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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 97 82
Rank change year-on-year +24 -15 +16
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,500 788 1,102
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.24% 2.67% 2.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.81% 2.95% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 830 405 617
10th Percentile £300 £263 £225
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £466
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.04% -3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 31 107
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.50 £12.40
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.02 £27.64 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.95% +41.74% -62.86%
75th Percentile £28.19 £32.95 £27.50
90th Percentile £58.50 £37.00 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% +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 39,324 26,741 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.82% 90.76% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,807 17,298 24,232
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.89% -0.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +1.09% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,359 1,048 2,416
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.00 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.31 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £28.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year +41.01% -17.86% -6.67%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +28 1,288 £500 - 405
UK excluding London +20 810 £450 -5.26% 306
London +22 593 £525 - 157
Work from Home +38 391 £500 +1.63% 183
North of England +1 253 £475 - 74
South East +32 189 £500 -1.91% 74
Yorkshire -7 143 £478 -9.05% 20
Midlands -2 122 £450 -10.00% 54
Scotland +10 118 £411 -11.99% 23
North West +7 102 £488 +10.23% 45
West Midlands -18 78 £494 -4.82% 44
South West -2 64 £425 +6.25% 35
East of England +1 49 £500 -4.76% 36
East Midlands -4 44 £438 +16.67% 10
Wales +6 16 £375 -11.76% 6
North East -28 9 £400 -11.11% 9
Northern Ireland +2 3 £500 +1.63% 8

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 (3.47%) Confluence
2 38 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.73%) 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 (3.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (3.07%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.33%) 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%) Maya
8 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (0.87%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
4 5 (0.33%) SAP GRC
5 4 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
6 3 (0.20%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.13%) Fidessa
7 2 (0.13%) ION MarketView
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 309 (20.60%) Azure
2 249 (16.60%) AWS
3 137 (9.13%) GCP
4 87 (5.80%) Power Platform
5 84 (5.60%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (5.27%) Entra ID
7 63 (4.20%) GitHub
8 55 (3.67%) SaaS
9 50 (3.33%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.07%) Serverless
11 42 (2.80%) OpenShift
12 39 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
13 34 (2.27%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (2.00%) Amazon S3
14 30 (2.00%) Snowflake
15 28 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (1.67%) Amazon ECS
16 25 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (1.60%) Microsoft Copilot
18 21 (1.40%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 56 (3.73%) Network Security
2 38 (2.53%) Firewall
2 38 (2.53%) SAN
3 28 (1.87%) VPN
4 23 (1.53%) NAS
4 23 (1.53%) WAN
5 20 (1.33%) MPLS
6 19 (1.27%) DNS
6 19 (1.27%) LAN
7 15 (1.00%) Cisco IPT
8 13 (0.87%) TCP/IP
9 12 (0.80%) SD-WAN
9 12 (0.80%) VLAN
10 11 (0.73%) DHCP
10 11 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
10 11 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
11 10 (0.67%) BGP
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) Wireless
13 8 (0.53%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (5.00%) Power BI
2 38 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (2.47%) Metadata
4 33 (2.20%) SQL Server
5 29 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.87%) MySQL
7 26 (1.73%) Relational Database
8 23 (1.53%) MongoDB
9 22 (1.47%) NoSQL
10 20 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (1.27%) Big Data
11 19 (1.27%) DynamoDB
12 16 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
12 16 (1.07%) Data Lake
13 14 (0.93%) Tableau
14 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
15 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 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 (2.47%) GitLab
5 13 (0.87%) 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
12 3 (0.20%) Bitbucket
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
1 447 (29.80%) Social Skills
2 347 (23.13%) Finance
3 189 (12.60%) Analytical Skills
4 178 (11.87%) Legal
5 132 (8.80%) Public Sector
6 123 (8.20%) Banking
7 68 (4.53%) Organisational Skills
8 57 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
9 42 (2.80%) Telecoms
10 33 (2.20%) Marketing
11 31 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 30 (2.00%) Front Office
13 29 (1.93%) Local Government
14 25 (1.67%) Law
14 25 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.67%) Retail
15 19 (1.27%) Police
16 13 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.73%) Manufacturing
18 10 (0.67%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 197 (13.13%) Architect
2 158 (10.53%) Analyst
3 128 (8.53%) Developer
4 118 (7.87%) Lead
5 105 (7.00%) Senior
