VPN Contracts

Virtual Private Network (VPN)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for VPN skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited VPN over the 6 months to 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 152 190 255
Rank change year-on-year +38 +65 +3
Contract jobs citing VPN 680 779 979
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.58% 1.39% 1.12%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 12.53% 10.93% 10.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 415 486 701
10th Percentile £197 £161 £173
25th Percentile £275 £253 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £430 £475 £477
Median % change year-on-year -9.47% -0.42% +12.24%
75th Percentile £581 £588 £586
90th Percentile £800 £688 £658
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £400
% change year-on-year -5.56% +12.50% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 17 31
10th Percentile £12.75 £15.43 £15.63
25th Percentile £13.87 £18.50 £16.38
Median hourly rate £16.56 £21.22 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.98% +6.10% +8.11%
75th Percentile £22.57 £62.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £24.43 £68.33 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £14.27 £21.22 £18.75
% change year-on-year -32.75% +13.17% -3.85%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

VPN is in the Communications and Computer Networking category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 5,426 7,124 9,720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.60% 12.71% 11.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,234 4,603 6,376
10th Percentile £206 £240 £240
25th Percentile £350 £400 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% +11.11%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £613
90th Percentile £688 £719 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £450
% change year-on-year +0.95% +5.56% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 417 443 367
10th Percentile £13.50 £9.80 £15.25
25th Percentile £16.30 £10.63 £16.75
Median hourly rate £40.00 £18.24 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +119.30% -29.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £63.75 £59.54 £50.77
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £65.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.88 £18.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +154.89% -16.28% -1.15%

VPN
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing VPN as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for VPN in the UK

VPN
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing VPN.

Daily rate trend for VPN in the UK

VPN
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VPN over the 6 months to 1 June 2024.

Daily rate histogram for VPN in the UK

VPN
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing VPN.

Hourly rate trend for VPN in the UK

VPN
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing VPN over the 6 months to 1 June 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for VPN in the UK

VPN
Top 16 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VPN within the UK over the 6 months to 1 June 2024. 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
England +41 610 £434 -8.68% 270
UK excluding London +54 437 £425 -5.56% 212
London +11 191 £415 -12.63% 72
Work from Home +16 174 £509 +1.75% 136
South East +28 115 £410 -18.00% 57
Midlands +27 106 £375 -21.05% 37
North of England +48 98 £612 +88.31% 52
West Midlands +22 86 £375 -23.08% 22
North West +50 73 £800 +146.15% 29
South West +9 45 £475 -2.56% 27
Scotland +37 32 £240 +28.86% 15
East of England -4 32 £440 -22.73% 22
Yorkshire +16 24 £300 -20.00% 19
East Midlands +17 20 £338 -3.57% 14
Wales +24 11 £425 -2.86% 6
North East +12 1 £600 +182.35% 4

