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 22 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 370 386 309
Rank change year-on-year +16 -77 +13
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 276 133 236
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.60% 0.48% 0.71%
As % of the System Software category 5.97% 4.00% 6.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 172 90 163
10th Percentile £391 £325 £339
25th Percentile £425 £402 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £535
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -10.28% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £584 £608
90th Percentile £702 £653 £670
UK median daily rate £500 £485 £535
% change year-on-year +3.09% -9.35% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 14
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +135.90% -78.65%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £63.04
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +1.45% +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 4,623 3,323 3,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.08% 12.04% 11.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,052 2,139 2,648
10th Percentile £213 £225 £225
25th Percentile £393 £376 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £681 £685 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 95 129
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.03 £14.06
25th Percentile £31.35 £22.75 £15.76
Median hourly rate £61.50 £37.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +64.00% +57.56% -40.50%
75th Percentile £74.63 £80.50 £59.88
90th Percentile £89.90 £91.50 £71.65
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £31.39 £23.99
% change year-on-year +75.24% +30.83% -50.43%

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 22 August 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 22 August 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 22 August 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 -41 111 £532 +6.40% 15
North of England -9 75 £500 +19.05% 6
South East -27 52 £475 -20.83% 18
Yorkshire -11 41 £515 +15.21% 2
North West -19 33 £480 +42.22% 3
South West -30 17 £540 +27.06% 13
Midlands -50 17 £487 -2.21% 8
West Midlands -52 11 £406 -18.96% 8
East of England -16 6 £425 +41.67% 5
East Midlands -15 4 £500 +5.26%
North East - 1 £400 - 1
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 (1.81%) Confluence
1 5 (1.81%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.72%) Apache
3 2 (0.72%) CMS
3 2 (0.72%) IIS
3 2 (0.72%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.36%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.36%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
4 1 (0.36%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.45%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.45%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.72%) InDesign
3 1 (0.36%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.36%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 133 (48.19%) Azure
2 48 (17.39%) Entra ID
3 40 (14.49%) AWS
4 35 (12.68%) Azure Monitor
5 31 (11.23%) Azure DevOps
6 26 (9.42%) Azure AKS
7 25 (9.06%) OpenShift
8 24 (8.70%) GitHub
9 23 (8.33%) IaaS
10 19 (6.88%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (5.07%) Microsoft 365
12 12 (4.35%) Azure Key Vault
13 11 (3.99%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 11 (3.99%) GCP
14 10 (3.62%) PaaS
14 10 (3.62%) Power Platform
14 10 (3.62%) SaaS
14 10 (3.62%) Serverless
15 8 (2.90%) Azure Storage
16 7 (2.54%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 40 (14.49%) DNS
2 39 (14.13%) Firewall
3 23 (8.33%) VPN
4 20 (7.25%) Network Security
4 20 (7.25%) VSAN
5 19 (6.88%) VLAN
6 18 (6.52%) DHCP
7 17 (6.16%) SSL
8 16 (5.80%) WAN
9 10 (3.62%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.90%) SAN
11 7 (2.54%) LAN
12 6 (2.17%) FTP
13 5 (1.81%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (1.45%) HTTPS
14 4 (1.45%) SSH
15 3 (1.09%) Cisco Nexus
15 3 (1.09%) NAS
15 3 (1.09%) TCP/IP
16 2 (0.72%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.87%) SQL Server
2 10 (3.62%) Azure SQL Database
2 10 (3.62%) Power BI
3 8 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (2.54%) Data Lake
4 7 (2.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (2.17%) MySQL
6 3 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.09%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.36%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.36%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.36%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.36%) Power Query
7 1 (0.36%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 14 (5.07%) Git
2 12 (4.35%) Jenkins
3 6 (2.17%) GitLab
3 6 (2.17%) JIRA
4 2 (0.72%) CppUnit
4 2 (0.72%) PVCS
4 2 (0.72%) Rational DOORS
4 2 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (0.72%) Team Foundation Server
4 2 (0.72%) Terragrunt
5 1 (0.36%) Selenium
5 1 (0.36%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 1 (0.36%) Visual Studio
General
1 43 (15.58%) Social Skills
2 26 (9.42%) Finance
3 11 (3.99%) Banking
3 11 (3.99%) Legal
4 9 (3.26%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (2.90%) Public Sector
6 6 (2.17%) Front Office
6 6 (2.17%) Retail
7 5 (1.81%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.45%) Marketing
9 2 (0.72%) Law
9 2 (0.72%) Local Government
9 2 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.72%) Publishing
10 1 (0.36%) Advertising
10 1 (0.36%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.36%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 42 (15.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (12.32%) Azure Engineer
3 31 (11.23%) Cloud Engineer
4 28 (10.14%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (9.42%) Senior
6 21 (7.61%) Lead
7 17 (6.16%) Architect
7 17 (6.16%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (5.43%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 14 (5.07%) Analyst
