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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 74 88
Rank change year-on-year -11 +14 +1
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,734 1,112 993
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.14% 3.35% 2.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.70% 3.70% 3.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 884 544 516
10th Percentile £263 £289 £208
25th Percentile £400 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -3.23% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 59 16
10th Percentile £13.31 £12.63 £19.06
25th Percentile £14.05 £13.60 £21.13
Median hourly rate £17.85 £17.00 £25.84
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -34.21% +5.22%
75th Percentile £24.50 £20.71 £38.98
90th Percentile £34.23 £29.37 £70.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £17.00 £24.00
% change year-on-year +2.94% -29.17% +14.29%

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 46,870 30,047 32,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 90.49% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,156 18,700 19,515
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
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 3,444 1,888 1,247
10th Percentile £13.53 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.94 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.18 £65.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -19 1,427 £500 - 261
UK excluding London -1 970 £450 -3.23% 227
London -34 593 £525 - 72
Work from Home +13 473 £500 +11.11% 115
North of England +15 367 £463 +0.54% 62
South East -12 197 £475 -5.94% 63
Yorkshire +11 182 £475 -7.32% 30
Midlands +6 160 £450 -5.26% 32
North West +12 155 £450 +2.27% 27
West Midlands +3 128 £450 -10.00% 18
Scotland -6 126 £450 +5.88% 8
South West -14 63 £500 +16.28% 40
East of England -16 36 £503 +5.79% 13
East Midlands -2 32 £435 +8.75% 14
North East -33 31 £463 +19.35% 6
Wales -7 19 £413 - 6
Northern Ireland +3 16 £115 -83.57% 7
Channel Islands -4 2 £600 -17.24%

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 77 (4.44%) SharePoint
2 36 (2.08%) Confluence
3 30 (1.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 22 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
5 15 (0.87%) Apache
6 14 (0.81%) Apache Spark
6 14 (0.81%) IIS
7 11 (0.63%) SAS
8 10 (0.58%) CMS
9 6 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.35%) WordPress
10 5 (0.29%) nginx
10 5 (0.29%) Tuxedo
11 4 (0.23%) CICS
12 3 (0.17%) Jupyter
12 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.17%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
13 2 (0.12%) WebLogic
14 1 (0.058%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 56 (3.23%) Microsoft Excel
1 56 (3.23%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.23%) UserZoom
7 1 (0.058%) Adobe Premiere
7 1 (0.058%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
7 1 (0.058%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 14 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.52%) SAP MDG
4 6 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.29%) Aladdin
5 5 (0.29%) NEC Housing
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
6 4 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.17%) Unit4 Business World
8 2 (0.12%) Cloudability
8 2 (0.12%) ION MarketView
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 2 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.12%) Sonata
9 1 (0.058%) FIS Private Capital Suite
9 1 (0.058%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.058%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.058%) SAP CX
Cloud Services
1 384 (22.15%) Azure
2 295 (17.01%) AWS
3 149 (8.59%) Microsoft 365
4 129 (7.44%) GCP
5 80 (4.61%) Power Platform
6 77 (4.44%) Entra ID
7 71 (4.09%) SaaS
8 66 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
9 63 (3.63%) GitHub
10 59 (3.40%) Microsoft Purview
11 49 (2.83%) Serverless
12 40 (2.31%) Microsoft Copilot
13 32 (1.85%) OneDrive
14 28 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
14 28 (1.61%) Snowflake
15 24 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 21 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
16 21 (1.21%) Power Automate
16 21 (1.21%) PowerApps
17 20 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 94 (5.42%) Network Security
2 66 (3.81%) Firewall
3 39 (2.25%) VPN
