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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 93 83
Rank change year-on-year +19 -10 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,496 812 1,114
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.14% 2.77% 2.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.72% 3.05% 2.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 824 404 606
10th Percentile £300 £257 £225
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.15% -2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 32 109
10th Percentile £13.26 £16.48 £12.45
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.25 £27.57 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.92% +31.29% -60.00%
75th Percentile £28.56 £32.73 £27.84
90th Percentile £51.15 £36.95 £43.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.27 £29.00 £19.50
% change year-on-year -30.10% +48.72% -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 40,206 26,654 37,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.43% 90.92% 86.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,270 17,186 24,018
10th Percentile £320 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £482 £500
% change year-on-year +1.09% -3.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,411 1,084 2,441
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.64 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.33% +0.42%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.70 £37.50
% change year-on-year +58.84% -26.13% +7.14%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +25 1,280 £500 +1.01% 390
UK excluding London +12 814 £450 -5.26% 283
London +31 583 £525 +5.00% 154
Work from Home +21 385 £500 +3.90% 169
North of England -3 258 £478 +0.53% 82
South East +22 177 £483 -3.40% 63
Yorkshire -9 152 £478 -6.83% 34
Midlands -9 130 £450 -10.00% 48
Scotland +5 122 £420 -8.20% 22
North West -2 98 £493 +12.57% 37
West Midlands -15 85 £450 -14.29% 35
South West -2 64 £418 +4.38% 27
East of England 0 49 £488 -7.14% 33
East Midlands +3 45 £438 +5.55% 13
Wales -6 12 £375 -11.76% 8
North East -34 9 £400 -4.48% 11
Northern Ireland +3 4 £588 +19.41% 2

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 (3.54%) Confluence
2 39 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 25 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 15 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 14 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.53%) 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%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.067%) JBoss
Applications
1 52 (3.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (3.01%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (0.94%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.33%) 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%) Maya
8 1 (0.067%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
8 1 (0.067%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 12 (0.80%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.53%) 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%) Distributed Ledger
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
6 3 (0.20%) SAP Payroll
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (0.13%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.13%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 2 (0.13%) Workfront
8 1 (0.067%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 308 (20.59%) Azure
2 253 (16.91%) AWS
3 130 (8.69%) GCP
4 87 (5.82%) Microsoft 365
4 87 (5.82%) Power Platform
5 78 (5.21%) Entra ID
6 67 (4.48%) GitHub
7 55 (3.68%) SaaS
8 48 (3.21%) Microsoft Purview
9 47 (3.14%) Serverless
10 46 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
11 43 (2.87%) OpenShift
12 35 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (2.01%) Amazon S3
14 28 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (1.74%) Microsoft Copilot
16 25 (1.67%) Amazon ECS
16 25 (1.67%) Snowflake
17 24 (1.60%) GitHub Actions
18 22 (1.47%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 60 (4.01%) Network Security
2 41 (2.74%) Firewall
3 37 (2.47%) SAN
4 25 (1.67%) VPN
5 24 (1.60%) NAS
6 21 (1.40%) WAN
7 18 (1.20%) LAN
7 18 (1.20%) MPLS
8 16 (1.07%) DNS
9 15 (1.00%) TCP/IP
10 13 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) VLAN
13 8 (0.53%) Cisco IPT
13 8 (0.53%) DHCP
13 8 (0.53%) SD-WAN
14 7 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
14 7 (0.47%) Ethernet
14 7 (0.47%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (5.01%) Power BI
2 38 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 33 (2.21%) SQL Server
4 32 (2.14%) Metadata
5 31 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.87%) MySQL
7 27 (1.80%) Relational Database
8 24 (1.60%) MongoDB
9 21 (1.40%) Amazon RDS
10 20 (1.34%) Big Data
10 20 (1.34%) NoSQL
11 19 (1.27%) DynamoDB
12 17 (1.14%) Data Lake
13 16 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
14 14 (0.94%) Oracle Database
15 13 (0.87%) Tableau
16 12 (0.80%) Amazon Aurora
17 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
17 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
17 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 87 (5.82%) JIRA
2 67 (4.48%) Git
3 65 (4.34%) Jenkins
4 37 (2.47%) 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%) Flyway
9 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.27%) Gradle
11 3 (0.20%) Katalon Studio
11 3 (0.20%) Liquibase
11 3 (0.20%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 447 (29.88%) Social Skills
2 351 (23.46%) Finance
3 185 (12.37%) Legal
4 177 (11.83%) Analytical Skills
5 129 (8.62%) Public Sector
6 119 (7.95%) Banking
7 65 (4.34%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
9 46 (3.07%) Telecoms
10 30 (2.01%) Front Office
10 30 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
10 30 (2.01%) Marketing
11 28 (1.87%) Local Government
12 25 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
13 24 (1.60%) Law
13 24 (1.60%) Retail
14 19 (1.27%) Police
15 14 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
16 12 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 10 (0.67%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 193 (12.90%) Architect
2 147 (9.83%) Analyst
