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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 92 83
Rank change year-on-year +19 -9 +12
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,542 783 1,063
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.73% 2.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.73% 3.00% 2.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 850 399 561
10th Percentile £300 £256 £215
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £584 £601
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £453
% change year-on-year -5.26% +4.97% -4.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 33 108
10th Percentile £15.47 £14.85 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.35 £27.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.36% +30.95% -56.71%
75th Percentile £33.64 £32.50 £27.59
90th Percentile £48.15 £36.90 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.25 £27.64 £19.50
% change year-on-year -23.12% +41.74% -47.67%

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 41,286 26,078 36,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.54% 91.02% 85.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,818 16,706 23,627
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,472 1,084 2,486
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.08 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.52 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.64% -23.57% -1.09%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.84 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.19 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -32.93% +7.14%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +27 1,320 £497 -0.64% 428
UK excluding London +16 847 £450 -5.26% 292
London +27 597 £525 +5.00% 189
Work from Home +19 397 £500 +5.26% 172
North of England -3 276 £475 - 66
South East +17 180 £475 -8.57% 73
Yorkshire -10 159 £478 -5.68% 28
Midlands -5 130 £450 -10.00% 59
Scotland +5 125 £425 -8.60% 24
North West +14 109 £488 +18.18% 30
West Midlands -18 88 £468 -10.95% 39
South West +9 68 £418 +4.38% 40
East of England +5 50 £475 -13.64% 15
East Midlands +5 42 £438 +17.06% 20
Wales -9 11 £363 -12.12% 10
Northern Ireland +7 9 £104 -78.86% 8
North East -38 9 £400 -3.03% 9

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 55 (3.57%) Confluence
2 49 (3.18%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 16 (1.04%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.58%) Apache
7 6 (0.39%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.32%) SAS
9 3 (0.19%) Drupal
9 3 (0.19%) IIS
9 3 (0.19%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) Ethereum
10 2 (0.13%) Hyperledger
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 50 (3.24%) Microsoft Office
2 46 (2.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.26%) UserZoom
7 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.065%) Maya
9 1 (0.065%) Trello
9 1 (0.065%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.71%) Aladdin
1 11 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.32%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
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 ERP
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.065%) Odoo
7 1 (0.065%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 319 (20.69%) Azure
2 248 (16.08%) AWS
3 131 (8.50%) GCP
4 97 (6.29%) Microsoft 365
5 84 (5.45%) Power Platform
6 83 (5.38%) Entra ID
7 62 (4.02%) GitHub
7 62 (4.02%) SaaS
8 49 (3.18%) Microsoft Purview
9 48 (3.11%) OpenShift
10 45 (2.92%) Azure DevOps
11 38 (2.46%) Serverless
12 26 (1.69%) Microsoft Copilot
13 25 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
14 24 (1.56%) Snowflake
15 21 (1.36%) Amazon S3
15 21 (1.36%) OneDrive
15 21 (1.36%) Power Automate
16 20 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
17 19 (1.23%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 68 (4.41%) Network Security
2 42 (2.72%) Firewall
3 39 (2.53%) SAN
4 27 (1.75%) NAS
4 27 (1.75%) VPN
5 21 (1.36%) DNS
5 21 (1.36%) TCP/IP
6 19 (1.23%) MPLS
6 19 (1.23%) WAN
7 15 (0.97%) LAN
8 13 (0.84%) DHCP
9 12 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
10 11 (0.71%) Fibre Channel
11 9 (0.58%) HTTP
11 9 (0.58%) iSCSI
11 9 (0.58%) VLAN
12 8 (0.52%) SD-WAN
