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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 87 88
Rank change year-on-year +16 +1 +8
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,566 817 1,039
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.16% 2.78% 2.38%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.74% 3.06% 2.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 862 408 545
10th Percentile £300 £261 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% -2.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £589 £600
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 33 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £14.78 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.53 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £22.13 £24.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.66% +16.67% -52.84%
75th Percentile £33.75 £32.50 £27.59
90th Percentile £45.23 £36.90 £41.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.35 £19.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year +9.49% - -38.10%

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 41,920 26,731 37,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.71% 91.01% 85.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,154 16,984 23,772
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,513 1,182 2,587
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.00 £61.16
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% +8.91%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 1,338 £500 - 360
UK excluding London +18 857 £450 -5.26% 269
London +17 608 £525 +3.45% 133
Work from Home +26 419 £500 +5.26% 168
North of England +3 282 £475 - 75
South East +22 185 £480 -8.57% 68
Yorkshire -12 155 £475 -9.52% 27
Midlands -11 133 £450 -10.00% 57
Scotland +1 129 £425 -5.56% 12
North West +17 119 £481 +7.66% 37
West Midlands -16 91 £473 -9.90% 36
South West +9 66 £410 +2.50% 34
East of England +8 45 £488 -7.14% 22
East Midlands -1 42 £438 +17.06% 21
Wales -8 11 £363 +22.36% 7
Northern Ireland +7 9 £104 -78.86% 2
North East -34 8 £400 -3.03% 11

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 57 (3.64%) Confluence
2 55 (3.51%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (1.09%) Apache Spark
5 15 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.51%) Apache
7 6 (0.38%) CMS
8 5 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 4 (0.26%) IIS
9 4 (0.26%) SAS
9 4 (0.26%) Tuxedo
10 3 (0.19%) Drupal
10 3 (0.19%) nginx
11 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.13%) Ethereum
11 2 (0.13%) Hyperledger
11 2 (0.13%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
11 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 45 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (2.62%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.89%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.26%) UserZoom
7 3 (0.19%) MS Visio
8 2 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.064%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.064%) Maya
9 1 (0.064%) Trello
9 1 (0.064%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
1 11 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (0.57%) Aladdin
3 5 (0.32%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.32%) SAP GRC
4 4 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.19%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.19%) SAP Payroll
6 2 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.13%) R3 Corda
6 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.13%) Sonata
6 2 (0.13%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 331 (21.14%) Azure
2 260 (16.60%) AWS
3 129 (8.24%) GCP
4 104 (6.64%) Microsoft 365
5 85 (5.43%) Entra ID
6 77 (4.92%) Power Platform
7 66 (4.21%) GitHub
8 62 (3.96%) SaaS
9 49 (3.13%) Microsoft Purview
10 44 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.75%) OpenShift
12 34 (2.17%) Serverless
13 28 (1.79%) Microsoft Copilot
14 24 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
14 24 (1.53%) OneDrive
15 22 (1.40%) Snowflake
16 21 (1.34%) Amazon S3
16 21 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (1.34%) Power Automate
17 20 (1.28%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 77 (4.92%) Network Security
2 46 (2.94%) Firewall
3 33 (2.11%) SAN
4 30 (1.92%) VPN
5 26 (1.66%) DNS
6 25 (1.60%) TCP/IP
7 21 (1.34%) NAS
8 20 (1.28%) WAN
9 18 (1.15%) DHCP
