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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 96 79
Rank change year-on-year +23 -17 +31
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,293 817 1,211
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.36% 2.60% 2.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.85% 2.92% 3.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 674 409 698
10th Percentile £276 £266 £206
25th Percentile £400 £400 £352
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.50% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £592 £601 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £449 £488 £450
% change year-on-year -7.95% +8.33% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 21 72
10th Percentile £13.23 £16.25 £11.96
25th Percentile £16.50 £22.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £20.71 £29.23 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.15% +35.95% -69.29%
75th Percentile £20.79 £34.15 £25.22
90th Percentile £42.50 £65.00 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.50 £29.62 £21.00
% change year-on-year -30.78% +41.02% -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 33,610 27,994 39,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.22% 89.12% 87.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,285 16,989 25,814
10th Percentile £305 £307 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.35% -0.05% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,025 871 2,057
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.70
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £58.65 £62.50 £61.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.71 £30.78 £36.00
% change year-on-year -19.72% -14.50% +24.57%

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 1 February 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 1 February 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 1 February 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 +27 1,101 £500 - 396
UK excluding London +18 687 £449 -7.95% 328
London +28 541 £525 +2.44% 128
Work from Home +14 295 £495 -1.00% 190
North of England -15 199 £450 -5.26% 80
South East +19 154 £490 +0.51% 86
Scotland +15 119 £405 -14.84% 17
Yorkshire +2 112 £475 -11.63% 21
Midlands +3 100 £447 -10.60% 73
North West -28 71 £429 -9.68% 49
West Midlands -10 61 £475 -7.32% 43
South West -2 49 £475 -1.30% 36
East of England +11 46 £314 -37.25% 27
East Midlands +7 39 £437 -3.37% 30
North East -23 17 £400 -11.11% 10
Wales +2 14 £388 -24.39% 13
Northern Ireland - 10 £500 - 4

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 (4.56%) Confluence
2 27 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (0.77%) CMS
5 8 (0.62%) Apache
5 8 (0.62%) Apache Spark
6 6 (0.46%) nginx
7 4 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.23%) CICS
8 3 (0.23%) Ethereum
8 3 (0.23%) Hyperledger
8 3 (0.23%) SAS
8 3 (0.23%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.15%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.15%) Drupal
9 2 (0.15%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.077%) Luigi
Applications
1 52 (4.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (3.09%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.31%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.23%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.23%) Sketch
7 2 (0.15%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.15%) InVision
7 2 (0.15%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.077%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.077%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.077%) Blender
8 1 (0.077%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.077%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.077%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 13 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.85%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (0.70%) Aladdin
3 9 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.23%) Distributed Ledger
5 3 (0.23%) Fidessa
5 3 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.23%) R3 Corda
5 3 (0.23%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.15%) assyst
6 2 (0.15%) ION MarketView
6 2 (0.15%) NEC Housing
6 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS R12
6 2 (0.15%) Oracle FAH
6 2 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.15%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 237 (18.33%) Azure
2 212 (16.40%) AWS
3 93 (7.19%) GCP
4 71 (5.49%) Power Platform
5 64 (4.95%) Microsoft 365
6 61 (4.72%) Serverless
7 54 (4.18%) GitHub
8 51 (3.94%) Entra ID
