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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 72 99 83
Rank change year-on-year +27 -16 +15
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,487 769 1,104
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.24% 2.62% 2.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.81% 2.89% 2.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 818 397 619
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £466
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.04% -3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 29 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £18.05 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.54 £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 £27.88 £33.40 £27.50
90th Percentile £59.00 £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 39,056 26,574 37,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.05% 90.71% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,707 17,203 24,522
10th Percentile £316 £306 £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 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,310 1,024 2,401
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.93 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.51 £15.89
Median hourly rate £37.16 £30.45 £33.55
Median % change year-on-year +22.04% -9.24% -7.45%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £29.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year +31.90% -12.29% -8.47%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +29 1,278 £500 - 394
UK excluding London +21 806 £450 -5.26% 303
London +34 588 £525 - 155
Work from Home +38 388 £500 +0.81% 185
North of England +3 251 £475 - 80
South East +29 190 £500 -1.91% 80
Yorkshire -10 142 £480 -8.57% 17
Midlands -8 119 £468 -6.50% 47
Scotland +11 117 £407 -12.79% 26
North West +10 101 £481 +7.66% 50
West Midlands -19 74 £500 -3.61% 37
South West +12 68 £425 +6.25% 32
East of England -7 46 £475 -9.52% 31
East Midlands -2 45 £438 +16.67% 10
Wales -2 15 £375 -11.76% 8
North East -26 9 £400 -11.11% 13
Northern Ireland +2 4 £500 +1.63% 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 53 (3.56%) Confluence
2 36 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 24 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 13 (0.87%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.54%) Apache
7 5 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.27%) CMS
9 3 (0.20%) Drupal
9 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
9 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.20%) nginx
9 3 (0.20%) SAS
10 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.13%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.067%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 54 (3.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 7 (0.47%) 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%) Maya
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 6 (0.40%) 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%) ION MarketView
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
Cloud Services
1 303 (20.38%) Azure
2 247 (16.61%) AWS
3 135 (9.08%) GCP
4 83 (5.58%) Power Platform
5 81 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (5.25%) Entra ID
7 62 (4.17%) GitHub
8 59 (3.97%) SaaS
9 48 (3.23%) Microsoft Purview
9 48 (3.23%) Serverless
10 41 (2.76%) OpenShift
11 38 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
12 36 (2.42%) AWS Lambda
13 32 (2.15%) Amazon S3
14 28 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
14 28 (1.88%) Snowflake
15 25 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
16 24 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (1.41%) Microsoft Copilot
18 20 (1.34%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 54 (3.63%) Network Security
2 39 (2.62%) Firewall
3 38 (2.56%) SAN
4 24 (1.61%) VPN
5 23 (1.55%) NAS
5 23 (1.55%) WAN
6 19 (1.28%) LAN
6 19 (1.28%) MPLS
7 18 (1.21%) DNS
8 15 (1.01%) Cisco IPT
9 13 (0.87%) TCP/IP
10 12 (0.81%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.81%) VLAN
11 11 (0.74%) DHCP
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
11 11 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.61%) BGP
12 9 (0.61%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.61%) Wireless
13 8 (0.54%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (4.91%) Power BI
2 41 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
3 36 (2.42%) Metadata
4 34 (2.29%) SQL Server
5 30 (2.02%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (2.02%) MySQL
6 26 (1.75%) Relational Database
7 22 (1.48%) Amazon RDS
7 22 (1.48%) MongoDB
8 21 (1.41%) NoSQL
9 19 (1.28%) DynamoDB
10 18 (1.21%) Big Data
11 16 (1.08%) Data Lake
12 15 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
13 13 (0.87%) Tableau
14 12 (0.81%) Amazon Aurora
14 12 (0.81%) Oracle Database
15 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
15 10 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
15 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 84 (5.65%) JIRA
2 63 (4.24%) Jenkins
3 59 (3.97%) Git
4 36 (2.42%) 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%) Postman
10 5 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 4 (0.27%) Gradle
11 4 (0.27%) Liquibase
12 3 (0.20%) Bitbucket
12 3 (0.20%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 442 (29.72%) Social Skills
2 343 (23.07%) Finance
3 189 (12.71%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (11.77%) Legal
5 136 (9.15%) Public Sector
6 121 (8.14%) Banking
7 65 (4.37%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
9 40 (2.69%) Telecoms
10 35 (2.35%) Marketing
11 30 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
12 28 (1.88%) Front Office
12 28 (1.88%) Local Government
12 28 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
13 27 (1.82%) Law
14 23 (1.55%) Retail
15 19 (1.28%) Police
16 12 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 11 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 10 (0.67%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 193 (12.98%) Architect
2 152 (10.22%) Analyst
3 123 (8.27%) Developer
4 115 (7.73%) Lead
5 107 (7.20%) Senior
6 93 (6.25%) Consultant
7 68 (4.57%) Business Analyst
7 68 (4.57%) Project Manager
