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 30 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 63 80 43
Rank change year-on-year +17 -37 +61
Contract jobs citing VPN 80 31 69
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.49% 1.88% 3.82%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 23.60% 13.14% 17.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 19 34
10th Percentile £159 £135 £200
25th Percentile £263 £194 £202
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £380 £325 £388
Median % change year-on-year +16.92% -16.13% -8.82%
75th Percentile £438 £449 £563
90th Percentile £535 £535 £617
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 7 1
10th Percentile - £15.22 -
25th Percentile - £16.68 £70.97
Median hourly rate - £18.13 £71.93
Median % change year-on-year - -74.79% -
75th Percentile - £35.00 £72.90
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £25.15 £19.00 £21.25
% change year-on-year +32.37% -10.59% +3.84%

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 339 236 385
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 14.78% 14.29% 21.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 212 134 199
10th Percentile £201 £165 £200
25th Percentile £300 £267 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% - -5.56%
75th Percentile £525 £583 £568
90th Percentile £582 £667 £678
England median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 12 20
10th Percentile - £12.48 £20.90
25th Percentile £18.50 £15.22 £23.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £18.13 £46.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.41% -60.59% +125.77%
75th Percentile £35.00 £35.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £56.00 - £68.88
England median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -2.86% -38.04% +48.66%

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 30 December 2025.

