GDPR Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

General Data Protection Regulation EU 2016/679 (GDPR)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring GDPR skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 168 165
Rank change year-on-year +72 -3 +66
Contract jobs citing GDPR 451 189 278
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.49% 1.38% 1.43%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 15.24% 8.88% 9.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 312 94 135
10th Percentile £325 £277 £321
25th Percentile £425 £388 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £638
90th Percentile £675 £638 £725
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.33% -0.05% -0.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 14 9
10th Percentile £12.93 - -
25th Percentile £13.77 £15.50 £11.00
Median hourly rate £17.00 £16.75 £14.54
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% +15.20% -30.24%
75th Percentile £62.25 £21.88 £17.46
90th Percentile £89.63 £28.19 £26.66
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £16.25 £15.52
% change year-on-year +109.23% +4.70% -46.19%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK excluding London

GDPR falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 2,960 2,128 2,987
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 16.33% 15.53% 15.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,870 1,214 1,863
10th Percentile £300 £210 £260
25th Percentile £400 £356 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 132 189
10th Percentile £14.03 £14.70 £12.74
25th Percentile £17.69 £19.50 £15.42
Median hourly rate £20.72 £29.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.55% -3.33% +39.53%
75th Percentile £63.56 £64.73 £61.25
90th Percentile £73.63 £73.98 £83.17
UK median hourly rate £26.11 £29.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year -9.97% -10.77% +35.42%

GDPR
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing GDPR relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

GDPR job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

GDPR
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing GDPR.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing GDPR

GDPR
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing GDPR in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for GDPR in the UK excluding London

GDPR
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing GDPR.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing GDPR

GDPR
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing GDPR in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for GDPR in the UK excluding London

GDPR
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing GDPR within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 13 January 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
South East +46 169 £500 -7.41% 167
North of England -11 91 £550 +18.92% 78
Midlands +7 77 £475 -5.00% 60
Yorkshire -5 52 £575 +9.52% 27
South West +9 48 £475 +69.64% 35
Scotland +36 42 £463 -9.76% 13
West Midlands -11 41 £500 +5.26% 37
East Midlands +9 36 £447 -18.73% 23
North West -16 32 £450 +4.35% 41
East of England -17 15 £553 +10.60% 66
Northern Ireland +3 11 £500 - 6
North East -12 7 £466 +9.65% 10
Wales -2 3 £550 - 18
GDPR
UK