6 93 (6.20%) Consultant
7 72 (4.80%) Business Analyst
8 69 (4.60%) Project Manager
9 58 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
10 42 (2.80%) Java Developer
11 39 (2.60%) Data Engineer
12 38 (2.53%) Security Architect
13 36 (2.40%) Security Engineer
14 35 (2.33%) Network Engineer
15 32 (2.13%) Administrator
16 29 (1.93%) Technical Architect
17 28 (1.87%) Data Analyst
18 25 (1.67%) Data Protection Officer
19 23 (1.53%) Support Engineer
20 21 (1.40%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.40%) REST
2 60 (4.00%) React
3 43 (2.87%) Spring
4 38 (2.53%) Spring Boot
5 37 (2.47%) .NET
6 34 (2.27%) HTML
7 31 (2.07%) Kafka
7 31 (2.07%) Node.js
8 30 (2.00%) CSS
8 30 (2.00%) RESTful
9 27 (1.80%) Middleware
10 23 (1.53%) Jest
10 23 (1.53%) OAuth
11 18 (1.20%) HTML5
11 18 (1.20%) Redux
12 17 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
12 17 (1.13%) Playwright
12 17 (1.13%) Spring MVC
13 16 (1.07%) CSS3
13 16 (1.07%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 701 (46.73%) Data Protection Act
2 84 (5.60%) Cloud Native
3 70 (4.67%) Product Ownership
4 64 (4.27%) Onboarding
5 54 (3.60%) Management Information System
6 36 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
8 32 (2.13%) NHS
9 31 (2.07%) Data Centre
10 30 (2.00%) Replication
11 29 (1.93%) Security Posture
12 27 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
14 22 (1.47%) Freedom of Information
15 21 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 21 (1.40%) Virtual Team
16 18 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
17 15 (1.00%) Derivative
17 15 (1.00%) Mobile App
17 15 (1.00%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 95 (6.33%) Windows
2 71 (4.73%) Linux
3 25 (1.67%) Unix
4 21 (1.40%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.93%) Android
7 13 (0.87%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
7 13 (0.87%) VMS
8 12 (0.80%) Windows 10
9 9 (0.60%) zOS
10 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.067%) Solaris
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 259 (17.27%) Agile
2 252 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
3 249 (16.60%) Stakeholder Management
4 235 (15.67%) Migration
5 203 (13.53%) CI/CD
6 196 (13.07%) DevOps
7 190 (12.67%) Continuous Improvement
8 145 (9.67%) Analytics
9 138 (9.20%) AI
10 135 (9.00%) Roadmaps
10 135 (9.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 132 (8.80%) Cybersecurity
11 132 (8.80%) Risk Management
12 119 (7.93%) Decision-Making
13 114 (7.60%) Data Governance
14 110 (7.33%) Information Security
15 101 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
16 99 (6.60%) Project Management
16 99 (6.60%) Test Automation
17 94 (6.27%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 222 (14.80%) Python
2 189 (12.60%) SQL
3 132 (8.80%) Java
4 77 (5.13%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.73%) PowerShell
6 50 (3.33%) C#
7 41 (2.73%) TypeScript
8 35 (2.33%) Bash
9 15 (1.00%) Bicep
10 12 (0.80%) C++
11 11 (0.73%) Perl
12 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
13 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
13 9 (0.60%) Scala
14 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
14 8 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
15 7 (0.47%) R
16 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
17 5 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 5 (0.33%) Go
Qualifications
1 209 (13.93%) Security Cleared
2 151 (10.07%) SC Cleared
3 122 (8.13%) Degree
4 66 (4.40%) CISSP
5 52 (3.47%) DV Cleared
6 37 (2.47%) CISM
7 31 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (1.93%) Azure Certification
9 29 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.80%) PMI Certification
11 25 (1.67%) AWS Certification
11 25 (1.67%) PMP
12 21 (1.40%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (1.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 19 (1.27%) Master's Degree
14 17 (1.13%) CCSP
15 12 (0.80%) CTC Cleared
16 11 (0.73%) CCNP
17 10 (0.67%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 272 (18.13%) GDPR
2 97 (6.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 95 (6.33%) NIST
4 71 (4.73%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.33%) QA
6 34 (2.27%) GRC
7 28 (1.87%) PCI DSS
8 27 (1.80%) Accessibility
9 24 (1.60%) PMO
10 20 (1.33%) SLA
11 17 (1.13%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.07%) NCSC
13 13 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
14 12 (0.80%) PERC
15 9 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.47%) HIPAA
17 6 (0.40%) COBIT
17 6 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 6 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 77 (5.13%) Docker
2 71 (4.73%) Active Directory
3 58 (3.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.47%) 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%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.067%) iptables
13 1 (0.067%) UAG
Systems Management
1 108 (7.20%) Kubernetes
2 99 (6.60%) Terraform
3 60 (4.00%) Ansible
4 44 (2.93%) Grafana
5 30 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (1.80%) NetBackup
6 27 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.47%) SCCM
8 19 (1.27%) 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%) Jamf Pro
13 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 240 (16.00%) Microsoft
2 73 (4.87%) Oracle
3 71 (4.73%) Google
4 59 (3.93%) VMware
5 51 (3.40%) Databricks
6 50 (3.33%) Cisco
7 49 (3.27%) ServiceNow
8 40 (2.67%) SAP
9 33 (2.20%) Salesforce
10 32 (2.13%) Red Hat
11 25 (1.67%) NetApp
12 24 (1.60%) Splunk
13 23 (1.53%) Citrix
14 22 (1.47%) Veritas
15 21 (1.40%) IBM
16 18 (1.20%) F5
17 17 (1.13%) Commvault
18 16 (1.07%) Veeam
19 15 (1.00%) Adobe
20 14 (0.93%) Informatica