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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 95 84
Rank change year-on-year +22 -11 +14
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,494 790 1,108
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.22% 2.67% 2.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.79% 2.95% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 827 407 621
10th Percentile £300 £260 £219
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 £463
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -4.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 31 107
10th Percentile £13.51 £18.50 £12.40
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.25 £27.64 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.12% +41.74% -62.86%
75th Percentile £28.56 £32.95 £27.50
90th Percentile £59.50 £37.00 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% +49.31% -62.86%

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 39,369 26,799 37,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.74% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,829 17,326 24,410
10th Percentile £318 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,359 1,054 2,423
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £29.90 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.11% -14.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.25 £58.70
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.18 £35.00
% change year-on-year +47.46% -19.49% -6.17%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +31 1,280 £500 - 333
UK excluding London +18 805 £450 -5.26% 276
London +26 590 £525 - 112
Work from Home +36 390 £500 +2.04% 158
North of England +3 254 £475 - 72
South East +24 185 £500 -1.91% 65
Yorkshire -3 143 £478 -9.05% 19
Scotland +6 119 £410 -12.31% 15
Midlands -4 119 £450 -10.00% 51
North West +12 103 £488 +11.43% 45
West Midlands -23 75 £488 -7.14% 42
South West +3 65 £425 +6.25% 28
East of England +5 48 £500 -4.76% 34
East Midlands -2 44 £438 +16.67% 9
Wales +4 16 £375 -11.76% 6
North East -28 9 £400 -11.11% 8
Northern Ireland +5 3 £500 +1.63% 9

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 52 (3.48%) Confluence
2 38 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (0.94%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.54%) Apache
7 5 (0.33%) CMS
7 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 5 (0.33%) SAS
8 3 (0.20%) Drupal
8 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
8 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
8 3 (0.20%) nginx
9 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.13%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 54 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (2.95%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
7 1 (0.067%) Blender
7 1 (0.067%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.067%) Maya
7 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (0.87%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.54%) 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%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
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%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.13%) Fidessa
7 2 (0.13%) ION MarketView
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 307 (20.55%) Azure
2 247 (16.53%) AWS
3 134 (8.97%) GCP
4 87 (5.82%) Power Platform
5 84 (5.62%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (5.29%) Entra ID
7 63 (4.22%) GitHub
8 56 (3.75%) SaaS
9 50 (3.35%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.08%) Serverless
11 41 (2.74%) OpenShift
12 39 (2.61%) Azure DevOps
13 34 (2.28%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (2.01%) Amazon S3
14 30 (2.01%) Snowflake
15 28 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (1.67%) Amazon ECS
16 25 (1.67%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (1.61%) Microsoft Copilot
18 21 (1.41%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 56 (3.75%) Network Security
2 38 (2.54%) SAN
3 35 (2.34%) Firewall
4 25 (1.67%) VPN
5 23 (1.54%) NAS
6 20 (1.34%) WAN
7 17 (1.14%) MPLS
8 16 (1.07%) DNS
8 16 (1.07%) LAN
9 15 (1.00%) Cisco IPT
10 13 (0.87%) TCP/IP
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
11 11 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 9 (0.60%) VLAN
13 8 (0.54%) DHCP
14 7 (0.47%) BGP
14 7 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.47%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (5.02%) Power BI
2 38 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (2.48%) Metadata
4 34 (2.28%) SQL Server
5 29 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.87%) MySQL
7 26 (1.74%) Relational Database
8 23 (1.54%) MongoDB
9 22 (1.47%) NoSQL
10 21 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (1.27%) Big Data
11 19 (1.27%) DynamoDB
12 16 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
12 16 (1.07%) Data Lake
13 14 (0.94%) Tableau
14 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
15 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 83 (5.56%) JIRA
2 62 (4.15%) Jenkins
3 59 (3.95%) Git
4 37 (2.48%) GitLab
5 13 (0.87%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) JUnit
7 9 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.47%) Maven
9 6 (0.40%) NUnit
10 5 (0.33%) Flyway
10 5 (0.33%) Postman
10 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.27%) Gradle
12 3 (0.20%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.20%) Katalon Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 442 (29.59%) Social Skills
2 347 (23.23%) Finance
3 187 (12.52%) Analytical Skills
4 183 (12.25%) Legal
5 130 (8.70%) Public Sector
6 123 (8.23%) Banking
7 67 (4.48%) Organisational Skills
8 55 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
9 42 (2.81%) Telecoms
10 33 (2.21%) Marketing
11 30 (2.01%) Front Office
12 29 (1.94%) Local Government
13 28 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
14 25 (1.67%) Law
14 25 (1.67%) Retail
15 24 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
16 19 (1.27%) Police
17 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
18 10 (0.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 194 (12.99%) Architect
2 157 (10.51%) Analyst
3 127 (8.50%) Developer
4 118 (7.90%) Lead
5 107 (7.16%) Senior
6 93 (6.22%) Consultant
7 72 (4.82%) Business Analyst
8 69 (4.62%) Project Manager