4 36 (2.08%) DNS
5 30 (1.73%) TCP/IP
6 25 (1.44%) DHCP
7 22 (1.27%) LAN
7 22 (1.27%) WAN
8 20 (1.15%) Cisco IPT
9 15 (0.87%) SAN
10 14 (0.81%) MPLS
10 14 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
11 13 (0.75%) VoIP
11 13 (0.75%) Wireless
12 12 (0.69%) HTTP
12 12 (0.69%) SSL
13 11 (0.63%) NAS
13 11 (0.63%) Unified Communications
14 10 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
14 10 (0.58%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (3.29%) Power BI
2 55 (3.17%) Metadata
3 40 (2.31%) Relational Database
4 38 (2.19%) SQL Server
5 33 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
6 29 (1.67%) Data Warehouse
7 23 (1.33%) BigQuery
7 23 (1.33%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.15%) NoSQL
9 12 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
10 11 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
10 11 (0.63%) MongoDB
10 11 (0.63%) Oracle Database
11 10 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (0.58%) Big Data
12 8 (0.46%) DynamoDB
12 8 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.46%) MySQL
12 8 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
12 8 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 81 (4.67%) JIRA
2 73 (4.21%) Git
3 56 (3.23%) Jenkins
4 27 (1.56%) GitLab
5 19 (1.10%) Selenium
6 11 (0.63%) Maven
7 10 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
7 10 (0.58%) Postman
8 6 (0.35%) Cypress.io
8 6 (0.35%) Gradle
8 6 (0.35%) JUnit
8 6 (0.35%) SonarQube
8 6 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
9 4 (0.23%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.23%) Mockito
9 4 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.17%) ERwin
10 3 (0.17%) Mocha
10 3 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 3 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 716 (41.29%) Social Skills
2 388 (22.38%) Finance
3 273 (15.74%) Legal
4 234 (13.49%) Public Sector
5 224 (12.92%) Analytical Skills
6 121 (6.98%) Banking
7 92 (5.31%) Organisational Skills
8 73 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
9 51 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
10 44 (2.54%) Local Government
11 41 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
12 35 (2.02%) Retail
13 33 (1.90%) Marketing
14 31 (1.79%) Law
15 29 (1.67%) Telecoms
16 24 (1.38%) Front Office
17 23 (1.33%) Police
18 22 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
19 20 (1.15%) Billing
20 19 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 259 (14.94%) Architect
2 177 (10.21%) Analyst
3 143 (8.25%) Lead
4 129 (7.44%) Senior
5 104 (6.00%) Developer
6 76 (4.38%) Project Manager
7 74 (4.27%) Solutions Architect
8 73 (4.21%) Business Analyst
9 69 (3.98%) Consultant
10 63 (3.63%) Security Architect
11 60 (3.46%) Administrator
12 44 (2.54%) Security Engineer
13 40 (2.31%) Information Officer
14 37 (2.13%) Information Governance Officer
15 36 (2.08%) Support Engineer
16 32 (1.85%) Data Analyst
17 29 (1.67%) Data Architect
18 27 (1.56%) Data Engineer
18 27 (1.56%) Network Engineer
19 26 (1.50%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (6.17%) Terraform
2 100 (5.77%) REST
3 46 (2.65%) Kafka
4 38 (2.19%) Middleware
4 38 (2.19%) OAuth
5 37 (2.13%) JSON
6 27 (1.56%) React
7 25 (1.44%) .NET
8 24 (1.38%) Node.js
8 24 (1.38%) OAuth2
8 24 (1.38%) RESTful
9 23 (1.33%) Spring
10 22 (1.27%) Spring Boot
11 17 (0.98%) OpenID
12 15 (0.87%) HTML
12 15 (0.87%) OpenAPI
12 15 (0.87%) SOAP
12 15 (0.87%) Swagger
13 14 (0.81%) YAML
14 13 (0.75%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 715 (41.23%) Data Protection Act
2 145 (8.36%) Management Information System
3 104 (6.00%) Product Ownership
4 94 (5.42%) Cloud Native
5 91 (5.25%) Onboarding
6 64 (3.69%) Distributed Systems
7 63 (3.63%) Data Centre
8 47 (2.71%) Freedom of Information
9 44 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
10 41 (2.36%) Security Posture
11 37 (2.13%) Virtual Team
12 35 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
13 32 (1.85%) AI Agents
13 32 (1.85%) Data Structures
14 30 (1.73%) Operational Technology
15 28 (1.61%) NHS
15 28 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
16 21 (1.21%) Private Cloud
17 20 (1.15%) Mobile App
18 19 (1.10%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 139 (8.02%) Windows
2 85 (4.90%) Linux
3 39 (2.25%) Windows Server
4 34 (1.96%) Apple iOS
5 31 (1.79%) Android
