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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 86 91
Rank change year-on-year +11 +5 +4
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,600 842 1,041
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.82% 2.37%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.72% 3.10% 2.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 879 407 543
10th Percentile £300 £260 £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 £680 £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 77 33 107
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.40
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.72 £19.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -2.56% -56.21%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.76 £27.67
90th Percentile £37.85 £36.08 £43.75
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 42,996 27,186 37,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.90% 91.05% 84.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,808 17,251 23,716
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.19% -4.48% -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 2,575 1,262 2,618
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.73
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.82 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +72.39% -32.00% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +14 1,358 £496 +1.98% 318
UK excluding London +12 883 £450 -4.26% 251
London +19 609 £525 +5.00% 122
Work from Home +29 436 £500 +5.26% 138
North of England +7 299 £475 - 66
South East +22 190 £475 -9.52% 68
Yorkshire -9 168 £475 -7.32% 22
Scotland +1 135 £425 - 7
Midlands -16 133 £450 -10.00% 44
North West +21 123 £489 +10.51% 34
West Midlands -25 92 £473 -9.90% 26
South West +2 67 £425 +6.25% 41
East of England -2 43 £500 -4.76% 18
East Midlands +6 41 £438 +17.06% 18
Wales -9 12 £375 +26.58% 9
North East -46 10 £450 +14.29% 10
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 58 (3.63%) SharePoint
2 57 (3.56%) Confluence
3 27 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.06%) 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 45 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.88%) 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 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.063%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.063%) Maya
7 1 (0.063%) Trello
7 1 (0.063%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 10 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.56%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
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%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) Sonata
7 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 339 (21.19%) Azure
2 257 (16.06%) AWS
3 128 (8.00%) GCP
4 106 (6.63%) Microsoft 365
5 85 (5.31%) Entra ID
6 84 (5.25%) Power Platform
7 65 (4.06%) GitHub
7 65 (4.06%) SaaS
8 53 (3.31%) Microsoft Purview
9 44 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (2.63%) OpenShift
11 30 (1.88%) Serverless
12 28 (1.75%) Microsoft Copilot
13 26 (1.63%) OneDrive
14 23 (1.44%) Snowflake
15 21 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 21 (1.31%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (1.31%) Power Automate
16 20 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
17 18 (1.13%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 83 (5.19%) Network Security
2 50 (3.13%) Firewall
3 34 (2.13%) VPN
4 32 (2.00%) SAN
5 27 (1.69%) DNS
5 27 (1.69%) TCP/IP
6 20 (1.25%) NAS
6 20 (1.25%) WAN
7 19 (1.19%) DHCP
8 17 (1.06%) MPLS
9 15 (0.94%) LAN
9 15 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
10 11 (0.69%) SSL
11 9 (0.56%) HTTP
11 9 (0.56%) VLAN
11 9 (0.56%) Wireless
12 8 (0.50%) Ethernet
13 7 (0.44%) BGP
13 7 (0.44%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.44%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (4.25%) Power BI
2 40 (2.50%) SQL Server
3 38 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
4 35 (2.19%) Metadata
5 25 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
5 25 (1.56%) Relational Database
6 22 (1.38%) MySQL
7 21 (1.31%) 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 (0.81%) 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%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 97 (6.06%) JIRA
2 73 (4.56%) Git
3 62 (3.88%) Jenkins
4 37 (2.31%) 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%) ERwin
9 5 (0.31%) Gradle
10 4 (0.25%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 526 (32.88%) Social Skills
2 365 (22.81%) Finance
3 228 (14.25%) Legal
4 181 (11.31%) Analytical Skills
5 153 (9.56%) Public Sector
6 115 (7.19%) Banking
7 65 (4.06%) Documentation Skills
8 62 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
9 36 (2.25%) Telecoms
10 33 (2.06%) Local Government
11 30 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.75%) Retail
13 27 (1.69%) Law
14 26 (1.63%) Front Office
15 24 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
16 22 (1.38%) Marketing
17 20 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
17 20 (1.25%) Police
18 13 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 12 (0.75%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 216 (13.50%) Architect
2 150 (9.38%) Analyst
3 120 (7.50%) Developer
4 118 (7.38%) Lead
5 117 (7.31%) Senior
