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 12 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 79 89
Rank change year-on-year -5 +10 -2
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,641 1,027 956
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.07% 3.12% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.62% 3.44% 2.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 878 511 516
10th Percentile £313 £289 £200
25th Percentile £401 £385 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £613
90th Percentile £700 £675 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +1.72% -2.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 46 50
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.08 -
25th Percentile £16.00 £14.78 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.00 £17.00 £20.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.53% -17.07% -50.05%
75th Percentile £33.75 £27.91 £28.75
90th Percentile £37.25 £34.66 £67.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.27 £15.25 £18.11
% change year-on-year +32.92% -15.79% -41.11%

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 45,292 29,826 33,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.48% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,883 18,657 21,289
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,827 1,696 1,836
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.51 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
% change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 -3 1,401 £500 +2.09% 1,284
UK excluding London +3 884 £473 +1.72% 745
London -12 629 £525 +3.96% 659
Work from Home +13 480 £500 +5.82% 599
North of England +15 324 £475 - 218
South East +10 196 £495 -5.08% 184
Yorkshire -2 172 £475 -5.00% 74
North West +17 142 £475 +7.95% 116
Midlands -8 134 £473 -5.40% 114
Scotland -8 109 £438 -2.78% 53
West Midlands -14 102 £473 -5.40% 84
South West -22 68 £425 +6.25% 85
East of England 0 35 £550 +15.79% 65
East Midlands +10 32 £459 +31.00% 30
Wales -4 18 £413 +39.24% 22
Northern Ireland +6 11 £104 -78.86% 16
North East -54 11 £463 +12.12% 28

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 (3.23%) Confluence
1 53 (3.23%) SharePoint
2 25 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (1.16%) Apache Spark
4 12 (0.73%) Apache
5 6 (0.37%) CMS
5 6 (0.37%) IIS
5 6 (0.37%) SAS
6 5 (0.30%) Tuxedo
7 4 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.18%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.12%) Camunda
9 2 (0.12%) NetWeaver
9 2 (0.12%) nginx
9 2 (0.12%) OpenROAD
9 2 (0.12%) OpenStack
9 2 (0.12%) WordPress
10 1 (0.061%) Moodle
Applications
1 39 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
1 39 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
3 9 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.24%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.24%) UserZoom
6 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.061%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.061%) Maya
7 1 (0.061%) Trello
7 1 (0.061%) Zemax
Business Applications
1 12 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 10 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 6 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.30%) Aladdin
5 5 (0.30%) NEC Housing
6 4 (0.24%) SAP MDG
7 3 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.18%) SAP GRC
7 3 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
8 2 (0.12%) ION MarketView
8 2 (0.12%) SAP FI
8 2 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
8 2 (0.12%) Sonata
8 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 1 (0.061%) iTrent
9 1 (0.061%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.061%) SAP CX
9 1 (0.061%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 373 (22.73%) Azure
2 279 (17.00%) AWS
3 143 (8.71%) GCP
4 117 (7.13%) Microsoft 365
5 94 (5.73%) Power Platform
6 84 (5.12%) Entra ID
7 74 (4.51%) SaaS
8 63 (3.84%) GitHub
9 62 (3.78%) Microsoft Purview
10 56 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
11 48 (2.93%) Serverless
12 36 (2.19%) Microsoft Copilot
13 35 (2.13%) OpenShift
14 28 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
15 26 (1.58%) OneDrive
16 25 (1.52%) PowerApps
17 23 (1.40%) Amazon S3
17 23 (1.40%) Power Automate
17 23 (1.40%) Snowflake
