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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 84 89
Rank change year-on-year +9 +5 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,619 872 1,047
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 2.85% 2.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.71% 3.13% 2.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 882 420 549
10th Percentile £300 £262 £214
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £594
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £463
% change year-on-year -3.74% +1.08% -2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 37 107
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.40
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.35 £19.50 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.49% - -46.24%
75th Percentile £33.64 £32.50 £27.50
90th Percentile £37.70 £36.69 £41.50
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 43,613 27,816 36,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.98% 90.91% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,139 17,565 23,448
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,612 1,364 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.49 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.00% -34.42% +8.91%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +11 1,372 £500 +3.09% 318
UK excluding London +11 905 £450 -3.74% 252
London +7 602 £525 +5.00% 123
Work from Home +18 455 £500 +6.67% 135
North of England +13 312 £475 - 68
South East +23 195 £480 -8.57% 62
Yorkshire -8 175 £475 -5.00% 22
Midlands -9 139 £459 -8.25% 52
Scotland -3 133 £425 -0.93% 10
North West +26 130 £488 +14.71% 35
West Midlands -19 97 £474 -9.71% 32
South West 0 67 £425 +6.25% 41
East of England +4 43 £488 -7.14% 12
East Midlands +8 42 £442 +18.33% 20
Wales -8 13 £375 +26.58% 11
Northern Ireland +6 10 £104 -78.86% 3
North East -45 9 £450 +14.29% 12

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 (3.64%) SharePoint
2 57 (3.52%) Confluence
3 25 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 18 (1.11%) Apache Spark
5 16 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.56%) Apache
7 6 (0.37%) IIS
8 5 (0.31%) CMS
8 5 (0.31%) Tuxedo
9 4 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
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
12 1 (0.062%) Anypoint
Applications
1 45 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (2.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.49%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.31%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.25%) UserZoom
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.062%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.062%) Maya
9 1 (0.062%) Trello
9 1 (0.062%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.43%) 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%) 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%) 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
9 1 (0.062%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 1 (0.062%) Oracle Receivables
9 1 (0.062%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 349 (21.56%) Azure
2 260 (16.06%) AWS
3 134 (8.28%) GCP
4 110 (6.79%) Microsoft 365
5 87 (5.37%) Entra ID
5 87 (5.37%) Power Platform
6 67 (4.14%) SaaS
7 64 (3.95%) GitHub
8 55 (3.40%) Microsoft Purview
9 46 (2.84%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (2.59%) OpenShift
11 34 (2.10%) Serverless
12 33 (2.04%) Microsoft Copilot
13 26 (1.61%) OneDrive
14 23 (1.42%) Power Automate
14 23 (1.42%) PowerApps
15 22 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
15 22 (1.36%) Snowflake
16 21 (1.30%) Amazon S3
17 20 (1.24%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 86 (5.31%) Network Security
2 51 (3.15%) Firewall
3 34 (2.10%) VPN
4 32 (1.98%) SAN
5 28 (1.73%) DNS
6 25 (1.54%) TCP/IP
7 22 (1.36%) WAN
8 21 (1.30%) DHCP
9 20 (1.24%) NAS
10 16 (0.99%) LAN
