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 11 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 58 35
Rank change year-on-year -17 -23 +32
Contract jobs citing VPN 84 39 91
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.65% 2.85% 4.76%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.42% 25.83% 24.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 22 53
10th Percentile £156 £145 £192
25th Percentile £215 £149 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £325 £226 £375
Median % change year-on-year +43.96% -39.80% -27.88%
75th Percentile £450 £363 £625
90th Percentile £473 £576 £775
England median daily rate £475 £475 £430
% change year-on-year - +10.47% -8.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £15.22 £70.97
Median hourly rate - £18.13 £71.93
Median % change year-on-year - -74.79% +379.53%
75th Percentile - - £72.90
90th Percentile - £32.44 -
England median hourly rate £12.56 £19.00 £16.86
% change year-on-year -33.89% +12.69% -21.98%

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 318 151 371
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 10.03% 11.02% 19.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 90 218
10th Percentile £204 £145 £200
25th Percentile £308 £263 £302
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £475 £400
Median % change year-on-year -11.58% +18.75% -15.79%
75th Percentile £537 £598 £575
90th Percentile £604 £700 £708
England median daily rate £500 £500 £495
% change year-on-year - +1.01% -5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 13 21
10th Percentile £18.01 £12.50 £10.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £15.13 £13.50
Median hourly rate £58.00 £16.26 £19.95
Median % change year-on-year +256.70% -18.50% +19.10%
75th Percentile £64.75 £24.22 £23.75
90th Percentile £70.23 £34.80 £28.75
England median hourly rate £41.94 £29.66 £40.00
% change year-on-year +41.40% -25.85% +116.22%

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 11 May 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 11 May 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 +15 49 £288 +22.34% 8
Warwickshire -3 16 £350 +59.09% 3
Coventry -13 10 £450 +8.24% 3
Worcestershire -16 3 £175 +20.69% 6
Staffordshire -1 1 £338 - 8
Solihull -17 1 £270 -1.82%
Shropshire -40 1 £119 -43.33% 2
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 8 (9.52%) SharePoint
2 3 (3.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (2.38%) Confluence
Applications
1 7 (8.33%) MS Visio
2 3 (3.57%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 21 (25.00%) Azure
2 18 (21.43%) Microsoft 365
3 13 (15.48%) Entra ID
4 10 (11.90%) AWS
5 6 (7.14%) OneDrive
6 5 (5.95%) Azure Sentinel
7 4 (4.76%) GCP
7 4 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 3 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (3.57%) GitHub
8 3 (3.57%) Power Platform
9 2 (2.38%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (2.38%) Amazon ELB
9 2 (2.38%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.38%) Microsoft Copilot
9 2 (2.38%) Route 53
10 1 (1.19%) AWS CloudTrail
10 1 (1.19%) CloudFront
10 1 (1.19%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 56 (66.67%) DNS
2 37 (44.05%) BGP
3 32 (38.10%) DMZ
3 32 (38.10%) Multicast
4 28 (33.33%) Firewall
5 24 (28.57%) WAN
6 18 (21.43%) LAN
7 15 (17.86%) SSL
8 13 (15.48%) DHCP
8 13 (15.48%) IPsec
8 13 (15.48%) Network Security
9 10 (11.90%) Wireless
10 9 (10.71%) Wireshark
11 8 (9.52%) BIG-IP
11 8 (9.52%) Cisco ASA
11 8 (9.52%) Cisco Nexus
11 8 (9.52%) HTTP
11 8 (9.52%) HTTPS
12 7 (8.33%) Ethereal
13 6 (7.14%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.38%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (1.19%) Apache Hive
2 1 (1.19%) Big Data
2 1 (1.19%) Data Lake
2 1 (1.19%) DocumentDB
2 1 (1.19%) Hadoop
2 1 (1.19%) Impala
2 1 (1.19%) MongoDB
2 1 (1.19%) NoSQL
2 1 (1.19%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.19%) Power BI
2 1 (1.19%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (11.90%) JIRA
2 3 (3.57%) Chocolatey
3 2 (2.38%) Browser DevTools
3 2 (2.38%) GitLab
4 1 (1.19%) AppScan
4 1 (1.19%) Burp Suite
4 1 (1.19%) Git
4 1 (1.19%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.19%) Metasploit
