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 7 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
7 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 371 377 311
Rank change year-on-year +6 -66 +33
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 277 142 221
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.60% 0.51% 0.69%
As % of the System Software category 5.94% 4.09% 5.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 97 155
10th Percentile £390 £348 £345
25th Percentile £425 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £735 £650 £662
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 4
10th Percentile £26.90 - -
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £49.09
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% -29.72% -37.65%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £84.11
90th Percentile - £50.45 £85.11
UK median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £49.09
% change year-on-year +124.64% -29.72% -37.65%

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 4,666 3,476 3,699
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.02% 12.44% 11.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,043 2,238 2,418
10th Percentile £218 £208 £220
25th Percentile £392 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
90th Percentile £700 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 234 108 87
10th Percentile £17.75 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £28.00 £22.38 £20.25
Median hourly rate £63.14 £34.50 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +83.00% +11.29% -32.87%
75th Percentile £74.00 £74.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £89.74 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £62.00 £33.39 £30.50
% change year-on-year +85.71% +9.46% -36.32%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 -56 95 £532 +4.93% 103
North of England -12 74 £500 +15.34% 34
South East -19 62 £475 -13.64% 45
Yorkshire -8 41 £524 +10.32% 12
North West -11 31 £484 +48.92% 22
South West -43 16 £558 +1.36% 10
East of England -13 15 £353 -25.68% 25
Midlands -40 14 £487 -4.04% 14
West Midlands -44 11 £487 -4.51% 10
East Midlands -16 3 £500 +5.26% 4
North East - 2 £413 -
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 9 (3.25%) IIS
2 6 (2.17%) Confluence
2 6 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.81%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.72%) CMS
4 2 (0.72%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.36%) Apache
5 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.36%) nginx
5 1 (0.36%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (1.44%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.44%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.72%) InDesign
2 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.36%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 132 (47.65%) Azure
2 63 (22.74%) Entra ID
3 34 (12.27%) AWS
3 34 (12.27%) Azure Monitor
4 33 (11.91%) IaaS
5 29 (10.47%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (8.66%) Microsoft 365
7 23 (8.30%) Azure AKS
8 20 (7.22%) GitHub
8 20 (7.22%) OpenShift
9 15 (5.42%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (4.33%) PaaS
11 11 (3.97%) GCP
11 11 (3.97%) Power Platform
11 11 (3.97%) SaaS
12 10 (3.61%) Azure Key Vault
13 9 (3.25%) Datadog
14 8 (2.89%) Amazon EC2
14 8 (2.89%) Azure Storage
14 8 (2.89%) Cohesity
Communications & Networking
1 45 (16.25%) DNS
2 37 (13.36%) Firewall
3 26 (9.39%) VPN
4 22 (7.94%) DHCP
5 19 (6.86%) WAN
6 17 (6.14%) SSL
7 16 (5.78%) VLAN
8 15 (5.42%) Network Security
9 11 (3.97%) LAN
9 11 (3.97%) SD-WAN
10 9 (3.25%) HTTP
11 8 (2.89%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (2.53%) FTP
13 6 (2.17%) TCP/IP
14 5 (1.81%) HTTPS
14 5 (1.81%) SAN
14 5 (1.81%) VSAN
15 4 (1.44%) SSH
16 3 (1.08%) NetScaler
17 2 (0.72%) ICMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.91%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.97%) MySQL
2 11 (3.97%) Power BI
3 10 (3.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 9 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
5 8 (2.89%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (2.53%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.08%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.36%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (0.36%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.36%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.36%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.36%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.36%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 17 (6.14%) Jenkins
2 13 (4.69%) Git
3 8 (2.89%) GitLab
3 8 (2.89%) JIRA
4 4 (1.44%) CppUnit
4 4 (1.44%) PVCS
4 4 (1.44%) Rational DOORS
4 4 (1.44%) SonarQube
5 3 (1.08%) Maven
5 3 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.72%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.72%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.72%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.36%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.36%) Selenium
7 1 (0.36%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.36%) Visual Studio
General
1 48 (17.33%) Social Skills
2 24 (8.66%) Finance
3 13 (4.69%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (2.89%) Banking
4 8 (2.89%) Legal
5 7 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (2.17%) Back Office
6 6 (2.17%) Front Office
6 6 (2.17%) Manufacturing
7 5 (1.81%) Retail
8 4 (1.44%) Law
8 4 (1.44%) Marketing
8 4 (1.44%) Public Sector
9 2 (0.72%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.72%) Local Government
9 2 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.72%) Publishing
10 1 (0.36%) Automotive
10 1 (0.36%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 50 (18.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 43 (15.52%) Azure Engineer
3 41 (14.80%) Cloud Engineer
4 29 (10.47%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (9.03%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
