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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 59 31
Rank change year-on-year -17 -28 +42
Contract jobs citing VPN 86 37 98
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.74% 2.75% 5.02%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 26.63% 25.69% 24.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 22 57
10th Percentile £160 £145 £196
25th Percentile £220 £149 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £338 £243 £375
Median % change year-on-year +39.18% -35.33% -27.88%
75th Percentile £450 £366 £575
90th Percentile £525 £576 £775
England median daily rate £475 £471 £447
% change year-on-year +0.80% +5.43% -0.67%
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 £14.63 £18.13 £17.00
% change year-on-year -19.29% +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 323 144 394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 10.27% 10.71% 20.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 90 231
10th Percentile £200 £145 £200
25th Percentile £307 £263 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £423 £463 £400
Median % change year-on-year -8.65% +15.63% -20.00%
75th Percentile £537 £598 £575
90th Percentile £603 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £500 £490
% change year-on-year - +2.04% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 21
10th Percentile £18.01 £12.34 £10.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £14.79 £13.50
Median hourly rate £58.00 £16.23 £19.95
Median % change year-on-year +257.47% -18.67% +19.10%
75th Percentile £64.75 £19.65 £23.75
90th Percentile £70.23 £35.95 £28.75
England median hourly rate £42.10 £30.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year +36.89% -23.13% +114.36%

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 2 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 2 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 +17 49 £288 +22.34% 8
Warwickshire +1 17 £350 - 5
Coventry -15 10 £450 -25.77% 3
Worcestershire -15 3 £175 +20.69% 7
Staffordshire 0 2 £444 - 5
Solihull -19 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 7 (8.14%) SharePoint
2 2 (2.33%) Confluence
2 2 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 7 (8.14%) MS Visio
2 4 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 21 (24.42%) Azure
2 17 (19.77%) Microsoft 365
3 12 (13.95%) AWS
4 11 (12.79%) Entra ID
5 6 (6.98%) OneDrive
6 5 (5.81%) Azure Sentinel
7 4 (4.65%) GCP
7 4 (4.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 3 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (3.49%) GitHub
8 3 (3.49%) Power Platform
9 2 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
9 2 (2.33%) Amazon ELB
9 2 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
9 2 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.33%) Microsoft Copilot
9 2 (2.33%) Route 53
10 1 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
10 1 (1.16%) CloudFront
10 1 (1.16%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 53 (61.63%) DNS
2 36 (41.86%) BGP
3 32 (37.21%) Firewall
4 30 (34.88%) DMZ
4 30 (34.88%) Multicast
5 25 (29.07%) WAN
6 19 (22.09%) LAN
7 17 (19.77%) Network Security
8 15 (17.44%) SSL
9 14 (16.28%) IPsec
10 11 (12.79%) DHCP
11 10 (11.63%) Wireless
12 9 (10.47%) Wireshark
13 8 (9.30%) BIG-IP
13 8 (9.30%) Cisco ASA
13 8 (9.30%) Cisco Nexus
13 8 (9.30%) HTTP
13 8 (9.30%) HTTPS
14 7 (8.14%) Ethereal
15 6 (6.98%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.16%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.16%) Big Data
1 1 (1.16%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.16%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.16%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.16%) Impala
1 1 (1.16%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.16%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.16%) Power BI
1 1 (1.16%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (11.63%) JIRA
2 3 (3.49%) Chocolatey
3 2 (2.33%) Browser DevTools
3 2 (2.33%) GitLab
4 1 (1.16%) AppScan
4 1 (1.16%) Burp Suite
4 1 (1.16%) Git
4 1 (1.16%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.16%) Metasploit
4 1 (1.16%) MSI
General
1 19 (22.09%) Social Skills