VPN
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 46 (6.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 29 (4.26%) SharePoint
3 17 (2.50%) Confluence
4 9 (1.32%) Apache
4 9 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (1.03%) IIS
6 5 (0.74%) Skype for Business
7 4 (0.59%) CMS
8 2 (0.29%) MQSeries
8 2 (0.29%) nginx
8 2 (0.29%) WordPress
9 1 (0.15%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.15%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.15%) WebSphere
Applications
1 85 (12.50%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.88%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.29%) Eikon
3 1 (0.15%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 150 (22.06%) Azure
2 109 (16.03%) AWS
3 81 (11.91%) Microsoft 365
4 45 (6.62%) GCP
5 35 (5.15%) PaaS
6 32 (4.71%) Entra ID
7 27 (3.97%) IaaS
8 15 (2.21%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 15 (2.21%) GitHub
9 14 (2.06%) Cloud Computing
9 14 (2.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 13 (1.91%) OneDrive
10 13 (1.91%) SaaS
11 9 (1.32%) Kong
12 8 (1.18%) Amazon EC2
12 8 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.03%) Azure DevOps
13 7 (1.03%) Cloudflare
13 7 (1.03%) OpenShift
14 6 (0.88%) Apigee
Communications & Networking
1 342 (50.29%) Firewall
2 217 (31.91%) WAN
3 147 (21.62%) LAN
4 133 (19.56%) DNS
5 131 (19.26%) BGP
6 115 (16.91%) MPLS
7 101 (14.85%) IPsec
8 93 (13.68%) Network Security
9 87 (12.79%) OSPF
10 85 (12.50%) Wireless
11 77 (11.32%) TCP/IP
12 74 (10.88%) DHCP
13 62 (9.12%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (8.68%) VLAN
15 52 (7.65%) Junos
15 52 (7.65%) SD-WAN
16 41 (6.03%) Cisco ASA
17 40 (5.88%) Cisco Nexus
18 32 (4.71%) VoIP
19 30 (4.41%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.91%) Elasticsearch
2 8 (1.18%) MongoDB
2 8 (1.18%) NoSQL
2 8 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (0.88%) MySQL
3 6 (0.88%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.59%) Amazon QuickSight
4 4 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
4 4 (0.59%) MariaDB
5 3 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
5 3 (0.44%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.29%) Power BI
6 2 (0.29%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.29%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.15%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.15%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.15%) Redis
Development Applications
1 41 (6.03%) JIRA
2 22 (3.24%) GitLab
3 21 (3.09%) Git
4 12 (1.76%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 9 (1.32%) CircleCI
5 9 (1.32%) Robot Framework
5 9 (1.32%) TestRail
5 9 (1.32%) Travis CI
6 7 (1.03%) Bitbucket
7 5 (0.74%) Spinnaker
8 4 (0.59%) Cypress.io
8 4 (0.59%) Snyk
8 4 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.44%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.29%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.15%) MSI
11 1 (0.15%) Subversion
General
1 164 (24.12%) Social Skills
2 77 (11.32%) Finance
3 74 (10.88%) Analytical Skills
4 50 (7.35%) Public Sector
5 30 (4.41%) Telecoms
6 24 (3.53%) Banking
7 17 (2.50%) Legal
8 14 (2.06%) Investment Banking
9 13 (1.91%) Retail
10 12 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
10 12 (1.76%) Manufacturing
11 9 (1.32%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
12 8 (1.18%) Mandarin Language
12 8 (1.18%) Marketing
13 7 (1.03%) Electronics
14 5 (0.74%) Automotive
14 5 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.44%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 164 (24.12%) Network Engineer
2 107 (15.74%) Architect
3 70 (10.29%) Support Engineer
4 55 (8.09%) Lead
5 47 (6.91%) Technical Architect
6 41 (6.03%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 41 (6.03%) Senior
7 39 (5.74%) Desktop Engineer
8 37 (5.44%) Desktop Support
9 36 (5.29%) Analyst
9 36 (5.29%) Network Architect
9 36 (5.29%) Technical Leader
10 35 (5.15%) 3rd Line Support
10 35 (5.15%) Lead Architect
11 34 (5.00%) IT Support
12 33 (4.85%) Network Support
13 28 (4.12%) WAN Engineer
14 27 (3.97%) Security Engineer
15 26 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 25 (3.68%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (6.47%) Node.js
2 23 (3.38%) JSON
3 18 (2.65%) HTML
3 18 (2.65%) React
4 17 (2.50%) CSS
5 15 (2.21%) XML
5 15 (2.21%) YAML
6 14 (2.06%) NETCONF
7 13 (1.91%) .NET
7 13 (1.91%) Elastic Stack
7 13 (1.91%) LDAP
7 13 (1.91%) Web Services
7 13 (1.91%) XMPP
7 13 (1.91%) YANG
8 10 (1.47%) SAML
9 9 (1.32%) REST
9 9 (1.32%) RESTCONF
9 9 (1.32%) SOAP
10 6 (0.88%) ModSecurity
10 6 (0.88%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 81 (11.91%) PKI
2 60 (8.82%) Public Cloud
3 43 (6.32%) Data Centre
