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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 87 89
Rank change year-on-year +16 +2 +4
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,551 770 1,049
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.18% 2.68% 2.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.75% 2.94% 2.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 853 393 553
10th Percentile £288 £258 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £601
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £451
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 31 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.43 £16.81 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.72 £27.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.57% +28.57% -52.84%
75th Percentile £33.75 £32.95 £27.59
90th Percentile £48.00 £37.00 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.35 £24.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -12.86% +25.64% -38.10%

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 41,363 26,184 36,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 91.01% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,810 16,717 23,641
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,496 1,118 2,535
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.85 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.27% -23.70% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.19 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.14 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +28 1,325 £500 - 482
UK excluding London +21 851 £450 -5.26% 310
London +31 599 £525 - 222
Work from Home +34 410 £500 +2.56% 203
North of England 0 280 £475 - 72
South East +28 182 £475 -9.52% 86
Yorkshire -9 156 £475 -8.43% 26
Midlands -2 129 £450 -10.00% 62
Scotland +6 127 £425 -7.10% 21
North West +21 116 £475 +8.57% 33
West Midlands -19 88 £468 -10.95% 42
South West +5 66 £410 +2.50% 35
East of England +5 48 £488 -7.14% 22
East Midlands +1 41 £438 +17.06% 20
Wales -7 11 £363 -12.12% 11
Northern Ireland +8 9 £104 -78.86% 7
North East -40 8 £400 -3.03% 13

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 56 (3.61%) Confluence
2 53 (3.42%) SharePoint
3 27 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.10%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.58%) Apache
7 6 (0.39%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.32%) SAS
9 4 (0.26%) IIS
10 3 (0.19%) Drupal
10 3 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
11 2 (0.13%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 47 (3.03%) Microsoft Office
2 43 (2.77%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.26%) UserZoom
7 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.064%) Maya
9 1 (0.064%) Trello
9 1 (0.064%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (0.64%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.32%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.19%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
6 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.064%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 325 (20.95%) Azure
2 259 (16.70%) AWS
3 131 (8.45%) GCP
4 103 (6.64%) Microsoft 365
5 87 (5.61%) Entra ID
6 83 (5.35%) Power Platform
7 66 (4.26%) SaaS
8 61 (3.93%) GitHub
9 49 (3.16%) Microsoft Purview
10 45 (2.90%) OpenShift
11 44 (2.84%) Azure DevOps
12 38 (2.45%) Serverless
13 28 (1.81%) Microsoft Copilot
14 25 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
15 23 (1.48%) OneDrive
15 23 (1.48%) Snowflake
16 21 (1.35%) Amazon S3
16 21 (1.35%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (1.35%) Power Automate
17 20 (1.29%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 74 (4.77%) Network Security
2 45 (2.90%) Firewall
3 36 (2.32%) SAN
4 30 (1.93%) VPN
5 24 (1.55%) DNS
5 24 (1.55%) NAS
6 23 (1.48%) TCP/IP
7 20 (1.29%) WAN
8 17 (1.10%) LAN
8 17 (1.10%) MPLS
9 16 (1.03%) DHCP
10 14 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.58%) HTTP
11 9 (0.58%) VLAN
12 8 (0.52%) Fibre Channel
12 8 (0.52%) SSL
12 8 (0.52%) Wireless
13 7 (0.45%) BGP
13 7 (0.45%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.45%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (4.38%) Power BI
2 37 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
