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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 92 82
Rank change year-on-year +21 -10 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,512 799 1,122
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.20% 2.73% 2.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.79% 3.01% 2.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 833 402 622
10th Percentile £300 £258 £225
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
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 59 31 108
10th Percentile £13.26 £18.50 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.25 £27.64 £20.25
Median % change year-on-year -23.12% +36.49% -61.43%
75th Percentile £27.88 £32.95 £27.59
90th Percentile £50.60 £37.00 £41.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.39 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -29.98% +49.31% -62.86%

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 39,921 26,554 37,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.61% 90.86% 86.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,152 17,143 24,256
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +1.04% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,393 1,068 2,439
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.81 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.95% -16.94% -6.17%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.24 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.71 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +52.52% -23.29% +1.39%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 +25 1,297 £500 - 336
UK excluding London +13 819 £450 -5.26% 273
London +29 597 £525 +1.69% 99
Work from Home +29 397 £500 +2.30% 145
North of England -3 258 £475 - 71
South East +25 181 £495 -4.72% 62
Yorkshire -8 149 £478 -7.95% 26
Midlands -4 127 £450 -10.00% 57
Scotland +7 122 £420 -10.06% 14
North West +3 101 £489 +15.00% 34
West Midlands -19 82 £459 -12.62% 41
South West +3 66 £410 +2.50% 33
East of England -5 49 £488 -7.14% 36
East Midlands +3 45 £438 +16.67% 16
Wales +1 15 £375 -11.76% 3
North East -28 9 £400 -11.11% 12
Northern Ireland +5 3 £500 +1.63% 4

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 53 (3.51%) Confluence
2 38 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (0.99%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 9 (0.60%) 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%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 53 (3.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (2.98%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.46%) 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 (0.79%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.33%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
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%) Fidessa
6 2 (0.13%) ION MarketView
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 314 (20.77%) Azure
2 258 (17.06%) AWS
3 137 (9.06%) GCP
4 89 (5.89%) Power Platform
5 86 (5.69%) Microsoft 365
6 77 (5.09%) Entra ID
7 66 (4.37%) GitHub
8 55 (3.64%) SaaS
9 47 (3.11%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.04%) Serverless
11 41 (2.71%) Azure DevOps
11 41 (2.71%) OpenShift
12 34 (2.25%) AWS Lambda
13 29 (1.92%) Amazon S3
14 28 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (1.79%) Snowflake
16 26 (1.72%) Microsoft Copilot
17 25 (1.65%) Amazon ECS
18 24 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
19 21 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 60 (3.97%) Network Security
2 40 (2.65%) Firewall
3 38 (2.51%) SAN
4 26 (1.72%) VPN
5 23 (1.52%) NAS
5 23 (1.52%) WAN
6 19 (1.26%) LAN
6 19 (1.26%) MPLS
7 16 (1.06%) DNS
8 15 (0.99%) Cisco IPT
9 14 (0.93%) TCP/IP
10 13 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) SD-WAN
12 9 (0.60%) VLAN
13 8 (0.53%) DHCP
14 7 (0.46%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.46%) Ethernet
14 7 (0.46%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (5.09%) Power BI
2 38 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (2.25%) SQL Server
4 32 (2.12%) Metadata
5 30 (1.98%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.85%) MySQL
7 27 (1.79%) Relational Database
8 24 (1.59%) MongoDB
9 20 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
9 20 (1.32%) NoSQL
10 19 (1.26%) Big Data
10 19 (1.26%) DynamoDB
11 17 (1.12%) Data Lake
12 16 (1.06%) Azure SQL Database
13 13 (0.86%) Oracle Database
13 13 (0.86%) Tableau
14 12 (0.79%) Amazon Aurora
15 10 (0.66%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
15 10 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 84 (5.56%) JIRA
2 64 (4.23%) Git
3 63 (4.17%) Jenkins
4 36 (2.38%) GitLab
5 12 (0.79%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.66%) JUnit
7 9 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.46%) Maven
9 6 (0.40%) NUnit
10 5 (0.33%) Flyway
10 5 (0.33%) Postman
10 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.26%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.26%) 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
General
1 452 (29.89%) Social Skills
2 355 (23.48%) Finance
3 183 (12.10%) Legal
4 179 (11.84%) Analytical Skills
5 128 (8.47%) Public Sector
6 120 (7.94%) Banking
7 68 (4.50%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
9 45 (2.98%) Telecoms
10 32 (2.12%) Marketing
11 30 (1.98%) Front Office
11 30 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
12 27 (1.79%) Local Government
13 25 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
14 24 (1.59%) Law
14 24 (1.59%) Retail
15 19 (1.26%) Police
16 14 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 11 (0.73%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 186 (12.30%) Architect
2 157 (10.38%) Analyst
3 130 (8.60%) Developer
4 121 (8.00%) Lead
5 115 (7.61%) Senior
6 98 (6.48%) Consultant
7 74 (4.89%) Business Analyst
8 72 (4.76%) Project Manager
9 54 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.84%) Java Developer
11 41 (2.71%) Data Engineer
12 40 (2.65%) Security Architect
13 39 (2.58%) Network Engineer
14 36 (2.38%) Security Engineer
15 33 (2.18%) Administrator
