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 17 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
17 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 339 335 296
Rank change year-on-year -4 -39 +34
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 272 146 274
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.63% 0.59% 0.73%
As % of the System Software category 6.33% 4.69% 6.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 100 197
10th Percentile £356 £350 £340
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £507 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% -7.86% +3.77%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK median daily rate £496 £501 £535
% change year-on-year -0.96% -6.36% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 25
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +102.90% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £57.31 £15.19
90th Percentile - £65.25 £56.21
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +102.90% +135.90% -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 4,295 3,114 4,132
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.00% 12.59% 11.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,885 2,074 2,879
10th Percentile £213 £214 £205
25th Percentile £400 £382 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £599 £607 £608
90th Percentile £680 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 75 203
10th Percentile £16.40 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.15 £18.13 £14.48
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.00 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year +87.50% +25.56% -57.22%
75th Percentile £73.00 £75.60 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £90.40 £72.85
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +82.14% +15.80% -55.68%

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 17 June 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Virtual Machines in England over the 6 months to 17 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Virtual Machines in England

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 17 June 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 -44 103 £538 -2.27% 16
North of England +6 93 £481 +27.25% 15
Yorkshire -10 51 £500 +5.26% 9
South East -31 41 £475 -13.64% 30
North West -8 40 £467 +24.39% 6
Midlands -60 15 £438 -12.15% 10
South West -16 13 £500 +5.26% 8
West Midlands -58 12 £425 -14.66% 6
East of England -25 7 £425 -19.12% 13
North East -32 2 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -21 1 £500 -4.76% 4
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 4 (1.47%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.10%) Confluence
2 3 (1.10%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.74%) Apache
3 2 (0.74%) CMS
3 2 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.74%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.74%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.37%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.37%) IIS
4 1 (0.37%) nginx
4 1 (0.37%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.47%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.47%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.74%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.37%) InDesign
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 111 (40.81%) Azure
2 37 (13.60%) AWS
3 33 (12.13%) OpenShift
4 30 (11.03%) Entra ID
5 26 (9.56%) GitHub
6 25 (9.19%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (7.72%) Azure Monitor
8 19 (6.99%) Azure AKS
9 18 (6.62%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (5.51%) Azure Key Vault
10 15 (5.51%) GCP
10 15 (5.51%) Serverless
11 12 (4.41%) Azure Storage
12 11 (4.04%) Azure Functions
12 11 (4.04%) Microsoft 365
13 9 (3.31%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 8 (2.94%) Nutanix
15 7 (2.57%) Azure Logic Apps
16 6 (2.21%) Cohesity
16 6 (2.21%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 38 (13.97%) DNS
2 33 (12.13%) Firewall
3 24 (8.82%) VPN
4 21 (7.72%) Network Security
5 18 (6.62%) DHCP
5 18 (6.62%) VLAN
6 16 (5.88%) WAN
7 15 (5.51%) SSL
7 15 (5.51%) VSAN
8 10 (3.68%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.94%) FTP
9 8 (2.94%) SAN
10 6 (2.21%) LAN
11 4 (1.47%) TCP/IP
11 4 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.74%) IPsec
12 2 (0.74%) NAS
12 2 (0.74%) NetScaler
12 2 (0.74%) Reverse Proxy
12 2 (0.74%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (7.72%) SQL Server
2 11 (4.04%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (2.21%) Db2
3 6 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.21%) Power BI
4 4 (1.47%) Data Lake
5 3 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.10%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.37%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.37%) Neo4j
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Exadata
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.37%) Power Query
6 1 (0.37%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 20 (7.35%) Git
2 13 (4.78%) Jenkins
3 10 (3.68%) GitLab
4 8 (2.94%) JIRA
5 3 (1.10%) PVCS
5 3 (1.10%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (0.74%) JMeter
6 2 (0.74%) Postman
6 2 (0.74%) Selenium
6 2 (0.74%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.74%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.74%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.37%) Gradle
7 1 (0.37%) RStudio
General
1 40 (14.71%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.93%) Finance
3 13 (4.78%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (4.41%) Banking
4 12 (4.41%) Legal
5 9 (3.31%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (2.21%) Retail
8 5 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.47%) Front Office
10 3 (1.10%) Electronics
10 3 (1.10%) Marketing
11 2 (0.74%) Law
11 2 (0.74%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.74%) Publishing
12 1 (0.37%) Advertising
12 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 34 (12.50%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
2 24 (8.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 20 (7.35%) Senior
4 17 (6.25%) Cloud Engineer
5 16 (5.88%) Architect
5 16 (5.88%) Wintel Engineer
6 14 (5.15%) Lead
7 13 (4.78%) Analyst
8 9 (3.31%) Administrator
