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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 77 89 84
Rank change year-on-year +12 -5 +21
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,066 970 1,350
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.24% 2.54% 2.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.58% 2.96% 3.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 501 518 793
10th Percentile £293 £210 £234
25th Percentile £400 £364 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -6.98% -1.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £663
90th Percentile £675 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £478 £475
% change year-on-year -3.14% +0.53% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 17 17
10th Percentile £12.63 £19.13 £16.44
25th Percentile £13.49 £22.50 £18.70
Median hourly rate £15.25 £27.84 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year -45.22% +10.85% +11.62%
75th Percentile £20.40 £67.50 £44.54
90th Percentile £36.48 £70.86 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.25 £25.00 £22.12
% change year-on-year -39.00% +13.02% +16.42%

All Process and 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 29,811 32,761 44,191
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.51% 85.67% 89.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,528 20,142 30,042
10th Percentile £300 £309 £313
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,799 1,460 1,542
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.84 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £18.64
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% +1.18% +47.01%
75th Percentile £44.68 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £43.00 £40.64
% change year-on-year -47.37% +5.81% +76.70%

Data Protection
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Data Protection as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Data Protection 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 17 September 2025.

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 17 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Protection in the UK

Data Protection
Top 18 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 17 September 2025. 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 +17 893 £490 -2.00% 577
UK excluding London +9 556 £463 -3.14% 464
London +17 461 £516 +3.25% 222
Work from Home -4 275 £450 -10.00% 252
North of England +15 168 £450 -8.63% 77
Scotland -4 111 £427 +0.47% 29
Midlands +27 89 £475 +5.56% 71
South East +3 88 £514 +0.29% 170
Yorkshire +15 77 £500 - 18
West Midlands +15 65 £500 +16.96% 42
North West -9 60 £439 -9.54% 49
South West +25 50 £400 -38.46% 66
North East +12 31 £400 +4.92% 10
East Midlands +12 24 £400 -29.67% 28
East of England 0 22 £475 +8.57% 39
Northern Ireland +9 14 £596 - 10
Wales +2 12 £413 +35.25% 11
Channel Islands - 2 £725 -

