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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 89 83
Rank change year-on-year +15 -6 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,502 810 1,117
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 2.77% 2.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.73% 3.04% 2.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 830 403 611
10th Percentile £300 £257 £225
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.15% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 32 109
10th Percentile £13.26 £16.48 £12.45
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.25 £27.57 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.92% +31.29% -60.00%
75th Percentile £28.56 £32.73 £27.84
90th Percentile £51.15 £36.95 £43.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.27 £29.00 £19.50
% change year-on-year -30.10% +48.72% -56.21%

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 40,275 26,638 37,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.44% 90.95% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,293 17,157 24,168
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +1.56% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,413 1,083 2,449
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.75 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.35% -0.11%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.94 £37.50
% change year-on-year +56.37% -25.49% +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 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 7 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 7 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 +28 1,288 £500 +2.04% 374
UK excluding London +13 816 £450 -5.26% 276
London +23 587 £525 +5.00% 150
Work from Home +21 385 £500 +2.56% 136
North of England -4 261 £478 +0.53% 72
South East +25 177 £483 -3.40% 60
Yorkshire -2 154 £480 -6.34% 26
Midlands -8 131 £450 -10.00% 49
Scotland +6 121 £420 -6.67% 27
North West +2 99 £490 +15.29% 33
West Midlands -17 85 £450 -14.29% 32
South West +1 65 £425 +6.25% 26
East of England -1 48 £488 -7.14% 34
East Midlands +2 46 £437 +5.37% 17
Wales -6 11 £375 -11.76% 9
North East -33 9 £400 -4.48% 13
Northern Ireland +4 4 £588 +19.41% 3

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 53 (3.53%) Confluence
2 39 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.53%) Apache
7 6 (0.40%) CMS
8 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.33%) SAS
9 3 (0.20%) Drupal
9 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.067%) JBoss
Applications
1 50 (3.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (3.00%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.067%) Blender
8 1 (0.067%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.067%) Maya
8 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
8 1 (0.067%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 12 (0.80%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
4 5 (0.33%) SAP GRC
5 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.27%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
6 3 (0.20%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 2 (0.13%) Workfront
8 1 (0.067%) Odoo
Cloud Services
1 310 (20.64%) Azure
2 254 (16.91%) AWS
3 131 (8.72%) GCP
4 87 (5.79%) Microsoft 365
4 87 (5.79%) Power Platform
5 78 (5.19%) Entra ID
6 68 (4.53%) GitHub
7 56 (3.73%) SaaS
8 48 (3.20%) Microsoft Purview
9 46 (3.06%) Azure DevOps
9 46 (3.06%) Serverless
10 43 (2.86%) OpenShift
11 34 (2.26%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (2.00%) Amazon S3
13 27 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
14 26 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
15 25 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
15 25 (1.66%) Snowflake
16 24 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
17 22 (1.46%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 60 (3.99%) Network Security
2 41 (2.73%) Firewall
3 36 (2.40%) SAN
4 25 (1.66%) VPN
5 24 (1.60%) NAS
6 21 (1.40%) WAN
7 19 (1.26%) MPLS
8 18 (1.20%) LAN
9 16 (1.07%) DNS
10 15 (1.00%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
13 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
13 9 (0.60%) VLAN
14 8 (0.53%) Cisco IPT
14 8 (0.53%) DHCP
14 8 (0.53%) SD-WAN
15 7 (0.47%) BGP
15 7 (0.47%) Ethernet
15 7 (0.47%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (4.99%) Power BI
2 39 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 33 (2.20%) SQL Server
4 32 (2.13%) Metadata
5 31 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.86%) MySQL
7 27 (1.80%) Relational Database
8 24 (1.60%) MongoDB
9 21 (1.40%) Amazon RDS
10 20 (1.33%) Big Data
10 20 (1.33%) NoSQL
11 18 (1.20%) DynamoDB
12 17 (1.13%) Data Lake
13 16 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
14 14 (0.93%) Oracle Database
15 13 (0.87%) Tableau
16 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
17 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
17 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
17 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 87 (5.79%) JIRA
2 67 (4.46%) Git
3 65 (4.33%) Jenkins
4 38 (2.53%) GitLab
5 12 (0.80%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) JUnit
7 8 (0.53%) Postman
7 8 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.40%) Maven
8 6 (0.40%) NUnit
9 5 (0.33%) Flyway
9 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.27%) Gradle
11 3 (0.20%) Liquibase
11 3 (0.20%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 452 (30.09%) Social Skills
2 351 (23.37%) Finance
3 186 (12.38%) Legal
4 177 (11.78%) Analytical Skills
5 129 (8.59%) Public Sector
6 119 (7.92%) Banking
7 64 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
8 57 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
9 46 (3.06%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.00%) Front Office
10 30 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
10 30 (2.00%) Marketing
11 28 (1.86%) Local Government
12 25 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
13 24 (1.60%) Law
13 24 (1.60%) Retail
14 19 (1.26%) Police
15 14 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
16 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 10 (0.67%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 196 (13.05%) Architect