2 16 (18.60%) Banking
2 16 (18.60%) Investment Banking
3 8 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (6.98%) Public Sector
5 5 (5.81%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (5.81%) Telecoms
6 3 (3.49%) Finance
7 2 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (2.33%) Legal
8 1 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 51 (59.30%) Network Engineer
2 34 (39.53%) Security Engineer
3 33 (38.37%) Network Security Engineer
4 30 (34.88%) Cisco Engineer
4 30 (34.88%) Cisco Network Engineer
4 30 (34.88%) Cisco Security Engineer
4 30 (34.88%) Data Engineer
4 30 (34.88%) Data Network Engineer
5 14 (16.28%) Web Engineer
6 9 (10.47%) IT Support
7 8 (9.30%) Analyst
8 6 (6.98%) IT Analyst
8 6 (6.98%) Support Engineer
9 5 (5.81%) Test Engineer
10 4 (4.65%) 1st Line Support
10 4 (4.65%) IT Support Analyst
10 4 (4.65%) Support Analyst
11 3 (3.49%) Administrator
11 3 (3.49%) Architect
11 3 (3.49%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (11.63%) SAML
2 8 (9.30%) LDAP
3 3 (3.49%) 802.1X
4 2 (2.33%) RFC 2544
5 1 (1.16%) JSON
5 1 (1.16%) Kafka
5 1 (1.16%) REST
5 1 (1.16%) RESTful
5 1 (1.16%) SignalR
5 1 (1.16%) Spring
5 1 (1.16%) Spring Boot
5 1 (1.16%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.14%) Enterprise Software
1 7 (8.14%) Onboarding
2 5 (5.81%) Data Centre
3 3 (3.49%) PKI
4 2 (2.33%) Fibre Optics
4 2 (2.33%) Operational Technology
4 2 (2.33%) Security Posture
4 2 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.16%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.16%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 25 (29.07%) Windows
2 8 (9.30%) Windows 10
3 7 (8.14%) Windows Server
4 5 (5.81%) Linux
5 3 (3.49%) CatOS
5 3 (3.49%) Mac OS
6 1 (1.16%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (38.37%) Load Balancing
2 11 (12.79%) Cybersecurity
3 9 (10.47%) Customer Service
3 9 (10.47%) High Availability
4 8 (9.30%) Cloud Security
4 8 (9.30%) ITIL
4 8 (9.30%) Problem-Solving
5 7 (8.14%) ITSM
6 6 (6.98%) Service Management
7 5 (5.81%) Change Management
7 5 (5.81%) DevOps
7 5 (5.81%) Network Segmentation
7 5 (5.81%) Vulnerability Remediation
7 5 (5.81%) Zero Trust
8 4 (4.65%) CI/CD
8 4 (4.65%) Network Optimisation
8 4 (4.65%) Performance Metrics
8 4 (4.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 4 (4.65%) Vulnerability Management
9 3 (3.49%) Proactive Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 2 (2.33%) PowerShell
1 2 (2.33%) Python
1 2 (2.33%) SQL
2 1 (1.16%) Bicep
2 1 (1.16%) Java
2 1 (1.16%) JavaScript
2 1 (1.16%) Kotlin
2 1 (1.16%) Lisp
2 1 (1.16%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 15 (17.44%) Security Cleared
2 12 (13.95%) SC Cleared
3 8 (9.30%) Cisco Certification
4 5 (5.81%) CCNA
5 4 (4.65%) CCNP
6 2 (2.33%) Azure Certification
6 2 (2.33%) CCIE
6 2 (2.33%) ISTQB
6 2 (2.33%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (1.16%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 1 (1.16%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.16%) CCSP
7 1 (1.16%) CISSP
7 1 (1.16%) Degree
7 1 (1.16%) MCSE
7 1 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.65%) SLA
2 3 (3.49%) GDPR
3 2 (2.33%) NCSC
3 2 (2.33%) NIST
4 1 (1.16%) COBIT
4 1 (1.16%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.16%) GRC
4 1 (1.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 24 (27.91%) Active Directory
2 8 (9.30%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (9.30%) VMware NSX
3 2 (2.33%) Docker
4 1 (1.16%) HDFS
4 1 (1.16%) Hyper-V
4 1 (1.16%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 13 (15.12%) Microsoft Intune
2 11 (12.79%) Single Sign-On
3 5 (5.81%) Terraform
4 4 (4.65%) Ansible
5 1 (1.16%) CASB
5 1 (1.16%) FortiGate
5 1 (1.16%) Kubernetes
5 1 (1.16%) Nessus
5 1 (1.16%) Packer
5 1 (1.16%) Progress Chef
5 1 (1.16%) SCCM
Vendors
1 49 (56.98%) Cisco
2 41 (47.67%) F5
3 27 (31.40%) Microsoft
4 11 (12.79%) CheckPoint
4 11 (12.79%) Palo Alto
5 10 (11.63%) ServiceNow
6 9 (10.47%) VMware
7 7 (8.14%) Juniper
8 5 (5.81%) SolarWinds
9 3 (3.49%) Citrix
9 3 (3.49%) Fortinet
9 3 (3.49%) Zscaler
10 2 (2.33%) Blue Coat
11 1 (1.16%) Apple
11 1 (1.16%) Aruba
11 1 (1.16%) CyberArk
11 1 (1.16%) HP
11 1 (1.16%) NetApp
11 1 (1.16%) Remedy
11 1 (1.16%) Tenable