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 25 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 82 88
Rank change year-on-year +9 +6 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,606 850 1,049
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.82% 2.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.71% 3.10% 2.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 878 409 548
10th Percentile £296 £261 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £588
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £456
% change year-on-year -4.26% +3.13% -4.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 33 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.35 £19.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.37% -2.56% -46.24%
75th Percentile £33.53 £31.76 £27.59
90th Percentile £37.55 £36.08 £43.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.25 £15.25 £19.50
% change year-on-year +39.34% -21.79% -35.00%

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 43,238 27,425 37,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 91.06% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,959 17,371 23,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,600 1,291 2,584
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.04 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.73% -34.32% +17.29%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 25 June 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 +17 1,365 £500 +2.56% 347
UK excluding London +10 889 £450 -4.26% 267
London +13 607 £525 +5.00% 133
Work from Home +22 447 £500 +5.26% 151
North of England +9 303 £475 - 70
South East +20 190 £475 -9.52% 65
Yorkshire -8 168 £475 -7.32% 26
Midlands -14 137 £450 -10.00% 64
Scotland +1 132 £425 - 9
North West +29 127 £488 +13.04% 33
West Midlands -22 94 £473 -9.90% 40
South West -12 69 £425 +6.25% 41
East of England +6 44 £488 -7.14% 17
East Midlands +8 43 £438 +17.06% 24
Wales -7 12 £375 +26.58% 9
North East -46 10 £450 +14.29% 12
Northern Ireland +4 9 £104 -78.86% 3

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 58 (3.61%) SharePoint
2 57 (3.55%) Confluence
3 26 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.06%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.50%) Apache
7 6 (0.37%) IIS
8 5 (0.31%) CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.31%) Tuxedo
9 4 (0.25%) SAS
10 3 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.12%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.12%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.12%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 45 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.25%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.25%) UserZoom
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.062%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.062%) Maya
7 1 (0.062%) Trello
7 1 (0.062%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 12 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.50%) Aladdin
4 6 (0.37%) NEC Housing
4 6 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.31%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 3 (0.19%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
7 3 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
8 2 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.12%) Oracle FAH
8 2 (0.12%) R3 Corda
8 2 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.12%) Sonata
8 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 344 (21.42%) Azure
2 261 (16.25%) AWS
3 130 (8.09%) GCP
4 109 (6.79%) Microsoft 365
5 86 (5.35%) Entra ID
5 86 (5.35%) Power Platform
6 66 (4.11%) SaaS
7 64 (3.99%) GitHub
8 52 (3.24%) Microsoft Purview
9 46 (2.86%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (2.62%) OpenShift
11 31 (1.93%) Serverless
12 30 (1.87%) Microsoft Copilot
13 26 (1.62%) OneDrive
14 22 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
14 22 (1.37%) Power Automate
14 22 (1.37%) Snowflake
15 21 (1.31%) Amazon S3
16 20 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
16 20 (1.25%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 85 (5.29%) Network Security
2 50 (3.11%) Firewall
3 34 (2.12%) VPN
4 32 (1.99%) SAN
5 27 (1.68%) DNS
6 25 (1.56%) TCP/IP
7 21 (1.31%) DHCP
7 21 (1.31%) WAN
8 20 (1.25%) NAS