GDPR
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 (5.76%) SharePoint
2 23 (5.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (4.21%) Confluence
4 10 (2.22%) TPMS
5 7 (1.55%) SAS
6 4 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.89%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.67%) Apache
7 3 (0.67%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.22%) CMS
8 1 (0.22%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.22%) Umbraco
Applications
1 36 (7.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (4.43%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (2.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.89%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.22%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.22%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.22%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.22%) InDesign
5 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.22%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.22%) Revit
Business Applications
1 10 (2.22%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.89%) Salesforce CRM
3 4 (0.89%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 2 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.22%) Aareon QL
5 1 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.22%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.22%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.22%) OPENHousing
5 1 (0.22%) Orchard Housing
5 1 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP Payroll
5 1 (0.22%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 148 (32.82%) Azure
2 140 (31.04%) AWS
3 75 (16.63%) GCP
4 51 (11.31%) Microsoft 365
5 42 (9.31%) Entra ID
6 21 (4.66%) OCI
6 21 (4.66%) Power Platform
7 19 (4.21%) Microsoft Purview
8 17 (3.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 16 (3.55%) AWS CloudFormation
10 14 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (3.10%) OneDrive
10 14 (3.10%) Serverless
11 13 (2.88%) Amazon S3
12 12 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 11 (2.44%) SaaS
13 11 (2.44%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
13 11 (2.44%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 11 (2.44%) ShareGate
14 10 (2.22%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 41 (9.09%) Firewall
2 19 (4.21%) Network Security
2 19 (4.21%) Wireless
3 15 (3.33%) DNS
4 14 (3.10%) VPN
5 13 (2.88%) SSL
6 10 (2.22%) DHCP
6 10 (2.22%) SNMP
6 10 (2.22%) SSH
7 8 (1.77%) PABX
8 7 (1.55%) LAN
8 7 (1.55%) SD-WAN
8 7 (1.55%) WAN
8 7 (1.55%) WLAN
9 6 (1.33%) TCP/IP
10 5 (1.11%) BGP
10 5 (1.11%) IPv4
10 5 (1.11%) IPv6
10 5 (1.11%) MPLS
10 5 (1.11%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (3.99%) Power BI
2 17 (3.77%) Metadata
3 14 (3.10%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (2.44%) Oracle Reports
5 10 (2.22%) Data Lake
5 10 (2.22%) Oracle BI Publisher
5 10 (2.22%) SQL Server
6 7 (1.55%) Amazon Athena
6 7 (1.55%) Big Data
6 7 (1.55%) Tableau
7 6 (1.33%) DynamoDB
7 6 (1.33%) NoSQL
7 6 (1.33%) Oracle Database
7 6 (1.33%) Relational Database
8 5 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (1.11%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (1.11%) RDBMS
9 4 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.89%) Oracle BI EE
9 4 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 32 (7.10%) JIRA
2 14 (3.10%) Burp Suite
2 14 (3.10%) Metasploit
3 7 (1.55%) GitLab
4 6 (1.33%) Git
5 3 (0.67%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.22%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.22%) Axure RP
6 1 (0.22%) Subversion
General
1 219 (48.56%) Social Skills
2 103 (22.84%) Finance
3 65 (14.41%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (12.86%) Public Sector
5 56 (12.42%) Documentation Skills
6 50 (11.09%) Legal
7 20 (4.43%) Marketing
8 19 (4.21%) Law
9 18 (3.99%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
11 14 (3.10%) Banking
12 11 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (1.11%) Manufacturing
13 5 (1.11%) Military
13 5 (1.11%) Telecoms
14 4 (0.89%) Aviation
15 3 (0.67%) Aerospace
15 3 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.67%) Retail
16 2 (0.44%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 88 (19.51%) Architect
2 69 (15.30%) Analyst
3 42 (9.31%) Lead
4 32 (7.10%) Business Analyst
5 28 (6.21%) Solutions Architect
6 24 (5.32%) Consultant
7 18 (3.99%) Senior
8 15 (3.33%) Salesforce Architect
8 15 (3.33%) Security Architect
9 14 (3.10%) Penetration Tester
10 13 (2.88%) Data Architect
11 12 (2.66%) Administrator
11 12 (2.66%) Developer
11 12 (2.66%) Information Officer
11 12 (2.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 12 (2.66%) Tester
12 11 (2.44%) Project Manager
12 11 (2.44%) Security Analyst
13 10 (2.22%) Data Analyst
13 10 (2.22%) Data Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (7.76%) LDAP
2 23 (5.10%) OAuth
2 23 (5.10%) REST
3 21 (4.66%) SAML
4 17 (3.77%) OpenID
5 14 (3.10%) Middleware
5 14 (3.10%) Oracle Fusion
5 14 (3.10%) SOAP
6 11 (2.44%) Lightning Web Components
6 11 (2.44%) OAuth2
6 11 (2.44%) Visualforce
