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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 90 80
Rank change year-on-year +15 -10 +29
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,229 857 1,125
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.30% 2.69% 2.64%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.76% 3.03% 3.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 629 439 657
10th Percentile £277 £264 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -6.98%
75th Percentile £600 £601 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £488 £450
% change year-on-year -7.69% +8.33% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 18 23
10th Percentile £12.63 £16.19 £17.20
25th Percentile £16.35 £21.19 £18.13
Median hourly rate £20.40 £25.93 £23.24
Median % change year-on-year -21.31% +11.55% -66.80%
75th Percentile £20.79 £35.90 £26.66
90th Percentile £42.50 £65.00 £44.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.40 £27.35 £21.00
% change year-on-year -25.41% +30.24% -70.00%

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 32,654 28,287 37,362
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.81% 88.79% 87.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,662 17,217 24,715
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,980 898 1,602
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.75 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%
75th Percentile £56.06 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.80 £74.91 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.83
% change year-on-year -21.76% -30.52% +51.12%

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 16 January 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 16 January 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 16 January 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 +17 1,063 £500 - 494
UK excluding London +9 635 £450 -7.69% 455
London +21 532 £525 +5.00% 110
Work from Home +6 281 £490 -2.00% 176
North of England -17 190 £459 -5.85% 90
South East +15 146 £500 - 136
Yorkshire -3 102 £487 -6.12% 36
Scotland +3 96 £400 -15.79% 22
Midlands +9 93 £450 -12.20% 70
North West -20 72 £439 -7.63% 39
West Midlands -7 59 £475 -8.43% 35
South West +2 46 £513 +5.13% 54
East of England +10 42 £463 -7.50% 68
East Midlands 0 34 £402 -10.67% 33
North East -21 17 £394 -17.11% 15
Wales +3 13 £400 -5.88% 21
Northern Ireland - 13 £500 - 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 62 (5.04%) Confluence
2 27 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.14%) CMS
4 13 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
5 10 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.65%) Apache
7 6 (0.49%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.41%) CICS
8 5 (0.41%) nginx
9 3 (0.24%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.24%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.24%) SAS
9 3 (0.24%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.16%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.16%) Drupal
10 2 (0.16%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.081%) SharePoint Server
11 1 (0.081%) WordPress
Applications
1 56 (4.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (3.34%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.57%) Chatbot
4 7 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.24%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.24%) Sketch
6 3 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.16%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.16%) InVision
7 2 (0.16%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.081%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.081%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.081%) Blender
8 1 (0.081%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.081%) Final Cut Pro
8 1 (0.081%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 12 (0.98%) Oracle EBS
1 12 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (0.65%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 4 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
3 4 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 4 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
3 4 (0.33%) VisionPLUS
4 3 (0.24%) Distributed Ledger
4 3 (0.24%) Fidessa
4 3 (0.24%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.24%) Oracle FAH
4 3 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.24%) R3 Corda
4 3 (0.24%) ResourceLink
5 2 (0.16%) assyst
5 2 (0.16%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 236 (19.20%) Azure
2 202 (16.44%) AWS
3 89 (7.24%) GCP
4 73 (5.94%) Power Platform
5 61 (4.96%) Microsoft 365
6 58 (4.72%) Serverless
