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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 153 161
Rank change year-on-year -68 +8 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Protection Act 582 513 492
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.26% 1.85% 1.53%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.65% 5.08% 4.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 231 213 250
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 £598
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 15,943 10,102 9,917
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.42% 36.39% 30.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,577 6,329 5,986
10th Percentile £325 £300 £294
25th Percentile £425 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -1.36%
75th Percentile £650 £645 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £518 £526
% change year-on-year +1.38% -1.55% -4.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,164 528 367
10th Percentile £13.94 £15.13 £15.84
25th Percentile £17.57 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £34.62 £30.00 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -46.90% +22.35%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.81 £73.75 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.13 £47.50
% change year-on-year +33.33% -40.79% +5.56%

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 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 6 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 6 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 -92 254 £413 -17.50% 82
North of England -17 183 £475 +5.56% 28
Yorkshire +20 107 £475 -3.31% 13
North West -15 70 £463 +3.93% 14
South East -34 67 £375 -9.09% 23
Midlands -34 49 £425 -8.11% 35
West Midlands -47 41 £406 -12.16% 15
South West -39 14 £425 -10.53% 15
East Midlands - 8 £425 - 20
North East -60 6 - - 1
East of England -35 5 £300 -36.84% 7
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 (3.09%) Confluence
2 11 (1.89%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.55%) SAS
4 7 (1.20%) Apache
5 6 (1.03%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.86%) 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 15 (2.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.52%) 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 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.86%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.34%) Cloudability
3 2 (0.34%) ION MarketView
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.17%) Actimize
4 1 (0.17%) Bloomberg TOMS
4 1 (0.17%) Eloqua
4 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
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 CX
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FI-CA
4 1 (0.17%) SAP FS
4 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 94 (16.15%) Azure
2 77 (13.23%) AWS
3 54 (9.28%) GCP
4 27 (4.64%) GitHub
5 23 (3.95%) SaaS
6 18 (3.09%) Power Platform
7 17 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 16 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
9 13 (2.23%) Serverless
10 10 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
11 9 (1.55%) Snowflake
12 7 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (1.20%) Azure AKS
12 7 (1.20%) OpenShift
13 6 (1.03%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.03%) Entra ID
13 6 (1.03%) IaaS
13 6 (1.03%) Microsoft Copilot
13 6 (1.03%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 22 (3.78%) Firewall
2 15 (2.58%) Network Security
3 12 (2.06%) LAN
4 11 (1.89%) WAN
5 10 (1.72%) MPLS
6 9 (1.55%) DNS
7 8 (1.37%) VoIP
8 7 (1.20%) Cisco IPT
8 7 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (1.03%) Cisco Nexus
9 6 (1.03%) VPN
10 5 (0.86%) DHCP
10 5 (0.86%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 5 (0.86%) SDH
10 5 (0.86%) Unified Communications
11 4 (0.69%) BIG-IP
11 4 (0.69%) Cisco ISE
11 4 (0.69%) HSRP
11 4 (0.69%) Multicast
11 4 (0.69%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.92%) Metadata
1 17 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
1 17 (2.92%) Power BI
2 12 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (1.72%) BigQuery
3 10 (1.72%) Relational Database
4 7 (1.20%) Oracle Database
4 7 (1.20%) SQL Server
5 6 (1.03%) Big Data
6 5 (0.86%) Data Lake
6 5 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (0.86%) Redis
7 4 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.69%) Db2
7 4 (0.69%) NoSQL
7 4 (0.69%) Tableau
8 3 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.52%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.52%) MySQL
8 3 (0.52%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 36 (6.19%) JIRA
2 23 (3.95%) Jenkins
3 20 (3.44%) Git
4 7 (1.20%) Maven
5 6 (1.03%) 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 (0.34%) CMake
8 2 (0.34%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.34%) ER Studio
8 2 (0.34%) ERwin
8 2 (0.34%) Gradle
8 2 (0.34%) JUnit
8 2 (0.34%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.17%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.17%) Postman
9 1 (0.17%) Vite
General
1 239 (41.07%) Social Skills
2 173 (29.73%) Finance
3 85 (14.60%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (13.92%) Banking
5 32 (5.50%) Public Sector
6 29 (4.98%) Legal
7 25 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
8 22 (3.78%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
10 18 (3.09%) Front Office
11 16 (2.75%) Telecoms
12 14 (2.41%) Retail
13 12 (2.06%) Billing
13 12 (2.06%) Investment Banking
14 11 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (1.72%) Marketing
16 9 (1.55%) Financial Institution
17 6 (1.03%) Publishing
18 5 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
