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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 89 87
Rank change year-on-year +19 -2 +9
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,564 798 1,051
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.17% 2.75% 2.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.74% 3.02% 2.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 859 402 556
10th Percentile £297 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £491 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.31% -1.80% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £592 £602
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 72 33 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.46 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.86 £24.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.79% +16.67% -52.84%
75th Percentile £33.75 £32.50 £27.59
90th Percentile £47.08 £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 41,843 26,418 36,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.98% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,135 16,804 23,539
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,505 1,141 2,540
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.78 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.03% -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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +24 1,335 £500 - 498
UK excluding London +19 855 £450 -5.26% 327
London +24 608 £525 +0.48% 215
Work from Home +35 418 £500 +3.90% 215
North of England +2 282 £475 - 78
South East +24 181 £475 -9.52% 86
Yorkshire -11 155 £475 -8.43% 27
Scotland +3 130 £425 -7.10% 23
Midlands -5 129 £450 -10.00% 67
North West +16 118 £475 +6.26% 39
West Midlands -19 88 £468 -10.95% 45
South West +7 66 £410 +2.50% 38
East of England +10 48 £488 -7.14% 26
East Midlands +2 41 £438 +17.06% 22
Wales -13 11 £363 +22.36% 7
Northern Ireland +9 9 £104 -78.86% 9
North East -36 9 £400 -3.03% 12

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 (3.58%) Confluence
2 51 (3.26%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.09%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.58%) Apache
7 6 (0.38%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.32%) SAS
9 4 (0.26%) IIS
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%) 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 46 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.90%) 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%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.064%) Maya
9 1 (0.064%) Trello
9 1 (0.064%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.64%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.32%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
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 FAH
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sonata
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 329 (21.04%) Azure
2 260 (16.62%) AWS
3 131 (8.38%) GCP
4 102 (6.52%) Microsoft 365
5 87 (5.56%) Entra ID
6 83 (5.31%) Power Platform
7 66 (4.22%) SaaS
8 62 (3.96%) GitHub
9 50 (3.20%) Microsoft Purview
10 44 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
10 44 (2.81%) OpenShift
11 37 (2.37%) Serverless
12 28 (1.79%) Microsoft Copilot
13 25 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (1.47%) Snowflake
15 22 (1.41%) OneDrive
16 21 (1.34%) Amazon S3
16 21 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (1.34%) Power Automate
17 20 (1.28%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 74 (4.73%) Network Security
2 45 (2.88%) Firewall
3 34 (2.17%) SAN
4 30 (1.92%) VPN
5 24 (1.53%) DNS
6 23 (1.47%) TCP/IP
7 22 (1.41%) NAS
8 20 (1.28%) WAN
9 17 (1.09%) LAN
9 17 (1.09%) MPLS
10 16 (1.02%) DHCP
11 14 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.58%) HTTP
12 9 (0.58%) VLAN
13 8 (0.51%) SSL
13 8 (0.51%) Wireless
14 7 (0.45%) BGP
14 7 (0.45%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.45%) Fibre Channel
14 7 (0.45%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (4.35%) Power BI
2 38 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
3 36 (2.30%) Metadata
4 32 (2.05%) SQL Server
5 29 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
6 23 (1.47%) MongoDB
6 23 (1.47%) MySQL
7 21 (1.34%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
9 19 (1.21%) Big Data
9 19 (1.21%) NoSQL
9 19 (1.21%) Relational Database
10 13 (0.83%) DynamoDB
11 12 (0.77%) Oracle Database
11 12 (0.77%) Tableau
12 10 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
12 10 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
13 9 (0.58%) BigQuery
14 8 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 95 (6.07%) JIRA
2 67 (4.28%) Git
3 63 (4.03%) Jenkins
4 39 (2.49%) GitLab
5 9 (0.58%) SpecFlow
6 8 (0.51%) JUnit
6 8 (0.51%) Postman
7 7 (0.45%) 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%) Gradle
10 4 (0.26%) ERwin
10 4 (0.26%) Selenium
10 4 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
11 3 (0.19%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
12 2 (0.13%) REST Assured
General
1 503 (32.16%) Social Skills
2 358 (22.89%) Finance
3 206 (13.17%) Legal
4 176 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
5 147 (9.40%) Public Sector
6 119 (7.61%) Banking
7 66 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
8 61 (3.90%) Organisational Skills
9 39 (2.49%) Telecoms
10 30 (1.92%) Front Office
10 30 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (1.85%) Local Government
12 28 (1.79%) Law
12 28 (1.79%) Retail
13 26 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.60%) Marketing
15 19 (1.21%) Police
16 18 (1.15%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.77%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 213 (13.62%) Architect
2 146 (9.34%) Analyst
3 127 (8.12%) Developer
4 117 (7.48%) Lead
5 109 (6.97%) Senior
6 93 (5.95%) Consultant
7 85 (5.43%) Project Manager
8 69 (4.41%) Business Analyst
9 60 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.75%) Network Engineer
10 43 (2.75%) Security Architect
11 42 (2.69%) Java Developer
