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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 62 29
Rank change year-on-year -14 -33 +43
Contract jobs citing VPN 85 37 96
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.73% 2.72% 4.99%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.56% 25.34% 24.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 46 23 57
10th Percentile £159 £145 £196
25th Percentile £238 £153 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £340 £275 £375
Median % change year-on-year +23.64% -26.67% -27.88%
75th Percentile £450 £449 £575
90th Percentile £525 £585 £775
England median daily rate £475 £465 £438
% change year-on-year +2.15% +6.29% -2.78%
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 £16.71 £18.13 £17.00
% change year-on-year -7.86% +6.65% -21.33%

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 320 146 394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 10.27% 10.75% 20.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 91 232
10th Percentile £200 £145 £201
25th Percentile £304 £269 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £475 £400
Median % change year-on-year -11.58% +18.75% -20.00%
75th Percentile £537 £600 £575
90th Percentile £602 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £500 £490
% change year-on-year - +2.04% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 11 21
10th Percentile £18.01 £12.18 £10.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £14.50 £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 £21.18 £23.75
90th Percentile £70.23 £37.25 £28.75
England median hourly rate £41.94 £36.65 £39.25
% change year-on-year +14.45% -6.64% +108.55%

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 29 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 29 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 +13 48 £363 -4.29% 7
Warwickshire -1 17 £350 - 4
Coventry -13 10 £450 -25.77% 2
Worcestershire -15 3 £175 +20.69% 7
Staffordshire 0 2 £444 - 5
Solihull -18 1 £270 -16.92%
Shropshire -45 1 £119 -43.33% 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 5 (5.88%) SharePoint
2 2 (2.35%) Confluence
3 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 7 (8.24%) MS Visio
2 4 (4.71%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (1.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 20 (23.53%) Azure
2 15 (17.65%) Microsoft 365
3 13 (15.29%) AWS
4 9 (10.59%) Entra ID
5 5 (5.88%) OneDrive
6 4 (4.71%) Azure Sentinel
6 4 (4.71%) GCP
6 4 (4.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 3 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (3.53%) GitHub
7 3 (3.53%) Power Platform
8 2 (2.35%) Amazon EKS
8 2 (2.35%) Amazon ELB
8 2 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (2.35%) Microsoft Copilot
8 2 (2.35%) Route 53
9 1 (1.18%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 1 (1.18%) Amazon Macie
9 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 52 (61.18%) DNS
2 36 (42.35%) BGP
3 33 (38.82%) Firewall
4 30 (35.29%) DMZ
4 30 (35.29%) Multicast
5 24 (28.24%) WAN
6 18 (21.18%) LAN
6 18 (21.18%) Network Security
7 15 (17.65%) SSL
8 14 (16.47%) IPsec
9 10 (11.76%) DHCP
9 10 (11.76%) Wireless
10 9 (10.59%) Wireshark
11 8 (9.41%) BIG-IP
11 8 (9.41%) Cisco ASA
11 8 (9.41%) Cisco Nexus
11 8 (9.41%) HTTP
11 8 (9.41%) HTTPS
12 7 (8.24%) Ethereal
13 6 (7.06%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.18%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.18%) Big Data
1 1 (1.18%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.18%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.18%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.18%) Impala
1 1 (1.18%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.18%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.18%) Power BI
1 1 (1.18%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (11.76%) JIRA
2 3 (3.53%) Chocolatey
3 2 (2.35%) Browser DevTools
3 2 (2.35%) GitLab
4 1 (1.18%) AppScan
4 1 (1.18%) Burp Suite
4 1 (1.18%) Git
4 1 (1.18%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.18%) Metasploit
4 1 (1.18%) MSI
General
1 19 (22.35%) Social Skills
2 16 (18.82%) Banking
