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

 6 months to
1 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 383 308 308
Rank change year-on-year -75 0 +51
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 161 198 248
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.51% 0.70% 0.68%
As % of the System Software category 4.08% 5.90% 5.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 126 167
10th Percentile £351 £348 £267
25th Percentile £449 £393 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -6.39%
75th Percentile £588 £607 £615
90th Percentile £655 £669 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 9 11
10th Percentile £64.70 £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% +12.46%
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% +12.46%

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 3,356 4,538
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.46% 11.94% 12.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,664 2,179 3,133
10th Percentile £213 £205 £190
25th Percentile £400 £363 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +3.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 79 204
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.60 £15.75
25th Percentile £20.93 £21.02 £18.50
Median hourly rate £48.11 £28.41 £46.29
Median % change year-on-year +69.34% -38.62% +79.75%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £68.63
90th Percentile £90.45 £78.50 £77.85
UK median hourly rate £48.11 £27.96 £50.00
% change year-on-year +72.10% -44.09% +94.17%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -30 70 £525 - 19
North of England -50 27 £480 +16.93% 16
South West -2 22 £550 +2.80% 6
South East -20 20 £563 +60.71% 18
Yorkshire -46 20 £485 +10.23% 4
East of England -27 11 £475 -7.32% 4
North West -27 7 £469 +24.13% 12
West Midlands -42 3 £566 +25.83% 3
Midlands -49 3 £566 +25.83% 6
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 61 (37.89%) Azure
2 27 (16.77%) AWS
2 27 (16.77%) GitHub
3 18 (11.18%) GitHub Actions
4 15 (9.32%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (8.07%) OpenShift
6 11 (6.83%) Microsoft 365
7 8 (4.97%) Azure AKS
7 8 (4.97%) GCP
8 7 (4.35%) Cloud Computing
8 7 (4.35%) Entra ID
8 7 (4.35%) Serverless
9 6 (3.73%) AWS CodePipeline
9 6 (3.73%) IaaS
10 5 (3.11%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (3.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (3.11%) Azure Monitor
10 5 (3.11%) PaaS
11 4 (2.48%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 32 (19.88%) Firewall
2 29 (18.01%) DNS
3 12 (7.45%) DHCP
4 10 (6.21%) VPN
5 9 (5.59%) TCP/IP
6 8 (4.97%) WAN
7 7 (4.35%) 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%) NAS
10 4 (2.48%) SAN
10 4 (2.48%) VLAN
11 2 (1.24%) Modbus
11 2 (1.24%) Wireless
12 1 (0.62%) Cisco Wireless
12 1 (0.62%) MQTT
12 1 (0.62%) NX-OS
12 1 (0.62%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.97%) PostgreSQL
1 8 (4.97%) SQL Server
2 5 (3.11%) Data Lake
3 4 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
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 25 (15.53%) Git
2 21 (13.04%) JIRA
3 14 (8.70%) Jenkins
4 10 (6.21%) GitLab
5 7 (4.35%) PVCS
5 7 (4.35%) Rational DOORS
6 3 (1.86%) 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%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.62%) SonarQube
General
1 35 (21.74%) Social Skills
2 11 (6.83%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (6.21%) Public Sector
4 8 (4.97%) Electronics
4 8 (4.97%) Finance
5 6 (3.73%) Spanish Language
5 6 (3.73%) Telecoms
6 5 (3.11%) Banking
7 3 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.86%) Social Science
8 2 (1.24%) Back Office
8 2 (1.24%) Front Office
8 2 (1.24%) Law
8 2 (1.24%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.62%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.62%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.62%) Legal
9 1 (0.62%) Police
9 1 (0.62%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 20 (12.42%) DevOps Engineer
2 16 (9.94%) Security Engineer
3 15 (9.32%) Architect
3 15 (9.32%) Senior
4 13 (8.07%) Platform Engineer
4 13 (8.07%) Software Engineer
5 11 (6.83%) C++ Software Engineer
5 11 (6.83%) Embedded C++ Engineer
5 11 (6.83%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
5 11 (6.83%) Embedded Engineer
5 11 (6.83%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 10 (6.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (5.59%) Data Engineer
8 8 (4.97%) Azure Engineer
8 8 (4.97%) Developer
9 7 (4.35%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 6 (3.73%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
10 6 (3.73%) C/C++ Software Engineer
