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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 74 84
Rank change year-on-year -10 +10 +3
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,676 1,097 986
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.07% 3.34% 2.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.63% 3.69% 3.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 853 532 519
10th Percentile £263 £289 £209
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.30% -2.25% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £605
90th Percentile £688 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £454 £475
% change year-on-year -0.83% -4.47% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 56 17
10th Percentile £13.45 £12.63 £19.13
25th Percentile £14.06 £13.60 £22.50
Median hourly rate £17.85 £16.50 £27.84
Median % change year-on-year +8.18% -40.73% +15.15%
75th Percentile £24.12 £20.48 £67.50
90th Percentile £33.75 £31.43 £70.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.85 £15.25 £25.00
% change year-on-year +17.05% -39.00% +19.05%

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 46,176 29,707 32,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.53% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,774 18,450 19,527
10th Percentile £325 £297 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,315 1,863 1,324
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +53.08% -38.77% -3.91%
75th Percentile £65.41 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.40 £65.00 £74.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +73.52% -47.49% -

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 October 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 October 2026.

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 6 October 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 -17 1,387 £500 +0.81% 1,978
UK excluding London -7 932 £450 -0.83% 1,230
London -32 586 £525 - 883
Work from Home +3 471 £500 +11.48% 861
North of England +11 334 £459 +1.94% 343
South East -7 201 £475 -5.94% 301
Yorkshire +13 168 £475 -5.00% 136
Midlands +5 160 £450 -5.26% 192
North West +8 145 £450 +2.27% 175
West Midlands +6 130 £450 -10.00% 102
Scotland -12 119 £450 +5.88% 91
South West -17 62 £500 +25.00% 103
East of England -15 35 £503 +5.79% 120
East Midlands -2 30 £435 +8.75% 89
North East -45 22 £463 +15.63% 33
Wales -8 19 £413 +11.86% 46
Northern Ireland +5 16 £115 -83.57% 34
Channel Islands -5 2 £600 -17.24% 5

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 71 (4.24%) SharePoint
2 33 (1.97%) Confluence
3 27 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
4 26 (1.55%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.13%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.78%) Apache
6 13 (0.78%) IIS
7 12 (0.72%) CMS
8 10 (0.60%) SAS
9 7 (0.42%) WordPress
10 6 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.30%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.24%) nginx
13 3 (0.18%) CICS
13 3 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 2 (0.12%) Drupal
14 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
15 1 (0.060%) Moodle
15 1 (0.060%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 1 (0.060%) WebSphere
Applications
1 52 (3.10%) Microsoft Office
2 50 (2.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.42%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.42%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.24%) UserZoom
6 1 (0.060%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.060%) InfoPath
6 1 (0.060%) Maya
6 1 (0.060%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
1 11 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.54%) SAP MDG
3 5 (0.30%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
3 5 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (0.24%) NEC Housing
4 4 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
6 2 (0.12%) Cloudability
6 2 (0.12%) ION MarketView
6 2 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.12%) Sonata
7 1 (0.060%) Actimize
7 1 (0.060%) Bloomberg TOMS
7 1 (0.060%) Eloqua
7 1 (0.060%) Maximo
7 1 (0.060%) Sage 50
7 1 (0.060%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 373 (22.26%) Azure
2 295 (17.60%) AWS
3 137 (8.17%) Microsoft 365
4 132 (7.88%) GCP
5 83 (4.95%) Power Platform
6 79 (4.71%) SaaS
7 78 (4.65%) Entra ID
8 66 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
9 60 (3.58%) GitHub
10 53 (3.16%) Microsoft Purview
11 51 (3.04%) Serverless
12 40 (2.39%) Microsoft Copilot
13 30 (1.79%) OneDrive
