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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 103 86
Rank change year-on-year +29 -17 +17
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,452 749 1,087
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.25% 2.58% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.80% 2.85% 2.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 798 385 613
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £698 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £453
% change year-on-year -3.16% +4.97% -7.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 28 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £17.83 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.00 £23.38 £16.06
Median hourly rate £20.71 £29.12 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.87% +49.31% -70.45%
75th Percentile £25.50 £33.59 £27.13
90th Percentile £58.00 £45.40 £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 38,255 26,278 38,264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.62% 90.49% 86.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,265 17,064 24,859
10th Percentile £313 £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 £636 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,246 966 2,352
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.00 £12.84
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.26 £16.00
Median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.72 £70.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.07 £31.50 £31.65
% change year-on-year +8.14% -0.47% -12.69%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +31 1,245 £500 - 369
UK excluding London +21 775 £460 -3.16% 290
London +26 584 £525 +0.72% 130
Work from Home +28 371 £500 +0.86% 149
North of England -5 243 £487 +2.53% 83
South East +28 181 £498 -4.23% 76
Yorkshire -12 142 £500 -3.61% 26
Scotland +13 115 £405 -13.78% 13
Midlands -16 108 £450 -10.00% 53
North West -5 93 £481 +5.77% 52
West Midlands -25 68 £500 -2.44% 26
South West +16 64 £425 +9.68% 30
East of England +6 49 £450 -25.00% 33
East Midlands -4 40 £438 +6.06% 27
Wales 0 14 £388 -8.82% 5
North East -23 9 £400 -15.79% 5
Northern Ireland +5 5 £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 57 (3.93%) Confluence
2 35 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 19 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.55%) Apache
4 8 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.55%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.21%) CMS
6 3 (0.21%) Ethereum
6 3 (0.21%) Hyperledger
6 3 (0.21%) nginx
7 2 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.14%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.14%) Drupal
7 2 (0.14%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.14%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
7 2 (0.14%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.069%) Mule
8 1 (0.069%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 56 (3.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.14%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.069%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.069%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.069%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.069%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.069%) Blender
9 1 (0.069%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.069%) InVision
9 1 (0.069%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.069%) Sketch
9 1 (0.069%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (0.83%) Aladdin
2 11 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
3 9 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.34%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.34%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 4 (0.28%) ResourceLink
6 4 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.21%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.21%) R3 Corda
8 2 (0.14%) Fidessa
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle FAH
8 2 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.14%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.14%) Workfront
9 1 (0.069%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 294 (20.25%) Azure
2 239 (16.46%) AWS
3 130 (8.95%) GCP
4 82 (5.65%) Power Platform
5 78 (5.37%) Microsoft 365
6 73 (5.03%) Entra ID
7 64 (4.41%) GitHub
8 50 (3.44%) Serverless
9 49 (3.37%) SaaS
10 41 (2.82%) Microsoft Purview
11 39 (2.69%) Azure DevOps
11 39 (2.69%) OpenShift
12 34 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (2.13%) AWS CloudFormation
