VPN Contracts

Virtual Private Network (VPN)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring VPN skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited VPN over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 132 140 200
Rank change year-on-year +8 +60 +56
Contract jobs citing VPN 632 745 788
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.16% 1.71% 1.32%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 16.90% 13.20% 10.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 422 456 491
10th Percentile £210 £200 £160
25th Percentile £300 £300 £226
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £447 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.23% -0.67% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £569
90th Percentile £625 £825 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £425 £425
% change year-on-year - - +9.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 42 18
10th Percentile £15.80 £12.75 £16.08
25th Percentile £18.13 £13.97 £18.61
Median hourly rate £23.00 £17.00 £21.61
Median % change year-on-year +35.29% -21.33% -1.77%
75th Percentile £24.18 £22.57 £62.00
90th Percentile £38.41 £24.75 £67.06
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £16.00 £21.61
% change year-on-year +34.42% -25.98% +8.05%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 3,739 5,643 7,361
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.79% 12.94% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,297 3,382 4,789
10th Percentile £213 £205 £235
25th Percentile £363 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £519
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.53% +3.70%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 423 478
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.57 £9.80
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.35 £10.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £38.50 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.58% +102.63% -31.84%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.59 £45.88 £18.50
% change year-on-year -46.41% +148.00% -13.95%

VPN
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing VPN as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for VPN in the UK

VPN
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing VPN.

Daily rate trend for VPN in the UK

VPN
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VPN over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for VPN in the UK

VPN
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing VPN.

Hourly rate trend for VPN in the UK

VPN
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing VPN over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for VPN in the UK

VPN
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VPN within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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
England +2 539 £467 +6.80% 446
UK excluding London -11 317 £425 - 348
London +46 248 £500 +11.11% 134
Work from Home +27 177 £500 +5.26% 243
South East +15 88 £500 +25.00% 99
North of England +4 78 £395 -32.77% 82
North West -10 55 £475 -40.63% 36
South West +32 41 £469 +10.29% 47
Midlands -38 37 £243 -35.33% 51
West Midlands -29 36 £243 -35.33% 34
East of England +25 31 £245 -48.42% 43
Scotland +11 22 £419 -4.39% 17
Yorkshire +11 18 £235 -21.67% 40
Wales +10 16 £375 -34.78% 14
Northern Ireland - 7 £148 - 7
North East +3 4 £300 -50.00% 10
East Midlands -7 1 - - 17

