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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 92 82
Rank change year-on-year +18 -10 +15
Contract jobs citing Data Protection 1,493 787 1,101
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.23% 2.67% 2.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.80% 2.95% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 822 406 617
10th Percentile £300 £263 £225
25th Percentile £400 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £597 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £475 £466
% change year-on-year -4.21% +2.04% -3.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 31 107
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.50 £12.40
25th Percentile £16.35 £18.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £21.02 £27.64 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.95% +41.74% -62.86%
75th Percentile £28.19 £32.95 £27.50
90th Percentile £58.50 £37.00 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £29.12 £19.50
% change year-on-year -28.87% +49.31% -62.86%

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 39,258 26,720 37,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.83% 90.74% 86.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,768 17,301 24,236
10th Percentile £318 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £484 £500
% change year-on-year +0.31% -3.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,351 1,041 2,413
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -14.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.00 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £29.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -17.14% -6.67%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +28 1,282 £500 - 382
UK excluding London +15 806 £455 -4.21% 292
London +22 590 £525 - 150
Work from Home +34 390 £500 +1.63% 183
North of England +2 251 £475 - 71
South East +25 189 £500 -1.91% 72
Yorkshire -11 143 £478 -9.05% 18
Midlands -5 121 £450 -10.00% 45
Scotland +7 117 £411 -11.99% 24
North West +3 100 £489 +9.34% 42
West Midlands -22 76 £500 -3.61% 35
South West +7 64 £425 +6.25% 33
East of England +1 49 £500 -4.76% 36
East Midlands -1 45 £438 +16.67% 10
Wales +5 16 £375 -11.76% 7
North East -23 9 £400 -11.11% 11
Northern Ireland +4 3 £500 +1.63% 8

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 52 (3.48%) Confluence
2 38 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (0.94%) Apache Spark
5 12 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (0.54%) Apache
7 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.27%) CMS
8 4 (0.27%) 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%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.13%) Jupyter
10 2 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
10 2 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 54 (3.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
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
Business Applications
1 13 (0.87%) Aladdin
2 10 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.40%) 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%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.20%) Distributed Ledger
7 3 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.20%) R3 Corda
7 3 (0.20%) ResourceLink
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 Payroll
8 2 (0.13%) Workfront
Cloud Services
1 308 (20.63%) Azure
2 248 (16.61%) AWS
3 137 (9.18%) GCP
4 85 (5.69%) Power Platform
5 84 (5.63%) Microsoft 365
6 79 (5.29%) Entra ID
7 62 (4.15%) GitHub
8 57 (3.82%) SaaS
9 50 (3.35%) Microsoft Purview
10 46 (3.08%) Serverless
11 41 (2.75%) OpenShift
12 38 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
13 34 (2.28%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (2.01%) Amazon S3
14 30 (2.01%) Snowflake
15 28 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (1.67%) Amazon ECS
17 24 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (1.61%) Microsoft Copilot
18 22 (1.47%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 57 (3.82%) Network Security
2 39 (2.61%) Firewall
3 38 (2.55%) SAN