2 16 (18.82%) Investment Banking
3 8 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (5.88%) Documentation Skills
4 5 (5.88%) Public Sector
4 5 (5.88%) Telecoms
5 3 (3.53%) Finance
6 2 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.35%) Legal
7 1 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 51 (60.00%) Network Engineer
2 34 (40.00%) Security Engineer
3 33 (38.82%) Network Security Engineer
4 30 (35.29%) Cisco Engineer
4 30 (35.29%) Cisco Network Engineer
4 30 (35.29%) Cisco Security Engineer
4 30 (35.29%) Data Engineer
4 30 (35.29%) Data Network Engineer
5 14 (16.47%) Web Engineer
6 9 (10.59%) IT Support
7 7 (8.24%) Analyst
8 6 (7.06%) Support Engineer
9 5 (5.88%) IT Analyst
9 5 (5.88%) Test Engineer
10 4 (4.71%) 1st Line Support
10 4 (4.71%) IT Support Analyst
10 4 (4.71%) Network Security Specialist
10 4 (4.71%) Network Specialist
10 4 (4.71%) Security Specialist
10 4 (4.71%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (11.76%) SAML
2 8 (9.41%) LDAP
3 3 (3.53%) 802.1X
4 2 (2.35%) RFC 2544
5 1 (1.18%) JSON
5 1 (1.18%) Kafka
5 1 (1.18%) REST
5 1 (1.18%) RESTful
5 1 (1.18%) SignalR
5 1 (1.18%) Spring
5 1 (1.18%) Spring Boot
5 1 (1.18%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.24%) Enterprise Software
2 6 (7.06%) Onboarding
3 5 (5.88%) Data Centre
4 3 (3.53%) PKI
4 3 (3.53%) Security Posture
5 2 (2.35%) Fibre Optics
5 2 (2.35%) Operational Technology
5 2 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.18%) Public Cloud
6 1 (1.18%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 25 (29.41%) Windows
2 8 (9.41%) Windows Server
3 7 (8.24%) Windows 10
4 5 (5.88%) Linux
5 3 (3.53%) CatOS
5 3 (3.53%) Mac OS
6 1 (1.18%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (38.82%) Load Balancing
2 11 (12.94%) Cybersecurity
3 9 (10.59%) Cloud Security
3 9 (10.59%) Customer Service
3 9 (10.59%) High Availability
4 8 (9.41%) ITIL
4 8 (9.41%) Problem-Solving
5 6 (7.06%) ITSM
5 6 (7.06%) Service Management
5 6 (7.06%) Vulnerability Remediation
6 5 (5.88%) Change Management
6 5 (5.88%) DevOps
6 5 (5.88%) Network Segmentation
6 5 (5.88%) Vulnerability Management
6 5 (5.88%) Zero Trust
7 4 (4.71%) CI/CD
7 4 (4.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 4 (4.71%) Network Optimisation
7 4 (4.71%) Performance Metrics
7 4 (4.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 2 (2.35%) PowerShell
1 2 (2.35%) Python
1 2 (2.35%) SQL
2 1 (1.18%) Bicep
2 1 (1.18%) Java
2 1 (1.18%) JavaScript
2 1 (1.18%) Kotlin
2 1 (1.18%) Lisp
2 1 (1.18%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 15 (17.65%) Security Cleared
2 12 (14.12%) SC Cleared
3 8 (9.41%) Cisco Certification
4 5 (5.88%) CCNA
5 4 (4.71%) CCNP
6 2 (2.35%) Azure Certification
6 2 (2.35%) CCIE
6 2 (2.35%) ISTQB
6 2 (2.35%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (1.18%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (1.18%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.18%) CCSP
7 1 (1.18%) CISSP
7 1 (1.18%) Degree
7 1 (1.18%) MCSE
7 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.53%) GDPR
1 3 (3.53%) SLA
2 2 (2.35%) NCSC
2 2 (2.35%) NIST
3 1 (1.18%) COBIT
3 1 (1.18%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.18%) GRC
3 1 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.18%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 22 (25.88%) Active Directory
2 8 (9.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (9.41%) VMware NSX
3 2 (2.35%) Docker
4 1 (1.18%) HDFS
4 1 (1.18%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 12 (14.12%) Microsoft Intune
2 11 (12.94%) Single Sign-On
3 5 (5.88%) Terraform
4 4 (4.71%) Ansible
5 1 (1.18%) CASB
5 1 (1.18%) FortiGate
5 1 (1.18%) Kubernetes
5 1 (1.18%) Nessus
5 1 (1.18%) Packer
5 1 (1.18%) Progress Chef
5 1 (1.18%) SCCM
Vendors
1 49 (57.65%) Cisco
2 41 (48.24%) F5
3 26 (30.59%) Microsoft
4 11 (12.94%) CheckPoint
4 11 (12.94%) Palo Alto
5 9 (10.59%) ServiceNow
5 9 (10.59%) VMware
6 7 (8.24%) Juniper
7 5 (5.88%) SolarWinds
8 3 (3.53%) Citrix
8 3 (3.53%) Fortinet
8 3 (3.53%) Zscaler
9 2 (2.35%) Blue Coat
10 1 (1.18%) Apple
10 1 (1.18%) Aruba
10 1 (1.18%) Cloudera
10 1 (1.18%) HP
10 1 (1.18%) NetApp
10 1 (1.18%) Remedy
10 1 (1.18%) Splunk