2 146 (9.72%) Analyst
3 129 (8.59%) Developer
4 117 (7.79%) Lead
5 115 (7.66%) Senior
6 95 (6.32%) Consultant
7 74 (4.93%) Project Manager
8 71 (4.73%) Business Analyst
9 53 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.86%) Java Developer
10 43 (2.86%) Security Architect
11 39 (2.60%) Network Engineer
11 39 (2.60%) Security Engineer
12 38 (2.53%) Data Engineer
13 35 (2.33%) Administrator
14 28 (1.86%) Data Analyst
15 27 (1.80%) Technical Architect
16 21 (1.40%) Python Developer
16 21 (1.40%) Support Engineer
17 20 (1.33%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (4.79%) REST
2 62 (4.13%) React
3 44 (2.93%) Spring
4 40 (2.66%) Spring Boot
5 35 (2.33%) .NET
6 33 (2.20%) Kafka
6 33 (2.20%) RESTful
7 32 (2.13%) HTML
8 31 (2.06%) Node.js
9 30 (2.00%) CSS
10 29 (1.93%) Middleware
11 28 (1.86%) OAuth
12 23 (1.53%) Jest
13 21 (1.40%) JSON
14 18 (1.20%) HTML5
14 18 (1.20%) OAuth2
14 18 (1.20%) Redux
15 17 (1.13%) Spring MVC
16 16 (1.07%) CSS3
16 16 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 719 (47.87%) Data Protection Act
2 91 (6.06%) Cloud Native
3 70 (4.66%) Product Ownership
4 67 (4.46%) Onboarding
5 48 (3.20%) Management Information System
6 40 (2.66%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
8 31 (2.06%) NHS
8 31 (2.06%) Replication
9 30 (2.00%) Data Centre
9 30 (2.00%) Security Posture
10 26 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
11 23 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 23 (1.53%) Virtual Team
12 21 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 19 (1.26%) Freedom of Information
14 17 (1.13%) Derivative
15 16 (1.07%) Mobile App
16 15 (1.00%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 95 (6.32%) Windows
2 75 (4.99%) Linux
3 25 (1.66%) Unix
4 21 (1.40%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.20%) Android
6 17 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.93%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.93%) VMS
8 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 13 (0.87%) Windows 10
9 10 (0.67%) zOS
10 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.067%) CentOS
13 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.067%) Solaris
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 281 (18.71%) Agile
2 253 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
3 251 (16.71%) Problem-Solving
4 233 (15.51%) Migration
5 220 (14.65%) CI/CD
6 214 (14.25%) DevOps
7 213 (14.18%) Continuous Improvement
8 147 (9.79%) Analytics
9 142 (9.45%) AI
10 141 (9.39%) Roadmaps
11 137 (9.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 124 (8.26%) Decision-Making
13 121 (8.06%) Risk Management
14 115 (7.66%) Cybersecurity
15 111 (7.39%) Infrastructure as Code
16 106 (7.06%) Data Governance
16 106 (7.06%) Information Security
16 106 (7.06%) Test Automation
17 97 (6.46%) Microservices
18 94 (6.26%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 220 (14.65%) Python
2 188 (12.52%) SQL
3 133 (8.85%) Java
4 77 (5.13%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.66%) PowerShell
6 47 (3.13%) C#
7 39 (2.60%) Bash
8 38 (2.53%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.20%) Bicep
10 15 (1.00%) C++
11 10 (0.67%) Perl
12 9 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 9 (0.60%) Scala
12 9 (0.60%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.53%) Go
13 8 (0.53%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.47%) R
15 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 207 (13.78%) Security Cleared
2 151 (10.05%) SC Cleared
3 116 (7.72%) Degree
4 63 (4.19%) CISSP
5 51 (3.40%) DV Cleared
6 35 (2.33%) CISM
7 30 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
7 30 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.93%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.80%) PMP
11 26 (1.73%) Azure Certification
12 20 (1.33%) AWS Certification
12 20 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (1.20%) Master's Degree
14 16 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.93%) CCSP
16 11 (0.73%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
18 9 (0.60%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 252 (16.78%) GDPR
2 94 (6.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 90 (5.99%) NIST
4 73 (4.86%) Data Quality
5 67 (4.46%) QA
6 33 (2.20%) Accessibility
6 33 (2.20%) GRC
7 27 (1.80%) PCI DSS
8 26 (1.73%) PMO
9 21 (1.40%) SLA
10 17 (1.13%) SOC 2
11 16 (1.07%) NCSC
12 11 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 10 (0.67%) Disclosure Scotland
14 9 (0.60%) HIPAA
14 9 (0.60%) PERC
15 8 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
15 8 (0.53%) WCAG
16 6 (0.40%) COBIT
17 5 (0.33%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 79 (5.26%) Docker
2 75 (4.99%) Active Directory
3 54 (3.60%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
5 20 (1.33%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.73%) vSphere
8 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.40%) KVM
11 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.20%) IAG
12 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.20%) XenApp
12 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.13%) GPFS
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.067%) iptables
Systems Management
1 116 (7.72%) Kubernetes
2 102 (6.79%) Terraform
3 64 (4.26%) Ansible
4 47 (3.13%) Grafana
5 32 (2.13%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (2.00%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.80%) NetBackup
8 21 (1.40%) SCCM
9 19 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.87%) Puppet
11 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.33%) Control-M
13 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
13 5 (0.33%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.27%) EMC NetWorker
14 4 (0.27%) Foglight
14 4 (0.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 240 (15.98%) Microsoft
2 76 (5.06%) Oracle
3 67 (4.46%) Google
4 55 (3.66%) VMware
5 53 (3.53%) ServiceNow
6 51 (3.40%) Cisco
6 51 (3.40%) Databricks
7 38 (2.53%) SAP
8 31 (2.06%) Red Hat
9 29 (1.93%) Salesforce
10 28 (1.86%) Splunk
11 26 (1.73%) NetApp
12 22 (1.46%) IBM
12 22 (1.46%) Veritas
13 21 (1.40%) Citrix
14 16 (1.07%) Commvault
14 16 (1.07%) F5
15 15 (1.00%) Dell
15 15 (1.00%) Veeam
15 15 (1.00%) Workday