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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 97 83
Rank change year-on-year +25 -14 +15
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,488 781 1,104
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.23% 2.65% 2.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.80% 2.92% 2.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 823 402 621
10th Percentile £300 £263 £225
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £466
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.04% -3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 31 107
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.50 £12.40
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.02 £27.64 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.95% +41.74% -69.05%
75th Percentile £28.19 £32.95 £27.50
90th Percentile £58.50 £37.00 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% +49.31% -68.43%

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 39,180 26,703 37,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.74% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,749 17,293 24,471
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,327 1,032 2,410
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.85 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%
75th Percentile £65.25 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £34.21
% change year-on-year +39.13% -15.96% -2.26%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 +29 1,279 £500 - 378
UK excluding London +21 804 £450 -5.26% 290
London +29 588 £525 - 144
Work from Home +37 388 £500 +0.81% 175
North of England -1 250 £475 - 76
South East +34 187 £500 -1.91% 71
Yorkshire -9 143 £478 -9.05% 16
Midlands -4 123 £450 -10.00% 47
Scotland +9 114 £410 -12.31% 27
North West +2 99 £489 +9.34% 48
West Midlands -24 77 £500 -3.61% 38
South West +11 65 £425 +9.68% 32
East of England 0 49 £500 -4.76% 33
East Midlands -1 46 £438 +16.67% 9
Wales +6 16 £375 -11.76% 7
North East -22 9 £400 -11.11% 12
Northern Ireland +6 4 £500 +1.63% 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 53 (3.56%) Confluence
2 38 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 24 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (0.94%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.54%) Apache
7 5 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.27%) CMS
8 4 (0.27%) 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%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 55 (3.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (2.96%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.40%) 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%) InVision
8 1 (0.067%) Maya
8 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Sketch
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (0.94%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.34%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.34%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
7 3 (0.20%) ResourceLink
8 2 (0.13%) Fidessa
8 2 (0.13%) ION MarketView
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 303 (20.36%) Azure
2 247 (16.60%) AWS
3 135 (9.07%) GCP
4 83 (5.58%) Microsoft 365
4 83 (5.58%) Power Platform
5 78 (5.24%) Entra ID
6 62 (4.17%) GitHub
7 56 (3.76%) SaaS
8 50 (3.36%) Microsoft Purview
9 46 (3.09%) Serverless
10 41 (2.76%) OpenShift
11 39 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
12 34 (2.28%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (2.02%) Amazon S3
13 30 (2.02%) Snowflake
14 28 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
16 24 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
17 23 (1.55%) Microsoft Copilot
18 22 (1.48%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 55 (3.70%) Network Security
2 39 (2.62%) Firewall
3 38 (2.55%) SAN
4 26 (1.75%) VPN
5 23 (1.55%) NAS
5 23 (1.55%) WAN
6 19 (1.28%) LAN
6 19 (1.28%) MPLS
7 18 (1.21%) DNS
8 15 (1.01%) Cisco IPT
9 13 (0.87%) TCP/IP
10 12 (0.81%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.81%) VLAN
11 11 (0.74%) DHCP
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
11 11 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.60%) BGP
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) Wireless
13 8 (0.54%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (4.84%) Power BI
2 40 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
3 36 (2.42%) Metadata
4 33 (2.22%) SQL Server
5 29 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
5 29 (1.95%) MySQL
6 26 (1.75%) Relational Database
7 23 (1.55%) MongoDB
8 22 (1.48%) NoSQL
9 20 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
10 19 (1.28%) Big Data
10 19 (1.28%) DynamoDB
11 16 (1.08%) Data Lake
12 15 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
13 14 (0.94%) Tableau
14 12 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
14 12 (0.81%) Oracle Database
15 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
15 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 84 (5.65%) JIRA
2 62 (4.17%) Jenkins
3 60 (4.03%) Git
4 36 (2.42%) GitLab
5 14 (0.94%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) JUnit
7 9 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.47%) Maven
9 6 (0.40%) NUnit
10 5 (0.34%) Flyway
10 5 (0.34%) Postman
10 5 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.27%) Gradle
11 4 (0.27%) Liquibase
12 3 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 3 (0.20%) Katalon Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 441 (29.64%) Social Skills
2 341 (22.92%) Finance
3 189 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (11.76%) Legal
5 131 (8.80%) Public Sector
6 121 (8.13%) Banking
7 67 (4.50%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
9 41 (2.76%) Telecoms
10 34 (2.28%) Marketing
11 31 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.95%) Front Office
13 28 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
14 27 (1.81%) Local Government
15 26 (1.75%) Law
16 23 (1.55%) Retail
17 19 (1.28%) Police
18 13 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 11 (0.74%) Manufacturing
20 10 (0.67%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 193 (12.97%) Architect
