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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 90 80
Rank change year-on-year +20 -10 +15
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,507 800 1,100
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.74% 2.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.74% 3.02% 2.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 836 397 600
10th Percentile £300 £255 £241
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £700 £710 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -0.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 31 108
10th Percentile £13.26 £16.25 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.25 £27.64 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.12% +31.62% -60.00%
75th Percentile £28.56 £32.95 £28.07
90th Percentile £51.15 £37.00 £43.58
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 40,321 26,530 37,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.95% 86.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,358 17,078 23,948
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.30% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,401 1,077 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.47 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.13 £37.50
% change year-on-year +62.21% -27.67% +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 9 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 9 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 9 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 1,298 £500 - 372
UK excluding London +14 820 £450 -5.26% 266
London +29 588 £525 +5.00% 151
Work from Home +19 388 £500 +2.56% 129
North of England -4 266 £478 +0.53% 73
South East +13 178 £483 -5.25% 60
Yorkshire -5 156 £478 -6.83% 28
Midlands +2 133 £450 -10.00% 48
Scotland +5 118 £425 -5.56% 27
North West +4 102 £493 +15.88% 32
West Midlands -12 87 £450 -14.29% 30
South West -1 65 £425 +6.25% 24
East of England -8 48 £488 -9.30% 30
East Midlands +1 46 £437 +5.37% 18
Wales -3 11 £375 -11.76% 4
North East -34 9 £400 -4.48% 13
Northern Ireland +5 3 £675 +37.20% 2

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 57 (3.78%) Confluence
2 41 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.53%) Apache
7 6 (0.40%) CMS
8 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 5 (0.33%) 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 (0.066%) Anypoint
Applications
1 47 (3.12%) Microsoft Office
2 45 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.066%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.066%) Blender
8 1 (0.066%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.066%) Maya
8 1 (0.066%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.066%) Trello
8 1 (0.066%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 12 (0.80%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.33%) 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 (0.066%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 306 (20.31%) Azure
2 251 (16.66%) AWS
3 130 (8.63%) GCP
4 86 (5.71%) Microsoft 365
5 84 (5.57%) Power Platform
6 77 (5.11%) Entra ID
7 68 (4.51%) GitHub
8 58 (3.85%) SaaS
9 48 (3.19%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.05%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.85%) OpenShift
11 43 (2.85%) Serverless
12 31 (2.06%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (1.99%) Amazon S3
14 26 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
15 25 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
16 24 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
16 24 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
16 24 (1.59%) Snowflake
17 23 (1.53%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 61 (4.05%) Network Security
2 42 (2.79%) Firewall
3 36 (2.39%) SAN
4 25 (1.66%) VPN
5 24 (1.59%) NAS
6 21 (1.39%) WAN
7 19 (1.26%) MPLS
8 18 (1.19%) LAN
9 17 (1.13%) DNS
10 15 (1.00%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
13 9 (0.60%) DHCP
13 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
13 9 (0.60%) VLAN
14 8 (0.53%) SD-WAN
15 7 (0.46%) BGP
15 7 (0.46%) Cisco IPT
15 7 (0.46%) Cisco Nexus
15 7 (0.46%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (4.78%) Power BI
2 39 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 32 (2.12%) Metadata
3 32 (2.12%) SQL Server
4 31 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
5 28 (1.86%) MySQL
6 27 (1.79%) Relational Database
7 24 (1.59%) MongoDB
8 21 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
9 20 (1.33%) Big Data
9 20 (1.33%) NoSQL
10 17 (1.13%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
12 15 (1.00%) DynamoDB
13 14 (0.93%) Oracle Database
14 13 (0.86%) Tableau
15 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (0.66%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
16 10 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 92 (6.10%) JIRA
2 67 (4.45%) Git
3 66 (4.38%) Jenkins
4 38 (2.52%) GitLab
5 12 (0.80%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.66%) JUnit
7 8 (0.53%) Postman
7 8 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.40%) Maven
8 6 (0.40%) NUnit
9 5 (0.33%) Flyway
9 5 (0.33%) 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%) Liquibase
11 3 (0.20%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 461 (30.59%) Social Skills
2 348 (23.09%) Finance
3 188 (12.48%) Legal
4 172 (11.41%) Analytical Skills
5 128 (8.49%) Public Sector
6 117 (7.76%) Banking
7 61 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
8 57 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
9 45 (2.99%) Telecoms
10 31 (2.06%) Front Office
11 30 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.86%) Local Government
13 27 (1.79%) Marketing
14 25 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
15 24 (1.59%) Law
15 24 (1.59%) Retail
16 19 (1.26%) Police
17 13 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
18 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 10 (0.66%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 203 (13.47%) Architect
2 141 (9.36%) Analyst
3 128 (8.49%) Developer
4 115 (7.63%) Lead
5 113 (7.50%) Senior
6 95 (6.30%) Consultant
7 78 (5.18%) Project Manager
8 71 (4.71%) Business Analyst
