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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 78 90
Rank change year-on-year -7 +12 -6
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,643 1,054 955
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.06% 3.19% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 3.53% 2.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 877 525 521
10th Percentile £305 £296 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -6.98%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £613
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £466 £475
% change year-on-year -0.64% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 45 33
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.08 -
25th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £16.06
Median hourly rate £17.85 £17.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -32.00% -40.74%
75th Percentile £29.60 £27.28 £28.75
90th Percentile £35.53 £34.70 £69.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.85 £15.25 £23.00
% change year-on-year +17.05% -33.70% -26.98%

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 45,360 29,849 33,165
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.48% 85.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,797 18,603 21,010
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,875 1,763 1,706
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.27 £17.30 £18.13
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +7.39%

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 24 August 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 24 August 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 24 August 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 -6 1,385 £500 +3.09% 561
UK excluding London -1 896 £463 -0.64% 441
London -13 608 £525 +5.00% 187
Work from Home +7 473 £500 +5.26% 186
North of England +12 324 £475 +3.26% 126
South East +6 193 £483 -5.29% 125
Yorkshire +3 168 £475 -5.00% 37
North West +14 143 £500 +11.86% 73
Midlands -3 143 £462 -2.84% 84
Scotland -8 115 £430 -7.03% 11
West Midlands -11 111 £473 -5.40% 54
South West -23 71 £425 +6.25% 49
East of England -9 33 £538 +13.16% 44
East Midlands +2 32 £441 +26.00% 30
Wales -9 18 £413 +39.24% 9
North East -51 14 £463 +15.63% 16
Northern Ireland +2 12 £110 -81.63% 2

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 59 (3.59%) SharePoint
2 45 (2.74%) Confluence
3 25 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 19 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 18 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
6 13 (0.79%) Apache
7 6 (0.37%) CMS
7 6 (0.37%) IIS
7 6 (0.37%) SAS
8 5 (0.30%) Tuxedo
9 4 (0.24%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.12%) Drupal
11 2 (0.12%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.12%) nginx
11 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
11 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.12%) WordPress
12 1 (0.061%) Moodle
Applications
1 45 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
5 9 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.30%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.24%) UserZoom
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.061%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.061%) Maya
9 1 (0.061%) Trello
9 1 (0.061%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 12 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 10 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 6 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.24%) Aladdin
5 4 (0.24%) NEC Housing
5 4 (0.24%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
7 2 (0.12%) ION MarketView
7 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.12%) SAP GRC
7 2 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.12%) Sonata
7 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 1 (0.061%) Bloomberg TOMS
8 1 (0.061%) Cloudability
8 1 (0.061%) Eloqua
8 1 (0.061%) FIS Private Capital Suite
8 1 (0.061%) SAP CX
Cloud Services
1 378 (23.01%) Azure
2 286 (17.41%) AWS
3 142 (8.64%) GCP
4 126 (7.67%) Microsoft 365
5 93 (5.66%) Power Platform
6 83 (5.05%) Entra ID
7 77 (4.69%) SaaS
8 63 (3.83%) GitHub
9 60 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
10 55 (3.35%) Microsoft Purview
11 53 (3.23%) Serverless
12 35 (2.13%) Microsoft Copilot
13 30 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (1.70%) OpenShift
15 27 (1.64%) OneDrive
