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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 73 85 85
Rank change year-on-year +12 0 +5
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,676 917 1,071
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.21% 2.87% 2.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.77% 3.17% 2.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 918 442 568
10th Percentile £304 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £700 £688 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £467 £469
% change year-on-year -2.57% -0.37% -1.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 37 106
10th Percentile £15.04 £14.78 £12.38
25th Percentile £16.62 £15.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.35 £27.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.93% +38.46% -46.24%
75th Percentile £33.64 £33.40 £27.50
90th Percentile £37.70 £38.38 £41.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.25 £15.25 £19.50
% change year-on-year +39.34% -21.79% -35.00%

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 44,398 28,953 36,844
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.10% 90.63% 85.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,615 18,257 23,517
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.28% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,640 1,439 2,494
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% +1.65%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 +14 1,414 £500 +4.44% 462
UK excluding London +14 935 £455 -2.57% 328
London +7 617 £525 +5.00% 193
Work from Home +26 477 £500 +5.82% 240
North of England +12 320 £475 - 85
South East +23 204 £483 -9.04% 83
Yorkshire -2 178 £475 -5.00% 30
Midlands -8 145 £468 -6.50% 70
Scotland +3 136 £425 -0.93% 13
North West +25 135 £489 +15.00% 43
West Midlands -16 104 £474 -9.71% 41
South West -5 69 £425 +6.25% 47
East of England +4 44 £500 -4.76% 19
East Midlands +11 41 £447 +19.60% 28
Wales -8 16 £400 +35.02% 10
Northern Ireland +9 10 £104 -78.86% 11
North East -52 9 £450 +9.09% 13

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 59 (3.52%) Confluence
1 59 (3.52%) SharePoint
2 25 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (1.13%) Apache Spark
4 17 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (0.66%) Apache
6 6 (0.36%) CMS
6 6 (0.36%) IIS
7 5 (0.30%) SAS
7 5 (0.30%) Tuxedo
8 3 (0.18%) nginx
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.12%) Ethereum
9 2 (0.12%) Hyperledger
9 2 (0.12%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 44 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (2.45%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.30%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.24%) UserZoom
8 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.060%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.060%) Maya
9 1 (0.060%) Trello
9 1 (0.060%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 11 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 10 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.42%) Aladdin
3 7 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
4 6 (0.36%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.30%) SAP GRC
6 4 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
6 4 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
7 3 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
8 2 (0.12%) Distributed Ledger
8 2 (0.12%) R3 Corda
8 2 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.12%) Sonata
8 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 1 (0.060%) FIS Private Capital Suite
9 1 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.060%) SAP CX
Cloud Services
1 363 (21.66%) Azure
2 268 (15.99%) AWS
3 140 (8.35%) GCP
4 115 (6.86%) Microsoft 365
5 89 (5.31%) Power Platform
6 88 (5.25%) Entra ID
7 71 (4.24%) SaaS
8 69 (4.12%) GitHub
9 58 (3.46%) Microsoft Purview
10 49 (2.92%) Azure DevOps
11 45 (2.68%) OpenShift
12 38 (2.27%) Serverless
13 34 (2.03%) Microsoft Copilot
14 26 (1.55%) OneDrive
15 24 (1.43%) Power Automate
15 24 (1.43%) PowerApps
16 22 (1.31%) AWS Lambda
16 22 (1.31%) Snowflake
17 21 (1.25%) Amazon S3
18 20 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 91 (5.43%) Network Security
2 52 (3.10%) Firewall
3 35 (2.09%) VPN
4 32 (1.91%) SAN
5 30 (1.79%) DNS
6 25 (1.49%) TCP/IP
7 23 (1.37%) DHCP
7 23 (1.37%) WAN
8 20 (1.19%) NAS
