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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 86 90
Rank change year-on-year +14 +4 0
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,602 846 1,041
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 2.82% 2.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.71% 3.09% 2.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 877 408 545
10th Percentile £294 £261 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £588
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £453
% change year-on-year -4.26% +3.87% -4.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 33 106
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.38
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.35 £19.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.37% -2.56% -46.24%
75th Percentile £33.53 £31.76 £27.76
90th Percentile £37.55 £36.08 £43.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.25 £15.25 £19.50
% change year-on-year +39.34% -21.79% -35.00%

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 43,234 27,342 36,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 91.04% 85.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,976 17,315 23,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -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 2,595 1,301 2,587
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.79 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.47% -34.22% +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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +15 1,362 £498 +2.50% 279
UK excluding London +14 884 £450 -4.26% 239
London +15 608 £525 +5.00% 88
Work from Home +21 445 £500 +5.26% 120
North of England +6 300 £475 - 74
South East +25 190 £475 -9.52% 60
Yorkshire -7 166 £475 -7.32% 26
Midlands -8 137 £450 -10.00% 50
Scotland +1 131 £425 - 5
North West +19 126 £489 +13.33% 35
West Midlands -25 94 £473 -9.90% 29
South West +1 68 £425 +6.25% 32
East of England +5 44 £488 -7.14% 16
East Midlands +8 43 £438 +17.06% 21
Wales -8 12 £375 +26.58% 9
North East -46 10 £450 +14.29% 14
Northern Ireland +3 9 £104 -78.86% 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 58 (3.62%) SharePoint
2 57 (3.56%) Confluence
3 26 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.06%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.50%) Apache
7 6 (0.37%) 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 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.12%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.12%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 45 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.25%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.25%) UserZoom
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.062%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.062%) Maya
7 1 (0.062%) Trello
7 1 (0.062%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 12 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.50%) Aladdin
4 6 (0.37%) NEC Housing
4 6 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.31%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 3 (0.19%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
7 3 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
8 2 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle FAH
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.12%) R3 Corda
8 2 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.12%) Sonata
Cloud Services
1 341 (21.29%) Azure
2 260 (16.23%) AWS
3 127 (7.93%) GCP
4 108 (6.74%) Microsoft 365
5 85 (5.31%) Entra ID
5 85 (5.31%) Power Platform
6 66 (4.12%) SaaS
7 64 (4.00%) GitHub
8 52 (3.25%) Microsoft Purview
9 46 (2.87%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (2.62%) OpenShift
11 31 (1.94%) Serverless
12 29 (1.81%) Microsoft Copilot
13 26 (1.62%) OneDrive
14 22 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
14 22 (1.37%) Power Automate
14 22 (1.37%) Snowflake
15 21 (1.31%) Amazon S3
16 20 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
17 19 (1.19%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 83 (5.18%) Network Security
2 49 (3.06%) Firewall
3 34 (2.12%) VPN
4 32 (2.00%) SAN
5 26 (1.62%) DNS
6 25 (1.56%) TCP/IP
7 20 (1.25%) DHCP
7 20 (1.25%) NAS
7 20 (1.25%) WAN
8 17 (1.06%) MPLS
9 15 (0.94%) LAN
10 14 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.69%) SSL