15 27 (1.64%) PowerApps
16 25 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
16 25 (1.52%) Power Automate
17 24 (1.46%) Amazon S3
18 22 (1.34%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 95 (5.78%) Network Security
2 59 (3.59%) Firewall
3 38 (2.31%) DNS
4 37 (2.25%) VPN
5 29 (1.77%) DHCP
6 23 (1.40%) TCP/IP
7 22 (1.34%) WAN
8 20 (1.22%) SAN
9 17 (1.03%) Cisco IPT
9 17 (1.03%) LAN
10 15 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
11 14 (0.85%) SSL
11 14 (0.85%) Wireless
12 13 (0.79%) NAS
13 11 (0.67%) HTTP
13 11 (0.67%) MPLS
14 10 (0.61%) VoIP
15 9 (0.55%) Intrusion Detection
16 8 (0.49%) Cisco Nexus
16 8 (0.49%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (4.26%) Power BI
2 52 (3.16%) Metadata
3 40 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
4 36 (2.19%) SQL Server
5 35 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
6 29 (1.77%) Relational Database
7 26 (1.58%) NoSQL
8 22 (1.34%) Data Lake
9 20 (1.22%) Big Data
10 19 (1.16%) MySQL
11 18 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
12 17 (1.03%) MongoDB
13 12 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
14 11 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
14 11 (0.67%) BigQuery
14 11 (0.67%) Oracle Database
15 9 (0.55%) DynamoDB
15 9 (0.55%) Redis
16 8 (0.49%) Tableau
17 7 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 82 (4.99%) JIRA
2 63 (3.83%) Git
3 56 (3.41%) Jenkins
4 32 (1.95%) GitLab
5 11 (0.67%) Maven
6 9 (0.55%) Oracle Forms
7 8 (0.49%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.37%) Gradle
8 6 (0.37%) Postman
8 6 (0.37%) Selenium
8 6 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
9 5 (0.30%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.30%) ERwin
9 5 (0.30%) Flyway
9 5 (0.30%) JUnit
10 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.18%) Mocha
11 3 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
11 3 (0.18%) Vite
General
1 594 (36.15%) Social Skills
2 356 (21.67%) Finance
3 252 (15.34%) Legal
4 203 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
5 193 (11.75%) Public Sector
6 111 (6.76%) Banking
7 74 (4.50%) Documentation Skills
8 73 (4.44%) Organisational Skills
9 41 (2.50%) Retail
10 38 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
11 37 (2.25%) Local Government
12 33 (2.01%) Law
13 31 (1.89%) Telecoms
14 27 (1.64%) Front Office
14 27 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
15 23 (1.40%) Marketing
16 22 (1.34%) Pharmaceutical
17 21 (1.28%) Billing
17 21 (1.28%) Police
18 16 (0.97%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 245 (14.91%) Architect
2 158 (9.62%) Analyst
3 144 (8.76%) Lead
4 125 (7.61%) Developer
5 120 (7.30%) Senior
6 82 (4.99%) Consultant
7 78 (4.75%) Project Manager
8 65 (3.96%) Solutions Architect
9 64 (3.90%) Business Analyst
10 59 (3.59%) Security Architect
11 40 (2.43%) Administrator
11 40 (2.43%) Security Engineer
12 34 (2.07%) Data Engineer
12 34 (2.07%) Support Engineer
13 30 (1.83%) Java Developer
13 30 (1.83%) Network Engineer
14 28 (1.70%) Data Analyst
15 27 (1.64%) IT Support
16 26 (1.58%) Technical Architect
17 25 (1.52%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (5.30%) REST
1 87 (5.30%) Terraform
2 39 (2.37%) React
3 36 (2.19%) JSON
3 36 (2.19%) Spring
4 33 (2.01%) Spring Boot
5 32 (1.95%) Kafka
6 31 (1.89%) CSS
6 31 (1.89%) HTML
6 31 (1.89%) Middleware
6 31 (1.89%) OAuth
7 26 (1.58%) RESTful
8 23 (1.40%) .NET
9 21 (1.28%) Node.js
10 17 (1.03%) OAuth2
10 17 (1.03%) OpenID
11 15 (0.91%) CSS3
11 15 (0.91%) GraphQL
11 15 (0.91%) HTML5
12 14 (0.85%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 713 (43.40%) Data Protection Act
2 92 (5.60%) Cloud Native
3 91 (5.54%) Product Ownership
4 82 (4.99%) Management Information System
5 74 (4.50%) Onboarding
6 52 (3.16%) Data Centre
7 47 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
8 41 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
9 40 (2.43%) Virtual Team
10 36 (2.19%) Security Posture
11 31 (1.89%) Freedom of Information
12 27 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
13 26 (1.58%) NHS
14 25 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
15 24 (1.46%) Operational Technology
15 24 (1.46%) Replication
16 22 (1.34%) Mobile App
17 20 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
17 20 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
18 19 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 129 (7.85%) Windows
2 81 (4.93%) Linux
3 31 (1.89%) Android