10 17 (1.09%) MPLS
11 15 (0.96%) LAN
12 13 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
13 9 (0.57%) HTTP
13 9 (0.57%) SSL
13 9 (0.57%) VLAN
14 8 (0.51%) Wireless
15 7 (0.45%) BGP
15 7 (0.45%) Cisco Nexus
15 7 (0.45%) Ethernet
15 7 (0.45%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (3.96%) Power BI
2 37 (2.36%) Metadata
2 37 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
2 37 (2.36%) SQL Server
3 26 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (1.47%) MySQL
4 23 (1.47%) Relational Database
5 22 (1.40%) MongoDB
6 21 (1.34%) Data Lake
7 20 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
8 19 (1.21%) Big Data
8 19 (1.21%) NoSQL
9 13 (0.83%) DynamoDB
10 12 (0.77%) Oracle Database
11 11 (0.70%) Tableau
12 10 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
13 9 (0.57%) BigQuery
14 8 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (0.51%) RDBMS
14 8 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 96 (6.13%) JIRA
2 73 (4.66%) Git
3 63 (4.02%) Jenkins
4 39 (2.49%) GitLab
5 8 (0.51%) JUnit
5 8 (0.51%) Postman
5 8 (0.51%) SpecFlow
5 8 (0.51%) Team Foundation Server
6 7 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.38%) Flyway
7 6 (0.38%) Maven
7 6 (0.38%) Oracle Forms
8 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.32%) Cypress.io
8 5 (0.32%) ERwin
8 5 (0.32%) Gradle
9 4 (0.26%) Selenium
10 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.19%) Katalon Studio
10 3 (0.19%) TestNG
General
1 509 (32.50%) Social Skills
2 361 (23.05%) Finance
3 210 (13.41%) Legal
4 175 (11.17%) Analytical Skills
5 149 (9.51%) Public Sector
6 118 (7.54%) Banking
7 66 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
8 58 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
9 38 (2.43%) Telecoms
10 30 (1.92%) Front Office
10 30 (1.92%) Local Government
11 29 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
11 29 (1.85%) Law
12 28 (1.79%) Retail
13 26 (1.66%) Presentation Skills
14 25 (1.60%) Marketing
15 20 (1.28%) Police
16 18 (1.15%) Pharmaceutical
17 12 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 12 (0.77%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 211 (13.47%) Architect
2 143 (9.13%) Analyst
3 125 (7.98%) Developer
4 116 (7.41%) Lead
5 115 (7.34%) Senior
6 93 (5.94%) Consultant
7 85 (5.43%) Project Manager
8 69 (4.41%) Business Analyst
9 61 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
10 44 (2.81%) Security Architect
11 42 (2.68%) Java Developer
12 41 (2.62%) Network Engineer
13 39 (2.49%) Security Engineer
14 37 (2.36%) Data Engineer
15 33 (2.11%) Administrator
16 27 (1.72%) Technical Architect
17 26 (1.66%) Support Engineer
18 24 (1.53%) Data Analyst
19 23 (1.47%) IT Support
19 23 (1.47%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (4.92%) REST
2 56 (3.58%) React
3 38 (2.43%) Spring
4 34 (2.17%) Spring Boot
5 31 (1.98%) HTML
5 31 (1.98%) Middleware
6 30 (1.92%) CSS
6 30 (1.92%) Kafka
6 30 (1.92%) RESTful
7 26 (1.66%) JSON
7 26 (1.66%) OAuth
8 25 (1.60%) .NET
9 21 (1.34%) Node.js
10 20 (1.28%) Jest
11 18 (1.15%) HTML5
11 18 (1.15%) PySpark
12 17 (1.09%) OpenID
12 17 (1.09%) Redux
12 17 (1.09%) Spring MVC
13 16 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 721 (46.04%) Data Protection Act
2 89 (5.68%) Cloud Native
3 78 (4.98%) Product Ownership
4 73 (4.66%) Onboarding
5 54 (3.45%) Management Information System
6 42 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
7 41 (2.62%) Data Centre
8 39 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
9 32 (2.04%) Security Posture
10 29 (1.85%) Virtual Team
11 27 (1.72%) NHS
12 23 (1.47%) Hybrid Cloud
13 21 (1.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.34%) Replication
13 21 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
14 18 (1.15%) Enterprise Storage
14 18 (1.15%) Operational Technology
15 16 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
15 16 (1.02%) Freedom of Information
15 16 (1.02%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 120 (7.66%) Windows
2 79 (5.04%) Linux
3 34 (2.17%) Unix
4 24 (1.53%) Android
4 24 (1.53%) Windows Server
5 23 (1.47%) Apple iOS
5 23 (1.47%) Mac OS
6 17 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (0.77%) VMS
7 12 (0.77%) Windows 10
8 7 (0.45%) zOS
9 6 (0.38%) CoreOS
9 6 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.13%) Rocky
10 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.064%) CentOS
