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 5 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
5 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 144 211 262
Rank change year-on-year +67 +51 -21
Contract jobs citing VPN 727 777 971
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.68% 1.32% 1.09%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 13.16% 10.63% 10.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 445 483 683
10th Percentile £200 £160 £172
25th Percentile £300 £243 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -5.26% +11.76%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £581
90th Percentile £825 £688 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £438 £425 £400
% change year-on-year +3.06% +6.25% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 16 29
10th Percentile £12.75 £15.77 £16.00
25th Percentile £13.97 £18.82 £18.13
Median hourly rate £17.00 £21.61 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.33% -1.77% +22.22%
75th Percentile £22.57 £62.31 £30.25
90th Percentile £24.75 £69.61 £54.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.00 £21.61 £20.00
% change year-on-year -25.98% +8.05% +5.26%

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 5,525 7,311 9,672
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.80% 12.38% 10.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,306 4,755 6,321
10th Percentile £205 £240 £230
25th Percentile £350 £400 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £520 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.81% +4.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £610
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £440
% change year-on-year - +7.95% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 420 473 363
10th Percentile £13.50 £9.80 £14.89
25th Percentile £16.72 £10.63 £17.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £18.82 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +112.54% -31.56% +3.77%
75th Percentile £63.75 £60.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £65.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.88 £18.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year +148.00% -13.95% -9.71%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 +75 667 £450 - 324
UK excluding London +74 456 £438 +3.06% 237
London +48 223 £450 - 99
Work from Home +42 192 £500 - 178
South East +41 120 £405 -19.00% 56
Midlands +41 117 £375 -23.08% 51
North of England +53 102 £588 +80.77% 60
West Midlands +35 95 £375 -27.88% 29
North West +52 79 £800 +146.15% 32
South West +24 49 £425 -12.82% 31
East of England +28 37 £475 +31.03% 24
Scotland +36 22 £357 +122.81% 17
Yorkshire +14 22 £300 -27.27% 19
East Midlands +19 21 £338 -20.59% 22
Wales +18 11 £575 +35.29% 2
North East +14 1 £600 +54.84% 9

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 56 (7.70%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (4.40%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.79%) Apache
3 13 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
3 13 (1.79%) Confluence
4 7 (0.96%) IIS
5 5 (0.69%) Skype for Business
6 4 (0.55%) CMS
6 4 (0.55%) MQSeries
7 3 (0.41%) nginx
7 3 (0.41%) WordPress
8 1 (0.14%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 76 (10.45%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.69%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
2 2 (0.28%) Eikon
3 1 (0.14%) Sage X3
3 1 (0.14%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 161 (22.15%) Azure
2 112 (15.41%) AWS
3 93 (12.79%) Microsoft 365
4 41 (5.64%) GCP
5 34 (4.68%) Entra ID
6 31 (4.26%) PaaS
7 26 (3.58%) IaaS
8 18 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 17 (2.34%) Cloud Computing
9 17 (2.34%) OneDrive
10 15 (2.06%) GitHub
11 13 (1.79%) SaaS
12 12 (1.65%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 10 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
13 10 (1.38%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
15 8 (1.10%) Amazon S3
16 7 (0.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 7 (0.96%) Cloudflare
17 6 (0.83%) Asana