18 22 (1.34%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 92 (5.61%) Network Security
2 59 (3.60%) Firewall
3 37 (2.25%) DNS
4 35 (2.13%) VPN
5 28 (1.71%) DHCP
6 24 (1.46%) SAN
7 23 (1.40%) TCP/IP
8 20 (1.22%) WAN
9 16 (0.98%) LAN
10 15 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
11 14 (0.85%) NAS
12 13 (0.79%) Cisco IPT
12 13 (0.79%) SSL
13 12 (0.73%) Wireless
14 11 (0.67%) HTTP
15 10 (0.61%) MPLS
16 9 (0.55%) Cisco Nexus
16 9 (0.55%) Intrusion Detection
16 9 (0.55%) VoIP
17 8 (0.49%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (4.45%) Power BI
2 48 (2.93%) Metadata
3 38 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
3 38 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
3 38 (2.32%) SQL Server
4 28 (1.71%) Relational Database
5 24 (1.46%) Data Lake
6 22 (1.34%) NoSQL
7 20 (1.22%) Big Data
8 19 (1.16%) MySQL
9 17 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
10 15 (0.91%) BigQuery
10 15 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 12 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
12 11 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 9 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
13 9 (0.55%) Tableau
14 8 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 7 (0.43%) Ingres
15 7 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 89 (5.42%) JIRA
2 63 (3.84%) Git
2 63 (3.84%) Jenkins
3 33 (2.01%) GitLab
4 11 (0.67%) Maven
5 9 (0.55%) Oracle Forms
6 8 (0.49%) Postman
6 8 (0.49%) SonarQube
7 7 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.37%) Flyway
8 6 (0.37%) Gradle
8 6 (0.37%) Selenium
8 6 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
9 5 (0.30%) Cypress.io
9 5 (0.30%) ERwin
9 5 (0.30%) JUnit
10 4 (0.24%) SpecFlow
11 3 (0.18%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.18%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.18%) Vite
General
1 580 (35.34%) Social Skills
2 360 (21.94%) Finance
3 247 (15.05%) Legal
4 200 (12.19%) Analytical Skills
5 175 (10.66%) Public Sector
6 114 (6.95%) Banking
7 71 (4.33%) Documentation Skills
8 63 (3.84%) Organisational Skills
9 39 (2.38%) Retail
10 37 (2.25%) Local Government
11 35 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
12 31 (1.89%) Law
13 30 (1.83%) Telecoms
14 28 (1.71%) Front Office
15 27 (1.65%) Marketing
16 23 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
17 22 (1.34%) Pharmaceutical
18 21 (1.28%) Billing
18 21 (1.28%) Police
19 15 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 243 (14.81%) Architect
2 152 (9.26%) Analyst
3 139 (8.47%) Lead
4 123 (7.50%) Developer
5 122 (7.43%) Senior
6 91 (5.55%) Consultant
7 83 (5.06%) Project Manager
8 66 (4.02%) Business Analyst
9 65 (3.96%) Solutions Architect
10 52 (3.17%) Security Architect
11 43 (2.62%) Security Engineer
12 41 (2.50%) Data Engineer
13 39 (2.38%) Administrator
14 33 (2.01%) Java Developer
14 33 (2.01%) Support Engineer
15 32 (1.95%) Network Engineer
16 30 (1.83%) Technical Architect
17 29 (1.77%) Data Analyst
18 28 (1.71%) IT Support
19 24 (1.46%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (5.24%) REST
2 41 (2.50%) React
3 35 (2.13%) Spring
4 34 (2.07%) JSON
4 34 (2.07%) Middleware
5 32 (1.95%) Kafka
6 31 (1.89%) CSS
6 31 (1.89%) Spring Boot
7 29 (1.77%) HTML
8 28 (1.71%) OAuth
9 26 (1.58%) RESTful
10 24 (1.46%) .NET
11 19 (1.16%) Node.js
12 17 (1.04%) OpenID
13 15 (0.91%) CSS3
13 15 (0.91%) GraphQL
13 15 (0.91%) HTML5
13 15 (0.91%) OAuth2
14 13 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
14 13 (0.79%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 723 (44.06%) Data Protection Act
2 91 (5.55%) Cloud Native
3 89 (5.42%) Product Ownership
4 73 (4.45%) Management Information System
4 73 (4.45%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.11%) Data Centre
6 46 (2.80%) Distributed Systems
7 42 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 42 (2.56%) Virtual Team
8 39 (2.38%) Security Posture
9 28 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
10 24 (1.46%) NHS
10 24 (1.46%) Operational Technology
11 23 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
11 23 (1.40%) Replication
12 22 (1.34%) Hybrid Cloud
13 21 (1.28%) Mobile App
14 20 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
15 19 (1.16%) AI Agents
15 19 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 128 (7.80%) Windows
2 83 (5.06%) Linux
3 31 (1.89%) Android