12 40 (2.56%) Security Engineer
13 38 (2.43%) Data Engineer
14 32 (2.05%) Administrator
15 28 (1.79%) Technical Architect
16 26 (1.66%) Data Analyst
16 26 (1.66%) Support Engineer
17 23 (1.47%) Python Developer
18 22 (1.41%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (4.99%) REST
2 58 (3.71%) React
3 38 (2.43%) Spring
4 34 (2.17%) Spring Boot
5 33 (2.11%) Middleware
6 31 (1.98%) HTML
6 31 (1.98%) Kafka
7 30 (1.92%) CSS
7 30 (1.92%) RESTful
8 27 (1.73%) .NET
9 26 (1.66%) JSON
9 26 (1.66%) OAuth
10 21 (1.34%) Jest
10 21 (1.34%) Node.js
11 18 (1.15%) HTML5
11 18 (1.15%) PySpark
11 18 (1.15%) Redux
12 17 (1.09%) OpenID
12 17 (1.09%) Spring MVC
13 16 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 729 (46.61%) Data Protection Act
2 91 (5.82%) Cloud Native
3 79 (5.05%) Product Ownership
4 71 (4.54%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.39%) Management Information System
6 41 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (2.49%) Data Centre
7 39 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
8 32 (2.05%) Security Posture
9 29 (1.85%) Virtual Team
10 27 (1.73%) NHS
11 23 (1.47%) Hybrid Cloud
12 22 (1.41%) Replication
13 21 (1.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
14 19 (1.21%) Enterprise Storage
15 18 (1.15%) Operational Technology
16 17 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
17 16 (1.02%) Freedom of Information
17 16 (1.02%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 120 (7.67%) Windows
2 79 (5.05%) Linux
3 34 (2.17%) Unix
4 24 (1.53%) Android
4 24 (1.53%) Windows Server
5 23 (1.47%) Mac OS
6 21 (1.34%) Apple iOS
7 17 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 12 (0.77%) VMS
10 8 (0.51%) zOS
11 6 (0.38%) CoreOS
11 6 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.064%) CentOS
13 1 (0.064%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.064%) Solaris
13 1 (0.064%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 297 (18.99%) Agile
2 264 (16.88%) Problem-Solving
3 260 (16.62%) Stakeholder Management
4 240 (15.35%) Continuous Improvement
4 240 (15.35%) Migration
5 224 (14.32%) CI/CD
6 217 (13.87%) DevOps
7 159 (10.17%) AI
8 153 (9.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 141 (9.02%) Roadmaps
10 138 (8.82%) Analytics
11 133 (8.50%) Cybersecurity
12 130 (8.31%) Decision-Making
13 121 (7.74%) Risk Management
14 117 (7.48%) Information Security
15 106 (6.78%) Infrastructure as Code
16 105 (6.71%) Data Governance
17 101 (6.46%) Test Automation
17 101 (6.46%) Validation
18 96 (6.14%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 220 (14.07%) Python
2 170 (10.87%) SQL
3 137 (8.76%) Java
4 72 (4.60%) JavaScript
5 58 (3.71%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.69%) Bash
7 38 (2.43%) C#
8 32 (2.05%) TypeScript
9 20 (1.28%) Bicep
10 15 (0.96%) Perl
11 14 (0.90%) C++
12 12 (0.77%) Go
13 11 (0.70%) Kotlin
13 11 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
14 9 (0.58%) Apex Code
14 9 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 8 (0.51%) ActionScript
15 8 (0.51%) Scala
16 7 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 6 (0.38%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 210 (13.43%) Security Cleared
2 155 (9.91%) SC Cleared
3 136 (8.70%) Degree
4 73 (4.67%) CISSP
5 51 (3.26%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.56%) CISM
7 34 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 32 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
9 31 (1.98%) Azure Certification
9 31 (1.98%) PMI Certification
10 27 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.73%) PMP
11 22 (1.41%) AWS Certification
11 22 (1.41%) Master's Degree
12 18 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
13 17 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 15 (0.96%) CCSP
15 12 (0.77%) CRISC
16 11 (0.70%) CCNP
17 9 (0.58%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (16.18%) GDPR
2 93 (5.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 88 (5.63%) NIST
4 82 (5.24%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.16%) QA
6 39 (2.49%) GRC
7 38 (2.43%) Accessibility
8 24 (1.53%) PCI DSS
9 20 (1.28%) PMO
9 20 (1.28%) SOC 2
10 19 (1.21%) SLA
11 17 (1.09%) NCSC
12 14 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 10 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
13 10 (0.64%) WCAG
14 8 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 8 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
14 8 (0.51%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.38%) COBIT
16 5 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 80 (5.12%) Active Directory
2 67 (4.28%) Docker
3 55 (3.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (0.96%) NFS
6 13 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.77%) vSphere
8 8 (0.51%) Hyper-V
8 8 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.38%) 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 (0.064%) iptables
Systems Management
1 115 (7.35%) Kubernetes
2 90 (5.75%) Terraform
3 67 (4.28%) Ansible
4 45 (2.88%) Grafana
5 41 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (1.98%) NetBackup
6 31 (1.98%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.41%) SCCM
8 20 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.83%) Puppet
10 12 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 11 (0.70%) Jamf Pro
12 7 (0.45%) Kibana
13 6 (0.38%) SnapMirror
14 5 (0.32%) Control-M
14 5 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
15 4 (0.26%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.26%) Foglight
15 4 (0.26%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.26%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 259 (16.56%) Microsoft
2 77 (4.92%) Oracle
3 63 (4.03%) Google
4 62 (3.96%) ServiceNow
5 56 (3.58%) Databricks
5 56 (3.58%) VMware
6 51 (3.26%) Cisco
7 42 (2.69%) SAP
8 33 (2.11%) Splunk
9 31 (1.98%) Red Hat
10 26 (1.66%) Veritas
11 24 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 23 (1.47%) Citrix
13 21 (1.34%) NetApp
14 16 (1.02%) Zscaler
15 15 (0.96%) Commvault
15 15 (0.96%) F5
15 15 (0.96%) IBM
15 15 (0.96%) Workday
16 14 (0.90%) Informatica