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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 91 85
Rank change year-on-year +20 -6 +9
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,502 797 1,079
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.75% 2.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.74% 3.02% 2.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 830 399 579
10th Percentile £300 £257 £243
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.51% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £584 £609
90th Percentile £700 £692 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 31 108
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.25 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.53 £27.64 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.10% +31.62% -60.00%
75th Percentile £33.17 £32.95 £27.59
90th Percentile £49.05 £37.00 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.76 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.70% +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 40,111 26,361 36,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.96% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,183 16,941 23,723
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.71% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,380 1,073 2,431
10th Percentile £14.89 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.78 £38.00
% change year-on-year +74.59% -32.17% +8.57%

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 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 14 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 14 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 +30 1,292 £496 -0.82% 390
UK excluding London +11 814 £450 -5.26% 266
London +27 588 £525 +5.00% 166
Work from Home +16 385 £500 +2.30% 145
North of England -3 264 £487 +2.53% 64
South East +19 179 £475 -5.00% 79
Yorkshire -6 156 £480 -7.47% 27
Midlands +1 132 £450 -10.00% 50
Scotland +5 118 £425 -8.60% 17
North West +2 100 £498 +17.06% 28
West Midlands -9 86 £468 -9.88% 33
South West -2 62 £410 +2.50% 28
East of England -4 48 £475 -11.63% 22
East Midlands +5 46 £437 +5.37% 17
Wales -4 11 £375 -10.45% 6
North East -32 9 £400 -4.48% 10
Northern Ireland 0 2 £675 +37.20% 3

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 56 (3.73%) Confluence
2 44 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 13 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (0.47%) 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%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) Ethereum
10 2 (0.13%) Hyperledger
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) NetWeaver
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 47 (3.13%) Microsoft Office
2 45 (3.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.13%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
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
7 1 (0.067%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 12 (0.80%) Aladdin
2 11 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
4 5 (0.33%) SAP GRC
5 4 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
5 4 (0.27%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.20%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
7 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 1 (0.067%) Odoo
8 1 (0.067%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 303 (20.17%) Azure
2 250 (16.64%) AWS
3 129 (8.59%) GCP
4 89 (5.93%) Microsoft 365
5 84 (5.59%) Power Platform
6 77 (5.13%) Entra ID
7 68 (4.53%) GitHub
8 60 (3.99%) SaaS
9 49 (3.26%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.06%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.86%) OpenShift
12 42 (2.80%) Serverless
13 29 (1.93%) Amazon S3
13 29 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
14 26 (1.73%) Microsoft Copilot
15 24 (1.60%) Amazon ECS
15 24 (1.60%) AWS CloudFormation
15 24 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
16 23 (1.53%) Snowflake
17 22 (1.46%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 61 (4.06%) Network Security
2 40 (2.66%) Firewall
3 36 (2.40%) SAN
4 25 (1.66%) VPN
5 24 (1.60%) NAS
6 20 (1.33%) DNS
7 19 (1.26%) MPLS
7 19 (1.26%) WAN
8 18 (1.20%) TCP/IP
9 17 (1.13%) LAN
10 13 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
11 12 (0.80%) DHCP
12 11 (0.73%) Fibre Channel
13 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
13 9 (0.60%) VLAN
14 7 (0.47%) BGP
14 7 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.47%) Ethernet
14 7 (0.47%) HTTP
14 7 (0.47%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (4.66%) Power BI
2 39 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 33 (2.20%) SQL Server
4 32 (2.13%) Metadata
5 31 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.86%) MySQL
7 27 (1.80%) Relational Database
8 24 (1.60%) MongoDB
9 20 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
9 20 (1.33%) Big Data
10 19 (1.26%) NoSQL
11 17 (1.13%) Data Lake
12 14 (0.93%) DynamoDB
13 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
13 13 (0.87%) Tableau
14 12 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
15 11 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
16 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
16 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 92 (6.13%) JIRA
2 68 (4.53%) Git
3 66 (4.39%) Jenkins
4 38 (2.53%) GitLab
5 12 (0.80%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) 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%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.33%) Flyway
9 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.27%) Gradle
10 4 (0.27%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) ERwin
11 3 (0.20%) Liquibase
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 457 (30.43%) Social Skills
2 346 (23.04%) Finance
3 187 (12.45%) Legal
4 170 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
5 129 (8.59%) Public Sector
6 119 (7.92%) Banking
7 60 (3.99%) Organisational Skills
8 59 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
9 42 (2.80%) Telecoms
10 31 (2.06%) Front Office
11 30 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.86%) Local Government
13 27 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.66%) Marketing
15 24 (1.60%) Law
15 24 (1.60%) Retail
16 19 (1.26%) Police
