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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 70 50
Rank change year-on-year +13 -20 +39
Contract jobs citing VPN 92 34 71
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.71% 2.25% 3.72%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 28.31% 15.67% 17.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 20 34
10th Percentile £150 £142 -
25th Percentile £223 £198 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £363 £300 £362
Median % change year-on-year +20.83% -17.01% -16.66%
75th Percentile £452 £443 £547
90th Percentile £541 £530 £610
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% +3.81%
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 £19.00 £35.00 £20.50
% change year-on-year -45.71% +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 325 217 401
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 13.09% 14.34% 20.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 196 120 203
10th Percentile £166 £160 £200
25th Percentile £292 £255 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £431 £425
Median % change year-on-year -7.25% +1.47% -5.56%
75th Percentile £513 £580 £568
90th Percentile £600 £671 £675
England median daily rate £490 £500 £486
% change year-on-year -2.00% +2.88% -7.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 14 32
10th Percentile - £13.09 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £15.48 £20.93
Median hourly rate £26.00 £21.18 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.79% -7.93% +6.69%
75th Percentile £35.00 £35.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £56.00 £39.88 £68.63
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -14.29% -30.00% +141.49%

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 3 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 3 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 +31 49 £400 -12.57% 6
Warwickshire +3 19 £378 +42.45% 4
Coventry -9 7 £400 - 5
Staffordshire +4 4 £394 -21.25% 6
Worcestershire -23 4 £175 +58.47% 7
Solihull -5 3 £300 -7.69%
Shropshire -41 3 £400 +90.48% 2
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 (1.09%) Confluence
Applications
1 5 (5.43%) Microsoft Office
1 5 (5.43%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 21 (22.83%) AWS
2 18 (19.57%) Azure
3 12 (13.04%) Microsoft 365
4 11 (11.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 8 (8.70%) GCP
6 6 (6.52%) Amazon ELB
6 6 (6.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 5 (5.43%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (5.43%) Amazon S3
8 4 (4.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (3.26%) AWS Direct Connect
10 2 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
10 2 (2.17%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (2.17%) Entra ID
10 2 (2.17%) GitHub
10 2 (2.17%) Route 53
11 1 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
11 1 (1.09%) AWS Lambda
11 1 (1.09%) Azure DevOps
11 1 (1.09%) CloudFront
Communications & Networking
1 44 (47.83%) DNS
2 40 (43.48%) Firewall
2 40 (43.48%) WAN
3 35 (38.04%) BGP
4 30 (32.61%) IPsec
5 25 (27.17%) MPLS
6 19 (20.65%) Network Security
7 18 (19.57%) DHCP
8 16 (17.39%) LAN
9 14 (15.22%) SSL
9 14 (15.22%) TCP/IP
9 14 (15.22%) Wireless
10 10 (10.87%) DMZ
11 9 (9.78%) Cisco ASA
11 9 (9.78%) Multicast
11 9 (9.78%) SD-WAN
12 6 (6.52%) HTTP
12 6 (6.52%) OSPF
12 6 (6.52%) VLAN
12 6 (6.52%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (1.09%) Apache Hive
1 1 (1.09%) Big Data
1 1 (1.09%) Data Lake
1 1 (1.09%) DocumentDB
1 1 (1.09%) Hadoop
1 1 (1.09%) Impala
1 1 (1.09%) MongoDB
1 1 (1.09%) NoSQL
1 1 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
1 1 (1.09%) Redis
Development Applications
1 8 (8.70%) JIRA
2 6 (6.52%) Git
3 5 (5.43%) Jenkins
4 4 (4.35%) GitLab
5 3 (3.26%) Chocolatey
6 1 (1.09%) AppScan
6 1 (1.09%) Burp Suite
6 1 (1.09%) Metasploit
General
1 28 (30.43%) Social Skills
2 16 (17.39%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (11.96%) Public Sector
4 6 (6.52%) Banking
4 6 (6.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 6 (6.52%) Investment Banking
5 5 (5.43%) Legal
6 4 (4.35%) Telecoms
