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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 91 82
Rank change year-on-year +17 -9 +11
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,492 807 1,113
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.14% 2.77% 2.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.72% 3.05% 2.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 827 400 606
10th Percentile £300 £257 £228
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.31% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £604
90th Percentile £700 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 32 108
10th Percentile £13.26 £16.48 £12.43
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 £28.56 £32.73 £28.07
90th Percentile £51.15 £36.95 £43.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.27 £29.00 £19.50
% change year-on-year -30.10% +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 40,077 26,470 37,223
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 90.96% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,204 17,026 23,967
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £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 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +1.77% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,075 2,431
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £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 £60.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.35 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.88% -27.07% +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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +31 1,283 £500 +1.01% 373
UK excluding London +15 813 £450 -5.26% 260
London +26 581 £525 +5.00% 154
Work from Home +22 383 £500 +2.56% 136
North of England -5 263 £478 +0.53% 71
South East +13 177 £483 -3.40% 56
Yorkshire -1 155 £478 -6.83% 25
Midlands -1 131 £450 -10.00% 49
Scotland +1 118 £425 -5.56% 23
North West 0 100 £493 +15.88% 33
West Midlands -16 85 £450 -14.29% 33
South West -4 64 £425 +6.25% 26
East of England +1 48 £488 -9.30% 31
East Midlands +5 46 £437 +5.37% 16
Wales -1 11 £375 -11.76% 4
North East -32 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 55 (3.69%) Confluence
2 39 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.68%) 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 45 (3.02%) Microsoft Excel
1 45 (3.02%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
3 8 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.34%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
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 (0.80%) 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
1 305 (20.44%) Azure
2 250 (16.76%) AWS
3 129 (8.65%) GCP
4 85 (5.70%) Microsoft 365
5 83 (5.56%) Power Platform
6 77 (5.16%) Entra ID
7 68 (4.56%) GitHub
8 56 (3.75%) SaaS
9 48 (3.22%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.08%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.88%) OpenShift
11 43 (2.88%) Serverless
12 31 (2.08%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (2.01%) Amazon S3
14 26 (1.74%) Microsoft Copilot
15 25 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
16 24 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
16 24 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
16 24 (1.61%) Snowflake
17 23 (1.54%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 60 (4.02%) Network Security
2 41 (2.75%) Firewall
3 36 (2.41%) SAN
4 25 (1.68%) VPN
5 24 (1.61%) NAS
6 21 (1.41%) WAN
7 19 (1.27%) MPLS
8 18 (1.21%) LAN
9 17 (1.14%) DNS
10 15 (1.01%) TCP/IP
11 14 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
13 9 (0.60%) DHCP
13 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
13 9 (0.60%) VLAN
14 8 (0.54%) SD-WAN
15 7 (0.47%) BGP
15 7 (0.47%) Cisco IPT
15 7 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
15 7 (0.47%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (4.76%) Power BI
2 39 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 32 (2.14%) Metadata
3 32 (2.14%) 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 21 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
9 20 (1.34%) Big Data
9 20 (1.34%) NoSQL
10 17 (1.14%) Data Lake
11 16 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
12 15 (1.01%) DynamoDB
13 14 (0.94%) Oracle Database
14 13 (0.87%) Tableau
15 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 89 (5.97%) JIRA
2 67 (4.49%) Git
3 65 (4.36%) Jenkins
4 38 (2.55%) GitLab
5 12 (0.80%) 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%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 454 (30.43%) Social Skills
2 346 (23.19%) Finance
3 187 (12.53%) Legal
4 172 (11.53%) Analytical Skills
5 125 (8.38%) Public Sector
6 117 (7.84%) Banking
7 61 (4.09%) Organisational Skills
8 57 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
9 45 (3.02%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.01%) Front Office
10 30 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (1.88%) Local Government
12 27 (1.81%) Marketing
13 25 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
14 24 (1.61%) Law
14 24 (1.61%) Retail
15 19 (1.27%) Police
16 13 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 10 (0.67%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 199 (13.34%) Architect
2 140 (9.38%) Analyst
3 128 (8.58%) Developer
4 115 (7.71%) Lead
5 113 (7.57%) Senior
6 95 (6.37%) Consultant
