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

 6 months to
19 Nov 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 394 298 307
Rank change year-on-year -96 +9 +76
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 145 221 291
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.48% 0.72% 0.74%
As % of the System Software category 3.74% 5.99% 5.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 99 149 198
10th Percentile £356 £345 £274
25th Percentile £423 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £615
90th Percentile £651 £665 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 10
10th Percentile £37.95 £26.84 £68.21
25th Percentile £45.00 £43.66 £73.09
Median hourly rate £58.50 £59.50 £78.73
Median % change year-on-year -1.68% -24.42% +12.46%
75th Percentile £65.13 £66.00 £87.65
90th Percentile £68.05 - £90.00
UK median hourly rate £58.50 £59.50 £78.73
% change year-on-year -1.68% -24.42% +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 3,881 3,691 5,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.77% 11.97% 13.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,536 2,370 3,545
10th Percentile £213 £216 £198
25th Percentile £399 £382 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +3.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £675 £710 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 79 237
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.02 £15.50
25th Percentile £21.00 £21.46 £18.50
Median hourly rate £32.32 £50.00 £43.84
Median % change year-on-year -35.37% +14.06% +75.34%
75th Percentile £74.26 £67.84 £67.25
90th Percentile £89.54 £75.00 £76.92
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £36.17 £47.01
% change year-on-year -17.05% -23.06% +88.02%

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 November 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 19 November 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 19 November 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 -10 74 £525 +5.00% 46
South East -32 20 £525 +1.16% 29
South West -7 19 £550 -3.51% 6
North of England -40 17 £475 -3.06% 13
Yorkshire -41 15 £475 +7.95% 5
East of England -29 6 £475 - 6
Midlands -61 4 £508 -12.80% 13
West Midlands -52 3 £508 -12.80% 6
North West -25 2 £528 -8.26% 8
East Midlands -20 1 - - 7
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 (10.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (4.14%) IIS
3 5 (3.45%) Confluence
4 4 (2.76%) Apache
4 4 (2.76%) SharePoint
5 3 (2.07%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.38%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.38%) Hyperledger
7 1 (0.69%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.69%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.69%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.69%) nginx
7 1 (0.69%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.69%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.69%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 61 (42.07%) Azure
2 22 (15.17%) Azure DevOps
3 17 (11.72%) AWS
3 17 (11.72%) GitHub
4 9 (6.21%) Entra ID
5 8 (5.52%) Azure AKS
5 8 (5.52%) Azure Monitor
5 8 (5.52%) Microsoft 365
6 7 (4.83%) GCP
6 7 (4.83%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (4.14%) Azure Key Vault
7 6 (4.14%) Azure Storage
7 6 (4.14%) Cloud Computing
8 5 (3.45%) Azure API Management
8 5 (3.45%) Azure Logic Apps
8 5 (3.45%) Azure Service Bus
8 5 (3.45%) IaaS
9 4 (2.76%) OpenShift
9 4 (2.76%) Serverless
10 3 (2.07%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 29 (20.00%) Firewall
2 24 (16.55%) DNS
3 10 (6.90%) DHCP
3 10 (6.90%) VPN
4 9 (6.21%) Network Security
4 9 (6.21%) WAN
5 7 (4.83%) Skype
6 6 (4.14%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (3.45%) TCP/IP
7 5 (3.45%) VLAN
7 5 (3.45%) VSAN
8 4 (2.76%) Intrusion Detection
8 4 (2.76%) NAS
8 4 (2.76%) SAN
