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 9 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 89 90
Rank change year-on-year +18 +1 +6
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,582 806 1,029
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.18% 2.75% 2.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.76% 3.03% 2.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 868 405 541
10th Percentile £300 £259 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £594 £600
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 33 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.56 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £22.13 £24.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.66% +16.67% -52.84%
75th Percentile £33.75 £32.50 £27.59
90th Percentile £45.23 £36.90 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.35 £19.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year +9.49% - -38.10%

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 42,104 26,621 36,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.75% 90.94% 85.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,283 16,896 23,594
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,537 1,167 2,565
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 June 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 +23 1,351 £498 -0.32% 365
UK excluding London +19 867 £450 -5.26% 269
London +30 612 £525 +0.96% 140
Work from Home +28 422 £500 +5.26% 153
North of England +2 287 £475 - 70
South East +25 185 £478 -9.05% 68
Yorkshire -10 156 £475 -9.52% 23
Midlands -7 135 £450 -10.00% 61
Scotland +4 130 £425 -7.10% 13
North West +21 122 £475 +6.26% 37
West Midlands -19 91 £473 -9.90% 39
South West +3 65 £410 +2.50% 33
East of England +5 48 £488 -7.14% 21
East Midlands 0 44 £438 +17.06% 22
Wales -6 11 £363 +22.36% 7
Northern Ireland +7 9 £104 -78.86% 3
North East -35 9 £400 -3.03% 10

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 57 (3.60%) Confluence
2 54 (3.41%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.07%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.57%) Apache
7 6 (0.38%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.32%) SAS
9 4 (0.25%) IIS
10 3 (0.19%) Drupal
10 3 (0.19%) nginx
10 3 (0.19%) Tuxedo
11 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.13%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 47 (2.97%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.25%) UserZoom
7 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.063%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.063%) Maya
9 1 (0.063%) Trello
9 1 (0.063%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.63%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.32%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.19%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sonata
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 333 (21.05%) Azure
2 263 (16.62%) AWS
3 131 (8.28%) GCP
4 103 (6.51%) Microsoft 365
5 87 (5.50%) Entra ID
6 81 (5.12%) Power Platform
7 66 (4.17%) SaaS
8 65 (4.11%) GitHub
9 49 (3.10%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (2.91%) Azure DevOps
11 44 (2.78%) OpenShift
12 36 (2.28%) Serverless
13 28 (1.77%) Microsoft Copilot
14 24 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
15 23 (1.45%) OneDrive
15 23 (1.45%) Snowflake
16 21 (1.33%) Amazon S3
16 21 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (1.33%) Power Automate
17 20 (1.26%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 77 (4.87%) Network Security
2 46 (2.91%) Firewall
3 34 (2.15%) SAN
4 30 (1.90%) VPN
5 25 (1.58%) DNS
6 24 (1.52%) TCP/IP
7 22 (1.39%) NAS
8 20 (1.26%) WAN
9 17 (1.07%) DHCP
9 17 (1.07%) LAN
9 17 (1.07%) MPLS
10 14 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.57%) HTTP
11 9 (0.57%) SSL
11 9 (0.57%) VLAN
12 8 (0.51%) Wireless
13 7 (0.44%) BGP
13 7 (0.44%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.44%) Ethernet
13 7 (0.44%) Fibre Channel
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (4.17%) Power BI
2 38 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (2.34%) Metadata
4 36 (2.28%) SQL Server
