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 9 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
9 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 363 307 289
Rank change year-on-year -56 -18 +48
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 192 177 283
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.58% 0.68% 0.74%
As % of the System Software category 4.71% 5.54% 6.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 113 195
10th Percentile £315 £350 £270
25th Percentile £413 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £501
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +3.90% -9.00%
75th Percentile £582 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £704 £690
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £501
% change year-on-year -2.44% +2.40% -7.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 11 21
10th Percentile £66.03 £33.25 -
25th Percentile - £57.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +150.85% -63.07%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £84.36
90th Percentile - - £88.75
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £25.12
% change year-on-year +11.11% +150.85% -61.95%

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 4,078 3,193 4,476
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.25% 12.27% 11.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,780 2,077 3,110
10th Percentile £200 £200 £188
25th Percentile £400 £375 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £480
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +9.38% -8.57%
75th Percentile £595 £626 £600
90th Percentile £695 £735 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £485
% change year-on-year -2.91% +6.19% -7.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 79 230
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.13 £21.02 £17.72
Median hourly rate £34.00 £29.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.24% -27.50% +1.91%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £65.74
90th Percentile £84.50 £75.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £43.75
% change year-on-year +44.62% -33.71% +13.64%

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 9 February 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 9 February 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 9 February 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 -38 75 £510 -11.39% 11
North of England -37 47 £475 +24.67% 16
Yorkshire -38 32 £500 +21.95% 6
South West -9 22 £550 +2.33% 2
South East -25 20 £525 +50.00% 11
North West -22 15 £460 +20.73% 10
East of England -29 12 £475 -8.43% 5
West Midlands -53 6 £500 -6.98% 5
Midlands -54 6 £500 -6.98% 9
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 13 (6.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (3.13%) IIS
3 5 (2.60%) Confluence
3 5 (2.60%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.08%) Apache
4 4 (2.08%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.56%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.04%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.04%) Hyperledger
6 2 (1.04%) nginx
7 1 (0.52%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.52%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.52%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.52%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.52%) Adobe Illustrator
1 1 (0.52%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.52%) OmniGraffle
1 1 (0.52%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.52%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 71 (36.98%) Azure
2 33 (17.19%) GitHub
3 31 (16.15%) AWS
4 20 (10.42%) GitHub Actions
4 20 (10.42%) OpenShift
5 18 (9.38%) Azure DevOps
6 13 (6.77%) GCP
7 9 (4.69%) Azure AKS
7 9 (4.69%) Entra ID
7 9 (4.69%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (4.69%) Serverless
8 8 (4.17%) Azure Monitor
8 8 (4.17%) Azure Storage
8 8 (4.17%) Cloud Computing
9 6 (3.13%) AWS CodePipeline
10 5 (2.60%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (2.60%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (2.60%) Azure Key Vault