Data Protection
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 49 (4.60%) Confluence
2 37 (3.47%) SharePoint
3 18 (1.69%) CMS
4 13 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 7 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.56%) nginx
7 5 (0.47%) Apache
7 5 (0.47%) CICS
7 5 (0.47%) SAS
8 4 (0.38%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.19%) FactoryTalk
10 2 (0.19%) OpenEdge
10 2 (0.19%) Oracle Coherence
11 1 (0.094%) Cloud Foundry
11 1 (0.094%) Luigi
11 1 (0.094%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.094%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.094%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.094%) WordPress
Applications
1 52 (4.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (2.53%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.13%) Chatbot
3 12 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.03%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.19%) Sketch
8 1 (0.094%) Acrobat
8 1 (0.094%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.094%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.094%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.094%) InVision
8 1 (0.094%) MadCap Flare
8 1 (0.094%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.094%) Siemens NX
8 1 (0.094%) SPSS
8 1 (0.094%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
3 4 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.38%) VisionPLUS
4 3 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.19%) assyst
5 2 (0.19%) BASE24
5 2 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
5 2 (0.19%) ResourceLink
6 1 (0.094%) CA PPM
6 1 (0.094%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.094%) Endur
6 1 (0.094%) Infor CloudSuite Industrial (formerly SyteLine)
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.094%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.094%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.094%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.094%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 195 (18.29%) AWS
2 186 (17.45%) Azure
3 78 (7.32%) GCP
4 65 (6.10%) Microsoft 365
5 62 (5.82%) Power Platform
6 43 (4.03%) GitHub
7 36 (3.38%) Entra ID
8 30 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
9 29 (2.72%) Serverless
10 25 (2.35%) Amazon S3
11 23 (2.16%) SaaS
12 22 (2.06%) AWS Lambda
13 21 (1.97%) Power Automate
14 20 (1.88%) PowerApps
15 19 (1.78%) Cloud Computing
16 17 (1.59%) Azure Monitor
17 16 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
18 12 (1.13%) Microsoft Purview
19 11 (1.03%) Azure AI
19 11 (1.03%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 55 (5.16%) Firewall
2 29 (2.72%) Network Security
3 19 (1.78%) DNS
4 15 (1.41%) WAN
5 14 (1.31%) VPN
6 11 (1.03%) DHCP
7 10 (0.94%) Cisco Nexus
7 10 (0.94%) SD-WAN
8 8 (0.75%) LAN
8 8 (0.75%) VLAN
9 7 (0.66%) BGP
9 7 (0.66%) HTTP
9 7 (0.66%) SSH
9 7 (0.66%) TCP/IP
9 7 (0.66%) Wireless
10 6 (0.56%) MPLS
11 5 (0.47%) SAN
11 5 (0.47%) Wireshark
12 4 (0.38%) NAS
12 4 (0.38%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (3.75%) Power BI
2 35 (3.28%) SQL Server
3 27 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
4 21 (1.97%) Tableau
5 16 (1.50%) Relational Database
6 15 (1.41%) NoSQL
7 12 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
7 12 (1.13%) MongoDB
8 11 (1.03%) DynamoDB
8 11 (1.03%) Metadata
9 10 (0.94%) Amazon Athena
10 9 (0.84%) Oracle Database
10 9 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
11 8 (0.75%) MySQL
12 7 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
12 7 (0.66%) Power Query
13 6 (0.56%) Big Data
13 6 (0.56%) Data Lake
14 5 (0.47%) Data Mining
14 5 (0.47%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 89 (8.35%) JIRA
2 35 (3.28%) Git
3 32 (3.00%) GitLab
4 28 (2.63%) Jenkins
5 11 (1.03%) Postman
6 8 (0.75%) Burp Suite
6 8 (0.75%) Metasploit
6 8 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.66%) JUnit
8 6 (0.56%) Xcode
9 4 (0.38%) ChangeMan
9 4 (0.38%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.38%) Selenium
10 3 (0.28%) Maven
10 3 (0.28%) SpecFlow
10 3 (0.28%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.19%) Gradle
11 2 (0.19%) Mockito
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle APEX
11 2 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
General
1 367 (34.43%) Social Skills
2 228 (21.39%) Finance
3 132 (12.38%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (8.26%) Banking
5 87 (8.16%) Public Sector
6 59 (5.53%) Legal
7 33 (3.10%) Marketing
8 28 (2.63%) Law
9 24 (2.25%) Telecoms
10 23 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
10 23 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.97%) Front Office
12 19 (1.78%) Organisational Skills
13 18 (1.69%) Manufacturing
14 17 (1.59%) Financial Institution
15 16 (1.50%) Aerospace
16 15 (1.41%) Local Government
17 13 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
17 13 (1.22%) Retail
18 12 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 166 (15.57%) Analyst
2 115 (10.79%) Developer
3 81 (7.60%) Architect
4 75 (7.04%) Senior
5 73 (6.85%) Lead
6 66 (6.19%) Business Analyst
7 53 (4.97%) Consultant
8 43 (4.03%) Administrator
9 42 (3.94%) Project Manager
10 39 (3.66%) Security Engineer
11 32 (3.00%) Data Analyst
12 27 (2.53%) Security Architect
13 23 (2.16%) Data Engineer
14 22 (2.06%) Applications Support
15 20 (1.88%) Solutions Architect
16 19 (1.78%) Information Officer
16 19 (1.78%) Support Engineer
17 18 (1.69%) Information Governance Officer
17 18 (1.69%) Java Developer
17 18 (1.69%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (2.91%) REST
2 30 (2.81%) RESTful
3 27 (2.53%) React