9 18 (1.07%) LAN
10 14 (0.84%) MPLS
10 14 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
11 12 (0.72%) HTTP
11 12 (0.72%) SSL
12 10 (0.60%) Wireless
13 8 (0.48%) Cisco Nexus
13 8 (0.48%) VLAN
14 7 (0.42%) Cisco IPT
14 7 (0.42%) Ethernet
14 7 (0.42%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (4.18%) Power BI
2 42 (2.51%) SQL Server
3 38 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
4 37 (2.21%) Metadata
5 29 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 26 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
7 23 (1.37%) Data Lake
7 23 (1.37%) NoSQL
8 22 (1.31%) MySQL
9 21 (1.25%) Big Data
10 20 (1.19%) MongoDB
11 18 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
12 12 (0.72%) Oracle Database
13 11 (0.66%) BigQuery
14 10 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (0.60%) RDBMS
14 10 (0.60%) Tableau
15 9 (0.54%) DynamoDB
16 8 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
16 8 (0.48%) Ingres
Development Applications
1 97 (5.79%) JIRA
2 73 (4.36%) Git
3 60 (3.58%) Jenkins
4 37 (2.21%) GitLab
5 10 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
6 9 (0.54%) Postman
6 9 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.54%) Team Foundation Server
7 8 (0.48%) Maven
8 7 (0.42%) JUnit
9 6 (0.36%) Flyway
9 6 (0.36%) Gradle
9 6 (0.36%) SpecFlow
10 5 (0.30%) Cypress.io
10 5 (0.30%) ERwin
11 4 (0.24%) Selenium
12 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 3 (0.18%) SonarQube
12 3 (0.18%) TestNG
12 3 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 556 (33.17%) Social Skills
2 377 (22.49%) Finance
3 243 (14.50%) Legal
4 197 (11.75%) Analytical Skills
5 163 (9.73%) Public Sector
6 118 (7.04%) Banking
7 69 (4.12%) Documentation Skills
8 65 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
9 35 (2.09%) Local Government
9 35 (2.09%) Telecoms
10 34 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
11 32 (1.91%) Retail
12 29 (1.73%) Law
13 27 (1.61%) Front Office
13 27 (1.61%) Marketing
14 23 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
15 20 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
15 20 (1.19%) Police
16 18 (1.07%) Billing
17 16 (0.95%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 236 (14.08%) Architect
2 155 (9.25%) Analyst
3 130 (7.76%) Developer
4 126 (7.52%) Lead
5 122 (7.28%) Senior
6 96 (5.73%) Consultant
7 88 (5.25%) Project Manager
8 71 (4.24%) Business Analyst
9 68 (4.06%) Solutions Architect
10 52 (3.10%) Security Architect
11 44 (2.63%) Data Engineer
12 43 (2.57%) Security Engineer
13 40 (2.39%) Network Engineer
14 39 (2.33%) Java Developer
15 33 (1.97%) Administrator
16 29 (1.73%) Technical Architect
17 28 (1.67%) Support Engineer
18 27 (1.61%) Data Analyst
19 26 (1.55%) IT Support
20 25 (1.49%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (5.07%) REST
2 56 (3.34%) React
3 39 (2.33%) Spring
4 35 (2.09%) Middleware
5 33 (1.97%) CSS
5 33 (1.97%) Spring Boot
6 32 (1.91%) HTML
6 32 (1.91%) RESTful
7 30 (1.79%) JSON
7 30 (1.79%) Kafka
8 28 (1.67%) .NET
8 28 (1.67%) OAuth
9 19 (1.13%) HTML5
10 18 (1.07%) CSS3
10 18 (1.07%) Jest
10 18 (1.07%) Node.js
10 18 (1.07%) PySpark
10 18 (1.07%) Redux
11 17 (1.01%) OpenID
12 15 (0.89%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 753 (44.93%) Data Protection Act
2 95 (5.67%) Cloud Native
3 88 (5.25%) Product Ownership
4 76 (4.53%) Onboarding
5 56 (3.34%) Management Information System
6 47 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
7 46 (2.74%) Data Centre
8 42 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
9 39 (2.33%) Security Posture
10 37 (2.21%) Virtual Team
11 25 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
11 25 (1.49%) NHS
11 25 (1.49%) Operational Technology
12 23 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
13 22 (1.31%) Replication
14 21 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
15 19 (1.13%) Data Structures
15 19 (1.13%) Mobile App
16 18 (1.07%) Enterprise Storage
17 16 (0.95%) Freedom of Information
Operating Systems
1 125 (7.46%) Windows
2 80 (4.77%) Linux
3 30 (1.79%) Unix
4 27 (1.61%) Windows Server
5 26 (1.55%) Android
5 26 (1.55%) Apple iOS
6 23 (1.37%) Mac OS
7 19 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.78%) VMS
9 12 (0.72%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.36%) CoreOS
10 6 (0.36%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.36%) zOS
11 2 (0.12%) Rocky