9 2 (1.38%) Modbus
10 1 (0.69%) Cisco IOS
10 1 (0.69%) iSCSI
10 1 (0.69%) MQTT
10 1 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
10 1 (0.69%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (7.59%) SQL Server
2 7 (4.83%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (3.45%) Data Lake
4 4 (2.76%) OLTP
5 3 (2.07%) Data Mining
6 2 (1.38%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (1.38%) Data Vault
6 2 (1.38%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.69%) Big Data
7 1 (0.69%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.69%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 18 (12.41%) JIRA
2 13 (8.97%) Git
3 10 (6.90%) Jenkins
4 6 (4.14%) GitLab
5 3 (2.07%) RStudio
6 2 (1.38%) Hardhat
6 2 (1.38%) PVCS
6 2 (1.38%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (1.38%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.69%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.69%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.69%) EasyMock
7 1 (0.69%) JBehave
7 1 (0.69%) JUnit
7 1 (0.69%) Mockito
7 1 (0.69%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.69%) Snyk
7 1 (0.69%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.69%) VisualVM
7 1 (0.69%) YourKit
General
1 31 (21.38%) Social Skills
2 16 (11.03%) Public Sector
3 10 (6.90%) Finance
4 8 (5.52%) Law
5 7 (4.83%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (4.83%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (4.14%) Banking
6 6 (4.14%) Telecoms
7 5 (3.45%) Spanish Language
8 3 (2.07%) Electronics
8 3 (2.07%) Social Science
9 2 (1.38%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.69%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.69%) Back Office
10 1 (0.69%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.69%) Front Office
10 1 (0.69%) Legal
10 1 (0.69%) Marketing
10 1 (0.69%) Police
10 1 (0.69%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 20 (13.79%) DevOps Engineer
2 16 (11.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 14 (9.66%) Security Engineer
3 14 (9.66%) Senior
4 12 (8.28%) Platform Engineer
5 10 (6.90%) Azure Engineer
6 9 (6.21%) Data Engineer
6 9 (6.21%) Developer
7 8 (5.52%) Software Engineer
8 6 (4.14%) C++ Software Engineer
8 6 (4.14%) Embedded C++ Engineer
8 6 (4.14%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
8 6 (4.14%) Embedded Engineer
8 6 (4.14%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 6 (4.14%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
8 6 (4.14%) Project Manager
9 5 (3.45%) Architect
9 5 (3.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 5 (3.45%) IT Engineer
9 5 (3.45%) Kubernetes Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (8.97%) ARM Templates
2 10 (6.90%) Middleware
3 7 (4.83%) TensorFlow
4 6 (4.14%) Hugging Face
4 6 (4.14%) OpenCV
4 6 (4.14%) OpenTelemetry
4 6 (4.14%) PyTorch
4 6 (4.14%) Regular Expression
4 6 (4.14%) SpaCy
5 5 (3.45%) ADO
5 5 (3.45%) YAML
6 4 (2.76%) Kafka
7 2 (1.38%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (1.38%) JSON
7 2 (1.38%) Loki
7 2 (1.38%) RESTful
7 2 (1.38%) Smart Contracts
7 2 (1.38%) Truffle
7 2 (1.38%) Web Services
7 2 (1.38%) web3js
Miscellaneous
1 11 (7.59%) Data Centre
2 10 (6.90%) Private Cloud
3 8 (5.52%) Onboarding
4 7 (4.83%) Management Information System
4 7 (4.83%) Replication
5 6 (4.14%) CAN bus
5 6 (4.14%) PKI
6 4 (2.76%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (2.07%) Legacy Code
7 3 (2.07%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (2.07%) Operational Technology
7 3 (2.07%) Public Cloud
7 3 (2.07%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.38%) Blockchain
8 2 (1.38%) CCTV
8 2 (1.38%) Cloud Native
8 2 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.38%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 54 (37.24%) Windows
2 45 (31.03%) Linux
3 27 (18.62%) Windows Server
4 14 (9.66%) VMS