6 22 (7.94%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
7 21 (7.58%) Lead
8 20 (7.22%) Senior
9 15 (5.42%) Architect
10 13 (4.69%) Analyst
10 13 (4.69%) DBA
11 11 (3.97%) Security Engineer
11 11 (3.97%) SQL DBA
12 10 (3.61%) Administrator
12 10 (3.61%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.61%) Wintel Engineer
13 9 (3.25%) Storage Engineer
14 8 (2.89%) Linux Engineer
14 8 (2.89%) Solutions Architect
15 7 (2.53%) Cybersecurity Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (22.02%) Terraform
2 13 (4.69%) ARM Templates
3 7 (2.53%) JSON
3 7 (2.53%) LDAP
3 7 (2.53%) Regular Expression
4 3 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.08%) Middleware
4 3 (1.08%) REST
4 3 (1.08%) Web Services
5 2 (0.72%) YAML
6 1 (0.36%) ADO
6 1 (0.36%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.36%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 33 (11.91%) Replication
2 29 (10.47%) Clustering
3 17 (6.14%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (5.05%) Data Centre
5 12 (4.33%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.97%) Enterprise Storage
6 11 (3.97%) Onboarding
7 9 (3.25%) Linux Command Line
7 9 (3.25%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.89%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.89%) Mainframe
9 7 (2.53%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (2.53%) Operational Technology
10 6 (2.17%) Fixed Income
10 6 (2.17%) Market Risk
10 6 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.81%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
12 4 (1.44%) Mobile App
12 4 (1.44%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 98 (35.38%) Windows
2 61 (22.02%) Linux
3 56 (20.22%) Windows Server
4 24 (8.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (7.22%) VMS
6 10 (3.61%) Unix
7 6 (2.17%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.44%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.08%) AIX
9 3 (1.08%) Data ONTAP
9 3 (1.08%) Windows 10
9 3 (1.08%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.72%) Android
10 2 (0.72%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.72%) CoreOS
10 2 (0.72%) zOS
11 1 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.36%) Rocky
11 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (25.27%) DevOps
2 67 (24.19%) CI/CD
3 66 (23.83%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 58 (20.94%) Infrastructure as Code
5 56 (20.22%) Migration
6 40 (14.44%) Disaster Recovery
7 35 (12.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 32 (11.55%) High Availability
8 32 (11.55%) Performance Tuning
9 31 (11.19%) RBAC
9 31 (11.19%) Runbook
10 26 (9.39%) Cybersecurity
10 26 (9.39%) ITIL
10 26 (9.39%) Problem-Solving
10 26 (9.39%) Validation
11 25 (9.03%) Stakeholder Management
12 23 (8.30%) AI
13 22 (7.94%) Platform Engineering
14 21 (7.58%) Capacity Planning
14 21 (7.58%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 100 (36.10%) PowerShell
2 59 (21.30%) Python
3 34 (12.27%) SQL
4 27 (9.75%) Bash
5 12 (4.33%) Bicep
6 11 (3.97%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.89%) C
7 8 (2.89%) C#
8 7 (2.53%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.81%) Groovy
9 5 (1.81%) Java
10 4 (1.44%) C++
11 3 (1.08%) Embedded C
12 2 (0.72%) Korn
13 1 (0.36%) Cypher
13 1 (0.36%) Go
13 1 (0.36%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.36%) RPG
Qualifications
1 83 (29.96%) Security Cleared
2 68 (24.55%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.30%) Microsoft Certification
4 21 (7.58%) Degree
5 20 (7.22%) Azure Certification
6 12 (4.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.97%) DV Cleared
8 10 (3.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 10 (3.61%) MCSA
8 10 (3.61%) MCSE
8 10 (3.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 8 (2.89%) VCAP
10 6 (2.17%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.81%) CCNA
11 5 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.81%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (1.08%) CISM
12 3 (1.08%) CISSP
12 3 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
13 2 (0.72%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.97%) QA
2 3 (1.08%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.08%) SLA
3 2 (0.72%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
3 2 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (0.72%) GMP
3 2 (0.72%) GxP
3 2 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.36%) NIST
4 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
System Software
1 83 (29.96%) VMware Infrastructure
2 54 (19.49%) Active Directory
3 34 (12.27%) vSphere
4 26 (9.39%) VMware ESXi
5 25 (9.03%) Docker
5 25 (9.03%) Hyper-V
6 13 (4.69%) NFS
7 8 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (2.17%) KVM
9 5 (1.81%) VMware NSX
10 4 (1.44%) Ceph
11 3 (1.08%) BitLocker
11 3 (1.08%) Firmware
11 3 (1.08%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.72%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.36%) DFS Replication
13 1 (0.36%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 1 (0.36%) Postfix
13 1 (0.36%) Squid
13 1 (0.36%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 39 (14.08%) Ansible
1 39 (14.08%) Kubernetes
2 20 (7.22%) vCenter Server
3 16 (5.78%) SCOM
4 14 (5.05%) Grafana
5 10 (3.61%) Microsoft Intune
6 9 (3.25%) Prometheus
7 7 (2.53%) Failover Clustering
7 7 (2.53%) Podman
7 7 (2.53%) SCCM
8 6 (2.17%) Packer
9 5 (1.81%) Proxmox
10 4 (1.44%) OPNET
10 4 (1.44%) vMotion
11 3 (1.08%) Microsoft Clustering
11 3 (1.08%) PowerCLI
11 3 (1.08%) SnapMirror
12 2 (0.72%) Argo
12 2 (0.72%) Avamar
12 2 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 108 (38.99%) Microsoft
2 86 (31.05%) VMware
3 29 (10.47%) Cisco
4 22 (7.94%) ServiceNow
5 18 (6.50%) Oracle
6 15 (5.42%) NetApp
7 13 (4.69%) CyberArk
8 12 (4.33%) Dell
9 10 (3.61%) SolarWinds
9 10 (3.61%) Veeam
10 9 (3.25%) Google
10 9 (3.25%) IBM
10 9 (3.25%) Red Hat
11 8 (2.89%) Qualys
12 7 (2.53%) Commvault
12 7 (2.53%) Meraki
12 7 (2.53%) Splunk
13 6 (2.17%) BT
13 6 (2.17%) CheckPoint
13 6 (2.17%) Xerox
230 Virtual Machines jobs in England