6 26 (1.50%) Unix
7 23 (1.33%) macOS
8 18 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (0.69%) Windows 10
10 10 (0.58%) zOS
11 2 (0.12%) AIX
11 2 (0.12%) CentOS
11 2 (0.12%) HPUX
11 2 (0.12%) Solaris
11 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) VMS
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.058%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 458 (26.41%) Stakeholder Management
2 339 (19.55%) Agile
3 307 (17.70%) Problem-Solving
4 304 (17.53%) Continuous Improvement
5 260 (14.99%) CI/CD
6 246 (14.19%) Cybersecurity
7 244 (14.07%) AI
8 233 (13.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 232 (13.38%) Migration
10 215 (12.40%) DevOps
11 189 (10.90%) Roadmaps
12 169 (9.75%) Decision-Making
13 163 (9.40%) Information Security
14 162 (9.34%) Risk Management
15 155 (8.94%) Infrastructure as Code
16 154 (8.88%) Analytics
17 152 (8.77%) Data Governance
18 143 (8.25%) Validation
19 127 (7.32%) Test Automation
20 124 (7.15%) Information Governance
Programming Languages
1 210 (12.11%) Python
2 166 (9.57%) SQL
3 78 (4.50%) Java
4 65 (3.75%) PowerShell
5 42 (2.42%) JavaScript
6 36 (2.08%) Bash
7 29 (1.67%) TypeScript
8 28 (1.61%) Go
9 21 (1.21%) Bicep
10 20 (1.15%) C#
11 13 (0.75%) Apex Code
11 13 (0.75%) Kotlin
12 12 (0.69%) Perl
13 11 (0.63%) Scala
14 10 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
15 9 (0.52%) C
16 8 (0.46%) C++
16 8 (0.46%) VB
17 7 (0.40%) COBOL
17 7 (0.40%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 292 (16.84%) Security Cleared
2 221 (12.75%) SC Cleared
3 124 (7.15%) Degree
4 82 (4.73%) CISSP
5 60 (3.46%) DV Cleared
6 55 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
7 52 (3.00%) CISM
8 44 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
9 36 (2.08%) PMI Certification
10 32 (1.85%) PMP
11 28 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
12 27 (1.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 27 (1.56%) Azure Certification
13 25 (1.44%) CCSP
14 20 (1.15%) AWS Certification
15 14 (0.81%) CRISC
16 13 (0.75%) CISA
17 12 (0.69%) CCNP
17 12 (0.69%) Master's Degree
18 10 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 236 (13.61%) GDPR
2 125 (7.21%) Data Quality
3 107 (6.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 74 (4.27%) QA
5 72 (4.15%) NIST
6 59 (3.40%) Accessibility
7 51 (2.94%) GRC
8 32 (1.85%) PCI DSS
9 28 (1.61%) NCSC
10 26 (1.50%) Cyber Essentials
11 19 (1.10%) PMO
12 16 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 16 (0.92%) SLA
13 12 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 11 (0.63%) PERC
14 11 (0.63%) WCAG
15 10 (0.58%) HIPAA
16 9 (0.52%) Government Security Classifications
16 9 (0.52%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 8 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 83 (4.79%) Active Directory
2 66 (3.81%) Docker
3 63 (3.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (0.87%) vSphere
5 14 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
6 12 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.29%) ISA Server
9 4 (0.23%) NFS
9 4 (0.23%) 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 (0.058%) Firmware
11 1 (0.058%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 1 (0.058%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.058%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.058%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 120 (6.92%) Kubernetes
2 50 (2.88%) Ansible
3 39 (2.25%) Microsoft Intune
4 29 (1.67%) Grafana
5 20 (1.15%) SCCM
6 15 (0.87%) Prometheus
7 13 (0.75%) Jamf Pro
7 13 (0.75%) NetBackup
7 13 (0.75%) Progress Chef
8 12 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (0.58%) Kibana
9 10 (0.58%) Puppet
10 9 (0.52%) CASB
11 5 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
11 5 (0.29%) Control-M
11 5 (0.29%) QRadar
11 5 (0.29%) SCOM
11 5 (0.29%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.23%) EMC NetWorker
13 3 (0.17%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 402 (23.18%) Microsoft
2 88 (5.07%) Google
3 87 (5.02%) ServiceNow
4 75 (4.33%) Cisco
5 71 (4.09%) Oracle
6 68 (3.92%) VMware
7 51 (2.94%) Databricks
8 47 (2.71%) SAP
9 37 (2.13%) Splunk
10 31 (1.79%) Salesforce
11 27 (1.56%) Zscaler
12 23 (1.33%) IBM
13 18 (1.04%) Dynatrace
13 18 (1.04%) Red Hat
13 18 (1.04%) Workday
14 17 (0.98%) CyberArk
14 17 (0.98%) Dell
15 16 (0.92%) F5
16 14 (0.81%) MuleSoft
17 13 (0.75%) SolarWinds