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

 6 months to
26 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 378 305 297
Rank change year-on-year -73 -8 +48
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 174 177 264
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.54% 0.67% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 4.33% 5.52% 5.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 105 183
10th Percentile £313 £350 £285
25th Percentile £416 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year +1.65% -0.10% -9.00%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £695 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £513
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -5.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 11 14
10th Percentile £66.03 £33.25 £14.06
25th Percentile - £57.25 £36.53
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £78.73
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -19.97% +15.77%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £87.65
90th Percentile - - £88.75
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 4,016 3,207 4,496
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.44% 12.12% 11.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,744 2,068 3,140
10th Percentile £207 £200 £188
25th Percentile £400 £371 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -8.02%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £495
% change year-on-year -2.44% +3.54% -5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 79 210
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.60 £14.88
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.15 £18.26
Median hourly rate £37.97 £29.00 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year +30.93% -33.85% +13.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £87.38 £75.00 £76.68
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £29.00 £49.88
% change year-on-year +44.62% -41.86% +29.56%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -9 75 £510 -7.27% 13
North of England -41 30 £469 +23.15% 47
South West -11 21 £550 +2.33% 21
South East -35 20 £563 +60.71% 36
Yorkshire -40 18 £500 +13.64% 21
North West -16 12 £460 +21.69% 23
East of England -24 12 £475 -7.32% 21
West Midlands -46 5 £504 +0.75% 9
Midlands -54 5 £504 +6.05% 30
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 (8.05%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (3.45%) IIS
3 5 (2.87%) Confluence
3 5 (2.87%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.30%) Apache
4 4 (2.30%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.72%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.15%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.15%) Hyperledger
7 1 (0.57%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.57%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.57%) nginx
7 1 (0.57%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.57%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.57%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 1 (0.57%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 68 (39.08%) Azure
2 31 (17.82%) GitHub
3 28 (16.09%) AWS
4 20 (11.49%) GitHub Actions
5 15 (8.62%) Azure DevOps
6 12 (6.90%) OpenShift
7 10 (5.75%) Entra ID
7 10 (5.75%) GCP
7 10 (5.75%) Microsoft 365
8 9 (5.17%) Serverless
9 8 (4.60%) Azure AKS
9 8 (4.60%) Azure Monitor
9 8 (4.60%) Cloud Computing
10 7 (4.02%) Azure Storage
11 6 (3.45%) AWS CodePipeline
11 6 (3.45%) IaaS
12 5 (2.87%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (2.87%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (2.87%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (2.87%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (17.82%) Firewall
2 26 (14.94%) DNS
3 11 (6.32%) DHCP
4 10 (5.75%) VPN
5 9 (5.17%) Network Security
5 9 (5.17%) WAN
6 8 (4.60%) TCP/IP
7 7 (4.02%) Skype
8 6 (3.45%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (2.87%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (2.30%) Intrusion Detection
10 4 (2.30%) VLAN
11 2 (1.15%) Modbus
11 2 (1.15%) SAN
11 2 (1.15%) Wireless
12 1 (0.57%) Cisco Wireless
12 1 (0.57%) HTTPS
12 1 (0.57%) MQTT
12 1 (0.57%) NX-OS
12 1 (0.57%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.60%) SQL Server
2 6 (3.45%) Azure SQL Database
3 5 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (2.30%) Data Lake
4 4 (2.30%) OLTP
5 3 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.72%) Data Mining
5 3 (1.72%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (1.15%) Data Hub
6 2 (1.15%) Data Vault
6 2 (1.15%) ImageNet
7 1 (0.57%) Big Data
7 1 (0.57%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.57%) Power BI
7 1 (0.57%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 24 (13.79%) Git
2 22 (12.64%) JIRA
3 10 (5.75%) Jenkins
4 8 (4.60%) PVCS
4 8 (4.60%) Rational DOORS
5 7 (4.02%) GitLab
6 4 (2.30%) RStudio
7 2 (1.15%) Hardhat
7 2 (1.15%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.57%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.57%) Gradle
8 1 (0.57%) SonarQube
General
1 33 (18.97%) Social Skills
2 11 (6.32%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (5.75%) Public Sector
4 9 (5.17%) Electronics
5 6 (3.45%) Finance
5 6 (3.45%) Spanish Language
5 6 (3.45%) Telecoms
6 4 (2.30%) Banking
6 4 (2.30%) Social Science
7 3 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.72%) Legal
8 2 (1.15%) Back Office
8 2 (1.15%) Front Office
8 2 (1.15%) Law
8 2 (1.15%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.57%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.57%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 25 (14.37%) DevOps Engineer
2 18 (10.34%) Senior
