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 13 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 391 309 306
Rank change year-on-year -82 -3 +62
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 154 208 277
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.50% 0.69% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 3.96% 5.77% 5.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 106 137 181
10th Percentile £349 £350 £275
25th Percentile £425 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £615
90th Percentile £655 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 9 11
10th Percentile £60.73 £29.73 -
25th Percentile £66.69 £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 £89.38
90th Percentile - - £90.00
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 3,888 3,606 4,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.56% 11.89% 12.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,578 2,323 3,396
10th Percentile £206 £210 £195
25th Percentile £400 £380 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +3.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £618
90th Percentile £688 £724 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 82 234
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.51 £15.50
25th Percentile £21.00 £21.46 £18.00
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.33 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.77% -11.67% +58.42%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.75 £65.98
90th Percentile £91.50 £75.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £33.39 £30.50 £43.79
% change year-on-year +9.46% -30.35% +73.44%

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 13 December 2025.

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 13 December 2025.

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 13 December 2025. 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 -14 73 £525 - 19
North of England -39 23 £493 +12.05% 22
South West -9 20 £550 +1.85% 11
Yorkshire -34 20 £489 +11.14% 3
South East -36 19 £475 +25.00% 31
East of England -27 8 £475 -7.32% 15
Midlands -47 4 £508 +1.50% 13
North West -19 3 £500 +13.51% 18
West Midlands -40 3 £508 +1.50% 5
East Midlands -18 1 - - 8
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 15 (9.74%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (3.90%) IIS
3 5 (3.25%) Confluence
4 4 (2.60%) Apache
4 4 (2.60%) SharePoint
5 3 (1.95%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.30%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.30%) Hyperledger
6 2 (1.30%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.65%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.65%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.65%) nginx
7 1 (0.65%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.65%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.65%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 62 (40.26%) Azure
2 25 (16.23%) GitHub
3 22 (14.29%) AWS
4 17 (11.04%) Azure DevOps
5 16 (10.39%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (6.49%) Microsoft 365
6 10 (6.49%) OpenShift
7 9 (5.84%) Azure AKS
8 7 (4.55%) Cloud Computing
8 7 (4.55%) Entra ID
8 7 (4.55%) GCP
8 7 (4.55%) Serverless
9 6 (3.90%) Azure Monitor
10 5 (3.25%) AWS CodePipeline
10 5 (3.25%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (3.25%) IaaS
11 4 (2.60%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (1.95%) Azure Data Factory
12 3 (1.95%) Azure Stack
Communications & Networking
1 33 (21.43%) Firewall
2 29 (18.83%) DNS
3 12 (7.79%) DHCP
4 10 (6.49%) VPN
4 10 (6.49%) WAN
5 7 (4.55%) Network Security
5 7 (4.55%) Skype
5 7 (4.55%) TCP/IP
5 7 (4.55%) Wi-Fi
6 5 (3.25%) VLAN
7 4 (2.60%) Intrusion Detection
7 4 (2.60%) NAS
7 4 (2.60%) Reverse Proxy
7 4 (2.60%) SAN
8 2 (1.30%) Modbus
8 2 (1.30%) VSAN
9 1 (0.65%) Cisco Wireless
9 1 (0.65%) iSCSI
9 1 (0.65%) MQTT
9 1 (0.65%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (7.14%) SQL Server
2 9 (5.84%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (3.25%) Data Lake
4 4 (2.60%) OLTP
5 3 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (1.95%) Data Mining
6 2 (1.30%) Data Hub
6 2 (1.30%) Data Vault
6 2 (1.30%) ImageNet
7 1 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.65%) Big Data
7 1 (0.65%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.65%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 20 (12.99%) Git
2 19 (12.34%) JIRA
3 12 (7.79%) Jenkins
4 8 (5.19%) GitLab
5 4 (2.60%) PVCS
5 4 (2.60%) Rational DOORS
6 3 (1.95%) RStudio
7 2 (1.30%) Hardhat
7 2 (1.30%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.65%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.65%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.65%) Snyk
8 1 (0.65%) SonarQube
General
1 34 (22.08%) Social Skills
2 14 (9.09%) Public Sector
3 10 (6.49%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (5.84%) Finance
5 6 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (3.90%) Spanish Language
5 6 (3.90%) Telecoms
6 5 (3.25%) Banking
6 5 (3.25%) Electronics
7 4 (2.60%) Law
8 3 (1.95%) Social Science
9 2 (1.30%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.65%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.65%) Back Office
10 1 (0.65%) Front Office
10 1 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.65%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.65%) Legal
10 1 (0.65%) Police
10 1 (0.65%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 18 (11.69%) DevOps Engineer
2 17 (11.04%) Security Engineer
2 17 (11.04%) Senior
3 15 (9.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 14 (9.09%) Architect
4 14 (9.09%) Platform Engineer
