Virtual Machines Contract Job Trends in England

Virtual Machine (VM)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 335 316 301
Rank change year-on-year -19 -15 +17
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 267 162 259
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.66% 0.67% 0.71%
As % of the System Software category 6.33% 5.36% 6.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 105 179
10th Percentile £356 £350 £300
25th Percentile £413 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £523
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.48% -3.78%
75th Percentile £572 £625 £608
90th Percentile £652 £750 £680
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £513
% change year-on-year -2.44% - -5.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 9 27
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £64.50 £15.19
90th Percentile - £66.00 £86.97
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
% change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.84%

All System Software Skills
England

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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 4,217 3,022 3,987
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.38% 12.53% 10.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,859 2,086 2,779
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £400 £384 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £688 £715 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 68 209
10th Percentile £17.92 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £26.66 £17.45 £14.48
Median hourly rate £57.50 £28.21 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.86% +34.31% -58.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £64.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £95.00 £88.00 £72.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £28.00 £22.40
% change year-on-year +87.50% +25.00% -58.52%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in England

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

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

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in England over the 6 months to 14 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in England

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

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

Virtual Machines
Contract Job Locations in England

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 England region over the 6 months to 14 May 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
London -40 105 £525 -8.70% 25
North of England 0 90 £482 +28.53% 14
Yorkshire -9 50 £500 +5.26% 5
North West -12 39 £460 +22.67% 8
South East -33 36 £514 -10.61% 13
Midlands -64 15 £425 -15.00% 5
West Midlands -61 12 £375 -25.00% 3
East of England -38 9 £425 -20.93% 4
South West -28 8 £450 -15.89% 7
North East -19 1 £400 +10.34% 1
East Midlands -31 1 £500 -4.76% 2
Virtual Machines
UK