3 31 (1.89%) Apple iOS
4 28 (1.70%) Unix
4 28 (1.70%) Windows Server
5 22 (1.34%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.97%) Windows 10
8 8 (0.49%) VMS
9 7 (0.43%) zOS
10 3 (0.18%) Solaris
10 3 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) CentOS
11 2 (0.12%) HPUX
11 2 (0.12%) Rocky
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.061%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 331 (20.15%) Stakeholder Management
2 300 (18.26%) Agile
3 285 (17.35%) Problem-Solving
4 264 (16.07%) Continuous Improvement
5 233 (14.18%) DevOps
6 231 (14.06%) CI/CD
7 211 (12.84%) AI
7 211 (12.84%) Migration
8 210 (12.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 184 (11.20%) Cybersecurity
10 159 (9.68%) Data Governance
11 153 (9.31%) Decision-Making
12 152 (9.25%) Roadmaps
13 146 (8.89%) Analytics
14 138 (8.40%) Information Security
15 131 (7.97%) Risk Management
16 124 (7.55%) Infrastructure as Code
17 122 (7.43%) Validation
18 118 (7.18%) Data Modelling
19 100 (6.09%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 201 (12.23%) Python
2 159 (9.68%) SQL
3 105 (6.39%) Java
4 58 (3.53%) PowerShell
5 55 (3.35%) JavaScript
6 37 (2.25%) Bash
7 26 (1.58%) TypeScript
8 19 (1.16%) C#
8 19 (1.16%) Go
9 15 (0.91%) Bicep
9 15 (0.91%) Kotlin
10 14 (0.85%) Apex Code
11 12 (0.73%) Perl
12 10 (0.61%) C++
13 8 (0.49%) C
13 8 (0.49%) Scala
13 8 (0.49%) VB
14 7 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
14 7 (0.43%) VB6
15 6 (0.37%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 255 (15.52%) Security Cleared
2 190 (11.56%) SC Cleared
3 105 (6.39%) Degree
4 78 (4.75%) CISSP
5 58 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 47 (2.86%) CISM
7 38 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
8 33 (2.01%) Azure Certification
9 31 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
10 29 (1.77%) PMI Certification
11 26 (1.58%) Computer Science Degree
11 26 (1.58%) PMP
12 22 (1.34%) AWS Certification
13 18 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
14 17 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.85%) CCSP
16 10 (0.61%) CCNP
16 10 (0.61%) Master's Degree
17 9 (0.55%) CRISC
18 8 (0.49%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (15.16%) GDPR
2 106 (6.45%) Data Quality
3 95 (5.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 77 (4.69%) NIST
5 76 (4.63%) QA
6 47 (2.86%) Accessibility
7 45 (2.74%) GRC
8 24 (1.46%) PMO
9 20 (1.22%) NCSC
9 20 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 20 (1.22%) SLA
10 15 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 12 (0.73%) PERC
11 12 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 11 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 11 (0.67%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.67%) WCAG
13 10 (0.61%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
14 9 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 92 (5.60%) Active Directory
2 63 (3.83%) Docker
3 55 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (0.67%) Hyper-V
6 10 (0.61%) NFS
7 9 (0.55%) vSphere
8 7 (0.43%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
11 4 (0.24%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.18%) KVM
12 3 (0.18%) XenApp
12 3 (0.18%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.12%) Firmware
13 2 (0.12%) GPFS
13 2 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.12%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 109 (6.63%) Kubernetes
2 45 (2.74%) Ansible
3 41 (2.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 28 (1.70%) Grafana
5 23 (1.40%) SCCM
6 22 (1.34%) NetBackup
7 18 (1.10%) Prometheus
8 17 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (0.85%) Puppet
10 12 (0.73%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.61%) Progress Chef
12 8 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.37%) Kibana
14 5 (0.30%) CA Single Sign-On
14 5 (0.30%) QRadar
15 4 (0.24%) Cisco CUCM
15 4 (0.24%) Istio
15 4 (0.24%) PingFederate
15 4 (0.24%) SCOM
15 4 (0.24%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 337 (20.51%) Microsoft
2 85 (5.17%) ServiceNow
3 68 (4.14%) Oracle
4 66 (4.02%) Google
5 59 (3.59%) Cisco
6 57 (3.47%) VMware
7 47 (2.86%) Databricks
8 37 (2.25%) SAP
9 34 (2.07%) Splunk
10 27 (1.64%) Salesforce
11 24 (1.46%) Zscaler
12 23 (1.40%) Red Hat
12 23 (1.40%) Workday
13 20 (1.22%) CyberArk
13 20 (1.22%) NetApp
14 17 (1.03%) IBM
15 16 (0.97%) Citrix
15 16 (0.97%) F5
16 15 (0.91%) Veritas
17 14 (0.85%) Dell