8 9 (3.31%) Technical Specialist
8 9 (3.31%) VMware Engineer
9 8 (2.94%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 7 (2.57%) Azure Architect
10 7 (2.57%) Linux Engineer
11 6 (2.21%) Consultant
11 6 (2.21%) Product Owner
11 6 (2.21%) Security Engineer
11 6 (2.21%) Senior VMware Engineer
11 6 (2.21%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.94%) ARM Templates
1 8 (2.94%) REST
2 6 (2.21%) YAML
3 4 (1.47%) Middleware
4 3 (1.10%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.10%) JSON
5 2 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.74%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.74%) PySpark
5 2 (0.74%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.74%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.74%) SOAP
5 2 (0.74%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.74%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.37%) Kafka
6 1 (0.37%) Node.js
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.37%) Pandas
6 1 (0.37%) SciPy
6 1 (0.37%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.93%) Replication
2 23 (8.46%) Data Centre
3 21 (7.72%) Clustering
4 17 (6.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (4.41%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.31%) Cloud Native
6 9 (3.31%) Product Ownership
7 6 (2.21%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.21%) Operational Technology
7 6 (2.21%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.84%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (1.84%) FlexPod
8 5 (1.84%) Mainframe
8 5 (1.84%) PKI
9 4 (1.47%) Fixed Income
9 4 (1.47%) Market Risk
9 4 (1.47%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.10%) SCADA
10 3 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 88 (32.35%) Windows
2 68 (25.00%) Linux
3 51 (18.75%) Windows Server
4 28 (10.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (8.46%) VMS
6 11 (4.04%) Unix
7 9 (3.31%) AIX
8 7 (2.57%) CoreOS
9 6 (2.21%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.47%) SUSE
11 3 (1.10%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.10%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.74%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.37%) Android
13 1 (0.37%) Solaris
13 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (27.21%) CI/CD
2 69 (25.37%) DevOps
3 59 (21.69%) Migration
4 49 (18.01%) Infrastructure as Code
5 43 (15.81%) High Availability
6 40 (14.71%) Disaster Recovery
7 38 (13.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 35 (12.87%) Network Virtualisation
9 33 (12.13%) Performance Tuning
10 32 (11.76%) Continuous Improvement
11 30 (11.03%) Capacity Planning
12 24 (8.82%) Problem-Solving
12 24 (8.82%) RBAC
12 24 (8.82%) Vulnerability Management
13 23 (8.46%) Cybersecurity
14 22 (8.09%) Containerisation
15 21 (7.72%) Validation
16 20 (7.35%) Platform Engineering
16 20 (7.35%) Storage Management
17 19 (6.99%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 75 (27.57%) PowerShell
2 64 (23.53%) Python
3 44 (16.18%) Bash
4 39 (14.34%) SQL
5 8 (2.94%) Bicep
6 6 (2.21%) C
6 6 (2.21%) C#
7 5 (1.84%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.47%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.10%) C++
9 3 (1.10%) Embedded C
9 3 (1.10%) Embedded C++
9 3 (1.10%) Java
10 2 (0.74%) Korn
11 1 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.37%) Groovy
11 1 (0.37%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.37%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.37%) RPG
11 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 68 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 52 (19.12%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 17 (6.25%) Microsoft Certification
4 17 (6.25%) VCAP
5 16 (5.88%) MCSA
5 16 (5.88%) MCSE
6 12 (4.41%) Azure Certification
7 8 (2.94%) Degree
8 6 (2.21%) OCP
8 6 (2.21%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.84%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.84%) ISTQB
9 5 (1.84%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (1.47%) CISSP
11 3 (1.10%) CISM
11 3 (1.10%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.10%) PMP
12 2 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.41%) QA
2 2 (0.74%) GMP
2 2 (0.74%) GxP
2 2 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (0.74%) NIST
2 2 (0.74%) SLA
3 1 (0.37%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.37%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.37%) GDPR
3 1 (0.37%) HIPAA
3 1 (0.37%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.37%) WCAG
System Software
1 90 (33.09%) VMware Infrastructure
2 50 (18.38%) vSphere
3 43 (15.81%) VMware ESXi
4 36 (13.24%) Active Directory
5 29 (10.66%) Hyper-V
6 20 (7.35%) Docker
7 16 (5.88%) KVM
8 10 (3.68%) Virtual Desktop
8 10 (3.68%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.31%) Firmware
9 9 (3.31%) NFS
10 7 (2.57%) Ceph
11 3 (1.10%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.74%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.74%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.37%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.37%) NLBS
13 1 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 61 (22.43%) Terraform
2 60 (22.06%) Ansible
3 47 (17.28%) Kubernetes
4 38 (13.97%) vCenter Server
5 14 (5.15%) PowerCLI
6 11 (4.04%) Grafana
7 9 (3.31%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.94%) SCCM
9 6 (2.21%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.21%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.21%) VxRail
10 5 (1.84%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (1.84%) vMotion
11 4 (1.47%) Argo
11 4 (1.47%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.47%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.47%) SCOM
12 3 (1.10%) Podman
12 3 (1.10%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.74%) SELinux
Vendors
1 94 (34.56%) VMware
2 76 (27.94%) Microsoft
3 35 (12.87%) Cisco
4 16 (5.88%) IBM
5 15 (5.51%) Red Hat
6 12 (4.41%) Google
6 12 (4.41%) NetApp
7 11 (4.04%) Oracle
8 10 (3.68%) Qualys
8 10 (3.68%) ServiceNow
9 9 (3.31%) Dell
9 9 (3.31%) Veeam
10 7 (2.57%) SolarWinds
10 7 (2.57%) Tenable
11 6 (2.21%) CyberArk
11 6 (2.21%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.84%) Commvault
12 5 (1.84%) Databricks
12 5 (1.84%) Splunk
13 4 (1.47%) Xerox
90 Virtual Machines jobs in England