5 10 (6.49%) Software Engineer
6 9 (5.84%) Azure Engineer
6 9 (5.84%) Data Engineer
7 8 (5.19%) C++ Software Engineer
7 8 (5.19%) Developer
7 8 (5.19%) Embedded C++ Engineer
7 8 (5.19%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
7 8 (5.19%) Embedded Engineer
7 8 (5.19%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 7 (4.55%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
9 6 (3.90%) IT Engineer
9 6 (3.90%) Site Engineer
9 6 (3.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 6 (3.90%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (5.19%) ARM Templates
1 8 (5.19%) Middleware
2 7 (4.55%) TensorFlow
3 6 (3.90%) Hugging Face
3 6 (3.90%) OpenCV
3 6 (3.90%) OpenTelemetry
3 6 (3.90%) PyTorch
3 6 (3.90%) Regular Expression
3 6 (3.90%) SpaCy
4 3 (1.95%) Kafka
4 3 (1.95%) YAML
5 2 (1.30%) .NET
5 2 (1.30%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (1.30%) Loki
5 2 (1.30%) RESTful
5 2 (1.30%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (1.30%) Truffle
5 2 (1.30%) Web Services
5 2 (1.30%) web3js
6 1 (0.65%) SwiftUI
Miscellaneous
1 14 (9.09%) Data Centre
2 12 (7.79%) Private Cloud
3 7 (4.55%) Management Information System
3 7 (4.55%) Onboarding
3 7 (4.55%) Replication
4 6 (3.90%) CAN bus
4 6 (3.90%) Cloud Native
4 6 (3.90%) PKI
5 5 (3.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 5 (3.25%) Linux Command Line
6 4 (2.60%) Public Cloud
6 4 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.95%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.95%) NHS
7 3 (1.95%) Operational Technology
7 3 (1.95%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.30%) Insider Threat
8 2 (1.30%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.30%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 50 (32.47%) Windows
2 48 (31.17%) Linux
3 27 (17.53%) Windows Server
4 19 (12.34%) VMS
5 10 (6.49%) Windows 10
6 8 (5.19%) Windows Server 2016
7 4 (2.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (1.95%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (1.95%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (1.30%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.65%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.65%) SUSE
10 1 (0.65%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.65%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.65%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (35.06%) DevOps
2 44 (28.57%) CI/CD
3 36 (23.38%) Infrastructure as Code
4 35 (22.73%) Agile
5 24 (15.58%) Migration
6 22 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 21 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (12.34%) Cybersecurity
9 16 (10.39%) High Availability
10 15 (9.74%) Platform Engineering
11 14 (9.09%) Analytics
11 14 (9.09%) Continuous Improvement
11 14 (9.09%) Information Security
11 14 (9.09%) Technical Leadership
12 13 (8.44%) Containerisation
12 13 (8.44%) Infrastructure Automation
12 13 (8.44%) Root Cause Analysis
12 13 (8.44%) Security Operations
13 11 (7.14%) Cloud Security
13 11 (7.14%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 34 (22.08%) Python
2 27 (17.53%) PowerShell
3 15 (9.74%) SQL
4 12 (7.79%) C++
4 12 (7.79%) Java
5 11 (7.14%) Bash
6 9 (5.84%) C#
6 9 (5.84%) Embedded C++
7 7 (4.55%) Shell Script
8 4 (2.60%) Bicep
8 4 (2.60%) C
8 4 (2.60%) Ruby
8 4 (2.60%) Scala
9 3 (1.95%) Embedded C
10 2 (1.30%) PHP
10 2 (1.30%) Solidity
11 1 (0.65%) Go
11 1 (0.65%) Korn
11 1 (0.65%) Swift
11 1 (0.65%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 48 (31.17%) Security Cleared
2 37 (24.03%) SC Cleared
3 11 (7.14%) DV Cleared
4 9 (5.84%) Degree
5 4 (2.60%) Azure Certification
5 4 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.60%) OCP
5 4 (2.60%) Oracle Certification
5 4 (2.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 3 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 3 (1.95%) VCAP
7 2 (1.30%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.30%) CCNA
7 2 (1.30%) CCNP
7 2 (1.30%) CISM
7 2 (1.30%) CISSP
7 2 (1.30%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 2 (1.30%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.65%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (3.25%) QA
3 4 (2.60%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.60%) NIST
4 3 (1.95%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (1.95%) SLA
5 2 (1.30%) GDPR
5 2 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 1 (0.65%) GRC
6 1 (0.65%) RMADS
System Software
1 38 (24.68%) VMware Infrastructure
2 34 (22.08%) Active Directory
3 12 (7.79%) Docker
3 12 (7.79%) vSphere
4 11 (7.14%) VMware NSX
5 10 (6.49%) VMware ESXi
6 7 (4.55%) Hyper-V
7 6 (3.90%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (1.95%) Firmware
9 2 (1.30%) KVM
9 2 (1.30%) Xen
10 1 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 42 (27.27%) Terraform
2 29 (18.83%) Kubernetes
3 23 (14.94%) vCenter Server
4 21 (13.64%) Ansible
5 13 (8.44%) SCCM
6 10 (6.49%) WSUS
7 9 (5.84%) Microsoft Intune
8 7 (4.55%) CASB
8 7 (4.55%) SCOrch
9 6 (3.90%) vRealize
10 4 (2.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (2.60%) Rancher
10 4 (2.60%) vMotion
11 3 (1.95%) PowerCLI
12 2 (1.30%) Fluentd
12 2 (1.30%) Grafana
12 2 (1.30%) Microsoft Clustering
12 2 (1.30%) NetApp OnCommand
12 2 (1.30%) Packer
12 2 (1.30%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 52 (33.77%) Microsoft
2 45 (29.22%) VMware
3 11 (7.14%) Cisco
4 7 (4.55%) Oracle
5 6 (3.90%) Veeam
6 5 (3.25%) Databricks
6 5 (3.25%) Dell
6 5 (3.25%) IBM
6 5 (3.25%) NetApp
6 5 (3.25%) Sophos
7 4 (2.60%) ANSYS
7 4 (2.60%) Pure Storage
7 4 (2.60%) Remedy
7 4 (2.60%) SolarWinds
8 3 (1.95%) F5
8 3 (1.95%) Tenable
9 2 (1.30%) Citrix
9 2 (1.30%) OpenAI
9 2 (1.30%) Rockwell
9 2 (1.30%) ServiceNow