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 13 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 64 50
Rank change year-on-year +4 -14 +42
Contract jobs citing VPN 94 35 67
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.64% 2.40% 3.56%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.14% 17.41% 17.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 21 33
10th Percentile £150 £145 £192
25th Percentile £200 £163 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £363 £275 £325
Median % change year-on-year +31.82% -15.38% -26.55%
75th Percentile £452 £438 £538
90th Percentile £534 £525 £615
England median daily rate £450 £475 £447
% change year-on-year -5.26% +6.26% +2.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 8 2
10th Percentile - £15.22 -
25th Percentile - £17.40 £70.97
Median hourly rate - £26.57 £71.93
Median % change year-on-year - -63.07% +379.53%
75th Percentile - £35.00 £72.90
90th Percentile - £37.09 -
England median hourly rate £18.94 £35.00 £20.50
% change year-on-year -45.90% +70.73% +2.50%

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 334 201 394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 12.94% 13.76% 20.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 197 116 206
10th Percentile £167 £158 £200
25th Percentile £293 £257 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% +2.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £513 £582 £550
90th Percentile £600 £678 £650
England median daily rate £486 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.80% +5.26% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 14 33
10th Percentile - £13.09 £13.30
25th Percentile £18.50 £15.48 £19.95
Median hourly rate £35.00 £21.18 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.29% -7.93% +6.69%
75th Percentile £59.50 £35.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £65.80 £39.88 £68.50
England median hourly rate £31.44 £32.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -3.26% -31.58% +138.93%

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 13 February 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 13 February 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 +30 51 £400 -12.57% 10
Warwickshire -2 19 £375 +41.51% 2
Coventry -8 9 £450 - 3
Staffordshire +1 4 £394 -21.25% 5
Worcestershire -21 4 £175 +37.02% 6
Shropshire -39 3 £400 +90.48% 1
Solihull -9 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 1 (1.06%) Confluence
Applications
1 5 (5.32%) Microsoft Office
1 5 (5.32%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 22 (23.40%) AWS
2 19 (20.21%) Azure
3 13 (13.83%) Microsoft 365
4 11 (11.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 8 (8.51%) GCP
6 6 (6.38%) Amazon ELB
6 6 (6.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (5.32%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (5.32%) Amazon S3
8 4 (4.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (3.19%) AWS Direct Connect
9 3 (3.19%) Entra ID
9 3 (3.19%) GitHub
10 2 (2.13%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (2.13%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (2.13%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (2.13%) Route 53
11 1 (1.06%) AWS CloudTrail
11 1 (1.06%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 46 (48.94%) DNS
2 42 (44.68%) Firewall
3 37 (39.36%) WAN
4 36 (38.30%) BGP
5 26 (27.66%) IPsec
6 23 (24.47%) MPLS
7 21 (22.34%) Network Security
8 17 (18.09%) DHCP
8 17 (18.09%) LAN
9 14 (14.89%) SSL
9 14 (14.89%) TCP/IP
9 14 (14.89%) Wireless
10 12 (12.77%) DMZ
10 12 (12.77%) Multicast
11 9 (9.57%) Cisco ASA
12 8 (8.51%) OSPF
12 8 (8.51%) SD-WAN
12 8 (8.51%) VLAN
13 6 (6.38%) HTTP
13 6 (6.38%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.06%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.06%) Big Data
1 1 (1.06%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.06%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.06%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.06%) Impala
1 1 (1.06%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.06%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.06%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.06%) Redis
Development Applications
1 8 (8.51%) JIRA
2 6 (6.38%) Git
3 5 (5.32%) GitLab
3 5 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 3 (3.19%) Chocolatey
5 1 (1.06%) AppScan
5 1 (1.06%) Burp Suite
5 1 (1.06%) Metasploit
General
1 30 (31.91%) Social Skills
2 16 (17.02%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (7.45%) Banking
3 7 (7.45%) Investment Banking
3 7 (7.45%) Public Sector
