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 19 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 383 313 300
Rank change year-on-year -70 -13 +44
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 161 178 255
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.51% 0.67% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 4.08% 5.56% 5.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 109 174
10th Percentile £318 £350 £273
25th Percentile £452 £400 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £506
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -1.23% -7.95%
75th Percentile £594 £608 £608
90th Percentile £654 £678 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -3.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 9 11
10th Percentile £66.03 £29.73 -
25th Percentile - £53.00 £73.09
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £78.73
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -19.97% +15.77%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £88.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £78.73
% change year-on-year +11.11% -19.97% +19.28%

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 3,949 3,202 4,460
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.47% 12.01% 12.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,704 2,062 3,115
10th Percentile £213 £200 £188
25th Percentile £400 £367 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -6.72%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £511 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% +2.10% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 77 192
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.58 £15.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.05 £18.27
Median hourly rate £41.94 £28.41 £48.89
Median % change year-on-year +47.62% -41.89% +41.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £68.88
90th Percentile £89.38 £75.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.96 £55.00
% change year-on-year +52.69% -49.17% +57.14%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 19 January 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 -24 73 £525 - 14
North of England -45 22 £498 +30.73% 35
South West -3 21 £550 +2.80% 17
South East -21 20 £563 +60.71% 28
Yorkshire -42 15 £500 +13.64% 10
East of England -22 12 £475 -7.32% 16
North West -26 7 £469 +24.13% 23
West Midlands -42 4 £508 +1.50% 3
Midlands -48 4 £508 +6.84% 16
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 14 (8.70%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (3.73%) IIS
3 5 (3.11%) Confluence
3 5 (3.11%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.48%) Apache
4 4 (2.48%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.86%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.24%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.24%) Hyperledger
7 1 (0.62%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.62%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.62%) nginx
7 1 (0.62%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.62%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.62%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 1 (0.62%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 62 (38.51%) Azure
2 29 (18.01%) GitHub
3 28 (17.39%) AWS
4 19 (11.80%) GitHub Actions
5 14 (8.70%) Azure DevOps
6 12 (7.45%) OpenShift
7 11 (6.83%) Microsoft 365
8 9 (5.59%) GCP
9 8 (4.97%) Entra ID
10 7 (4.35%) Cloud Computing
10 7 (4.35%) Serverless
11 6 (3.73%) AWS CodePipeline
11 6 (3.73%) Azure AKS
11 6 (3.73%) Azure Monitor
12 5 (3.11%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (3.11%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (3.11%) IaaS
13 4 (2.48%) Azure Storage
13 4 (2.48%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 30 (18.63%) Firewall
2 26 (16.15%) DNS
3 12 (7.45%) DHCP
4 10 (6.21%) VPN
5 9 (5.59%) TCP/IP
5 9 (5.59%) WAN
6 8 (4.97%) Network Security
7 7 (4.35%) Skype
8 6 (3.73%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (3.11%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (2.48%) Intrusion Detection
10 4 (2.48%) VLAN
11 2 (1.24%) Modbus
11 2 (1.24%) Wireless
12 1 (0.62%) Ethernet
12 1 (0.62%) HTTPS
12 1 (0.62%) RTP
12 1 (0.62%) SAN
12 1 (0.62%) SSH
12 1 (0.62%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.97%) SQL Server
2 5 (3.11%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
3 4 (2.48%) Data Lake
3 4 (2.48%) OLTP
4 3 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (1.86%) Data Mining
4 3 (1.86%) Oracle Database
4 3 (1.86%) Oracle Reports
5 2 (1.24%) Data Hub
5 2 (1.24%) Data Vault
5 2 (1.24%) ImageNet
6 1 (0.62%) Big Data
6 1 (0.62%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.62%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 23 (14.29%) Git
2 22 (13.66%) JIRA
3 10 (6.21%) Jenkins
4 8 (4.97%) PVCS
4 8 (4.97%) Rational DOORS
5 7 (4.35%) GitLab
6 4 (2.48%) RStudio
7 2 (1.24%) Hardhat
7 2 (1.24%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.62%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.62%) Gradle
8 1 (0.62%) SonarQube
General
1 33 (20.50%) Social Skills
2 11 (6.83%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (6.21%) Public Sector
4 9 (5.59%) Electronics
5 6 (3.73%) Finance
5 6 (3.73%) Spanish Language
5 6 (3.73%) Telecoms
6 4 (2.48%) Banking
6 4 (2.48%) Social Science
7 3 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.24%) Back Office
8 2 (1.24%) Front Office
8 2 (1.24%) Law
8 2 (1.24%) Legal
8 2 (1.24%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.62%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.62%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.62%) Police
Job Titles
1 24 (14.91%) DevOps Engineer
2 17 (10.56%) Security Engineer
2 17 (10.56%) Senior
3 14 (8.70%) Architect
3 14 (8.70%) Software Engineer
