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

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 92 84
Rank change year-on-year +19 -8 +15
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,484 771 1,094
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.25% 2.63% 2.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.81% 2.91% 2.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 812 401 613
10th Percentile £300 £263 £218
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -3.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 29 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £18.05 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.63 £19.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £20.79 £29.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.31% +48.72% -70.45%
75th Percentile £26.06 £33.40 £27.50
90th Percentile £58.50 £42.60 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% +49.31% -70.45%

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 38,904 26,533 37,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.62% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,602 17,197 24,340
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,022 2,384
10th Percentile £14.98 £14.99 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.38 £18.86 £15.88
Median hourly rate £37.00 £30.79 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +20.16% -6.87% -8.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.88 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.13 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £29.00 £33.03
% change year-on-year +27.59% -12.21% -8.24%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +32 1,272 £500 - 399
UK excluding London +25 806 £450 -5.26% 308
London +23 586 £525 - 156
Work from Home +31 386 £500 +0.10% 170
North of England +2 249 £475 - 84
South East +30 189 £498 -2.40% 81
Yorkshire -9 142 £478 -9.05% 21
Midlands -7 120 £468 -6.50% 48
Scotland +6 118 £405 -13.28% 25
North West +11 99 £481 +5.77% 48
West Midlands -21 75 £500 -3.61% 35
South West +10 67 £425 +6.25% 30
East of England +2 47 £463 -11.90% 34
East Midlands -2 45 £438 +6.06% 13
Wales +1 16 £375 -11.76% 8
North East -26 9 £400 -11.11% 15
Northern Ireland +2 4 £500 +1.63% 1

