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 7 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 102 83
Rank change year-on-year +26 -19 +20
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,397 777 1,125
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.27% 2.54% 2.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.79% 2.81% 2.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 751 402 616
10th Percentile £276 £270 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £588
90th Percentile £688 £693 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 22 108
10th Percentile £13.26 £16.55 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.01 £24.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £20.71 £29.62 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.07% +51.87% -70.45%
75th Percentile £24.19 £33.18 £26.66
90th Percentile £38.20 £62.20 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £29.23 £19.50
% change year-on-year -29.15% +49.90% -70.45%

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 36,884 27,639 38,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.36% 90.19% 86.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,378 17,377 25,379
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -2.58% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,184 915 2,310
10th Percentile £14.72 £15.62 £13.16
25th Percentile £18.32 £21.03 £16.06
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.81 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.66% +0.95% -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £58.64
90th Percentile £74.00 £75.95 £71.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £32.25 £32.50
% change year-on-year -21.30% -0.77% -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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 +37 1,196 £500 - 386
UK excluding London +17 742 £450 -5.26% 299
London +38 572 £525 +3.45% 141
Work from Home +28 335 £500 +0.05% 159
North of England -4 230 £475 - 84
South East +20 175 £475 -2.56% 87
Yorkshire -1 135 £487 -9.40% 23
Scotland +13 112 £405 -10.11% 13
Midlands -1 107 £450 -7.69% 46
North West -20 82 £433 -5.87% 59
West Midlands -19 64 £500 -1.23% 28
East of England +10 50 £450 -18.18% 28
South West +6 48 £500 +5.26% 38
East Midlands +1 43 £438 +6.06% 18
Wales +5 15 £375 -11.76% 6
North East -22 14 £400 -15.79% 3
Northern Ireland - 9 £500 - 1

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 62 (4.44%) Confluence
2 32 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 17 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
4 11 (0.79%) Apache Spark
5 10 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.57%) Apache
7 5 (0.36%) CMS
8 4 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
9 3 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 3 (0.21%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.21%) Hyperledger
10 2 (0.14%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.14%) Drupal
10 2 (0.14%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.14%) nginx
10 2 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.14%) SAS
10 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.072%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 51 (3.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.21%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.21%) Sketch
6 2 (0.14%) Adobe After Effects
6 2 (0.14%) Adobe Illustrator
6 2 (0.14%) InVision
6 2 (0.14%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.072%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.072%) Adobe Premiere
7 1 (0.072%) Blender
7 1 (0.072%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.072%) Final Cut Pro
7 1 (0.072%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.72%) Aladdin
3 9 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
4 8 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.36%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.29%) SAP GRC
7 3 (0.21%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.21%) Fidessa
7 3 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.21%) R3 Corda
7 3 (0.21%) ResourceLink
7 3 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 2 (0.14%) ION MarketView
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle FAH
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.14%) Workfront
9 1 (0.072%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 263 (18.83%) Azure
2 221 (15.82%) AWS
3 110 (7.87%) GCP
4 73 (5.23%) Microsoft 365
5 70 (5.01%) Power Platform
6 64 (4.58%) Entra ID
7 59 (4.22%) GitHub
8 54 (3.87%) Serverless