4 28 (1.88%) VPN
5 23 (1.54%) NAS
5 23 (1.54%) WAN
6 19 (1.27%) LAN
6 19 (1.27%) MPLS
7 18 (1.21%) DNS
8 15 (1.00%) Cisco IPT
9 13 (0.87%) TCP/IP
10 12 (0.80%) SD-WAN
10 12 (0.80%) VLAN
11 11 (0.74%) DHCP
11 11 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
11 11 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.60%) BGP
12 9 (0.60%) iSCSI
12 9 (0.60%) Wireless
13 8 (0.54%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (4.89%) Power BI
2 39 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 36 (2.41%) Metadata
4 33 (2.21%) SQL Server
5 29 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (1.88%) MySQL
7 26 (1.74%) Relational Database
8 23 (1.54%) MongoDB
9 22 (1.47%) NoSQL
10 20 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
11 19 (1.27%) Big Data
11 19 (1.27%) DynamoDB
12 17 (1.14%) Data Lake
13 16 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
14 14 (0.94%) Tableau
15 13 (0.87%) Oracle Database
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 83 (5.56%) JIRA
2 61 (4.09%) Jenkins
3 59 (3.95%) Git
4 36 (2.41%) GitLab
5 13 (0.87%) SpecFlow
6 10 (0.67%) JUnit
7 9 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (0.47%) Maven
9 6 (0.40%) NUnit
10 5 (0.33%) Flyway
10 5 (0.33%) Postman
10 5 (0.33%) 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%) Katalon Studio
12 3 (0.20%) Selenium
12 3 (0.20%) TestNG
12 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 444 (29.74%) Social Skills
2 343 (22.97%) Finance
3 189 (12.66%) Analytical Skills
4 176 (11.79%) Legal
5 131 (8.77%) Public Sector
6 121 (8.10%) Banking
7 68 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
8 57 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
9 41 (2.75%) Telecoms
10 34 (2.28%) Marketing
11 31 (2.08%) Influencing Skills
12 29 (1.94%) Front Office
13 27 (1.81%) Local Government
14 26 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
15 25 (1.67%) Law
16 24 (1.61%) Retail
17 19 (1.27%) Police
18 13 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 11 (0.74%) Manufacturing
20 10 (0.67%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 195 (13.06%) Architect
2 157 (10.52%) Analyst
3 127 (8.51%) Developer
4 118 (7.90%) Lead
5 105 (7.03%) Senior
6 93 (6.23%) Consultant
7 72 (4.82%) Business Analyst
8 68 (4.55%) Project Manager
9 56 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
10 42 (2.81%) Java Developer
11 39 (2.61%) Data Engineer
12 38 (2.55%) Security Architect
13 36 (2.41%) Security Engineer
14 35 (2.34%) Network Engineer
15 32 (2.14%) Administrator
16 29 (1.94%) Technical Architect
17 28 (1.88%) Data Analyst
18 25 (1.67%) Data Protection Officer
19 23 (1.54%) Support Engineer
20 21 (1.41%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (4.42%) REST
2 60 (4.02%) React
3 43 (2.88%) Spring
4 38 (2.55%) Spring Boot
5 37 (2.48%) .NET
6 34 (2.28%) HTML
7 31 (2.08%) Kafka
7 31 (2.08%) Node.js
8 30 (2.01%) CSS
8 30 (2.01%) RESTful
9 27 (1.81%) Middleware
10 23 (1.54%) Jest
10 23 (1.54%) OAuth
11 18 (1.21%) HTML5
11 18 (1.21%) Redux
12 17 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
12 17 (1.14%) Playwright
12 17 (1.14%) Spring MVC
13 16 (1.07%) JSON
13 16 (1.07%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 697 (46.68%) Data Protection Act
2 84 (5.63%) Cloud Native
3 72 (4.82%) Product Ownership
4 62 (4.15%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.42%) Management Information System
6 34 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
7 32 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
8 31 (2.08%) Data Centre
8 31 (2.08%) NHS
9 30 (2.01%) Replication
10 29 (1.94%) Security Posture
11 27 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
12 23 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
13 21 (1.41%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 21 (1.41%) Freedom of Information
13 21 (1.41%) Virtual Team
14 17 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
15 15 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
15 15 (1.00%) Mobile App
15 15 (1.00%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 95 (6.36%) Windows
2 70 (4.69%) Linux
