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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 88 90
Rank change year-on-year +15 +2 +5
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,595 836 1,037
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.81% 2.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.73% 3.09% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 877 407 546
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.06% -3.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £595
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 79 34 107
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.40
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £22.00 £19.25 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -1.28% -56.21%
75th Percentile £33.75 £32.32 £27.67
90th Percentile £40.60 £36.84 £41.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.35 £15.25 £19.50
% change year-on-year +40.00% -21.79% -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 42,754 27,087 37,306
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 91.00% 85.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,630 17,192 23,755
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -3.79% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,570 1,249 2,608
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.87 £16.02
Median hourly rate £43.96 £26.21 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +67.72% -29.51% +6.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.32 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +18 1,354 £500 +2.56% 329
UK excluding London +17 879 £450 -5.26% 262
London +22 608 £525 +5.00% 126
Work from Home +26 436 £500 +5.26% 142
North of England +8 295 £475 - 69
South East +26 191 £475 -9.52% 72
Yorkshire -10 165 £475 -9.52% 23
Scotland +1 135 £425 -2.86% 10
Midlands -8 133 £450 -10.00% 45
North West +28 122 £481 +8.82% 34
West Midlands -11 92 £473 -9.90% 25
South West +6 66 £425 +6.25% 39
East of England +4 43 £500 -4.76% 21
East Midlands +1 41 £438 +17.06% 20
Wales -9 12 £375 +26.58% 9
North East -47 10 £450 +14.29% 12
Northern Ireland +5 9 £104 -78.86% 7

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 (3.57%) SharePoint
2 56 (3.51%) Confluence
3 26 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.07%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.50%) Apache
7 6 (0.38%) IIS
8 5 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.31%) Tuxedo
9 4 (0.25%) CMS
9 4 (0.25%) SAS
10 3 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.13%) Hyperledger
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 44 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (2.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.25%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.25%) UserZoom
7 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.063%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.063%) Maya
8 1 (0.063%) Trello
8 1 (0.063%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
1 11 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.56%) Aladdin
3 6 (0.38%) NEC Housing
3 6 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 5 (0.31%) SAP GRC
5 4 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
5 4 (0.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 3 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.19%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
6 3 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
7 2 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
7 2 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 340 (21.32%) Azure
2 259 (16.24%) AWS
3 128 (8.03%) GCP
4 107 (6.71%) Microsoft 365
5 85 (5.33%) Power Platform
6 83 (5.20%) Entra ID
7 65 (4.08%) GitHub
8 63 (3.95%) SaaS
9 53 (3.32%) Microsoft Purview
10 45 (2.82%) Azure DevOps
11 42 (2.63%) OpenShift
12 30 (1.88%) Serverless
13 29 (1.82%) Microsoft Copilot
14 26 (1.63%) OneDrive
15 24 (1.50%) Snowflake
16 22 (1.38%) Power Automate
17 21 (1.32%) Amazon S3
17 21 (1.32%) AWS Lambda
18 20 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
19 19 (1.19%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 83 (5.20%) Network Security
2 47 (2.95%) Firewall