5 29 (1.83%) Data Warehouse
6 23 (1.45%) MongoDB
6 23 (1.45%) MySQL
7 22 (1.39%) Relational Database
8 21 (1.33%) Data Lake
9 20 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
10 19 (1.20%) Big Data
10 19 (1.20%) NoSQL
11 13 (0.82%) DynamoDB
12 12 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 11 (0.70%) Tableau
14 10 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.57%) BigQuery
16 8 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 7 (0.44%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 96 (6.07%) JIRA
2 71 (4.49%) Git
3 63 (3.98%) Jenkins
4 39 (2.47%) GitLab
5 9 (0.57%) SpecFlow
6 8 (0.51%) JUnit
6 8 (0.51%) Postman
7 7 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.44%) Team Foundation Server
8 6 (0.38%) Flyway
8 6 (0.38%) Maven
9 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.32%) ERwin
9 5 (0.32%) Gradle
9 5 (0.32%) Oracle Forms
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
General
1 515 (32.55%) Social Skills
2 361 (22.82%) Finance
3 209 (13.21%) Legal
4 178 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
5 151 (9.54%) Public Sector
6 119 (7.52%) Banking
7 66 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
8 60 (3.79%) Organisational Skills
9 39 (2.47%) Telecoms
10 30 (1.90%) Front Office
10 30 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (1.83%) Law
11 29 (1.83%) Local Government
12 28 (1.77%) Retail
13 26 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.58%) Marketing
15 20 (1.26%) Police
16 18 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.76%) Investment Banking
17 12 (0.76%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 214 (13.53%) Architect
2 144 (9.10%) Analyst
3 127 (8.03%) Developer
4 118 (7.46%) Lead
5 114 (7.21%) Senior
6 93 (5.88%) Consultant
7 86 (5.44%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.42%) Business Analyst
9 61 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.72%) Network Engineer
10 43 (2.72%) Security Architect
11 42 (2.65%) Java Developer
12 39 (2.47%) Security Engineer
13 38 (2.40%) Data Engineer
14 33 (2.09%) Administrator
15 28 (1.77%) Technical Architect
16 26 (1.64%) Support Engineer
17 24 (1.52%) Data Analyst
18 23 (1.45%) IT Manager
18 23 (1.45%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (4.87%) REST
2 58 (3.67%) React
3 38 (2.40%) Spring
4 34 (2.15%) Spring Boot
5 32 (2.02%) Middleware
6 31 (1.96%) HTML
6 31 (1.96%) Kafka
7 30 (1.90%) CSS
7 30 (1.90%) RESTful
8 27 (1.71%) .NET
9 26 (1.64%) JSON
9 26 (1.64%) OAuth
10 21 (1.33%) Jest
10 21 (1.33%) Node.js
11 19 (1.20%) PySpark
12 18 (1.14%) HTML5
12 18 (1.14%) Redux
13 17 (1.07%) OpenID
13 17 (1.07%) Spring MVC
14 16 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 731 (46.21%) Data Protection Act
2 91 (5.75%) Cloud Native
3 80 (5.06%) Product Ownership
4 73 (4.61%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.35%) Management Information System
6 41 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 40 (2.53%) Data Centre
8 39 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
9 32 (2.02%) Security Posture
10 29 (1.83%) Virtual Team
11 27 (1.71%) NHS
12 23 (1.45%) Hybrid Cloud
13 22 (1.39%) Replication
14 21 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 21 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
15 19 (1.20%) Enterprise Storage
15 19 (1.20%) Operational Technology
16 17 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
17 16 (1.01%) Freedom of Information
17 16 (1.01%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 121 (7.65%) Windows
2 79 (4.99%) Linux
3 34 (2.15%) Unix
4 24 (1.52%) Android
4 24 (1.52%) Mac OS
4 24 (1.52%) Windows Server
5 22 (1.39%) Apple iOS
6 17 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.88%) Windows 10
8 12 (0.76%) VMS
9 8 (0.51%) zOS
10 6 (0.38%) CoreOS
10 6 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.13%) Rocky
11 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.063%) CentOS
12 1 (0.063%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.063%) Solaris
12 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 300 (18.96%) Agile
2 269 (17.00%) Problem-Solving
3 261 (16.50%) Stakeholder Management
4 245 (15.49%) Migration
