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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 87 88
Rank change year-on-year +15 +1 +8
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,577 817 1,039
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.78% 2.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.73% 3.06% 2.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 868 408 545
10th Percentile £300 £261 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £589 £600
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 75 33 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.56 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £22.27 £24.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.12% +16.67% -52.84%
75th Percentile £33.75 £32.50 £27.59
90th Percentile £44.30 £36.90 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.35 £19.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year +9.49% - -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 42,291 26,731 37,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 91.01% 85.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,385 16,984 23,772
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,541 1,182 2,587
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.16
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 1,348 £500 - 369
UK excluding London +19 862 £450 -5.26% 273
London +19 613 £525 +3.45% 141
Work from Home +26 423 £500 +5.26% 224
North of England +1 284 £475 - 71
South East +22 186 £480 -8.57% 78
Yorkshire -7 156 £475 -9.52% 25
Midlands -14 134 £450 -10.00% 52
Scotland 0 130 £425 -5.56% 12
North West +14 120 £488 +9.06% 36
West Midlands -19 92 £474 -9.71% 31
South West +6 66 £410 +2.50% 37
East of England +8 45 £488 -7.14% 24
East Midlands -1 42 £438 +17.06% 21
Wales -7 11 £363 +22.36% 7
Northern Ireland +8 9 £104 -78.86% 1
North East -39 8 £400 -3.03% 10

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 (3.61%) Confluence
2 56 (3.55%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.08%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.51%) Apache
7 6 (0.38%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.32%) Tuxedo
9 4 (0.25%) IIS
9 4 (0.25%) SAS
10 3 (0.19%) Drupal
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%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 45 (2.85%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (2.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.25%) UserZoom
7 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.063%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.063%) Maya
9 1 (0.063%) Trello
9 1 (0.063%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
1 11 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.57%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.32%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.19%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
6 2 (0.13%) Sonata
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 335 (21.24%) Azure
2 263 (16.68%) AWS
3 129 (8.18%) GCP
4 105 (6.66%) Microsoft 365
5 85 (5.39%) Entra ID
6 79 (5.01%) Power Platform
7 67 (4.25%) GitHub
8 62 (3.93%) SaaS
9 49 (3.11%) Microsoft Purview
10 45 (2.85%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.73%) OpenShift
12 34 (2.16%) Serverless
13 28 (1.78%) Microsoft Copilot
14 25 (1.59%) OneDrive
15 24 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
16 23 (1.46%) Snowflake
17 22 (1.40%) Power Automate
18 21 (1.33%) Amazon S3
18 21 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
19 20 (1.27%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 79 (5.01%) Network Security
2 47 (2.98%) Firewall
3 33 (2.09%) SAN
4 30 (1.90%) VPN
5 27 (1.71%) DNS
6 26 (1.65%) TCP/IP
7 21 (1.33%) NAS
8 20 (1.27%) WAN
9 19 (1.20%) DHCP
10 17 (1.08%) MPLS
11 15 (0.95%) LAN
12 13 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
13 9 (0.57%) HTTP
13 9 (0.57%) SSL
13 9 (0.57%) VLAN
14 8 (0.51%) Wireless
15 7 (0.44%) BGP
15 7 (0.44%) Cisco Nexus
15 7 (0.44%) Ethernet
15 7 (0.44%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (4.06%) Power BI