9 17 (1.06%) MPLS
10 16 (1.00%) LAN
11 14 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.68%) SSL
13 9 (0.56%) HTTP
13 9 (0.56%) VLAN
13 9 (0.56%) Wireless
14 8 (0.50%) Ethernet
15 7 (0.44%) BGP
15 7 (0.44%) Cisco Nexus
15 7 (0.44%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (4.30%) Power BI
2 41 (2.55%) SQL Server
3 37 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
4 36 (2.24%) Metadata
5 25 (1.56%) Data Warehouse
5 25 (1.56%) Relational Database
6 21 (1.31%) Data Lake
6 21 (1.31%) MySQL
7 19 (1.18%) Big Data
7 19 (1.18%) MongoDB
8 18 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 18 (1.12%) NoSQL
9 13 (0.81%) Oracle Database
10 12 (0.75%) DynamoDB
11 10 (0.62%) BigQuery
11 10 (0.62%) RDBMS
11 10 (0.62%) Tableau
12 8 (0.50%) Ingres
12 8 (0.50%) Redis
13 7 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 97 (6.04%) JIRA
2 70 (4.36%) Git
3 58 (3.61%) Jenkins
4 37 (2.30%) GitLab
5 9 (0.56%) JUnit
5 9 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
6 8 (0.50%) Maven
6 8 (0.50%) Postman
7 7 (0.44%) Oracle Forms
7 7 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.44%) SpecFlow
8 6 (0.37%) Flyway
8 6 (0.37%) Gradle
9 5 (0.31%) ERwin
10 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.25%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 532 (33.13%) Social Skills
2 363 (22.60%) Finance
3 230 (14.32%) Legal
4 181 (11.27%) Analytical Skills
5 151 (9.40%) Public Sector
6 114 (7.10%) Banking
7 66 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
8 63 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
9 36 (2.24%) Telecoms
10 35 (2.18%) Local Government
11 31 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.74%) Retail
13 27 (1.68%) Law
14 26 (1.62%) Front Office
15 23 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
16 22 (1.37%) Marketing
17 20 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
17 20 (1.25%) Police
18 14 (0.87%) Financial Institution
18 14 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 219 (13.64%) Architect
2 151 (9.40%) Analyst
3 121 (7.53%) Lead
4 120 (7.47%) Developer
5 116 (7.22%) Senior
6 92 (5.73%) Consultant
7 83 (5.17%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.36%) Business Analyst
9 63 (3.92%) Solutions Architect
10 48 (2.99%) Security Architect
11 43 (2.68%) Network Engineer
12 41 (2.55%) Data Engineer
12 41 (2.55%) Security Engineer
13 39 (2.43%) Java Developer
14 31 (1.93%) Administrator
15 27 (1.68%) Data Analyst
15 27 (1.68%) Support Engineer
15 27 (1.68%) Technical Architect
16 25 (1.56%) IT Support
17 23 (1.43%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (4.61%) REST
2 55 (3.42%) React
3 38 (2.37%) Spring
4 34 (2.12%) Spring Boot
5 32 (1.99%) Middleware
6 31 (1.93%) CSS
6 31 (1.93%) Kafka
7 30 (1.87%) HTML
7 30 (1.87%) RESTful
8 26 (1.62%) JSON
8 26 (1.62%) OAuth
9 23 (1.43%) .NET
10 20 (1.25%) Jest
11 19 (1.18%) Node.js
12 18 (1.12%) PySpark
13 17 (1.06%) HTML5
13 17 (1.06%) OpenID
13 17 (1.06%) Redux
14 16 (1.00%) CSS3
14 16 (1.00%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 729 (45.39%) Data Protection Act
2 91 (5.67%) Cloud Native
3 88 (5.48%) Product Ownership
4 73 (4.55%) Onboarding
5 56 (3.49%) Management Information System
6 45 (2.80%) Data Centre
7 43 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
8 42 (2.62%) Distributed Systems
9 37 (2.30%) Security Posture
10 34 (2.12%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.56%) NHS
12 23 (1.43%) Operational Technology
13 22 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
13 22 (1.37%) Replication
14 21 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
15 18 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
15 18 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
16 17 (1.06%) Data Structures
17 16 (1.00%) Freedom of Information
17 16 (1.00%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 120 (7.47%) Windows
2 77 (4.79%) Linux
3 28 (1.74%) Unix
4 25 (1.56%) Android
4 25 (1.56%) Windows Server
5 24 (1.49%) Apple iOS
6 21 (1.31%) Mac OS
7 18 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.75%) VMS
9 11 (0.68%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.37%) CoreOS
10 6 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.37%) zOS
11 2 (0.12%) Rocky
11 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.062%) CentOS