3 33 (2.07%) VPN
4 32 (2.01%) SAN
5 26 (1.63%) DNS
5 26 (1.63%) TCP/IP
6 20 (1.25%) NAS
7 19 (1.19%) DHCP
7 19 (1.19%) WAN
8 17 (1.07%) MPLS
9 14 (0.88%) LAN
9 14 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
10 11 (0.69%) SSL
11 9 (0.56%) HTTP
11 9 (0.56%) VLAN
12 8 (0.50%) Ethernet
12 8 (0.50%) Wireless
13 7 (0.44%) BGP
13 7 (0.44%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.44%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.33%) Power BI
2 40 (2.51%) SQL Server
3 38 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
4 37 (2.32%) Metadata
5 25 (1.57%) Data Warehouse
5 25 (1.57%) Relational Database
6 22 (1.38%) MySQL
7 21 (1.32%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.25%) MongoDB
9 19 (1.19%) Big Data
10 18 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
10 18 (1.13%) NoSQL
11 13 (0.82%) Oracle Database
12 12 (0.75%) DynamoDB
13 11 (0.69%) Tableau
14 10 (0.63%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.63%) RDBMS
15 9 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
16 8 (0.50%) Ingres
16 8 (0.50%) Redis
Development Applications
1 96 (6.02%) JIRA
2 73 (4.58%) Git
3 63 (3.95%) Jenkins
4 37 (2.32%) GitLab
5 9 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
6 8 (0.50%) JUnit
6 8 (0.50%) Postman
6 8 (0.50%) SpecFlow
7 7 (0.44%) Maven
7 7 (0.44%) Oracle Forms
7 7 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.38%) Flyway
9 5 (0.31%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.31%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.31%) ERwin
9 5 (0.31%) Gradle
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 521 (32.66%) Social Skills
2 366 (22.95%) Finance
3 225 (14.11%) Legal
4 181 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
5 153 (9.59%) Public Sector
6 113 (7.08%) Banking
7 66 (4.14%) Documentation Skills
8 61 (3.82%) Organisational Skills
9 38 (2.38%) Telecoms
10 33 (2.07%) Local Government
11 30 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.76%) Retail
13 27 (1.69%) Front Office
13 27 (1.69%) Law
14 24 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
15 23 (1.44%) Marketing
16 20 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
16 20 (1.25%) Police
17 13 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 12 (0.75%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 215 (13.48%) Architect
2 145 (9.09%) Analyst
3 122 (7.65%) Developer
4 118 (7.40%) Lead
5 117 (7.34%) Senior
6 96 (6.02%) Consultant
7 87 (5.45%) Project Manager
8 68 (4.26%) Business Analyst
9 64 (4.01%) Solutions Architect
10 47 (2.95%) Security Architect
11 43 (2.70%) Network Engineer
12 40 (2.51%) Data Engineer
12 40 (2.51%) Java Developer
13 39 (2.45%) Security Engineer
14 31 (1.94%) Administrator
15 27 (1.69%) Data Analyst
16 26 (1.63%) Support Engineer
16 26 (1.63%) Technical Architect
17 24 (1.50%) IT Support
18 23 (1.44%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (4.89%) REST
2 55 (3.45%) React
3 38 (2.38%) Spring
4 34 (2.13%) Spring Boot
5 31 (1.94%) Middleware
6 30 (1.88%) CSS
6 30 (1.88%) HTML
6 30 (1.88%) Kafka
7 28 (1.76%) RESTful
8 26 (1.63%) OAuth
9 25 (1.57%) JSON
10 23 (1.44%) .NET
11 20 (1.25%) Jest
12 19 (1.19%) Node.js
13 18 (1.13%) PySpark
14 17 (1.07%) HTML5
14 17 (1.07%) OpenID
14 17 (1.07%) Redux
14 17 (1.07%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 727 (45.58%) Data Protection Act
2 89 (5.58%) Cloud Native
3 86 (5.39%) Product Ownership
4 72 (4.51%) Onboarding
5 56 (3.51%) Management Information System
6 44 (2.76%) Data Centre
6 44 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
7 40 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
8 35 (2.19%) Security Posture
9 31 (1.94%) Virtual Team
10 25 (1.57%) NHS
11 23 (1.44%) Hybrid Cloud
12 22 (1.38%) Replication
13 21 (1.32%) Operational Technology
14 20 (1.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
15 18 (1.13%) Enterprise Storage
16 17 (1.07%) Data Structures
16 17 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
17 16 (1.00%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 119 (7.46%) Windows
2 78 (4.89%) Linux
3 31 (1.94%) Unix
4 24 (1.50%) Android
4 24 (1.50%) Windows Server
5 23 (1.44%) Apple iOS
6 22 (1.38%) Mac OS
