Data Protection Contract Job Trends

Data Protection
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Data Protection skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 92 82
Rank change year-on-year +19 -10 +17
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,502 799 1,128
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.21% 2.72% 2.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.80% 3.00% 3.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 832 403 626
10th Percentile £300 £263 £225
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.82% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £589 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 31 108
10th Percentile £13.26 £18.50 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.25 £27.64 £20.25
Median % change year-on-year -23.12% +36.49% -61.43%
75th Percentile £27.88 £32.95 £27.59
90th Percentile £50.60 £37.00 £41.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.39 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -29.98% +49.31% -62.86%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 39,566 26,667 37,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.67% 90.82% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,976 17,238 24,315
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.42% -0.36% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,367 1,068 2,431
10th Percentile £14.87 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £29.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.22% -16.71% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £28.00 £35.95
% change year-on-year +49.79% -22.11% +0.14%

Data Protection
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Data Protection job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Protection
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Protection

Data Protection
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Protection over the 6 months to 26 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Protection in the UK

Data Protection
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Protection

Data Protection
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Protection over the 6 months to 26 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Protection in the UK

Data Protection
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 26 April 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
England +25 1,285 £500 - 337
UK excluding London +18 814 £450 -5.26% 282
London +22 592 £525 - 99
Work from Home +30 388 £500 +2.30% 163
North of England +3 257 £475 - 80
South East +17 182 £495 -1.10% 62
Yorkshire -10 147 £475 -8.43% 22
Scotland +9 125 £413 -11.67% 12
Midlands -2 120 £450 -10.00% 53
North West +8 102 £481 +10.00% 47
West Midlands -22 75 £475 -9.52% 41
South West +5 66 £418 +4.38% 35
East of England -1 48 £500 -4.76% 38
East Midlands -6 45 £438 +16.67% 12
Wales +4 15 £375 -11.76% 6
North East -27 9 £400 -11.11% 12
Northern Ireland +5 3 £500 +1.63% 4

