Data Protection Contract Job Trends in England

Data Protection
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Data Protection skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 72 92
Rank change year-on-year -16 +20 -5
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,403 934 825
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.04% 3.32% 2.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.58% 3.66% 2.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 723 477 445
10th Percentile £261 £291 £210
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -6.98%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £625
90th Percentile £688 £675 £733
UK median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 40 16
10th Percentile £13.45 £12.63 £19.06
25th Percentile £14.05 £15.13 £21.13
Median hourly rate £17.85 £19.61 £25.84
Median % change year-on-year -8.98% -24.11% +11.19%
75th Percentile £25.00 £20.71 £68.05
90th Percentile £34.94 £40.46 £71.03
UK median hourly rate £17.85 £17.00 £27.26
% change year-on-year +5.00% -37.64% +12.75%

All Process & Methodology Skills
England

Data Protection falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,199 25,531 28,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 84.82% 90.87% 86.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,678 16,181 17,100
10th Percentile £325 £294 £313
25th Percentile £425 £404 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,975 1,587 1,157
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.50 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.36 £17.79 £20.19
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.47 £45.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.25 £74.92
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -8.31%

Data Protection
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Protection relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Data Protection job vacancy trend in England

Data Protection
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection

Data Protection
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Protection in England over the 6 months to 9 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Protection in England

Data Protection
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Protection

Data Protection
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Protection in England over the 6 months to 9 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Protection in England

Data Protection
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 within the England region over the 6 months to 9 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 -31 587 £525 - 890
North of England +18 351 £463 +2.78% 328
South East -3 198 £465 -8.02% 245
Yorkshire +19 178 £475 -7.32% 133
Midlands +5 160 £450 -5.26% 162
North West +10 147 £450 +2.27% 166
West Midlands +7 129 £450 -10.00% 90
South West -9 62 £500 +17.65% 103
East of England -19 35 £500 +5.26% 98
East Midlands -11 31 £468 +16.88% 72
North East -41 27 £463 +15.63% 30
Data Protection
UK

