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 15 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 91 84
Rank change year-on-year +21 -7 +12
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,513 797 1,080
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.17% 2.74% 2.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.76% 3.01% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 836 400 584
10th Percentile £300 £257 £235
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.56% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £583 £602
90th Percentile £700 £691 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 31 108
10th Percentile £14.49 £16.25 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.53 £27.64 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.10% +31.62% -60.00%
75th Percentile £33.26 £32.95 £27.59
90th Percentile £48.75 £37.00 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.76 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.70% +49.31% -56.21%

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 40,228 26,443 36,791
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.98% 86.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,265 17,000 23,677
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,081 2,436
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.83% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.31 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 +21 1,302 £494 -1.20% 415
UK excluding London +8 818 £450 -5.26% 283
London +26 595 £525 +5.00% 181
Work from Home +20 388 £500 +2.30% 145
North of England -5 266 £484 +1.79% 72
South East +14 180 £475 -5.00% 75
Yorkshire -5 156 £480 -7.47% 31
Midlands +1 132 £450 -10.00% 58
Scotland +5 118 £425 -8.60% 20
North West +7 102 £495 +20.00% 29
West Midlands -14 86 £468 -9.88% 39
South West 0 62 £410 +2.50% 29
East of England -1 48 £475 -11.63% 22
East Midlands +6 46 £437 +5.37% 19
Wales +1 11 £375 -9.09% 7
North East -33 9 £400 -4.48% 13
Northern Ireland -1 3 £389 -21.04% 3

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 56 (3.70%) Confluence
2 46 (3.04%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.99%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.46%) Apache
7 6 (0.40%) CMS
8 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.33%) SAS
9 3 (0.20%) Drupal
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) Ethereum
10 2 (0.13%) Hyperledger
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) NetWeaver
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 48 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
2 46 (3.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.20%) UserZoom
7 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.066%) Blender
8 1 (0.066%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.066%) Maya
8 1 (0.066%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.066%) Trello
8 1 (0.066%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 12 (0.79%) Aladdin
2 11 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
4 5 (0.33%) SAP GRC
5 4 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.26%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.20%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
7 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 1 (0.066%) Odoo
8 1 (0.066%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 305 (20.16%) Azure
2 250 (16.52%) AWS
3 129 (8.53%) GCP
4 91 (6.01%) Microsoft 365
5 85 (5.62%) Power Platform
6 78 (5.16%) Entra ID
7 69 (4.56%) GitHub
8 61 (4.03%) SaaS
9 49 (3.24%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.04%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.84%) OpenShift
12 42 (2.78%) Serverless
13 29 (1.92%) Amazon S3
13 29 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
14 26 (1.72%) Microsoft Copilot
15 25 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
16 24 (1.59%) Amazon ECS
16 24 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
17 23 (1.52%) Snowflake
18 22 (1.45%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 61 (4.03%) Network Security
2 41 (2.71%) Firewall
3 36 (2.38%) SAN
4 26 (1.72%) VPN
5 24 (1.59%) NAS
6 21 (1.39%) DNS
7 19 (1.26%) MPLS
7 19 (1.26%) TCP/IP
7 19 (1.26%) WAN
8 17 (1.12%) LAN
9 13 (0.86%) DHCP
9 13 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