10 5 (2.60%) IaaS
10 5 (2.60%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 29 (15.10%) Firewall
2 25 (13.02%) DNS
3 10 (5.21%) DHCP
4 9 (4.69%) Network Security
4 9 (4.69%) VPN
4 9 (4.69%) WAN
5 8 (4.17%) TCP/IP
6 7 (3.65%) Skype
7 6 (3.13%) Reverse Proxy
7 6 (3.13%) Wi-Fi
8 4 (2.08%) Intrusion Detection
8 4 (2.08%) SAN
8 4 (2.08%) VLAN
9 2 (1.04%) Modbus
9 2 (1.04%) Wireless
10 1 (0.52%) Cisco Wireless
10 1 (0.52%) LAN
10 1 (0.52%) MQTT
10 1 (0.52%) NX-OS
10 1 (0.52%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.69%) SQL Server
2 7 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (2.60%) Azure SQL Database
4 4 (2.08%) Data Lake
4 4 (2.08%) OLTP
5 3 (1.56%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.56%) Data Mining
5 3 (1.56%) DB2
5 3 (1.56%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.56%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (1.04%) Data Hub
6 2 (1.04%) Data Vault
6 2 (1.04%) ImageNet
7 1 (0.52%) Big Data
7 1 (0.52%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.52%) Power BI
7 1 (0.52%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.52%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 27 (14.06%) Git
2 23 (11.98%) JIRA
3 14 (7.29%) Jenkins
4 10 (5.21%) GitLab
5 8 (4.17%) PVCS
5 8 (4.17%) Rational DOORS
6 4 (2.08%) RStudio
7 2 (1.04%) Hardhat
7 2 (1.04%) JMeter
7 2 (1.04%) Postman
7 2 (1.04%) Selenium
7 2 (1.04%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.52%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.52%) Gradle
8 1 (0.52%) SonarQube
General
1 36 (18.75%) Social Skills
2 13 (6.77%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (5.73%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.69%) Electronics
4 9 (4.69%) Finance
5 8 (4.17%) Banking
6 6 (3.13%) Spanish Language
6 6 (3.13%) Telecoms
7 5 (2.60%) Legal
8 4 (2.08%) Social Science
9 3 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (1.04%) Law
10 2 (1.04%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.52%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.52%) Back Office
11 1 (0.52%) Front Office
11 1 (0.52%) Italian Language
11 1 (0.52%) Marketing
11 1 (0.52%) Retail
Job Titles
1 27 (14.06%) DevOps Engineer
2 18 (9.38%) Senior
3 17 (8.85%) Security Engineer
4 15 (7.81%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (7.29%) Software Engineer
6 13 (6.77%) Architect
6 13 (6.77%) Azure Engineer
7 12 (6.25%) C++ Software Engineer
7 12 (6.25%) Embedded C++ Engineer
7 12 (6.25%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
7 12 (6.25%) Embedded Engineer
7 12 (6.25%) Embedded Software Engineer
7 12 (6.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 11 (5.73%) Data Engineer
9 10 (5.21%) Cloud Engineer
9 10 (5.21%) Wintel Engineer
10 9 (4.69%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 7 (3.65%) Embedded C Software Engineer
11 7 (3.65%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
11 7 (3.65%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (4.17%) ARM Templates
2 5 (2.60%) Middleware
3 4 (2.08%) Hugging Face
3 4 (2.08%) OpenTelemetry
3 4 (2.08%) TensorFlow
4 3 (1.56%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.56%) Kafka
4 3 (1.56%) OpenCV
4 3 (1.56%) PyTorch
4 3 (1.56%) Regular Expression
4 3 (1.56%) SpaCy
5 2 (1.04%) .NET
5 2 (1.04%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (1.04%) Truffle
5 2 (1.04%) web3js
5 2 (1.04%) YAML
6 1 (0.52%) Django
6 1 (0.52%) RESTful
6 1 (0.52%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.52%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 22 (11.46%) Data Centre
2 14 (7.29%) Private Cloud
3 13 (6.77%) Cloud Native
3 13 (6.77%) Replication
4 10 (5.21%) Clustering
5 7 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (3.65%) Linux Command Line
6 6 (3.13%) CAN bus
6 6 (3.13%) Onboarding
6 6 (3.13%) Public Cloud
7 5 (2.60%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (2.08%) PKI
9 3 (1.56%) Algorithms
9 3 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.56%) Management Information System
9 3 (1.56%) NHS
9 3 (1.56%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 60 (31.25%) Linux
