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 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 93 83
Rank change year-on-year +21 -10 +10
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,489 799 1,083
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.13% 2.74% 2.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.72% 3.01% 2.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 824 396 582
10th Percentile £303 £255 £243
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £589 £611
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 31 108
10th Percentile £13.26 £16.25 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.30 £27.64 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.94% +31.62% -60.00%
75th Percentile £29.31 £32.95 £27.59
90th Percentile £50.05 £37.00 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.27 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -30.38% +49.31% -56.21%

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 40,059 26,552 37,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.94% 86.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,139 17,089 23,891
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% -1.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +2.93% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,402 1,086 2,440
10th Percentile £14.97 £14.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.48% -21.23% +0.29%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 +29 1,286 £498 +0.69% 374
UK excluding London +14 812 £450 -5.26% 269
London +28 581 £525 +5.00% 152
Work from Home +12 381 £500 +2.56% 126
North of England -7 264 £480 +1.05% 71
South East +20 179 £483 -5.25% 69
Yorkshire -6 155 £478 -6.83% 24
Midlands +6 132 £450 -10.00% 49
Scotland +4 115 £425 -5.56% 18
North West +5 101 £495 +16.47% 35
West Midlands -16 86 £450 -12.20% 34
South West -1 65 £425 +6.25% 27
East Midlands +1 46 £437 +5.37% 15
East of England -1 46 £475 -11.63% 24
Wales -3 11 £375 -11.76% 7
North East -34 9 £400 -4.48% 13
Northern Ireland +4 2 £675 +37.20% 6

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 (3.76%) Confluence
2 41 (2.75%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.47%) Apache
7 6 (0.40%) CMS
8 5 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.34%) SAS
9 3 (0.20%) Drupal
9 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.067%) JBoss
Applications
1 47 (3.16%) Microsoft Office
2 45 (3.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe After Effects
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
7 1 (0.067%) Blender
7 1 (0.067%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.067%) Maya
7 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.067%) Trello
7 1 (0.067%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 12 (0.81%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.34%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.34%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
4 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.27%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
5 3 (0.20%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Workfront
7 1 (0.067%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 299 (20.08%) Azure
2 247 (16.59%) AWS
3 129 (8.66%) GCP
4 86 (5.78%) Microsoft 365
5 82 (5.51%) Power Platform
6 77 (5.17%) Entra ID
7 68 (4.57%) GitHub
8 59 (3.96%) SaaS
9 48 (3.22%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.09%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.89%) OpenShift
12 41 (2.75%) Serverless
13 29 (1.95%) Amazon S3
13 29 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
14 26 (1.75%) Microsoft Copilot
15 24 (1.61%) Amazon ECS
15 24 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
15 24 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
16 23 (1.54%) Snowflake
17 20 (1.34%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 61 (4.10%) Network Security
2 41 (2.75%) Firewall
3 36 (2.42%) SAN
4 25 (1.68%) VPN
5 24 (1.61%) NAS
6 19 (1.28%) WAN
7 18 (1.21%) MPLS
8 17 (1.14%) DNS
8 17 (1.14%) LAN
9 15 (1.01%) TCP/IP
10 14 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
12 9 (0.60%) DHCP
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) VLAN
13 7 (0.47%) BGP
13 7 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
13 7 (0.47%) Ethernet
13 7 (0.47%) SD-WAN
13 7 (0.47%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (4.70%) Power BI
2 39 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
3 32 (2.15%) Metadata
3 32 (2.15%) SQL Server
4 31 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
5 28 (1.88%) MySQL
6 27 (1.81%) Relational Database
7 24 (1.61%) MongoDB
8 20 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
8 20 (1.34%) Big Data
9 19 (1.28%) NoSQL
10 17 (1.14%) Data Lake
11 14 (0.94%) DynamoDB
12 13 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
12 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
12 13 (0.87%) Tableau
13 11 (0.74%) Amazon Aurora
14 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 92 (6.18%) JIRA
2 67 (4.50%) Git
3 66 (4.43%) Jenkins
4 38 (2.55%) GitLab
5 12 (0.81%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) JUnit
7 8 (0.54%) Postman
7 8 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.40%) Maven
8 6 (0.40%) NUnit
9 5 (0.34%) Flyway
9 5 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.27%) Gradle
11 3 (0.20%) ERwin
11 3 (0.20%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.20%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 452 (30.36%) Social Skills
2 345 (23.17%) Finance
3 185 (12.42%) Legal
4 169 (11.35%) Analytical Skills
5 127 (8.53%) Public Sector
6 117 (7.86%) Banking
7 60 (4.03%) Organisational Skills
8 57 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
9 43 (2.89%) Telecoms
10 31 (2.08%) Front Office
11 30 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.88%) Local Government
13 26 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.68%) Marketing
15 24 (1.61%) Law
15 24 (1.61%) Retail
16 19 (1.28%) Police
17 13 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
18 12 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 10 (0.67%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 194 (13.03%) Architect
2 140 (9.40%) Analyst
3 128 (8.60%) Developer
4 113 (7.59%) Senior
5 112 (7.52%) Lead