4 13 (8.07%) Platform Engineer
5 12 (7.45%) C++ Software Engineer
5 12 (7.45%) Embedded C++ Engineer
5 12 (7.45%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
5 12 (7.45%) Embedded Engineer
5 12 (7.45%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 10 (6.21%) Data Engineer
6 10 (6.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (5.59%) Azure Engineer
7 9 (5.59%) Cloud Engineer
8 8 (4.97%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 7 (4.35%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
9 7 (4.35%) C/C++ Software Engineer
9 7 (4.35%) Embedded C Engineer
9 7 (4.35%) Embedded C Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (4.35%) ARM Templates
2 6 (3.73%) Middleware
3 5 (3.11%) OpenTelemetry
4 3 (1.86%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.86%) Kafka
4 3 (1.86%) TensorFlow
5 2 (1.24%) .NET
5 2 (1.24%) Hugging Face
5 2 (1.24%) OpenCV
5 2 (1.24%) PyTorch
5 2 (1.24%) Regular Expression
5 2 (1.24%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (1.24%) SpaCy
5 2 (1.24%) Truffle
5 2 (1.24%) web3js
5 2 (1.24%) YAML
6 1 (0.62%) Node.js
6 1 (0.62%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.62%) RESTful
6 1 (0.62%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 17 (10.56%) Data Centre
2 14 (8.70%) Private Cloud
3 10 (6.21%) Cloud Native
4 9 (5.59%) Replication
5 6 (3.73%) CAN bus
6 5 (3.11%) Clustering
6 5 (3.11%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (2.48%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (2.48%) Linux Command Line
7 4 (2.48%) PKI
7 4 (2.48%) Public Cloud
8 3 (1.86%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.86%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.86%) Cyber Threat
8 3 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.86%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.86%) NHS
8 3 (1.86%) Onboarding
8 3 (1.86%) Operational Technology
9 2 (1.24%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 49 (30.43%) Linux
2 45 (27.95%) Windows
3 21 (13.04%) VMS
3 21 (13.04%) Windows Server
4 10 (6.21%) Windows 10
5 8 (4.97%) Windows Server 2016
6 7 (4.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (1.24%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.62%) Android
8 1 (0.62%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.62%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (36.02%) DevOps
2 54 (33.54%) CI/CD
3 41 (25.47%) Infrastructure as Code
4 31 (19.25%) Agile
5 22 (13.66%) Continuous Improvement
5 22 (13.66%) High Availability
6 21 (13.04%) Migration
7 20 (12.42%) Containerisation
7 20 (12.42%) Cybersecurity
8 18 (11.18%) Technical Leadership
9 17 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
10 15 (9.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 14 (8.70%) Analytics
11 14 (8.70%) Information Security
11 14 (8.70%) Platform Engineering
11 14 (8.70%) Software Engineering
12 13 (8.07%) Mentoring
12 13 (8.07%) Root Cause Analysis
12 13 (8.07%) Runbook
13 12 (7.45%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 31 (19.25%) Python
2 26 (16.15%) PowerShell
3 16 (9.94%) SQL
4 15 (9.32%) C++
5 13 (8.07%) Bash
5 13 (8.07%) Embedded C++
6 12 (7.45%) Java
7 9 (5.59%) C#
8 8 (4.97%) C
8 8 (4.97%) Shell Script
9 7 (4.35%) Embedded C
10 5 (3.11%) Ruby
11 4 (2.48%) Scala
12 3 (1.86%) Bicep
13 2 (1.24%) PHP
13 2 (1.24%) Solidity
14 1 (0.62%) Go
14 1 (0.62%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.62%) Korn
14 1 (0.62%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 50 (31.06%) Security Cleared
2 41 (25.47%) SC Cleared
3 10 (6.21%) DV Cleared
4 8 (4.97%) OCP
4 8 (4.97%) Oracle Certification
5 7 (4.35%) VCAP
5 7 (4.35%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 6 (3.73%) Azure Certification
6 6 (3.73%) Degree
7 4 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (2.48%) MCSA
7 4 (2.48%) MCSE
7 4 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (1.24%) CCNA
8 2 (1.24%) CCNP
8 2 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (1.24%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 2 (1.24%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.62%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.11%) GDPR
1 5 (3.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (2.48%) QA
3 3 (1.86%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.86%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 2 (1.24%) SLA
5 1 (0.62%) GRC
5 1 (0.62%) NIST
System Software
1 41 (25.47%) VMware Infrastructure
2 29 (18.01%) Active Directory
3 15 (9.32%) Docker
4 13 (8.07%) vSphere
5 12 (7.45%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (5.59%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (4.35%) Hyper-V
7 7 (4.35%) VMware NSX
8 5 (3.11%) KVM
9 4 (2.48%) Firmware
10 2 (1.24%) Xen
11 1 (0.62%) Ceph
11 1 (0.62%) NLBS
Systems Management
1 49 (30.43%) Terraform
2 33 (20.50%) Kubernetes
3 26 (16.15%) Ansible
4 22 (13.66%) vCenter Server
5 14 (8.70%) SCCM
6 12 (7.45%) WSUS
7 10 (6.21%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (3.73%) CASB
8 6 (3.73%) SCOrch
9 5 (3.11%) Rancher
10 4 (2.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (2.48%) vMotion
11 3 (1.86%) Data Guard
11 3 (1.86%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 3 (1.86%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (1.86%) vRealize
12 2 (1.24%) Fluentd
12 2 (1.24%) NetApp OnCommand
12 2 (1.24%) Packer
12 2 (1.24%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 51 (31.68%) Microsoft
2 47 (29.19%) VMware
3 15 (9.32%) Cisco
4 9 (5.59%) IBM
4 9 (5.59%) Oracle
5 8 (4.97%) ANSYS
6 6 (3.73%) Sophos
7 5 (3.11%) NetApp
7 5 (3.11%) Red Hat
7 5 (3.11%) SolarWinds
7 5 (3.11%) Veeam
8 4 (2.48%) Databricks
8 4 (2.48%) Dell
8 4 (2.48%) Pure Storage
8 4 (2.48%) Remedy
9 3 (1.86%) Citrix
9 3 (1.86%) OpenAI
10 2 (1.24%) Google
10 2 (1.24%) Palo Alto
10 2 (1.24%) Rockwell