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 30 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
Birmingham +25 40 £375 -18.03% 16
Warwickshire +7 23 £378 +42.45% 3
Coventry -13 5 £400 +148.06% 8
Staffordshire +2 4 £394 -21.25% 13
Shropshire -41 3 £400 +90.48% 9
Solihull 0 2 £363 -14.71%
Worcestershire -25 1 £538 +386.73% 18
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 1 (1.25%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (5.00%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (3.75%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 18 (22.50%) AWS
2 13 (16.25%) Azure
3 10 (12.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 8 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
5 7 (8.75%) GCP
6 5 (6.25%) Amazon EC2
6 5 (6.25%) Amazon ELB
6 5 (6.25%) Amazon S3
6 5 (6.25%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 4 (5.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 3 (3.75%) AWS Direct Connect
9 2 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (2.50%) GitHub
10 1 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (1.25%) Azure Monitor
10 1 (1.25%) Azure Sentinel
10 1 (1.25%) Entra ID
10 1 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (1.25%) OneDrive
10 1 (1.25%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 43 (53.75%) WAN
2 36 (45.00%) DNS
2 36 (45.00%) Firewall
3 35 (43.75%) IPsec
4 30 (37.50%) BGP
5 27 (33.75%) MPLS
6 19 (23.75%) Network Security
7 17 (21.25%) SSL
7 17 (21.25%) Wireless
8 14 (17.50%) DHCP
8 14 (17.50%) TCP/IP
9 13 (16.25%) LAN
10 9 (11.25%) Cisco IPT
10 9 (11.25%) DMVPN
10 9 (11.25%) SD-WAN
11 7 (8.75%) Cisco ASA
12 6 (7.50%) Junos
12 6 (7.50%) VLAN
12 6 (7.50%) WLAN
13 5 (6.25%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.25%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.25%) Big Data
1 1 (1.25%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.25%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.25%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.25%) Impala
1 1 (1.25%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.25%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.25%) Redis
Development Applications
1 6 (7.50%) Git
2 5 (6.25%) Jenkins
3 4 (5.00%) GitLab
3 4 (5.00%) JIRA
General
1 20 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 16 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (16.25%) Public Sector
4 7 (8.75%) Telecoms
5 6 (7.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (6.25%) Legal
7 3 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (2.50%) Banking
8 2 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (2.50%) Investment Banking
9 1 (1.25%) Finance
9 1 (1.25%) Military
9 1 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 22 (27.50%) Network Engineer
2 18 (22.50%) Support Engineer
3 13 (16.25%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 12 (15.00%) 3rd Line Support
4 12 (15.00%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
5 11 (13.75%) Analyst
5 11 (13.75%) Support Analyst
5 11 (13.75%) WAN Engineer
6 10 (12.50%) 2nd Line Engineer
7 9 (11.25%) 2nd Line Support
8 8 (10.00%) 1st Line Support
8 8 (10.00%) Security Engineer
9 7 (8.75%) Architect
9 7 (8.75%) IT Analyst
9 7 (8.75%) IT Support
9 7 (8.75%) IT Support Analyst
9 7 (8.75%) Network Architect
10 6 (7.50%) 1st Line Support Analyst
10 6 (7.50%) Network Security Engineer
11 5 (6.25%) 2nd Line Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (11.25%) 802.1X
2 3 (3.75%) LDAP
2 3 (3.75%) SAML
3 1 (1.25%) Azure Blueprints
3 1 (1.25%) JSON
3 1 (1.25%) Kafka
3 1 (1.25%) REST
3 1 (1.25%) RESTful
3 1 (1.25%) SignalR
3 1 (1.25%) Spring
3 1 (1.25%) Spring Boot
3 1 (1.25%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 23 (28.75%) PKI
2 17 (21.25%) Data Centre
3 9 (11.25%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (6.25%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 3 (3.75%) Security Posture
6 2 (2.50%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (2.50%) NHS
6 2 (2.50%) Onboarding
6 2 (2.50%) Operational Technology
6 2 (2.50%) SCADA
7 1 (1.25%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 15 (18.75%) Windows
2 7 (8.75%) Windows 10
3 5 (6.25%) Windows Server
4 2 (2.50%) CatOS
4 2 (2.50%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (28.75%) Load Balancing
2 20 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
3 18 (22.50%) Network Design
4 16 (20.00%) Change Management
5 15 (18.75%) ITIL
6 12 (15.00%) Customer Service
7 10 (12.50%) Inventory Management
8 9 (11.25%) High Availability
9 8 (10.00%) Mentoring
10 7 (8.75%) Cybersecurity
10 7 (8.75%) Incident Response
10 7 (8.75%) Knowledge Transfer
10 7 (8.75%) Network Architecture
10 7 (8.75%) Zero Trust
11 6 (7.50%) CI/CD
11 6 (7.50%) DevOps
11 6 (7.50%) Mobile Device Management
11 6 (7.50%) Project Delivery
12 5 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
12 5 (6.25%) Performance Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 9 (11.25%) Python
2 7 (8.75%) Bash
3 4 (5.00%) PowerShell
4 1 (1.25%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 43 (53.75%) Security Cleared
2 36 (45.00%) SC Cleared
3 9 (11.25%) CCNP
3 9 (11.25%) Cisco Certification
4 7 (8.75%) CCIE
4 7 (8.75%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (7.50%) MCP
6 5 (6.25%) CISSP
6 5 (6.25%) MCDST
7 4 (5.00%) Azure Certification
7 4 (5.00%) Degree
8 3 (3.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 3 (3.75%) AWS Certification
8 3 (3.75%) CCIE Security
8 3 (3.75%) CCSP
9 2 (2.50%) CCNA
9 2 (2.50%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (2.50%) JNCIE
9 2 (2.50%) JNCIP
10 1 (1.25%) CCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (7.50%) GDPR
2 5 (6.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (5.00%) NIST
3 4 (5.00%) PCI DSS
4 2 (2.50%) SLA
5 1 (1.25%) GRC
5 1 (1.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 14 (17.50%) Active Directory
2 9 (11.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (8.75%) VMware NSX
4 6 (7.50%) Docker
5 2 (2.50%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.25%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 12 (15.00%) Terraform
2 10 (12.50%) Ansible
3 8 (10.00%) SCCM
4 3 (3.75%) FortiGate
4 3 (3.75%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (3.75%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (1.25%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 38 (47.50%) Cisco
2 37 (46.25%) Juniper
3 22 (27.50%) F5
4 19 (23.75%) CheckPoint
4 19 (23.75%) Microsoft
5 16 (20.00%) Palo Alto
6 9 (11.25%) Blue Coat
6 9 (11.25%) VMware
7 8 (10.00%) Fortinet
8 6 (7.50%) ServiceNow
8 6 (7.50%) SolarWinds
9 5 (6.25%) iManage
9 5 (6.25%) Meraki
9 5 (6.25%) Mitel
10 4 (5.00%) Netskope
11 2 (2.50%) Forcepoint
12 1 (1.25%) Apple
12 1 (1.25%) Cloudera
12 1 (1.25%) Infoblox