Communications & Networking
1 375 (51.58%) Firewall
2 241 (33.15%) WAN
3 177 (24.35%) LAN
4 155 (21.32%) BGP
5 131 (18.02%) DNS
6 130 (17.88%) MPLS
7 117 (16.09%) IPsec
8 108 (14.86%) OSPF
9 105 (14.44%) Wireless
10 100 (13.76%) Network Security
11 80 (11.00%) TCP/IP
12 70 (9.63%) DHCP
13 68 (9.35%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (9.08%) VLAN
15 53 (7.29%) Cisco ASA
16 52 (7.15%) Junos
17 47 (6.46%) SD-WAN
18 43 (5.91%) Cisco Nexus
18 43 (5.91%) WLAN
19 33 (4.54%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.65%) MongoDB
1 12 (1.65%) NoSQL
1 12 (1.65%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
3 10 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
3 10 (1.38%) SQL Server
4 9 (1.24%) MySQL
5 5 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (0.55%) Amazon QuickSight
6 4 (0.55%) MariaDB
6 4 (0.55%) RDBMS
6 4 (0.55%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
7 3 (0.41%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.28%) Power BI
9 1 (0.14%) BusinessObjects
9 1 (0.14%) Redis
Development Applications
1 38 (5.23%) JIRA
2 22 (3.03%) GitLab
3 21 (2.89%) Git
4 13 (1.79%) Robot Framework
4 13 (1.79%) TestRail
5 9 (1.24%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.83%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 6 (0.83%) CircleCI
7 6 (0.83%) Travis CI
8 5 (0.69%) Spinnaker
9 4 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.55%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.55%) Snyk
10 3 (0.41%) Postman
10 3 (0.41%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.14%) MSI
12 1 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 180 (24.76%) Social Skills
2 82 (11.28%) Finance
3 75 (10.32%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (8.53%) Public Sector
5 39 (5.36%) Telecoms
6 23 (3.16%) Banking
7 19 (2.61%) Legal
8 14 (1.93%) Investment Banking
8 14 (1.93%) Manufacturing
9 13 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
10 12 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
11 11 (1.51%) Electronics
11 11 (1.51%) Marketing
11 11 (1.51%) Retail
12 9 (1.24%) Financial Institution
13 8 (1.10%) Mandarin Language
13 8 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.69%) Automotive
15 4 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 4 (0.55%) Law
Job Titles
1 195 (26.82%) Network Engineer
2 104 (14.31%) Architect
3 74 (10.18%) Support Engineer
4 57 (7.84%) Lead
5 46 (6.33%) Technical Architect
6 42 (5.78%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 42 (5.78%) Senior
7 39 (5.36%) Analyst
8 36 (4.95%) Network Architect
9 35 (4.81%) 3rd Line Support
9 35 (4.81%) IT Support
9 35 (4.81%) Lead Architect
9 35 (4.81%) Technical Leader
10 34 (4.68%) Network Specialist
11 32 (4.40%) Desktop Support
11 32 (4.40%) Network Support
12 31 (4.26%) WAN Engineer
13 30 (4.13%) Cisco Engineer
14 29 (3.99%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 29 (3.99%) Desktop Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (6.05%) Node.js
2 24 (3.30%) LDAP
3 23 (3.16%) JSON
4 19 (2.61%) HTML
4 19 (2.61%) NETCONF
5 18 (2.48%) YANG
6 17 (2.34%) CSS
6 17 (2.34%) React
7 13 (1.79%) .NET
7 13 (1.79%) REST
7 13 (1.79%) RESTCONF
7 13 (1.79%) SOAP
7 13 (1.79%) XML
7 13 (1.79%) XMPP
8 12 (1.65%) Web Services
8 12 (1.65%) YAML
9 11 (1.51%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (1.51%) SAML
10 6 (0.83%) 802.1X
10 6 (0.83%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 90 (12.38%) PKI
2 58 (7.98%) Data Centre
2 58 (7.98%) Public Cloud
3 28 (3.85%) Video Conferencing
4 19 (2.61%) Clustering
5 16 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
6 14 (1.93%) Product Ownership
7 13 (1.79%) BYOD
8 11 (1.51%) Cloud Native
8 11 (1.51%) Hybrid Cloud
8 11 (1.51%) iPad
9 10 (1.38%) Hedge funds
9 10 (1.38%) NHS
9 10 (1.38%) Onboarding
10 9 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.24%) Management Information System
11 8 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
11 8 (1.10%) Blackberry
11 8 (1.10%) Driving Licence
12 7 (0.96%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 263 (36.18%) Windows
2 120 (16.51%) Windows Server