9 47 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
10 46 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
11 40 (3.09%) SaaS
12 39 (3.02%) Amazon S3
13 30 (2.32%) Snowflake
14 28 (2.17%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (2.09%) Power Automate
16 23 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
17 22 (1.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 21 (1.62%) Microsoft Purview
18 21 (1.62%) OCI
19 19 (1.47%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 43 (3.33%) Firewall
2 34 (2.63%) Network Security
3 22 (1.70%) SAN
4 19 (1.47%) LAN
4 19 (1.47%) MPLS
5 18 (1.39%) VPN
6 16 (1.24%) DNS
6 16 (1.24%) WAN
7 15 (1.16%) NAS
8 14 (1.08%) Cisco IPT
8 14 (1.08%) TCP/IP
9 10 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (0.70%) SD-WAN
11 8 (0.62%) BGP
11 8 (0.62%) SSH
11 8 (0.62%) VLAN
12 7 (0.54%) DHCP
12 7 (0.54%) HTTP
12 7 (0.54%) Internet
12 7 (0.54%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (4.33%) Power BI
2 36 (2.78%) SQL Server
3 34 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.78%) NoSQL
4 23 (1.78%) Relational Database
5 20 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
5 20 (1.55%) Metadata
6 16 (1.24%) MongoDB
6 16 (1.24%) MySQL
7 15 (1.16%) DynamoDB
7 15 (1.16%) Tableau
8 14 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
9 12 (0.93%) Amazon Aurora
9 12 (0.93%) Oracle Reports
10 11 (0.85%) Data Lake
11 10 (0.77%) Oracle Database
12 9 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
13 8 (0.62%) Hadoop
13 8 (0.62%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 7 (0.54%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 106 (8.20%) JIRA
2 51 (3.94%) Git
3 48 (3.71%) Jenkins
4 33 (2.55%) GitLab
5 11 (0.85%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.77%) JUnit
7 6 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (0.39%) Gradle
8 5 (0.39%) Maven
8 5 (0.39%) NUnit
9 4 (0.31%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.31%) CircleCI
9 4 (0.31%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.31%) Fiddler
9 4 (0.31%) Team Foundation Server
10 3 (0.23%) Postman
10 3 (0.23%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.15%) ChangeMan
11 2 (0.15%) IntelliJ
11 2 (0.15%) Oracle Forms
General
1 432 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 268 (20.73%) Finance
3 168 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 139 (10.75%) Public Sector
5 109 (8.43%) Banking
6 97 (7.50%) Legal
7 48 (3.71%) Organisational Skills
8 38 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
8 38 (2.94%) Telecoms
9 35 (2.71%) Marketing
10 30 (2.32%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.70%) Law
11 22 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
12 21 (1.62%) Front Office
13 20 (1.55%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.39%) Local Government
15 14 (1.08%) Retail
16 12 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 12 (0.93%) Police
17 10 (0.77%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 160 (12.37%) Analyst
2 139 (10.75%) Developer
3 131 (10.13%) Architect
4 96 (7.42%) Lead
5 72 (5.57%) Senior
6 70 (5.41%) Business Analyst
7 66 (5.10%) Consultant
8 64 (4.95%) Project Manager
9 44 (3.40%) Solutions Architect
10 37 (2.86%) Administrator
11 30 (2.32%) Security Engineer
12 29 (2.24%) Data Analyst
12 29 (2.24%) Data Engineer
13 23 (1.78%) Automation Engineer
13 23 (1.78%) Network Engineer
14 22 (1.70%) Data Protection Officer
15 21 (1.62%) Security Architect
15 21 (1.62%) Support Engineer
16 20 (1.55%) Java Developer
17 19 (1.47%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.95%) REST
2 38 (2.94%) React
3 36 (2.78%) .NET
4 33 (2.55%) Node.js
4 33 (2.55%) RESTful
5 28 (2.17%) OAuth
6 25 (1.93%) Spring
7 23 (1.78%) Kafka
8 21 (1.62%) Spring Boot
9 20 (1.55%) HTML
9 20 (1.55%) Middleware
9 20 (1.55%) SOAP
10 15 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
11 14 (1.08%) .NET Core
11 14 (1.08%) OAuth2
11 14 (1.08%) Playwright
11 14 (1.08%) PySpark
12 13 (1.01%) SAML
12 13 (1.01%) XML
13 12 (0.93%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 645 (49.88%) Data Protection Act
2 59 (4.56%) Cloud Native
3 54 (4.18%) Management Information System
3 54 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 53 (4.10%) Onboarding
5 31 (2.40%) NHS
6 30 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
7 26 (2.01%) Freedom of Information
8 23 (1.78%) Data Structures
9 21 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
10 20 (1.55%) Security Posture
11 18 (1.39%) Data Centre
12 17 (1.31%) CMDB
12 17 (1.31%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 17 (1.31%) Replication
13 16 (1.24%) Virtual Team