11 1 (0.064%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.064%) Solaris
11 1 (0.064%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.064%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 298 (19.03%) Agile
2 269 (17.18%) Problem-Solving
3 255 (16.28%) Stakeholder Management
4 238 (15.20%) Migration
5 237 (15.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 222 (14.18%) CI/CD
7 215 (13.73%) DevOps
8 161 (10.28%) AI
9 155 (9.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 138 (8.81%) Cybersecurity
11 137 (8.75%) Roadmaps
12 134 (8.56%) Analytics
13 131 (8.37%) Decision-Making
14 120 (7.66%) Risk Management
15 116 (7.41%) Information Security
16 107 (6.83%) Validation
17 104 (6.64%) Data Governance
17 104 (6.64%) Infrastructure as Code
18 99 (6.32%) Test Automation
19 98 (6.26%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 219 (13.98%) Python
2 171 (10.92%) SQL
3 136 (8.68%) Java
4 71 (4.53%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.51%) PowerShell
6 40 (2.55%) Bash
7 37 (2.36%) C#
8 30 (1.92%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.15%) Bicep
10 15 (0.96%) Perl
11 14 (0.89%) C++
12 12 (0.77%) Go
13 11 (0.70%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
15 9 (0.57%) Apex Code
15 9 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 8 (0.51%) ActionScript
17 7 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 7 (0.45%) Scala
17 7 (0.45%) VB
Qualifications
1 213 (13.60%) Security Cleared
2 157 (10.03%) SC Cleared
3 138 (8.81%) Degree
4 73 (4.66%) CISSP
5 50 (3.19%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.55%) CISM
7 34 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 31 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
9 30 (1.92%) PMI Certification
10 29 (1.85%) Azure Certification
11 26 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
11 26 (1.66%) PMP
12 22 (1.40%) AWS Certification
12 22 (1.40%) Master's Degree
13 18 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
14 17 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 15 (0.96%) CCSP
16 12 (0.77%) CRISC
17 10 (0.64%) CCNP
18 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (16.03%) GDPR
2 91 (5.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 88 (5.62%) NIST
4 85 (5.43%) Data Quality
5 69 (4.41%) QA
6 40 (2.55%) GRC
7 37 (2.36%) Accessibility
8 26 (1.66%) PCI DSS
9 21 (1.34%) PMO
10 20 (1.28%) SOC 2
11 19 (1.21%) SLA
12 17 (1.09%) NCSC
13 14 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.57%) WCAG
16 8 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
16 8 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
16 8 (0.51%) HIPAA
17 6 (0.38%) COBIT
18 5 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 78 (4.98%) Active Directory
2 66 (4.21%) Docker
3 55 (3.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
5 14 (0.89%) NFS
6 13 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.77%) vSphere
8 10 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 8 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.45%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.38%) KVM
12 4 (0.26%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (0.19%) IAG
13 3 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.19%) XenApp
13 3 (0.19%) XenDesktop
14 2 (0.13%) GPFS
14 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.064%) iptables
Systems Management
1 113 (7.22%) Kubernetes
2 86 (5.49%) Terraform
3 67 (4.28%) Ansible
4 46 (2.94%) Grafana
5 41 (2.62%) Microsoft Intune
6 31 (1.98%) NetBackup
6 31 (1.98%) Prometheus
7 20 (1.28%) SCCM
7 20 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 13 (0.83%) Puppet
9 12 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 7 (0.45%) Kibana
11 6 (0.38%) SnapMirror
12 5 (0.32%) Control-M
12 5 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
13 4 (0.26%) CA Single Sign-On
13 4 (0.26%) Foglight
13 4 (0.26%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.26%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 257 (16.41%) Microsoft
2 80 (5.11%) Oracle
3 66 (4.21%) ServiceNow
4 61 (3.90%) Google
5 56 (3.58%) VMware
6 53 (3.38%) Databricks
7 50 (3.19%) Cisco
8 41 (2.62%) SAP
9 34 (2.17%) Splunk
10 31 (1.98%) Red Hat
11 26 (1.66%) Veritas
12 24 (1.53%) Salesforce
13 21 (1.34%) Citrix
14 20 (1.28%) NetApp
15 17 (1.09%) Workday
15 17 (1.09%) Zscaler
16 15 (0.96%) Commvault
16 15 (0.96%) F5
17 14 (0.89%) Informatica
18 13 (0.83%) Dell