2 156 (10.48%) Analyst
3 125 (8.40%) Developer
4 116 (7.80%) Lead
5 105 (7.06%) Senior
6 95 (6.38%) Consultant
7 71 (4.77%) Business Analyst
8 68 (4.57%) Project Manager
9 55 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
10 42 (2.82%) Java Developer
11 39 (2.62%) Data Engineer
12 38 (2.55%) Security Architect
13 35 (2.35%) Security Engineer
14 34 (2.28%) Network Engineer
15 32 (2.15%) Administrator
16 29 (1.95%) Technical Architect
17 27 (1.81%) Data Analyst
18 26 (1.75%) Data Protection Officer
19 22 (1.48%) Support Engineer
20 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (4.37%) REST
2 59 (3.97%) React
3 43 (2.89%) Spring
4 38 (2.55%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.42%) .NET
6 33 (2.22%) HTML
7 31 (2.08%) Kafka
7 31 (2.08%) Node.js
8 30 (2.02%) RESTful
9 29 (1.95%) CSS
10 27 (1.81%) Middleware
11 24 (1.61%) OAuth
12 23 (1.55%) Jest
13 18 (1.21%) HTML5
13 18 (1.21%) Playwright
13 18 (1.21%) Redux
14 17 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
14 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.08%) CSS3
15 16 (1.08%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 694 (46.64%) Data Protection Act
2 84 (5.65%) Cloud Native
3 72 (4.84%) Product Ownership
4 62 (4.17%) Onboarding
5 52 (3.49%) Management Information System
6 33 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
7 32 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
8 30 (2.02%) Data Centre
8 30 (2.02%) NHS
8 30 (2.02%) Replication
9 29 (1.95%) Security Posture
10 26 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
11 23 (1.55%) Enterprise Storage
12 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 21 (1.41%) Freedom of Information
13 20 (1.34%) Virtual Team
14 17 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
15 15 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
15 15 (1.01%) Mobile App
15 15 (1.01%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 96 (6.45%) Windows
2 72 (4.84%) Linux
3 25 (1.68%) Unix
4 21 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (0.87%) Android
6 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
6 13 (0.87%) VMS
7 12 (0.81%) Apple iOS
7 12 (0.81%) Windows 10
8 9 (0.60%) zOS
9 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
11 3 (0.20%) Solaris
12 2 (0.13%) AIX
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 256 (17.20%) Agile
2 250 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
3 247 (16.60%) Stakeholder Management
4 229 (15.39%) Migration
5 201 (13.51%) CI/CD
6 195 (13.10%) DevOps
7 188 (12.63%) Continuous Improvement
8 142 (9.54%) Analytics
9 138 (9.27%) Roadmaps
10 133 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 132 (8.87%) AI
11 132 (8.87%) Cybersecurity
12 131 (8.80%) Risk Management
13 120 (8.06%) Decision-Making
14 111 (7.46%) Data Governance
15 109 (7.33%) Information Security
16 102 (6.85%) Infrastructure as Code
17 100 (6.72%) Test Automation
18 98 (6.59%) Project Management
19 93 (6.25%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 217 (14.58%) Python
2 189 (12.70%) SQL
3 132 (8.87%) Java
4 78 (5.24%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.70%) PowerShell
6 51 (3.43%) C#
7 41 (2.76%) TypeScript
8 34 (2.28%) Bash
9 15 (1.01%) Bicep
10 12 (0.81%) C++
11 11 (0.74%) Perl
12 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
13 8 (0.54%) PL/SQL
13 8 (0.54%) Scala
14 7 (0.47%) R
15 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
16 5 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 5 (0.34%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 208 (13.98%) Security Cleared
2 150 (10.08%) SC Cleared
3 124 (8.33%) Degree
4 66 (4.44%) CISSP
5 52 (3.49%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.55%) CISM
7 32 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.95%) Azure Certification
8 29 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
9 28 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 27 (1.81%) PMI Certification
11 25 (1.68%) PMP
12 24 (1.61%) AWS Certification
13 21 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
14 20 (1.34%) Master's Degree
15 19 (1.28%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 17 (1.14%) CCSP
17 12 (0.81%) CTC Cleared
18 10 (0.67%) CCNP
18 10 (0.67%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 273 (18.35%) GDPR
2 99 (6.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 97 (6.52%) NIST
4 71 (4.77%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.37%) QA
6 35 (2.35%) GRC
7 29 (1.95%) PCI DSS
8 27 (1.81%) Accessibility
9 24 (1.61%) PMO
10 21 (1.41%) SLA
11 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.08%) NCSC
13 13 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
14 12 (0.81%) PERC
15 9 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.47%) HIPAA
16 7 (0.47%) NIST 800
17 6 (0.40%) COBIT
17 6 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 76 (5.11%) Docker
2 71 (4.77%) Active Directory
3 57 (3.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (1.28%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.60%) vSphere
9 6 (0.40%) KVM
9 6 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
11 3 (0.20%) IAG
11 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.20%) XenApp
11 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.067%) Firmware
13 1 (0.067%) Samba
Systems Management
1 107 (7.19%) Kubernetes
2 100 (6.72%) Terraform
3 60 (4.03%) Ansible
4 42 (2.82%) Grafana
5 30 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (1.81%) NetBackup
7 25 (1.68%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.48%) SCCM
9 19 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.74%) Puppet
11 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.34%) Control-M
14 5 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 238 (15.99%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.97%) Oracle
3 70 (4.70%) Google
4 58 (3.90%) VMware
5 50 (3.36%) Databricks
6 49 (3.29%) ServiceNow
7 48 (3.23%) Cisco
8 40 (2.69%) SAP
9 36 (2.42%) Salesforce
10 32 (2.15%) Red Hat
11 24 (1.61%) NetApp
12 23 (1.55%) Splunk
13 22 (1.48%) Citrix
13 22 (1.48%) Veritas
14 21 (1.41%) IBM
15 18 (1.21%) F5
16 17 (1.14%) Commvault
17 16 (1.08%) Adobe
17 16 (1.08%) Veeam
18 14 (0.94%) Workday