7 49 (3.99%) GitHub
8 47 (3.82%) Entra ID
9 45 (3.66%) AWS Lambda
10 44 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
11 40 (3.25%) SaaS
12 36 (2.93%) Amazon S3
13 29 (2.36%) Snowflake
14 27 (2.20%) Power Automate
15 25 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
16 23 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (1.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 20 (1.63%) Microsoft Purview
19 19 (1.55%) OCI
20 18 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 45 (3.66%) Firewall
2 29 (2.36%) Network Security
3 17 (1.38%) LAN
3 17 (1.38%) MPLS
4 15 (1.22%) SAN
5 14 (1.14%) VPN
5 14 (1.14%) WAN
6 13 (1.06%) Cisco IPT
6 13 (1.06%) DNS
6 13 (1.06%) SSH
7 10 (0.81%) NAS
8 9 (0.73%) BGP
8 9 (0.73%) SD-WAN
8 9 (0.73%) TCP/IP
9 8 (0.65%) Wi-Fi
10 7 (0.57%) HTTP
10 7 (0.57%) Wireless
11 6 (0.49%) DHCP
11 6 (0.49%) Internet
11 6 (0.49%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (4.80%) Power BI
2 35 (2.85%) SQL Server
3 34 (2.77%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
5 23 (1.87%) Relational Database
6 22 (1.79%) NoSQL
7 18 (1.46%) Metadata
8 15 (1.22%) MySQL
9 14 (1.14%) DynamoDB
9 14 (1.14%) Tableau
10 13 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
10 13 (1.06%) MongoDB
10 13 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
11 12 (0.98%) Amazon Aurora
12 10 (0.81%) Data Lake
13 9 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (0.65%) Oracle BI Publisher
14 8 (0.65%) Oracle Database
15 7 (0.57%) BigQuery
15 7 (0.57%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 105 (8.54%) JIRA
2 48 (3.91%) Jenkins
3 43 (3.50%) Git
4 32 (2.60%) GitLab
5 10 (0.81%) SpecFlow
6 8 (0.65%) JUnit
7 5 (0.41%) NUnit
8 4 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.33%) ChangeMan
8 4 (0.33%) CircleCI
8 4 (0.33%) Fiddler
8 4 (0.33%) Gradle
8 4 (0.33%) Maven
8 4 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.24%) Cypress.io
9 3 (0.24%) Postman
9 3 (0.24%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.16%) IntelliJ
10 2 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.16%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 413 (33.60%) Social Skills
2 250 (20.34%) Finance
3 157 (12.77%) Analytical Skills
4 132 (10.74%) Public Sector
5 105 (8.54%) Banking
6 91 (7.40%) Legal
7 40 (3.25%) Organisational Skills
8 37 (3.01%) Marketing
9 36 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
10 33 (2.69%) Telecoms
11 29 (2.36%) Influencing Skills
12 24 (1.95%) Law
13 22 (1.79%) Manufacturing
13 22 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
14 16 (1.30%) Front Office
14 16 (1.30%) Local Government
15 13 (1.06%) Retail
16 12 (0.98%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 10 (0.81%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 156 (12.69%) Analyst
2 140 (11.39%) Developer
3 126 (10.25%) Architect
4 91 (7.40%) Lead
5 64 (5.21%) Business Analyst
6 62 (5.04%) Consultant
6 62 (5.04%) Senior
7 59 (4.80%) Project Manager
8 37 (3.01%) Solutions Architect
9 35 (2.85%) Administrator
9 35 (2.85%) Security Engineer
10 33 (2.69%) Data Analyst
11 28 (2.28%) Data Engineer
12 24 (1.95%) Automation Engineer
13 22 (1.79%) Security Architect
13 22 (1.79%) Support Engineer
14 21 (1.71%) Network Engineer
15 20 (1.63%) Data Protection Officer
15 20 (1.63%) Information Officer
15 20 (1.63%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (4.88%) REST
2 37 (3.01%) .NET
3 34 (2.77%) React
4 31 (2.52%) Node.js
5 29 (2.36%) RESTful
6 27 (2.20%) OAuth
7 23 (1.87%) Spring
8 22 (1.79%) Kafka
9 21 (1.71%) HTML
9 21 (1.71%) SOAP
10 18 (1.46%) Spring Boot
11 16 (1.30%) Middleware
12 15 (1.22%) .NET Core
12 15 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
13 13 (1.06%) AngularJS
14 12 (0.98%) OAuth2
14 12 (0.98%) Playwright
14 12 (0.98%) SAML
14 12 (0.98%) XML
15 10 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 614 (49.96%) Data Protection Act
2 54 (4.39%) Cloud Native
3 53 (4.31%) Product Ownership
4 52 (4.23%) Management Information System
4 52 (4.23%) Onboarding
5 29 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
6 28 (2.28%) Freedom of Information
7 27 (2.20%) NHS
8 20 (1.63%) Data Structures
9 19 (1.55%) Security Posture
10 17 (1.38%) CMDB
10 17 (1.38%) Data Centre
11 16 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
11 16 (1.30%) Replication
12 15 (1.22%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 13 (1.06%) AI Agents
15 12 (0.98%) Derivative
15 12 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
15 12 (0.98%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 90 (7.32%) Windows
2 57 (4.64%) Linux
3 25 (2.03%) Unix
4 15 (1.22%) Mac OS
5 13 (1.06%) Windows 10
5 13 (1.06%) Windows Server
6 10 (0.81%) zOS