13 31 (2.13%) Snowflake
14 29 (2.00%) Amazon S3
15 24 (1.65%) GitHub Actions
16 21 (1.45%) PaaS
17 20 (1.38%) Azure AKS
17 20 (1.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 50 (3.44%) Network Security
2 37 (2.55%) SAN
3 36 (2.48%) Firewall
4 24 (1.65%) VPN
5 23 (1.58%) NAS
6 20 (1.38%) WAN
7 18 (1.24%) DNS
7 18 (1.24%) LAN
7 18 (1.24%) MPLS
8 15 (1.03%) Cisco IPT
9 13 (0.90%) TCP/IP
10 11 (0.76%) Fibre Channel
10 11 (0.76%) SD-WAN
10 11 (0.76%) VLAN
11 10 (0.69%) DHCP
11 10 (0.69%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.62%) BGP
12 9 (0.62%) iSCSI
13 8 (0.55%) IPv4
13 8 (0.55%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (4.96%) Power BI
2 36 (2.48%) Metadata
3 35 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
4 33 (2.27%) SQL Server
5 31 (2.13%) MySQL
6 28 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
7 22 (1.52%) Relational Database
8 19 (1.31%) Data Lake
9 18 (1.24%) DynamoDB
10 17 (1.17%) MongoDB
10 17 (1.17%) NoSQL
11 16 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
12 14 (0.96%) Azure SQL Database
12 14 (0.96%) Tableau
13 12 (0.83%) Big Data
13 12 (0.83%) Oracle Database
14 9 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 8 (0.55%) Aerospike
15 8 (0.55%) BigQuery
15 8 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 89 (6.13%) JIRA
2 63 (4.34%) Jenkins
3 61 (4.20%) Git
4 39 (2.69%) GitLab
5 12 (0.83%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.69%) JUnit
7 9 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.48%) Maven
9 6 (0.41%) 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 (0.28%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.28%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.28%) Liquibase
12 3 (0.21%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.21%) Selenium
12 3 (0.21%) TestNG
12 3 (0.21%) Visual Studio
General
1 451 (31.06%) Social Skills
2 327 (22.52%) Finance
3 186 (12.81%) Analytical Skills
4 170 (11.71%) Legal
5 141 (9.71%) Public Sector
6 118 (8.13%) Banking
7 61 (4.20%) Organisational Skills
8 51 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
9 40 (2.75%) Telecoms
10 33 (2.27%) Marketing
11 30 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 27 (1.86%) Front Office
12 27 (1.86%) Law
12 27 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
13 25 (1.72%) Local Government
14 19 (1.31%) Retail
15 18 (1.24%) Police
16 13 (0.90%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 10 (0.69%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 191 (13.15%) Architect
2 153 (10.54%) Analyst
3 121 (8.33%) Developer
4 114 (7.85%) Lead
5 96 (6.61%) Senior
6 78 (5.37%) Consultant
7 67 (4.61%) Business Analyst
8 66 (4.55%) Project Manager
9 54 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
10 38 (2.62%) Java Developer
11 37 (2.55%) Security Architect
12 36 (2.48%) Data Engineer
13 35 (2.41%) Security Engineer
14 32 (2.20%) Administrator
14 32 (2.20%) Network Engineer
15 31 (2.13%) Technical Architect
16 26 (1.79%) Data Analyst
17 24 (1.65%) Data Protection Officer
18 22 (1.52%) Automation Engineer
19 21 (1.45%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (4.41%) REST
2 58 (3.99%) React
3 41 (2.82%) Spring
4 37 (2.55%) .NET
5 36 (2.48%) Spring Boot
6 32 (2.20%) Node.js
7 30 (2.07%) Kafka
8 29 (2.00%) Middleware
9 27 (1.86%) RESTful
10 26 (1.79%) HTML
11 25 (1.72%) OAuth
12 23 (1.58%) Jest
13 22 (1.52%) CSS
14 18 (1.24%) HTML5
14 18 (1.24%) Redux
15 17 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
15 17 (1.17%) Spring MVC
16 16 (1.10%) CSS3
16 16 (1.10%) Playwright
17 15 (1.03%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 671 (46.21%) Data Protection Act
2 77 (5.30%) Cloud Native
3 69 (4.75%) Product Ownership
4 64 (4.41%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.51%) Management Information System
6 32 (2.20%) NHS
7 30 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
7 30 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
7 30 (2.07%) Replication
8 29 (2.00%) Hybrid Cloud
9 28 (1.93%) Security Posture
10 26 (1.79%) Data Centre
11 22 (1.52%) Enterprise Storage
11 22 (1.52%) Freedom of Information
12 21 (1.45%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 16 (1.10%) Data Structures
13 16 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
14 15 (1.03%) Operational Technology
14 15 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (0.96%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 97 (6.68%) Windows
2 70 (4.82%) Linux
3 22 (1.52%) Unix
4 19 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (1.31%) Windows Server
5 15 (1.03%) VMS
6 12 (0.83%) Mac OS