2 39 (2.47%) SQL Server
3 38 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
4 37 (2.35%) Metadata
5 26 (1.65%) Data Warehouse
6 24 (1.52%) MySQL
6 24 (1.52%) Relational Database
7 22 (1.40%) MongoDB
8 21 (1.33%) Data Lake
9 20 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
10 19 (1.20%) Big Data
10 19 (1.20%) NoSQL
11 13 (0.82%) DynamoDB
12 12 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 11 (0.70%) Tableau
14 10 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.57%) BigQuery
15 9 (0.57%) RDBMS
16 8 (0.51%) Ingres
16 8 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 97 (6.15%) JIRA
2 75 (4.76%) Git
3 63 (3.99%) Jenkins
4 39 (2.47%) GitLab
5 9 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
6 8 (0.51%) JUnit
6 8 (0.51%) Postman
6 8 (0.51%) SpecFlow
7 7 (0.44%) Oracle Forms
7 7 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.38%) Flyway
8 6 (0.38%) Maven
9 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.32%) ERwin
9 5 (0.32%) Gradle
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
General
1 512 (32.47%) Social Skills
2 362 (22.95%) Finance
3 212 (13.44%) Legal
4 176 (11.16%) Analytical Skills
5 151 (9.58%) Public Sector
6 118 (7.48%) Banking
7 66 (4.19%) Documentation Skills
8 58 (3.68%) Organisational Skills
9 38 (2.41%) Telecoms
10 30 (1.90%) Front Office
10 30 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
10 30 (1.90%) Local Government
11 29 (1.84%) Law
12 28 (1.78%) Retail
13 26 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.59%) Marketing
15 20 (1.27%) Police
16 19 (1.20%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.76%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 214 (13.57%) Architect
2 145 (9.19%) Analyst
3 126 (7.99%) Developer
4 116 (7.36%) Lead
5 115 (7.29%) Senior
6 93 (5.90%) Consultant
7 85 (5.39%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.44%) Business Analyst
9 61 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
10 45 (2.85%) Security Architect
11 42 (2.66%) Java Developer
11 42 (2.66%) Network Engineer
12 39 (2.47%) Security Engineer
13 38 (2.41%) Data Engineer
14 33 (2.09%) Administrator
15 27 (1.71%) Support Engineer
15 27 (1.71%) Technical Architect
16 25 (1.59%) Data Analyst
17 24 (1.52%) IT Support
18 23 (1.46%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (5.01%) REST
2 56 (3.55%) React
3 39 (2.47%) Spring
4 35 (2.22%) Spring Boot
5 31 (1.97%) HTML
5 31 (1.97%) Kafka
5 31 (1.97%) Middleware
6 30 (1.90%) CSS
6 30 (1.90%) RESTful
7 26 (1.65%) JSON
7 26 (1.65%) OAuth
8 25 (1.59%) .NET
9 21 (1.33%) Node.js
10 20 (1.27%) Jest
11 18 (1.14%) HTML5
11 18 (1.14%) PySpark
12 17 (1.08%) OpenID
12 17 (1.08%) Redux
12 17 (1.08%) Spring MVC
13 16 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 725 (45.97%) Data Protection Act
2 90 (5.71%) Cloud Native
3 78 (4.95%) Product Ownership
4 74 (4.69%) Onboarding
5 54 (3.42%) Management Information System
6 43 (2.73%) Data Centre
7 42 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
8 40 (2.54%) Distributed Systems
9 32 (2.03%) Security Posture
10 29 (1.84%) Virtual Team
11 27 (1.71%) NHS
12 23 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
13 21 (1.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.33%) Replication
13 21 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.20%) Operational Technology
15 18 (1.14%) Enterprise Storage
16 16 (1.01%) Data Structures
16 16 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
16 16 (1.01%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 121 (7.67%) Windows
2 79 (5.01%) Linux
3 34 (2.16%) Unix
4 24 (1.52%) Android
4 24 (1.52%) Apple iOS
4 24 (1.52%) Mac OS
4 24 (1.52%) Windows Server
5 17 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (0.76%) VMS
6 12 (0.76%) Windows 10
7 7 (0.44%) zOS
8 6 (0.38%) CoreOS
8 6 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.13%) Rocky
9 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.063%) CentOS
10 1 (0.063%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.063%) Solaris
10 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 301 (19.09%) Agile