7 8 (1.77%) Node.js
8 6 (1.33%) Microsoft Graph
9 5 (1.11%) RESTful
9 5 (1.11%) SailPoint
10 4 (0.89%) .NET
10 4 (0.89%) CSS
10 4 (0.89%) HTML
10 4 (0.89%) Kafka
11 3 (0.67%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 36 (7.98%) Management Information System
2 27 (5.99%) Onboarding
3 23 (5.10%) Security Posture
4 22 (4.88%) Data Structures
5 20 (4.43%) Cloud Native
5 20 (4.43%) Data Protection Act
6 19 (4.21%) Freedom of Information
6 19 (4.21%) Product Ownership
7 11 (2.44%) NHS
8 9 (2.00%) Cyber Threat
8 9 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (1.77%) Smartphone
10 7 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
10 7 (1.55%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 7 (1.55%) Freedom of Information Act
10 7 (1.55%) PKI
10 7 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
10 7 (1.55%) Synthetic Data
Operating Systems
1 62 (13.75%) Windows
2 27 (5.99%) Linux
3 15 (3.33%) Mac OS
4 12 (2.66%) Windows 10
5 5 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.67%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.44%) Solaris
7 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.22%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (27.72%) Data Protection
2 105 (23.28%) Stakeholder Management
3 104 (23.06%) Cybersecurity
4 97 (21.51%) Problem-Solving
5 87 (19.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 86 (19.07%) Migration
7 82 (18.18%) Roadmaps
8 79 (17.52%) Agile
9 75 (16.63%) Data Governance
10 66 (14.63%) Regulatory Compliance
11 62 (13.75%) DevOps
12 60 (13.30%) Risk Management
13 58 (12.86%) CI/CD
14 57 (12.64%) Analytics
14 57 (12.64%) Continuous Improvement
15 55 (12.20%) Information Security
16 53 (11.75%) Data Security
17 51 (11.31%) Data Modelling
17 51 (11.31%) Data Privacy
17 51 (11.31%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 67 (14.86%) PowerShell
2 62 (13.75%) Python
3 45 (9.98%) SQL
4 16 (3.55%) Bash
5 11 (2.44%) Apex Code
6 9 (2.00%) Java
6 9 (2.00%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.77%) PL/SQL
8 5 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
9 3 (0.67%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.44%) Bicep
10 2 (0.44%) C#
10 2 (0.44%) Perl
10 2 (0.44%) R
10 2 (0.44%) Rust
10 2 (0.44%) Solidity
11 1 (0.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.22%) Scala
11 1 (0.22%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.22%) VB
Qualifications
1 97 (21.51%) Security Cleared
2 77 (17.07%) SC Cleared
3 61 (13.53%) Degree
4 60 (13.30%) CISSP
5 41 (9.09%) CISM
6 25 (5.54%) AWS Certification
7 17 (3.77%) Azure Certification
7 17 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 14 (3.10%) CHECK Team Member
9 14 (3.10%) Cisco Certification
10 13 (2.88%) DV Cleared
11 12 (2.66%) CREST Certified
11 12 (2.66%) Cyber Scheme
11 12 (2.66%) Oracle Certification
12 11 (2.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 11 (2.44%) CCSP
12 11 (2.44%) Postgraduate
13 10 (2.22%) FFIEC
14 9 (2.00%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 147 (32.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 102 (22.62%) NIST
3 75 (16.63%) PCI DSS
4 42 (9.31%) Data Quality
5 26 (5.76%) QA
6 23 (5.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 21 (4.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 20 (4.43%) HIPAA
9 19 (4.21%) Cyber Essentials
10 15 (3.33%) PMO
10 15 (3.33%) PSD2
11 13 (2.88%) SLA
12 11 (2.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 11 (2.44%) NCSC
13 10 (2.22%) GLBA
14 9 (2.00%) GRC
15 8 (1.77%) SOC 2
16 6 (1.33%) Disclosure Scotland
17 5 (1.11%) MiFID
18 4 (0.89%) FIPS 140-2
System Software
1 52 (11.53%) Active Directory
2 19 (4.21%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (1.77%) Docker
4 4 (0.89%) VMware NSX
5 3 (0.67%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.44%) Terminal Services
6 2 (0.44%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 28 (6.21%) Terraform
2 18 (3.99%) SCCM
3 15 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
3 15 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
4 14 (3.10%) Nmap
5 12 (2.66%) Kubernetes
6 11 (2.44%) Ansible
7 6 (1.33%) PingFederate
8 5 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (0.89%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.89%) RSA Archer
10 3 (0.67%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.67%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 3 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.67%) QRadar
10 3 (0.67%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.44%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
11 2 (0.44%) Red Hat Satellite
11 2 (0.44%) systemd
12 1 (0.22%) Avamar
Vendors
1 106 (23.50%) Microsoft
2 39 (8.65%) Oracle
3 33 (7.32%) Salesforce
4 27 (5.99%) CyberArk
5 22 (4.88%) VMware
6 20 (4.43%) BeyondTrust
7 19 (4.21%) Splunk
8 18 (3.99%) ServiceNow
9 17 (3.77%) Google
10 15 (3.33%) Cisco
11 14 (3.10%) Citrix
12 12 (2.66%) SAP
13 11 (2.44%) Databricks
14 10 (2.22%) Palo Alto
14 10 (2.22%) Ping Identity
15 9 (2.00%) Fortinet
15 9 (2.00%) Thales
16 7 (1.55%) Informatica
16 7 (1.55%) OneTrust
16 7 (1.55%) Workday