VPN Contract Job Trends in England

Virtual Private Network (VPN)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring VPN skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 180 140 134
Rank change year-on-year -40 -6 +83
Contract jobs citing VPN 497 539 721
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.58% 1.86% 1.93%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 14.63% 14.59% 13.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 321 315 453
10th Percentile £206 £223 £186
25th Percentile £350 £306 £288
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - +9.20%
75th Percentile £575 £578 £580
90th Percentile £650 £660 £713
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +7.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 9 40
10th Percentile £15.62 £15.22 £15.58
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.63 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.47 £35.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.23% +66.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £83.00 - £32.16
90th Percentile £89.63 £52.75 £65.98
UK median hourly rate £25.47 £23.59 £20.75
% change year-on-year +7.97% +13.69% +3.75%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

VPN falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 3,398 3,694 5,287
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.80% 12.75% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,195 2,173 3,282
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £357 £369 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £681 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 115 322
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.64 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.69 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £34.00 £41.00 £55.70
Median % change year-on-year -17.07% -26.39% +23.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.18
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.24
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -9.33% -31.82% +34.05%

VPN
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing VPN relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

VPN job vacancy trend in England

VPN
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing VPN.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing VPN

VPN
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VPN in England over the 6 months to 19 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for VPN in England

VPN
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing VPN.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing VPN

VPN
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing VPN in England over the 6 months to 19 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for VPN in England

VPN
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VPN within the England region over the 6 months to 19 December 2025. 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
London 0 200 £450 -10.00% 103
Midlands 0 86 £380 +8.57% 84
West Midlands +19 80 £380 +11.76% 57
South East -40 79 £500 -6.98% 157
North of England -79 58 £425 +2.91% 99
North West -49 33 £407 -12.94% 52
East of England -32 29 £475 +72.73% 63
South West -37 29 £494 +7.92% 53
Yorkshire -55 23 £483 +75.45% 43
East Midlands -28 6 £450 +9.09% 25
North East -9 2 £388 -29.55% 5
VPN
UK

