Virtual Machines Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Virtual Machine (VM)
North West > Cheshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Cheshire requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 47 61
Rank change year-on-year -23 +14 -8
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 3 8 2
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 0.45% 1.77% 0.39%
As % of the System Software category 2.34% 12.90% 3.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 6 0
10th Percentile £516 £336 -
25th Percentile £539 £361 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £578 £378 -
Median % change year-on-year +52.78% - -
75th Percentile £616 £381 -
90th Percentile £640 £384 -
North West median daily rate £460 £381 £513
% change year-on-year +20.73% -25.66% +5.13%

All System Software Skills
Cheshire

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 Cheshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 128 62 57
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 19.36% 13.72% 11.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 79 37 38
10th Percentile £311 £265 £126
25th Percentile £355 £350 £168
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £391 £363
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% +7.86% -15.70%
75th Percentile £494 £425 £520
90th Percentile £610 £504 £553
North West median daily rate £435 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +8.75% -11.11% +2.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 5 2
10th Percentile - - £16.66
25th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £16.84
Median hourly rate £16.88 £24.18 £17.33
Median % change year-on-year -30.21% +39.55% -37.56%
75th Percentile £18.87 - £17.62
90th Percentile £23.83 £56.17 £17.68
North West median hourly rate £41.94 £22.09 £18.00
% change year-on-year +89.86% +22.72% -63.87%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

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

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in Cheshire

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

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

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

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in Cheshire over the 6 months to 30 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in Cheshire

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Trend in Cheshire

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

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

Virtual Machines
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

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 Cheshire region over the 6 months to 30 January 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
Knutsford -30 1 £655 +71.92%
Virtual Machines
North West

Virtual Machines
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheshire 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:

Cloud Services
1 1 (33.33%) Azure
1 1 (33.33%) Azure Service Bus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (33.33%) Azure SQL Database
1 1 (33.33%) DB2
1 1 (33.33%) SQL Server
General
1 1 (33.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 1 (33.33%) Architect
1 1 (33.33%) DevOps Engineer
1 1 (33.33%) Solutions Architect
1 1 (33.33%) Technical Architect
1 1 (33.33%) Technical Solutions Architect
1 1 (33.33%) Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (33.33%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 1 (33.33%) Distributed Applications
1 1 (33.33%) Distributed Systems
1 1 (33.33%) Linux Command Line
1 1 (33.33%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1 (33.33%) AIX
1 1 (33.33%) Linux
1 1 (33.33%) Unix
1 1 (33.33%) Windows
1 1 (33.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1 (33.33%) Asset Management
1 1 (33.33%) CI/CD
1 1 (33.33%) DevOps
1 1 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
1 1 (33.33%) Remediation Plan
1 1 (33.33%) Roadmaps
1 1 (33.33%) Technology Roadmap
1 1 (33.33%) Virtual Environments
Programming Languages
1 2 (66.67%) SQL
2 1 (33.33%) Bash
2 1 (33.33%) C#
2 1 (33.33%) PowerShell
System Software
1 1 (33.33%) Hyper-V
1 1 (33.33%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1 (33.33%) IBM BigFix
1 1 (33.33%) Kubernetes
1 1 (33.33%) Terraform
1 1 (33.33%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1 (33.33%) IBM
1 1 (33.33%) Microsoft