VPN Contract Job Trends in the South East

Virtual Private Network (VPN)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring VPN skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 100 73
Rank change year-on-year -34 -27 +49
Contract jobs citing VPN 100 65 111
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.52% 1.83% 2.60%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 13.93% 10.91% 14.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 70 52 56
10th Percentile £300 £273 £223
25th Percentile £386 £394 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% +16.67%
75th Percentile £622 £600 £588
90th Percentile £650 £638 £691
England median daily rate £500 £450 £488
% change year-on-year +11.11% -7.69% +3.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 5 3
10th Percentile £61.74 £48.06 £17.80
25th Percentile £63.50 £71.00 £18.06
Median hourly rate £71.43 £89.63 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.31% +371.74% -16.48%
75th Percentile £96.00 - £20.95
90th Percentile - - £21.82
England median hourly rate £25.75 £58.50 £23.80
% change year-on-year -55.98% +145.80% +10.70%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 718 596 768
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 10.95% 16.78% 17.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 414 429 429
10th Percentile £275 £204 £242
25th Percentile £400 £325 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.87% -2.50% +10.50%
75th Percentile £590 £588 £608
90th Percentile £650 £638 £665
England median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.71% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 20 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.86 £26.40
25th Percentile £31.25 £38.94 £35.00
Median hourly rate £52.43 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.68% -21.43% +16.67%
75th Percentile £65.22 £84.66 £74.38
90th Percentile £96.00 £90.04 £75.00
England median hourly rate £38.72 £34.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +13.88% -40.87% +1.79%

VPN
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

VPN job vacancy trend in the South East

VPN
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing VPN.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing VPN

VPN
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VPN in the South East over the 6 months to 13 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for VPN in the South East

VPN
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing VPN.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing VPN

VPN
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing VPN in the South East over the 6 months to 13 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for VPN in the South East

VPN
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VPN within the South East region over the 6 months to 13 October 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
Thames Valley -1 61 £560 +24.44% 22
Berkshire -9 29 £410 -8.89% 3
Buckinghamshire -3 26 £615 +124.85% 7
Hampshire -37 20 £450 -25.00% 26
Surrey -16 13 £475 -9.52% 22
Oxfordshire -25 6 £450 -25.00% 12
Middlesex - 3 £450 -
West Sussex -26 2 £315 -21.25% 2
Home Counties - 2 £600 -
VPN
England

