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

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 64 49
Rank change year-on-year +2 -15 +42
Contract jobs citing VPN 91 35 70
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.60% 2.38% 3.65%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 27.83% 16.91% 17.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 21 35
10th Percentile £150 £145 £194
25th Percentile £200 £163 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £350 £275 £360
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -23.61% -18.64%
75th Percentile £450 £438 £559
90th Percentile £533 £525 £605
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% +3.45%
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 £21.25
% change year-on-year -45.90% +64.71% +6.25%

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 327 207 398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 12.95% 14.07% 20.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 196 117 208
10th Percentile £166 £158 £200
25th Percentile £292 £255 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% - -5.56%
75th Percentile £514 £580 £568
90th Percentile £600 £676 £673
England median daily rate £487 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.60% +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 £29.44 £35.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -15.89% -26.32% +137.50%

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 10 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 10 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 +28 49 £350 -23.50% 7
Warwickshire -5 18 £375 +41.51% 1
Coventry -5 9 £450 - 3
Staffordshire +4 4 £394 -21.25% 5
Worcestershire -21 4 £175 +37.02% 6
Shropshire -38 3 £400 +90.48% 1
Solihull -6 1 £270 -16.92%
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 (1.10%) Confluence
Applications
1 5 (5.49%) Microsoft Office
1 5 (5.49%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 22 (24.18%) AWS
2 19 (20.88%) Azure
3 13 (14.29%) Microsoft 365
4 11 (12.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 8 (8.79%) GCP
6 6 (6.59%) Amazon ELB
6 6 (6.59%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (5.49%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (5.49%) Amazon S3
8 4 (4.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (3.30%) AWS Direct Connect
10 2 (2.20%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (2.20%) AWS CloudFormation
10 2 (2.20%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (2.20%) Entra ID
10 2 (2.20%) GitHub
10 2 (2.20%) Route 53
11 1 (1.10%) AWS CloudTrail
11 1 (1.10%) CloudFront
11 1 (1.10%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 44 (48.35%) DNS
2 40 (43.96%) Firewall
3 37 (40.66%) WAN
4 34 (37.36%) BGP
5 27 (29.67%) IPsec
6 23 (25.27%) MPLS
7 20 (21.98%) Network Security
8 17 (18.68%) DHCP
9 16 (17.58%) LAN
10 14 (15.38%) SSL
10 14 (15.38%) TCP/IP
10 14 (15.38%) Wireless
11 10 (10.99%) DMZ
11 10 (10.99%) Multicast
12 9 (9.89%) Cisco ASA
13 8 (8.79%) SD-WAN
14 7 (7.69%) OSPF
14 7 (7.69%) VLAN
15 6 (6.59%) HTTP
15 6 (6.59%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.10%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.10%) Big Data
1 1 (1.10%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.10%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.10%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.10%) Impala
1 1 (1.10%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.10%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.10%) Redis
Development Applications
1 8 (8.79%) JIRA
2 6 (6.59%) Git
3 5 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 4 (4.40%) GitLab
5 3 (3.30%) Chocolatey
6 1 (1.10%) AppScan
6 1 (1.10%) Burp Suite
6 1 (1.10%) Metasploit
General
1 29 (31.87%) Social Skills
2 16 (17.58%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (8.79%) Public Sector
4 6 (6.59%) Banking
4 6 (6.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 6 (6.59%) Investment Banking
5 5 (5.49%) Legal
5 5 (5.49%) Telecoms
6 4 (4.40%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (3.30%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (2.20%) Finance
9 1 (1.10%) Military
