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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 95 81
Rank change year-on-year +21 -14 +21
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,495 769 1,100
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.26% 2.63% 2.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.82% 2.90% 2.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 817 400 617
10th Percentile £300 £263 £223
25th Percentile £400 £373 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £465
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.10% -2.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 29 108
10th Percentile £15.72 £18.05 £12.43
25th Percentile £16.73 £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 £25.50 £33.40 £27.13
90th Percentile £58.00 £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 39,137 26,475 37,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.32% 90.62% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,793 17,183 24,611
10th Percentile £315 £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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.05% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,000 2,387
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.28 £70.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £29.23 £33.07
% change year-on-year +25.59% -11.60% -7.64%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +32 1,283 £500 - 369
UK excluding London +24 810 £450 -5.26% 290
London +30 593 £525 - 130
Work from Home +27 387 £500 - 149
North of England 0 252 £478 +0.53% 83
South East +29 192 £498 -2.40% 76
Yorkshire -6 146 £487 -7.24% 26
Scotland +12 118 £405 -13.28% 13
Midlands -7 117 £450 -10.00% 53
North West +15 98 £488 +7.14% 52
West Midlands -25 73 £500 -3.61% 26
South West +13 67 £425 +6.25% 30
East of England -4 48 £463 -11.90% 33
East Midlands -1 44 £438 +6.06% 27
Wales +1 16 £375 -11.76% 5
North East -25 9 £400 -11.11% 5
Northern Ireland +1 4 £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 55 (3.68%) Confluence
2 35 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 22 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.54%) Apache
4 8 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (0.54%) Apache Spark
5 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 4 (0.27%) CMS
7 3 (0.20%) Drupal
7 3 (0.20%) Ethereum
7 3 (0.20%) Hyperledger
7 3 (0.20%) nginx
8 2 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.13%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
8 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
8 2 (0.13%) SAS
8 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.067%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 55 (3.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
4 8 (0.54%) 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%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.067%) Sketch
8 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 12 (0.80%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
5 5 (0.33%) NEC Housing
5 5 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 5 (0.33%) 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%) 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
9 1 (0.067%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 304 (20.33%) Azure
2 242 (16.19%) AWS
3 135 (9.03%) GCP
4 83 (5.55%) Power Platform
5 82 (5.48%) Microsoft 365
6 78 (5.22%) Entra ID
7 65 (4.35%) GitHub
8 56 (3.75%) SaaS
9 47 (3.14%) Microsoft Purview
9 47 (3.14%) Serverless
10 41 (2.74%) OpenShift
11 38 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
12 31 (2.07%) AWS Lambda
13 29 (1.94%) Snowflake
14 28 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (1.74%) Amazon S3
16 24 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (1.40%) Microsoft Copilot
17 21 (1.40%) PaaS
18 20 (1.34%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 54 (3.61%) Network Security
2 39 (2.61%) Firewall
3 38 (2.54%) SAN
4 25 (1.67%) VPN
5 23 (1.54%) NAS
6 21 (1.40%) WAN
7 19 (1.27%) DNS
7 19 (1.27%) LAN
7 19 (1.27%) MPLS
8 15 (1.00%) Cisco IPT
9 13 (0.87%) TCP/IP
10 11 (0.74%) DHCP
10 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