7 18 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.75%) VMS
9 9 (0.56%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.38%) CoreOS
10 6 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.38%) zOS
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
1 307 (19.25%) Agile
2 270 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
3 265 (16.61%) Stakeholder Management
4 245 (15.36%) Continuous Improvement
5 238 (14.92%) Migration
6 219 (13.73%) CI/CD
7 215 (13.48%) DevOps
8 167 (10.47%) AI
9 163 (10.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 144 (9.03%) Roadmaps
11 139 (8.71%) Cybersecurity
12 134 (8.40%) Decision-Making
13 131 (8.21%) Analytics
14 122 (7.65%) Information Security
14 122 (7.65%) Risk Management
15 113 (7.08%) Data Governance
16 110 (6.90%) Validation
17 101 (6.33%) Infrastructure as Code
18 99 (6.21%) Project Management
19 98 (6.14%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 218 (13.67%) Python
2 172 (10.78%) SQL
3 132 (8.28%) Java
4 69 (4.33%) JavaScript
5 53 (3.32%) PowerShell
6 37 (2.32%) Bash
7 35 (2.19%) C#
8 30 (1.88%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.13%) Bicep
10 14 (0.88%) Perl
11 12 (0.75%) Go
12 11 (0.69%) C++
12 11 (0.69%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.63%) Apex Code
13 10 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (0.50%) ActionScript
14 8 (0.50%) VB
15 7 (0.44%) Scala
15 7 (0.44%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.44%) VB6
Qualifications
1 219 (13.73%) Security Cleared
2 162 (10.16%) SC Cleared
3 138 (8.65%) Degree
4 72 (4.51%) CISSP
5 52 (3.26%) DV Cleared
6 39 (2.45%) CISM
7 34 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
7 34 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 31 (1.94%) PMI Certification
9 30 (1.88%) Azure Certification
10 28 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
10 28 (1.76%) PMP
11 22 (1.38%) AWS Certification
11 22 (1.38%) Master's Degree
12 18 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
13 17 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 15 (0.94%) CCSP
15 12 (0.75%) CCNP
15 12 (0.75%) CRISC
16 9 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 252 (15.80%) GDPR
2 94 (5.89%) Data Quality
3 87 (5.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 87 (5.45%) NIST
4 70 (4.39%) QA
5 41 (2.57%) GRC
6 38 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.69%) PCI DSS
8 20 (1.25%) PMO
9 19 (1.19%) SLA
9 19 (1.19%) SOC 2
10 17 (1.07%) NCSC
10 17 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
12 9 (0.56%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
13 8 (0.50%) WCAG
14 6 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 5 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 5 (0.31%) NIST 800
System Software
1 77 (4.83%) Active Directory
2 65 (4.08%) Docker
3 52 (3.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
5 14 (0.88%) NFS
5 14 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
6 12 (0.75%) vSphere
7 10 (0.63%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.50%) 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
1 111 (6.96%) Kubernetes
2 83 (5.20%) Terraform
3 64 (4.01%) Ansible
4 42 (2.63%) Grafana
5 37 (2.32%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (1.88%) NetBackup
7 29 (1.82%) Prometheus
8 18 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (1.07%) SCCM
10 14 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
11 13 (0.82%) Puppet
12 12 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.44%) Kibana
14 6 (0.38%) SnapMirror
15 5 (0.31%) Control-M
15 5 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.25%) CA Single Sign-On
16 4 (0.25%) Foglight
16 4 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 4 (0.25%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 267 (16.74%) Microsoft
2 82 (5.14%) Oracle
3 68 (4.26%) ServiceNow
4 59 (3.70%) Google
5 55 (3.45%) Databricks
6 54 (3.39%) Cisco
7 53 (3.32%) VMware
8 43 (2.70%) SAP
9 33 (2.07%) Splunk
10 32 (2.01%) Red Hat
11 25 (1.57%) Veritas
12 23 (1.44%) Salesforce
13 20 (1.25%) NetApp
14 19 (1.19%) Workday
15 18 (1.13%) Zscaler
16 17 (1.07%) Citrix
17 16 (1.00%) Commvault
18 15 (0.94%) F5
19 14 (0.88%) Informatica
20 13 (0.82%) Dell