6 96 (6.00%) Consultant
7 86 (5.38%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.38%) Business Analyst
9 64 (4.00%) Solutions Architect
10 47 (2.94%) Security Architect
11 43 (2.69%) Network Engineer
12 41 (2.56%) Data Engineer
13 40 (2.50%) Security Engineer
14 39 (2.44%) Java Developer
15 31 (1.94%) Administrator
16 27 (1.69%) Data Analyst
17 26 (1.63%) Support Engineer
17 26 (1.63%) Technical Architect
18 25 (1.56%) IT Support
19 23 (1.44%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (4.88%) REST
2 55 (3.44%) 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 29 (1.81%) RESTful
8 26 (1.63%) JSON
8 26 (1.63%) OAuth
9 23 (1.44%) .NET
10 20 (1.25%) Jest
11 19 (1.19%) Node.js
12 18 (1.13%) PySpark
13 17 (1.06%) HTML5
13 17 (1.06%) OpenID
13 17 (1.06%) Redux
13 17 (1.06%) Spring MVC
14 16 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 728 (45.50%) Data Protection Act
2 89 (5.56%) Cloud Native
3 88 (5.50%) Product Ownership
4 74 (4.63%) Onboarding
5 57 (3.56%) Management Information System
6 44 (2.75%) Data Centre
6 44 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
7 40 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
8 36 (2.25%) Security Posture
9 31 (1.94%) Virtual Team
10 25 (1.56%) NHS
11 22 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
11 22 (1.38%) Replication
12 21 (1.31%) Operational Technology
12 21 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
13 18 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
13 18 (1.13%) Enterprise Storage
14 17 (1.06%) Data Structures
14 17 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 16 (1.00%) Freedom of Information
Operating Systems
1 122 (7.63%) Windows
2 78 (4.88%) Linux
3 31 (1.94%) Unix
4 26 (1.63%) Windows Server
5 25 (1.56%) Android
6 24 (1.50%) Apple iOS
7 21 (1.31%) Mac OS
8 18 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (0.75%) VMS
10 10 (0.63%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.38%) CoreOS
11 6 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.38%) zOS
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.063%) CentOS
13 1 (0.063%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.063%) Solaris
13 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.063%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 309 (19.31%) Agile
2 277 (17.31%) Problem-Solving
3 268 (16.75%) Stakeholder Management
4 246 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
5 239 (14.94%) Migration
6 219 (13.69%) CI/CD
7 214 (13.38%) DevOps
8 167 (10.44%) AI
9 165 (10.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 144 (9.00%) Roadmaps
11 139 (8.69%) Cybersecurity
12 133 (8.31%) Decision-Making
13 129 (8.06%) Analytics
14 123 (7.69%) Information Security
14 123 (7.69%) Risk Management
15 112 (7.00%) Data Governance
16 110 (6.88%) Validation
17 101 (6.31%) Infrastructure as Code
17 101 (6.31%) Project Management
18 97 (6.06%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 217 (13.56%) Python
2 173 (10.81%) SQL
3 129 (8.06%) Java
4 66 (4.13%) JavaScript
5 53 (3.31%) PowerShell
6 37 (2.31%) Bash
7 30 (1.88%) C#
7 30 (1.88%) TypeScript
8 18 (1.13%) Bicep
9 13 (0.81%) Perl
10 12 (0.75%) Go
10 12 (0.75%) Kotlin
11 10 (0.63%) Apex Code
11 10 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (0.56%) C++
13 8 (0.50%) VB
14 7 (0.44%) PL/SQL
14 7 (0.44%) Scala
14 7 (0.44%) Shell Script
14 7 (0.44%) VB6
Qualifications
1 223 (13.94%) Security Cleared
2 166 (10.38%) SC Cleared
3 137 (8.56%) Degree
4 72 (4.50%) CISSP
5 53 (3.31%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.38%) 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 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
10 28 (1.75%) PMP
11 22 (1.38%) AWS Certification
11 22 (1.38%) Master's Degree
12 19 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
13 17 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 15 (0.94%) CCSP
15 12 (0.75%) CCNP
16 11 (0.69%) CRISC
17 9 (0.56%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (15.69%) GDPR
2 94 (5.88%) Data Quality
3 86 (5.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 86 (5.38%) NIST
4 70 (4.38%) QA
5 42 (2.63%) GRC
6 39 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 26 (1.63%) PCI DSS
8 21 (1.31%) PMO
8 21 (1.31%) SLA
9 19 (1.19%) SOC 2
10 17 (1.06%) NCSC
10 17 (1.06%) 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 79 (4.94%) Active Directory
2 65 (4.06%) Docker
3 53 (3.31%) 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 (6.94%) Kubernetes
2 83 (5.19%) Terraform
3 63 (3.94%) Ansible
4 41 (2.56%) Grafana
5 39 (2.44%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (1.88%) NetBackup
7 28 (1.75%) Prometheus
8 21 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (1.13%) SCCM
10 14 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
11 13 (0.81%) 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%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 269 (16.81%) Microsoft
2 80 (5.00%) Oracle
3 71 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 58 (3.63%) Google
5 55 (3.44%) Cisco
5 55 (3.44%) Databricks
6 54 (3.38%) VMware
7 40 (2.50%) SAP
8 33 (2.06%) Splunk
9 32 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 25 (1.56%) Veritas
11 24 (1.50%) Salesforce
12 20 (1.25%) NetApp
13 19 (1.19%) Workday
13 19 (1.19%) Zscaler
14 16 (1.00%) Citrix
14 16 (1.00%) Commvault
15 15 (0.94%) F5
16 14 (0.88%) CyberArk
17 13 (0.81%) OpenAI