2 57 (29.69%) Windows
3 29 (15.10%) Windows Server
4 24 (12.50%) VMS
5 10 (5.21%) Windows 10
6 8 (4.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (3.65%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (1.56%) AIX
8 3 (1.56%) Unix
8 3 (1.56%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (1.04%) CoreOS
9 2 (1.04%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.52%) Android
10 1 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.52%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (34.38%) DevOps
2 64 (33.33%) CI/CD
3 43 (22.40%) Infrastructure as Code
4 33 (17.19%) Agile
5 31 (16.15%) Migration
6 28 (14.58%) High Availability
7 26 (13.54%) Cybersecurity
8 25 (13.02%) Continuous Improvement
9 22 (11.46%) Containerisation
10 21 (10.94%) Disaster Recovery
10 21 (10.94%) Problem-Solving
10 21 (10.94%) Technical Leadership
11 20 (10.42%) Platform Engineering
12 18 (9.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 16 (8.33%) Analytics
13 16 (8.33%) Network Virtualisation
14 14 (7.29%) Project Delivery
14 14 (7.29%) Root Cause Analysis
14 14 (7.29%) Software Engineering
15 13 (6.77%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 44 (22.92%) Python
2 39 (20.31%) PowerShell
3 22 (11.46%) Bash
3 22 (11.46%) SQL
4 14 (7.29%) C++
5 13 (6.77%) Embedded C++
6 10 (5.21%) Java
7 9 (4.69%) C#
7 9 (4.69%) Shell Script
8 8 (4.17%) C
9 7 (3.65%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.60%) Ruby
11 4 (2.08%) Bicep
11 4 (2.08%) Scala
12 2 (1.04%) PHP
12 2 (1.04%) Solidity
13 1 (0.52%) Go
13 1 (0.52%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.52%) Swift
13 1 (0.52%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 58 (30.21%) Security Cleared
2 47 (24.48%) SC Cleared
3 12 (6.25%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 11 (5.73%) VCAP
5 10 (5.21%) DV Cleared
5 10 (5.21%) OCP
5 10 (5.21%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (4.17%) MCSA
6 8 (4.17%) MCSE
6 8 (4.17%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (3.13%) Degree
8 5 (2.60%) Azure Certification
9 4 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (1.04%) CCNA
10 2 (1.04%) CCNP
10 2 (1.04%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (1.04%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 2 (1.04%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.52%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.13%) QA
2 5 (2.60%) GDPR
2 5 (2.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.08%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.04%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 2 (1.04%) SLA
5 1 (0.52%) GRC
5 1 (0.52%) NIST
System Software
1 53 (27.60%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (14.58%) Active Directory
3 25 (13.02%) vSphere
4 19 (9.90%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (8.33%) Docker
6 15 (7.81%) Hyper-V
7 13 (6.77%) KVM
8 10 (5.21%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (3.65%) VMware NSX
10 6 (3.13%) Firmware
11 2 (1.04%) NFS
11 2 (1.04%) Xen
12 1 (0.52%) Ceph
12 1 (0.52%) NLBS
Systems Management
1 56 (29.17%) Terraform
2 44 (22.92%) Kubernetes
3 37 (19.27%) Ansible
4 32 (16.67%) vCenter Server
5 12 (6.25%) SCCM
6 11 (5.73%) WSUS
7 9 (4.69%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (3.13%) CASB
8 6 (3.13%) SCOrch
9 5 (2.60%) Rancher
10 4 (2.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (2.08%) PowerCLI
10 4 (2.08%) vMotion
11 3 (1.56%) Data Guard
11 3 (1.56%) IBM BigFix
11 3 (1.56%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 3 (1.56%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (1.56%) vRealize
12 2 (1.04%) Fluentd
12 2 (1.04%) Grafana
Vendors
1 63 (32.81%) Microsoft
2 59 (30.73%) VMware
3 21 (10.94%) Cisco
4 12 (6.25%) IBM
5 8 (4.17%) ANSYS
5 8 (4.17%) Oracle
5 8 (4.17%) Red Hat
6 7 (3.65%) NetApp
7 6 (3.13%) Google
8 5 (2.60%) Databricks
8 5 (2.60%) OpenAI
8 5 (2.60%) SolarWinds
8 5 (2.60%) Sophos
8 5 (2.60%) Veeam
9 4 (2.08%) Dell
9 4 (2.08%) Pure Storage
9 4 (2.08%) Remedy
10 3 (1.56%) Alibaba
11 2 (1.04%) Citrix
11 2 (1.04%) Rockwell
50 Virtual Machines jobs in England