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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 87 82
Rank change year-on-year +10 -5 +27
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,217 854 1,121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.28% 2.68% 2.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.73% 3.02% 3.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 624 440 656
10th Percentile £277 £264 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -6.98%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £488 £450
% change year-on-year -7.69% +8.33% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 18 23
10th Percentile £12.63 £16.19 £17.20
25th Percentile £16.35 £21.19 £18.13
Median hourly rate £20.40 £25.93 £23.24
Median % change year-on-year -21.31% +11.55% -66.80%
75th Percentile £20.79 £35.90 £26.66
90th Percentile £42.50 £65.00 £44.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.40 £27.35 £21.00
% change year-on-year -25.41% +30.24% -70.00%

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 32,585 28,260 37,041
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.84% 88.76% 87.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,582 17,185 24,531
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £742 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,992 898 1,578
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.56 £18.04
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +15.71%
75th Percentile £55.89 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.33
% change year-on-year -21.76% -29.73% +46.88%

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 15 January 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 15 January 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 15 January 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 +20 1,049 £500 - 490
UK excluding London -2 631 £450 -7.69% 453
London +20 525 £525 +4.74% 105
Work from Home +9 278 £490 -2.00% 180
North of England -12 189 £460 -3.16% 86
South East +12 143 £495 -1.00% 131
Yorkshire 0 101 £487 -3.80% 35
Scotland +2 99 £400 -15.79% 21
Midlands +12 91 £450 -12.20% 73
North West -24 72 £439 -8.59% 40
West Midlands -3 59 £475 -8.43% 35
South West -3 46 £513 +5.13% 57
East of England +6 41 £463 -7.50% 69
East Midlands -1 32 £402 -11.06% 37
North East -18 17 £394 -17.11% 11
Wales 0 13 £400 -5.88% 21
Northern Ireland - 13 £500 - 7

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 (5.09%) Confluence
2 27 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.15%) CMS
4 13 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 10 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.66%) Apache
7 6 (0.49%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.41%) CICS
8 5 (0.41%) nginx
9 3 (0.25%) SAS
9 3 (0.25%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.16%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.16%) Drupal
10 2 (0.16%) Ethereum
10 2 (0.16%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.16%) Hyperledger
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.082%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.082%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 56 (4.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.58%) Chatbot
4 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.25%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.25%) Sketch
6 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.16%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.16%) InVision
7 2 (0.16%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.082%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.082%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.082%) Blender
8 1 (0.082%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.082%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.082%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 12 (0.99%) Oracle EBS
1 12 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.66%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 4 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
3 4 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 4 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
3 4 (0.33%) VisionPLUS
4 3 (0.25%) Fidessa
4 3 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.25%) Oracle FAH
4 3 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.25%) ResourceLink
5 2 (0.16%) assyst
5 2 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.16%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.16%) R3 Corda
5 2 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 233 (19.15%) Azure
2 200 (16.43%) AWS
3 86 (7.07%) GCP