2 270 (17.12%) Problem-Solving
3 257 (16.30%) Stakeholder Management
4 241 (15.28%) Migration
5 238 (15.09%) Continuous Improvement
6 224 (14.20%) CI/CD
7 216 (13.70%) DevOps
8 165 (10.46%) AI
9 155 (9.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 141 (8.94%) Cybersecurity
11 137 (8.69%) Roadmaps
12 136 (8.62%) Analytics
13 131 (8.31%) Decision-Making
14 121 (7.67%) Risk Management
15 117 (7.42%) Information Security
16 109 (6.91%) Validation
17 106 (6.72%) Data Governance
18 104 (6.59%) Infrastructure as Code
19 99 (6.28%) Test Automation
20 98 (6.21%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 219 (13.89%) Python
2 173 (10.97%) SQL
3 137 (8.69%) Java
4 71 (4.50%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.49%) PowerShell
6 40 (2.54%) Bash
7 37 (2.35%) C#
8 30 (1.90%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.14%) Bicep
10 15 (0.95%) Perl
11 14 (0.89%) C++
12 12 (0.76%) Go
13 11 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.63%) Apex Code
14 10 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 9 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.51%) ActionScript
16 8 (0.51%) VB
17 7 (0.44%) PL/SQL
17 7 (0.44%) Scala
Qualifications
1 215 (13.63%) Security Cleared
2 159 (10.08%) SC Cleared
3 139 (8.81%) Degree
4 73 (4.63%) CISSP
5 50 (3.17%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.54%) CISM
7 34 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 32 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
9 30 (1.90%) PMI Certification
10 29 (1.84%) Azure Certification
11 26 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
11 26 (1.65%) PMP
12 22 (1.40%) AWS Certification
12 22 (1.40%) Master's Degree
13 18 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
14 17 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 15 (0.95%) CCSP
16 12 (0.76%) CRISC
17 10 (0.63%) CCNP
18 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (15.92%) GDPR
2 92 (5.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (5.64%) NIST
4 87 (5.52%) Data Quality
5 71 (4.50%) QA
6 40 (2.54%) GRC
7 39 (2.47%) Accessibility
8 26 (1.65%) PCI DSS
9 21 (1.33%) PMO
10 20 (1.27%) SOC 2
11 19 (1.20%) SLA
12 17 (1.08%) NCSC
13 14 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
14 10 (0.63%) WCAG
15 8 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
15 8 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
15 8 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 6 (0.38%) COBIT
17 5 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 78 (4.95%) Active Directory
2 66 (4.19%) Docker
3 55 (3.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
5 14 (0.89%) NFS
6 13 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.76%) vSphere
8 10 (0.63%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.44%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.38%) 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 (0.13%) GPFS
14 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.063%) iptables
Systems Management
1 113 (7.17%) Kubernetes
2 86 (5.45%) Terraform
3 67 (4.25%) Ansible
4 46 (2.92%) Grafana
5 42 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (1.97%) NetBackup
6 31 (1.97%) Prometheus
7 20 (1.27%) SCCM
7 20 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
9 13 (0.82%) Puppet
10 12 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.44%) Kibana
12 6 (0.38%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.32%) Control-M
13 5 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.25%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.25%) Foglight
14 4 (0.25%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 260 (16.49%) Microsoft
2 81 (5.14%) Oracle
3 67 (4.25%) ServiceNow
4 61 (3.87%) Google
5 56 (3.55%) VMware
6 54 (3.42%) Databricks
7 52 (3.30%) Cisco
8 41 (2.60%) SAP
9 34 (2.16%) Splunk
10 31 (1.97%) Red Hat
11 26 (1.65%) Veritas
12 25 (1.59%) Salesforce
13 21 (1.33%) Citrix
14 20 (1.27%) NetApp
15 17 (1.08%) Workday
15 17 (1.08%) Zscaler
16 15 (0.95%) Commvault
16 15 (0.95%) F5
17 14 (0.89%) Informatica
18 13 (0.82%) Dell