6 12 (0.83%) Windows 10
7 9 (0.62%) Android
7 9 (0.62%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.55%) zOS
9 7 (0.48%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.41%) CoreOS
11 5 (0.34%) Solaris
12 4 (0.28%) AIX
13 2 (0.14%) Rocky
13 2 (0.14%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.069%) CentOS
14 1 (0.069%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.069%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (17.56%) Problem-Solving
2 246 (16.94%) Stakeholder Management
3 245 (16.87%) Agile
4 221 (15.22%) Migration
5 200 (13.77%) CI/CD
5 200 (13.77%) DevOps
6 186 (12.81%) Continuous Improvement
7 145 (9.99%) Cybersecurity
8 142 (9.78%) Analytics
9 136 (9.37%) Roadmaps
10 131 (9.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 128 (8.82%) AI
12 126 (8.68%) Risk Management
13 110 (7.58%) Decision-Making
14 107 (7.37%) Information Security
15 101 (6.96%) Infrastructure as Code
16 100 (6.89%) Data Governance
17 96 (6.61%) Test Automation
18 93 (6.40%) Business Intelligence
19 92 (6.34%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 213 (14.67%) Python
2 187 (12.88%) SQL
3 124 (8.54%) Java
4 70 (4.82%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.86%) PowerShell
6 53 (3.65%) C#
7 40 (2.75%) Bash
8 38 (2.62%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.24%) Bicep
10 12 (0.83%) C++
11 11 (0.76%) Perl
12 10 (0.69%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.55%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
13 8 (0.55%) PL/SQL
14 6 (0.41%) ActionScript 2.0
15 5 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.34%) Groovy
16 4 (0.28%) Go
16 4 (0.28%) R
Qualifications
1 202 (13.91%) Security Cleared
2 144 (9.92%) SC Cleared
3 127 (8.75%) Degree
4 57 (3.93%) CISSP
5 55 (3.79%) DV Cleared
6 34 (2.34%) CISM
7 33 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (1.93%) PMI Certification
9 26 (1.79%) Azure Certification
9 26 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
10 25 (1.72%) AWS Certification
11 24 (1.65%) PMP
12 22 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
13 21 (1.45%) Master's Degree
14 20 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
15 14 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.96%) CTC Cleared
16 12 (0.83%) CCSP
17 9 (0.62%) CCNP
17 9 (0.62%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 263 (18.11%) GDPR
2 95 (6.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (6.34%) NIST
4 68 (4.68%) Data Quality
5 62 (4.27%) QA
6 32 (2.20%) PCI DSS
7 29 (2.00%) GRC
8 27 (1.86%) Accessibility
8 27 (1.86%) PMO
9 24 (1.65%) SLA
10 18 (1.24%) NCSC
11 17 (1.17%) SOC 2
12 14 (0.96%) Disclosure Scotland
13 12 (0.83%) PERC
14 11 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 9 (0.62%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.55%) HIPAA
17 7 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
18 6 (0.41%) COBIT
19 5 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 70 (4.82%) Docker
2 69 (4.75%) Active Directory
3 54 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (1.31%) NFS
4 19 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.62%) Hyper-V
6 9 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 9 (0.62%) vSphere
7 5 (0.34%) KVM
7 5 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
9 3 (0.21%) IAG
9 3 (0.21%) Time Sharing Option
10 2 (0.14%) Firmware
10 2 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
10 2 (0.14%) XenApp
10 2 (0.14%) XenDesktop
11 1 (0.069%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 108 (7.44%) Kubernetes
2 103 (7.09%) Terraform
3 67 (4.61%) Ansible
4 37 (2.55%) Grafana
5 32 (2.20%) NetBackup
6 28 (1.93%) Microsoft Intune
7 23 (1.58%) Prometheus
8 19 (1.31%) SCCM
8 19 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
9 16 (1.10%) Puppet
10 10 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.48%) SnapMirror
12 5 (0.34%) Control-M
12 5 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
12 5 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
12 5 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (0.34%) RSA Archer
13 4 (0.28%) CA Single Sign-On
13 4 (0.28%) Foglight
13 4 (0.28%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 228 (15.70%) Microsoft
2 71 (4.89%) Oracle
3 66 (4.55%) Google
4 55 (3.79%) VMware
5 51 (3.51%) Databricks
6 46 (3.17%) ServiceNow
7 43 (2.96%) Cisco
8 40 (2.75%) SAP
9 35 (2.41%) Red Hat
9 35 (2.41%) Salesforce
10 24 (1.65%) NetApp
11 23 (1.58%) Commvault
11 23 (1.58%) Veritas
12 21 (1.45%) Citrix
13 19 (1.31%) F5
14 18 (1.24%) IBM
15 16 (1.10%) Splunk
15 16 (1.10%) Veeam
16 15 (1.03%) Adobe
17 13 (0.90%) CyberArk