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 (3.57%) Confluence
2 35 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.54%) Apache
4 8 (0.54%) Apache Spark
5 7 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 4 (0.27%) CMS
8 3 (0.20%) Drupal
8 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
8 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
8 3 (0.20%) nginx
9 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.13%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.13%) SAS
9 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.067%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 55 (3.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.40%) 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%) InVision
8 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Sketch
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (0.81%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.34%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.34%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.27%) ResourceLink
6 4 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
8 2 (0.13%) Fidessa
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.13%) Workfront
9 1 (0.067%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 300 (20.22%) Azure
2 240 (16.17%) AWS
3 133 (8.96%) GCP
4 82 (5.53%) Power Platform
5 81 (5.46%) Microsoft 365
6 77 (5.19%) Entra ID
7 63 (4.25%) GitHub
8 56 (3.77%) SaaS
9 47 (3.17%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.10%) Serverless
11 41 (2.76%) OpenShift
12 38 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
13 31 (2.09%) AWS Lambda
14 28 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
14 28 (1.89%) Snowflake
15 26 (1.75%) Amazon S3
16 24 (1.62%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (1.42%) Microsoft Copilot
18 20 (1.35%) PaaS
19 19 (1.28%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 53 (3.57%) Network Security
2 38 (2.56%) Firewall
2 38 (2.56%) SAN
3 24 (1.62%) VPN
4 23 (1.55%) NAS
5 21 (1.42%) WAN
6 19 (1.28%) DNS
6 19 (1.28%) LAN
6 19 (1.28%) MPLS
7 15 (1.01%) Cisco IPT
8 13 (0.88%) TCP/IP
9 11 (0.74%) DHCP
9 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
9 11 (0.74%) SD-WAN
9 11 (0.74%) VLAN
9 11 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (0.61%) BGP
10 9 (0.61%) iSCSI
10 9 (0.61%) Wireless
11 8 (0.54%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (4.85%) Power BI
2 37 (2.49%) Metadata
3 36 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
4 34 (2.29%) SQL Server
5 31 (2.09%) MySQL
6 30 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
7 26 (1.75%) Relational Database
8 18 (1.21%) DynamoDB
8 18 (1.21%) NoSQL
9 17 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (1.15%) MongoDB
10 16 (1.08%) Data Lake
11 15 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
12 13 (0.88%) Big Data
12 13 (0.88%) Tableau
13 12 (0.81%) Oracle Database
14 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 9 (0.61%) Oracle Reports
16 8 (0.54%) Redis
Development Applications
1 84 (5.66%) JIRA
2 62 (4.18%) Git
3 60 (4.04%) Jenkins
4 37 (2.49%) 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
10 5 (0.34%) Flyway
10 5 (0.34%) Gradle
10 5 (0.34%) Postman
10 5 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.27%) Liquibase
12 3 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 3 (0.20%) Katalon Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 448 (30.19%) Social Skills
2 341 (22.98%) Finance
3 186 (12.53%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (11.86%) Legal
5 138 (9.30%) Public Sector
6 118 (7.95%) Banking
7 65 (4.38%) Organisational Skills
8 55 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
9 41 (2.76%) Telecoms
10 35 (2.36%) Marketing
11 30 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
13 27 (1.82%) Front Office
13 27 (1.82%) Law
14 26 (1.75%) Local Government
15 22 (1.48%) Retail
16 19 (1.28%) Police
17 12 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.81%) Manufacturing
18 11 (0.74%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 189 (12.74%) Architect
2 157 (10.58%) Analyst
3 124 (8.36%) Developer
4 113 (7.61%) Lead
5 104 (7.01%) Senior
6 92 (6.20%) Consultant
7 68 (4.58%) Business Analyst
7 68 (4.58%) Project Manager
8 55 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
9 40 (2.70%) Java Developer
10 37 (2.49%) Security Architect
10 37 (2.49%) Security Engineer
11 34 (2.29%) Administrator
12 33 (2.22%) Data Engineer
12 33 (2.22%) Network Engineer
13 28 (1.89%) Data Analyst
14 27 (1.82%) Technical Architect
15 26 (1.75%) Data Protection Officer
16 21 (1.42%) Python Developer
17 20 (1.35%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.31%) REST
2 60 (4.04%) React
3 43 (2.90%) Spring
4 38 (2.56%) Spring Boot
5 37 (2.49%) .NET
6 31 (2.09%) Node.js
7 30 (2.02%) Kafka
8 29 (1.95%) Middleware
9 27 (1.82%) HTML
9 27 (1.82%) RESTful
10 25 (1.68%) OAuth
11 23 (1.55%) CSS
11 23 (1.55%) Jest
12 18 (1.21%) HTML5
12 18 (1.21%) Redux
13 17 (1.15%) Oracle Fusion
13 17 (1.15%) Spring MVC
14 16 (1.08%) CSS3
14 16 (1.08%) Playwright
15 15 (1.01%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 690 (46.50%) Data Protection Act
2 83 (5.59%) Cloud Native
3 65 (4.38%) Product Ownership
4 61 (4.11%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.57%) Management Information System
6 33 (2.22%) NHS
7 31 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
7 31 (2.09%) Security Posture
8 30 (2.02%) Replication
9 28 (1.89%) Data Centre
9 28 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
9 28 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
10 23 (1.55%) Enterprise Storage
11 21 (1.42%) Freedom of Information
12 20 (1.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 18 (1.21%) Virtual Team
14 17 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (1.08%) Data Structures
15 16 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
16 15 (1.01%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 97 (6.54%) Windows
2 70 (4.72%) Linux
3 22 (1.48%) Unix
4 19 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (1.28%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.94%) VMS
6 13 (0.88%) Android
6 13 (0.88%) Mac OS
7 12 (0.81%) Apple iOS
7 12 (0.81%) Windows 10
8 9 (0.61%) zOS
9 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
11 5 (0.34%) Solaris
12 4 (0.27%) AIX
13 2 (0.13%) Rocky
13 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.067%) CentOS
14 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 253 (17.05%) Problem-Solving
2 251 (16.91%) Agile
3 246 (16.58%) Stakeholder Management
4 224 (15.09%) Migration
5 194 (13.07%) CI/CD
5 194 (13.07%) DevOps
6 187 (12.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 144 (9.70%) Analytics
8 143 (9.64%) Cybersecurity
9 137 (9.23%) Roadmaps
9 137 (9.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 134 (9.03%) AI
11 128 (8.63%) Risk Management
12 119 (8.02%) Decision-Making
13 110 (7.41%) Data Governance
13 110 (7.41%) Information Security
14 98 (6.60%) Infrastructure as Code
15 97 (6.54%) Project Management
16 93 (6.27%) Business Intelligence
17 91 (6.13%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 210 (14.15%) Python
2 185 (12.47%) SQL
3 126 (8.49%) Java
4 69 (4.65%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.77%) PowerShell
6 51 (3.44%) C#
7 39 (2.63%) TypeScript
8 37 (2.49%) Bash
9 17 (1.15%) Bicep
10 12 (0.81%) C++
11 11 (0.74%) Perl
12 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
13 8 (0.54%) PL/SQL
14 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
15 5 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.34%) R
16 4 (0.27%) Go
16 4 (0.27%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 206 (13.88%) Security Cleared
2 149 (10.04%) SC Cleared
3 125 (8.42%) Degree
4 63 (4.25%) CISSP
5 52 (3.50%) DV Cleared
6 36 (2.43%) CISM
7 32 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (1.89%) Azure Certification
9 26 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.75%) PMI Certification
10 25 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
11 24 (1.62%) AWS Certification
11 24 (1.62%) PMP
12 22 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
13 21 (1.42%) Master's Degree
14 17 (1.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.94%) CCSP
16 12 (0.81%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
18 9 (0.61%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 275 (18.53%) GDPR
2 101 (6.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 98 (6.60%) NIST
4 73 (4.92%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.38%) QA
6 33 (2.22%) GRC
7 31 (2.09%) PCI DSS
8 28 (1.89%) Accessibility
9 25 (1.68%) PMO
10 23 (1.55%) SLA
11 17 (1.15%) NCSC
11 17 (1.15%) SOC 2
12 14 (0.94%) Disclosure Scotland
13 12 (0.81%) PERC
14 10 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 9 (0.61%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.54%) HIPAA
17 7 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
18 6 (0.40%) COBIT
19 5 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 74 (4.99%) Active Directory
2 72 (4.85%) Docker
3 56 (3.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.35%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (1.28%) NFS
6 13 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.61%) VMware NSX
7 9 (0.61%) vSphere
8 6 (0.40%) KVM
9 5 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
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%) Firmware
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.067%) UAG
Systems Management
1 109 (7.35%) Kubernetes
2 100 (6.74%) Terraform
3 62 (4.18%) Ansible
4 37 (2.49%) Grafana
5 29 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (1.75%) NetBackup
7 24 (1.62%) Prometheus
8 21 (1.42%) 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%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.34%) Control-M
14 5 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.34%) RSA Archer
15 4 (0.27%) Kibana
15 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 237 (15.97%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.99%) Oracle
3 69 (4.65%) Google
4 57 (3.84%) VMware
5 49 (3.30%) Databricks
6 48 (3.23%) ServiceNow
7 45 (3.03%) Cisco
8 38 (2.56%) SAP
9 37 (2.49%) Salesforce
10 31 (2.09%) Red Hat
11 25 (1.68%) NetApp
12 22 (1.48%) Citrix
13 21 (1.42%) IBM
13 21 (1.42%) Veritas
14 19 (1.28%) F5
14 19 (1.28%) Splunk
15 17 (1.15%) Commvault
16 16 (1.08%) Adobe
16 16 (1.08%) Veeam
17 14 (0.94%) CyberArk