3 31 (1.89%) Apple iOS
4 29 (1.77%) Unix
5 28 (1.71%) Windows Server
6 23 (1.40%) Mac OS
7 20 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.85%) Windows 10
9 11 (0.67%) VMS
10 7 (0.43%) zOS
11 4 (0.24%) CoreOS
11 4 (0.24%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.18%) Solaris
13 2 (0.12%) AIX
13 2 (0.12%) HPUX
13 2 (0.12%) Rocky
13 2 (0.12%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 313 (19.07%) Stakeholder Management
2 306 (18.65%) Agile
3 294 (17.92%) Problem-Solving
4 260 (15.84%) Continuous Improvement
5 237 (14.44%) DevOps
6 230 (14.02%) CI/CD
7 216 (13.16%) Migration
8 215 (13.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 204 (12.43%) AI
10 171 (10.42%) Cybersecurity
11 156 (9.51%) Analytics
12 153 (9.32%) Data Governance
13 152 (9.26%) Roadmaps
14 150 (9.14%) Decision-Making
15 132 (8.04%) Risk Management
16 122 (7.43%) Information Security
17 117 (7.13%) Data Modelling
18 115 (7.01%) Validation
19 114 (6.95%) Infrastructure as Code
20 102 (6.22%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 211 (12.86%) Python
2 165 (10.05%) SQL
3 107 (6.52%) Java
4 60 (3.66%) PowerShell
5 55 (3.35%) JavaScript
6 43 (2.62%) Bash
7 26 (1.58%) TypeScript
8 22 (1.34%) C#
9 17 (1.04%) Go
10 14 (0.85%) Kotlin
11 13 (0.79%) Apex Code
11 13 (0.79%) Bicep
11 13 (0.79%) Perl
12 11 (0.67%) C++
13 8 (0.49%) Scala
13 8 (0.49%) VB
14 7 (0.43%) C
14 7 (0.43%) VB6
15 6 (0.37%) Groovy
15 6 (0.37%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 247 (15.05%) Security Cleared
2 188 (11.46%) SC Cleared
3 114 (6.95%) Degree
4 82 (5.00%) CISSP
5 57 (3.47%) DV Cleared
6 50 (3.05%) CISM
7 33 (2.01%) Azure Certification
7 33 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 31 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
8 31 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
9 30 (1.83%) PMI Certification
10 27 (1.65%) PMP
11 19 (1.16%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 13 (0.79%) CCSP
13 13 (0.79%) Master's Degree
14 11 (0.67%) CCNP
15 10 (0.61%) CISA
16 9 (0.55%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (15.17%) GDPR
2 99 (6.03%) Data Quality
3 91 (5.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 79 (4.81%) NIST
5 75 (4.57%) QA
6 45 (2.74%) GRC
7 41 (2.50%) Accessibility
8 25 (1.52%) PMO
9 23 (1.40%) PCI DSS
10 21 (1.28%) SLA
11 19 (1.16%) NCSC
12 14 (0.85%) SOC 2
13 13 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 12 (0.73%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
15 11 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
15 11 (0.67%) PERC
15 11 (0.67%) WCAG
16 9 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
17 8 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 92 (5.61%) Active Directory
2 62 (3.78%) Docker
3 54 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
5 13 (0.79%) NFS
6 11 (0.67%) Hyper-V
6 11 (0.67%) vSphere
7 9 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (0.43%) VMware NSX
9 6 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.24%) KVM
10 4 (0.24%) Time Sharing Option
11 3 (0.18%) XenApp
11 3 (0.18%) XenDesktop
12 2 (0.12%) Firmware
12 2 (0.12%) GPFS
12 2 (0.12%) IAG
12 2 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.12%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 110 (6.70%) Kubernetes
2 87 (5.30%) Terraform
3 54 (3.29%) Ansible
4 42 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 31 (1.89%) Grafana
6 26 (1.58%) NetBackup
7 23 (1.40%) SCCM
8 19 (1.16%) Prometheus
9 18 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
10 17 (1.04%) Puppet
11 13 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.61%) Progress Chef
13 8 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.43%) Kibana
15 5 (0.30%) CA Single Sign-On
15 5 (0.30%) QRadar
16 4 (0.24%) Istio
16 4 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.24%) PingFederate
16 4 (0.24%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 314 (19.13%) Microsoft
2 84 (5.12%) ServiceNow
3 73 (4.45%) Oracle
4 65 (3.96%) Google
5 56 (3.41%) Cisco
6 55 (3.35%) VMware
7 51 (3.11%) Databricks
8 38 (2.32%) SAP
9 35 (2.13%) Splunk
10 30 (1.83%) Red Hat
11 29 (1.77%) Salesforce
12 25 (1.52%) Workday
13 24 (1.46%) Zscaler
14 23 (1.40%) CyberArk
14 23 (1.40%) NetApp
15 19 (1.16%) Veritas
16 17 (1.04%) Citrix
16 17 (1.04%) F5
17 16 (0.98%) IBM
18 15 (0.91%) Dell