VPN
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 6 (6.00%) SharePoint
2 4 (4.00%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 5 (5.00%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (2.00%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (2.00%) Houdini
2 2 (2.00%) NUKE
3 1 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (1.00%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.00%) Oracle EBS
1 1 (1.00%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 50 (50.00%) Azure
2 23 (23.00%) Entra ID
3 17 (17.00%) AWS
4 16 (16.00%) Azure Monitor
5 14 (14.00%) Microsoft 365
6 11 (11.00%) Azure Sentinel
7 8 (8.00%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 8 (8.00%) OpenShift
8 6 (6.00%) OneDrive
9 5 (5.00%) GCP
9 5 (5.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 4 (4.00%) AWS Direct Connect
11 3 (3.00%) Azure Key Vault
12 2 (2.00%) Azure AKS
12 2 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
12 2 (2.00%) Google Workspace
13 1 (1.00%) Amazon EC2
13 1 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
13 1 (1.00%) AWS CloudTrail
13 1 (1.00%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 67 (67.00%) Firewall
2 64 (64.00%) DNS
3 48 (48.00%) DHCP
4 37 (37.00%) TCP/IP
5 31 (31.00%) WAN
6 30 (30.00%) LAN
7 29 (29.00%) Network Security
8 23 (23.00%) VLAN
9 20 (20.00%) SSL
10 18 (18.00%) IPsec
11 13 (13.00%) BGP
11 13 (13.00%) Cisco Firepower
12 12 (12.00%) Cisco ASA
12 12 (12.00%) SD-WAN
13 11 (11.00%) Wireless
14 9 (9.00%) Wi-Fi
15 8 (8.00%) BIG-IP
15 8 (8.00%) MPLS
15 8 (8.00%) NGFW
15 8 (8.00%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (2.00%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (1.00%) Git
2 1 (1.00%) GitLab
2 1 (1.00%) Jenkins
General
1 34 (34.00%) Social Skills
2 18 (18.00%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (9.00%) Telecoms
4 6 (6.00%) Aerospace
5 4 (4.00%) Public Sector
6 3 (3.00%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (3.00%) Military
7 2 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.00%) Finance
7 2 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.00%) Legal
8 1 (1.00%) Local Government
8 1 (1.00%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.00%) Retail
Job Titles
1 23 (23.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 22 (22.00%) Senior
3 18 (18.00%) Architect
4 15 (15.00%) Network Engineer
5 10 (10.00%) Azure Engineer
5 10 (10.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 9 (9.00%) Network Architect
7 8 (8.00%) Support Engineer
8 7 (7.00%) IT Engineer
8 7 (7.00%) Security Engineer
8 7 (7.00%) Senior Network Engineer
8 7 (7.00%) Systems Engineer
9 6 (6.00%) Cloud Engineer
9 6 (6.00%) Platform Engineer
10 5 (5.00%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
10 5 (5.00%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
11 4 (4.00%) IT Support
11 4 (4.00%) Network Security Architect
11 4 (4.00%) Security Assurance Coordinator
11 4 (4.00%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (28.00%) Terraform
2 16 (16.00%) ARM Templates
3 15 (15.00%) 802.1X
4 2 (2.00%) ModSecurity
4 2 (2.00%) REST
4 2 (2.00%) Unreal Engine
5 1 (1.00%) gRPC
5 1 (1.00%) NETCONF
5 1 (1.00%) RESTCONF
5 1 (1.00%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 27 (27.00%) Hybrid Cloud
2 19 (19.00%) Data Centre
3 18 (18.00%) Onboarding
4 13 (13.00%) PKI
5 8 (8.00%) ARM Cortex
5 8 (8.00%) Management Information System
6 7 (7.00%) Cloud Native
7 5 (5.00%) Private Cloud
8 4 (4.00%) Fibre Optics
8 4 (4.00%) iPhone
8 4 (4.00%) Public Cloud
9 3 (3.00%) Blackberry
9 3 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (3.00%) Device Driver
9 3 (3.00%) Digital Signage
9 3 (3.00%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (3.00%) Driving Licence
10 2 (2.00%) Motion Graphics
10 2 (2.00%) Replication
10 2 (2.00%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 53 (53.00%) Windows
2 33 (33.00%) Linux
3 29 (29.00%) Windows Server
4 10 (10.00%) Windows 10
5 2 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (1.00%) Apple iOS
6 1 (1.00%) macOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (33.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 27 (27.00%) ITIL
3 21 (21.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 20 (20.00%) DevOps
5 17 (17.00%) Cybersecurity
5 17 (17.00%) Disaster Recovery
5 17 (17.00%) Platform Engineering
6 16 (16.00%) Infrastructure Monitoring
6 16 (16.00%) Technical Leadership
6 16 (16.00%) Zero Trust
7 15 (15.00%) CI/CD
8 14 (14.00%) Network Virtualisation
8 14 (14.00%) Observability
8 14 (14.00%) Security Operations
9 13 (13.00%) Analytics
9 13 (13.00%) Business Continuity
10 12 (12.00%) RBAC
10 12 (12.00%) Stakeholder Management
10 12 (12.00%) Validation
11 11 (11.00%) Log Analytics
Programming Languages
1 32 (32.00%) PowerShell
2 18 (18.00%) Bash
2 18 (18.00%) Bicep
3 11 (11.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 61 (61.00%) Security Cleared
2 35 (35.00%) DV Cleared
3 30 (30.00%) SC Cleared
4 12 (12.00%) Degree
5 9 (9.00%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (8.00%) Azure Certification
6 8 (8.00%) CCNP
6 8 (8.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (7.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 4 (4.00%) AWS Certification
9 3 (3.00%) CCIE
9 3 (3.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 2 (2.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
11 1 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (1.00%) JNCIE
11 1 (1.00%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (12.00%) NCSC
2 10 (10.00%) JSP 440
3 7 (7.00%) NIST
4 4 (4.00%) RMADS
5 2 (2.00%) NIST 800
5 2 (2.00%) SLA
6 1 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (1.00%) QA
System Software
1 43 (43.00%) Active Directory
2 32 (32.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (12.00%) VMware NSX
4 11 (11.00%) Hyper-V
5 10 (10.00%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (10.00%) vSphere
6 5 (5.00%) Docker
6 5 (5.00%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (3.00%) BitLocker
8 2 (2.00%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (1.00%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 22 (22.00%) Ansible
2 18 (18.00%) Microsoft Intune
3 13 (13.00%) SCCM
4 12 (12.00%) Kubernetes
5 9 (9.00%) Grafana
6 8 (8.00%) Prometheus
7 4 (4.00%) Cisco CUCM
8 3 (3.00%) Istio
8 3 (3.00%) vCenter Server
9 2 (2.00%) FortiGate
10 1 (1.00%) Rancher
10 1 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 58 (58.00%) Microsoft
2 37 (37.00%) VMware
3 31 (31.00%) Cisco
4 23 (23.00%) Palo Alto
5 17 (17.00%) F5
5 17 (17.00%) SolarWinds
6 11 (11.00%) CheckPoint
6 11 (11.00%) Juniper
7 9 (9.00%) CrowdStrike
8 8 (8.00%) Fortinet
8 8 (8.00%) ServiceNow
9 7 (7.00%) Veeam
10 6 (6.00%) Arista
10 6 (6.00%) Red Hat
11 5 (5.00%) BT
11 5 (5.00%) Commvault
11 5 (5.00%) Google
11 5 (5.00%) NetApp
11 5 (5.00%) Xerox
11 5 (5.00%) Zscaler