12 9 (0.56%) HTTP
12 9 (0.56%) VLAN
12 9 (0.56%) Wireless
13 8 (0.50%) Ethernet
14 7 (0.44%) BGP
14 7 (0.44%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.44%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.31%) Power BI
2 41 (2.56%) SQL Server
3 37 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
4 35 (2.18%) Metadata
5 25 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
5 25 (1.56%) Relational Database
6 21 (1.31%) Data Lake
6 21 (1.31%) MySQL
7 19 (1.19%) Big Data
7 19 (1.19%) MongoDB
8 18 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 18 (1.12%) NoSQL
9 13 (0.81%) Oracle Database
10 12 (0.75%) DynamoDB
11 11 (0.69%) Tableau
12 10 (0.62%) BigQuery
12 10 (0.62%) RDBMS
13 9 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
14 8 (0.50%) Ingres
14 8 (0.50%) Redis
Development Applications
1 97 (6.05%) JIRA
2 70 (4.37%) Git
3 58 (3.62%) Jenkins
4 37 (2.31%) GitLab
5 9 (0.56%) JUnit
5 9 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
6 8 (0.50%) Maven
6 8 (0.50%) Postman
7 7 (0.44%) Oracle Forms
7 7 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.44%) SpecFlow
8 6 (0.37%) Flyway
8 6 (0.37%) Gradle
9 5 (0.31%) ERwin
10 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.25%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 529 (33.02%) Social Skills
2 361 (22.53%) Finance
3 230 (14.36%) Legal
4 182 (11.36%) Analytical Skills
5 152 (9.49%) Public Sector
6 111 (6.93%) Banking
7 66 (4.12%) Documentation Skills
8 63 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
9 36 (2.25%) Telecoms
10 35 (2.18%) Local Government
11 31 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
12 27 (1.69%) Retail
13 26 (1.62%) Front Office
13 26 (1.62%) Law
14 25 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
15 22 (1.37%) Marketing
16 20 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
16 20 (1.25%) Police
17 14 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 12 (0.75%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 216 (13.48%) Architect
2 149 (9.30%) Analyst
3 122 (7.62%) Lead
4 118 (7.37%) Developer
5 115 (7.18%) Senior
6 96 (5.99%) Consultant
7 84 (5.24%) Project Manager
8 69 (4.31%) Business Analyst
9 63 (3.93%) Solutions Architect
10 47 (2.93%) Security Architect
11 43 (2.68%) Network Engineer
12 41 (2.56%) Data Engineer
13 40 (2.50%) Security Engineer
14 39 (2.43%) Java Developer
15 31 (1.94%) Administrator
16 27 (1.69%) Data Analyst
16 27 (1.69%) Support Engineer
17 26 (1.62%) Technical Architect
18 25 (1.56%) IT Support
19 22 (1.37%) Data Protection Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (4.81%) REST
2 55 (3.43%) React
3 38 (2.37%) Spring
4 34 (2.12%) Spring Boot
5 32 (2.00%) Middleware
6 31 (1.94%) Kafka
7 30 (1.87%) CSS
7 30 (1.87%) HTML
7 30 (1.87%) RESTful
8 26 (1.62%) JSON
8 26 (1.62%) OAuth
9 23 (1.44%) .NET
10 20 (1.25%) Jest
11 19 (1.19%) Node.js
12 18 (1.12%) PySpark
13 17 (1.06%) HTML5
13 17 (1.06%) OpenID
13 17 (1.06%) Redux
14 16 (1.00%) CSS3
14 16 (1.00%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 724 (45.19%) Data Protection Act
2 88 (5.49%) Cloud Native
2 88 (5.49%) Product Ownership
3 71 (4.43%) Onboarding
4 57 (3.56%) Management Information System
5 44 (2.75%) Data Centre
6 43 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
7 42 (2.62%) Distributed Systems
8 37 (2.31%) Security Posture
9 32 (2.00%) Virtual Team
10 25 (1.56%) NHS
11 22 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
11 22 (1.37%) Replication
12 21 (1.31%) Operational Technology
12 21 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
13 18 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
13 18 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
14 17 (1.06%) Data Structures
15 16 (1.00%) Freedom of Information
15 16 (1.00%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 120 (7.49%) Windows
2 77 (4.81%) Linux
3 28 (1.75%) Unix
4 25 (1.56%) Android
4 25 (1.56%) Windows Server
5 24 (1.50%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.31%) Mac OS
7 18 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.75%) VMS
9 11 (0.69%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.37%) CoreOS
10 6 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.37%) zOS
11 2 (0.12%) Rocky
11 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.062%) CentOS