6 93 (6.25%) Consultant
7 78 (5.24%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.70%) Business Analyst
9 53 (3.56%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.89%) Java Developer
10 43 (2.89%) Security Architect
11 39 (2.62%) Network Engineer
11 39 (2.62%) Security Engineer
12 38 (2.55%) Data Engineer
13 35 (2.35%) Administrator
14 27 (1.81%) Data Analyst
15 26 (1.75%) Technical Architect
16 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
16 21 (1.41%) Support Engineer
17 20 (1.34%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (4.90%) REST
2 61 (4.10%) React
3 41 (2.75%) Spring
4 37 (2.48%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.42%) .NET
6 34 (2.28%) Kafka
7 33 (2.22%) RESTful
8 31 (2.08%) HTML
9 30 (2.01%) CSS
9 30 (2.01%) Middleware
10 29 (1.95%) OAuth
11 28 (1.88%) Node.js
12 23 (1.54%) Jest
13 22 (1.48%) JSON
14 18 (1.21%) HTML5
14 18 (1.21%) OAuth2
14 18 (1.21%) Redux
15 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
16 16 (1.07%) OpenID
16 16 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 716 (48.09%) Data Protection Act
2 92 (6.18%) Cloud Native
3 71 (4.77%) Product Ownership
4 67 (4.50%) Onboarding
5 48 (3.22%) Management Information System
6 44 (2.96%) Distributed Systems
7 35 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
8 31 (2.08%) Replication
9 30 (2.01%) Data Centre
9 30 (2.01%) Security Posture
10 28 (1.88%) NHS
11 26 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
12 25 (1.68%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
13 23 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
14 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 19 (1.28%) Freedom of Information
16 16 (1.07%) Derivative
16 16 (1.07%) Mobile App
17 15 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 95 (6.38%) Windows
2 75 (5.04%) Linux
3 27 (1.81%) Unix
4 22 (1.48%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.21%) Android
6 17 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.01%) Apple iOS
8 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 13 (0.87%) VMS
8 13 (0.87%) Windows 10
9 9 (0.60%) zOS
10 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.067%) CentOS
13 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.067%) Solaris
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 286 (19.21%) Agile
2 256 (17.19%) Stakeholder Management
3 243 (16.32%) Problem-Solving
4 232 (15.58%) Migration
5 217 (14.57%) CI/CD
6 210 (14.10%) Continuous Improvement
6 210 (14.10%) DevOps
7 141 (9.47%) AI
8 136 (9.13%) Analytics
9 135 (9.07%) Roadmaps
10 130 (8.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 123 (8.26%) Decision-Making
12 117 (7.86%) Risk Management
13 115 (7.72%) Cybersecurity
14 107 (7.19%) Information Security
15 106 (7.12%) Infrastructure as Code
16 101 (6.78%) Data Governance
17 100 (6.72%) Test Automation
18 95 (6.38%) Microservices
18 95 (6.38%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 211 (14.17%) Python
2 176 (11.82%) SQL
3 129 (8.66%) Java
4 77 (5.17%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.69%) PowerShell
6 47 (3.16%) C#
7 40 (2.69%) Bash
8 36 (2.42%) TypeScript
9 19 (1.28%) Bicep
10 15 (1.01%) C++
11 11 (0.74%) Perl
12 9 (0.60%) Go
12 9 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 9 (0.60%) Scala
12 9 (0.60%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.54%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.47%) R
15 6 (0.40%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 203 (13.63%) Security Cleared
2 147 (9.87%) SC Cleared
3 117 (7.86%) Degree
4 62 (4.16%) CISSP
5 51 (3.43%) DV Cleared
6 34 (2.28%) CISM
7 31 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (1.95%) PMI Certification
10 28 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
11 27 (1.81%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.81%) PMP
12 21 (1.41%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (1.21%) Master's Degree
15 16 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 14 (0.94%) CCSP
17 11 (0.74%) CTC Cleared
18 10 (0.67%) CCNP
19 9 (0.60%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 241 (16.19%) GDPR
2 89 (5.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 87 (5.84%) NIST
4 71 (4.77%) Data Quality
5 66 (4.43%) QA
6 33 (2.22%) Accessibility
6 33 (2.22%) GRC
7 24 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 21 (1.41%) PMO
9 20 (1.34%) SLA
10 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
11 16 (1.07%) NCSC
12 11 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
13 8 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
13 8 (0.54%) WCAG
14 7 (0.47%) PERC
15 6 (0.40%) COBIT
15 6 (0.40%) HIPAA
16 5 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 77 (5.17%) Docker
2 74 (4.97%) Active Directory
3 53 (3.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.34%) NFS
4 20 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.74%) vSphere
7 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.40%) KVM
10 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
11 3 (0.20%) IAG
11 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.20%) XenApp
11 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
12 2 (0.13%) GPFS
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.067%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 115 (7.72%) Kubernetes
2 97 (6.51%) Terraform
3 66 (4.43%) Ansible
4 48 (3.22%) Grafana
5 32 (2.15%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (2.08%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.81%) NetBackup
8 21 (1.41%) SCCM
9 20 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.87%) Puppet
11 11 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
13 5 (0.34%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.27%) Control-M
14 4 (0.27%) EMC NetWorker
14 4 (0.27%) Foglight
14 4 (0.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 233 (15.65%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.97%) Oracle
3 65 (4.37%) Google
4 54 (3.63%) VMware
5 53 (3.56%) Databricks
6 49 (3.29%) ServiceNow
7 47 (3.16%) Cisco
8 40 (2.69%) SAP
9 31 (2.08%) Red Hat
10 28 (1.88%) Splunk
11 26 (1.75%) NetApp
12 23 (1.54%) IBM
13 22 (1.48%) Veritas
14 21 (1.41%) Salesforce
15 20 (1.34%) Citrix
16 16 (1.07%) Commvault
16 16 (1.07%) F5
16 16 (1.07%) Workday
17 15 (1.01%) Dell
17 15 (1.01%) Veeam