4 6 (6.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 6 (6.38%) Telecoms
5 5 (5.32%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (5.32%) Legal
6 3 (3.19%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.13%) Finance
8 1 (1.06%) Military
8 1 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 32 (34.04%) Network Engineer
2 16 (17.02%) Security Engineer
3 15 (15.96%) Support Engineer
4 14 (14.89%) Network Security Engineer
5 13 (13.83%) Analyst
6 12 (12.77%) Cisco Engineer
6 12 (12.77%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 12 (12.77%) Cisco Security Engineer
6 12 (12.77%) Data Engineer
6 12 (12.77%) Data Network Engineer
6 12 (12.77%) IT Support
7 11 (11.70%) Support Analyst
8 8 (8.51%) 1st Line Support
8 8 (8.51%) 2nd Line Engineer
8 8 (8.51%) 3rd Line Engineer
8 8 (8.51%) 3rd Line Support
8 8 (8.51%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
8 8 (8.51%) Architect
9 7 (7.45%) 2nd Line Support
9 7 (7.45%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.32%) LDAP
1 5 (5.32%) SAML
2 4 (4.26%) 802.1X
3 2 (2.13%) RFC 2544
4 1 (1.06%) Azure Blueprints
4 1 (1.06%) JSON
4 1 (1.06%) Kafka
4 1 (1.06%) REST
4 1 (1.06%) RESTful
4 1 (1.06%) SignalR
4 1 (1.06%) Spring
4 1 (1.06%) Spring Boot
4 1 (1.06%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (17.02%) PKI
2 15 (15.96%) Data Centre
3 7 (7.45%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (5.32%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 4 (4.26%) Onboarding
5 4 (4.26%) Operational Technology
6 3 (3.19%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (3.19%) SCADA
6 3 (3.19%) Security Posture
7 2 (2.13%) Fibre Optics
7 2 (2.13%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (2.13%) NHS
8 1 (1.06%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 26 (27.66%) Windows
2 10 (10.64%) Windows 10
2 10 (10.64%) Windows Server
3 5 (5.32%) Linux
4 3 (3.19%) CatOS
5 2 (2.13%) Mac OS
6 1 (1.06%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (29.79%) Load Balancing
2 19 (20.21%) Problem-Solving
3 18 (19.15%) Customer Service
4 16 (17.02%) ITIL
5 14 (14.89%) High Availability
5 14 (14.89%) Network Design
6 12 (12.77%) Change Management
7 11 (11.70%) Cybersecurity
8 10 (10.64%) Zero Trust
9 8 (8.51%) CI/CD
9 8 (8.51%) Cloud Security
9 8 (8.51%) Incident Response
9 8 (8.51%) Mentoring
10 7 (7.45%) DevOps
10 7 (7.45%) Knowledge Transfer
10 7 (7.45%) Network Architecture
11 6 (6.38%) DevSecOps
11 6 (6.38%) Infrastructure as Code
11 6 (6.38%) Mobile Device Management
11 6 (6.38%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 9 (9.57%) Python
2 7 (7.45%) Bash
3 4 (4.26%) PowerShell
4 1 (1.06%) Bicep
4 1 (1.06%) JavaScript
4 1 (1.06%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 32 (34.04%) Security Cleared
2 26 (27.66%) SC Cleared
3 15 (15.96%) Cisco Certification
4 11 (11.70%) CCNP
5 7 (7.45%) CCIE
5 7 (7.45%) CCNA
5 7 (7.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (6.38%) CISSP
6 6 (6.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 5 (5.32%) MCDST
8 4 (4.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 4 (4.26%) AWS Certification
8 4 (4.26%) Azure Certification
8 4 (4.26%) CCSP
8 4 (4.26%) Degree
9 3 (3.19%) CCIE Security
10 2 (2.13%) ISTQB
10 2 (2.13%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (2.13%) JNCIE
10 2 (2.13%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.45%) GDPR
2 6 (6.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (6.38%) NIST
3 5 (5.32%) PCI DSS
4 3 (3.19%) NCSC
5 2 (2.13%) SLA
6 1 (1.06%) COBIT
6 1 (1.06%) GRC
System Software
1 22 (23.40%) Active Directory
2 11 (11.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (9.57%) VMware NSX
4 6 (6.38%) Docker
5 2 (2.13%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.06%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 14 (14.89%) Terraform
2 12 (12.77%) Ansible
3 8 (8.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (7.45%) SCCM
5 5 (5.32%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (3.19%) FortiGate
7 1 (1.06%) Kubernetes
7 1 (1.06%) Nessus
7 1 (1.06%) Packer
7 1 (1.06%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 45 (47.87%) Cisco
2 29 (30.85%) F5
3 26 (27.66%) Microsoft
4 24 (25.53%) Juniper
5 17 (18.09%) Palo Alto
6 16 (17.02%) CheckPoint
7 11 (11.70%) VMware
8 7 (7.45%) Fortinet
8 7 (7.45%) ServiceNow
8 7 (7.45%) SolarWinds
9 5 (5.32%) iManage
9 5 (5.32%) Meraki
9 5 (5.32%) Mitel
10 4 (4.26%) Blue Coat
10 4 (4.26%) Netskope
11 2 (2.13%) Forcepoint
12 1 (1.06%) BeyondTrust
12 1 (1.06%) Cloudera
12 1 (1.06%) Splunk
12 1 (1.06%) Veracode