4 25 (3.68%) Video Conferencing
5 18 (2.65%) Product Ownership
6 17 (2.50%) Clustering
7 16 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
8 13 (1.91%) BYOD
9 11 (1.62%) Cloud Native
9 11 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (1.62%) iPad
10 9 (1.32%) Data Structures
11 8 (1.18%) Blackberry
11 8 (1.18%) Hedge funds
11 8 (1.18%) Management Information System
11 8 (1.18%) Onboarding
11 8 (1.18%) Security Posture
12 7 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
12 7 (1.03%) iPhone
12 7 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 260 (38.24%) Windows
2 111 (16.32%) Windows Server
3 106 (15.59%) Windows 10
4 59 (8.68%) Windows 7
5 56 (8.24%) Android
5 56 (8.24%) Linux
6 55 (8.09%) Apple iOS
7 29 (4.26%) Mac OS
8 17 (2.50%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (1.76%) Unix
9 12 (1.76%) Windows Server 2016
10 10 (1.47%) Windows Server 2012
11 7 (1.03%) VMS
12 3 (0.44%) Mac OS X
12 3 (0.44%) Windows XP
13 2 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2003
13 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.15%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (17.94%) Problem-Solving
2 107 (15.74%) CI/CD
3 105 (15.44%) Agile
4 96 (14.12%) Customer Service
4 96 (14.12%) DevOps
5 78 (11.47%) Load Balancing
6 70 (10.29%) ITIL
7 65 (9.56%) Mobile Device Management
8 62 (9.12%) Migration
9 61 (8.97%) Zero Trust
10 54 (7.94%) Project Management
10 54 (7.94%) Risk Management
10 54 (7.94%) Security Architecture
11 48 (7.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 47 (6.91%) Network Design
13 46 (6.76%) Design Patterns
13 46 (6.76%) High Availability
13 46 (6.76%) Infrastructure as Code
13 46 (6.76%) Project Delivery
14 42 (6.18%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 66 (9.71%) PowerShell
2 60 (8.82%) Python
3 25 (3.68%) SQL
4 24 (3.53%) Java
5 15 (2.21%) TypeScript
6 13 (1.91%) Bash
7 7 (1.03%) C#
7 7 (1.03%) PHP
8 4 (0.59%) Bicep
8 4 (0.59%) Go
9 3 (0.44%) ActionScript
9 3 (0.44%) Ruby
10 1 (0.15%) C
10 1 (0.15%) C++
10 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.15%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 201 (29.56%) Security Cleared
2 119 (17.50%) SC Cleared
3 107 (15.74%) Cisco Certification
4 75 (11.03%) CCNP
5 64 (9.41%) Degree
6 49 (7.21%) CCNA
7 32 (4.71%) CCIE
8 17 (2.50%) A+ Certification
8 17 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
9 16 (2.35%) DV Cleared
9 16 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (1.91%) AWS Certification
11 12 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
11 12 (1.76%) JNCIA
12 11 (1.62%) MCSE
13 9 (1.32%) CCIE Data Center
14 6 (0.88%) CCSA
14 6 (0.88%) MCSA
15 5 (0.74%) CISSP
15 5 (0.74%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (7.21%) SLA
2 22 (3.24%) QA
3 11 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (1.18%) PCI DSS
5 5 (0.74%) NIST
6 4 (0.59%) GDPR
6 4 (0.59%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.44%) NCSC
8 2 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.15%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.15%) GRC
9 1 (0.15%) NEBOSH
9 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 136 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 74 (10.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (5.88%) Docker
4 37 (5.44%) Hyper-V
5 22 (3.24%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (2.50%) VMware NSX
7 14 (2.06%) Firmware
8 13 (1.91%) Terminal Services
8 13 (1.91%) vSphere
9 11 (1.62%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (1.47%) BitLocker
11 9 (1.32%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (1.03%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
14 5 (0.74%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.44%) NFS
16 2 (0.29%) Samba
16 2 (0.29%) Squid
Systems Management
1 61 (8.97%) SCCM
2 49 (7.21%) Terraform
3 40 (5.88%) Kubernetes
4 38 (5.59%) Ansible
5 24 (3.53%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (3.09%) FortiGate
7 18 (2.65%) Grafana
8 17 (2.50%) Prometheus
9 12 (1.76%) Puppet
10 9 (1.32%) Docker Swarm
10 9 (1.32%) Kibana
10 9 (1.32%) logstash
10 9 (1.32%) Progress Chef
11 8 (1.18%) Failover Clustering
11 8 (1.18%) Jamf Pro
12 7 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.88%) Autotask
13 6 (0.88%) Istio
13 6 (0.88%) OPNET
14 5 (0.74%) Nagios
Vendors
1 230 (33.82%) Cisco
2 179 (26.32%) Microsoft
3 132 (19.41%) Juniper
4 89 (13.09%) VMware
5 79 (11.62%) Palo Alto
6 53 (7.79%) F5
7 52 (7.65%) Fortinet
8 46 (6.76%) CheckPoint
9 41 (6.03%) Citrix
10 31 (4.56%) ServiceNow
11 26 (3.82%) Zscaler
12 24 (3.53%) Apple
13 23 (3.38%) Google
14 22 (3.24%) Blue Coat
15 20 (2.94%) Splunk
16 19 (2.79%) SolarWinds
17 18 (2.65%) Infoblox
18 15 (2.21%) Aruba
19 14 (2.06%) HP
19 14 (2.06%) Meraki