1.35%) Replication
9 7 (1.18%) AI Agents
9 7 (1.18%) Fixed Income
9 7 (1.18%) Freedom of Information
9 7 (1.18%) Mobile App
10 6 (1.02%) Algorithms
10 6 (1.02%) Virtual Team
11 5 (0.85%) Equity Derivative
11 5 (0.85%) Hedge funds
11 5 (0.85%) Operational Technology
12 4 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 33 (5.58%) Windows
2 28 (4.74%) Linux
3 6 (1.02%) Unix
3 6 (1.02%) zOS
4 4 (0.68%) AIX
4 4 (0.68%) Solaris
4 4 (0.68%) Windows 10
4 4 (0.68%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.51%) Android
5 3 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.34%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 591 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 106 (17.94%) Stakeholder Management
3 99 (16.75%) Problem-Solving
4 93 (15.74%) Agile
5 77 (13.03%) Migration
6 61 (10.32%) AI
7 56 (9.48%) CI/CD
8 54 (9.14%) DevOps
9 53 (8.97%) Roadmaps
10 52 (8.80%) Project Management
11 50 (8.46%) Analytics
12 46 (7.78%) Continuous Improvement
13 41 (6.94%) Decision-Making
14 39 (6.60%) Software Engineering
15 35 (5.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 35 (5.92%) Test Automation
16 32 (5.41%) Observability
17 29 (4.91%) Risk Management
18 28 (4.74%) Business Analysis
18 28 (4.74%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 104 (17.60%) Python
2 73 (12.35%) SQL
3 54 (9.14%) Java
4 33 (5.58%) C#
5 31 (5.25%) JavaScript
6 22 (3.72%) PowerShell
7 19 (3.21%) TypeScript
8 10 (1.69%) C++
9 9 (1.52%) Bash
10 6 (1.02%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (0.68%) Go
12 4 (0.68%) Scala
13 3 (0.51%) Groovy
13 3 (0.51%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.34%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.34%) Bicep
14 2 (0.34%) JCL
14 2 (0.34%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 49 (8.29%) Degree
2 42 (7.11%) Security Cleared
3 36 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 18 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (1.52%) Master's Degree
6 8 (1.35%) PMI Certification
6 8 (1.35%) PMP
7 7 (1.18%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.85%) CCNP
9 5 (0.85%) CISSP
10 4 (0.68%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.68%) DV Cleared
11 3 (0.51%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 2 (0.34%) CCNA
12 2 (0.34%) JNCIA
12 2 (0.34%) MBA
12 2 (0.34%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (5.58%) QA
2 31 (5.25%) GDPR
3 18 (3.05%) Data Quality
4 14 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (2.20%) PMO
6 11 (1.86%) Accessibility
6 11 (1.86%) NIST
7 9 (1.52%) SLA
8 5 (0.85%) GRC
9 3 (0.51%) IFRS
10 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.34%) Basel III
10 2 (0.34%) GAAP
10 2 (0.34%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.34%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.34%) NCSC
10 2 (0.34%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.34%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 28 (4.74%) Docker
2 22 (3.72%) Active Directory
3 12 (2.03%) Virtual Desktop
3 12 (2.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.85%) KVM
5 4 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.51%) IAG
6 3 (0.51%) NFS
6 3 (0.51%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.51%) vSphere
7 2 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
7 2 (0.34%) Time Sharing Option
7 2 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.17%) Firmware
8 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.17%) XenApp
8 1 (0.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 37 (6.26%) Kubernetes
2 25 (4.23%) Terraform
3 17 (2.88%) Ansible
4 8 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
5 7 (1.18%) Grafana
6 5 (0.85%) Control-M
6 5 (0.85%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (0.51%) Puppet
8 3 (0.51%) SCCM
8 3 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.51%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.34%) IBM Guardium
9 2 (0.34%) Nessus
9 2 (0.34%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.34%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.17%) Argo
10 1 (0.17%) Istio
10 1 (0.17%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.17%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 54 (9.14%) Microsoft
2 28 (4.74%) Cisco
3 22 (3.72%) Databricks
4 19 (3.21%) SAP
5 18 (3.05%) ServiceNow
6 17 (2.88%) Oracle
7 12 (2.03%) Adobe
7 12 (2.03%) VMware
8 11 (1.86%) Salesforce
9 10 (1.69%) Citrix
10 9 (1.52%) Google
11 8 (1.35%) CyberArk
11 8 (1.35%) Informatica
11 8 (1.35%) Nokia
12 7 (1.18%) ADVA
12 7 (1.18%) F5
13 6 (1.02%) IBM
13 6 (1.02%) Meraki
13 6 (1.02%) Palo Alto
13 6 (1.02%) Workday
20 Data Protection Act jobs in England