10 6 (3.73%) Cloud Engineer
10 6 (3.73%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (5.59%) Middleware
2 7 (4.35%) ARM Templates
3 6 (3.73%) OpenTelemetry
3 6 (3.73%) TensorFlow
4 5 (3.11%) Hugging Face
4 5 (3.11%) OpenCV
4 5 (3.11%) PyTorch
4 5 (3.11%) Regular Expression
4 5 (3.11%) SpaCy
5 3 (1.86%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.86%) Kafka
6 2 (1.24%) .NET
6 2 (1.24%) Loki
6 2 (1.24%) Smart Contracts
6 2 (1.24%) Truffle
6 2 (1.24%) web3js
6 2 (1.24%) YAML
7 1 (0.62%) Django
7 1 (0.62%) RESTful
7 1 (0.62%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 17 (10.56%) Data Centre
2 13 (8.07%) Private Cloud
3 10 (6.21%) Cloud Native
4 9 (5.59%) Replication
5 6 (3.73%) CAN bus
5 6 (3.73%) Management Information System
5 6 (3.73%) Onboarding
6 5 (3.11%) Clustering
6 5 (3.11%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (3.11%) Self-Motivation
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%) NHS
8 3 (1.86%) Operational Technology
8 3 (1.86%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.24%) Insider Threat
9 2 (1.24%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 51 (31.68%) Linux
2 48 (29.81%) Windows
3 24 (14.91%) Windows Server
4 22 (13.66%) VMS
5 10 (6.21%) Windows 10
6 8 (4.97%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (4.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (1.24%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.62%) Android
9 1 (0.62%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.62%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (34.78%) DevOps
2 51 (31.68%) CI/CD
3 39 (24.22%) Infrastructure as Code
4 35 (21.74%) Agile
5 23 (14.29%) Migration
6 22 (13.66%) High Availability
7 19 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 19 (11.80%) Cybersecurity
8 18 (11.18%) Containerisation
8 18 (11.18%) Problem-Solving
9 17 (10.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 16 (9.94%) Technical Leadership
11 14 (8.70%) Analytics
11 14 (8.70%) Information Security
11 14 (8.70%) Infrastructure Automation
11 14 (8.70%) Platform Engineering
12 13 (8.07%) Root Cause Analysis
12 13 (8.07%) Software Engineering
13 12 (7.45%) Mentoring
13 12 (7.45%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 35 (21.74%) Python
2 27 (16.77%) PowerShell
3 16 (9.94%) SQL
4 15 (9.32%) C++
5 13 (8.07%) Java
6 12 (7.45%) Embedded C++
7 11 (6.83%) Bash
8 10 (6.21%) Shell Script
9 9 (5.59%) C#
10 7 (4.35%) C
11 6 (3.73%) Embedded C
12 5 (3.11%) Ruby
13 4 (2.48%) Bicep
13 4 (2.48%) Scala
14 2 (1.24%) PHP
14 2 (1.24%) Solidity
15 1 (0.62%) Go
15 1 (0.62%) JavaScript
15 1 (0.62%) Swift
15 1 (0.62%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 50 (31.06%) Security Cleared
2 40 (24.84%) SC Cleared
3 10 (6.21%) DV Cleared
4 8 (4.97%) Degree
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
7 4 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (2.48%) MCSA
7 4 (2.48%) MCSE
7 4 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (1.24%) CCNA
9 2 (1.24%) CCNP
9 2 (1.24%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (1.24%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.62%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (3.11%) GDPR
2 5 (3.11%) 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%) NIST
4 2 (1.24%) SLA
5 1 (0.62%) GRC
System Software
1 43 (26.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 33 (20.50%) Active Directory
3 16 (9.94%) vSphere
4 15 (9.32%) Docker
5 13 (8.07%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (6.21%) VMware NSX
7 7 (4.35%) Hyper-V
7 7 (4.35%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (3.11%) KVM
9 4 (2.48%) Firmware
10 2 (1.24%) Xen
11 1 (0.62%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 46 (28.57%) Terraform
2 33 (20.50%) Kubernetes
3 28 (17.39%) Ansible
4 26 (16.15%) 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
8 6 (3.73%) vRealize
9 4 (2.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (2.48%) Rancher
9 4 (2.48%) vMotion
10 3 (1.86%) Data Guard
10 3 (1.86%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 3 (1.86%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (1.24%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (1.24%) NetApp OnCommand
11 2 (1.24%) Packer
11 2 (1.24%) systemd
Vendors
1 52 (32.30%) Microsoft
2 49 (30.43%) VMware
3 15 (9.32%) Cisco
4 10 (6.21%) Oracle
5 8 (4.97%) IBM
6 7 (4.35%) ANSYS
7 6 (3.73%) Sophos
8 5 (3.11%) Databricks
8 5 (3.11%) NetApp
8 5 (3.11%) Red Hat
8 5 (3.11%) SolarWinds
8 5 (3.11%) Veeam
9 4 (2.48%) Dell
9 4 (2.48%) Pure Storage
9 4 (2.48%) Remedy
10 3 (1.86%) Citrix
10 3 (1.86%) F5
11 2 (1.24%) OpenAI
11 2 (1.24%) Rockwell
12 1 (0.62%) Guidewire
63 Virtual Machines jobs in England