3 17 (9.77%) Security Engineer
4 14 (8.05%) Architect
4 14 (8.05%) Software Engineer
5 13 (7.47%) Platform Engineer
6 12 (6.90%) C++ Software Engineer
6 12 (6.90%) Cloud Engineer
6 12 (6.90%) Embedded C++ Engineer
6 12 (6.90%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
6 12 (6.90%) Embedded Engineer
6 12 (6.90%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 12 (6.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 11 (6.32%) Azure Engineer
8 10 (5.75%) Data Engineer
8 10 (5.75%) Wintel Engineer
9 9 (5.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 7 (4.02%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
10 7 (4.02%) C/C++ Software Engineer
10 7 (4.02%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (4.60%) ARM Templates
2 6 (3.45%) Middleware
3 5 (2.87%) OpenTelemetry
4 3 (1.72%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.72%) Kafka
4 3 (1.72%) TensorFlow
5 2 (1.15%) .NET
5 2 (1.15%) Hugging Face
5 2 (1.15%) OpenCV
5 2 (1.15%) PyTorch
5 2 (1.15%) Regular Expression
5 2 (1.15%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (1.15%) SpaCy
5 2 (1.15%) Truffle
5 2 (1.15%) web3js
5 2 (1.15%) YAML
6 1 (0.57%) LangGraph
6 1 (0.57%) RESTful
6 1 (0.57%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.57%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 18 (10.34%) Data Centre
2 14 (8.05%) Private Cloud
2 14 (8.05%) Replication
3 11 (6.32%) Cloud Native
4 10 (5.75%) Clustering
5 6 (3.45%) CAN bus
5 6 (3.45%) Public Cloud
6 5 (2.87%) Cyber Threat
6 5 (2.87%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (2.30%) Linux Command Line
7 4 (2.30%) Onboarding
7 4 (2.30%) PKI
8 3 (1.72%) Algorithms
8 3 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.72%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.72%) NHS
8 3 (1.72%) Operational Technology
8 3 (1.72%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 52 (29.89%) Windows
2 49 (28.16%) Linux
3 27 (15.52%) Windows Server
4 22 (12.64%) VMS
5 10 (5.75%) Windows 10
6 8 (4.60%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (1.72%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (1.72%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.57%) Android
9 1 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.57%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (35.06%) DevOps
2 56 (32.18%) CI/CD
3 43 (24.71%) Infrastructure as Code
4 33 (18.97%) Agile
5 28 (16.09%) High Availability
6 24 (13.79%) Continuous Improvement
6 24 (13.79%) Cybersecurity
7 23 (13.22%) Migration
8 20 (11.49%) Containerisation
8 20 (11.49%) Technical Leadership
9 18 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
10 17 (9.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 16 (9.20%) Disaster Recovery
12 15 (8.62%) Analytics
13 14 (8.05%) Platform Engineering
13 14 (8.05%) Project Delivery
13 14 (8.05%) Software Engineering
14 13 (7.47%) Information Security
14 13 (7.47%) Mentoring
14 13 (7.47%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 33 (18.97%) Python
2 31 (17.82%) PowerShell
3 20 (11.49%) SQL
4 15 (8.62%) C++
5 14 (8.05%) Bash
6 13 (7.47%) Embedded C++
7 12 (6.90%) Java
8 9 (5.17%) C#
9 8 (4.60%) C
9 8 (4.60%) Shell Script
10 7 (4.02%) Embedded C
11 5 (2.87%) Ruby
12 4 (2.30%) Bicep
12 4 (2.30%) Scala
13 2 (1.15%) PHP
13 2 (1.15%) Solidity
14 1 (0.57%) Go
14 1 (0.57%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.57%) Swift
14 1 (0.57%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 56 (32.18%) Security Cleared
2 47 (27.01%) SC Cleared
3 11 (6.32%) VCAP
3 11 (6.32%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 10 (5.75%) DV Cleared
5 8 (4.60%) MCSA
5 8 (4.60%) MCSE
5 8 (4.60%) Microsoft Certification
5 8 (4.60%) OCP
5 8 (4.60%) Oracle Certification
6 6 (3.45%) Azure Certification
6 6 (3.45%) Degree
7 4 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (1.15%) CCNA
8 2 (1.15%) CCNP
8 2 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (1.15%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 2 (1.15%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.57%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.87%) GDPR
1 5 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (2.30%) Cyber Essentials
2 4 (2.30%) QA
3 3 (1.72%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 2 (1.15%) SLA
5 1 (0.57%) GRC
5 1 (0.57%) NIST
System Software
1 47 (27.01%) VMware Infrastructure
2 30 (17.24%) Active Directory
3 19 (10.92%) vSphere
4 17 (9.77%) VMware ESXi
5 15 (8.62%) Docker
6 11 (6.32%) Virtual Desktop
7 8 (4.60%) Hyper-V
8 7 (4.02%) VMware NSX
9 5 (2.87%) KVM
10 4 (2.30%) Firmware
11 2 (1.15%) Xen
12 1 (0.57%) Ceph
12 1 (0.57%) NLBS
Systems Management
1 52 (29.89%) Terraform
2 35 (20.11%) Kubernetes
3 30 (17.24%) Ansible
4 27 (15.52%) vCenter Server
5 13 (7.47%) SCCM
6 11 (6.32%) WSUS
7 10 (5.75%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (3.45%) CASB
8 6 (3.45%) SCOrch
9 5 (2.87%) Rancher
10 4 (2.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (2.30%) vMotion
11 3 (1.72%) Data Guard
11 3 (1.72%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 3 (1.72%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (1.72%) vRealize
12 2 (1.15%) Fluentd
12 2 (1.15%) Grafana
12 2 (1.15%) Microsoft Clustering
12 2 (1.15%) NetApp OnCommand
Vendors
1 61 (35.06%) Microsoft
2 53 (30.46%) VMware
3 21 (12.07%) Cisco
4 9 (5.17%) IBM
4 9 (5.17%) Oracle
5 8 (4.60%) ANSYS
6 5 (2.87%) Databricks
6 5 (2.87%) NetApp
6 5 (2.87%) Red Hat
6 5 (2.87%) SolarWinds
6 5 (2.87%) Sophos
6 5 (2.87%) Veeam
7 4 (2.30%) Dell
7 4 (2.30%) OpenAI
7 4 (2.30%) Pure Storage
7 4 (2.30%) Remedy
8 3 (1.72%) Citrix
8 3 (1.72%) Google
9 2 (1.15%) Palo Alto
9 2 (1.15%) Rockwell
165 Virtual Machines jobs in England