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 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 350 345 305
Rank change year-on-year -5 -40 +19
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 294 163 259
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.66% 0.60% 0.74%
As % of the System Software category 6.54% 4.98% 6.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 115 187
10th Percentile £358 £350 £331
25th Percentile £424 £413 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% -8.91% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £604 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £670
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 6 21
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £26.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year -24.64% +135.90% -78.65%
75th Percentile £30.50 £57.31 £15.19
90th Percentile £33.20 £65.25 -
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year -24.64% +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 4,493 3,276 4,055
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.01% 11.98% 11.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,969 2,145 2,825
10th Percentile £213 £225 £220
25th Percentile £400 £380 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £694 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 89 169
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.14 £14.06
25th Percentile £26.50 £22.50 £14.48
Median hourly rate £56.25 £37.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% +69.30% -44.63%
75th Percentile £74.26 £80.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £85.00 £90.30 £70.13
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £34.50 £22.35
% change year-on-year +52.17% +54.36% -55.30%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 -45 112 £525 -4.55% 28
North of England +1 97 £485 +17.58% 11
Yorkshire -4 57 £500 +13.06% 5
South East -33 50 £475 -17.39% 22
North West -17 38 £476 +26.76% 6
Midlands -56 18 £487 +0.41% 4
South West -23 16 £540 -8.09% 4
West Midlands -64 12 £425 -7.61% 4
East Midlands -11 4 £500 -4.76%
East of England -26 4 £425 -19.12% 8
North East -38 2 £400 +10.34%
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 (1.70%) Confluence
1 5 (1.70%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.68%) Apache
3 2 (0.68%) CMS
3 2 (0.68%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.68%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.34%) IIS
4 1 (0.34%) nginx
4 1 (0.34%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 5 (1.70%) Adobe Illustrator
1 5 (1.70%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.68%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.68%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 128 (43.54%) Azure
2 41 (13.95%) AWS
3 38 (12.93%) Entra ID
4 35 (11.90%) OpenShift
5 32 (10.88%) Azure DevOps
5 32 (10.88%) Azure Monitor
6 25 (8.50%) Azure AKS
7 22 (7.48%) GitHub
8 16 (5.44%) GitHub Actions
9 15 (5.10%) GCP
10 14 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
11 13 (4.42%) IaaS
11 13 (4.42%) Serverless
12 12 (4.08%) Azure Storage
13 11 (3.74%) Azure Key Vault
14 10 (3.40%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 10 (3.40%) Power Platform
15 9 (3.06%) Azure Functions
15 9 (3.06%) Azure Logic Apps
16 8 (2.72%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 41 (13.95%) DNS
2 38 (12.93%) Firewall
3 26 (8.84%) VPN
4 20 (6.80%) DHCP
4 20 (6.80%) Network Security
5 19 (6.46%) SSL
5 19 (6.46%) VLAN
6 16 (5.44%) VSAN
6 16 (5.44%) WAN
7 10 (3.40%) SD-WAN
8 8 (2.72%) FTP
8 8 (2.72%) SAN
9 7 (2.38%) LAN
10 6 (2.04%) TCP/IP
11 5 (1.70%) SSH
11 5 (1.70%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.36%) HTTPS
13 3 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (1.02%) Reverse Proxy
14 2 (0.68%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.88%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.74%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.40%) Power BI
4 7 (2.38%) Data Lake
5 6 (2.04%) Db2
5 6 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 5 (1.70%) MySQL
7 3 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.02%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.68%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.34%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.34%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 17 (5.78%) Git
2 16 (5.44%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.06%) GitLab
4 7 (2.38%) JIRA
5 3 (1.02%) Selenium
6 2 (0.68%) JMeter
6 2 (0.68%) Postman
6 2 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.68%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 42 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 31 (10.54%) Finance
3 14 (4.76%) Banking
4 13 (4.42%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (4.42%) Legal
5 8 (2.72%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.38%) Retail
7 6 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.04%) Front Office
8 4 (1.36%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.36%) Marketing
9 2 (0.68%) Law
9 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.68%) Publishing
10 1 (0.34%) Advertising
10 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 35 (11.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (11.56%) DevOps Engineer
3 31 (10.54%) Azure Engineer
4 24 (8.16%) Cloud Engineer
5 21 (7.14%) Senior
6 20 (6.80%) Lead
7 16 (5.44%) Analyst
8 15 (5.10%) Architect
9 11 (3.74%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 11 (3.74%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (3.40%) Administrator
10 10 (3.40%) VMware Engineer
11 9 (3.06%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (3.06%) Technical Specialist
11 9 (3.06%) Wintel Engineer
12 8 (2.72%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 8 (2.72%) DBA