17 13 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
18 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 10 (0.67%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 196 (13.05%) Architect
2 142 (9.45%) Analyst
3 130 (8.66%) Developer
4 114 (7.59%) Senior
5 112 (7.46%) Lead
6 94 (6.26%) Consultant
7 80 (5.33%) Project Manager
8 70 (4.66%) Business Analyst
9 55 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.86%) Java Developer
10 43 (2.86%) Security Architect
11 39 (2.60%) Network Engineer
11 39 (2.60%) Security Engineer
12 38 (2.53%) Data Engineer
13 35 (2.33%) Administrator
14 27 (1.80%) Data Analyst
14 27 (1.80%) Technical Architect
15 23 (1.53%) Support Engineer
16 22 (1.46%) Python Developer
17 20 (1.33%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (4.93%) REST
2 61 (4.06%) React
3 40 (2.66%) Spring
4 36 (2.40%) .NET
4 36 (2.40%) Spring Boot
5 34 (2.26%) Kafka
6 33 (2.20%) RESTful
7 31 (2.06%) HTML
7 31 (2.06%) Middleware
8 30 (2.00%) CSS
9 29 (1.93%) OAuth
10 28 (1.86%) Node.js
11 24 (1.60%) JSON
12 23 (1.53%) Jest
13 18 (1.20%) HTML5
13 18 (1.20%) OAuth2
13 18 (1.20%) Redux
14 17 (1.13%) Playwright
14 17 (1.13%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 718 (47.80%) Data Protection Act
2 93 (6.19%) Cloud Native
3 71 (4.73%) Product Ownership
4 65 (4.33%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.40%) Management Information System
6 45 (3.00%) Distributed Systems
7 36 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
8 33 (2.20%) Data Centre
9 30 (2.00%) Security Posture
10 29 (1.93%) Replication
11 28 (1.86%) NHS
12 25 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
12 25 (1.66%) Virtual Team
13 23 (1.53%) Enterprise Storage
13 23 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
14 21 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 19 (1.26%) Freedom of Information
16 17 (1.13%) Derivative
17 16 (1.07%) Mobile App
18 15 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 100 (6.66%) Windows
2 77 (5.13%) Linux
3 29 (1.93%) Unix
4 22 (1.46%) Windows Server
5 20 (1.33%) Android
6 18 (1.20%) Apple iOS
7 17 (1.13%) Mac OS
7 17 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.87%) VMS
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
1 290 (19.31%) Agile
2 256 (17.04%) Stakeholder Management
3 247 (16.44%) Problem-Solving
4 233 (15.51%) Migration
5 220 (14.65%) CI/CD
6 215 (14.31%) DevOps
7 212 (14.11%) Continuous Improvement
8 141 (9.39%) AI
9 136 (9.05%) Analytics
10 134 (8.92%) Roadmaps
11 129 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 123 (8.19%) Decision-Making
13 117 (7.79%) Risk Management
14 116 (7.72%) Cybersecurity
15 108 (7.19%) Infrastructure as Code
16 107 (7.12%) Information Security
17 102 (6.79%) Test Automation
18 99 (6.59%) Data Governance
19 97 (6.46%) Microservices
20 96 (6.39%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 213 (14.18%) Python
2 175 (11.65%) SQL
3 129 (8.59%) Java
4 79 (5.26%) JavaScript
5 57 (3.79%) PowerShell
6 49 (3.26%) C#
7 40 (2.66%) Bash
8 35 (2.33%) TypeScript
9 19 (1.26%) Bicep
10 15 (1.00%) C++
11 11 (0.73%) Perl
12 10 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
13 9 (0.60%) Go
13 9 (0.60%) Kotlin
13 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
13 9 (0.60%) Scala
13 9 (0.60%) Shell Script
14 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
15 7 (0.47%) R
16 6 (0.40%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 206 (13.72%) Security Cleared
2 150 (9.99%) SC Cleared
3 121 (8.06%) Degree
4 63 (4.19%) CISSP
5 53 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 34 (2.26%) CISM
7 32 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 30 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (1.93%) PMI Certification
10 27 (1.80%) Azure Certification
10 27 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.80%) PMP
11 21 (1.40%) AWS Certification
12 19 (1.26%) Master's Degree
12 19 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 14 (0.93%) CCSP
15 11 (0.73%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.67%) CCNP
17 9 (0.60%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 243 (16.18%) GDPR
2 90 (5.99%) NIST
3 89 (5.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 71 (4.73%) Data Quality
5 67 (4.46%) QA
6 35 (2.33%) Accessibility
7 33 (2.20%) GRC
8 24 (1.60%) PCI DSS
9 21 (1.40%) PMO
10 20 (1.33%) SLA
11 19 (1.26%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.07%) NCSC
13 11 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.67%) WCAG
15 9 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
16 8 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
17 7 (0.47%) PERC
18 6 (0.40%) COBIT
18 6 (0.40%) HIPAA
19 5 (0.33%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 76 (5.06%) Docker
2 74 (4.93%) Active Directory
3 52 (3.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.33%) NFS
5 17 (1.13%) Virtual Desktop
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.73%) vSphere
8 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
9 7 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.40%) KVM
11 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
12 3 (0.20%) IAG
12 3 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
12 3 (0.20%) XenApp
12 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.13%) GPFS
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.067%) iptables
Systems Management
1 114 (7.59%) Kubernetes
2 96 (6.39%) Terraform
3 66 (4.39%) Ansible
4 49 (3.26%) Grafana
5 35 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (2.06%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.80%) NetBackup
8 21 (1.40%) SCCM
9 20 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.87%) Puppet
11 11 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.33%) Tivoli Storage Manager
15 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.27%) Control-M
15 4 (0.27%) Foglight
15 4 (0.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 239 (15.91%) Microsoft
2 75 (4.99%) Oracle
3 63 (4.19%) Google
4 54 (3.60%) ServiceNow
5 53 (3.53%) Databricks
5 53 (3.53%) VMware
6 47 (3.13%) Cisco
7 41 (2.73%) 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 21 (1.40%) Salesforce
14 20 (1.33%) Citrix
15 16 (1.07%) Commvault
15 16 (1.07%) Workday
16 15 (1.00%) F5
17 14 (0.93%) Dell
17 14 (0.93%) Informatica