3 25 (1.67%) Unix
4 21 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 18 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.94%) Android
7 13 (0.87%) Apple iOS
7 13 (0.87%) Mac OS
7 13 (0.87%) VMS
8 12 (0.80%) 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
1 257 (17.21%) Agile
2 252 (16.88%) Problem-Solving
3 249 (16.68%) Stakeholder Management
4 231 (15.47%) Migration
5 201 (13.46%) CI/CD
6 195 (13.06%) DevOps
7 189 (12.66%) Continuous Improvement
8 143 (9.58%) Analytics
9 136 (9.11%) AI
9 136 (9.11%) Roadmaps
10 134 (8.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 132 (8.84%) Cybersecurity
12 130 (8.71%) Risk Management
13 121 (8.10%) Decision-Making
14 113 (7.57%) Data Governance
15 109 (7.30%) Information Security
16 101 (6.76%) Infrastructure as Code
17 99 (6.63%) Test Automation
18 98 (6.56%) Project Management
19 94 (6.30%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 218 (14.60%) Python
2 190 (12.73%) SQL
3 132 (8.84%) Java
4 77 (5.16%) JavaScript
5 55 (3.68%) PowerShell
6 50 (3.35%) C#
7 41 (2.75%) TypeScript
8 34 (2.28%) Bash
9 15 (1.00%) Bicep
10 12 (0.80%) C++
11 11 (0.74%) Perl
12 10 (0.67%) Shell Script
13 9 (0.60%) PL/SQL
14 8 (0.54%) ActionScript
14 8 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (0.54%) Scala
15 7 (0.47%) R
16 6 (0.40%) ActionScript 2.0
17 5 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 5 (0.33%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 207 (13.86%) Security Cleared
2 150 (10.05%) SC Cleared
3 124 (8.31%) Degree
4 66 (4.42%) CISSP
5 51 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 38 (2.55%) CISM
7 32 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
8 29 (1.94%) Azure Certification
8 29 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 29 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
9 27 (1.81%) PMI Certification
10 25 (1.67%) AWS Certification
10 25 (1.67%) PMP
11 21 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
12 20 (1.34%) Master's Degree
13 19 (1.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 17 (1.14%) CCSP
15 12 (0.80%) CTC Cleared
16 11 (0.74%) CCNP
17 10 (0.67%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 273 (18.29%) GDPR
2 98 (6.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 96 (6.43%) NIST
4 72 (4.82%) Data Quality
5 65 (4.35%) QA
6 35 (2.34%) GRC
7 29 (1.94%) PCI DSS
8 27 (1.81%) Accessibility
9 24 (1.61%) PMO
10 20 (1.34%) SLA
11 17 (1.14%) SOC 2
12 16 (1.07%) NCSC
13 13 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
14 12 (0.80%) PERC
15 9 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
15 9 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 7 (0.47%) HIPAA
17 6 (0.40%) COBIT
17 6 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 6 (0.40%) WCAG
System Software
1 76 (5.09%) Docker
2 71 (4.76%) Active Directory
3 58 (3.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
5 19 (1.27%) NFS
6 13 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.60%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.60%) 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%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.067%) Firmware
13 1 (0.067%) Samba
Systems Management
1 107 (7.17%) Kubernetes
2 99 (6.63%) Terraform
3 59 (3.95%) Ansible
4 42 (2.81%) Grafana
5 30 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (1.81%) NetBackup
7 25 (1.67%) Prometheus
8 22 (1.47%) SCCM
9 19 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.74%) Puppet
11 10 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.47%) SnapMirror
13 6 (0.40%) Kibana
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
15 4 (0.27%) CA Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.27%) PingFederate
Vendors
1 240 (16.08%) Microsoft
2 75 (5.02%) Oracle
3 71 (4.76%) Google
4 59 (3.95%) VMware
5 50 (3.35%) Databricks
6 49 (3.28%) Cisco
6 49 (3.28%) ServiceNow
7 39 (2.61%) SAP
8 36 (2.41%) Salesforce
9 32 (2.14%) Red Hat
10 25 (1.67%) NetApp
11 23 (1.54%) Citrix
11 23 (1.54%) Splunk
12 22 (1.47%) Veritas
13 21 (1.41%) IBM
14 18 (1.21%) F5
15 17 (1.14%) Commvault
16 16 (1.07%) Veeam
17 15 (1.00%) Adobe
18 14 (0.94%) Workday