Australian Privacy Jobs Quarterly Report – June 2022

Privacy 108’s analysis of Australian privacy jobs advertised in June 2022 is now available.

Main Findings from our Privacy Jobs Report

Main findings include:

• The number of job ads this quarter was almost the same as last quarter: a total of 154 compared to 155 last quarter. Professional services organisations, including law firms, were the biggest advertisers.
• There was a big increase in advertised positions with Corporates (particularly retail) and Technology / Telecom firms, with a number offering multiple positions. This suggests organisations in these sectors are establishing and building privacy teams. Previously, Government and Banking have been the dominant sectors. This quarter, both sectors dropped out of the top three advertising sectors.
• Health, higher education and not for profit sectors continue to advertise very few positions.
• The increase we saw last quarter in positions for qualified lawyers has continued, with legal counsel roles comprising 33% of all positions advertised. A total of 50 of the 154 roles had ‘counsel’ in their title.
• Despite the requirement for legal qualifications, most job functions are still mainly compliance focussed, with many being in the compliance or risk part of the organisation.
• Notwithstanding the focus on legal qualifications and prior privacy experience, the average salary for advertised positions was around $145k, which is more commensurate with lower middle management rather than senior roles.
• Our estimate of the number of re-advertised positions since August 2021 has risen to 41%. The more difficult roles to fill seem to be experienced privacy lawyers and senior leadership positions. We expect this difficulty will continue as organisations recognise the importance of privacy and more senior leaders are needed.
• There is also growing references to privacy and security requirements including the iapp certifications and the CDPSE from ISACA.

Our Methodoloy:

As part of our ongoing research into the state of the Australian privacy profession, Privacy 108 analyses the privacy job market, comparing on-line job adverts monthly.

Job listings provide a useful snapshot into how both private and public sector organisations value privacy, the resources they are willing to commit to developing and managing privacy programs, and to building their privacy maturity.

A list of all positions with ‘privacy’ and/or ‘data protection’ in the title is compiled from jobs advertised on www.seek.com.au, www.indeed.com.au and Linked In on a selected date each month. These lists are then analysed.

From December 2018 to July 2021 the job surveys were conducted on a quarterly basis only. Commencing in August 2021 we began taking monthly (rather than quarterly) snapshots. This will help us identify, for instance, jobs that are advertised for more than 30 days. Linked In job ads were also only added to the analysis from August 2021.

Data from every month and from all three job advertising platforms we now survey (Linked In, Seek and Indeed) are included in our charts and analysis in this report, with the exception of the quarterly trend charts. In order to continue comparing trends from when we commenced surveying the job market in Dec 2018, these quarterly trend charts are based only on the snapshot numbers for the quarterly months of March, June, September and December.

The full version can be viewed in this report for viewing or download.

Previous reports

March 2022 Quarterly Job Trends

Sarah Nash

Compliance and risk. Sarah has extensive business experience in compliance, internal audit, and policy development.