19 4 (0.69%) Law
Job Titles
1 79 (13.57%) Architect
2 66 (11.34%) Analyst
3 42 (7.22%) Lead
4 41 (7.04%) Business Analyst
5 39 (6.70%) Developer
6 30 (5.15%) Senior
7 29 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
8 26 (4.47%) Project Manager
9 25 (4.30%) Consultant
10 14 (2.41%) DevOps Engineer
10 14 (2.41%) Support Engineer
11 12 (2.06%) Java Developer
11 12 (2.06%) Software Engineer
12 10 (1.72%) Data Engineer
12 10 (1.72%) Data Protection Officer
12 10 (1.72%) Tester
13 9 (1.55%) Designer
13 9 (1.55%) Product Manager
13 9 (1.55%) Product Owner
14 8 (1.37%) Technical Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (6.53%) Terraform
2 37 (6.36%) REST
3 19 (3.26%) Kafka
4 15 (2.58%) Spring
5 14 (2.41%) React
5 14 (2.41%) Spring Boot
6 12 (2.06%) JSON
7 11 (1.89%) GraphQL
7 11 (1.89%) Node.js
8 10 (1.72%) .NET
8 10 (1.72%) YAML
9 9 (1.55%) Middleware
10 8 (1.37%) OAuth
10 8 (1.37%) Pandas
11 7 (1.20%) HTML
11 7 (1.20%) OAuth2
12 6 (1.03%) OpenID
12 6 (1.03%) RESTful
13 5 (0.86%) AngularJS
13 5 (0.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 38 (6.53%) Product Ownership
2 37 (6.36%) Cloud Native
3 28 (4.81%) Onboarding
4 26 (4.47%) Distributed Systems
5 22 (3.78%) Virtual Team
6 19 (3.26%) Data Centre
6 19 (3.26%) Management Information System
7 16 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
8 15 (2.58%) Data Structures
9 14 (2.41%) Freedom of Information
10 13 (2.23%) Mainframe
11 12 (2.06%) Mobile App
12 11 (1.89%) Derivative
13 9 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
13 9 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 9 (1.55%) Freedom of Information Act
13 9 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
14 8 (1.37%) AI Agents
14 8 (1.37%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 32 (5.50%) Linux
2 29 (4.98%) Windows
3 12 (2.06%) Android
3 12 (2.06%) Unix
4 10 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.55%) Apple iOS
6 8 (1.37%) zOS
7 6 (1.03%) Windows Server
8 5 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.52%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.17%) CentOS
10 1 (0.17%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 582 (100.00%) Data Protection
2 165 (28.35%) Stakeholder Management
3 115 (19.76%) Agile
4 106 (18.21%) Continuous Improvement
5 104 (17.87%) Problem-Solving
6 99 (17.01%) AI
7 89 (15.29%) Migration
8 86 (14.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 83 (14.26%) CI/CD
10 67 (11.51%) Decision-Making
11 63 (10.82%) Analytics
12 62 (10.65%) DevOps
13 59 (10.14%) Roadmaps
14 53 (9.11%) Risk Management
15 50 (8.59%) Software Engineering
16 48 (8.25%) Data Modelling
17 47 (8.08%) Project Management
18 44 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
18 44 (7.56%) Test Automation
19 41 (7.04%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 82 (14.09%) Python
2 62 (10.65%) SQL
3 50 (8.59%) Java
4 17 (2.92%) TypeScript
5 16 (2.75%) JavaScript
6 12 (2.06%) Go
6 12 (2.06%) Kotlin
6 12 (2.06%) PowerShell
7 11 (1.89%) Bash
8 9 (1.55%) C#
9 7 (1.20%) C++
10 5 (0.86%) Bicep
10 5 (0.86%) COBOL
10 5 (0.86%) Perl
11 4 (0.69%) Apex Code
11 4 (0.69%) C
11 4 (0.69%) Groovy
12 2 (0.34%) REXX
12 2 (0.34%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.34%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 38 (6.53%) Security Cleared
2 35 (6.01%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.47%) Degree
4 9 (1.55%) PMI Certification
4 9 (1.55%) PMP
5 7 (1.20%) AWS Certification
5 7 (1.20%) Azure Certification
5 7 (1.20%) CISSP
6 6 (1.03%) 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 (0.34%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.34%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.34%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (8.08%) Data Quality
2 42 (7.22%) GDPR
3 31 (5.33%) QA
4 9 (1.55%) PMO
5 7 (1.20%) NIST
6 6 (1.03%) Accessibility
6 6 (1.03%) 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 (0.34%) COBIT
9 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.34%) GRC
9 2 (0.34%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.34%) SEPA
9 2 (0.34%) SLA
10 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 18 (3.09%) Active Directory
1 18 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
2 16 (2.75%) Docker
3 8 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
3 8 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.69%) NFS
5 2 (0.34%) GPFS
5 2 (0.34%) KVM
5 2 (0.34%) Virtual Servers
5 2 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.34%) vSphere
6 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.17%) Time Sharing Option
6 1 (0.17%) Varnish
6 1 (0.17%) XenApp
6 1 (0.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 45 (7.73%) Kubernetes
2 28 (4.81%) Ansible
3 6 (1.03%) Grafana
3 6 (1.03%) Prometheus
4 5 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (0.69%) Cisco CUCM
6 3 (0.52%) Kustomize
6 3 (0.52%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.34%) Argo
7 2 (0.34%) Control-M
7 2 (0.34%) Istio
7 2 (0.34%) Packer
7 2 (0.34%) Puppet
7 2 (0.34%) QRadar
7 2 (0.34%) SCCM
7 2 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.34%) Tivoli Storage Manager
7 2 (0.34%) vCenter Server
8 1 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.17%) vRealize
Vendors
1 73 (12.54%) Microsoft
2 28 (4.81%) Cisco
3 26 (4.47%) Google
4 22 (3.78%) Databricks
5 20 (3.44%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.09%) VMware
7 17 (2.92%) Oracle
7 17 (2.92%) SAP
8 12 (2.06%) IBM
8 12 (2.06%) Red Hat
9 11 (1.89%) F5
9 11 (1.89%) Salesforce
10 9 (1.55%) Citrix
11 6 (1.03%) CheckPoint
12 5 (0.86%) Murex
12 5 (0.86%) Palo Alto
13 4 (0.69%) Atlassian
13 4 (0.69%) SolarWinds
13 4 (0.69%) Sonatype
13 4 (0.69%) Splunk