11 15 (0.93%) MPLS
12 13 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
13 11 (0.68%) SSL
14 9 (0.56%) HTTP
14 9 (0.56%) Wireless
15 8 (0.49%) VLAN
16 7 (0.43%) Cisco Nexus
16 7 (0.43%) Ethernet
16 7 (0.43%) HTTPS
16 7 (0.43%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (4.20%) Power BI
2 41 (2.53%) SQL Server
3 37 (2.29%) Metadata
3 37 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
4 25 (1.54%) Relational Database
5 24 (1.48%) Data Warehouse
6 23 (1.42%) MySQL
7 21 (1.30%) Data Lake
8 20 (1.24%) Big Data
8 20 (1.24%) MongoDB
8 20 (1.24%) NoSQL
9 18 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
10 13 (0.80%) Oracle Database
11 11 (0.68%) BigQuery
12 10 (0.62%) DynamoDB
12 10 (0.62%) RDBMS
12 10 (0.62%) Tableau
13 8 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
13 8 (0.49%) Ingres
14 7 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 95 (5.87%) JIRA
2 71 (4.39%) Git
3 56 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 35 (2.16%) GitLab
5 9 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
6 8 (0.49%) JUnit
6 8 (0.49%) Maven
6 8 (0.49%) Postman
7 7 (0.43%) Oracle Forms
7 7 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.37%) Flyway
8 6 (0.37%) Gradle
8 6 (0.37%) SpecFlow
9 5 (0.31%) ERwin
10 4 (0.25%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.25%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
General
1 539 (33.29%) Social Skills
2 365 (22.54%) Finance
3 233 (14.39%) Legal
4 191 (11.80%) Analytical Skills
5 157 (9.70%) Public Sector
6 114 (7.04%) Banking
7 65 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
8 64 (3.95%) Organisational Skills
9 36 (2.22%) Local Government
10 35 (2.16%) Telecoms
11 32 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.73%) Law
12 28 (1.73%) Retail
13 26 (1.61%) Front Office
14 23 (1.42%) Marketing
14 23 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.24%) Pharmaceutical
15 20 (1.24%) Police
16 15 (0.93%) Financial Institution
17 14 (0.86%) Billing
Job Titles
1 226 (13.96%) Architect
2 151 (9.33%) Analyst
3 122 (7.54%) Developer
4 121 (7.47%) Lead
5 120 (7.41%) Senior
6 93 (5.74%) Consultant
7 85 (5.25%) Project Manager
8 69 (4.26%) Business Analyst
9 64 (3.95%) Solutions Architect
10 51 (3.15%) Security Architect
11 43 (2.66%) Data Engineer
12 42 (2.59%) Security Engineer
13 41 (2.53%) Network Engineer
14 40 (2.47%) Java Developer
15 32 (1.98%) Administrator
16 28 (1.73%) Technical Architect
17 27 (1.67%) Data Analyst
18 25 (1.54%) IT Support
18 25 (1.54%) Support Engineer
19 24 (1.48%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (4.69%) REST
2 53 (3.27%) React
3 39 (2.41%) Spring
4 33 (2.04%) Spring Boot
5 32 (1.98%) CSS
5 32 (1.98%) Middleware
6 31 (1.91%) HTML
6 31 (1.91%) RESTful
7 30 (1.85%) Kafka
8 26 (1.61%) JSON
8 26 (1.61%) OAuth
9 23 (1.42%) .NET
10 18 (1.11%) HTML5
10 18 (1.11%) Jest
10 18 (1.11%) PySpark
11 17 (1.05%) CSS3
11 17 (1.05%) Node.js
11 17 (1.05%) OpenID
11 17 (1.05%) Redux
12 16 (0.99%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 726 (44.84%) Data Protection Act
2 92 (5.68%) Cloud Native
3 87 (5.37%) Product Ownership
4 74 (4.57%) Onboarding
5 56 (3.46%) Management Information System
6 45 (2.78%) Data Centre
7 43 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
8 40 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
9 37 (2.29%) Security Posture
10 36 (2.22%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.54%) NHS
12 24 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.42%) Operational Technology
14 22 (1.36%) Replication
15 21 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
16 19 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
17 18 (1.11%) Data Structures
17 18 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
18 16 (0.99%) Freedom of Information
18 16 (0.99%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 118 (7.29%) Windows
2 77 (4.76%) Linux
3 29 (1.79%) Unix
4 25 (1.54%) Android