12 8 (0.52%) SSL
12 8 (0.52%) Wireless
13 7 (0.45%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (4.54%) Power BI
2 36 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
3 35 (2.27%) Metadata
4 32 (2.08%) SQL Server
5 28 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
6 24 (1.56%) MongoDB
6 24 (1.56%) MySQL
7 22 (1.43%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
8 20 (1.30%) NoSQL
8 20 (1.30%) Relational Database
9 19 (1.23%) Big Data
10 13 (0.84%) Tableau
11 12 (0.78%) DynamoDB
11 12 (0.78%) Oracle Database
12 11 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
12 11 (0.71%) BigQuery
13 9 (0.58%) Oracle Reports
13 9 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 7 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 90 (5.84%) JIRA
2 68 (4.41%) Git
3 63 (4.09%) Jenkins
4 36 (2.33%) GitLab
5 10 (0.65%) SpecFlow
6 8 (0.52%) JUnit
7 7 (0.45%) Postman
7 7 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.39%) Flyway
8 6 (0.39%) Maven
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.32%) Gradle
10 4 (0.26%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.26%) ERwin
10 4 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
11 3 (0.19%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.19%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
12 2 (0.13%) REST Assured
General
1 482 (31.26%) Social Skills
2 357 (23.15%) Finance
3 197 (12.78%) Legal
4 174 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
5 142 (9.21%) Public Sector
6 119 (7.72%) Banking
7 65 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
8 64 (4.15%) Organisational Skills
9 41 (2.66%) Telecoms
10 31 (2.01%) Front Office
10 31 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (1.82%) Local Government
12 27 (1.75%) Law
12 27 (1.75%) Marketing
12 27 (1.75%) Retail
13 25 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (1.10%) Police
15 16 (1.04%) Pharmaceutical
16 12 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.71%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 210 (13.62%) Architect
2 143 (9.27%) Analyst
3 127 (8.24%) Developer
4 116 (7.52%) Lead
5 110 (7.13%) Senior
6 92 (5.97%) Consultant
7 81 (5.25%) Project Manager
8 66 (4.28%) Business Analyst
9 60 (3.89%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.79%) Security Architect
11 41 (2.66%) Java Developer
11 41 (2.66%) Network Engineer
12 39 (2.53%) Security Engineer
13 37 (2.40%) Data Engineer
14 35 (2.27%) Administrator
15 28 (1.82%) Technical Architect
16 26 (1.69%) Data Analyst
17 25 (1.62%) Support Engineer
18 23 (1.49%) Python Developer
19 22 (1.43%) Data Protection Officer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (4.86%) REST
2 58 (3.76%) React
3 37 (2.40%) Spring
4 33 (2.14%) Middleware
4 33 (2.14%) Spring Boot
5 31 (2.01%) HTML
5 31 (2.01%) RESTful
6 30 (1.95%) CSS
6 30 (1.95%) Kafka
7 27 (1.75%) .NET
8 24 (1.56%) JSON
8 24 (1.56%) OAuth
9 23 (1.49%) Node.js
10 21 (1.36%) Jest
11 18 (1.17%) HTML5
11 18 (1.17%) Redux
12 17 (1.10%) Spring MVC
13 16 (1.04%) CSS3
13 16 (1.04%) OpenID
13 16 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 719 (46.63%) Data Protection Act
2 91 (5.90%) Cloud Native
3 76 (4.93%) Product Ownership
4 70 (4.54%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.31%) Management Information System
6 40 (2.59%) Distributed Systems
7 39 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
8 37 (2.40%) Data Centre
9 30 (1.95%) Security Posture
10 27 (1.75%) Replication
11 26 (1.69%) NHS
11 26 (1.69%) Virtual Team
12 23 (1.49%) Enterprise Storage
12 23 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
13 21 (1.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
15 17 (1.10%) Derivative
15 17 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
15 17 (1.10%) Freedom of Information
16 16 (1.04%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 109 (7.07%) Windows
2 78 (5.06%) Linux
3 33 (2.14%) Unix
4 23 (1.49%) Windows Server
5 22 (1.43%) Android
6 20 (1.30%) Mac OS
7 19 (1.23%) Apple iOS
8 17 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 13 (0.84%) VMS
9 13 (0.84%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.58%) zOS
11 7 (0.45%) Data ONTAP
12 6 (0.39%) CoreOS
13 2 (0.13%) Rocky
13 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.065%) CentOS