10 11 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
11 9 (0.59%) iSCSI
11 9 (0.59%) VLAN
12 7 (0.46%) BGP
12 7 (0.46%) Cisco Nexus
12 7 (0.46%) Ethernet
12 7 (0.46%) HTTP
12 7 (0.46%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (4.69%) Power BI
2 38 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 32 (2.12%) Metadata
3 32 (2.12%) SQL Server
4 31 (2.05%) Data Warehouse
5 28 (1.85%) MySQL
6 26 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 23 (1.52%) MongoDB
8 20 (1.32%) Big Data
9 19 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
10 18 (1.19%) NoSQL
11 17 (1.12%) Data Lake
12 13 (0.86%) DynamoDB
12 13 (0.86%) Oracle Database
12 13 (0.86%) Tableau
13 12 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (0.66%) Amazon Aurora
14 10 (0.66%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 92 (6.08%) JIRA
2 69 (4.56%) Git
3 66 (4.36%) Jenkins
4 38 (2.51%) GitLab
5 12 (0.79%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.66%) JUnit
7 8 (0.53%) Postman
7 8 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.40%) Maven
8 6 (0.40%) NUnit
9 5 (0.33%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.33%) Flyway
9 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (0.26%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.26%) Gradle
10 4 (0.26%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) ERwin
11 3 (0.20%) Liquibase
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 462 (30.54%) Social Skills
2 347 (22.93%) Finance
3 188 (12.43%) Legal
4 171 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
5 131 (8.66%) Public Sector
6 119 (7.87%) Banking
7 61 (4.03%) Organisational Skills
8 59 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
9 41 (2.71%) Telecoms
10 31 (2.05%) Front Office
10 31 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (1.85%) Local Government
12 27 (1.78%) Presentation Skills
13 25 (1.65%) Marketing
14 24 (1.59%) Law
14 24 (1.59%) Retail
15 19 (1.26%) Police
16 13 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 10 (0.66%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 197 (13.02%) Architect
2 143 (9.45%) Analyst
3 132 (8.72%) Developer
4 114 (7.53%) Senior
5 112 (7.40%) Lead
6 94 (6.21%) Consultant
7 80 (5.29%) Project Manager
8 69 (4.56%) Business Analyst
9 55 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.84%) Java Developer
10 43 (2.84%) Security Architect
11 39 (2.58%) Network Engineer
11 39 (2.58%) Security Engineer
12 38 (2.51%) Data Engineer
13 35 (2.31%) Administrator
14 28 (1.85%) Technical Architect
15 27 (1.78%) Data Analyst
16 23 (1.52%) Support Engineer
17 22 (1.45%) Python Developer
18 20 (1.32%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (4.96%) REST
2 60 (3.97%) React
3 40 (2.64%) Spring
4 36 (2.38%) Spring Boot
5 35 (2.31%) .NET
6 34 (2.25%) Kafka
7 32 (2.12%) RESTful
8 31 (2.05%) HTML
8 31 (2.05%) Middleware
9 30 (1.98%) CSS
10 28 (1.85%) Node.js
10 28 (1.85%) OAuth
11 24 (1.59%) JSON
12 22 (1.45%) Jest
13 18 (1.19%) HTML5
13 18 (1.19%) OAuth2
13 18 (1.19%) Redux
14 17 (1.12%) Playwright
14 17 (1.12%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.06%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 721 (47.65%) Data Protection Act
2 94 (6.21%) Cloud Native
3 72 (4.76%) Product Ownership
4 64 (4.23%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.37%) Management Information System
6 45 (2.97%) Distributed Systems
7 36 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 34 (2.25%) Data Centre
9 30 (1.98%) Security Posture
10 29 (1.92%) Replication
11 28 (1.85%) NHS
12 25 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
12 25 (1.65%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.52%) Enterprise Storage
13 23 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
14 21 (1.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 19 (1.26%) Freedom of Information
16 17 (1.12%) Derivative
17 16 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
17 16 (1.06%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 102 (6.74%) Windows
2 77 (5.09%) Linux
3 29 (1.92%) Unix
4 22 (1.45%) Windows Server
5 20 (1.32%) Android
6 19 (1.26%) Apple iOS
7 18 (1.19%) Mac OS
8 17 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 13 (0.86%) VMS
9 13 (0.86%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.59%) zOS
11 7 (0.46%) Data ONTAP