11 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.060%) CentOS
12 1 (0.060%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.060%) Solaris
12 1 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 307 (18.32%) Agile
2 294 (17.54%) Problem-Solving
3 283 (16.89%) Stakeholder Management
4 255 (15.21%) Continuous Improvement
5 239 (14.26%) Migration
6 234 (13.96%) DevOps
7 230 (13.72%) CI/CD
8 184 (10.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 181 (10.80%) AI
10 152 (9.07%) Cybersecurity
11 147 (8.77%) Roadmaps
12 144 (8.59%) Decision-Making
13 138 (8.23%) Analytics
14 131 (7.82%) Information Security
15 126 (7.52%) Risk Management
16 121 (7.22%) Data Governance
17 119 (7.10%) Validation
18 116 (6.92%) Infrastructure as Code
19 104 (6.21%) Data Modelling
20 99 (5.91%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 227 (13.54%) Python
2 174 (10.38%) SQL
3 123 (7.34%) Java
4 66 (3.94%) JavaScript
5 59 (3.52%) PowerShell
6 45 (2.68%) Bash
7 33 (1.97%) TypeScript
8 28 (1.67%) C#
9 19 (1.13%) Bicep
10 16 (0.95%) Go
11 12 (0.72%) Apex Code
11 12 (0.72%) Kotlin
12 11 (0.66%) Perl
13 10 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (0.48%) Scala
14 8 (0.48%) VB
15 7 (0.42%) C++
15 7 (0.42%) Shell Script
15 7 (0.42%) VB6
16 6 (0.36%) ActionScript
Qualifications
1 246 (14.68%) Security Cleared
2 185 (11.04%) SC Cleared
3 132 (7.88%) Degree
4 74 (4.42%) CISSP
5 60 (3.58%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.27%) CISM
7 36 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
8 35 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
9 32 (1.91%) Azure Certification
9 32 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (1.61%) PMI Certification
11 25 (1.49%) AWS Certification
12 23 (1.37%) PMP
13 19 (1.13%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 19 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
14 17 (1.01%) CCSP
14 17 (1.01%) Master's Degree
15 12 (0.72%) CCNP
16 9 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 9 (0.54%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (14.86%) GDPR
2 98 (5.85%) Data Quality
3 85 (5.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 85 (5.07%) NIST
4 78 (4.65%) QA
5 46 (2.74%) GRC
6 40 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 27 (1.61%) PCI DSS
8 24 (1.43%) PMO
9 19 (1.13%) SLA
9 19 (1.13%) SOC 2
10 18 (1.07%) NCSC
11 12 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
12 10 (0.60%) HIPAA
13 9 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
14 8 (0.48%) WCAG
15 7 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
16 6 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 5 (0.30%) PERC
System Software
1 83 (4.95%) Active Directory
2 71 (4.24%) Docker
3 57 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
5 15 (0.89%) NFS
6 14 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
7 13 (0.78%) Hyper-V
8 12 (0.72%) vSphere
9 8 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (0.42%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.36%) KVM
12 4 (0.24%) Time Sharing Option
12 4 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
13 3 (0.18%) IAG
13 3 (0.18%) XenApp
13 3 (0.18%) XenDesktop
14 2 (0.12%) GPFS
14 2 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 1 (0.060%) iptables
Systems Management
1 122 (7.28%) Kubernetes
2 93 (5.55%) Terraform
3 62 (3.70%) Ansible
4 40 (2.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 39 (2.33%) Grafana
6 30 (1.79%) NetBackup
7 28 (1.67%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.31%) SCCM
8 22 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
9 16 (0.95%) Puppet
10 14 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
11 11 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.42%) Kibana
12 7 (0.42%) Progress Chef
13 6 (0.36%) SnapMirror
14 5 (0.30%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
15 4 (0.24%) PingFederate
15 4 (0.24%) QRadar
15 4 (0.24%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 294 (17.54%) Microsoft
2 77 (4.59%) Oracle
3 76 (4.53%) ServiceNow
4 65 (3.88%) Google
5 58 (3.46%) VMware
6 56 (3.34%) Cisco
7 51 (3.04%) Databricks
8 41 (2.45%) SAP
9 38 (2.27%) Splunk
10 33 (1.97%) Red Hat
11 27 (1.61%) Salesforce
12 23 (1.37%) Veritas
13 20 (1.19%) NetApp
13 20 (1.19%) Zscaler
14 19 (1.13%) Workday
15 16 (0.95%) Commvault
15 16 (0.95%) CyberArk
15 16 (0.95%) F5
16 15 (0.89%) Citrix
17 14 (0.84%) Dell