VPN
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 58 (9.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 54 (8.54%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.58%) Confluence
4 9 (1.42%) Skype for Business
5 3 (0.47%) CMS
5 3 (0.47%) Exchange Server 2003
5 3 (0.47%) Exchange Server 2007
5 3 (0.47%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (0.47%) Exchange Server 2013
5 3 (0.47%) Office Communications Server
5 3 (0.47%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (0.32%) IBM Notes
7 1 (0.16%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.16%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.16%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
7 1 (0.16%) IIS
Applications
1 81 (12.82%) Microsoft Office
2 20 (3.16%) MS Visio
3 13 (2.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.16%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.16%) Final Cut Pro
6 1 (0.16%) QuarkXPress
Business Applications
1 8 (1.27%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 213 (33.70%) Azure
2 137 (21.68%) AWS
3 124 (19.62%) Microsoft 365
4 49 (7.75%) GCP
5 41 (6.49%) Entra ID
6 29 (4.59%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 28 (4.43%) OneDrive
8 23 (3.64%) Amazon EC2
8 23 (3.64%) Serverless
9 21 (3.32%) AWS CloudFormation
10 20 (3.16%) PaaS
11 19 (3.01%) Azure DevOps
11 19 (3.01%) IaaS
11 19 (3.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 18 (2.85%) Route 53
13 13 (2.06%) SaaS
14 12 (1.90%) Amazon S3
14 12 (1.90%) Cloudflare
14 12 (1.90%) GitHub
15 11 (1.74%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 327 (51.74%) Firewall
2 211 (33.39%) WAN
3 179 (28.32%) DNS
4 167 (26.42%) Network Security
5 152 (24.05%) LAN
6 141 (22.31%) BGP
7 116 (18.35%) OSPF
8 113 (17.88%) MPLS
9 102 (16.14%) TCP/IP
10 94 (14.87%) DHCP
11 79 (12.50%) Wireless
12 69 (10.92%) IPsec
13 68 (10.76%) VLAN
14 58 (9.18%) SD-WAN
15 48 (7.59%) Wi-Fi
16 42 (6.65%) SSL
17 41 (6.49%) Cisco Nexus
18 39 (6.17%) Cisco ASA
19 38 (6.01%) Cisco Firepower
20 32 (5.06%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.11%) Amazon RDS
2 15 (2.37%) Data Lake
3 13 (2.06%) SQL Server
4 9 (1.42%) Big Data
4 9 (1.42%) Elasticsearch
4 9 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (1.11%) Power BI
6 6 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (0.95%) Hadoop
7 4 (0.63%) DynamoDB
7 4 (0.63%) MySQL
7 4 (0.63%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.32%) IDOL
8 2 (0.32%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.16%) Cloudera CDH
9 1 (0.16%) DocumentDB
9 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.16%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 19 (3.01%) JIRA
2 16 (2.53%) Jenkins
3 13 (2.06%) Git
4 8 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
5 7 (1.11%) GitLab
6 2 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.32%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.32%) HP UFT
6 2 (0.32%) LoadRunner
7 1 (0.16%) Maven
7 1 (0.16%) MSI
7 1 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 199 (31.49%) Social Skills
2 79 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (10.28%) Finance
3 65 (10.28%) Public Sector
4 43 (6.80%) Telecoms
5 22 (3.48%) Banking
6 19 (3.01%) Legal
6 19 (3.01%) Marketing
7 17 (2.69%) Manufacturing
8 16 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (2.06%) Electronics
10 10 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
11 9 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.95%) Law
13 4 (0.63%) French Language
13 4 (0.63%) Investment Banking
13 4 (0.63%) Retail
14 3 (0.47%) German Language
14 3 (0.47%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 181 (28.64%) Network Engineer
2 123 (19.46%) Support Engineer
3 80 (12.66%) Architect
4 56 (8.86%) Senior
5 44 (6.96%) Desktop Engineer
6 40 (6.33%) Desktop Support
7 37 (5.85%) IT Support
8 36 (5.70%) 2nd Line Support
8 36 (5.70%) Desktop Support Engineer
9 33 (5.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 32 (5.06%) IT Engineer
11 30 (4.75%) 2nd Line Engineer
12 28 (4.43%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
12 28 (4.43%) Network Architect
13 25 (3.96%) Analyst
13 25 (3.96%) Network Support
14 24 (3.80%) Consultant
15 23 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
15 23 (3.64%) IT Support Engineer
15 23 (3.64%) Network Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (2.53%) ADO
2 9 (1.42%) 802.1X
2 9 (1.42%) Elastic Stack
3 7 (1.11%) JSON
4 6 (0.95%) REST
5 5 (0.79%) ARM Templates
5 5 (0.79%) Node.js
5 5 (0.79%) XML
6 4 (0.63%) NETCONF
6 4 (0.63%) YAML
7 3 (0.47%) LDAP
7 3 (0.47%) SAML
7 3 (0.47%) SOAP
8 2 (0.32%) boto
8 2 (0.32%) Flask
8 2 (0.32%) RESTCONF
8 2 (0.32%) RESTful
8 2 (0.32%) Symfony
8 2 (0.32%) Web Services
8 2 (0.32%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 68 (10.76%) Data Centre