9 46 (3.29%) SaaS
10 42 (3.01%) AWS Lambda
11 41 (2.93%) Amazon S3
12 37 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
13 35 (2.51%) OpenShift
14 34 (2.43%) Microsoft Purview
15 31 (2.22%) AWS CloudFormation
15 31 (2.22%) Snowflake
16 24 (1.72%) GitHub Actions
17 23 (1.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 21 (1.50%) PaaS
19 20 (1.43%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 44 (3.15%) Firewall
2 40 (2.86%) Network Security
3 34 (2.43%) SAN
4 21 (1.50%) NAS
5 20 (1.43%) VPN
6 19 (1.36%) MPLS
7 17 (1.22%) LAN
7 17 (1.22%) WAN
8 16 (1.15%) Cisco IPT
8 16 (1.15%) DNS
9 14 (1.00%) TCP/IP
10 11 (0.79%) SD-WAN
11 10 (0.72%) BGP
12 9 (0.64%) Fibre Channel
12 9 (0.64%) HTTP
12 9 (0.64%) VLAN
12 9 (0.64%) Wi-Fi
13 8 (0.57%) SSH
14 7 (0.50%) iSCSI
15 6 (0.43%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (4.58%) Power BI
2 38 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (2.43%) SQL Server
4 29 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
5 26 (1.86%) Metadata
6 20 (1.43%) Relational Database
7 19 (1.36%) NoSQL
8 18 (1.29%) DynamoDB
9 17 (1.22%) MySQL
10 16 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
10 16 (1.15%) Data Lake
10 16 (1.15%) MongoDB
11 15 (1.07%) Tableau
12 14 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
13 12 (0.86%) Amazon Aurora
13 12 (0.86%) Oracle Database
14 10 (0.72%) BigQuery
15 8 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
15 8 (0.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 7 (0.50%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 98 (7.02%) JIRA
2 62 (4.44%) Git
3 61 (4.37%) Jenkins
4 35 (2.51%) GitLab
5 12 (0.86%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.72%) JUnit
7 8 (0.57%) Gradle
7 8 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.50%) Maven
9 6 (0.43%) NUnit
9 6 (0.43%) Postman
10 5 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.29%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.29%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.29%) Fiddler
12 3 (0.21%) Flyway
12 3 (0.21%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.21%) Selenium
12 3 (0.21%) TestNG
12 3 (0.21%) webpack
General
1 440 (31.50%) Social Skills
2 306 (21.90%) Finance
3 179 (12.81%) Analytical Skills
4 138 (9.88%) Public Sector
5 133 (9.52%) Legal
6 119 (8.52%) Banking
7 55 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
8 43 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
9 38 (2.72%) Telecoms
10 32 (2.29%) Marketing
11 29 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
13 21 (1.50%) Front Office
14 19 (1.36%) Local Government
15 18 (1.29%) Law
16 15 (1.07%) Police
17 14 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 14 (1.00%) Manufacturing
18 13 (0.93%) Retail
19 12 (0.86%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 173 (12.38%) Architect
2 152 (10.88%) Analyst
3 114 (8.16%) Developer
4 101 (7.23%) Lead
5 81 (5.80%) Senior
6 78 (5.58%) Consultant
7 69 (4.94%) Project Manager
8 66 (4.72%) Business Analyst
9 50 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
10 38 (2.72%) Security Engineer
11 36 (2.58%) Data Engineer
12 31 (2.22%) Network Engineer
13 29 (2.08%) Technical Architect
14 28 (2.00%) Data Analyst
15 27 (1.93%) Administrator
15 27 (1.93%) Security Architect
16 25 (1.79%) Automation Engineer
17 24 (1.72%) Java Developer
18 22 (1.57%) Support Engineer
19 21 (1.50%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.58%) REST
2 49 (3.51%) React
3 37 (2.65%) .NET
4 33 (2.36%) Node.js
5 29 (2.08%) Kafka
6 26 (1.86%) Spring
7 25 (1.79%) RESTful
8 22 (1.57%) Middleware
8 22 (1.57%) Spring Boot
9 20 (1.43%) OAuth
9 20 (1.43%) PySpark
10 18 (1.29%) Oracle Fusion
11 17 (1.22%) Playwright
12 15 (1.07%) HTML
13 14 (1.00%) .NET Core
14 12 (0.86%) AngularJS
14 12 (0.86%) Jest
14 12 (0.86%) JSON
15 11 (0.79%) AWS CDK
15 11 (0.79%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 692 (49.53%) Data Protection Act
2 64 (4.58%) Cloud Native
2 64 (4.58%) Product Ownership
3 58 (4.15%) Onboarding
4 52 (3.72%) Management Information System
5 29 (2.08%) NHS
6 28 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
6 28 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
7 26 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
8 24 (1.72%) Replication
9 23 (1.65%) Security Posture
10 22 (1.57%) Data Centre
10 22 (1.57%) Freedom of Information
11 20 (1.43%) Data Structures
11 20 (1.43%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 18 (1.29%) Enterprise Storage
13 14 (1.00%) Insider Threat
14 13 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