10 11 (0.74%) SD-WAN
10 11 (0.74%) VLAN
10 11 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.60%) BGP
11 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
11 9 (0.60%) Wireless
12 8 (0.54%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (4.88%) Power BI
2 37 (2.47%) Metadata
2 37 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (2.27%) SQL Server
4 31 (2.07%) MySQL
5 30 (2.01%) Data Warehouse
6 26 (1.74%) Relational Database
7 18 (1.20%) DynamoDB
7 18 (1.20%) NoSQL
8 17 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
8 17 (1.14%) Data Lake
8 17 (1.14%) MongoDB
9 15 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
10 13 (0.87%) Big Data
10 13 (0.87%) Tableau
11 12 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 10 (0.67%) BigQuery
12 10 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 9 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
14 8 (0.54%) Redis
Development Applications
1 87 (5.82%) JIRA
2 62 (4.15%) Git
2 62 (4.15%) Jenkins
3 38 (2.54%) GitLab
4 12 (0.80%) SpecFlow
5 10 (0.67%) JUnit
6 9 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (0.47%) Maven
8 6 (0.40%) NUnit
9 5 (0.33%) Flyway
9 5 (0.33%) Gradle
9 5 (0.33%) Postman
9 5 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.27%) Cypress.io
10 4 (0.27%) Liquibase
11 3 (0.20%) IntelliJ
11 3 (0.20%) Selenium
11 3 (0.20%) TestNG
11 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 456 (30.50%) Social Skills
2 342 (22.88%) Finance
3 190 (12.71%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (11.77%) Legal
5 139 (9.30%) Public Sector
6 122 (8.16%) Banking
7 66 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
8 55 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
9 41 (2.74%) Telecoms
10 35 (2.34%) Marketing
11 30 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.94%) Presentation Skills
13 28 (1.87%) Front Office
14 27 (1.81%) Law
15 26 (1.74%) Local Government
16 22 (1.47%) Retail
17 19 (1.27%) Police
18 13 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 12 (0.80%) Manufacturing
20 11 (0.74%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 191 (12.78%) Architect
2 157 (10.50%) Analyst
3 125 (8.36%) Developer
4 115 (7.69%) Lead
5 103 (6.89%) Senior
6 92 (6.15%) Consultant
7 69 (4.62%) Business Analyst
7 69 (4.62%) Project Manager
8 55 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
9 40 (2.68%) Java Developer
10 38 (2.54%) Security Architect
11 37 (2.47%) Security Engineer
12 34 (2.27%) Administrator
12 34 (2.27%) Data Engineer
13 33 (2.21%) Network Engineer
14 27 (1.81%) Data Analyst
14 27 (1.81%) Technical Architect
15 26 (1.74%) Data Protection Officer
16 21 (1.40%) Python Developer
16 21 (1.40%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.41%) REST
2 60 (4.01%) React
3 43 (2.88%) Spring
4 38 (2.54%) Spring Boot
5 37 (2.47%) .NET
6 31 (2.07%) Node.js
7 30 (2.01%) Kafka
8 29 (1.94%) Middleware
9 27 (1.81%) HTML
9 27 (1.81%) RESTful
10 25 (1.67%) OAuth
11 23 (1.54%) CSS
11 23 (1.54%) Jest
12 18 (1.20%) HTML5
12 18 (1.20%) Redux
13 17 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
13 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
14 16 (1.07%) CSS3
14 16 (1.07%) Playwright
15 15 (1.00%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 698 (46.69%) Data Protection Act
2 84 (5.62%) Cloud Native
3 67 (4.48%) Product Ownership
4 63 (4.21%) Onboarding
5 53 (3.55%) Management Information System
6 32 (2.14%) NHS
7 31 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
7 31 (2.07%) Security Posture
8 30 (2.01%) Replication
9 29 (1.94%) Hybrid Cloud
9 29 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
10 28 (1.87%) Data Centre
11 23 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
12 21 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 21 (1.40%) Freedom of Information
13 18 (1.20%) Virtual Team
14 17 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
14 17 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
15 16 (1.07%) Data Structures
16 15 (1.00%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 98 (6.56%) Windows
2 71 (4.75%) Linux
3 22 (1.47%) Unix
4 19 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (1.27%) Windows Server