4 20 (1.88%) SOAP
5 18 (1.69%) HTML
6 17 (1.59%) .NET
6 17 (1.59%) OAuth
6 17 (1.59%) XML
7 16 (1.50%) JSON
7 16 (1.50%) Kafka
8 15 (1.41%) Spring
9 10 (0.94%) Middleware
9 10 (0.94%) PySpark
10 9 (0.84%) AngularJS
10 9 (0.84%) FIX Protocol
10 9 (0.84%) LangChain
11 8 (0.75%) CSS
11 8 (0.75%) scikit-learn
12 7 (0.66%) AWS CDK
12 7 (0.66%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 569 (53.38%) Data Protection Act
2 57 (5.35%) Management Information System
3 33 (3.10%) Onboarding
4 30 (2.81%) Cloud Native
5 27 (2.53%) Freedom of Information
5 27 (2.53%) Product Ownership
6 26 (2.44%) Data Centre
6 26 (2.44%) Virtual Team
7 18 (1.69%) Security Posture
8 17 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
8 17 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
9 15 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.22%) Data Structures
11 13 (1.22%) Derivative
11 13 (1.22%) Mobile App
11 13 (1.22%) Replication
12 12 (1.13%) Freedom of Information Act
12 12 (1.13%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 74 (6.94%) Windows
2 62 (5.82%) Linux
3 28 (2.63%) Unix
4 15 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 13 (1.22%) Android
6 12 (1.13%) Mac OS
7 9 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 7 (0.66%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.56%) zOS
10 4 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.28%) AIX
11 3 (0.28%) Solaris
12 2 (0.19%) CentOS
13 1 (0.094%) Amazon Linux
13 1 (0.094%) HPUX
13 1 (0.094%) VME
13 1 (0.094%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (19.04%) Problem-Solving
2 177 (16.60%) Agile
3 135 (12.66%) CI/CD
4 132 (12.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 126 (11.82%) DevOps
6 124 (11.63%) Cybersecurity
7 113 (10.60%) Migration
8 96 (9.01%) Project Management
9 93 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 84 (7.88%) Artificial Intelligence
11 79 (7.41%) Continuous Improvement
12 75 (7.04%) Information Security
13 74 (6.94%) Computer Science
14 73 (6.85%) Analytics
14 73 (6.85%) Risk Management
15 56 (5.25%) Business Intelligence
15 56 (5.25%) Infrastructure as Code
16 55 (5.16%) Cloud Security
16 55 (5.16%) Mentoring
17 53 (4.97%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 196 (18.39%) Python
2 134 (12.57%) SQL
3 58 (5.44%) Bash
4 57 (5.35%) PowerShell
5 50 (4.69%) Java
6 48 (4.50%) JavaScript
7 31 (2.91%) C#
8 16 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 14 (1.31%) C++
10 12 (1.13%) Go
11 10 (0.94%) Perl
11 10 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 8 (0.75%) PHP
12 8 (0.75%) PromQL
12 8 (0.75%) Swift
13 7 (0.66%) COBOL
13 7 (0.66%) Kotlin
13 7 (0.66%) Objective-C
13 7 (0.66%) PL/SQL
14 5 (0.47%) C
Qualifications
1 129 (12.10%) Degree
2 99 (9.29%) Security Cleared
3 72 (6.75%) SC Cleared
4 61 (5.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (2.16%) AWS Certification
5 23 (2.16%) CISSP
6 21 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
7 17 (1.59%) CISM
8 15 (1.41%) DV Cleared
8 15 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 14 (1.31%) PMI Certification
10 13 (1.22%) CCNP
10 13 (1.22%) PMP
11 12 (1.13%) Master's Degree
12 11 (1.03%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.94%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.94%) Azure Certification
14 9 (0.84%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (0.84%) OSCP
15 8 (0.75%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 184 (17.26%) GDPR
2 57 (5.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 51 (4.78%) NIST
4 36 (3.38%) QA
5 34 (3.19%) Data Quality
6 28 (2.63%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.97%) GRC
8 16 (1.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 16 (1.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 16 (1.50%) NCSC
9 13 (1.22%) PMO
10 11 (1.03%) PCI DSS
11 10 (0.94%) Accessibility
11 10 (0.94%) COBIT
11 10 (0.94%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.84%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.75%) PERC
14 6 (0.56%) EU AI Act
14 6 (0.56%) SEPA
System Software
1 53 (4.97%) Active Directory
2 36 (3.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 35 (3.28%) Docker
4 5 (0.47%) VMware NSX
5 4 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.38%) vSphere
6 3 (0.28%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.094%) HDFS
7 1 (0.094%) KVM
7 1 (0.094%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.094%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.094%) Veritas Cluster Server
7 1 (0.094%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.094%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 50 (4.69%) Kubernetes
2 40 (3.75%) Terraform
3 28 (2.63%) NetBackup
4 24 (2.25%) Ansible
5 18 (1.69%) SCCM
6 17 (1.59%) Grafana
6 17 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (1.41%) Prometheus
8 14 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
9 8 (0.75%) Nmap
10 4 (0.38%) CA Endevor
10 4 (0.38%) CASB
10 4 (0.38%) Cisco CUCM
10 4 (0.38%) Data Guard
10 4 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 3 (0.28%) FortiGate
11 3 (0.28%) ITRS Geneos
12 2 (0.19%) HP Data Protector
12 2 (0.19%) Kibana
12 2 (0.19%) Nessus
Vendors
1 148 (13.88%) Microsoft
2 48 (4.50%) Oracle
3 43 (4.03%) Google
4 42 (3.94%) Cisco
5 39 (3.66%) VMware
6 25 (2.35%) Veritas
7 21 (1.97%) Salesforce
8 20 (1.88%) SAP
9 18 (1.69%) IBM
9 18 (1.69%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.41%) Databricks
11 14 (1.31%) Splunk
12 13 (1.22%) Citrix
12 13 (1.22%) Red Hat
13 12 (1.13%) Juniper
14 11 (1.03%) Commvault
14 11 (1.03%) CyberArk
14 11 (1.03%) F5
15 9 (0.84%) Foundry
15 9 (0.84%) Pega