Data Protection
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 57 (4.06%) SharePoint
2 31 (2.21%) Confluence
3 26 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 24 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
5 16 (1.14%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.93%) Apache
7 12 (0.86%) IIS
8 10 (0.71%) CMS
9 8 (0.57%) SAS
10 6 (0.43%) WordPress
11 5 (0.36%) nginx
11 5 (0.36%) Tuxedo
12 3 (0.21%) CICS
12 3 (0.21%) Jupyter
13 2 (0.14%) OpenROAD
13 2 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.14%) Tomcat
13 2 (0.14%) WebLogic
13 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
14 1 (0.071%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 47 (3.35%) Microsoft Office
2 46 (3.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.29%) UserZoom
7 1 (0.071%) Adobe Premiere
7 1 (0.071%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.071%) Maya
7 1 (0.071%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.36%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
2 5 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.29%) NEC Housing
3 4 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.29%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.21%) Unit4 Business World
5 2 (0.14%) Cloudability
5 2 (0.14%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.071%) FastStats
6 1 (0.071%) Misys Equation
6 1 (0.071%) Oracle BRM
6 1 (0.071%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.071%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.071%) SAP FI-CA
6 1 (0.071%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 311 (22.17%) Azure
2 246 (17.53%) AWS
3 118 (8.41%) Microsoft 365
4 114 (8.13%) GCP
5 62 (4.42%) SaaS
6 61 (4.35%) Power Platform
7 58 (4.13%) Entra ID
8 55 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
8 55 (3.92%) GitHub
9 44 (3.14%) Serverless
10 43 (3.06%) Microsoft Purview
11 32 (2.28%) OneDrive
12 30 (2.14%) Microsoft Copilot
13 25 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
14 22 (1.57%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (1.50%) Snowflake
16 18 (1.28%) Amazon S3
17 16 (1.14%) OpenShift
17 16 (1.14%) PowerApps
18 15 (1.07%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 77 (5.49%) Network Security
2 53 (3.78%) Firewall
3 34 (2.42%) VPN
4 32 (2.28%) DNS
5 28 (2.00%) TCP/IP
6 22 (1.57%) DHCP
7 21 (1.50%) LAN
8 20 (1.43%) WAN
9 19 (1.35%) Cisco IPT
10 14 (1.00%) MPLS
10 14 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.78%) Unified Communications
11 11 (0.78%) VoIP
12 10 (0.71%) SAN
13 9 (0.64%) Internet
13 9 (0.64%) Wireless
14 8 (0.57%) SSL
15 7 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
15 7 (0.50%) Cisco Nexus
15 7 (0.50%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (3.71%) Metadata
2 45 (3.21%) Power BI
3 35 (2.49%) Relational Database
4 31 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
5 27 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
5 27 (1.92%) SQL Server
6 20 (1.43%) NoSQL
7 19 (1.35%) BigQuery
8 14 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
9 13 (0.93%) Data Lake
10 12 (0.86%) Big Data
11 9 (0.64%) Oracle Database
11 9 (0.64%) Redis
12 8 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
12 8 (0.57%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.57%) MySQL
13 7 (0.50%) Ingres
14 6 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
14 6 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
14 6 (0.43%) Looker
Development Applications
1 65 (4.63%) JIRA
2 57 (4.06%) Git
3 51 (3.64%) Jenkins
4 22 (1.57%) GitLab
5 19 (1.35%) Selenium
6 10 (0.71%) Maven
7 6 (0.43%) Oracle Forms
7 6 (0.43%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.43%) Team Foundation Server
8 5 (0.36%) Gradle
8 5 (0.36%) JUnit
8 5 (0.36%) Postman
9 4 (0.29%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.29%) Mockito
10 3 (0.21%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.21%) ERwin
10 3 (0.21%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.21%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.14%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 583 (41.55%) Social Skills
2 316 (22.52%) Finance
3 188 (13.40%) Legal
4 180 (12.83%) Analytical Skills
5 179 (12.76%) Public Sector
6 112 (7.98%) Banking
7 72 (5.13%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
9 44 (3.14%) Local Government
10 43 (3.06%) Influencing Skills
11 36 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
12 31 (2.21%) Retail
13 26 (1.85%) Law
14 25 (1.78%) Telecoms
15 24 (1.71%) Marketing
16 22 (1.57%) Front Office
17 20 (1.43%) Police
18 18 (1.28%) Billing
19 17 (1.21%) Pharmaceutical
20 15 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 197 (14.04%) Architect
2 145 (10.33%) Analyst
3 121 (8.62%) Lead
4 91 (6.49%) Senior
5 68 (4.85%) Developer
6 66 (4.70%) Project Manager
7 62 (4.42%) Solutions Architect
8 59 (4.21%) Business Analyst
9 50 (3.56%) Consultant
10 46 (3.28%) Administrator
11 45 (3.21%) Security Architect
12 38 (2.71%) Security Engineer
13 37 (2.64%) Information Officer
14 34 (2.42%) Information Governance Officer
15 33 (2.35%) Support Engineer
16 29 (2.07%) Data Analyst
17 24 (1.71%) Data Engineer
18 22 (1.57%) IT Support
19 21 (1.50%) Network Engineer
20 20 (1.43%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (5.99%) Terraform
2 70 (4.99%) REST
3 36 (2.57%) Kafka
4 29 (2.07%) OAuth
5 26 (1.85%) JSON
6 22 (1.57%) Middleware
7 19 (1.35%) React
7 19 (1.35%) Spring
8 18 (1.28%) .NET
8 18 (1.28%) RESTful
8 18 (1.28%) Spring Boot
9 17 (1.21%) OAuth2
10 16 (1.14%) Node.js