12 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
13 2 (0.13%) Rocky
13 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.066%) CentOS
14 1 (0.066%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.066%) Solaris
14 1 (0.066%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.066%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 292 (19.30%) Agile
2 256 (16.92%) Stakeholder Management
3 249 (16.46%) Problem-Solving
4 232 (15.33%) Migration
5 221 (14.61%) CI/CD
6 216 (14.28%) DevOps
7 212 (14.01%) Continuous Improvement
8 144 (9.52%) AI
9 138 (9.12%) Analytics
10 134 (8.86%) Roadmaps
11 129 (8.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 124 (8.20%) Decision-Making
13 117 (7.73%) Cybersecurity
14 116 (7.67%) Risk Management
15 109 (7.20%) Information Security
15 109 (7.20%) Infrastructure as Code
16 102 (6.74%) Test Automation
17 98 (6.48%) Data Governance
18 97 (6.41%) Microservices
19 96 (6.35%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 214 (14.14%) Python
2 174 (11.50%) SQL
3 129 (8.53%) Java
4 79 (5.22%) JavaScript
5 57 (3.77%) PowerShell
6 48 (3.17%) C#
7 40 (2.64%) Bash
8 35 (2.31%) TypeScript
9 20 (1.32%) Bicep
10 15 (0.99%) C++
11 11 (0.73%) Perl
12 10 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
13 9 (0.59%) Go
13 9 (0.59%) Kotlin
13 9 (0.59%) PL/SQL
13 9 (0.59%) Scala
13 9 (0.59%) Shell Script
14 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
15 7 (0.46%) R
16 6 (0.40%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 206 (13.62%) Security Cleared
2 150 (9.91%) SC Cleared
3 125 (8.26%) Degree
4 63 (4.16%) CISSP
5 53 (3.50%) DV Cleared
6 34 (2.25%) CISM
7 32 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (1.92%) PMI Certification
10 28 (1.85%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
11 27 (1.78%) PMP
12 21 (1.39%) AWS Certification
12 21 (1.39%) Master's Degree
13 19 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
14 16 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.93%) CCSP
16 11 (0.73%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.66%) CCNP
18 9 (0.59%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (15.99%) GDPR
2 90 (5.95%) NIST
3 89 (5.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 71 (4.69%) Data Quality
5 67 (4.43%) QA
6 36 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 33 (2.18%) GRC
8 24 (1.59%) PCI DSS
9 21 (1.39%) PMO
10 20 (1.32%) SLA
11 19 (1.26%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.06%) NCSC
13 11 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.66%) WCAG
15 9 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
16 8 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
17 7 (0.46%) PERC
18 6 (0.40%) COBIT
18 6 (0.40%) HIPAA
19 5 (0.33%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 75 (4.96%) Docker
2 74 (4.89%) Active Directory
3 52 (3.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.32%) NFS
5 17 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.73%) vSphere
8 9 (0.59%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.40%) KVM
11 4 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.26%) 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 (0.066%) iptables
Systems Management
1 114 (7.53%) Kubernetes
2 97 (6.41%) Terraform
3 66 (4.36%) Ansible
4 49 (3.24%) Grafana
5 36 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (2.05%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.78%) NetBackup
8 21 (1.39%) SCCM
9 20 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.86%) Puppet
11 11 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 7 (0.46%) Kibana
12 7 (0.46%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
13 5 (0.33%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 4 (0.26%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.26%) Control-M
14 4 (0.26%) Foglight
14 4 (0.26%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 241 (15.93%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.96%) Oracle
3 63 (4.16%) Google
4 55 (3.64%) ServiceNow
5 53 (3.50%) Databricks
5 53 (3.50%) VMware
6 48 (3.17%) Cisco
7 41 (2.71%) SAP
8 31 (2.05%) Red Hat
9 28 (1.85%) Splunk
10 26 (1.72%) NetApp
11 23 (1.52%) IBM
12 22 (1.45%) Veritas
13 21 (1.39%) Salesforce
14 20 (1.32%) Citrix
15 16 (1.06%) Commvault
15 16 (1.06%) Workday
16 15 (0.99%) F5
17 14 (0.93%) Dell
17 14 (0.93%) Informatica