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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 77 47
Rank change year-on-year +15 -30 +57
Contract jobs citing VPN 82 30 68
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.59% 1.92% 3.87%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 25.31% 13.27% 18.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 18 33
10th Percentile £152 £135 -
25th Percentile £263 £210 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £378 £333 £375
Median % change year-on-year +13.53% -11.33% -13.54%
75th Percentile £441 £455 £550
90th Percentile £534 £540 £615
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% +3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 7 2
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 £22.00
% change year-on-year +32.37% -13.64% +2.49%

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 324 226 366
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 14.17% 14.49% 20.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 198 129 186
10th Percentile £200 £165 £200
25th Percentile £300 £263 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% - -5.56%
75th Percentile £525 £582 £563
90th Percentile £582 £670 £675
England median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 12 21
10th Percentile - £12.48 £21.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £15.22 £23.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £18.13 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.41% -72.11% +178.61%
75th Percentile £35.00 £35.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £56.00 - £70.00
England median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -1.43% -38.04% +125.96%

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 January 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 January 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 +26 41 £350 -23.50% 5
Warwickshire +8 23 £378 +42.45% 4
Coventry -9 5 £400 - 4
Staffordshire +5 4 £394 -21.25% 5
Shropshire -37 3 £400 +90.48% 3
Solihull 0 2 £363 -3.33%
Worcestershire -24 2 £356 +222.60% 9
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 (1.22%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (4.88%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (3.66%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (1.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 19 (23.17%) AWS
2 15 (18.29%) Azure
3 10 (12.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 9 (10.98%) Microsoft 365
5 7 (8.54%) GCP
6 5 (6.10%) Amazon EC2
6 5 (6.10%) Amazon ELB
6 5 (6.10%) Amazon S3
6 5 (6.10%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 4 (4.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 3 (3.66%) AWS Direct Connect
9 2 (2.44%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (2.44%) GitHub
10 1 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
10 1 (1.22%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (1.22%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (1.22%) Entra ID
10 1 (1.22%) OneDrive
10 1 (1.22%) Power Platform
10 1 (1.22%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 42 (51.22%) WAN
2 38 (46.34%) DNS
2 38 (46.34%) Firewall
3 33 (40.24%) IPsec
4 29 (35.37%) BGP
5 25 (30.49%) MPLS
6 20 (24.39%) Network Security
7 17 (20.73%) SSL
7 17 (20.73%) Wireless
8 15 (18.29%) DHCP
9 14 (17.07%) TCP/IP
10 13 (15.85%) LAN
11 9 (10.98%) Cisco IPT
11 9 (10.98%) DMVPN
11 9 (10.98%) SD-WAN
12 7 (8.54%) Cisco ASA
13 6 (7.32%) VLAN
13 6 (7.32%) WLAN
14 5 (6.10%) OSPF
15 4 (4.88%) EIGRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.22%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.22%) Big Data
1 1 (1.22%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.22%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.22%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.22%) Impala
1 1 (1.22%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.22%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 6 (7.32%) Git
2 5 (6.10%) Jenkins
2 5 (6.10%) JIRA
3 4 (4.88%) GitLab
4 1 (1.22%) Chocolatey
General
1 23 (28.05%) Social Skills
2 16 (19.51%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (13.41%) Public Sector
4 7 (8.54%) Telecoms
5 6 (7.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (6.10%) Legal