10 9 (3.26%) Administrator
10 9 (3.26%) DBA
10 9 (3.26%) Linux Engineer
10 9 (3.26%) Platform Engineer
10 9 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
10 9 (3.26%) VMware Engineer
10 9 (3.26%) Wintel Engineer
11 8 (2.90%) Consultant
11 8 (2.90%) Storage Engineer
12 6 (2.17%) Market Risk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (22.83%) Terraform
2 9 (3.26%) ARM Templates
3 8 (2.90%) REST
3 8 (2.90%) YAML
4 5 (1.81%) Middleware
5 3 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.09%) JSON
6 2 (0.72%) SOAP
7 1 (0.36%) ADO
7 1 (0.36%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.36%) Java SE
7 1 (0.36%) LDAP
7 1 (0.36%) Node.js
7 1 (0.36%) NumPy
7 1 (0.36%) OpenID
7 1 (0.36%) OpenTofu
7 1 (0.36%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 1 (0.36%) Pandas
7 1 (0.36%) SciPy
7 1 (0.36%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 31 (11.23%) Replication
2 25 (9.06%) Clustering
3 19 (6.88%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (4.71%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.99%) Linux Command Line
6 8 (2.90%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.90%) Enterprise Storage
6 8 (2.90%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.54%) Mainframe
7 7 (2.54%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (2.17%) Fixed Income
8 6 (2.17%) Market Risk
8 6 (2.17%) Operational Technology
8 6 (2.17%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.81%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.81%) PKI
9 5 (1.81%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.09%) EMC Centera
10 3 (1.09%) SCADA
10 3 (1.09%) Symmetrix
Operating Systems
1 89 (32.25%) Windows
2 68 (24.64%) Linux
3 50 (18.12%) Windows Server
4 32 (11.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 25 (9.06%) VMS
6 7 (2.54%) Ubuntu
7 5 (1.81%) CoreOS
7 5 (1.81%) Unix
8 4 (1.45%) Data ONTAP
8 4 (1.45%) SUSE
8 4 (1.45%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.45%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.09%) AIX
9 3 (1.09%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.72%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.36%) Android
11 1 (0.36%) Solaris
11 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (25.36%) DevOps
2 68 (24.64%) CI/CD
3 61 (22.10%) Migration
4 57 (20.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 53 (19.20%) Infrastructure as Code
6 41 (14.86%) Performance Tuning
7 39 (14.13%) Disaster Recovery
8 37 (13.41%) High Availability
9 35 (12.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 31 (11.23%) RBAC
10 31 (11.23%) Validation
11 27 (9.78%) Problem-Solving
12 26 (9.42%) Network Virtualisation
12 26 (9.42%) Stakeholder Management
13 25 (9.06%) Capacity Planning
13 25 (9.06%) Platform Engineering
14 23 (8.33%) Runbook
14 23 (8.33%) Vulnerability Management
15 21 (7.61%) ITIL
16 20 (7.25%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 82 (29.71%) PowerShell
2 53 (19.20%) Python
3 38 (13.77%) SQL
4 30 (10.87%) Bash
5 11 (3.99%) Bicep
6 9 (3.26%) C#
7 6 (2.17%) C
7 6 (2.17%) T-SQL
8 4 (1.45%) Korn
8 4 (1.45%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.45%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.09%) Java
10 2 (0.72%) C++
10 2 (0.72%) Embedded C
11 1 (0.36%) Go
11 1 (0.36%) Groovy
11 1 (0.36%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.36%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.36%) RPG
11 1 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 77 (27.90%) Security Cleared
2 62 (22.46%) SC Cleared
3 18 (6.52%) Azure Certification
4 17 (6.16%) Degree
4 17 (6.16%) Microsoft Certification
5 14 (5.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.99%) VCAP
7 10 (3.62%) MCSA
7 10 (3.62%) MCSE
8 9 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 7 (2.54%) DV Cleared
10 6 (2.17%) ISTQB
10 6 (2.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 5 (1.81%) CCNA
11 5 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.81%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 4 (1.45%) OCP
12 4 (1.45%) Oracle Certification
13 3 (1.09%) CISSP
13 3 (1.09%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.62%) QA
2 3 (1.09%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.09%) SLA
3 2 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
3 2 (0.72%) GMP
3 2 (0.72%) GxP
3 2 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.72%) NIST
4 1 (0.36%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (0.36%) GDPR
4 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 85 (30.80%) VMware Infrastructure
2 44 (15.94%) vSphere
3 41 (14.86%) Active Directory
4 34 (12.32%) VMware ESXi
5 23 (8.33%) Docker
6 18 (6.52%) Hyper-V
7 14 (5.07%) VMware NSX
8 7 (2.54%) Ceph
8 7 (2.54%) NFS
8 7 (2.54%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (1.81%) Firmware
9 5 (1.81%) KVM
10 3 (1.09%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 3 (1.09%) VMware Workstation
11 2 (0.72%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 1 (0.36%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 45 (16.30%) Kubernetes
2 44 (15.94%) Ansible
3 26 (9.42%) vCenter Server
4 13 (4.71%) Grafana
5 12 (4.35%) PowerCLI
6 10 (3.62%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.62%) SCOM
7 9 (3.26%) Failover Clustering
8 8 (2.90%) SCCM
8 8 (2.90%) VxRail
9 6 (2.17%) Microsoft Clustering
9 6 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.17%) Podman
9 6 (2.17%) vMotion
10 5 (1.81%) Packer
11 4 (1.45%) Argo
11 4 (1.45%) Avamar
11 4 (1.45%) OPNET
11 4 (1.45%) Proxmox
11 4 (1.45%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 90 (32.61%) Microsoft
1 90 (32.61%) VMware
2 29 (10.51%) Cisco
3 21 (7.61%) Oracle
4 19 (6.88%) ServiceNow
5 16 (5.80%) NetApp
6 14 (5.07%) Dell
7 13 (4.71%) Red Hat
8 12 (4.35%) Veeam
9 10 (3.62%) IBM
9 10 (3.62%) Qualys
10 9 (3.26%) CyberArk
11 8 (2.90%) Google
12 7 (2.54%) Databricks
12 7 (2.54%) SolarWinds
13 6 (2.17%) Splunk
14 5 (1.81%) Commvault
14 5 (1.81%) EMC
14 5 (1.81%) Meraki
14 5 (1.81%) Palo Alto