7 3 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (3.26%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (2.17%) Finance
9 1 (1.09%) Military
9 1 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 30 (32.61%) Network Engineer
2 19 (20.65%) Support Engineer
3 13 (14.13%) Security Engineer
4 12 (13.04%) IT Support
5 11 (11.96%) Analyst
5 11 (11.96%) Network Security Engineer
5 11 (11.96%) Support Analyst
6 10 (10.87%) 2nd Line Engineer
6 10 (10.87%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 10 (10.87%) 3rd Line Support
6 10 (10.87%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
7 9 (9.78%) 2nd Line Support
7 9 (9.78%) Cisco Engineer
7 9 (9.78%) Cisco Network Engineer
7 9 (9.78%) Cisco Security Engineer
7 9 (9.78%) Data Engineer
7 9 (9.78%) Data Network Engineer
7 9 (9.78%) WAN Engineer
8 8 (8.70%) 1st Line Support
8 8 (8.70%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.43%) LDAP
1 5 (5.43%) SAML
2 4 (4.35%) 802.1X
3 1 (1.09%) Azure Blueprints
3 1 (1.09%) JSON
3 1 (1.09%) Kafka
3 1 (1.09%) REST
3 1 (1.09%) RESTful
3 1 (1.09%) SignalR
3 1 (1.09%) Spring
3 1 (1.09%) Spring Boot
3 1 (1.09%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (21.74%) PKI
2 14 (15.22%) Data Centre
3 8 (8.70%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (5.43%) Onboarding
4 5 (5.43%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 3 (3.26%) Operational Technology
5 3 (3.26%) SCADA
5 3 (3.26%) Security Posture
6 2 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (2.17%) NHS
7 1 (1.09%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 26 (28.26%) Windows
2 10 (10.87%) Windows 10
3 9 (9.78%) Windows Server
4 4 (4.35%) Linux
5 3 (3.26%) CatOS
6 2 (2.17%) Mac OS
7 1 (1.09%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (31.52%) Load Balancing
2 19 (20.65%) Problem-Solving
3 18 (19.57%) Customer Service
4 16 (17.39%) ITIL
4 16 (17.39%) Network Design
5 14 (15.22%) High Availability
6 11 (11.96%) Change Management
7 10 (10.87%) Cybersecurity
8 8 (8.70%) Mentoring
8 8 (8.70%) Zero Trust
9 7 (7.61%) Cloud Security
9 7 (7.61%) Incident Response
9 7 (7.61%) Knowledge Transfer
9 7 (7.61%) Network Architecture
10 6 (6.52%) CI/CD
10 6 (6.52%) DevOps
10 6 (6.52%) Mobile Device Management
10 6 (6.52%) Vulnerability Remediation
11 5 (5.43%) Cost Optimisation
11 5 (5.43%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 9 (9.78%) Python
2 7 (7.61%) Bash
3 4 (4.35%) PowerShell
4 1 (1.09%) JavaScript
4 1 (1.09%) Lisp
Qualifications
1 35 (38.04%) Security Cleared
2 29 (31.52%) SC Cleared
3 12 (13.04%) Cisco Certification
4 9 (9.78%) CCNP
5 7 (7.61%) CCIE
5 7 (7.61%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (6.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 5 (5.43%) CCNA
7 5 (5.43%) CISSP
7 5 (5.43%) MCDST
8 4 (4.35%) Azure Certification
8 4 (4.35%) Degree
9 3 (3.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 3 (3.26%) AWS Certification
9 3 (3.26%) CCIE Security
9 3 (3.26%) CCSP
10 2 (2.17%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (2.17%) JNCIE
10 2 (2.17%) JNCIP
11 1 (1.09%) CCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.61%) GDPR
2 6 (6.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (5.43%) NIST
3 5 (5.43%) PCI DSS
4 2 (2.17%) SLA
5 1 (1.09%) COBIT
5 1 (1.09%) GRC
5 1 (1.09%) NCSC
System Software
1 22 (23.91%) Active Directory
2 11 (11.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (9.78%) VMware NSX
4 6 (6.52%) Docker
5 2 (2.17%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.09%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 12 (13.04%) Terraform
2 11 (11.96%) Ansible
3 8 (8.70%) Microsoft Intune
3 8 (8.70%) SCCM
4 5 (5.43%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (3.26%) FortiGate
6 1 (1.09%) Kubernetes
6 1 (1.09%) Nessus
6 1 (1.09%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 41 (44.57%) Cisco
2 29 (31.52%) Juniper
3 26 (28.26%) F5
3 26 (28.26%) Microsoft
4 18 (19.57%) Palo Alto
5 16 (17.39%) CheckPoint
6 11 (11.96%) VMware
7 8 (8.70%) Fortinet
8 7 (7.61%) ServiceNow
8 7 (7.61%) SolarWinds
9 5 (5.43%) iManage
9 5 (5.43%) Meraki
9 5 (5.43%) Mitel
10 4 (4.35%) Blue Coat
10 4 (4.35%) Netskope
11 2 (2.17%) Forcepoint
12 1 (1.09%) BeyondTrust
12 1 (1.09%) CyberArk
12 1 (1.09%) LogRhythm
12 1 (1.09%) Veracode