14 13 (1.01%) AI Agents
14 13 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
14 13 (1.01%) Insider Threat
15 12 (0.93%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 93 (7.19%) Windows
2 67 (5.18%) Linux
3 24 (1.86%) Unix
4 17 (1.31%) Windows Server
5 16 (1.24%) Mac OS
6 13 (1.01%) Windows 10
7 8 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (0.62%) zOS
8 7 (0.54%) Android
9 5 (0.39%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.39%) Solaris
9 5 (0.39%) VMS
10 4 (0.31%) AIX
11 1 (0.077%) CentOS
11 1 (0.077%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.077%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.077%) VME
11 1 (0.077%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 236 (18.25%) Agile
2 235 (18.17%) Problem-Solving
3 216 (16.71%) Stakeholder Management
4 171 (13.23%) Migration
5 168 (12.99%) CI/CD
6 163 (12.61%) DevOps
7 132 (10.21%) Continuous Improvement
8 128 (9.90%) Analytics
9 126 (9.74%) Cybersecurity
10 123 (9.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 120 (9.28%) AI
11 120 (9.28%) Roadmaps
12 108 (8.35%) Project Management
13 102 (7.89%) Information Security
14 100 (7.73%) Risk Management
15 86 (6.65%) Microservices
16 80 (6.19%) Test Automation
17 77 (5.96%) Business Intelligence
18 76 (5.88%) Decision-Making
19 73 (5.65%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 224 (17.32%) Python
2 163 (12.61%) SQL
3 87 (6.73%) Java
4 65 (5.03%) JavaScript
5 64 (4.95%) PowerShell
6 54 (4.18%) C#
7 46 (3.56%) Bash
8 35 (2.71%) TypeScript
9 16 (1.24%) Bicep
10 13 (1.01%) C++
10 13 (1.01%) Shell Script
11 11 (0.85%) Perl
12 7 (0.54%) PL/SQL
13 6 (0.46%) ActionScript
13 6 (0.46%) ActionScript 2.0
13 6 (0.46%) PHP
14 5 (0.39%) Scala
15 4 (0.31%) Go
15 4 (0.31%) R
16 3 (0.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 169 (13.07%) Security Cleared
2 125 (9.67%) SC Cleared
3 119 (9.20%) Degree
4 43 (3.33%) DV Cleared
5 34 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 30 (2.32%) CISSP
7 24 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 24 (1.86%) CISM
8 23 (1.78%) AWS Certification
9 22 (1.70%) Master's Degree
10 19 (1.47%) PMI Certification
11 17 (1.31%) PMP
12 14 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
13 13 (1.01%) CTC Cleared
14 12 (0.93%) Azure Certification
14 12 (0.93%) CRISC
15 10 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 10 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (0.70%) A+ Certification
16 9 (0.70%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 217 (16.78%) GDPR
2 90 (6.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 76 (5.88%) NIST
4 57 (4.41%) Data Quality
5 42 (3.25%) QA
6 31 (2.40%) PCI DSS
7 28 (2.17%) Accessibility
8 20 (1.55%) GRC
9 19 (1.47%) PMO
10 14 (1.08%) NCSC
11 13 (1.01%) Disclosure Scotland
11 13 (1.01%) SLA
12 12 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 11 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
13 11 (0.85%) NIST 800
13 11 (0.85%) PERC
14 8 (0.62%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
15 6 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.46%) HIPAA
System Software
1 63 (4.87%) Docker
2 56 (4.33%) Active Directory
3 49 (3.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
5 8 (0.62%) Hyper-V
5 8 (0.62%) NFS
6 5 (0.39%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.23%) KVM
9 2 (0.15%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.077%) Firmware
10 1 (0.077%) HDFS
10 1 (0.077%) ISA Server
10 1 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.077%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
10 1 (0.077%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 79 (6.11%) Terraform
2 67 (5.18%) Kubernetes
3 59 (4.56%) Ansible
4 27 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (1.93%) NetBackup
6 24 (1.86%) Grafana
7 22 (1.70%) SCCM
8 20 (1.55%) Prometheus
9 9 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.62%) Oracle RMAN
11 7 (0.54%) Puppet
12 6 (0.46%) RSA Archer
13 5 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.39%) vCenter Server
14 4 (0.31%) Control-M
14 4 (0.31%) EMC NetWorker
14 4 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
15 3 (0.23%) Argo
15 3 (0.23%) Data Guard
15 3 (0.23%) Kibana
Vendors
1 194 (15.00%) Microsoft
2 66 (5.10%) Oracle
3 57 (4.41%) Google
4 51 (3.94%) VMware
5 39 (3.02%) Cisco
6 38 (2.94%) ServiceNow
7 37 (2.86%) Databricks
8 36 (2.78%) SAP
9 31 (2.40%) Salesforce
10 22 (1.70%) Citrix
10 22 (1.70%) Red Hat
11 20 (1.55%) Veritas
12 18 (1.39%) IBM
13 17 (1.31%) Commvault
13 17 (1.31%) F5
14 14 (1.08%) Splunk
15 12 (0.93%) Adobe
16 11 (0.85%) Informatica
16 11 (0.85%) OneTrust
16 11 (0.85%) Veeam