9 1 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 30 (32.97%) Network Engineer
2 16 (17.58%) Support Engineer
3 14 (15.38%) Security Engineer
4 12 (13.19%) Analyst
4 12 (13.19%) IT Support
4 12 (13.19%) Network Security Engineer
5 11 (12.09%) Support Analyst
6 10 (10.99%) Cisco Engineer
6 10 (10.99%) Cisco Network Engineer
6 10 (10.99%) Cisco Security Engineer
6 10 (10.99%) Data Engineer
6 10 (10.99%) Data Network Engineer
7 9 (9.89%) 2nd Line Engineer
8 8 (8.79%) 1st Line Support
8 8 (8.79%) 2nd Line Support
8 8 (8.79%) 3rd Line Engineer
8 8 (8.79%) 3rd Line Support
8 8 (8.79%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
8 8 (8.79%) Architect
9 7 (7.69%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.49%) LDAP
1 5 (5.49%) SAML
2 4 (4.40%) 802.1X
3 1 (1.10%) Azure Blueprints
3 1 (1.10%) JSON
3 1 (1.10%) Kafka
3 1 (1.10%) REST
3 1 (1.10%) RESTful
3 1 (1.10%) RFC 2544
3 1 (1.10%) SignalR
3 1 (1.10%) Spring
3 1 (1.10%) Spring Boot
3 1 (1.10%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (18.68%) PKI
2 14 (15.38%) Data Centre
3 7 (7.69%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (5.49%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 4 (4.40%) Onboarding
6 3 (3.30%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (3.30%) Operational Technology
6 3 (3.30%) SCADA
6 3 (3.30%) Security Posture
7 2 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (2.20%) NHS
8 1 (1.10%) Driving Licence
8 1 (1.10%) Fibre Optics
Operating Systems
1 25 (27.47%) Windows
2 10 (10.99%) Windows 10
3 9 (9.89%) Windows Server
4 4 (4.40%) Linux
5 3 (3.30%) CatOS
6 2 (2.20%) Mac OS
7 1 (1.10%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (29.67%) Load Balancing
2 19 (20.88%) Problem-Solving
3 18 (19.78%) Customer Service
4 16 (17.58%) ITIL
5 14 (15.38%) High Availability
5 14 (15.38%) Network Design
6 12 (13.19%) Change Management
7 11 (12.09%) Cybersecurity
8 9 (9.89%) Zero Trust
9 8 (8.79%) Cloud Security
9 8 (8.79%) Mentoring
10 7 (7.69%) CI/CD
10 7 (7.69%) Incident Response
10 7 (7.69%) Knowledge Transfer
10 7 (7.69%) Network Architecture
11 6 (6.59%) DevOps
11 6 (6.59%) DevSecOps
11 6 (6.59%) Mobile Device Management
11 6 (6.59%) Vulnerability Remediation
12 5 (5.49%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 9 (9.89%) Python
2 7 (7.69%) Bash
3 3 (3.30%) PowerShell
4 1 (1.10%) JavaScript
4 1 (1.10%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 32 (35.16%) Security Cleared
2 26 (28.57%) SC Cleared
3 14 (15.38%) Cisco Certification
4 10 (10.99%) CCNP
5 7 (7.69%) CCIE
5 7 (7.69%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (6.59%) CCNA
6 6 (6.59%) CISSP
6 6 (6.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 5 (5.49%) MCDST
8 4 (4.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 4 (4.40%) AWS Certification
8 4 (4.40%) Azure Certification
8 4 (4.40%) CCSP
8 4 (4.40%) Degree
9 3 (3.30%) CCIE Security
10 2 (2.20%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (2.20%) JNCIE
10 2 (2.20%) JNCIP
11 1 (1.10%) CCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.69%) GDPR
2 6 (6.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (6.59%) NIST
3 5 (5.49%) PCI DSS
4 2 (2.20%) NCSC
4 2 (2.20%) SLA
5 1 (1.10%) COBIT
5 1 (1.10%) GRC
System Software
1 21 (23.08%) Active Directory
2 11 (12.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (9.89%) VMware NSX
4 6 (6.59%) Docker
5 2 (2.20%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.10%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 13 (14.29%) Terraform
2 11 (12.09%) Ansible
3 8 (8.79%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (7.69%) SCCM
5 5 (5.49%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (3.30%) FortiGate
7 1 (1.10%) Kubernetes
7 1 (1.10%) Nessus
7 1 (1.10%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 42 (46.15%) Cisco
2 27 (29.67%) F5
3 26 (28.57%) Microsoft
4 25 (27.47%) Juniper
5 17 (18.68%) Palo Alto
6 16 (17.58%) CheckPoint
7 11 (12.09%) VMware
8 7 (7.69%) Fortinet
8 7 (7.69%) ServiceNow
8 7 (7.69%) SolarWinds
9 5 (5.49%) iManage
9 5 (5.49%) Meraki
9 5 (5.49%) Mitel
10 4 (4.40%) Blue Coat
10 4 (4.40%) Netskope
11 2 (2.20%) Forcepoint
12 1 (1.10%) BeyondTrust
12 1 (1.10%) Cloudera
12 1 (1.10%) Splunk
12 1 (1.10%) Veracode