12 1 (0.062%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.062%) Solaris
12 1 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 309 (19.29%) Agile
2 280 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
3 270 (16.85%) Stakeholder Management
4 248 (15.48%) Continuous Improvement
5 241 (15.04%) Migration
6 216 (13.48%) CI/CD
7 213 (13.30%) DevOps
8 167 (10.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 165 (10.30%) AI
10 145 (9.05%) Roadmaps
11 142 (8.86%) Cybersecurity
12 136 (8.49%) Decision-Making
13 130 (8.11%) Analytics
14 126 (7.87%) Information Security
15 121 (7.55%) Risk Management
16 113 (7.05%) Data Governance
17 110 (6.87%) Validation
18 103 (6.43%) Infrastructure as Code
19 99 (6.18%) Project Management
20 97 (6.05%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 216 (13.48%) Python
2 168 (10.49%) SQL
3 126 (7.87%) Java
4 66 (4.12%) JavaScript
5 52 (3.25%) PowerShell
6 39 (2.43%) Bash
7 29 (1.81%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.69%) C#
9 18 (1.12%) Bicep
10 13 (0.81%) Go
11 12 (0.75%) Kotlin
12 11 (0.69%) Perl
13 10 (0.62%) Apex Code
13 10 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (0.50%) VB
15 7 (0.44%) C++
15 7 (0.44%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.44%) Scala
15 7 (0.44%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.44%) VB6
Qualifications
1 226 (14.11%) Security Cleared
2 168 (10.49%) SC Cleared
3 136 (8.49%) Degree
4 72 (4.49%) CISSP
5 56 (3.50%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.37%) CISM
7 34 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
7 34 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.87%) Azure Certification
8 30 (1.87%) PMI Certification
9 29 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.69%) PMP
11 22 (1.37%) AWS Certification
12 20 (1.25%) Master's Degree
13 19 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
14 17 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 15 (0.94%) CCSP
16 12 (0.75%) CCNP
17 11 (0.69%) CRISC
18 9 (0.56%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (15.61%) GDPR
2 96 (5.99%) Data Quality
3 86 (5.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 86 (5.37%) NIST
4 71 (4.43%) QA
5 43 (2.68%) GRC
6 40 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 26 (1.62%) PCI DSS
8 22 (1.37%) PMO
9 19 (1.19%) SOC 2
10 18 (1.12%) NCSC
10 18 (1.12%) SLA
11 17 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
13 9 (0.56%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
14 8 (0.50%) WCAG
15 6 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
16 5 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 5 (0.31%) NIST 800
System Software
1 79 (4.93%) Active Directory
2 66 (4.12%) Docker
3 54 (3.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (0.94%) NFS
6 14 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.75%) vSphere
8 10 (0.62%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.44%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.37%) KVM
12 4 (0.25%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.19%) IAG
13 3 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.19%) XenApp
13 3 (0.19%) XenDesktop
14 2 (0.12%) GPFS
14 2 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.062%) iptables
Systems Management
1 109 (6.80%) Kubernetes
2 86 (5.37%) Terraform
3 58 (3.62%) Ansible
4 40 (2.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 37 (2.31%) Grafana
6 28 (1.75%) NetBackup
7 26 (1.62%) Prometheus
8 21 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (1.19%) SCCM
10 14 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
10 14 (0.87%) Puppet
11 12 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.44%) Kibana
13 6 (0.37%) SnapMirror
14 5 (0.31%) CA Single Sign-On
14 5 (0.31%) Control-M
14 5 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.25%) Foglight
15 4 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 273 (17.04%) Microsoft
2 78 (4.87%) Oracle
3 73 (4.56%) ServiceNow
4 58 (3.62%) Google
5 55 (3.43%) Cisco
5 55 (3.43%) VMware
6 54 (3.37%) Databricks
7 40 (2.50%) SAP
8 33 (2.06%) Splunk
9 32 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 24 (1.50%) Salesforce
11 23 (1.44%) Veritas
12 21 (1.31%) Workday
13 20 (1.25%) NetApp
14 19 (1.19%) Zscaler
15 16 (1.00%) Commvault
16 15 (0.94%) F5
17 14 (0.87%) Citrix
17 14 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 14 (0.87%) IBM