3 35 (2.26%) Metadata
4 32 (2.06%) SQL Server
5 27 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
6 24 (1.55%) MongoDB
7 23 (1.48%) MySQL
8 21 (1.35%) Data Lake
9 20 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
9 20 (1.29%) NoSQL
10 19 (1.23%) Big Data
10 19 (1.23%) Relational Database
11 13 (0.84%) DynamoDB
12 12 (0.77%) Oracle Database
12 12 (0.77%) Tableau
13 10 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
13 10 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.58%) BigQuery
15 8 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 7 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 92 (5.93%) JIRA
2 67 (4.32%) Git
3 63 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 39 (2.51%) GitLab
5 9 (0.58%) SpecFlow
6 8 (0.52%) JUnit
6 8 (0.52%) Postman
7 7 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.39%) Flyway
8 6 (0.39%) Maven
9 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.32%) Gradle
10 4 (0.26%) ERwin
10 4 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
11 3 (0.19%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.19%) Selenium
11 3 (0.19%) TestNG
11 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
12 2 (0.13%) REST Assured
General
1 498 (32.11%) Social Skills
2 359 (23.15%) Finance
3 204 (13.15%) Legal
4 172 (11.09%) Analytical Skills
5 146 (9.41%) Public Sector
6 120 (7.74%) Banking
7 65 (4.19%) Documentation Skills
8 62 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
9 39 (2.51%) Telecoms
10 30 (1.93%) Front Office
10 30 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (1.87%) Local Government
12 28 (1.81%) Retail
13 27 (1.74%) Law
14 26 (1.68%) Marketing
15 25 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
16 18 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
16 18 (1.16%) Police
17 12 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.77%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 213 (13.73%) Architect
2 143 (9.22%) Analyst
3 127 (8.19%) Developer
4 118 (7.61%) Lead
5 107 (6.90%) Senior
6 94 (6.06%) Consultant
7 84 (5.42%) Project Manager
8 67 (4.32%) Business Analyst
9 60 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.77%) Security Architect
11 42 (2.71%) Network Engineer
12 41 (2.64%) Java Developer
12 41 (2.64%) Security Engineer
13 37 (2.39%) Data Engineer
14 34 (2.19%) Administrator
15 28 (1.81%) Technical Architect
16 26 (1.68%) Data Analyst
17 25 (1.61%) Support Engineer
18 23 (1.48%) Python Developer
19 22 (1.42%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (5.03%) REST
2 58 (3.74%) React
3 38 (2.45%) Spring
4 34 (2.19%) Spring Boot
5 33 (2.13%) Middleware
6 31 (2.00%) HTML
7 30 (1.93%) CSS
7 30 (1.93%) Kafka
7 30 (1.93%) RESTful
8 28 (1.81%) .NET
9 26 (1.68%) OAuth
10 25 (1.61%) JSON
11 22 (1.42%) Node.js
12 21 (1.35%) Jest
13 18 (1.16%) HTML5
13 18 (1.16%) Redux
14 17 (1.10%) OpenID
14 17 (1.10%) PySpark
14 17 (1.10%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 720 (46.42%) Data Protection Act
2 91 (5.87%) Cloud Native
3 77 (4.96%) Product Ownership
4 71 (4.58%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.42%) Management Information System
6 40 (2.58%) Distributed Systems
6 40 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
7 39 (2.51%) Data Centre
8 32 (2.06%) Security Posture
9 27 (1.74%) NHS
9 27 (1.74%) Virtual Team
10 24 (1.55%) Replication
11 23 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
12 21 (1.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 20 (1.29%) Enterprise Storage
13 20 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
14 18 (1.16%) Operational Technology
15 17 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
16 16 (1.03%) Derivative
16 16 (1.03%) Freedom of Information
Operating Systems
1 118 (7.61%) Windows
2 79 (5.09%) Linux
3 34 (2.19%) Unix
4 23 (1.48%) Android
4 23 (1.48%) Mac OS
4 23 (1.48%) Windows Server
5 21 (1.35%) Apple iOS
6 17 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.90%) Windows 10
8 12 (0.77%) VMS
9 8 (0.52%) zOS
10 7 (0.45%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.39%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.064%) CentOS
13 1 (0.064%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.064%) Solaris
13 1 (0.064%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 293 (18.89%) Agile
2 259 (16.70%) Stakeholder Management