Virtual Machines
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 5 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (1.87%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.50%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.12%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.75%) CMS
4 2 (0.75%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.37%) Apache
5 1 (0.37%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.37%) Confluence
5 1 (0.37%) IIS
5 1 (0.37%) nginx
5 1 (0.37%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.12%) Adobe Illustrator
1 3 (1.12%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.75%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.37%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 107 (40.07%) Azure
2 41 (15.36%) AWS
3 37 (13.86%) OpenShift
4 31 (11.61%) GitHub
5 25 (9.36%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (8.99%) Entra ID
7 23 (8.61%) GitHub Actions
8 20 (7.49%) Azure Monitor
9 17 (6.37%) Azure AKS
10 16 (5.99%) GCP
11 14 (5.24%) Serverless
12 13 (4.87%) Microsoft 365
13 11 (4.12%) Azure Storage
14 9 (3.37%) Azure Key Vault
14 9 (3.37%) Nutanix
15 7 (2.62%) Azure Functions
16 6 (2.25%) Azure Logic Apps
16 6 (2.25%) Cohesity
17 5 (1.87%) Microsoft Purview
17 5 (1.87%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 35 (13.11%) Firewall
2 33 (12.36%) DNS
3 22 (8.24%) VPN
4 19 (7.12%) Network Security
5 17 (6.37%) VLAN
6 16 (5.99%) DHCP
7 15 (5.62%) VSAN
8 11 (4.12%) WAN
9 10 (3.75%) SSL
10 8 (3.00%) SAN
10 8 (3.00%) SD-WAN
10 8 (3.00%) TCP/IP
11 6 (2.25%) LAN
11 6 (2.25%) Reverse Proxy
12 5 (1.87%) FTP
13 4 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.75%) Cisco Nexus
14 2 (0.75%) IPsec
14 2 (0.75%) NAS
14 2 (0.75%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.99%) SQL Server
2 8 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.25%) DB2
5 5 (1.87%) Oracle Database
5 5 (1.87%) Power BI
6 4 (1.50%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.75%) ImageNet
9 1 (0.37%) Data Hub
9 1 (0.37%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.37%) Power Query
9 1 (0.37%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.37%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 27 (10.11%) Git
2 11 (4.12%) GitLab
2 11 (4.12%) Jenkins
3 8 (3.00%) JIRA
4 6 (2.25%) PVCS
4 6 (2.25%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (0.75%) JMeter
5 2 (0.75%) Postman
5 2 (0.75%) RStudio
5 2 (0.75%) Selenium
5 2 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.75%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.75%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.37%) Gradle
General
1 37 (13.86%) Social Skills
2 19 (7.12%) Finance
3 12 (4.49%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.12%) Public Sector
5 10 (3.75%) Legal
6 9 (3.37%) Banking
7 7 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (2.25%) Electronics
9 5 (1.87%) Retail
10 3 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.12%) Front Office
10 3 (1.12%) Marketing
11 2 (0.75%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.75%) Social Science
12 1 (0.37%) Advertising
12 1 (0.37%) Back Office
12 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Police
12 1 (0.37%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 35 (13.11%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (8.99%) Azure Engineer
3 23 (8.61%) Senior
4 20 (7.49%) Architect
5 19 (7.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 16 (5.99%) Wintel Engineer
7 13 (4.87%) Cloud Engineer
8 11 (4.12%) Analyst
8 11 (4.12%) Lead
8 11 (4.12%) VMware Engineer
9 9 (3.37%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 9 (3.37%) Security Engineer
10 7 (2.62%) Administrator
10 7 (2.62%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 6 (2.25%) C Software Engineer
11 6 (2.25%) Consultant
11 6 (2.25%) Embedded C Engineer
11 6 (2.25%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
11 6 (2.25%) Software Engineer
11 6 (2.25%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.00%) ARM Templates
1 8 (3.00%) YAML
2 7 (2.62%) REST
3 4 (1.50%) Middleware
4 3 (1.12%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.12%) JSON
5 2 (0.75%) .NET
5 2 (0.75%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.75%) PySpark
5 2 (0.75%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.75%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.75%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.75%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.37%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.37%) Java SE
6 1 (0.37%) LDAP
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.37%) Pandas
6 1 (0.37%) Retrofit
6 1 (0.37%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 27 (10.11%) Replication
2 22 (8.24%) Data Centre
3 21 (7.87%) Clustering
4 14 (5.24%) Cloud Native
5 13 (4.87%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (4.49%) Linux Command Line
6 12 (4.49%) Private Cloud
7 10 (3.75%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.25%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.87%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (1.87%) FlexPod
9 5 (1.87%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.87%) PKI
10 3 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.12%) Mainframe
10 3 (1.12%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.12%) SCADA
10 3 (1.12%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.75%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 73 (27.34%) Windows
2 69 (25.84%) Linux
3 42 (15.73%) Windows Server
4 32 (11.99%) VMS
5 25 (9.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (3.00%) AIX
6 8 (3.00%) Unix
7 7 (2.62%) CoreOS
8 6 (2.25%) Data ONTAP
9 4 (1.50%) SUSE
10 3 (1.12%) Apple iOS
10 3 (1.12%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.75%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.37%) Android
12 1 (0.37%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (28.09%) CI/CD
2 72 (26.97%) DevOps
3 62 (23.22%) Migration
4 52 (19.48%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (15.73%) High Availability
6 41 (15.36%) Disaster Recovery
7 35 (13.11%) Network Virtualisation
7 35 (13.11%) Performance Tuning
8 32 (11.99%) Continuous Improvement
9 30 (11.24%) Capacity Planning
10 29 (10.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 27 (10.11%) Containerisation
12 23 (8.61%) Cybersecurity
13 20 (7.49%) Platform Engineering
13 20 (7.49%) Technical Leadership
14 19 (7.12%) Vulnerability Management
15 18 (6.74%) Deployment Automation
15 18 (6.74%) Problem-Solving
15 18 (6.74%) RBAC
15 18 (6.74%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 67 (25.09%) PowerShell
2 61 (22.85%) Python
3 41 (15.36%) Bash
4 37 (13.86%) SQL
5 9 (3.37%) Bicep
5 9 (3.37%) Shell Script
6 8 (3.00%) C
7 6 (2.25%) C++
7 6 (2.25%) Embedded C
7 6 (2.25%) Embedded C++
7 6 (2.25%) Java
8 5 (1.87%) C#
9 4 (1.50%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.50%) Ruby
10 2 (0.75%) Go
10 2 (0.75%) Korn
10 2 (0.75%) PHP
11 1 (0.37%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.37%) RPG
11 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 67 (25.09%) Security Cleared
2 52 (19.48%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 17 (6.37%) VCAP
5 15 (5.62%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (5.24%) MCSA
6 14 (5.24%) MCSE
6 14 (5.24%) OCP
6 14 (5.24%) Oracle Certification
7 13 (4.87%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.37%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.50%) Degree
11 3 (1.12%) CISSP
11 3 (1.12%) ISTQB
11 3 (1.12%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.12%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.12%) PMP
12 2 (0.75%) CISM
12 2 (0.75%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.49%) QA
2 6 (2.25%) GDPR
3 3 (1.12%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.75%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.75%) GMP
4 2 (0.75%) GxP
5 1 (0.37%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.37%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.37%) NIST
5 1 (0.37%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.37%) SLA
5 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.37%) WCAG
System Software
1 83 (31.09%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (17.60%) vSphere
3 41 (15.36%) VMware ESXi
4 34 (12.73%) Active Directory
5 26 (9.74%) Hyper-V
6 16 (5.99%) Docker
6 16 (5.99%) KVM
7 9 (3.37%) Firmware
7 9 (3.37%) VMware NSX
8 8 (3.00%) Ceph
8 8 (3.00%) NFS
9 5 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.75%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 2 (0.75%) Xen
11 1 (0.37%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.37%) NLBS
11 1 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.37%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 1 (0.37%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 69 (25.84%) Terraform
2 64 (23.97%) Ansible
3 52 (19.48%) Kubernetes
4 39 (14.61%) vCenter Server
5 12 (4.49%) PowerCLI
6 9 (3.37%) SCCM
7 8 (3.00%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (2.62%) Grafana
9 6 (2.25%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.25%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.25%) VxRail
9 6 (2.25%) WSUS
10 5 (1.87%) Prometheus
11 4 (1.50%) Argo
11 4 (1.50%) Data Guard
11 4 (1.50%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.50%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.50%) Oracle RMAN
12 3 (1.12%) systemd
12 3 (1.12%) vMotion
Vendors
1 87 (32.58%) VMware
2 74 (27.72%) Microsoft
3 28 (10.49%) Cisco
4 19 (7.12%) Red Hat
5 17 (6.37%) IBM
6 12 (4.49%) Oracle
7 11 (4.12%) Dell
7 11 (4.12%) Google
7 11 (4.12%) NetApp
8 9 (3.37%) Veeam
9 6 (2.25%) ANSYS
9 6 (2.25%) Tenable
10 5 (1.87%) CyberArk
10 5 (1.87%) Databricks
10 5 (1.87%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.87%) SolarWinds
11 4 (1.50%) Commvault
11 4 (1.50%) OpenText
11 4 (1.50%) Qualys
11 4 (1.50%) Sophos