8 55 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
9 41 (2.76%) Java Developer
10 39 (2.62%) Data Engineer
11 37 (2.49%) Security Architect
11 37 (2.49%) Security Engineer
12 34 (2.29%) Administrator
12 34 (2.29%) Network Engineer
13 28 (1.88%) Technical Architect
14 27 (1.82%) Data Analyst
15 26 (1.75%) Data Protection Officer
16 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
16 21 (1.41%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (4.37%) REST
2 59 (3.97%) React
3 42 (2.82%) Spring
4 37 (2.49%) Spring Boot
5 36 (2.42%) .NET
6 33 (2.22%) HTML
7 31 (2.08%) Node.js
8 30 (2.02%) Kafka
9 29 (1.95%) CSS
9 29 (1.95%) RESTful
10 27 (1.82%) Middleware
11 25 (1.68%) OAuth
12 23 (1.55%) Jest
13 18 (1.21%) HTML5
13 18 (1.21%) Redux
14 17 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
14 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
15 16 (1.08%) CSS3
15 16 (1.08%) Playwright
15 16 (1.08%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 695 (46.74%) Data Protection Act
2 83 (5.58%) Cloud Native
3 69 (4.64%) Product Ownership
4 62 (4.17%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.43%) Management Information System
6 32 (2.15%) NHS
7 31 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
7 31 (2.08%) Security Posture
8 30 (2.02%) Replication
9 29 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
10 28 (1.88%) Hybrid Cloud
11 27 (1.82%) Data Centre
12 23 (1.55%) Enterprise Storage
13 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 20 (1.34%) Freedom of Information
15 18 (1.21%) Virtual Team
16 16 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
17 15 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
17 15 (1.01%) Mobile App
17 15 (1.01%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 98 (6.59%) Windows
2 74 (4.98%) Linux
3 26 (1.75%) Unix
4 21 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.94%) VMS
7 13 (0.87%) Android
7 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 12 (0.81%) Apple iOS
8 12 (0.81%) Windows 10
9 9 (0.61%) zOS
10 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
11 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
12 4 (0.27%) Solaris
13 3 (0.20%) AIX
14 2 (0.13%) Rocky
14 2 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
15 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
15 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 253 (17.01%) Agile
2 251 (16.88%) Problem-Solving
3 247 (16.61%) Stakeholder Management
4 228 (15.33%) Migration
5 198 (13.32%) CI/CD
6 195 (13.11%) DevOps
7 188 (12.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 144 (9.68%) Analytics
9 139 (9.35%) Roadmaps
10 134 (9.01%) AI
10 134 (9.01%) Cybersecurity
10 134 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 127 (8.54%) Risk Management
12 119 (8.00%) Decision-Making
13 111 (7.46%) Data Governance
14 108 (7.26%) Information Security
15 103 (6.93%) Infrastructure as Code
16 97 (6.52%) Test Automation
17 95 (6.39%) Project Management
18 93 (6.25%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 214 (14.39%) Python
2 187 (12.58%) SQL
3 131 (8.81%) Java
4 76 (5.11%) JavaScript
5 56 (3.77%) PowerShell
6 49 (3.30%) C#
7 40 (2.69%) TypeScript
8 35 (2.35%) Bash
9 17 (1.14%) 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
13 8 (0.54%) Scala
14 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
15 5 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.34%) Kotlin
15 5 (0.34%) R
Qualifications
1 208 (13.99%) Security Cleared
2 149 (10.02%) SC Cleared
3 123 (8.27%) Degree
4 62 (4.17%) CISSP
5 53 (3.56%) DV Cleared
6 35 (2.35%) CISM
7 32 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (1.88%) Azure Certification
8 28 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.75%) PMI Certification
10 25 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
11 24 (1.61%) AWS Certification
11 24 (1.61%) PMP
12 22 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
13 20 (1.34%) Master's Degree
14 17 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.94%) CCSP
16 12 (0.81%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
18 9 (0.61%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 271 (18.22%) GDPR
2 96 (6.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 95 (6.39%) NIST
4 73 (4.91%) Data Quality
5 66 (4.44%) QA
6 33 (2.22%) GRC
7 30 (2.02%) PCI DSS
8 27 (1.82%) Accessibility
9 25 (1.68%) PMO
10 21 (1.41%) SLA
11 17 (1.14%) NCSC
12 16 (1.08%) SOC 2
13 14 (0.94%) Disclosure Scotland
14 12 (0.81%) PERC
15 9 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 8 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
17 7 (0.47%) HIPAA
17 7 (0.47%) NIST 800
18 6 (0.40%) COBIT
18 6 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 75 (5.04%) Docker
2 74 (4.98%) Active Directory
3 57 (3.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (1.28%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.61%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.61%) vSphere
9 6 (0.40%) KVM
9 6 (0.40%) 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%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 106 (7.13%) Kubernetes
2 104 (6.99%) Terraform
3 61 (4.10%) Ansible
4 41 (2.76%) Grafana
5 30 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (1.82%) NetBackup
7 24 (1.61%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.48%) SCCM
9 19 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.74%) Puppet
11 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 8 (0.54%) Kibana
13 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
14 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
15 5 (0.34%) Control-M
15 5 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
15 5 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 5 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
16 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 236 (15.87%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.98%) Oracle
3 70 (4.71%) Google
4 58 (3.90%) VMware
5 50 (3.36%) ServiceNow
6 49 (3.30%) Databricks
7 47 (3.16%) Cisco
8 39 (2.62%) SAP
9 36 (2.42%) Salesforce
10 32 (2.15%) Red Hat
11 24 (1.61%) NetApp
12 23 (1.55%) Splunk
13 22 (1.48%) Citrix
13 22 (1.48%) Veritas
14 21 (1.41%) IBM
15 18 (1.21%) F5
16 17 (1.14%) Commvault
17 16 (1.08%) Adobe
17 16 (1.08%) Veeam
18 14 (0.94%) Informatica