3 129 (8.62%) Developer
4 117 (7.82%) Lead
5 115 (7.69%) Senior
6 95 (6.35%) Consultant
7 73 (4.88%) Project Manager
8 71 (4.75%) Business Analyst
9 52 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
10 43 (2.87%) Java Developer
11 42 (2.81%) Security Architect
12 39 (2.61%) Data Engineer
12 39 (2.61%) Network Engineer
12 39 (2.61%) Security Engineer
13 35 (2.34%) Administrator
14 28 (1.87%) Data Analyst
14 28 (1.87%) Technical Architect
15 21 (1.40%) Python Developer
15 21 (1.40%) Support Engineer
16 20 (1.34%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (4.75%) REST
2 63 (4.21%) React
3 44 (2.94%) Spring
4 40 (2.67%) Spring Boot
5 35 (2.34%) .NET
6 33 (2.21%) RESTful
7 32 (2.14%) HTML
7 32 (2.14%) Kafka
7 32 (2.14%) Node.js
8 30 (2.01%) CSS
9 28 (1.87%) Middleware
10 27 (1.80%) OAuth
11 23 (1.54%) Jest
12 21 (1.40%) JSON
13 18 (1.20%) HTML5
13 18 (1.20%) Redux
14 17 (1.14%) OAuth2
14 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.07%) CSS3
15 16 (1.07%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 715 (47.79%) Data Protection Act
2 89 (5.95%) Cloud Native
3 70 (4.68%) Product Ownership
4 67 (4.48%) Onboarding
5 49 (3.28%) Management Information System
6 40 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
7 33 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 32 (2.14%) Replication
9 31 (2.07%) NHS
10 30 (2.01%) Data Centre
11 29 (1.94%) Security Posture
12 26 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
13 23 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
13 23 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
13 23 (1.54%) Virtual Team
14 21 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 19 (1.27%) Freedom of Information
16 17 (1.14%) Derivative
17 16 (1.07%) Mobile App
18 14 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 94 (6.28%) Windows
2 74 (4.95%) Linux
3 25 (1.67%) Unix
4 20 (1.34%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.20%) Android
6 16 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 14 (0.94%) VMS
8 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
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%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.067%) Solaris
13 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 279 (18.65%) Agile
2 250 (16.71%) Stakeholder Management
3 248 (16.58%) Problem-Solving
4 231 (15.44%) Migration
5 219 (14.64%) CI/CD
6 213 (14.24%) DevOps
7 211 (14.10%) Continuous Improvement
8 147 (9.83%) Analytics
9 142 (9.49%) AI
10 141 (9.43%) Roadmaps
11 137 (9.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 123 (8.22%) Decision-Making
13 120 (8.02%) Risk Management
14 113 (7.55%) Cybersecurity
15 110 (7.35%) Infrastructure as Code
16 106 (7.09%) Information Security
16 106 (7.09%) Test Automation
17 105 (7.02%) Data Governance
18 97 (6.48%) Microservices
19 93 (6.22%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 222 (14.84%) Python
2 189 (12.63%) SQL
3 133 (8.89%) Java
4 77 (5.15%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.68%) PowerShell
6 47 (3.14%) C#
7 39 (2.61%) Bash
8 38 (2.54%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.20%) Bicep
10 15 (1.00%) C++
11 10 (0.67%) Perl
12 9 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 9 (0.60%) Scala
12 9 (0.60%) Shell Script
13 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
13 8 (0.53%) Go
13 8 (0.53%) Kotlin
14 7 (0.47%) R
15 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
Qualifications
1 204 (13.64%) Security Cleared
2 148 (9.89%) SC Cleared
3 117 (7.82%) Degree
4 63 (4.21%) CISSP
5 51 (3.41%) DV Cleared
6 35 (2.34%) CISM
7 30 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
7 30 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.94%) PMI Certification
9 28 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.80%) PMP
11 25 (1.67%) Azure Certification
12 20 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (1.27%) AWS Certification
13 19 (1.27%) Master's Degree
14 16 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.94%) CCSP
16 11 (0.74%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
18 9 (0.60%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (16.91%) GDPR
2 94 (6.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 90 (6.02%) NIST
4 73 (4.88%) Data Quality
5 66 (4.41%) QA
6 34 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 33 (2.21%) GRC
8 28 (1.87%) PCI DSS
9 26 (1.74%) PMO
10 22 (1.47%) SLA
11 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.07%) NCSC
13 11 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.67%) Disclosure Scotland
15 9 (0.60%) HIPAA
15 9 (0.60%) PERC
16 8 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
16 8 (0.53%) WCAG
17 6 (0.40%) COBIT
18 5 (0.33%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 78 (5.21%) Docker
2 75 (5.01%) Active Directory
3 54 (3.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 20 (1.34%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (0.74%) 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%) XenApp
12 3 (0.20%) XenDesktop
13 2 (0.13%) GPFS
13 2 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.067%) iptables
Systems Management
1 116 (7.75%) Kubernetes
2 102 (6.82%) Terraform
3 63 (4.21%) Ansible
4 47 (3.14%) Grafana
5 32 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
6 30 (2.01%) Prometheus
7 27 (1.80%) NetBackup
8 21 (1.40%) SCCM
9 19 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (0.87%) Puppet
11 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) Kibana
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 5 (0.33%) Control-M
13 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
13 5 (0.33%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
14 4 (0.27%) EMC NetWorker
14 4 (0.27%) Foglight
14 4 (0.27%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 240 (16.04%) Microsoft
2 76 (5.08%) Oracle
3 67 (4.48%) Google
4 55 (3.68%) VMware
5 54 (3.61%) ServiceNow
6 50 (3.34%) Databricks
7 49 (3.28%) Cisco
8 38 (2.54%) SAP
9 30 (2.01%) Red Hat
9 30 (2.01%) Salesforce
10 28 (1.87%) Splunk
11 26 (1.74%) NetApp
12 22 (1.47%) Citrix
12 22 (1.47%) IBM
12 22 (1.47%) Veritas
13 16 (1.07%) Commvault
13 16 (1.07%) F5
14 15 (1.00%) Dell
14 15 (1.00%) Veeam
14 15 (1.00%) Workday