9 56 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
10 42 (2.81%) Java Developer
11 39 (2.61%) Data Engineer
12 38 (2.54%) Security Architect
13 36 (2.41%) Security Engineer
14 35 (2.34%) Network Engineer
15 33 (2.21%) Administrator
16 29 (1.94%) Technical Architect
17 28 (1.87%) Data Analyst
18 25 (1.67%) Data Protection Officer
19 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
19 21 (1.41%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.42%) REST
2 60 (4.02%) React
3 43 (2.88%) Spring
4 38 (2.54%) Spring Boot
5 37 (2.48%) .NET
6 34 (2.28%) HTML
7 31 (2.07%) Kafka
7 31 (2.07%) Node.js
8 30 (2.01%) CSS
8 30 (2.01%) RESTful
9 27 (1.81%) Middleware
10 23 (1.54%) Jest
10 23 (1.54%) OAuth
11 18 (1.20%) HTML5
11 18 (1.20%) Redux
12 17 (1.14%) Playwright
12 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
13 16 (1.07%) CSS3
13 16 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
13 16 (1.07%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 699 (46.79%) Data Protection Act
2 84 (5.62%) Cloud Native
3 69 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 63 (4.22%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.55%) Management Information System
6 36 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 31 (2.07%) NHS
9 30 (2.01%) Replication
10 29 (1.94%) Security Posture
11 28 (1.87%) Data Centre
12 27 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
14 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 21 (1.41%) Freedom of Information
14 21 (1.41%) Virtual Team
15 18 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
16 15 (1.00%) Derivative
16 15 (1.00%) Mobile App
16 15 (1.00%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 94 (6.29%) Windows
2 70 (4.69%) Linux
3 25 (1.67%) Unix
4 21 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 17 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.94%) Android
6 14 (0.94%) Windows 10
7 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
7 13 (0.87%) VMS
8 11 (0.74%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.60%) 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%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.067%) Solaris
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 260 (17.40%) Agile
2 253 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
3 248 (16.60%) Stakeholder Management
4 235 (15.73%) Migration
5 203 (13.59%) CI/CD
6 196 (13.12%) DevOps
7 190 (12.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 146 (9.77%) Analytics
9 139 (9.30%) AI
10 134 (8.97%) Roadmaps
10 134 (8.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 132 (8.84%) Risk Management
12 125 (8.37%) Cybersecurity
13 120 (8.03%) Decision-Making
14 114 (7.63%) Data Governance
15 109 (7.30%) Information Security
16 101 (6.76%) Infrastructure as Code
17 99 (6.63%) Test Automation
18 97 (6.49%) Project Management
19 93 (6.22%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 219 (14.66%) Python
2 189 (12.65%) SQL
3 132 (8.84%) Java
4 77 (5.15%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.75%) PowerShell
6 50 (3.35%) C#
7 41 (2.74%) TypeScript
8 35 (2.34%) Bash
9 15 (1.00%) Bicep
10 12 (0.80%) C++
11 11 (0.74%) Perl
12 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
13 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
13 9 (0.60%) Scala
14 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
14 8 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
15 7 (0.47%) R
16 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
17 5 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 5 (0.33%) Go
Qualifications
1 205 (13.72%) Security Cleared
2 149 (9.97%) SC Cleared
3 118 (7.90%) Degree
4 63 (4.22%) CISSP
5 50 (3.35%) DV Cleared
6 37 (2.48%) CISM
7 31 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
7 31 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 27 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
8 27 (1.81%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.74%) Azure Certification
10 25 (1.67%) PMP
11 22 (1.47%) AWS Certification
12 21 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (1.27%) Master's Degree
14 16 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.94%) CCSP
16 11 (0.74%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 10 (0.67%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 268 (17.94%) GDPR
2 94 (6.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (6.16%) NIST
4 71 (4.75%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.35%) QA
6 34 (2.28%) GRC
7 27 (1.81%) Accessibility
8 25 (1.67%) PCI DSS
9 24 (1.61%) PMO
10 20 (1.34%) SLA
11 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.07%) NCSC
13 13 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
14 12 (0.80%) PERC
15 9 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.47%) HIPAA
17 6 (0.40%) COBIT
17 6 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 6 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 77 (5.15%) Docker
2 73 (4.89%) Active Directory
3 55 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.67%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (1.27%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.67%) 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%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.067%) Firmware
14 1 (0.067%) Samba
Systems Management
1 108 (7.23%) Kubernetes
2 96 (6.43%) Terraform
3 57 (3.82%) Ansible
4 44 (2.95%) Grafana
5 30 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (1.81%) NetBackup
6 27 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.47%) SCCM
8 19 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.80%) Puppet
10 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.47%) Kibana
11 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
12 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 5 (0.33%) Control-M
13 5 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
13 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.27%) Foglight
14 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 237 (15.86%) Microsoft
2 72 (4.82%) Oracle
3 71 (4.75%) Google
4 56 (3.75%) VMware
5 51 (3.41%) Databricks
6 47 (3.15%) Cisco
6 47 (3.15%) ServiceNow
7 40 (2.68%) SAP
8 32 (2.14%) Salesforce
9 31 (2.07%) Red Hat
10 25 (1.67%) NetApp
11 24 (1.61%) Splunk
12 23 (1.54%) Citrix
13 22 (1.47%) Veritas
14 21 (1.41%) IBM
15 16 (1.07%) Commvault
15 16 (1.07%) Veeam
16 15 (1.00%) Adobe
16 15 (1.00%) F5
17 14 (0.94%) Informatica