7 8 (0.65%) Android
8 6 (0.49%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (0.49%) Solaris
9 5 (0.41%) AIX
9 5 (0.41%) VMS
10 1 (0.081%) CentOS
10 1 (0.081%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.081%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.081%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 222 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
2 217 (17.66%) Agile
3 205 (16.68%) Stakeholder Management
4 159 (12.94%) DevOps
5 156 (12.69%) Migration
6 155 (12.61%) CI/CD
7 129 (10.50%) Cybersecurity
8 127 (10.33%) Analytics
9 119 (9.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 114 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
11 113 (9.19%) AI
12 105 (8.54%) Information Security
12 105 (8.54%) Roadmaps
13 100 (8.14%) Risk Management
14 99 (8.06%) Project Management
15 84 (6.83%) Microservices
16 79 (6.43%) Business Intelligence
17 76 (6.18%) Test Automation
18 73 (5.94%) Incident Response
19 70 (5.70%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 213 (17.33%) Python
2 160 (13.02%) SQL
3 80 (6.51%) Java
4 66 (5.37%) JavaScript
5 60 (4.88%) PowerShell
6 57 (4.64%) C#
7 45 (3.66%) Bash
8 31 (2.52%) TypeScript
9 17 (1.38%) C++
10 12 (0.98%) Bicep
11 10 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 8 (0.65%) Perl
12 8 (0.65%) PHP
12 8 (0.65%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.41%) COBOL
13 5 (0.41%) Kotlin
13 5 (0.41%) Scala
14 4 (0.33%) ActionScript 2.0
14 4 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 4 (0.33%) R
Qualifications
1 161 (13.10%) Security Cleared
2 118 (9.60%) SC Cleared
3 111 (9.03%) Degree
4 39 (3.17%) DV Cleared
5 36 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 30 (2.44%) CISSP
7 24 (1.95%) CISM
8 21 (1.71%) Master's Degree
9 20 (1.63%) AWS Certification
9 20 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
10 18 (1.46%) PMI Certification
11 17 (1.38%) PMP
12 15 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (0.98%) Azure Certification
13 12 (0.98%) CTC Cleared
14 11 (0.90%) CRISC
15 10 (0.81%) A+ Certification
16 9 (0.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 9 (0.73%) CCSP
16 9 (0.73%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 221 (17.98%) GDPR
2 90 (7.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 76 (6.18%) NIST
4 49 (3.99%) Data Quality
5 37 (3.01%) QA
6 28 (2.28%) PCI DSS
7 26 (2.12%) Accessibility
8 18 (1.46%) PMO
9 15 (1.22%) GRC
10 14 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
10 14 (1.14%) NCSC
11 13 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 13 (1.06%) SLA
12 11 (0.90%) NIST 800
12 11 (0.90%) PERC
13 10 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
14 8 (0.65%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 7 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
16 6 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 6 (0.49%) HIPAA
System Software
1 57 (4.64%) Docker
2 56 (4.56%) Active Directory
3 42 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
5 8 (0.65%) NFS
6 6 (0.49%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.33%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.16%) KVM
8 2 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.081%) Firmware
9 1 (0.081%) HDFS
9 1 (0.081%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.081%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.081%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.081%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.081%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 71 (5.78%) Terraform
2 59 (4.80%) Kubernetes
3 50 (4.07%) Ansible
4 26 (2.12%) Microsoft Intune
5 25 (2.03%) NetBackup
6 20 (1.63%) SCCM
7 19 (1.55%) Grafana
8 16 (1.30%) Prometheus
9 8 (0.65%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (0.57%) Puppet
11 6 (0.49%) RSA Archer
11 6 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (0.41%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.33%) CA Endevor
13 4 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
13 4 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
14 3 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.24%) Control-M
14 3 (0.24%) Data Guard
14 3 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 189 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 59 (4.80%) Oracle
3 57 (4.64%) Google
4 44 (3.58%) VMware
5 37 (3.01%) Cisco
6 36 (2.93%) Salesforce
6 36 (2.93%) ServiceNow
7 35 (2.85%) SAP
8 34 (2.77%) Databricks
9 23 (1.87%) IBM
10 22 (1.79%) Citrix
10 22 (1.79%) Veritas
11 20 (1.63%) Red Hat
12 16 (1.30%) Commvault
12 16 (1.30%) F5
13 11 (0.90%) Adobe
13 11 (0.90%) CyberArk
13 11 (0.90%) OneTrust
13 11 (0.90%) Veeam
13 11 (0.90%) Workday