4 1 (1.19%) MSI
General
1 17 (20.24%) Banking
1 17 (20.24%) Investment Banking
1 17 (20.24%) Social Skills
2 9 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (5.95%) Documentation Skills
3 5 (5.95%) Public Sector
3 5 (5.95%) Telecoms
4 3 (3.57%) Finance
5 2 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.19%) Legal
Job Titles
1 51 (60.71%) Network Engineer
2 36 (42.86%) Security Engineer
3 35 (41.67%) Network Security Engineer
4 32 (38.10%) Cisco Engineer
4 32 (38.10%) Cisco Network Engineer
4 32 (38.10%) Cisco Security Engineer
4 32 (38.10%) Data Engineer
4 32 (38.10%) Data Network Engineer
5 15 (17.86%) Web Engineer
6 10 (11.90%) IT Support
7 8 (9.52%) Analyst
8 7 (8.33%) Support Engineer
9 6 (7.14%) IT Analyst
10 5 (5.95%) Test Engineer
11 4 (4.76%) IT Engineer
11 4 (4.76%) IT Support Analyst
11 4 (4.76%) Support Analyst
12 3 (3.57%) 1st Line Support
12 3 (3.57%) Lead
12 3 (3.57%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (11.90%) SAML
2 8 (9.52%) LDAP
3 3 (3.57%) 802.1X
4 2 (2.38%) RFC 2544
5 1 (1.19%) JSON
5 1 (1.19%) Kafka
5 1 (1.19%) REST
5 1 (1.19%) RESTful
5 1 (1.19%) SignalR
5 1 (1.19%) Spring
5 1 (1.19%) Spring Boot
5 1 (1.19%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.33%) Enterprise Software
1 7 (8.33%) Onboarding
2 5 (5.95%) Data Centre
3 2 (2.38%) Fibre Optics
3 2 (2.38%) Operational Technology
3 2 (2.38%) PKI
3 2 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (1.19%) Public Cloud
4 1 (1.19%) Replication
4 1 (1.19%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 23 (27.38%) Windows
2 9 (10.71%) Windows 10
3 6 (7.14%) Windows Server
4 5 (5.95%) Linux
5 3 (3.57%) CatOS
5 3 (3.57%) Mac OS
6 1 (1.19%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (41.67%) Load Balancing
2 11 (13.10%) Cybersecurity
3 9 (10.71%) Customer Service
3 9 (10.71%) Problem-Solving
4 8 (9.52%) High Availability
4 8 (9.52%) ITIL
4 8 (9.52%) ITSM
5 6 (7.14%) Cloud Security
6 5 (5.95%) Change Management
6 5 (5.95%) DevOps
6 5 (5.95%) Service Management
6 5 (5.95%) Zero Trust
7 4 (4.76%) CI/CD
7 4 (4.76%) Network Optimisation
7 4 (4.76%) Network Segmentation
7 4 (4.76%) Performance Metrics
7 4 (4.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 3 (3.57%) Identity Access Management
8 3 (3.57%) Requirements Gathering
8 3 (3.57%) Scenario Testing
Programming Languages
1 2 (2.38%) PowerShell
1 2 (2.38%) Python
1 2 (2.38%) SQL
2 1 (1.19%) Bicep
2 1 (1.19%) Java
2 1 (1.19%) JavaScript
2 1 (1.19%) Kotlin
2 1 (1.19%) Lisp
2 1 (1.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 13 (15.48%) Security Cleared
2 10 (11.90%) SC Cleared
3 8 (9.52%) Cisco Certification
4 5 (5.95%) CCNA
5 4 (4.76%) CCNP
6 2 (2.38%) Azure Certification
6 2 (2.38%) CCIE
6 2 (2.38%) ISTQB
6 2 (2.38%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (1.19%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (1.19%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.19%) CCSP
7 1 (1.19%) CISSP
7 1 (1.19%) Degree
7 1 (1.19%) MCSE
7 1 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.95%) SLA
2 3 (3.57%) GDPR
3 2 (2.38%) NCSC
3 2 (2.38%) NIST
4 1 (1.19%) COBIT
4 1 (1.19%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.19%) GRC
4 1 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.19%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 26 (30.95%) Active Directory
2 9 (10.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (9.52%) VMware NSX
4 2 (2.38%) Docker
4 2 (2.38%) Hyper-V
4 2 (2.38%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (1.19%) HDFS
5 1 (1.19%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 13 (15.48%) Microsoft Intune
2 11 (13.10%) Single Sign-On
3 5 (5.95%) Terraform
4 4 (4.76%) Ansible
5 1 (1.19%) CASB
5 1 (1.19%) Kubernetes
5 1 (1.19%) Nessus
5 1 (1.19%) Packer
5 1 (1.19%) Progress Chef
5 1 (1.19%) SCCM
Vendors
1 49 (58.33%) Cisco
2 43 (51.19%) F5
3 26 (30.95%) Microsoft
4 11 (13.10%) CheckPoint
4 11 (13.10%) Palo Alto
5 10 (11.90%) ServiceNow
5 10 (11.90%) VMware
6 6 (7.14%) Juniper
7 5 (5.95%) SolarWinds
8 3 (3.57%) Citrix
8 3 (3.57%) Fortinet
8 3 (3.57%) Zscaler
9 2 (2.38%) Blue Coat
10 1 (1.19%) Apple
10 1 (1.19%) Aruba
10 1 (1.19%) CyberArk
10 1 (1.19%) HP
10 1 (1.19%) NetApp
10 1 (1.19%) Remedy
10 1 (1.19%) Veeam