12 1 (0.062%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.062%) Solaris
12 1 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 309 (19.24%) Agile
2 280 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
3 272 (16.94%) Stakeholder Management
4 249 (15.50%) Continuous Improvement
5 238 (14.82%) Migration
6 219 (13.64%) CI/CD
7 214 (13.33%) DevOps
8 166 (10.34%) AI
8 166 (10.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 144 (8.97%) Roadmaps
10 143 (8.90%) Cybersecurity
11 138 (8.59%) Decision-Making
12 129 (8.03%) Analytics
13 125 (7.78%) Information Security
14 121 (7.53%) Risk Management
15 113 (7.04%) Data Governance
16 109 (6.79%) Validation
17 105 (6.54%) Infrastructure as Code
18 98 (6.10%) Project Management
19 96 (5.98%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 217 (13.51%) Python
2 168 (10.46%) SQL
3 126 (7.85%) Java
4 66 (4.11%) JavaScript
5 52 (3.24%) PowerShell
6 39 (2.43%) Bash
7 29 (1.81%) TypeScript
8 27 (1.68%) C#
9 18 (1.12%) Bicep
10 13 (0.81%) Go
11 12 (0.75%) Kotlin
12 11 (0.68%) Perl
13 10 (0.62%) Apex Code
13 10 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (0.50%) VB
15 7 (0.44%) C++
15 7 (0.44%) PL/SQL
15 7 (0.44%) Scala
15 7 (0.44%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.44%) VB6
Qualifications
1 228 (14.20%) Security Cleared
2 170 (10.59%) SC Cleared
3 133 (8.28%) Degree
4 71 (4.42%) CISSP
5 57 (3.55%) DV Cleared
6 37 (2.30%) CISM
7 34 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
7 34 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.87%) Azure Certification
9 29 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
9 29 (1.81%) PMI Certification
10 26 (1.62%) PMP
11 23 (1.43%) AWS Certification
12 19 (1.18%) Master's Degree
12 19 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
13 17 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 15 (0.93%) CCSP
15 12 (0.75%) CCNP
16 10 (0.62%) CRISC
17 9 (0.56%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 246 (15.32%) GDPR
2 96 (5.98%) Data Quality
3 85 (5.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 85 (5.29%) NIST
4 71 (4.42%) QA
5 43 (2.68%) GRC
6 40 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 26 (1.62%) PCI DSS
8 22 (1.37%) PMO
9 19 (1.18%) SOC 2
10 18 (1.12%) NCSC
10 18 (1.12%) SLA
11 17 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
13 9 (0.56%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
14 8 (0.50%) WCAG
15 6 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
15 6 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 5 (0.31%) NIST 800
System Software
1 80 (4.98%) Active Directory
2 66 (4.11%) Docker
3 55 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (1.18%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (0.93%) NFS
6 14 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.75%) vSphere
8 11 (0.68%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.44%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.37%) KVM
12 4 (0.25%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.19%) IAG
13 3 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.19%) XenApp
13 3 (0.19%) XenDesktop
14 2 (0.12%) GPFS
14 2 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.062%) iptables
Systems Management
1 110 (6.85%) Kubernetes
2 87 (5.42%) Terraform
3 58 (3.61%) Ansible
4 40 (2.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 37 (2.30%) Grafana
6 28 (1.74%) NetBackup
7 26 (1.62%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (1.18%) SCCM
10 14 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
10 14 (0.87%) Puppet
11 12 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.44%) Kibana
13 6 (0.37%) SnapMirror
14 5 (0.31%) CA Single Sign-On
14 5 (0.31%) Control-M
14 5 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.25%) Foglight
15 4 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 275 (17.12%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.67%) Oracle
3 73 (4.55%) ServiceNow
4 60 (3.74%) Google
5 56 (3.49%) VMware
6 55 (3.42%) Cisco
7 54 (3.36%) Databricks
8 40 (2.49%) SAP
9 33 (2.05%) Splunk
10 32 (1.99%) Red Hat
11 24 (1.49%) Salesforce
12 23 (1.43%) Veritas
13 21 (1.31%) Workday
14 20 (1.25%) NetApp
15 19 (1.18%) Zscaler
16 16 (1.00%) Commvault
17 15 (0.93%) F5
18 14 (0.87%) Citrix
18 14 (0.87%) CyberArk
18 14 (0.87%) IBM