VPN
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 58 (11.67%) SharePoint
2 41 (8.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (3.02%) Confluence
4 14 (2.82%) Skype for Business
5 8 (1.61%) Exchange Server 2003
5 8 (1.61%) Exchange Server 2007
5 8 (1.61%) Exchange Server 2010
5 8 (1.61%) Exchange Server 2013
5 8 (1.61%) Office Communications Server
5 8 (1.61%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (0.40%) Apache
6 2 (0.40%) IIS
6 2 (0.40%) nginx
6 2 (0.40%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.20%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.20%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 46 (9.26%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.62%) MS Visio
3 10 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
5 4 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.20%) OmniGraffle
6 1 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.21%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.60%) Maximo
3 2 (0.40%) SystmOne
4 1 (0.20%) Eikon
4 1 (0.20%) Eze OMS
4 1 (0.20%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.20%) RMDS
4 1 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 167 (33.60%) Azure
2 131 (26.36%) AWS
3 94 (18.91%) Microsoft 365
4 61 (12.27%) Entra ID
5 51 (10.26%) GCP
6 47 (9.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 34 (6.84%) Amazon EC2
7 34 (6.84%) Amazon S3
7 34 (6.84%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 31 (6.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 27 (5.43%) GitHub
10 25 (5.03%) Amazon ELB
11 20 (4.02%) Azure Monitor
12 18 (3.62%) Azure Sentinel
12 18 (3.62%) IaaS
12 18 (3.62%) Serverless
13 17 (3.42%) Azure DevOps
14 15 (3.02%) AWS Direct Connect
15 14 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
15 14 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 270 (54.33%) Firewall
2 176 (35.41%) WAN
3 167 (33.60%) DNS
4 116 (23.34%) TCP/IP
5 115 (23.14%) Network Security
6 108 (21.73%) LAN
7 97 (19.52%) BGP
8 93 (18.71%) DHCP
9 66 (13.28%) SD-WAN
10 65 (13.08%) SSL
11 63 (12.68%) OSPF
12 60 (12.07%) MPLS
13 58 (11.67%) Wireless
14 57 (11.47%) IPsec
15 52 (10.46%) VLAN
16 44 (8.85%) Wi-Fi
17 21 (4.23%) Cisco ASA
17 21 (4.23%) WLAN
18 18 (3.62%) Cisco Nexus
18 18 (3.62%) EIGRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.21%) Amazon RDS
2 6 (1.21%) Data Lake
2 6 (1.21%) SQL Server
3 5 (1.01%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.60%) Big Data
4 3 (0.60%) DocumentDB
4 3 (0.60%) Hadoop
4 3 (0.60%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.40%) Amazon QuickSight
5 2 (0.40%) Apache Hive
5 2 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.40%) Impala
5 2 (0.40%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.40%) Power BI
5 2 (0.40%) Redis
6 1 (0.20%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (0.20%) Electronic Patient Records
6 1 (0.20%) MySQL
6 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 40 (8.05%) GitLab
2 38 (7.65%) Jenkins
3 34 (6.84%) Git
4 23 (4.63%) JIRA
5 4 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.40%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.40%) Metasploit
6 2 (0.40%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.20%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.20%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.20%) Maven
7 1 (0.20%) MSI
7 1 (0.20%) Octopus Deploy
7 1 (0.20%) Postman
7 1 (0.20%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.20%) Subversion
7 1 (0.20%) Travis CI
General
1 168 (33.80%) Social Skills
2 69 (13.88%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (13.08%) Public Sector
4 39 (7.85%) Finance
5 30 (6.04%) Telecoms
6 21 (4.23%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (3.22%) Banking
7 16 (3.22%) Legal
8 14 (2.82%) Organisational Skills
9 11 (2.21%) Retail
10 10 (2.01%) Law
11 8 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.21%) Manufacturing
12 6 (1.21%) Marketing
12 6 (1.21%) Military
12 6 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (1.01%) Electronics
13 5 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (0.80%) Aerospace
14 4 (0.80%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 103 (20.72%) Network Engineer
2 76 (15.29%) Architect
3 67 (13.48%) Support Engineer
4 59 (11.87%) Senior
5 43 (8.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 37 (7.44%) Network Architect
7 36 (7.24%) Security Engineer
8 34 (6.84%) IT Support
9 31 (6.24%) Analyst
10 28 (5.63%) DevOps Engineer
11 23 (4.63%) 2nd Line Support
11 23 (4.63%) 3rd Line Engineer
12 19 (3.82%) Azure Engineer
12 19 (3.82%) IT Engineer
12 19 (3.82%) Support Analyst
13 18 (3.62%) Desktop Support
14 17 (3.42%) 3rd Line Support
14 17 (3.42%) Cloud Engineer
14 17 (3.42%) Consultant
14 17 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (3.22%) 802.1X
2 10 (2.01%) SAML
3 9 (1.81%) ARM Templates
3 9 (1.81%) JSON
4 7 (1.41%) LDAP
5 6 (1.21%) YAML
6 4 (0.80%) REST
6 4 (0.80%) VML
7 3 (0.60%) Node.js
7 3 (0.60%) React
7 3 (0.60%) RESTful
7 3 (0.60%) XML
8 2 (0.40%) Azure Blueprints
8 2 (0.40%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.40%) Jinja
8 2 (0.40%) Kafka
8 2 (0.40%) OAuth
8 2 (0.40%) OAuth2