5 15 (1.00%) VMS
6 13 (0.87%) Android
6 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
6 13 (0.87%) Windows 10
7 12 (0.80%) Apple iOS
8 9 (0.60%) zOS
9 7 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (0.40%) CoreOS
11 5 (0.33%) Solaris
12 4 (0.27%) AIX
13 2 (0.13%) Rocky
13 2 (0.13%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.067%) CentOS
14 1 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 256 (17.12%) Problem-Solving
2 252 (16.86%) Agile
3 250 (16.72%) Stakeholder Management
4 229 (15.32%) Migration
5 200 (13.38%) CI/CD
6 198 (13.24%) DevOps
7 190 (12.71%) Continuous Improvement
8 145 (9.70%) Analytics
8 145 (9.70%) Cybersecurity
9 138 (9.23%) Roadmaps
9 138 (9.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 135 (9.03%) AI
11 130 (8.70%) Risk Management
12 119 (7.96%) Decision-Making
13 111 (7.42%) Information Security
14 110 (7.36%) Data Governance
15 100 (6.69%) Infrastructure as Code
16 99 (6.62%) Project Management
17 94 (6.29%) Business Intelligence
18 93 (6.22%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 214 (14.31%) Python
2 187 (12.51%) SQL
3 126 (8.43%) Java
4 69 (4.62%) JavaScript
5 58 (3.88%) PowerShell
6 51 (3.41%) C#
7 39 (2.61%) TypeScript
8 38 (2.54%) Bash
9 18 (1.20%) Bicep
10 12 (0.80%) 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
14 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
15 5 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 5 (0.33%) Groovy
15 5 (0.33%) R
16 4 (0.27%) Go
Qualifications
1 206 (13.78%) Security Cleared
2 149 (9.97%) SC Cleared
3 127 (8.49%) Degree
4 63 (4.21%) CISSP
5 52 (3.48%) DV Cleared
6 36 (2.41%) CISM
7 33 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.94%) Azure Certification
9 26 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.74%) PMI Certification
10 25 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
11 24 (1.61%) AWS Certification
11 24 (1.61%) PMP
12 23 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
13 21 (1.40%) Master's Degree
14 17 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 14 (0.94%) CCSP
16 12 (0.80%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.67%) CCNP
18 9 (0.60%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 277 (18.53%) GDPR
2 102 (6.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 99 (6.62%) NIST
4 72 (4.82%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.35%) QA
6 33 (2.21%) GRC
7 32 (2.14%) PCI DSS
8 28 (1.87%) Accessibility
9 25 (1.67%) PMO
10 24 (1.61%) SLA
11 17 (1.14%) NCSC
11 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
12 14 (0.94%) Disclosure Scotland
13 12 (0.80%) PERC
14 10 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 9 (0.60%) NIST 800
16 8 (0.54%) HIPAA
17 7 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
18 6 (0.40%) COBIT
19 5 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 75 (5.02%) Active Directory
2 73 (4.88%) Docker
3 57 (3.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
5 20 (1.34%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.60%) VMware NSX
7 9 (0.60%) vSphere
8 6 (0.40%) KVM
9 5 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
10 4 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
10 4 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.20%) IAG
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
1 111 (7.42%) Kubernetes
2 101 (6.76%) Terraform
3 65 (4.35%) Ansible
4 37 (2.47%) Grafana
5 29 (1.94%) Microsoft Intune
6 28 (1.87%) NetBackup
7 24 (1.61%) Prometheus
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%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.33%) Control-M
14 5 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 5 (0.33%) RSA Archer
15 4 (0.27%) Kibana
15 4 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 241 (16.12%) Microsoft
2 74 (4.95%) Oracle
3 69 (4.62%) Google
4 58 (3.88%) VMware
5 49 (3.28%) Databricks
5 49 (3.28%) ServiceNow
6 45 (3.01%) Cisco
7 39 (2.61%) SAP
8 37 (2.47%) Salesforce
9 33 (2.21%) Red Hat
10 25 (1.67%) NetApp
11 22 (1.47%) Citrix
11 22 (1.47%) Veritas
12 21 (1.40%) IBM
13 19 (1.27%) Commvault
13 19 (1.27%) F5
13 19 (1.27%) Splunk
14 16 (1.07%) Adobe
14 16 (1.07%) Veeam
15 14 (0.94%) Informatica