14 1 (0.065%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.065%) Solaris
14 1 (0.065%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.065%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 292 (18.94%) Agile
2 257 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
3 250 (16.21%) Problem-Solving
4 245 (15.89%) Migration
5 232 (15.05%) Continuous Improvement
6 219 (14.20%) CI/CD
7 215 (13.94%) DevOps
8 147 (9.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 145 (9.40%) AI
10 141 (9.14%) Roadmaps
11 135 (8.75%) Analytics
12 129 (8.37%) Decision-Making
13 128 (8.30%) Cybersecurity
14 123 (7.98%) Risk Management
15 113 (7.33%) Information Security
16 105 (6.81%) Infrastructure as Code
17 103 (6.68%) Data Governance
18 99 (6.42%) Test Automation
19 97 (6.29%) Validation
20 95 (6.16%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 220 (14.27%) Python
2 171 (11.09%) SQL
3 134 (8.69%) Java
4 75 (4.86%) JavaScript
5 58 (3.76%) PowerShell
6 41 (2.66%) Bash
7 40 (2.59%) C#
8 35 (2.27%) TypeScript
9 20 (1.30%) Bicep
10 15 (0.97%) Perl
11 14 (0.91%) C++
12 12 (0.78%) Go
13 11 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
14 10 (0.65%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.58%) Apex Code
15 9 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.52%) ActionScript
16 8 (0.52%) Scala
17 7 (0.45%) PL/SQL
18 6 (0.39%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 206 (13.36%) Security Cleared
2 152 (9.86%) SC Cleared
3 132 (8.56%) Degree
4 68 (4.41%) CISSP
5 53 (3.44%) DV Cleared
6 37 (2.40%) CISM
7 32 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.88%) Azure Certification
8 29 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
8 29 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
8 29 (1.88%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.69%) PMP
10 22 (1.43%) Master's Degree
11 19 (1.23%) AWS Certification
12 18 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
13 15 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 13 (0.84%) CCSP
15 10 (0.65%) CCNP
15 10 (0.65%) CRISC
15 10 (0.65%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (16.02%) GDPR
2 89 (5.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 89 (5.77%) NIST
3 77 (4.99%) Data Quality
4 61 (3.96%) QA
5 37 (2.40%) Accessibility
6 36 (2.33%) GRC
7 24 (1.56%) PCI DSS
8 21 (1.36%) PMO
9 20 (1.30%) SLA
10 19 (1.23%) SOC 2
11 15 (0.97%) NCSC
12 13 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 10 (0.65%) WCAG
14 9 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
15 8 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
16 7 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
16 7 (0.45%) HIPAA
16 7 (0.45%) PERC
17 6 (0.39%) COBIT
System Software
1 77 (4.99%) Active Directory
2 67 (4.35%) Docker
3 53 (3.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.30%) NFS
5 19 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.71%) vSphere
8 8 (0.52%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.39%) KVM
11 4 (0.26%) 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 (0.065%) iptables
Systems Management
1 117 (7.59%) Kubernetes
2 91 (5.90%) Terraform
3 67 (4.35%) Ansible
4 46 (2.98%) Grafana
5 39 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
6 32 (2.08%) Prometheus
7 31 (2.01%) NetBackup
8 21 (1.36%) SCCM
8 21 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.84%) Puppet
10 11 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 9 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 7 (0.45%) Kibana
12 7 (0.45%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.32%) Control-M
13 5 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
13 5 (0.32%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 4 (0.26%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.26%) Foglight
14 4 (0.26%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 251 (16.28%) Microsoft
2 76 (4.93%) Oracle
3 66 (4.28%) Google
4 57 (3.70%) ServiceNow
5 54 (3.50%) VMware
6 53 (3.44%) Databricks
7 50 (3.24%) Cisco
8 42 (2.72%) SAP
9 31 (2.01%) Red Hat
9 31 (2.01%) Splunk
10 26 (1.69%) NetApp
10 26 (1.69%) Veritas
11 23 (1.49%) Salesforce
12 21 (1.36%) Citrix
13 19 (1.23%) IBM
14 15 (0.97%) Commvault
14 15 (0.97%) Workday
15 14 (0.91%) F5
15 14 (0.91%) Informatica
15 14 (0.91%) Zscaler