9 55 (3.65%) Solutions Architect
10 45 (2.99%) Security Architect
11 43 (2.85%) Java Developer
12 39 (2.59%) Network Engineer
12 39 (2.59%) Security Engineer
13 38 (2.52%) Data Engineer
14 35 (2.32%) Administrator
15 29 (1.92%) Technical Architect
16 27 (1.79%) Data Analyst
17 21 (1.39%) Python Developer
17 21 (1.39%) Support Engineer
18 20 (1.33%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (4.84%) REST
2 63 (4.18%) React
3 44 (2.92%) Spring
4 40 (2.65%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.39%) .NET
6 34 (2.26%) Kafka
7 33 (2.19%) RESTful
8 32 (2.12%) HTML
9 30 (1.99%) CSS
9 30 (1.99%) Middleware
10 29 (1.92%) Node.js
10 29 (1.92%) OAuth
11 23 (1.53%) Jest
12 22 (1.46%) JSON
13 18 (1.19%) HTML5
13 18 (1.19%) OAuth2
13 18 (1.19%) Redux
14 17 (1.13%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.06%) CSS3
15 16 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 727 (48.24%) Data Protection Act
2 92 (6.10%) Cloud Native
3 72 (4.78%) Product Ownership
4 68 (4.51%) Onboarding
5 49 (3.25%) Management Information System
6 44 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
7 35 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
8 31 (2.06%) Replication
9 30 (1.99%) Data Centre
9 30 (1.99%) Security Posture
10 28 (1.86%) NHS
11 26 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
12 25 (1.66%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
13 23 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
14 21 (1.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 20 (1.33%) Freedom of Information
16 17 (1.13%) Derivative
16 17 (1.13%) Mobile App
17 15 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 96 (6.37%) Windows
2 76 (5.04%) Linux
3 27 (1.79%) Unix
4 22 (1.46%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.19%) Android
6 17 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 14 (0.93%) VMS
9 13 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.86%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.60%) zOS
11 7 (0.46%) Data ONTAP
12 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
13 2 (0.13%) Rocky
13 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.066%) CentOS
14 1 (0.066%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.066%) Solaris
14 1 (0.066%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.066%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 287 (19.04%) Agile
2 261 (17.32%) Stakeholder Management
3 246 (16.32%) Problem-Solving
4 233 (15.46%) Migration
5 221 (14.66%) CI/CD
6 214 (14.20%) DevOps
7 213 (14.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 143 (9.49%) AI
9 141 (9.36%) Analytics
10 138 (9.16%) Roadmaps
11 134 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 127 (8.43%) Decision-Making
13 120 (7.96%) Risk Management
14 116 (7.70%) Cybersecurity
15 109 (7.23%) Infrastructure as Code
16 107 (7.10%) Information Security
17 106 (7.03%) Data Governance
18 104 (6.90%) Test Automation
19 98 (6.50%) Microservices
20 95 (6.30%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 217 (14.40%) Python
2 182 (12.08%) SQL
3 134 (8.89%) Java
4 78 (5.18%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.65%) PowerShell
6 47 (3.12%) C#
7 40 (2.65%) Bash
8 39 (2.59%) TypeScript
9 19 (1.26%) Bicep
10 15 (1.00%) C++
11 11 (0.73%) 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 (0.53%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.53%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.46%) R
15 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 208 (13.80%) Security Cleared
2 152 (10.09%) SC Cleared
3 118 (7.83%) Degree
4 63 (4.18%) CISSP
5 52 (3.45%) DV Cleared
6 35 (2.32%) CISM
7 31 (2.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (1.92%) PMI Certification
10 28 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
11 27 (1.79%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.79%) PMP
12 21 (1.39%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (1.19%) Master's Degree
15 16 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 14 (0.93%) CCSP
17 11 (0.73%) CTC Cleared
18 10 (0.66%) CCNP
19 9 (0.60%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (16.26%) GDPR
2 91 (6.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (5.91%) NIST
4 73 (4.84%) Data Quality
5 66 (4.38%) QA
6 34 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 33 (2.19%) GRC
8 24 (1.59%) PCI DSS
9 23 (1.53%) PMO
10 20 (1.33%) SLA
11 17 (1.13%) NCSC
11 17 (1.13%) SOC 2
12 11 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 10 (0.66%) Disclosure Scotland
14 8 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
14 8 (0.53%) PERC
14 8 (0.53%) WCAG
15 6 (0.40%) COBIT
15 6 (0.40%) HIPAA
16 5 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 80 (5.31%) Docker
2 75 (4.98%) Active Directory
3 54 (3.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.33%) NFS
4 20 (1.33%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
6 11 (0.73%) vSphere
7 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
8 7 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.46%) 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 (0.066%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 118 (7.83%) Kubernetes
2 100 (6.64%) Terraform
3 66 (4.38%) Ansible
4 48 (3.19%) Grafana
5 31 (2.06%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 27 (1.79%) NetBackup
7 21 (1.39%) SCCM
8 20 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.86%) Puppet
10 11 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.46%) Kibana
11 7 (0.46%) SnapMirror
12 5 (0.33%) Control-M
12 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (0.33%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
13 4 (0.27%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.27%) Foglight
13 4 (0.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 236 (15.66%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.98%) Oracle
3 66 (4.38%) Google
4 55 (3.65%) VMware
5 53 (3.52%) Databricks
6 49 (3.25%) Cisco
6 49 (3.25%) ServiceNow
7 40 (2.65%) SAP
8 31 (2.06%) Red Hat
9 28 (1.86%) Splunk
10 26 (1.73%) NetApp
11 23 (1.53%) IBM
12 22 (1.46%) Veritas
13 20 (1.33%) Citrix
13 20 (1.33%) Salesforce
14 17 (1.13%) F5
15 16 (1.06%) Commvault
15 16 (1.06%) Workday
16 15 (1.00%) Dell
16 15 (1.00%) Veeam