16 28 (1.85%) Data Analyst
17 26 (1.72%) Technical Architect
18 25 (1.65%) Data Protection Officer
19 21 (1.39%) Python Developer
19 21 (1.39%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (4.56%) REST
2 62 (4.10%) React
3 45 (2.98%) Spring
4 40 (2.65%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.38%) .NET
5 36 (2.38%) HTML
6 33 (2.18%) RESTful
7 32 (2.12%) Kafka
8 31 (2.05%) CSS
8 31 (2.05%) Node.js
9 25 (1.65%) OAuth
10 24 (1.59%) Middleware
11 23 (1.52%) Jest
12 18 (1.19%) HTML5
12 18 (1.19%) Redux
13 17 (1.12%) JSON
13 17 (1.12%) Spring MVC
14 16 (1.06%) CSS3
14 16 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
14 16 (1.06%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 717 (47.42%) Data Protection Act
2 88 (5.82%) Cloud Native
3 70 (4.63%) Product Ownership
4 65 (4.30%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.51%) Management Information System
6 38 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
8 32 (2.12%) NHS
8 32 (2.12%) Replication
9 31 (2.05%) Security Posture
10 30 (1.98%) Data Centre
11 26 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.52%) Enterprise Storage
13 22 (1.46%) Virtual Team
14 21 (1.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 19 (1.26%) Freedom of Information
15 19 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
16 17 (1.12%) Mobile App
17 16 (1.06%) Derivative
18 14 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 96 (6.35%) Windows
2 73 (4.83%) Linux
3 26 (1.72%) Unix
4 20 (1.32%) Windows Server
5 17 (1.12%) Android
6 16 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.93%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.93%) VMS
7 14 (0.93%) Windows 10
8 13 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.60%) zOS
10 7 (0.46%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.13%) Rocky
12 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.066%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.066%) Solaris
13 1 (0.066%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.066%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 271 (17.92%) Agile
2 250 (16.53%) Stakeholder Management
3 249 (16.47%) Problem-Solving
4 230 (15.21%) Migration
5 210 (13.89%) CI/CD
6 208 (13.76%) Continuous Improvement
7 205 (13.56%) DevOps
8 148 (9.79%) AI
9 147 (9.72%) Analytics
10 139 (9.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 138 (9.13%) Roadmaps
12 126 (8.33%) Risk Management
13 120 (7.94%) Decision-Making
14 119 (7.87%) Cybersecurity
15 112 (7.41%) Data Governance
16 109 (7.21%) Information Security
17 105 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
18 104 (6.88%) Test Automation
19 95 (6.28%) Business Intelligence
19 95 (6.28%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 219 (14.48%) Python
2 191 (12.63%) SQL
3 135 (8.93%) Java
4 80 (5.29%) JavaScript
5 54 (3.57%) PowerShell
6 48 (3.17%) C#
7 38 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 36 (2.38%) Bash
9 17 (1.12%) Bicep
10 14 (0.93%) C++
11 10 (0.66%) Perl
11 10 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 9 (0.60%) Scala
13 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
14 7 (0.46%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.46%) R
15 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
15 6 (0.40%) Go
Qualifications
1 210 (13.89%) Security Cleared
2 155 (10.25%) SC Cleared
3 121 (8.00%) Degree
4 64 (4.23%) CISSP
5 49 (3.24%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.51%) CISM
7 31 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
7 31 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (1.98%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
9 28 (1.85%) PMP
10 25 (1.65%) Azure Certification
11 20 (1.32%) AWS Certification
11 20 (1.32%) Master's Degree
11 20 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
12 16 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 14 (0.93%) CCSP
14 11 (0.73%) CCNP
14 11 (0.73%) CTC Cleared
15 10 (0.66%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 266 (17.59%) GDPR
2 93 (6.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (5.89%) NIST
4 74 (4.89%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.30%) QA
6 34 (2.25%) GRC
7 33 (2.18%) Accessibility
8 27 (1.79%) PCI DSS
9 25 (1.65%) PMO
10 22 (1.46%) SLA
11 17 (1.12%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.06%) NCSC
13 12 (0.79%) PERC
14 11 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
14 11 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 9 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.60%) HIPAA
16 7 (0.46%) WCAG
17 6 (0.40%) COBIT
17 6 (0.40%) NIST 800
System Software
1 78 (5.16%) Docker
2 74 (4.89%) Active Directory
3 55 (3.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (1.59%) Virtual Desktop
5 20 (1.32%) NFS
6 13 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.66%) vSphere
8 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.40%) KVM
11 4 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.26%) 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 (0.066%) iptables
Systems Management
1 114 (7.54%) Kubernetes
2 98 (6.48%) Terraform
3 61 (4.03%) Ansible
4 45 (2.98%) Grafana
5 32 (2.12%) Microsoft Intune
6 28 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.79%) NetBackup
8 22 (1.46%) SCCM
9 19 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (0.79%) Puppet
11 10 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.46%) Kibana
12 7 (0.46%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.33%) Control-M
14 5 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
15 4 (0.26%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.26%) Foglight
15 4 (0.26%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 242 (16.01%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.96%) Oracle
3 74 (4.89%) Google
4 56 (3.70%) VMware
5 51 (3.37%) Cisco
6 49 (3.24%) Databricks
6 49 (3.24%) ServiceNow
7 36 (2.38%) SAP
8 30 (1.98%) Red Hat
8 30 (1.98%) Salesforce
9 25 (1.65%) NetApp
10 23 (1.52%) IBM
10 23 (1.52%) Splunk
11 22 (1.46%) Citrix
11 22 (1.46%) Veritas
12 16 (1.06%) Commvault
12 16 (1.06%) F5
12 16 (1.06%) Veeam
13 15 (0.99%) Adobe
13 15 (0.99%) Workday