12 8 (2.72%) Solutions Architect
12 8 (2.72%) Storage Engineer
13 6 (2.04%) Market Risk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.74%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.72%) REST
2 8 (2.72%) YAML
3 5 (1.70%) Middleware
4 3 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.02%) JSON
5 2 (0.68%) Hugging Face
5 2 (0.68%) SOAP
6 1 (0.34%) .NET
6 1 (0.34%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.34%) Java SE
6 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.34%) LangChain
6 1 (0.34%) LDAP
6 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.34%) PySpark
6 1 (0.34%) PyTorch
6 1 (0.34%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.34%) SpaCy
6 1 (0.34%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 28 (9.52%) Replication
2 20 (6.80%) Data Centre
3 19 (6.46%) Clustering
4 18 (6.12%) Hybrid Cloud
5 17 (5.78%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.06%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.72%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.38%) Mainframe
8 7 (2.38%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.04%) Enterprise Storage
9 6 (2.04%) Fixed Income
9 6 (2.04%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.04%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.70%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.70%) PKI
10 5 (1.70%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.36%) Public Cloud
12 3 (1.02%) IBM XIV
12 3 (1.02%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 96 (32.65%) Windows
2 84 (28.57%) Linux
3 51 (17.35%) Windows Server
4 34 (11.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (8.84%) VMS
6 11 (3.74%) Unix
7 9 (3.06%) AIX
8 7 (2.38%) CoreOS
8 7 (2.38%) Ubuntu
9 6 (2.04%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.36%) SUSE
11 3 (1.02%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.34%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (25.51%) DevOps
2 73 (24.83%) CI/CD
3 62 (21.09%) Migration
4 51 (17.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 49 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
6 43 (14.63%) Performance Tuning
7 41 (13.95%) High Availability
8 40 (13.61%) Disaster Recovery
9 30 (10.20%) Problem-Solving
10 29 (9.86%) Continuous Improvement
10 29 (9.86%) Network Virtualisation
11 27 (9.18%) RBAC
11 27 (9.18%) Validation
11 27 (9.18%) Vulnerability Management
12 25 (8.50%) Capacity Planning
13 23 (7.82%) Platform Engineering
13 23 (7.82%) Vulnerability Remediation
14 22 (7.48%) Analytics
15 21 (7.14%) Change Management
15 21 (7.14%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 85 (28.91%) PowerShell
2 65 (22.11%) Python
3 45 (15.31%) SQL
4 43 (14.63%) Bash
5 8 (2.72%) Bicep
6 7 (2.38%) C#
7 6 (2.04%) C
8 5 (1.70%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.70%) T-SQL
9 4 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.02%) Java
10 3 (1.02%) Korn
11 1 (0.34%) Cypher
11 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.34%) Go
11 1 (0.34%) Groovy
11 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.34%) RPG
11 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 74 (25.17%) Security Cleared
2 58 (19.73%) SC Cleared
3 18 (6.12%) Azure Certification
4 16 (5.44%) Degree
4 16 (5.44%) Microsoft Certification
4 16 (5.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 11 (3.74%) VCAP
6 10 (3.40%) MCSA
6 10 (3.40%) MCSE
7 8 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (2.04%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.04%) ISTQB
8 6 (2.04%) OCP
8 6 (2.04%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.70%) CCNA
9 5 (1.70%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 5 (1.70%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 4 (1.36%) CISSP
11 3 (1.02%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.08%) QA
2 3 (1.02%) SLA
3 2 (0.68%) GMP
3 2 (0.68%) GxP
3 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.68%) NIST
3 2 (0.68%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.34%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.34%) GDPR
4 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 87 (29.59%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (15.99%) vSphere
3 43 (14.63%) Active Directory
4 38 (12.93%) VMware ESXi
5 28 (9.52%) Hyper-V
6 27 (9.18%) Docker
7 18 (6.12%) KVM
8 12 (4.08%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.06%) NFS
10 8 (2.72%) Firmware
11 7 (2.38%) Ceph
12 5 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
13 3 (1.02%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (1.02%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.68%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.34%) BitLocker
15 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 61 (20.75%) Terraform
2 54 (18.37%) Ansible
2 54 (18.37%) Kubernetes
3 33 (11.22%) vCenter Server
4 15 (5.10%) PowerCLI
5 12 (4.08%) Grafana
6 9 (3.06%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.72%) SCCM
7 8 (2.72%) SCOM
8 7 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.04%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.04%) Podman
9 6 (2.04%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.04%) VxRail
10 5 (1.70%) vMotion
11 4 (1.36%) Argo
11 4 (1.36%) Avamar
11 4 (1.36%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.36%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.36%) OPNET
Vendors
1 92 (31.29%) VMware
2 81 (27.55%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.86%) Cisco
4 19 (6.46%) Oracle
4 19 (6.46%) ServiceNow
5 16 (5.44%) IBM
5 16 (5.44%) NetApp
5 16 (5.44%) Red Hat
6 12 (4.08%) Dell
7 11 (3.74%) Google
7 11 (3.74%) Veeam
8 10 (3.40%) Qualys
9 9 (3.06%) CyberArk
10 7 (2.38%) Databricks
10 7 (2.38%) SolarWinds
10 7 (2.38%) Tenable
11 6 (2.04%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.70%) Commvault
12 5 (1.70%) EMC
12 5 (1.70%) Meraki