VPN Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Virtual Private Network (VPN)
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring VPN skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 5 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 66 35
Rank change year-on-year -8 -31 +41
Contract jobs citing VPN 89 35 93
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.98% 2.60% 4.83%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.89% 21.88% 23.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 24 57
10th Percentile £157 £145 £200
25th Percentile £263 £156 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £350 £243 £375
Median % change year-on-year +44.33% -35.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £456 £443 £550
90th Percentile £525 £560 £715
England median daily rate £475 £475 £430
% change year-on-year - +10.47% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 6 2
10th Percentile - £15.22 -
25th Percentile - £15.95 £70.97
Median hourly rate - £18.13 £71.93
Median % change year-on-year - -74.79% +379.53%
75th Percentile - £30.78 £72.90
90th Percentile - £38.49 -
England median hourly rate £16.71 £18.57 £17.00
% change year-on-year -10.02% +9.21% -18.78%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
West Midlands

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 West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 331 160 399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 11.09% 11.90% 20.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 102 237
10th Percentile £206 £158 £204
25th Percentile £306 £277 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £475 £400
Median % change year-on-year -13.16% +18.75% -13.98%
75th Percentile £537 £588 £550
90th Percentile £600 £674 £675
England median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 12 22
10th Percentile £34.20 £12.48 £10.78
25th Percentile £56.50 £15.22 £13.50
Median hourly rate £58.00 £18.13 £21.23
Median % change year-on-year +219.91% -14.58% +8.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £34.06 £23.75
90th Percentile £70.35 £37.03 £28.75
England median hourly rate £42.38 £35.75 £38.00
% change year-on-year +18.53% -5.92% +100.37%

VPN
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

VPN job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

VPN
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing VPN.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing VPN

VPN
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VPN in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 5 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for VPN in the West Midlands

VPN
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing VPN.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing VPN

VPN
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VPN within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 5 April 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
Birmingham +14 46 £400 +5.61% 11
Warwickshire -1 18 £363 - 1
Coventry -14 12 £450 -26.53% 4
Shropshire -48 4 £260 +23.57% 1
Worcestershire -19 3 £175 +20.69% 2
Staffordshire -1 2 £444 -15.48% 3
Solihull -15 1 £270 -16.92% 1
VPN
England