4 73 (6.00%) Power Platform
5 60 (4.93%) Microsoft 365
6 58 (4.77%) Serverless
7 47 (3.86%) GitHub
8 46 (3.78%) Entra ID
9 45 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
10 43 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
11 39 (3.20%) SaaS
12 36 (2.96%) Amazon S3
13 29 (2.38%) Snowflake
14 27 (2.22%) Power Automate
15 23 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
16 22 (1.81%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (1.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 20 (1.64%) Microsoft Purview
19 19 (1.56%) OCI
20 18 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 45 (3.70%) Firewall
2 28 (2.30%) Network Security
3 17 (1.40%) LAN
3 17 (1.40%) MPLS
4 15 (1.23%) SAN
5 14 (1.15%) VPN
5 14 (1.15%) WAN
6 13 (1.07%) Cisco IPT
6 13 (1.07%) DNS
6 13 (1.07%) SSH
7 10 (0.82%) NAS
8 9 (0.74%) BGP
8 9 (0.74%) SD-WAN
8 9 (0.74%) TCP/IP
9 8 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
10 7 (0.58%) HTTP
10 7 (0.58%) Wireless
11 6 (0.49%) DHCP
11 6 (0.49%) Internet
11 6 (0.49%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (4.85%) Power BI
2 35 (2.88%) SQL Server
3 34 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
5 23 (1.89%) Relational Database
6 22 (1.81%) NoSQL
7 18 (1.48%) Metadata
8 15 (1.23%) MySQL
9 14 (1.15%) DynamoDB
9 14 (1.15%) Tableau
10 13 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
10 13 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 13 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
11 12 (0.99%) Amazon Aurora
12 10 (0.82%) Data Lake
13 9 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (0.66%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 8 (0.66%) Oracle Database
15 7 (0.58%) Hadoop
15 7 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 105 (8.63%) JIRA
2 47 (3.86%) Jenkins
3 42 (3.45%) Git
4 31 (2.55%) GitLab
5 10 (0.82%) SpecFlow
6 8 (0.66%) JUnit
7 5 (0.41%) NUnit
8 4 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.33%) ChangeMan
8 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.33%) Fiddler
8 4 (0.33%) Gradle
8 4 (0.33%) Maven
8 4 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 3 (0.25%) Postman
9 3 (0.25%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.16%) IntelliJ
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 411 (33.77%) Social Skills
2 250 (20.54%) Finance
3 155 (12.74%) Analytical Skills
4 131 (10.76%) Public Sector
5 105 (8.63%) Banking
6 91 (7.48%) Legal
7 40 (3.29%) Organisational Skills
8 36 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
8 36 (2.96%) Marketing
9 33 (2.71%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.47%) Influencing Skills
11 24 (1.97%) Law
12 22 (1.81%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
14 16 (1.31%) Front Office
15 15 (1.23%) Local Government
16 13 (1.07%) Financial Institution
16 13 (1.07%) Retail
17 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 10 (0.82%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 157 (12.90%) Analyst
2 139 (11.42%) Developer
3 124 (10.19%) Architect
4 90 (7.40%) Lead
5 66 (5.42%) Business Analyst
6 62 (5.09%) Senior
7 61 (5.01%) Consultant
8 57 (4.68%) Project Manager
9 37 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
10 35 (2.88%) Administrator
11 33 (2.71%) Security Engineer
12 32 (2.63%) Data Analyst
13 27 (2.22%) Data Engineer
14 24 (1.97%) Automation Engineer
15 22 (1.81%) Support Engineer
16 21 (1.73%) Data Protection Officer
16 21 (1.73%) Network Engineer
16 21 (1.73%) Security Architect
17 20 (1.64%) Software Engineer
18 19 (1.56%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (4.93%) REST
2 36 (2.96%) .NET
3 33 (2.71%) React
4 30 (2.47%) Node.js
5 28 (2.30%) RESTful
6 26 (2.14%) OAuth
7 23 (1.89%) Spring
8 22 (1.81%) Kafka
9 21 (1.73%) HTML
9 21 (1.73%) SOAP
10 18 (1.48%) Spring Boot
11 16 (1.31%) Middleware
12 15 (1.23%) .NET Core
12 15 (1.23%) Oracle Fusion
13 13 (1.07%) AngularJS
14 12 (0.99%) Playwright
14 12 (0.99%) XML
15 11 (0.90%) OAuth2
15 11 (0.90%) SAML
16 10 (0.82%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 609 (50.04%) Data Protection Act
2 53 (4.35%) Management Information System
3 52 (4.27%) Cloud Native
3 52 (4.27%) Product Ownership
4 49 (4.03%) Onboarding
5 30 (2.47%) Freedom of Information
6 29 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
7 27 (2.22%) NHS
8 20 (1.64%) Data Structures
9 19 (1.56%) Security Posture
10 17 (1.40%) CMDB
10 17 (1.40%) Data Centre
11 16 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
11 16 (1.31%) Replication
12 15 (1.23%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 13 (1.07%) AI Agents
15 12 (0.99%) Derivative
15 12 (0.99%) Insider Threat