10 16 (1.14%) OpenID
11 15 (1.07%) HTML
12 12 (0.86%) CSS
12 12 (0.86%) YAML
13 11 (0.78%) SAML
14 10 (0.71%) Flask
14 10 (0.71%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 591 (42.12%) Data Protection Act
2 120 (8.55%) Management Information System
3 93 (6.63%) Product Ownership
4 78 (5.56%) Onboarding
5 77 (5.49%) Cloud Native
6 53 (3.78%) Data Centre
7 49 (3.49%) Distributed Systems
8 41 (2.92%) Freedom of Information
9 37 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
10 30 (2.14%) Virtual Team
11 29 (2.07%) Data Structures
11 29 (2.07%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
12 27 (1.92%) NHS
13 24 (1.71%) AI Agents
14 20 (1.43%) Private Cloud
15 19 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
16 17 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
16 17 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
16 17 (1.21%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 111 (7.91%) Windows
2 70 (4.99%) Linux
3 31 (2.21%) Apple iOS
4 28 (2.00%) Android
4 28 (2.00%) Windows Server
5 23 (1.64%) Unix
6 20 (1.43%) Mac OS
7 13 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 11 (0.78%) Windows 10
9 8 (0.57%) zOS
10 2 (0.14%) AIX
10 2 (0.14%) CentOS
10 2 (0.14%) HPUX
10 2 (0.14%) Solaris
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.071%) MVS
11 1 (0.071%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.071%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 365 (26.02%) Stakeholder Management
2 276 (19.67%) Agile
3 255 (18.18%) Continuous Improvement
4 244 (17.39%) Problem-Solving
5 212 (15.11%) CI/CD
6 211 (15.04%) AI
7 207 (14.75%) Cybersecurity
8 183 (13.04%) Migration
9 177 (12.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 164 (11.69%) Roadmaps
11 162 (11.55%) DevOps
12 151 (10.76%) Information Security
13 140 (9.98%) Decision-Making
14 133 (9.48%) Risk Management
15 127 (9.05%) Data Governance
16 124 (8.84%) Infrastructure as Code
17 122 (8.70%) Analytics
18 117 (8.34%) Validation
19 108 (7.70%) Information Governance
20 102 (7.27%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 170 (12.12%) Python
2 138 (9.84%) SQL
3 70 (4.99%) Java
4 53 (3.78%) PowerShell
5 31 (2.21%) JavaScript
6 28 (2.00%) Bash
7 23 (1.64%) TypeScript
8 20 (1.43%) Go
9 13 (0.93%) Kotlin
9 13 (0.93%) Scala
10 11 (0.78%) Apex Code
10 11 (0.78%) Bicep
10 11 (0.78%) C#
11 8 (0.57%) C
11 8 (0.57%) VB
12 7 (0.50%) C++
12 7 (0.50%) COBOL
12 7 (0.50%) Kusto Query Language
12 7 (0.50%) VB6
13 5 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 228 (16.25%) Security Cleared
2 164 (11.69%) SC Cleared
3 113 (8.05%) Degree
4 72 (5.13%) CISSP
5 54 (3.85%) DV Cleared
6 46 (3.28%) CISM
7 38 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 35 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
9 31 (2.21%) PMI Certification
10 29 (2.07%) PMP
11 23 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
12 22 (1.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 20 (1.43%) Azure Certification
13 20 (1.43%) CCSP
14 16 (1.14%) AWS Certification
15 13 (0.93%) CISA
15 13 (0.93%) CRISC
16 10 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
17 9 (0.64%) Master's Degree
17 9 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 199 (14.18%) GDPR
2 102 (7.27%) Data Quality
3 74 (5.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 54 (3.85%) QA
5 51 (3.64%) NIST
6 44 (3.14%) Accessibility
6 44 (3.14%) GRC
7 29 (2.07%) PCI DSS
8 15 (1.07%) PMO
9 13 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
10 12 (0.86%) NCSC
10 12 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 12 (0.86%) SLA
11 10 (0.71%) PERC
12 9 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 8 (0.57%) Government Security Classifications
13 8 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 8 (0.57%) WCAG
14 7 (0.50%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 70 (4.99%) Active Directory
2 51 (3.64%) Docker
3 48 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
4 11 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (0.71%) vSphere
6 9 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.36%) ISA Server
8 3 (0.21%) NFS
8 3 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
8 3 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.14%) GPFS
9 2 (0.14%) IAG
9 2 (0.14%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.071%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.071%) Firmware
10 1 (0.071%) KVM
10 1 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 1 (0.071%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 85 (6.06%) Kubernetes
2 46 (3.28%) Ansible
3 35 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 29 (2.07%) Grafana
5 18 (1.28%) SCCM
6 14 (1.00%) Prometheus
7 12 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
7 12 (0.86%) Kibana
7 12 (0.86%) Progress Chef
8 10 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (0.64%) Puppet
10 8 (0.57%) CASB
11 6 (0.43%) NetBackup
12 5 (0.36%) Cisco CUCM
12 5 (0.36%) QRadar
13 4 (0.29%) Control-M
14 3 (0.21%) EMC NetWorker
14 3 (0.21%) Istio
14 3 (0.21%) SCOM
14 3 (0.21%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 317 (22.59%) Microsoft
2 73 (5.20%) Google
3 71 (5.06%) ServiceNow
4 60 (4.28%) Cisco
5 54 (3.85%) Oracle
6 51 (3.64%) VMware
7 39 (2.78%) Databricks
8 37 (2.64%) SAP
9 30 (2.14%) Splunk
10 24 (1.71%) Salesforce
10 24 (1.71%) Zscaler
11 19 (1.35%) IBM
12 17 (1.21%) Workday
13 16 (1.14%) F5
14 13 (0.93%) Dynatrace
15 12 (0.86%) Red Hat
16 11 (0.78%) CyberArk
16 11 (0.78%) Dell
17 10 (0.71%) CrowdStrike
17 10 (0.71%) SolarWinds