3 90 (12.38%) Windows 10
4 65 (8.94%) Linux
5 55 (7.57%) Android
6 53 (7.29%) Apple iOS
7 50 (6.88%) Windows 7
8 27 (3.71%) Mac OS
9 20 (2.75%) Windows Server 2019
10 16 (2.20%) Unix
11 13 (1.79%) Windows Server 2012
12 10 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.83%) Ubuntu
14 5 (0.69%) VMS
15 4 (0.55%) Windows Server 2003
16 3 (0.41%) Mac OS X
16 3 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.41%) Windows XP
17 2 (0.28%) CentOS
17 2 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (17.19%) Problem-Solving
2 114 (15.68%) Agile
3 103 (14.17%) CI/CD
4 98 (13.48%) DevOps
5 91 (12.52%) Customer Service
6 85 (11.69%) Load Balancing
7 67 (9.22%) ITIL
7 67 (9.22%) Migration
8 62 (8.53%) Network Design
9 60 (8.25%) Mobile Device Management
9 60 (8.25%) Zero Trust
10 55 (7.57%) Risk Management
11 53 (7.29%) Project Management
11 53 (7.29%) Security Architecture
12 52 (7.15%) Infrastructure as Code
13 50 (6.88%) Project Delivery
14 49 (6.74%) High Availability
15 48 (6.60%) Change Management
15 48 (6.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 45 (6.19%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 65 (8.94%) Python
2 63 (8.67%) PowerShell
3 33 (4.54%) SQL
4 24 (3.30%) Java
5 15 (2.06%) TypeScript
6 13 (1.79%) Bash
7 11 (1.51%) C#
8 7 (0.96%) PHP
9 5 (0.69%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.55%) Go
11 3 (0.41%) Bicep
11 3 (0.41%) Perl
11 3 (0.41%) Ruby
12 1 (0.14%) C
12 1 (0.14%) C++
12 1 (0.14%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 214 (29.44%) Security Cleared
2 127 (17.47%) SC Cleared
3 108 (14.86%) Cisco Certification
4 76 (10.45%) CCNP
5 64 (8.80%) Degree
6 46 (6.33%) CCNA
7 32 (4.40%) CCIE
8 22 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 17 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
10 16 (2.20%) DV Cleared
11 14 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
12 12 (1.65%) AWS Certification
12 12 (1.65%) JNCIA
12 12 (1.65%) MCSE
13 9 (1.24%) CCIE Data Center
14 8 (1.10%) A+ Certification
15 7 (0.96%) MCSA
16 6 (0.83%) CCSA
17 5 (0.69%) CISSP
17 5 (0.69%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (7.02%) SLA
2 25 (3.44%) QA
3 10 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (1.10%) PCI DSS
5 4 (0.55%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.55%) NCSC
5 4 (0.55%) NIST
6 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (0.41%) GDPR
7 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.14%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.14%) GRC
8 1 (0.14%) HL7
8 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 135 (18.57%) Active Directory
2 70 (9.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (5.78%) Hyper-V
4 37 (5.09%) Docker
5 24 (3.30%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (2.06%) Terminal Services
6 15 (2.06%) vSphere
7 14 (1.93%) Firmware
8 13 (1.79%) VMware ESXi
9 12 (1.65%) BitLocker
10 10 (1.38%) VMware NSX
11 9 (1.24%) Virtual Servers
12 8 (1.10%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.69%) VMware Workstation
14 4 (0.55%) NFS
14 4 (0.55%) Samba
15 2 (0.28%) Squid
16 1 (0.14%) Terminal Server
Systems Management
1 47 (6.46%) Terraform
2 44 (6.05%) SCCM
3 43 (5.91%) Ansible
4 34 (4.68%) FortiGate
5 32 (4.40%) Kubernetes
6 26 (3.58%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (2.34%) Grafana
8 15 (2.06%) Prometheus
9 11 (1.51%) Puppet
10 8 (1.10%) Failover Clustering
10 8 (1.10%) Jamf Pro
10 8 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.10%) vCenter Server
11 7 (0.96%) Nagios
12 6 (0.83%) Autotask
12 6 (0.83%) Docker Swarm
12 6 (0.83%) Istio
12 6 (0.83%) Kibana
12 6 (0.83%) Progress Chef
12 6 (0.83%) vMotion
Vendors
1 250 (34.39%) Cisco
2 178 (24.48%) Microsoft
3 154 (21.18%) Juniper
4 90 (12.38%) VMware
5 89 (12.24%) Palo Alto
6 60 (8.25%) Fortinet
7 48 (6.60%) F5
8 46 (6.33%) CheckPoint
9 45 (6.19%) Citrix
10 34 (4.68%) ServiceNow
11 24 (3.30%) Zscaler
12 23 (3.16%) SolarWinds
13 21 (2.89%) Apple
14 20 (2.75%) Infoblox
15 19 (2.61%) Google
15 19 (2.61%) Splunk
16 18 (2.48%) Blue Coat
17 17 (2.34%) Aruba
18 15 (2.06%) HP
19 14 (1.93%) Meraki