16 11 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 89 (7.31%) Windows
2 56 (4.60%) Linux
3 25 (2.05%) Unix
4 15 (1.23%) Mac OS
5 13 (1.07%) Windows 10
5 13 (1.07%) Windows Server
6 10 (0.82%) zOS
7 8 (0.66%) Android
8 6 (0.49%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.49%) Solaris
9 5 (0.41%) AIX
9 5 (0.41%) VMS
10 1 (0.082%) CentOS
10 1 (0.082%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.082%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.082%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 222 (18.24%) Problem-Solving
2 215 (17.67%) Agile
3 202 (16.60%) Stakeholder Management
4 157 (12.90%) DevOps
5 152 (12.49%) CI/CD
5 152 (12.49%) Migration
6 127 (10.44%) Cybersecurity
7 126 (10.35%) Analytics
8 122 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 112 (9.20%) Continuous Improvement
10 109 (8.96%) AI
11 105 (8.63%) Roadmaps
12 104 (8.55%) Information Security
13 101 (8.30%) Risk Management
14 98 (8.05%) Project Management
15 82 (6.74%) Microservices
16 80 (6.57%) Business Intelligence
17 75 (6.16%) Test Automation
18 74 (6.08%) Incident Response
19 70 (5.75%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 210 (17.26%) Python
2 158 (12.98%) SQL
3 76 (6.24%) Java
4 64 (5.26%) JavaScript
5 60 (4.93%) PowerShell
6 57 (4.68%) C#
7 45 (3.70%) Bash
8 31 (2.55%) TypeScript
9 17 (1.40%) C++
10 11 (0.90%) Bicep
11 10 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 8 (0.66%) Perl
12 8 (0.66%) PHP
12 8 (0.66%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.41%) COBOL
13 5 (0.41%) Go
13 5 (0.41%) Kotlin
13 5 (0.41%) Scala
14 4 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 4 (0.33%) R
Qualifications
1 160 (13.15%) Security Cleared
2 117 (9.61%) SC Cleared
3 110 (9.04%) Degree
4 39 (3.20%) DV Cleared
5 36 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 30 (2.47%) CISSP
7 24 (1.97%) CISM
8 20 (1.64%) AWS Certification
8 20 (1.64%) Master's Degree
9 19 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
10 18 (1.48%) PMI Certification
11 17 (1.40%) PMP
12 15 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.99%) Azure Certification
13 12 (0.99%) CTC Cleared
14 11 (0.90%) CRISC
15 10 (0.82%) A+ Certification
16 9 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 9 (0.74%) CCSP
16 9 (0.74%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 221 (18.16%) GDPR
2 88 (7.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 73 (6.00%) NIST
4 48 (3.94%) Data Quality
5 37 (3.04%) QA
6 26 (2.14%) PCI DSS
7 25 (2.05%) Accessibility
8 18 (1.48%) PMO
9 14 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (1.15%) GRC
9 14 (1.15%) NCSC
10 13 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (1.07%) SLA
11 11 (0.90%) Disclosure Scotland
11 11 (0.90%) NIST 800
11 11 (0.90%) PERC
12 8 (0.66%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 7 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
14 6 (0.49%) EU AI Act
14 6 (0.49%) HIPAA
System Software
1 56 (4.60%) Active Directory
1 56 (4.60%) Docker
2 41 (3.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (0.66%) NFS
5 5 (0.41%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.33%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.16%) KVM
7 2 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.082%) Firmware
8 1 (0.082%) HDFS
8 1 (0.082%) ISA Server
8 1 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
8 1 (0.082%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.082%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.082%) VMware Workstation
8 1 (0.082%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 69 (5.67%) Terraform
2 57 (4.68%) Kubernetes
3 50 (4.11%) Ansible
4 26 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.05%) NetBackup
6 20 (1.64%) Grafana
6 20 (1.64%) SCCM
7 17 (1.40%) Prometheus
8 8 (0.66%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.58%) Puppet
10 6 (0.49%) RSA Archer
11 5 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.41%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.33%) CA Endevor
12 4 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
13 3 (0.25%) Control-M
13 3 (0.25%) Data Guard
13 3 (0.25%) Kibana
13 3 (0.25%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 187 (15.37%) Microsoft
2 58 (4.77%) Oracle
3 54 (4.44%) Google
4 43 (3.53%) VMware
5 36 (2.96%) Cisco
5 36 (2.96%) Salesforce
5 36 (2.96%) ServiceNow
6 35 (2.88%) SAP
7 34 (2.79%) Databricks
8 23 (1.89%) IBM
9 22 (1.81%) Citrix
9 22 (1.81%) Veritas
10 20 (1.64%) Red Hat
11 16 (1.31%) Commvault
11 16 (1.31%) F5
12 11 (0.90%) Adobe
12 11 (0.90%) CyberArk
12 11 (0.90%) OneTrust
12 11 (0.90%) Veeam
12 11 (0.90%) Workday