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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 92 82
Rank change year-on-year +18 -10 +14
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,486 805 1,114
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.15% 2.75% 2.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.73% 3.02% 2.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 818 402 606
10th Percentile £300 £257 £225
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 £600 £601
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 32 109
10th Percentile £13.26 £16.48 £12.45
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.25 £27.57 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.92% +31.29% -60.00%
75th Percentile £28.00 £32.73 £27.84
90th Percentile £51.70 £36.95 £43.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.64 £29.00 £19.50
% change year-on-year -32.29% +48.72% -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 39,853 26,632 37,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.47% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,078 17,168 24,015
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +1.46% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,383 1,080 2,442
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.83
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.06% -0.47%
75th Percentile £67.13 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.57 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.59% -26.48% +7.14%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +27 1,275 £500 +2.04% 390
UK excluding London +12 803 £450 -5.26% 265
London +30 587 £525 +5.00% 160
Work from Home +17 382 £500 +2.56% 181
North of England -2 252 £478 +0.53% 66
South East +19 175 £483 -3.40% 62
Yorkshire -5 148 £478 -6.83% 24
Midlands -7 130 £450 -11.11% 54
Scotland +3 119 £420 -8.20% 17
North West -1 96 £493 +12.57% 32
West Midlands -19 84 £450 -14.29% 39
South West -1 64 £418 +4.38% 28
East of England -3 49 £488 -7.14% 32
East Midlands +1 46 £438 +5.55% 15
Wales -2 13 £375 -11.76% 5
North East -34 9 £400 -4.48% 10
Northern Ireland +2 3 £500 +1.63% 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 54 (3.63%) Confluence
2 38 (2.56%) SharePoint
3 24 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.54%) 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 53 (3.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (3.03%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.94%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.067%) Blender
8 1 (0.067%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.067%) Maya
8 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
8 1 (0.067%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 12 (0.81%) Aladdin
2 9 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.34%) NEC Housing
4 5 (0.34%) SAP GRC
5 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
6 3 (0.20%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.13%) Fidessa
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 304 (20.46%) Azure
2 251 (16.89%) AWS
3 131 (8.82%) GCP
4 87 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 85 (5.72%) Microsoft 365
6 77 (5.18%) Entra ID
7 66 (4.44%) GitHub
8 56 (3.77%) SaaS
9 48 (3.23%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.10%) Serverless
11 43 (2.89%) Azure DevOps
12 41 (2.76%) OpenShift
13 34 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
14 29 (1.95%) Amazon S3
15 28 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (1.75%) Snowflake
17 25 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
17 25 (1.68%) Microsoft Copilot
18 23 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
19 22 (1.48%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 60 (4.04%) Network Security
2 41 (2.76%) Firewall
3 37 (2.49%) SAN
4 25 (1.68%) VPN
5 23 (1.55%) NAS
6 21 (1.41%) WAN
7 18 (1.21%) LAN
7 18 (1.21%) MPLS
8 16 (1.08%) DNS
9 14 (0.94%) TCP/IP
10 13 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
12 9 (0.61%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.61%) VLAN
13 8 (0.54%) Cisco IPT
13 8 (0.54%) DHCP
13 8 (0.54%) SD-WAN
14 7 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.47%) Ethernet
14 7 (0.47%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (5.05%) Power BI
2 38 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 32 (2.15%) Metadata
3 32 (2.15%) SQL Server
4 31 (2.09%) Data Warehouse
5 28 (1.88%) MySQL
6 27 (1.82%) Relational Database
7 24 (1.62%) MongoDB
8 20 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
8 20 (1.35%) Big Data
8 20 (1.35%) NoSQL
9 19 (1.28%) DynamoDB
10 17 (1.14%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.08%) Azure SQL Database
12 14 (0.94%) Tableau
13 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
14 12 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
15 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
15 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 86 (5.79%) JIRA
2 65 (4.37%) Git
3 64 (4.31%) Jenkins
4 36 (2.42%) GitLab
5 12 (0.81%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) JUnit
7 9 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.47%) Maven
9 6 (0.40%) NUnit
9 6 (0.40%) Postman
10 5 (0.34%) Flyway
10 5 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.27%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.27%) Gradle
12 3 (0.20%) Katalon Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Liquibase
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 444 (29.88%) Social Skills
2 347 (23.35%) Finance
3 181 (12.18%) Legal
4 177 (11.91%) Analytical Skills
5 126 (8.48%) Public Sector
6 121 (8.14%) Banking
7 66 (4.44%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
9 46 (3.10%) Telecoms
10 31 (2.09%) Marketing
11 30 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.95%) Front Office
13 27 (1.82%) Local Government
14 25 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
15 24 (1.62%) Law
16 23 (1.55%) Retail
17 19 (1.28%) Police
18 14 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
19 12 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 11 (0.74%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 188 (12.65%) Architect
2 149 (10.03%) Analyst
3 130 (8.75%) Developer