5 10 (6.90%) Windows 10
6 8 (5.52%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (4.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (2.76%) Ubuntu
9 3 (2.07%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (2.07%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.69%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.69%) CentOS
10 1 (0.69%) SUSE
10 1 (0.69%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.69%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.69%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (36.55%) DevOps
2 42 (28.97%) CI/CD
3 33 (22.76%) Agile
3 33 (22.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 26 (17.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 25 (17.24%) Problem-Solving
6 19 (13.10%) Migration
7 17 (11.72%) Analytics
7 17 (11.72%) Cybersecurity
8 16 (11.03%) High Availability
9 14 (9.66%) Continuous Integration
10 13 (8.97%) Root Cause Analysis
11 12 (8.28%) Platform Engineering
12 11 (7.59%) AI
12 11 (7.59%) Information Security
12 11 (7.59%) Machine Learning
13 10 (6.90%) Cloud Security
13 10 (6.90%) Continuous Improvement
13 10 (6.90%) Infrastructure Automation
13 10 (6.90%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 32 (22.07%) Python
2 31 (21.38%) PowerShell
3 14 (9.66%) SQL
4 11 (7.59%) Java
5 10 (6.90%) Bash
5 10 (6.90%) C++
6 8 (5.52%) Bicep
6 8 (5.52%) C#
7 7 (4.83%) Embedded C++
8 4 (2.76%) Scala
8 4 (2.76%) Shell Script
9 2 (1.38%) C
9 2 (1.38%) JavaScript
9 2 (1.38%) Solidity
10 1 (0.69%) Embedded C
10 1 (0.69%) Go
10 1 (0.69%) Korn
10 1 (0.69%) PHP
10 1 (0.69%) Ruby
10 1 (0.69%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 47 (32.41%) Security Cleared
2 34 (23.45%) SC Cleared
3 11 (7.59%) DV Cleared
4 9 (6.21%) Degree
5 4 (2.76%) Azure Certification
5 4 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 3 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
6 3 (2.07%) VCAP
7 2 (1.38%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.38%) CCNA
7 2 (1.38%) CCNP
7 2 (1.38%) CISM
7 2 (1.38%) CISSP
7 2 (1.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 2 (1.38%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 1 (0.69%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
8 1 (0.69%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (2.76%) Accessibility
2 4 (2.76%) NIST
3 3 (2.07%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (2.07%) QA
3 3 (2.07%) SLA
4 2 (1.38%) GDPR
4 2 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 1 (0.69%) GRC
5 1 (0.69%) RMADS
System Software
1 40 (27.59%) VMware Infrastructure
2 32 (22.07%) Active Directory
3 17 (11.72%) vSphere
4 14 (9.66%) VMware ESXi
5 13 (8.97%) Docker
6 11 (7.59%) VMware NSX
7 7 (4.83%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (4.14%) Hyper-V
9 3 (2.07%) Firmware
9 3 (2.07%) KVM
10 1 (0.69%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 31 (21.38%) Terraform
2 26 (17.93%) vCenter Server
3 25 (17.24%) Kubernetes
4 13 (8.97%) Ansible
5 10 (6.90%) SCCM
6 8 (5.52%) WSUS
7 7 (4.83%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (4.14%) CASB
8 6 (4.14%) SCOrch
8 6 (4.14%) vRealize
9 4 (2.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (2.76%) Rancher
9 4 (2.76%) vMotion
10 3 (2.07%) Grafana
10 3 (2.07%) PowerCLI
11 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (1.38%) NetApp OnCommand
11 2 (1.38%) Packer
11 2 (1.38%) Prometheus
11 2 (1.38%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 48 (33.10%) VMware
2 45 (31.03%) Microsoft
3 11 (7.59%) Cisco
4 7 (4.83%) Oracle
5 6 (4.14%) NetApp
5 6 (4.14%) Veeam
6 5 (3.45%) Databricks
7 4 (2.76%) IBM
7 4 (2.76%) Remedy
7 4 (2.76%) SolarWinds
8 3 (2.07%) Citrix
8 3 (2.07%) F5
8 3 (2.07%) Red Hat
8 3 (2.07%) Sophos
8 3 (2.07%) Tenable
9 2 (1.38%) ANSYS
9 2 (1.38%) OpenAI
9 2 (1.38%) Rockwell
9 2 (1.38%) ServiceNow
10 1 (0.69%) MuleSoft
108 Virtual Machines jobs in England