3 256 (16.51%) Problem-Solving
4 240 (15.47%) Migration
5 236 (15.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 224 (14.44%) CI/CD
7 217 (13.99%) DevOps
8 157 (10.12%) AI
9 151 (9.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 141 (9.09%) Roadmaps
11 136 (8.77%) Analytics
12 130 (8.38%) Decision-Making
13 129 (8.32%) Cybersecurity
14 121 (7.80%) Risk Management
15 117 (7.54%) Information Security
16 106 (6.83%) Infrastructure as Code
17 105 (6.77%) Data Governance
18 101 (6.51%) Test Automation
18 101 (6.51%) Validation
19 96 (6.19%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 219 (14.12%) Python
2 167 (10.77%) SQL
3 136 (8.77%) Java
4 72 (4.64%) JavaScript
5 59 (3.80%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.71%) Bash
7 39 (2.51%) C#
8 32 (2.06%) TypeScript
9 20 (1.29%) Bicep
10 15 (0.97%) Perl
11 14 (0.90%) C++
12 12 (0.77%) Go
13 11 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
14 10 (0.64%) Kotlin
15 9 (0.58%) Apex Code
15 9 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.52%) ActionScript
16 8 (0.52%) Scala
17 7 (0.45%) PL/SQL
18 6 (0.39%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 207 (13.35%) Security Cleared
2 153 (9.86%) SC Cleared
3 138 (8.90%) Degree
4 72 (4.64%) CISSP
5 51 (3.29%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.58%) CISM
7 35 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 31 (2.00%) Azure Certification
8 31 (2.00%) PMI Certification
9 30 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
10 27 (1.74%) PMP
11 26 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
12 22 (1.42%) AWS Certification
12 22 (1.42%) Master's Degree
13 18 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
14 16 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.90%) CCSP
16 11 (0.71%) CRISC
17 10 (0.64%) CCNP
18 9 (0.58%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (16.05%) GDPR
2 92 (5.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 88 (5.67%) NIST
4 79 (5.09%) Data Quality
5 61 (3.93%) QA
6 37 (2.39%) Accessibility
6 37 (2.39%) GRC
7 25 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 21 (1.35%) PMO
9 19 (1.23%) SLA
9 19 (1.23%) SOC 2
10 17 (1.10%) NCSC
11 14 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
12 10 (0.64%) WCAG
13 8 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
13 8 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
13 8 (0.52%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.39%) COBIT
15 5 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 81 (5.22%) Active Directory
2 67 (4.32%) Docker
3 54 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
5 17 (1.10%) NFS
6 13 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.71%) vSphere
8 8 (0.52%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.39%) KVM
11 4 (0.26%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.19%) IAG
12 3 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.19%) XenApp
12 3 (0.19%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.13%) GPFS
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.064%) iptables
Systems Management
1 115 (7.41%) Kubernetes
2 90 (5.80%) Terraform
3 67 (4.32%) Ansible
4 45 (2.90%) Grafana
5 41 (2.64%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (2.00%) NetBackup
6 31 (2.00%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.42%) SCCM
8 21 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.84%) Puppet
10 12 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 11 (0.71%) Jamf Pro
12 7 (0.45%) Kibana
12 7 (0.45%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.32%) Control-M
13 5 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.26%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.26%) Foglight
14 4 (0.26%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.26%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 258 (16.63%) Microsoft
2 77 (4.96%) Oracle
3 65 (4.19%) Google
4 61 (3.93%) ServiceNow
5 55 (3.55%) Databricks
5 55 (3.55%) VMware
6 50 (3.22%) Cisco
7 43 (2.77%) SAP
8 33 (2.13%) Splunk
9 31 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 26 (1.68%) Veritas
11 23 (1.48%) NetApp
11 23 (1.48%) Salesforce
12 22 (1.42%) Citrix
13 16 (1.03%) IBM
13 16 (1.03%) Zscaler
14 15 (0.97%) Commvault
14 15 (0.97%) F5
14 15 (0.97%) Workday
15 14 (0.90%) Informatica