14 25 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
14 25 (1.49%) GitHub Actions
14 25 (1.49%) Snowflake
15 23 (1.37%) OpenShift
16 22 (1.31%) Power Automate
17 21 (1.25%) Azure Monitor
17 21 (1.25%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 95 (5.67%) Network Security
2 64 (3.82%) Firewall
3 36 (2.15%) DNS
3 36 (2.15%) VPN
4 27 (1.61%) TCP/IP
5 24 (1.43%) DHCP
6 21 (1.25%) WAN
7 20 (1.19%) Cisco IPT
7 20 (1.19%) LAN
8 15 (0.89%) MPLS
8 15 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
9 14 (0.84%) SAN
10 12 (0.72%) Wireless
11 11 (0.66%) VoIP
12 10 (0.60%) HTTP
12 10 (0.60%) Unified Communications
13 9 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
13 9 (0.54%) Intrusion Detection
13 9 (0.54%) NAS
13 9 (0.54%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (3.58%) Power BI
2 54 (3.22%) Metadata
3 43 (2.57%) Relational Database
4 38 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
5 32 (1.91%) SQL Server
6 31 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
7 24 (1.43%) NoSQL
8 23 (1.37%) BigQuery
8 23 (1.37%) Data Lake
9 16 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
10 15 (0.89%) Big Data
11 13 (0.78%) MongoDB
12 11 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
12 11 (0.66%) Oracle Database
13 10 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
13 10 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
14 8 (0.48%) Amazon Aurora
14 8 (0.48%) DynamoDB
14 8 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (0.48%) Redis
Development Applications
1 77 (4.59%) JIRA
2 69 (4.12%) Git
3 59 (3.52%) Jenkins
4 26 (1.55%) GitLab
5 18 (1.07%) Selenium
6 10 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
6 10 (0.60%) Postman
7 9 (0.54%) Maven
8 6 (0.36%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
9 5 (0.30%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.24%) Gradle
10 4 (0.24%) JUnit
11 3 (0.18%) ERwin
11 3 (0.18%) Mockito
11 3 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 3 (0.18%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.18%) Vite
General
1 675 (40.27%) Social Skills
2 360 (21.48%) Finance
3 253 (15.10%) Legal
4 225 (13.42%) Public Sector
5 220 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
6 118 (7.04%) Banking
7 84 (5.01%) Organisational Skills
8 72 (4.30%) Documentation Skills
9 46 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
10 45 (2.68%) Local Government
11 40 (2.39%) Presentation Skills
12 38 (2.27%) Retail
13 29 (1.73%) Telecoms
14 28 (1.67%) Law
15 27 (1.61%) Marketing
16 23 (1.37%) Front Office
17 22 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 22 (1.31%) Pharmaceutical
17 22 (1.31%) Police
18 19 (1.13%) Billing
Job Titles
1 250 (14.92%) Architect
2 173 (10.32%) Analyst
3 135 (8.05%) Lead
4 126 (7.52%) Senior
5 99 (5.91%) Developer
6 74 (4.42%) Consultant
7 71 (4.24%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.18%) Business Analyst
9 69 (4.12%) Solutions Architect
10 60 (3.58%) Security Architect
11 56 (3.34%) Administrator
12 46 (2.74%) Security Engineer
13 39 (2.33%) Information Officer
14 37 (2.21%) Support Engineer
15 36 (2.15%) Information Governance Officer
16 32 (1.91%) Data Analyst
16 32 (1.91%) Data Engineer
17 28 (1.67%) Data Architect
17 28 (1.67%) Network Engineer
18 26 (1.55%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (6.38%) Terraform
2 94 (5.61%) REST
3 42 (2.51%) Kafka
4 36 (2.15%) JSON
5 35 (2.09%) Middleware
5 35 (2.09%) OAuth
6 25 (1.49%) RESTful
7 24 (1.43%) .NET
7 24 (1.43%) React
8 22 (1.31%) OAuth2
8 22 (1.31%) Spring
9 21 (1.25%) Node.js
9 21 (1.25%) Spring Boot
10 20 (1.19%) HTML
11 17 (1.01%) CSS
12 16 (0.95%) OpenID
13 15 (0.89%) SOAP
14 14 (0.84%) OpenAPI
14 14 (0.84%) Swagger
14 14 (0.84%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 688 (41.05%) Data Protection Act
2 139 (8.29%) Management Information System
3 99 (5.91%) Product Ownership
4 93 (5.55%) Onboarding
5 91 (5.43%) Cloud Native
6 62 (3.70%) Data Centre
7 60 (3.58%) Distributed Systems
8 45 (2.68%) Freedom of Information
8 45 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
9 40 (2.39%) Security Posture
10 34 (2.03%) Virtual Team
11 30 (1.79%) Data Structures
11 30 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
11 30 (1.79%) NHS
12 28 (1.67%) AI Agents
12 28 (1.67%) Operational Technology
12 28 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
13 21 (1.25%) Private Cloud
14 19 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
14 19 (1.13%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 133 (7.94%) Windows