8 2 (0.40%) SignalR
8 2 (0.40%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 74 (14.89%) Data Centre
2 34 (6.84%) PKI
3 31 (6.24%) Hybrid Cloud
4 18 (3.62%) Onboarding
4 18 (3.62%) Self-Motivation
5 15 (3.02%) Cloud Native
6 13 (2.62%) Replication
7 12 (2.41%) Public Cloud
7 12 (2.41%) Security Posture
8 10 (2.01%) Video Conferencing
9 9 (1.81%) NHS
10 8 (1.61%) iPhone
11 7 (1.41%) iPad
11 7 (1.41%) Operational Technology
11 7 (1.41%) SCADA
11 7 (1.41%) Virtual Team
12 6 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
12 6 (1.21%) Management Information System
13 5 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
13 5 (1.01%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 158 (31.79%) Windows
2 65 (13.08%) Windows 10
3 45 (9.05%) Windows Server
4 32 (6.44%) Linux
5 16 (3.22%) Windows Server 2016
6 15 (3.02%) Mac OS
7 9 (1.81%) VMS
7 9 (1.81%) Windows Server 2003
7 9 (1.81%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (1.21%) Windows Server 2012
9 5 (1.01%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.80%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.60%) Android
12 2 (0.40%) CatOS
12 2 (0.40%) CentOS
12 2 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 1 (0.20%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.20%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.20%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (21.33%) Problem-Solving
2 101 (20.32%) ITIL
3 85 (17.10%) Infrastructure as Code
4 78 (15.69%) DevOps
5 70 (14.08%) High Availability
6 64 (12.88%) CI/CD
7 60 (12.07%) Migration
8 56 (11.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 50 (10.06%) Load Balancing
10 47 (9.46%) Cloud Security
10 47 (9.46%) Incident Response
11 46 (9.26%) Customer Service
11 46 (9.26%) Network Design
12 45 (9.05%) ITSM
13 44 (8.85%) Cybersecurity
14 43 (8.65%) Change Management
15 41 (8.25%) Zero Trust
16 35 (7.04%) Agile
16 35 (7.04%) Infrastructure Automation
17 34 (6.84%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 77 (15.49%) Python
2 67 (13.48%) PowerShell
3 45 (9.05%) Bash
4 15 (3.02%) Bicep
5 13 (2.62%) SQL
6 6 (1.21%) JavaScript
7 5 (1.01%) Java
7 5 (1.01%) VB
7 5 (1.01%) VBScript
8 3 (0.60%) Go
8 3 (0.60%) Perl
9 2 (0.40%) C#
9 2 (0.40%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.20%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.20%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.20%) Swift
10 1 (0.20%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 176 (35.41%) Security Cleared
2 132 (26.56%) SC Cleared
3 84 (16.90%) Cisco Certification
4 75 (15.09%) CCNP
5 45 (9.05%) Degree
6 32 (6.44%) DV Cleared
7 29 (5.84%) CCIE
7 29 (5.84%) CISSP
8 28 (5.63%) Azure Certification
9 27 (5.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 26 (5.23%) CCNA
11 17 (3.42%) CISM
12 13 (2.62%) ITIL Certification
13 12 (2.41%) JNCIP
14 10 (2.01%) MCP
14 10 (2.01%) Network+ Certification
15 9 (1.81%) AWS Certification
15 9 (1.81%) JNCIE
15 9 (1.81%) JNCIS
16 8 (1.61%) CCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (7.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 32 (6.44%) GDPR
3 29 (5.84%) NIST
4 12 (2.41%) Cyber Essentials
5 9 (1.81%) SLA
6 6 (1.21%) PCI DSS
7 5 (1.01%) NCSC
8 3 (0.60%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.60%) NIST 800
8 3 (0.60%) QA
8 3 (0.60%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.40%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.40%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.20%) GRC
10 1 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.20%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.20%) PMO
System Software
1 133 (26.76%) Active Directory
2 46 (9.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 43 (8.65%) Docker
4 21 (4.23%) Hyper-V
5 18 (3.62%) VMware NSX
6 11 (2.21%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (1.61%) Brightmail
7 8 (1.61%) Firmware
7 8 (1.61%) ISA Server
7 8 (1.61%) vSphere
8 7 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.21%) BitLocker
10 5 (1.01%) Terminal Services
11 3 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.40%) HDFS
13 1 (0.20%) etcd
13 1 (0.20%) KVM
13 1 (0.20%) RHEV
13 1 (0.20%) UAG
13 1 (0.20%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 98 (19.72%) Terraform
2 73 (14.69%) Ansible
3 50 (10.06%) Microsoft Intune
4 34 (6.84%) SCCM
5 26 (5.23%) Kubernetes
6 23 (4.63%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (4.43%) FortiGate
8 9 (1.81%) Grafana
9 8 (1.61%) Microsoft Clustering
10 7 (1.41%) Fluentd
10 7 (1.41%) Prometheus
11 6 (1.21%) Nagios
12 5 (1.01%) Nmap
12 5 (1.01%) QRadar
12 5 (1.01%) vCenter Server
13 4 (0.80%) CA Spectrum
13 4 (0.80%) Puppet
14 3 (0.60%) Iperf
14 3 (0.60%) Progress Chef
14 3 (0.60%) vMotion
Vendors
1 172 (34.61%) Cisco
2 159 (31.99%) Microsoft
3 97 (19.52%) Palo Alto
4 81 (16.30%) Juniper
5 73 (14.69%) CheckPoint
6 65 (13.08%) F5
7 60 (12.07%) VMware
8 57 (11.47%) Fortinet
9 43 (8.65%) ServiceNow
10 37 (7.44%) Meraki
11 31 (6.24%) Zscaler
12 29 (5.84%) Citrix
13 22 (4.43%) SolarWinds
14 15 (3.02%) Aruba
14 15 (3.02%) Splunk
15 11 (2.21%) Blue Coat
16 10 (2.01%) McAfee
16 10 (2.01%) Remedy
17 9 (1.81%) Google
18 8 (1.61%) NetApp