2 47 (7.44%) PKI
3 33 (5.22%) Hybrid Cloud
3 33 (5.22%) Self-Motivation
4 20 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 19 (3.01%) Anti-Spyware
5 19 (3.01%) Video Conferencing
6 18 (2.85%) Public Cloud
7 16 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
8 15 (2.37%) Security Posture
9 14 (2.22%) Cloud Native
9 14 (2.22%) Onboarding
10 13 (2.06%) NHS
11 12 (1.90%) Clustering
12 11 (1.74%) iPad
12 11 (1.74%) iPhone
13 8 (1.27%) Driving Licence
14 7 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
14 7 (1.11%) BYOD
14 7 (1.11%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 227 (35.92%) Windows
2 97 (15.35%) Windows 10
3 75 (11.87%) Linux
4 66 (10.44%) Windows Server
5 28 (4.43%) Unix
6 14 (2.22%) Windows 7
7 13 (2.06%) Windows Server 2003
8 12 (1.90%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (1.74%) Windows Server 2012
10 9 (1.42%) Android
10 9 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 8 (1.27%) Apple iOS
12 7 (1.11%) Mac OS
12 7 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
13 6 (0.95%) Windows Server 2008
13 6 (0.95%) Windows XP
14 5 (0.79%) CentOS
14 5 (0.79%) VMS
14 5 (0.79%) Windows 8
15 4 (0.63%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (21.99%) Problem-Solving
2 125 (19.78%) Migration
3 85 (13.45%) ITIL
4 69 (10.92%) Infrastructure as Code
5 66 (10.44%) Customer Service
6 52 (8.23%) Network Monitoring
7 51 (8.07%) Network Architecture
8 50 (7.91%) CI/CD
8 50 (7.91%) DevOps
9 49 (7.75%) High Availability
10 47 (7.44%) ITSM
11 46 (7.28%) Agile
12 42 (6.65%) Project Management
13 40 (6.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 36 (5.70%) Project Delivery
15 35 (5.54%) Cybersecurity
15 35 (5.54%) Zero Trust
16 34 (5.38%) Network Design
17 33 (5.22%) Computer Science
17 33 (5.22%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 78 (12.34%) Python
2 63 (9.97%) PowerShell
3 19 (3.01%) Bash
3 19 (3.01%) SQL
4 18 (2.85%) Java
5 11 (1.74%) Bicep
5 11 (1.74%) Perl
6 7 (1.11%) Shell Script
7 5 (0.79%) JavaScript
8 4 (0.63%) VB
8 4 (0.63%) VBScript
9 1 (0.16%) C
9 1 (0.16%) Groovy
9 1 (0.16%) Scala
Qualifications
1 170 (26.90%) Security Cleared
2 142 (22.47%) Cisco Certification
3 125 (19.78%) SC Cleared
4 100 (15.82%) Degree
5 97 (15.35%) CCNP
6 60 (9.49%) CCNA
7 35 (5.54%) CCIE
8 30 (4.75%) DV Cleared
8 30 (4.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (4.43%) Azure Certification
10 25 (3.96%) AWS Certification
10 25 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
11 15 (2.37%) ISEB
11 15 (2.37%) ISTQB
11 15 (2.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 15 (2.37%) ITIL Certification
12 14 (2.22%) A+ Certification
12 14 (2.22%) CCSA
13 11 (1.74%) CCSE
13 11 (1.74%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.27%) SLA
2 25 (3.96%) NIST
3 22 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (1.42%) NCSC
5 7 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (1.11%) QA
6 5 (0.79%) GDPR
6 5 (0.79%) JSP 440
6 5 (0.79%) PCI DSS
6 5 (0.79%) RMADS
7 4 (0.63%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.47%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.32%) DICOM
9 2 (0.32%) HL7
10 1 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.16%) GRC
10 1 (0.16%) GxP
System Software
1 160 (25.32%) Active Directory
2 50 (7.91%) VMware Infrastructure
3 39 (6.17%) Docker
4 28 (4.43%) BitLocker
4 28 (4.43%) Hyper-V
5 17 (2.69%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (2.06%) VMware NSX
7 11 (1.74%) Microsoft App-V
7 11 (1.74%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (1.58%) Terminal Services
9 9 (1.42%) Firmware
10 5 (0.79%) vSphere
11 4 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.47%) Brightmail
12 3 (0.47%) ISA Server
13 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 1 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 84 (13.29%) Terraform
2 73 (11.55%) Ansible
3 66 (10.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 57 (9.02%) SCCM
5 47 (7.44%) Kubernetes
6 30 (4.75%) FortiGate
7 19 (3.01%) Puppet
8 14 (2.22%) Nagios
9 13 (2.06%) AppManager
9 13 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (1.74%) Cisco Prime
11 10 (1.58%) Progress Chef
11 10 (1.58%) vCenter Server
11 10 (1.58%) vMotion
12 9 (1.42%) ZABBIX
13 5 (0.79%) Prometheus
14 4 (0.63%) CASB
14 4 (0.63%) Grafana
15 3 (0.47%) AirWatch
15 3 (0.47%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 232 (36.71%) Cisco
2 215 (34.02%) Microsoft
3 117 (18.51%) Palo Alto
4 69 (10.92%) VMware
5 68 (10.76%) Fortinet
6 66 (10.44%) CheckPoint
7 60 (9.49%) Citrix
8 56 (8.86%) Juniper
9 50 (7.91%) ServiceNow
10 43 (6.80%) F5
11 42 (6.65%) SolarWinds
12 34 (5.38%) Google
13 27 (4.27%) Zscaler
14 26 (4.11%) Meraki
15 21 (3.32%) HP
16 20 (3.16%) Infoblox
17 17 (2.69%) Arista
18 15 (2.37%) Ivanti
18 15 (2.37%) McAfee
19 14 (2.22%) Splunk