VPN
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 4 (4.49%) SharePoint
2 2 (2.25%) Confluence
3 1 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (6.74%) MS Visio
2 5 (5.62%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (3.37%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (2.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 26 (29.21%) Azure
2 19 (21.35%) AWS
3 15 (16.85%) Microsoft 365
4 9 (10.11%) Entra ID
5 8 (8.99%) GCP
5 8 (8.99%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 6 (6.74%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (5.62%) OneDrive
8 4 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (4.49%) Azure Sentinel
8 4 (4.49%) Power Platform
9 3 (3.37%) AWS Direct Connect
9 3 (3.37%) GitHub
10 2 (2.25%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (2.25%) Amazon ELB
10 2 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (2.25%) Microsoft Copilot
10 2 (2.25%) Route 53
11 1 (1.12%) Amazon Macie
Communications & Networking
1 49 (55.06%) DNS
2 38 (42.70%) BGP
2 38 (42.70%) Firewall
3 30 (33.71%) WAN
4 24 (26.97%) DMZ
4 24 (26.97%) Multicast
5 20 (22.47%) LAN
6 18 (20.22%) Network Security
7 16 (17.98%) IPsec
8 15 (16.85%) DHCP
9 14 (15.73%) MPLS
10 13 (14.61%) SSL
11 12 (13.48%) Wireless
12 10 (11.24%) Cisco ASA
12 10 (11.24%) SD-WAN
13 8 (8.99%) OSPF
13 8 (8.99%) VLAN
14 7 (7.87%) Wireshark
15 6 (6.74%) Cisco Nexus
15 6 (6.74%) Ethereal
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.12%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.12%) Big Data
1 1 (1.12%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.12%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.12%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.12%) Impala
1 1 (1.12%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.12%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.12%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.12%) Power BI
1 1 (1.12%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (11.24%) JIRA
2 3 (3.37%) Chocolatey
3 2 (2.25%) Browser DevTools
3 2 (2.25%) Git
3 2 (2.25%) GitLab
4 1 (1.12%) AppScan
4 1 (1.12%) Burp Suite
4 1 (1.12%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.12%) Metasploit
4 1 (1.12%) MSI
General
1 24 (26.97%) Social Skills
2 13 (14.61%) Banking
2 13 (14.61%) Investment Banking
3 12 (13.48%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (7.87%) Public Sector
5 6 (6.74%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (5.62%) Telecoms
7 4 (4.49%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (4.49%) Legal
8 3 (3.37%) Finance
8 3 (3.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 43 (48.31%) Network Engineer
2 28 (31.46%) Security Engineer
3 27 (30.34%) Network Security Engineer
4 24 (26.97%) Cisco Engineer
4 24 (26.97%) Cisco Network Engineer
4 24 (26.97%) Cisco Security Engineer
4 24 (26.97%) Data Engineer
4 24 (26.97%) Data Network Engineer
5 11 (12.36%) Web Engineer
6 9 (10.11%) IT Support
7 8 (8.99%) Support Engineer
8 7 (7.87%) Analyst
8 7 (7.87%) Architect
9 5 (5.62%) 1st Line Support
9 5 (5.62%) Network Architect
9 5 (5.62%) Support Analyst
9 5 (5.62%) Test Engineer
10 4 (4.49%) Network Security Specialist
10 4 (4.49%) Network Specialist
10 4 (4.49%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (8.99%) SAML
2 6 (6.74%) LDAP
3 3 (3.37%) 802.1X
4 2 (2.25%) RFC 2544
5 1 (1.12%) Azure Blueprints
5 1 (1.12%) JSON
5 1 (1.12%) Kafka
5 1 (1.12%) REST
5 1 (1.12%) RESTful
5 1 (1.12%) SignalR
5 1 (1.12%) Spring
5 1 (1.12%) Spring Boot
5 1 (1.12%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (11.24%) Data Centre
2 7 (7.87%) Enterprise Software
2 7 (7.87%) PKI
3 5 (5.62%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.37%) Security Posture
5 2 (2.25%) Fibre Optics
5 2 (2.25%) NHS
5 2 (2.25%) Operational Technology
5 2 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.12%) Public Cloud
6 1 (1.12%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 27 (30.34%) Windows
2 10 (11.24%) Windows Server
3 7 (7.87%) Windows 10
4 5 (5.62%) Linux
5 4 (4.49%) Mac OS
6 3 (3.37%) CatOS
7 1 (1.12%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (37.08%) Load Balancing
2 14 (15.73%) ITIL
3 13 (14.61%) Cybersecurity
4 11 (12.36%) High Availability
4 11 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
5 10 (11.24%) Customer Service
6 9 (10.11%) Cloud Security
6 9 (10.11%) Zero Trust
7 8 (8.99%) Network Design
8 7 (7.87%) Change Management
9 6 (6.74%) DevOps
9 6 (6.74%) Network Architecture
9 6 (6.74%) Roadmaps
9 6 (6.74%) Service Management
9 6 (6.74%) Vulnerability Remediation
10 5 (5.62%) Business Strategy
10 5 (5.62%) CI/CD
10 5 (5.62%) Cost Optimisation
10 5 (5.62%) Data Protection
10 5 (5.62%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 6 (6.74%) Python
2 5 (5.62%) PowerShell
3 3 (3.37%) Bash
4 2 (2.25%) SQL
5 1 (1.12%) Bicep
5 1 (1.12%) Java
5 1 (1.12%) JavaScript
5 1 (1.12%) Kotlin
5 1 (1.12%) Lisp
5 1 (1.12%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 21 (23.60%) Security Cleared
2 17 (19.10%) SC Cleared
3 11 (12.36%) Cisco Certification
4 7 (7.87%) CCNP
5 6 (6.74%) Azure Certification
6 5 (5.62%) CCIE
6 5 (5.62%) CCNA
6 5 (5.62%) Degree
7 4 (4.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 4 (4.49%) AWS Certification
7 4 (4.49%) CCSP
7 4 (4.49%) CISSP
8 3 (3.37%) CCIE Security
8 3 (3.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (2.25%) ISTQB
9 2 (2.25%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (2.25%) JNCIE
9 2 (2.25%) JNCIP
9 2 (2.25%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.87%) GDPR
2 6 (6.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (6.74%) NIST
3 5 (5.62%) PCI DSS
4 3 (3.37%) NCSC
4 3 (3.37%) SLA
5 1 (1.12%) COBIT
5 1 (1.12%) Data Quality
5 1 (1.12%) GRC
System Software
1 23 (25.84%) Active Directory
2 13 (14.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (11.24%) VMware NSX
4 2 (2.25%) Docker
4 2 (2.25%) Hyper-V
5 1 (1.12%) HDFS
5 1 (1.12%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 11 (12.36%) Microsoft Intune
2 10 (11.24%) Terraform
3 9 (10.11%) Single Sign-On
4 8 (8.99%) Ansible
5 2 (2.25%) SCCM
6 1 (1.12%) CASB
6 1 (1.12%) FortiGate
6 1 (1.12%) Kubernetes
6 1 (1.12%) Nessus
6 1 (1.12%) Packer
6 1 (1.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 49 (55.06%) Cisco
2 37 (41.57%) F5
3 26 (29.21%) Microsoft
4 13 (14.61%) Juniper
4 13 (14.61%) Palo Alto
4 13 (14.61%) VMware
5 9 (10.11%) CheckPoint
5 9 (10.11%) ServiceNow
6 7 (7.87%) Fortinet
6 7 (7.87%) SolarWinds
7 4 (4.49%) Meraki
8 3 (3.37%) Citrix
8 3 (3.37%) Zscaler
9 2 (2.25%) Apple
9 2 (2.25%) Blue Coat
9 2 (2.25%) Forcepoint
9 2 (2.25%) Netskope
10 1 (1.12%) CyberArk
10 1 (1.12%) LogRhythm
10 1 (1.12%) Veracode