Editorial

‘709%’ surge in GDPR vacancies

With just two months to go until GDPR rules come into force, number of related job ads has massively spiked – with pay on offer coming in at nearly double the average British salary

Posted 27 March 2018 by Gary Flood


The General Data Protection (GDPR) regs, which comes into force on 25th May as part of the update of the UK’s Data Protection Act (1998), seem to have finally come on to the radar of UK firms in both the public and private sectors.

With an unknown horde of organisations still racing to get compliant in time, the number of vacancies for Data Protection Officers – a job that didn’t even exist two years ago – has risen by an astonishing 709%.

But to underline just how far we still may have to go – the number of candidates looking for such jobs is a lot less, rising to 297%.

The figures come from job site Indeed, which claims to be the world’s ‘number one’ job site, with over 200 million unique visitors every month from over 60 different countries.

Data Protection Officers will be an important role for many organisations, acting as gatekeepers for data security and process owners for all the workflows that involve it.

The job requires in-depth knowledge of data protection law and practices – and because such specialists are in high demand, says the jobsite, the average salary it is seeing being offered for such posts is coming in at £47,483 – nearly double the average UK wage of £27,600.