5 243 (15.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 224 (14.16%) CI/CD
7 219 (13.84%) DevOps
8 160 (10.11%) AI
9 156 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 142 (8.98%) Roadmaps
11 137 (8.66%) Analytics
11 137 (8.66%) Cybersecurity
12 132 (8.34%) Decision-Making
13 121 (7.65%) Risk Management
14 119 (7.52%) Information Security
15 106 (6.70%) Infrastructure as Code
15 106 (6.70%) Validation
16 105 (6.64%) Data Governance
17 101 (6.38%) Test Automation
18 98 (6.19%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 219 (13.84%) Python
2 174 (11.00%) SQL
3 137 (8.66%) Java
4 72 (4.55%) JavaScript
5 57 (3.60%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.65%) Bash
7 38 (2.40%) C#
8 32 (2.02%) TypeScript
9 20 (1.26%) Bicep
10 15 (0.95%) Perl
11 14 (0.88%) C++
12 12 (0.76%) Go
13 11 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 9 (0.57%) Apex Code
15 9 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.51%) ActionScript
16 8 (0.51%) Scala
17 7 (0.44%) PL/SQL
18 6 (0.38%) VB
Qualifications
1 215 (13.59%) Security Cleared
2 159 (10.05%) SC Cleared
3 137 (8.66%) Degree
4 73 (4.61%) CISSP
5 52 (3.29%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.53%) CISM
7 34 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 32 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
9 31 (1.96%) Azure Certification
10 30 (1.90%) PMI Certification
11 27 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
12 26 (1.64%) PMP
13 22 (1.39%) AWS Certification
13 22 (1.39%) Master's Degree
14 18 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
15 17 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 15 (0.95%) CCSP
17 12 (0.76%) CRISC
18 11 (0.70%) CCNP
19 9 (0.57%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 256 (16.18%) GDPR
2 93 (5.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 88 (5.56%) NIST
4 85 (5.37%) Data Quality
5 68 (4.30%) QA
6 41 (2.59%) GRC
7 38 (2.40%) Accessibility
8 26 (1.64%) PCI DSS
9 21 (1.33%) PMO
10 20 (1.26%) SOC 2
11 19 (1.20%) SLA
12 17 (1.07%) NCSC
13 14 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
14 10 (0.63%) WCAG
15 8 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
15 8 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
15 8 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.38%) COBIT
17 5 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 80 (5.06%) Active Directory
2 67 (4.24%) Docker
3 55 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.26%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (0.95%) NFS
6 13 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.76%) vSphere
8 8 (0.51%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.38%) KVM
11 4 (0.25%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.19%) IAG
12 3 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.19%) XenApp
12 3 (0.19%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.13%) GPFS
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.063%) iptables
Systems Management
1 115 (7.27%) Kubernetes
2 89 (5.63%) Terraform
3 67 (4.24%) Ansible
4 45 (2.84%) Grafana
5 42 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (1.96%) NetBackup
6 31 (1.96%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.39%) SCCM
8 20 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.82%) Puppet
10 12 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (0.76%) Jamf Pro
11 7 (0.44%) Kibana
12 6 (0.38%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.32%) Control-M
13 5 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.25%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.25%) Foglight
14 4 (0.25%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.25%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 260 (16.43%) Microsoft
2 80 (5.06%) Oracle
3 64 (4.05%) ServiceNow
4 63 (3.98%) Google
5 57 (3.60%) Databricks
6 56 (3.54%) VMware
7 51 (3.22%) Cisco
8 41 (2.59%) SAP
9 33 (2.09%) Splunk
10 31 (1.96%) Red Hat
11 26 (1.64%) Veritas
12 24 (1.52%) Salesforce
13 23 (1.45%) Citrix
14 21 (1.33%) NetApp
15 18 (1.14%) Workday
16 17 (1.07%) Zscaler
17 15 (0.95%) Commvault
17 15 (0.95%) F5
17 15 (0.95%) IBM
18 14 (0.88%) Informatica