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 17 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 98 83
Rank change year-on-year +27 -15 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,494 775 1,103
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.25% 2.64% 2.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.82% 2.91% 2.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 824 401 619
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £366 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £595 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £464
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.37% -3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 30 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £18.28 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.54 £18.69 £16.06
Median hourly rate £20.79 £28.32 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.59% +45.23% -70.45%
75th Percentile £28.38 £33.18 £27.50
90th Percentile £59.00 £39.80 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% +49.31% -70.45%

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 39,116 26,622 37,889
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.70% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,735 17,238 24,535
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.51% -0.26% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,315 1,028 2,411
10th Percentile £14.98 £14.96 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.43 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +23.25% -7.98% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £33.07
% change year-on-year +39.13% -13.05% -7.64%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +31 1,287 £500 - 377
UK excluding London +22 808 £450 -5.26% 289
London +23 593 £525 - 147
Work from Home +36 389 £500 +0.81% 168
North of England -1 251 £475 - 75
South East +24 189 £500 -1.91% 72
Yorkshire -11 142 £480 -8.57% 15
Midlands -10 122 £450 -10.00% 44
Scotland +8 115 £410 -12.31% 27
North West +12 101 £481 +7.66% 48
West Midlands -17 76 £500 -3.61% 37
South West +10 67 £425 +6.25% 32
East of England +4 49 £475 -9.52% 34
East Midlands 0 46 £438 +16.67% 7
Wales +3 15 £375 -11.76% 7
North East -27 9 £400 -11.11% 12
Northern Ireland +5 4 £500 +1.63% 2

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 53 (3.55%) Confluence
2 36 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 24 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 13 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.54%) Apache
7 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.27%) CMS
8 4 (0.27%) SAS
9 3 (0.20%) Drupal
9 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 54 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.067%) Blender
8 1 (0.067%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.067%) InVision
8 1 (0.067%) Maya
8 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Sketch
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (0.94%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.33%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
7 3 (0.20%) ResourceLink
8 2 (0.13%) Fidessa
8 2 (0.13%) ION MarketView
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 305 (20.41%) Azure
2 247 (16.53%) AWS
3 135 (9.04%) GCP
4 82 (5.49%) Microsoft 365
5 80 (5.35%) Power Platform
6 79 (5.29%) Entra ID
7 62 (4.15%) GitHub
8 59 (3.95%) SaaS
9 49 (3.28%) Microsoft Purview
10 47 (3.15%) Serverless
11 41 (2.74%) OpenShift
12 39 (2.61%) Azure DevOps
13 35 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
14 31 (2.07%) Amazon S3
15 30 (2.01%) Snowflake
16 28 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (1.67%) Amazon ECS
18 24 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
19 22 (1.47%) Azure AKS
19 22 (1.47%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 57 (3.82%) Network Security
2 41 (2.74%) Firewall
3 38 (2.54%) SAN
4 26 (1.74%) VPN
5 23 (1.54%) NAS
5 23 (1.54%) WAN
6 19 (1.27%) LAN
6 19 (1.27%) MPLS
7 18 (1.20%) DNS
8 15 (1.00%) Cisco IPT
9 13 (0.87%) TCP/IP
10 12 (0.80%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.80%) VLAN
11 11 (0.74%) DHCP
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
11 11 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.60%) BGP
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) Wireless
13 8 (0.54%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (4.75%) Power BI
2 40 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (2.48%) Metadata
4 34 (2.28%) SQL Server
5 30 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
6 29 (1.94%) MySQL
7 26 (1.74%) Relational Database
8 22 (1.47%) MongoDB
9 21 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (1.41%) NoSQL
10 19 (1.27%) DynamoDB
11 18 (1.20%) Big Data
12 16 (1.07%) Data Lake
13 15 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
14 13 (0.87%) Tableau
15 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
15 12 (0.80%) Oracle Database
16 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 84 (5.62%) JIRA
2 62 (4.15%) Jenkins
3 59 (3.95%) Git
4 36 (2.41%) GitLab
5 14 (0.94%) 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%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.27%) Gradle
11 4 (0.27%) Liquibase
12 3 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 3 (0.20%) Katalon Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 444 (29.72%) Social Skills
2 345 (23.09%) Finance
3 191 (12.78%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (11.78%) Legal
5 135 (9.04%) Public Sector
6 122 (8.17%) Banking
7 66 (4.42%) Organisational Skills
8 57 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
9 41 (2.74%) Telecoms
10 34 (2.28%) Marketing
11 31 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.94%) Front Office
13 28 (1.87%) Local Government
13 28 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
14 27 (1.81%) Law
15 22 (1.47%) Retail
16 19 (1.27%) Police
17 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 11 (0.74%) Manufacturing
19 10 (0.67%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 194 (12.99%) Architect
2 155 (10.37%) Analyst
3 124 (8.30%) Developer
4 116 (7.76%) Lead
5 106 (7.10%) Senior
6 96 (6.43%) Consultant
7 71 (4.75%) Business Analyst
8 67 (4.48%) Project Manager