5 24 (1.48%) Apple iOS
5 24 (1.48%) Windows Server
6 21 (1.30%) Mac OS
7 18 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.80%) 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
1 303 (18.72%) Agile
2 284 (17.54%) Problem-Solving
3 274 (16.92%) Stakeholder Management
4 250 (15.44%) Continuous Improvement
5 231 (14.27%) Migration
6 221 (13.65%) CI/CD
7 220 (13.59%) DevOps
8 173 (10.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 169 (10.44%) AI
10 147 (9.08%) Cybersecurity
11 144 (8.89%) Roadmaps
12 137 (8.46%) Decision-Making
13 130 (8.03%) Analytics
14 126 (7.78%) Information Security
15 124 (7.66%) Risk Management
16 117 (7.23%) Data Governance
17 110 (6.79%) Infrastructure as Code
18 107 (6.61%) Validation
19 98 (6.05%) Project Management
20 95 (5.87%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 220 (13.59%) Python
2 168 (10.38%) SQL
3 124 (7.66%) Java
4 65 (4.01%) JavaScript
5 53 (3.27%) PowerShell
6 41 (2.53%) Bash
7 29 (1.79%) TypeScript
8 26 (1.61%) C#
9 19 (1.17%) Bicep
10 14 (0.86%) Go
11 12 (0.74%) Kotlin
12 11 (0.68%) Perl
13 10 (0.62%) Apex Code
13 10 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (0.49%) Scala
14 8 (0.49%) VB
15 7 (0.43%) C++
15 7 (0.43%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.43%) VB6
16 6 (0.37%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 234 (14.45%) Security Cleared
2 174 (10.75%) SC Cleared
3 135 (8.34%) Degree
4 74 (4.57%) CISSP
5 58 (3.58%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.35%) CISM
7 36 (2.22%) Cisco Certification
7 36 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
8 32 (1.98%) Azure Certification
9 29 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
9 29 (1.79%) PMI Certification
10 25 (1.54%) AWS Certification
10 25 (1.54%) PMP
11 19 (1.17%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 19 (1.17%) Master's Degree
11 19 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
12 17 (1.05%) CCSP
13 12 (0.74%) CCNP
14 10 (0.62%) CRISC
15 9 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (15.38%) GDPR
2 97 (5.99%) Data Quality
3 86 (5.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 85 (5.25%) NIST
5 73 (4.51%) QA
6 43 (2.66%) GRC
7 40 (2.47%) Accessibility
8 26 (1.61%) PCI DSS
9 22 (1.36%) PMO
10 19 (1.17%) SOC 2
11 18 (1.11%) NCSC
12 17 (1.05%) SLA
13 14 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
14 10 (0.62%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
15 8 (0.49%) WCAG
16 6 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
16 6 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 5 (0.31%) NIST 800
System Software
1 79 (4.88%) Active Directory
2 67 (4.14%) Docker
3 55 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (0.93%) NFS
6 14 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.74%) vSphere
8 11 (0.68%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.43%) 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
1 113 (6.98%) Kubernetes
2 89 (5.50%) Terraform
3 57 (3.52%) Ansible
4 39 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
5 37 (2.29%) Grafana
6 28 (1.73%) NetBackup
7 26 (1.61%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (1.17%) SCCM
10 14 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
10 14 (0.86%) Puppet
11 11 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.43%) Kibana
13 6 (0.37%) SnapMirror
14 5 (0.31%) CA Single Sign-On
14 5 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.25%) Control-M
15 4 (0.25%) Foglight
15 4 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 283 (17.48%) Microsoft
2 72 (4.45%) Oracle
2 72 (4.45%) ServiceNow
3 65 (4.01%) Google
4 56 (3.46%) VMware
5 54 (3.34%) Cisco
6 51 (3.15%) Databricks
7 39 (2.41%) SAP
8 33 (2.04%) Splunk
9 32 (1.98%) Red Hat
10 24 (1.48%) Salesforce
11 23 (1.42%) Veritas
12 20 (1.24%) NetApp
13 19 (1.17%) Workday
13 19 (1.17%) Zscaler
14 16 (0.99%) Commvault
15 15 (0.93%) F5
16 14 (0.86%) CyberArk
17 13 (0.80%) Citrix
17 13 (0.80%) IFS