15 12 (0.86%) AI Agents
15 12 (0.86%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 98 (7.02%) Windows
2 68 (4.87%) Linux
3 24 (1.72%) Unix
4 18 (1.29%) Windows Server
5 17 (1.22%) Mac OS
5 17 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.93%) VMS
7 12 (0.86%) Windows 10
8 8 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.50%) Android
9 7 (0.50%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.43%) CoreOS
10 6 (0.43%) zOS
11 4 (0.29%) AIX
11 4 (0.29%) Solaris
12 2 (0.14%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.072%) CentOS
13 1 (0.072%) Rocky
13 1 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 244 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
2 243 (17.39%) Stakeholder Management
3 227 (16.25%) Agile
4 204 (14.60%) Migration
5 184 (13.17%) CI/CD
6 178 (12.74%) DevOps
7 163 (11.67%) Continuous Improvement
8 141 (10.09%) Roadmaps
9 138 (9.88%) Analytics
9 138 (9.88%) Cybersecurity
10 130 (9.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 124 (8.88%) AI
12 117 (8.38%) Risk Management
13 113 (8.09%) Information Security
14 101 (7.23%) Project Management
15 96 (6.87%) Decision-Making
16 93 (6.66%) Test Automation
17 86 (6.16%) Microservices
18 85 (6.08%) Infrastructure as Code
19 82 (5.87%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 232 (16.61%) Python
2 173 (12.38%) SQL
3 99 (7.09%) Java
4 68 (4.87%) JavaScript
4 68 (4.87%) PowerShell
5 55 (3.94%) C#
6 46 (3.29%) Bash
7 40 (2.86%) TypeScript
8 19 (1.36%) Bicep
9 12 (0.86%) Perl
10 11 (0.79%) C++
11 10 (0.72%) Shell Script
12 8 (0.57%) ActionScript
12 8 (0.57%) Kusto Query Language
13 7 (0.50%) PL/SQL
14 6 (0.43%) ActionScript 2.0
14 6 (0.43%) PHP
15 5 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.36%) Go
16 4 (0.29%) Scala
Qualifications
1 187 (13.39%) Security Cleared
2 133 (9.52%) SC Cleared
3 125 (8.95%) Degree
4 49 (3.51%) DV Cleared
5 43 (3.08%) CISSP
6 34 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
7 30 (2.15%) CISM
8 27 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.86%) AWS Certification
10 23 (1.65%) Master's Degree
11 21 (1.50%) PMI Certification
12 19 (1.36%) PMP
13 18 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
14 17 (1.22%) Azure Certification
15 15 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
16 14 (1.00%) CRISC
16 14 (1.00%) CTC Cleared
17 13 (0.93%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 11 (0.79%) CCSP
19 10 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 239 (17.11%) GDPR
2 97 (6.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 91 (6.51%) NIST
4 68 (4.87%) Data Quality
5 56 (4.01%) QA
6 32 (2.29%) PCI DSS
7 30 (2.15%) Accessibility
8 26 (1.86%) GRC
9 24 (1.72%) PMO
10 19 (1.36%) SLA
11 18 (1.29%) NCSC
12 15 (1.07%) SOC 2
13 14 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
14 13 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (0.86%) NIST 800
16 11 (0.79%) PERC
17 8 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
18 7 (0.50%) HIPAA
19 6 (0.43%) COBIT
19 6 (0.43%) WCAG
System Software
1 65 (4.65%) Docker
2 63 (4.51%) Active Directory
3 54 (3.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (1.07%) NFS
6 12 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.72%) vSphere
8 7 (0.50%) Hyper-V
9 6 (0.43%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.29%) KVM
10 4 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.21%) IAG
11 3 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 1 (0.072%) Firmware
12 1 (0.072%) HDFS
12 1 (0.072%) ISA Server
12 1 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.072%) Samba
12 1 (0.072%) UAG
Systems Management
1 96 (6.87%) Terraform
2 93 (6.66%) Kubernetes
3 68 (4.87%) Ansible
4 32 (2.29%) Grafana
5 31 (2.22%) NetBackup
6 30 (2.15%) Microsoft Intune
7 23 (1.65%) Prometheus
8 20 (1.43%) SCCM
9 15 (1.07%) Puppet
10 13 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.50%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.43%) EMC NetWorker
13 6 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 6 (0.43%) RSA Archer
14 5 (0.36%) Control-M
14 5 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 4 (0.29%) Kibana
16 3 (0.21%) Argo
Vendors
1 205 (14.67%) Microsoft
2 67 (4.80%) Oracle
3 59 (4.22%) Google
4 56 (4.01%) VMware
5 49 (3.51%) Databricks
6 45 (3.22%) ServiceNow
7 41 (2.93%) Cisco
8 38 (2.72%) SAP
9 34 (2.43%) Salesforce
10 32 (2.29%) Red Hat
11 22 (1.57%) Citrix
11 22 (1.57%) Commvault
11 22 (1.57%) Veritas
12 19 (1.36%) NetApp
13 18 (1.29%) F5
13 18 (1.29%) IBM
14 16 (1.15%) Adobe
15 15 (1.07%) Splunk
15 15 (1.07%) Veeam
16 11 (0.79%) Meraki