Virtual Machines Contract Job Trends in Berkshire

Virtual Machine (VM)
South East > Berkshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Berkshire requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 104 76 85
Rank change year-on-year -28 +9 +23
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 9 27 42
As % of all contract jobs in Berkshire 0.61% 1.78% 2.42%
As % of the System Software category 5.00% 11.54% 16.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 20 36
10th Percentile £394 £325 £343
25th Percentile £523 £345 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £569 £350 £600
Median % change year-on-year +62.50% -41.67% +17.65%
75th Percentile £602 £608 £615
90th Percentile £616 £616 £620
South East median daily rate £569 £365 £550
% change year-on-year +55.82% -33.64% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £24.34
Median hourly rate - - £25.12
75th Percentile - - £25.89
90th Percentile - - -
South East median hourly rate £58.50 - £25.12
% change year-on-year - - -69.56%

All System Software Skills
Berkshire

Virtual Machines falls under the System Software category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring system software skills in Berkshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 180 234 254
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Berkshire 12.24% 15.40% 14.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 140 189
10th Percentile £221 £232 £148
25th Percentile £331 £375 £205
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £534 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.77% +12.37% -1.04%
75th Percentile £539 £638 £600
90th Percentile £617 £671 £638
South East median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 7
10th Percentile £74.80 - £22.19
25th Percentile £82.00 £55.87 £41.55
Median hourly rate £90.00 £56.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.60% -12.70% +18.18%
75th Percentile £100.00 £57.62 £67.94
90th Percentile £103.30 - £68.63
South East median hourly rate £81.00 £57.25 £58.75
% change year-on-year +41.48% -2.55% +144.79%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in Berkshire

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Virtual Machines relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Berkshire.

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in Berkshire

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Trend in Berkshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram in Berkshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in Berkshire over the 6 months to 18 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in Berkshire

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Trend in Berkshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Berkshire citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Contract Job Locations in Berkshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Virtual Machines within the Berkshire region over the 6 months to 18 December 2025. 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
Reading +11 8 £575 -4.96% 1
Slough - 1 £275 -
Virtual Machines
South East

Virtual Machines
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Berkshire 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 4 (44.44%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 5 (55.56%) AWS
2 4 (44.44%) Azure
3 3 (33.33%) Amazon EC2
3 3 (33.33%) Amazon S3
3 3 (33.33%) Azure Storage
3 3 (33.33%) IaaS
4 2 (22.22%) PaaS
5 1 (11.11%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (11.11%) Entra ID
5 1 (11.11%) GitHub
5 1 (11.11%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (11.11%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (33.33%) Amazon RDS
1 3 (33.33%) Oracle Database
1 3 (33.33%) Oracle Reports
2 1 (11.11%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (55.56%) JIRA
General
1 5 (55.56%) Social Skills
2 4 (44.44%) Telecoms
3 1 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (11.11%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 4 (44.44%) Project Manager
2 3 (33.33%) DBA
2 3 (33.33%) Oracle DBA
3 2 (22.22%) DevOps Engineer
4 1 (11.11%) Administrator
4 1 (11.11%) AWS DevOps
4 1 (11.11%) AWS DevOps Engineer
4 1 (11.11%) AWS Engineer
4 1 (11.11%) Cloud Engineer
4 1 (11.11%) Data Analytics Engineer
4 1 (11.11%) Network Manager
4 1 (11.11%) Network Project Manager
Miscellaneous
1 4 (44.44%) Self-Motivation
2 3 (33.33%) Cloud Native
3 1 (11.11%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (11.11%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 5 (55.56%) Linux
2 3 (33.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (11.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (55.56%) Agile
1 5 (55.56%) CI/CD
1 5 (55.56%) DevOps
1 5 (55.56%) Problem-Solving
2 4 (44.44%) Change Control
2 4 (44.44%) Change Management
2 4 (44.44%) Conflict Resolution
2 4 (44.44%) Project Delivery
2 4 (44.44%) Project Management
2 4 (44.44%) Runbook
2 4 (44.44%) Waterfall
3 3 (33.33%) High Availability
3 3 (33.33%) Performance Tuning
3 3 (33.33%) Statistics
3 3 (33.33%) Task Automation
4 2 (22.22%) Performance Monitoring
4 2 (22.22%) Storage Management
5 1 (11.11%) Analytics
5 1 (11.11%) Continuous Delivery
5 1 (11.11%) Data Analytics
Programming Languages
1 5 (55.56%) SQL
2 3 (33.33%) Shell Script
3 2 (22.22%) Python
4 1 (11.11%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 3 (33.33%) Azure Certification
1 3 (33.33%) OCP
1 3 (33.33%) Oracle Certification
2 1 (11.11%) AWS Certification
2 1 (11.11%) SC Cleared
2 1 (11.11%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (33.33%) GDPR
2 1 (11.11%) QA
System Software
1 1 (11.11%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 3 (33.33%) Data Guard
1 3 (33.33%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
1 3 (33.33%) Oracle RMAN
2 2 (22.22%) systemd
3 1 (11.11%) Kubernetes
3 1 (11.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (77.78%) Oracle
2 4 (44.44%) Remedy
3 3 (33.33%) Red Hat
4 1 (11.11%) Databricks
4 1 (11.11%) Microsoft