7 3 (3.66%) Banking
7 3 (3.66%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (3.66%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.22%) Finance
9 1 (1.22%) Military
9 1 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 22 (26.83%) Network Engineer
2 18 (21.95%) Support Engineer
3 11 (13.41%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 11 (13.41%) 3rd Line Support
3 11 (13.41%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
3 11 (13.41%) Analyst
3 11 (13.41%) Support Analyst
4 10 (12.20%) 2nd Line Engineer
4 10 (12.20%) WAN Engineer
5 9 (10.98%) 2nd Line Support
5 9 (10.98%) IT Support
5 9 (10.98%) Security Engineer
6 8 (9.76%) 1st Line Support
7 7 (8.54%) Architect
7 7 (8.54%) IT Analyst
7 7 (8.54%) IT Support Analyst
7 7 (8.54%) Network Architect
7 7 (8.54%) Network Security Engineer
8 6 (7.32%) 1st Line Support Analyst
9 5 (6.10%) 2nd Line Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (10.98%) 802.1X
2 3 (3.66%) LDAP
2 3 (3.66%) SAML
3 1 (1.22%) Azure Blueprints
3 1 (1.22%) JSON
3 1 (1.22%) Kafka
3 1 (1.22%) REST
3 1 (1.22%) RESTful
3 1 (1.22%) SignalR
3 1 (1.22%) Spring
3 1 (1.22%) Spring Boot
3 1 (1.22%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 21 (25.61%) PKI
2 17 (20.73%) Data Centre
3 9 (10.98%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (6.10%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 3 (3.66%) Onboarding
5 3 (3.66%) Security Posture
6 2 (2.44%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (2.44%) NHS
6 2 (2.44%) Operational Technology
6 2 (2.44%) SCADA
7 1 (1.22%) Driving Licence
7 1 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 18 (21.95%) Windows
2 8 (9.76%) Windows 10
3 6 (7.32%) Windows Server
4 2 (2.44%) CatOS
4 2 (2.44%) Mac OS
5 1 (1.22%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (28.05%) Load Balancing
2 20 (24.39%) Problem-Solving
3 16 (19.51%) Change Management
3 16 (19.51%) Network Design
4 15 (18.29%) ITIL
5 14 (17.07%) Customer Service
6 10 (12.20%) High Availability
6 10 (12.20%) Inventory Management
7 8 (9.76%) Mentoring
8 7 (8.54%) Cybersecurity
8 7 (8.54%) Incident Response
8 7 (8.54%) Knowledge Transfer
8 7 (8.54%) Network Architecture
8 7 (8.54%) Zero Trust
9 6 (7.32%) CI/CD
9 6 (7.32%) DevOps
9 6 (7.32%) Mobile Device Management
9 6 (7.32%) Project Delivery
10 5 (6.10%) Disk Encryption
10 5 (6.10%) Performance Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 9 (10.98%) Python
2 7 (8.54%) Bash
3 4 (4.88%) PowerShell
4 1 (1.22%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 41 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 35 (42.68%) SC Cleared
3 10 (12.20%) Cisco Certification
4 9 (10.98%) CCNP
5 7 (8.54%) CCIE
5 7 (8.54%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (7.32%) MCP
7 5 (6.10%) CISSP
7 5 (6.10%) MCDST
8 4 (4.88%) Azure Certification
8 4 (4.88%) Degree
9 3 (3.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 3 (3.66%) AWS Certification
9 3 (3.66%) CCIE Security
9 3 (3.66%) CCNA
9 3 (3.66%) CCSP
10 2 (2.44%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (2.44%) JNCIE
10 2 (2.44%) JNCIP
11 1 (1.22%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (7.32%) GDPR
2 5 (6.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (4.88%) NIST
3 4 (4.88%) PCI DSS
4 2 (2.44%) SLA
5 1 (1.22%) GRC
5 1 (1.22%) NCSC
System Software
1 16 (19.51%) Active Directory
2 9 (10.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (8.54%) VMware NSX
4 6 (7.32%) Docker
5 2 (2.44%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.22%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 12 (14.63%) Terraform
2 10 (12.20%) Ansible
3 8 (9.76%) SCCM
4 5 (6.10%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (3.66%) FortiGate
5 3 (3.66%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.22%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 39 (47.56%) Cisco
2 35 (42.68%) Juniper
3 23 (28.05%) F5
4 21 (25.61%) Microsoft
5 19 (23.17%) CheckPoint
6 16 (19.51%) Palo Alto
7 9 (10.98%) Blue Coat
7 9 (10.98%) VMware
8 8 (9.76%) Fortinet
9 6 (7.32%) ServiceNow
9 6 (7.32%) SolarWinds
10 5 (6.10%) iManage
10 5 (6.10%) Meraki
10 5 (6.10%) Mitel
11 4 (4.88%) Netskope
12 2 (2.44%) Forcepoint
13 1 (1.22%) Apple
13 1 (1.22%) Cloudera
13 1 (1.22%) Infoblox