9 55 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
10 41 (2.74%) Java Developer
11 39 (2.61%) Data Engineer
12 38 (2.54%) Security Architect
13 37 (2.48%) Security Engineer
14 34 (2.28%) Administrator
14 34 (2.28%) Network Engineer
15 28 (1.87%) Technical Architect
16 27 (1.81%) Data Analyst
17 26 (1.74%) Data Protection Officer
18 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
18 21 (1.41%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (4.35%) REST
2 59 (3.95%) React
3 42 (2.81%) Spring
4 37 (2.48%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.41%) .NET
6 33 (2.21%) HTML
7 31 (2.07%) Node.js
8 30 (2.01%) Kafka
9 29 (1.94%) CSS
9 29 (1.94%) RESTful
10 27 (1.81%) Middleware
11 24 (1.61%) OAuth
12 23 (1.54%) Jest
13 18 (1.20%) HTML5
13 18 (1.20%) Playwright
13 18 (1.20%) Redux
14 17 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
14 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.07%) CSS3
15 16 (1.07%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 699 (46.79%) Data Protection Act
2 83 (5.56%) Cloud Native
3 71 (4.75%) Product Ownership
4 62 (4.15%) Onboarding
5 52 (3.48%) Management Information System
6 31 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
6 31 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
6 31 (2.07%) NHS
6 31 (2.07%) Security Posture
7 30 (2.01%) Replication
8 29 (1.94%) Data Centre
9 28 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
10 23 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
11 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 20 (1.34%) Freedom of Information
12 20 (1.34%) Virtual Team
13 16 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
14 15 (1.00%) Mobile App
14 15 (1.00%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 97 (6.49%) Windows
2 73 (4.89%) Linux
3 26 (1.74%) Unix
4 21 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.94%) VMS
7 13 (0.87%) Android
7 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 12 (0.80%) Apple iOS
8 12 (0.80%) Windows 10
9 9 (0.60%) zOS
10 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
12 3 (0.20%) Solaris
13 2 (0.13%) AIX
13 2 (0.13%) Rocky
13 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 256 (17.14%) Agile
2 252 (16.87%) Problem-Solving
3 249 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
4 228 (15.26%) Migration
5 200 (13.39%) CI/CD
6 195 (13.05%) DevOps
7 190 (12.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 145 (9.71%) Analytics
9 139 (9.30%) Roadmaps
10 135 (9.04%) AI
10 135 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 132 (8.84%) Cybersecurity
12 130 (8.70%) Risk Management
13 120 (8.03%) Decision-Making
14 112 (7.50%) Data Governance
15 109 (7.30%) Information Security
16 104 (6.96%) Infrastructure as Code
17 99 (6.63%) Test Automation
18 97 (6.49%) Project Management
19 91 (6.09%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 217 (14.52%) Python
2 189 (12.65%) SQL
3 131 (8.77%) Java
4 78 (5.22%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.75%) PowerShell
6 51 (3.41%) C#
7 42 (2.81%) TypeScript
8 35 (2.34%) Bash
9 18 (1.20%) Bicep
10 12 (0.80%) C++
11 11 (0.74%) Perl
12 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
13 8 (0.54%) PL/SQL
13 8 (0.54%) Scala
14 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
14 6 (0.40%) R
15 5 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.33%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 210 (14.06%) Security Cleared
2 151 (10.11%) SC Cleared
3 124 (8.30%) Degree
4 65 (4.35%) CISSP
5 53 (3.55%) DV Cleared
6 37 (2.48%) CISM
7 32 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.94%) Azure Certification
9 28 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
9 28 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
10 26 (1.74%) PMI Certification
11 24 (1.61%) AWS Certification
11 24 (1.61%) PMP
12 22 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
13 20 (1.34%) Master's Degree
14 19 (1.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 17 (1.14%) CCSP
16 12 (0.80%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
17 10 (0.67%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 274 (18.34%) GDPR
2 99 (6.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 98 (6.56%) NIST
4 73 (4.89%) Data Quality
5 66 (4.42%) QA
6 34 (2.28%) GRC
7 29 (1.94%) PCI DSS
8 27 (1.81%) Accessibility
9 25 (1.67%) PMO
10 21 (1.41%) SLA
11 17 (1.14%) NCSC
11 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
12 13 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
13 12 (0.80%) PERC
14 9 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
14 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 7 (0.47%) HIPAA
15 7 (0.47%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.40%) COBIT
16 6 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 76 (5.09%) Docker
2 73 (4.89%) Active Directory
3 57 (3.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (1.27%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.60%) vSphere
9 6 (0.40%) KVM
9 6 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
11 3 (0.20%) IAG
11 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.20%) XenApp
11 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
12 2 (0.13%) Firmware
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.067%) UAG
Systems Management
1 107 (7.16%) Kubernetes
2 103 (6.89%) Terraform
3 60 (4.02%) Ansible
4 42 (2.81%) Grafana
5 30 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (1.81%) NetBackup
7 25 (1.67%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.47%) SCCM
9 19 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.74%) Puppet
11 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.33%) Control-M
14 5 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
15 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 239 (16.00%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.95%) Oracle
3 70 (4.69%) Google
4 58 (3.88%) VMware
5 51 (3.41%) Databricks
6 50 (3.35%) ServiceNow
7 48 (3.21%) Cisco
8 40 (2.68%) SAP
9 36 (2.41%) Salesforce
10 32 (2.14%) Red Hat
11 24 (1.61%) NetApp
12 23 (1.54%) Splunk
13 22 (1.47%) Citrix
13 22 (1.47%) Veritas
14 21 (1.41%) IBM
15 18 (1.20%) F5
16 17 (1.14%) Commvault
17 16 (1.07%) Adobe
17 16 (1.07%) Veeam
18 14 (0.94%) Informatica