4 117 (7.87%) Lead
5 112 (7.54%) Senior
6 94 (6.33%) Consultant
7 73 (4.91%) Business Analyst
8 72 (4.85%) Project Manager
9 52 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.89%) Java Developer
11 42 (2.83%) Data Engineer
12 40 (2.69%) Security Architect
13 38 (2.56%) Network Engineer
14 37 (2.49%) Security Engineer
15 34 (2.29%) Administrator
16 28 (1.88%) Data Analyst
16 28 (1.88%) Technical Architect
17 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
17 21 (1.41%) Support Engineer
18 20 (1.35%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (4.71%) REST
2 62 (4.17%) React
3 45 (3.03%) Spring
4 40 (2.69%) Spring Boot
5 35 (2.36%) .NET
6 33 (2.22%) HTML
6 33 (2.22%) RESTful
7 32 (2.15%) Kafka
8 31 (2.09%) Node.js
9 30 (2.02%) CSS
10 26 (1.75%) Middleware
11 25 (1.68%) OAuth
12 23 (1.55%) Jest
13 20 (1.35%) JSON
14 18 (1.21%) HTML5
14 18 (1.21%) Redux
15 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
16 16 (1.08%) CSS3
16 16 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
16 16 (1.08%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 711 (47.85%) Data Protection Act
2 88 (5.92%) Cloud Native
3 68 (4.58%) Product Ownership
4 66 (4.44%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.43%) Management Information System
6 39 (2.62%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
8 32 (2.15%) NHS
9 31 (2.09%) Replication
10 30 (2.02%) Data Centre
10 30 (2.02%) Security Posture
11 26 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.55%) Enterprise Storage
13 22 (1.48%) Virtual Team
14 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 20 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
16 19 (1.28%) Freedom of Information
17 17 (1.14%) Mobile App
18 16 (1.08%) Derivative
19 14 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 93 (6.26%) Windows
2 73 (4.91%) Linux
3 25 (1.68%) Unix
4 20 (1.35%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.21%) Android
6 16 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.94%) VMS
8 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 13 (0.87%) Windows 10
9 9 (0.61%) 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%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.067%) Solaris
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 274 (18.44%) Agile
2 247 (16.62%) Stakeholder Management
3 246 (16.55%) Problem-Solving
4 228 (15.34%) Migration
5 215 (14.47%) CI/CD
6 209 (14.06%) DevOps
7 208 (14.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 147 (9.89%) Analytics
9 141 (9.49%) AI
10 139 (9.35%) Roadmaps
11 135 (9.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 122 (8.21%) Risk Management
13 119 (8.01%) Decision-Making
14 115 (7.74%) Cybersecurity
15 108 (7.27%) Information Security
15 108 (7.27%) Infrastructure as Code
16 106 (7.13%) Data Governance
17 104 (7.00%) Test Automation
18 97 (6.53%) Microservices
19 92 (6.19%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 222 (14.94%) Python
2 188 (12.65%) SQL
3 134 (9.02%) Java
4 78 (5.25%) JavaScript
5 54 (3.63%) PowerShell
6 48 (3.23%) C#
7 38 (2.56%) Bash
8 37 (2.49%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.21%) Bicep
10 15 (1.01%) C++
11 10 (0.67%) Perl
11 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
12 9 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (0.61%) PL/SQL
12 9 (0.61%) Scala
13 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.54%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.47%) Go
14 7 (0.47%) R
15 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 202 (13.59%) Security Cleared
2 148 (9.96%) SC Cleared
3 117 (7.87%) Degree
4 64 (4.31%) CISSP
5 49 (3.30%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.56%) CISM
7 31 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (2.09%) PMI Certification
8 30 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (1.95%) PMP
10 27 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
11 25 (1.68%) Azure Certification
12 20 (1.35%) Master's Degree
12 20 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (1.28%) AWS Certification
14 16 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.94%) CCSP
16 11 (0.74%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
17 10 (0.67%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (17.09%) GDPR
2 93 (6.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 91 (6.12%) NIST
4 75 (5.05%) Data Quality
5 66 (4.44%) QA
6 34 (2.29%) Accessibility
6 34 (2.29%) GRC
7 28 (1.88%) PCI DSS
8 25 (1.68%) PMO
9 22 (1.48%) SLA
10 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
11 15 (1.01%) NCSC
12 11 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 10 (0.67%) Disclosure Scotland
14 9 (0.61%) HIPAA
14 9 (0.61%) PERC
15 8 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
15 8 (0.54%) WCAG
16 6 (0.40%) COBIT
16 6 (0.40%) NIST 800
System Software
1 77 (5.18%) Docker
2 74 (4.98%) Active Directory
3 53 (3.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 20 (1.35%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.67%) vSphere
8 9 (0.61%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.40%) KVM
11 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.20%) IAG
12 3 (0.20%) XenApp
12 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.13%) GPFS
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.067%) iptables
Systems Management
1 114 (7.67%) Kubernetes
2 100 (6.73%) Terraform
3 62 (4.17%) Ansible
4 46 (3.10%) Grafana
5 31 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
6 29 (1.95%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.82%) NetBackup
8 21 (1.41%) SCCM
9 19 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.81%) Puppet
11 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.34%) Control-M
14 5 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.27%) Foglight
15 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 238 (16.02%) Microsoft
2 75 (5.05%) Oracle
3 69 (4.64%) Google
4 54 (3.63%) VMware
5 52 (3.50%) ServiceNow
6 50 (3.36%) Cisco
6 50 (3.36%) Databricks
7 37 (2.49%) SAP
8 30 (2.02%) Red Hat
8 30 (2.02%) Salesforce
9 25 (1.68%) NetApp
9 25 (1.68%) Splunk
10 23 (1.55%) IBM
11 22 (1.48%) Citrix
11 22 (1.48%) Veritas
12 16 (1.08%) Commvault
12 16 (1.08%) F5
13 15 (1.01%) Adobe
13 15 (1.01%) Veeam
13 15 (1.01%) Workday