7 75 (5.03%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.69%) Business Analyst
9 54 (3.62%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.88%) Java Developer
10 43 (2.88%) Security Architect
11 39 (2.61%) Network Engineer
11 39 (2.61%) Security Engineer
12 38 (2.55%) Data Engineer
13 35 (2.35%) Administrator
14 29 (1.94%) Technical Architect
15 26 (1.74%) Data Analyst
16 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
16 21 (1.41%) Support Engineer
17 19 (1.27%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (4.89%) REST
2 63 (4.22%) React
3 44 (2.95%) Spring
4 40 (2.68%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.41%) .NET
6 34 (2.28%) Kafka
7 33 (2.21%) RESTful
8 32 (2.14%) HTML
9 30 (2.01%) CSS
9 30 (2.01%) Middleware
10 29 (1.94%) Node.js
10 29 (1.94%) OAuth
11 23 (1.54%) Jest
12 22 (1.47%) JSON
13 18 (1.21%) HTML5
13 18 (1.21%) OAuth2
13 18 (1.21%) Redux
14 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.07%) OpenID
15 16 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 720 (48.26%) Data Protection Act
2 90 (6.03%) Cloud Native
3 71 (4.76%) Product Ownership
4 68 (4.56%) Onboarding
5 47 (3.15%) Management Information System
6 41 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.21%) 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 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
12 23 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
12 23 (1.54%) Virtual Team
13 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 19 (1.27%) Freedom of Information
15 17 (1.14%) Derivative
16 16 (1.07%) Mobile App
17 15 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 94 (6.30%) Windows
2 76 (5.09%) Linux
3 25 (1.68%) Unix
4 22 (1.47%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.21%) Android
6 17 (1.14%) 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 (0.60%) 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
1 283 (18.97%) Agile
2 254 (17.02%) Stakeholder Management
3 244 (16.35%) Problem-Solving
4 232 (15.55%) Migration
5 218 (14.61%) CI/CD
6 213 (14.28%) Continuous Improvement
7 212 (14.21%) DevOps
8 142 (9.52%) AI
9 140 (9.38%) Analytics
10 137 (9.18%) Roadmaps
11 134 (8.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 127 (8.51%) Decision-Making
13 120 (8.04%) Risk Management
14 114 (7.64%) Cybersecurity
15 109 (7.31%) Infrastructure as Code
16 106 (7.10%) Data Governance
17 105 (7.04%) Information Security
18 102 (6.84%) Test Automation
19 98 (6.57%) Microservices
20 95 (6.37%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 214 (14.34%) Python
2 182 (12.20%) SQL
3 134 (8.98%) Java
4 78 (5.23%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.69%) PowerShell
6 47 (3.15%) C#
7 39 (2.61%) Bash
7 39 (2.61%) TypeScript
8 19 (1.27%) Bicep
9 15 (1.01%) C++
10 11 (0.74%) Perl
11 9 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
11 9 (0.60%) Scala
11 9 (0.60%) Shell Script
12 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
12 8 (0.54%) Go
12 8 (0.54%) Kotlin
13 7 (0.47%) R
14 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 206 (13.81%) Security Cleared
2 150 (10.05%) SC Cleared
3 115 (7.71%) Degree
4 63 (4.22%) CISSP
5 51 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 35 (2.35%) CISM
7 30 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
8 29 (1.94%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.94%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.81%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.81%) PMP
11 21 (1.41%) AWS Certification
12 19 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (1.21%) Master's Degree
14 16 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.94%) CCSP
16 11 (0.74%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
18 9 (0.60%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (16.42%) GDPR
2 90 (6.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (5.97%) NIST
4 73 (4.89%) Data Quality
5 66 (4.42%) QA
6 33 (2.21%) Accessibility
6 33 (2.21%) GRC
7 24 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 23 (1.54%) PMO
9 20 (1.34%) SLA
10 17 (1.14%) NCSC
10 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
11 11 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.67%) Disclosure Scotland
13 8 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
13 8 (0.54%) PERC
13 8 (0.54%) WCAG
14 6 (0.40%) COBIT
14 6 (0.40%) HIPAA
15 5 (0.34%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 80 (5.36%) Docker
2 75 (5.03%) Active Directory
3 54 (3.62%) 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%) iptables
Systems Management
1 118 (7.91%) Kubernetes
2 100 (6.70%) Terraform
3 65 (4.36%) Ansible
4 48 (3.22%) Grafana
5 31 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 27 (1.81%) NetBackup
7 21 (1.41%) SCCM
8 19 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (0.87%) Puppet
10 11 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.47%) Kibana
11 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
12 5 (0.34%) Control-M
12 5 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (0.34%) 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 (15.82%) Microsoft
2 75 (5.03%) Oracle
3 65 (4.36%) Google
4 55 (3.69%) VMware
5 52 (3.49%) Databricks
6 49 (3.28%) Cisco
6 49 (3.28%) ServiceNow
7 39 (2.61%) SAP
8 31 (2.08%) Red Hat
9 28 (1.88%) Splunk
10 26 (1.74%) NetApp
11 22 (1.47%) Veritas
12 21 (1.41%) IBM
13 20 (1.34%) Citrix
13 20 (1.34%) Salesforce
14 17 (1.14%) F5
15 16 (1.07%) Commvault
16 15 (1.01%) Dell
16 15 (1.01%) Veeam
16 15 (1.01%) Workday