Data Protection
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 52 (3.46%) Confluence
2 37 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 24 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (0.93%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.53%) Apache
7 5 (0.33%) CMS
7 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 5 (0.33%) SAS
8 3 (0.20%) Drupal
8 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
8 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
8 3 (0.20%) nginx
9 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.13%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 55 (3.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (2.93%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
7 1 (0.067%) Blender
7 1 (0.067%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.067%) Maya
7 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (0.80%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.33%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
5 3 (0.20%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.13%) Fidessa
6 2 (0.13%) ION MarketView
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 305 (20.31%) Azure
2 253 (16.84%) AWS
3 136 (9.05%) GCP
4 86 (5.73%) Power Platform
5 84 (5.59%) Microsoft 365
6 77 (5.13%) Entra ID
7 64 (4.26%) GitHub
8 55 (3.66%) SaaS
9 49 (3.26%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.06%) Serverless
11 41 (2.73%) OpenShift
12 38 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
13 34 (2.26%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (2.00%) Amazon S3
15 29 (1.93%) Snowflake
16 28 (1.86%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
17 25 (1.66%) GitHub Actions
17 25 (1.66%) Microsoft Copilot
18 21 (1.40%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 60 (3.99%) Network Security
2 39 (2.60%) Firewall
3 38 (2.53%) SAN
4 26 (1.73%) VPN
5 23 (1.53%) NAS
6 21 (1.40%) WAN
7 18 (1.20%) MPLS
8 17 (1.13%) LAN
9 16 (1.07%) DNS
10 15 (1.00%) Cisco IPT
11 14 (0.93%) TCP/IP
12 12 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
13 11 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
14 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
14 9 (0.60%) SD-WAN
14 9 (0.60%) VLAN
15 8 (0.53%) DHCP
16 7 (0.47%) BGP
16 7 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
16 7 (0.47%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (4.93%) Power BI
2 38 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 35 (2.33%) Metadata
4 34 (2.26%) SQL Server
5 29 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.86%) MySQL
7 27 (1.80%) Relational Database
8 23 (1.53%) MongoDB
9 21 (1.40%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (1.40%) NoSQL
10 19 (1.26%) Big Data
10 19 (1.26%) DynamoDB
11 16 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
11 16 (1.07%) Data Lake
12 14 (0.93%) Tableau
13 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
14 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
15 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
15 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 83 (5.53%) JIRA
2 62 (4.13%) Jenkins
3 59 (3.93%) Git
4 37 (2.46%) GitLab
5 12 (0.80%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) JUnit
7 9 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.47%) Maven
9 6 (0.40%) NUnit
10 5 (0.33%) Flyway
10 5 (0.33%) Postman
10 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.27%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.27%) Gradle
12 3 (0.20%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 448 (29.83%) Social Skills
2 349 (23.24%) Finance
3 187 (12.45%) Analytical Skills
4 184 (12.25%) Legal
5 128 (8.52%) Public Sector
6 124 (8.26%) Banking
7 68 (4.53%) Organisational Skills
8 54 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
9 43 (2.86%) Telecoms
10 32 (2.13%) Marketing
11 31 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (2.00%) Front Office
13 27 (1.80%) Local Government
14 25 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
15 24 (1.60%) Law
15 24 (1.60%) Retail
16 19 (1.26%) Police
17 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
18 11 (0.73%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 187 (12.45%) Architect
2 162 (10.79%) Analyst
3 127 (8.46%) Developer
4 119 (7.92%) Lead
5 109 (7.26%) Senior
6 96 (6.39%) Consultant
7 75 (4.99%) Business Analyst
8 70 (4.66%) Project Manager
9 54 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.86%) Java Developer
11 40 (2.66%) Security Architect
12 39 (2.60%) Data Engineer
13 37 (2.46%) Network Engineer
14 36 (2.40%) Security Engineer
15 32 (2.13%) Administrator
16 29 (1.93%) Data Analyst
17 26 (1.73%) Data Protection Officer
17 26 (1.73%) Technical Architect
18 21 (1.40%) Python Developer
18 21 (1.40%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.39%) REST
2 60 (3.99%) React
3 44 (2.93%) Spring
4 39 (2.60%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.40%) .NET
6 35 (2.33%) HTML
7 31 (2.06%) Kafka
7 31 (2.06%) Node.js
8 30 (2.00%) CSS
9 29 (1.93%) RESTful
10 24 (1.60%) Middleware
11 23 (1.53%) Jest
12 22 (1.46%) OAuth
13 18 (1.20%) HTML5
13 18 (1.20%) Redux
14 17 (1.13%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.07%) CSS3
15 16 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
15 16 (1.07%) Playwright
15 16 (1.07%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 716 (47.67%) Data Protection Act
2 85 (5.66%) Cloud Native
3 69 (4.59%) Product Ownership
4 65 (4.33%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.53%) Management Information System
6 36 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
7 32 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
7 32 (2.13%) Replication
8 31 (2.06%) NHS
9 30 (2.00%) Security Posture
10 29 (1.93%) Data Centre
11 26 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
13 21 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.40%) Freedom of Information
13 21 (1.40%) Virtual Team
14 18 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (1.07%) Derivative
16 15 (1.00%) Mobile App
16 15 (1.00%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 94 (6.26%) Windows
2 72 (4.79%) Linux
3 25 (1.66%) Unix
4 20 (1.33%) Windows Server
5 16 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (1.00%) Android
7 14 (0.93%) VMS
7 14 (0.93%) Windows 10
8 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 12 (0.80%) Apple iOS
10 9 (0.60%) zOS
11 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
12 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
13 2 (0.13%) Rocky
13 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.067%) Solaris
14 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (17.44%) Agile
2 250 (16.64%) Problem-Solving
3 248 (16.51%) Stakeholder Management
4 233 (15.51%) Migration
5 204 (13.58%) CI/CD
6 197 (13.12%) DevOps
7 196 (13.05%) Continuous Improvement
8 147 (9.79%) Analytics
9 145 (9.65%) AI
10 139 (9.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 135 (8.99%) Roadmaps
12 132 (8.79%) Risk Management
13 123 (8.19%) Cybersecurity
14 122 (8.12%) Decision-Making
15 113 (7.52%) Data Governance
16 109 (7.26%) Information Security
17 102 (6.79%) Infrastructure as Code
18 99 (6.59%) Test Automation
19 97 (6.46%) Project Management
20 93 (6.19%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 218 (14.51%) Python
2 189 (12.58%) SQL
3 133 (8.85%) Java
4 77 (5.13%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.66%) PowerShell
6 48 (3.20%) C#
7 39 (2.60%) TypeScript
8 34 (2.26%) Bash
9 15 (1.00%) Bicep
10 13 (0.87%) C++
11 10 (0.67%) Perl
11 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
12 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 9 (0.60%) Scala
13 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
14 7 (0.47%) R
15 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
15 6 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 5 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 205 (13.65%) Security Cleared
2 150 (9.99%) SC Cleared
3 119 (7.92%) Degree
4 64 (4.26%) CISSP
5 49 (3.26%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.53%) CISM
7 31 (2.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
9 28 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
9 28 (1.86%) PMI Certification
10 26 (1.73%) Azure Certification
10 26 (1.73%) PMP
11 22 (1.46%) AWS Certification
12 20 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (1.26%) Master's Degree
14 16 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.93%) CCSP
16 11 (0.73%) CCNP
16 11 (0.73%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 267 (17.78%) GDPR
2 94 (6.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (6.13%) NIST
4 70 (4.66%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.33%) QA
6 34 (2.26%) GRC
7 27 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 25 (1.66%) PCI DSS
8 25 (1.66%) PMO
9 21 (1.40%) SLA
10 17 (1.13%) SOC 2
11 16 (1.07%) NCSC
12 13 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
13 12 (0.80%) PERC
14 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
16 7 (0.47%) HIPAA
17 6 (0.40%) COBIT
17 6 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 6 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 76 (5.06%) Docker
2 73 (4.86%) Active Directory
3 55 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.66%) Virtual Desktop
5 21 (1.40%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.67%) vSphere
8 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.40%) KVM
11 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.20%) IAG
12 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.20%) XenApp
12 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.13%) GPFS
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.067%) UAG
Systems Management
1 109 (7.26%) Kubernetes
2 96 (6.39%) Terraform
3 58 (3.86%) Ansible
4 44 (2.93%) Grafana
5 30 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (1.80%) NetBackup
6 27 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.46%) SCCM
8 19 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.80%) Puppet
10 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.47%) Kibana
11 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
12 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 5 (0.33%) Control-M
13 5 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
13 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.27%) Foglight
14 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 238 (15.85%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.99%) Oracle
3 73 (4.86%) Google
4 56 (3.73%) VMware
5 50 (3.33%) Databricks
6 48 (3.20%) Cisco
6 48 (3.20%) ServiceNow
7 36 (2.40%) SAP
8 32 (2.13%) Salesforce
9 30 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 25 (1.66%) NetApp
11 24 (1.60%) Splunk
12 23 (1.53%) IBM
13 22 (1.46%) Citrix
13 22 (1.46%) Veritas
14 16 (1.07%) Commvault
14 16 (1.07%) F5
14 16 (1.07%) Veeam
15 15 (1.00%) Adobe
16 14 (0.93%) Workday