2 84 (5.01%) Linux
3 38 (2.27%) Windows Server
4 31 (1.85%) Apple iOS
5 29 (1.73%) Android
5 29 (1.73%) Unix
6 22 (1.31%) Mac OS
7 16 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.72%) Windows 10
9 8 (0.48%) zOS
10 2 (0.12%) AIX
10 2 (0.12%) CentOS
10 2 (0.12%) HPUX
10 2 (0.12%) Solaris
10 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.12%) VMS
10 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.060%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 415 (24.76%) Stakeholder Management
2 317 (18.91%) Agile
3 293 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
4 289 (17.24%) Continuous Improvement
5 251 (14.98%) CI/CD
6 243 (14.50%) AI
7 235 (14.02%) Cybersecurity
8 227 (13.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 221 (13.19%) Migration
10 212 (12.65%) DevOps
11 173 (10.32%) Roadmaps
12 164 (9.79%) Information Security
13 163 (9.73%) Decision-Making
14 159 (9.49%) Risk Management
15 153 (9.13%) Data Governance
16 152 (9.07%) Infrastructure as Code
17 146 (8.71%) Analytics
18 139 (8.29%) Validation
19 122 (7.28%) Test Automation
20 120 (7.16%) Information Governance
Programming Languages
1 212 (12.65%) Python
2 167 (9.96%) SQL
3 78 (4.65%) Java
4 63 (3.76%) PowerShell
5 44 (2.63%) JavaScript
6 35 (2.09%) Bash
7 29 (1.73%) TypeScript
8 26 (1.55%) Go
9 21 (1.25%) Bicep
10 20 (1.19%) C#
11 16 (0.95%) Scala
12 13 (0.78%) Apex Code
12 13 (0.78%) Kotlin
13 12 (0.72%) Perl
14 9 (0.54%) C
15 8 (0.48%) C++
15 8 (0.48%) VB
16 7 (0.42%) COBOL
16 7 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
16 7 (0.42%) VB6
Qualifications
1 279 (16.65%) Security Cleared
2 209 (12.47%) SC Cleared
3 120 (7.16%) Degree
4 82 (4.89%) CISSP
5 59 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 51 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
6 51 (3.04%) CISM
7 46 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
8 30 (1.79%) Azure Certification
8 30 (1.79%) PMI Certification
9 29 (1.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 27 (1.61%) CCSP
10 27 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
10 27 (1.61%) PMP
11 18 (1.07%) AWS Certification
12 14 (0.84%) CRISC
13 13 (0.78%) CISA
14 12 (0.72%) CCNP
14 12 (0.72%) Master's Degree
14 12 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (14.44%) GDPR
2 123 (7.34%) Data Quality
3 104 (6.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 75 (4.47%) NIST
5 67 (4.00%) QA
6 52 (3.10%) GRC
7 50 (2.98%) Accessibility
8 32 (1.91%) PCI DSS
9 24 (1.43%) NCSC
10 23 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
11 20 (1.19%) PMO
12 14 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 14 (0.84%) SLA
13 11 (0.66%) PERC
13 11 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 11 (0.66%) WCAG
14 10 (0.60%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 9 (0.54%) Government Security Classifications
15 9 (0.54%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 80 (4.77%) Active Directory
2 70 (4.18%) Docker
3 61 (3.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (1.01%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.78%) vSphere
6 12 (0.72%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.30%) ISA Server
8 5 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
9 4 (0.24%) NFS
9 4 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.12%) GPFS
10 2 (0.12%) IAG
10 2 (0.12%) KVM
10 2 (0.12%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.060%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.060%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.060%) Varnish
11 1 (0.060%) XenApp
11 1 (0.060%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 116 (6.92%) Kubernetes
2 49 (2.92%) Ansible
3 38 (2.27%) Microsoft Intune
4 34 (2.03%) Grafana
5 21 (1.25%) SCCM
6 16 (0.95%) Prometheus
7 15 (0.89%) Kibana
8 13 (0.78%) NetBackup
8 13 (0.78%) Progress Chef
9 12 (0.72%) Jamf Pro
10 11 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.60%) Puppet
12 8 (0.48%) CASB
13 5 (0.30%) Cisco CUCM
13 5 (0.30%) QRadar
13 5 (0.30%) SCOM
14 4 (0.24%) Control-M
14 4 (0.24%) vCenter Server
15 3 (0.18%) Istio
15 3 (0.18%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 378 (22.55%) Microsoft
2 90 (5.37%) ServiceNow
3 89 (5.31%) Google
4 72 (4.30%) Cisco
5 64 (3.82%) Oracle
6 62 (3.70%) VMware
7 48 (2.86%) Databricks
8 43 (2.57%) Splunk
9 40 (2.39%) SAP
10 29 (1.73%) Salesforce
11 27 (1.61%) Zscaler
12 20 (1.19%) IBM
13 19 (1.13%) Workday
14 18 (1.07%) Dynatrace
15 17 (1.01%) CyberArk
15 17 (1.01%) F5
15 17 (1.01%) Red Hat
16 15 (0.89%) Dell
17 14 (0.84%) MuleSoft
18 13 (0.78%) SolarWinds