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

 6 months to
29 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 375 310
Rank change year-on-year +8 -65 +11
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 273 134 226
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.59% 0.48% 0.69%
As % of the System Software category 5.89% 4.02% 5.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 92 156
10th Percentile £391 £325 £341
25th Percentile £425 £394 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £625
90th Percentile £705 £650 £673
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £535
% change year-on-year +5.26% -11.21% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 12
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% -79.40%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £76.71
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +1.45% +135.90% -78.88%

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 4,637 3,335 3,846
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.10% 12.02% 11.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,043 2,148 2,630
10th Percentile £213 £224 £225
25th Percentile £392 £377 £384
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 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 95 120
10th Percentile £17.05 £15.03 £14.06
25th Percentile £33.70 £22.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £37.50 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% +55.09% -44.73%
75th Percentile £75.00 £80.50 £62.81
90th Percentile £89.98 £91.50 £71.45
UK median hourly rate £58.74 £30.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +95.78% +24.07% -51.64%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -36 112 £532 +6.40% 55
North of England -15 72 £491 +17.93% 17
South East -27 52 £475 -15.56% 26
Yorkshire -20 38 £519 +17.35% 5
North West -29 33 £480 +42.22% 11
South West -30 17 £540 +20.00% 9
Midlands -45 17 £487 +0.41% 7
West Midlands -40 11 £406 -17.98% 7
East of England -19 5 £425 +41.67% 22
East Midlands -12 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 6 (2.20%) Confluence
2 5 (1.83%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.73%) Apache
4 2 (0.73%) CMS
4 2 (0.73%) IIS
4 2 (0.73%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.37%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.37%) nginx
5 1 (0.37%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.37%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.47%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.47%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.73%) InDesign
3 1 (0.37%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.37%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 133 (48.72%) Azure
2 50 (18.32%) Entra ID
3 39 (14.29%) AWS
4 35 (12.82%) Azure Monitor
5 31 (11.36%) Azure DevOps
6 26 (9.52%) Azure AKS
7 24 (8.79%) GitHub
8 23 (8.42%) IaaS
8 23 (8.42%) OpenShift
9 20 (7.33%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
11 12 (4.40%) Azure Key Vault
12 11 (4.03%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 10 (3.66%) PaaS
13 10 (3.66%) SaaS
14 9 (3.30%) GCP
14 9 (3.30%) Power Platform
14 9 (3.30%) Serverless
15 8 (2.93%) Azure Storage
16 7 (2.56%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 42 (15.38%) DNS
2 40 (14.65%) Firewall
3 22 (8.06%) VPN
4 20 (7.33%) Network Security
4 20 (7.33%) VSAN
5 19 (6.96%) VLAN
6 18 (6.59%) DHCP
7 17 (6.23%) SSL
8 16 (5.86%) WAN
9 10 (3.66%) SD-WAN
10 7 (2.56%) FTP
10 7 (2.56%) LAN
10 7 (2.56%) SAN
11 5 (1.83%) HTTPS
11 5 (1.83%) SSH
11 5 (1.83%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.47%) TCP/IP
13 3 (1.10%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (1.10%) NAS
14 2 (0.73%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (11.36%) SQL Server
2 11 (4.03%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (3.30%) Power BI
5 7 (2.56%) Data Lake
5 7 (2.56%) MySQL
5 7 (2.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.10%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.37%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.37%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.37%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.37%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.37%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.37%) Power Query
7 1 (0.37%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (5.49%) Git
2 13 (4.76%) Jenkins
3 7 (2.56%) JIRA
4 6 (2.20%) GitLab
5 2 (0.73%) CppUnit
5 2 (0.73%) PVCS
5 2 (0.73%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.73%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 2 (0.73%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.73%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.37%) Selenium
6 1 (0.37%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.37%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.37%) Visual Studio
General
1 43 (15.75%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.89%) Finance
3 11 (4.03%) Legal
4 10 (3.66%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (3.30%) Banking
6 8 (2.93%) Public Sector
7 6 (2.20%) Front Office
7 6 (2.20%) Retail
8 5 (1.83%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.47%) Marketing
10 2 (0.73%) Law
10 2 (0.73%) Local Government
10 2 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.73%) Publishing
11 1 (0.37%) Advertising
11 1 (0.37%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.37%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 42 (15.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (12.45%) Azure Engineer
3 31 (11.36%) Cloud Engineer
4 28 (10.26%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (9.16%) Senior
6 21 (7.69%) Lead
7 17 (6.23%) Architect
7 17 (6.23%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (5.49%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 14 (5.13%) Analyst
10 11 (4.03%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.66%) Administrator
11 10 (3.66%) DBA
12 9 (3.30%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
12 9 (3.30%) VMware Engineer
12 9 (3.30%) Wintel Engineer
13 8 (2.93%) Project Manager
14 7 (2.56%) Consultant
14 7 (2.56%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (22.71%) Terraform
2 10 (3.66%) ARM Templates
3 8 (2.93%) REST
3 8 (2.93%) YAML
4 5 (1.83%) Middleware
5 3 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.10%) JSON
6 2 (0.73%) SOAP
7 1 (0.37%) ADO
7 1 (0.37%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.37%) Java SE
7 1 (0.37%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.37%) LDAP
7 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.37%) NumPy
7 1 (0.37%) OpenID
7 1 (0.37%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 1 (0.37%) Pandas
7 1 (0.37%) SciPy
7 1 (0.37%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 33 (12.09%) Replication
2 24 (8.79%) Clustering
3 17 (6.23%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (5.13%) Data Centre
5 11 (4.03%) Linux Command Line
6 8 (2.93%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.93%) Enterprise Storage
6 8 (2.93%) Mainframe
6 8 (2.93%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.56%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (2.20%) Fixed Income
8 6 (2.20%) Market Risk
8 6 (2.20%) Operational Technology
8 6 (2.20%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.83%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.83%) PKI
9 5 (1.83%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.10%) Celerra
10 3 (1.10%) EMC VMAX
10 3 (1.10%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 90 (32.97%) Windows
2 68 (24.91%) Linux
3 52 (19.05%) Windows Server
4 30 (10.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (8.42%) VMS
6 8 (2.93%) Ubuntu
7 6 (2.20%) Unix
8 4 (1.47%) SUSE
8 4 (1.47%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.47%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.10%) AIX
9 3 (1.10%) CoreOS
9 3 (1.10%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.37%) Android
10 1 (0.37%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.37%) Solaris
10 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.37%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (26.01%) CI/CD
2 70 (25.64%) DevOps
3 60 (21.98%) Migration
4 58 (21.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 56 (20.51%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (15.38%) Performance Tuning
7 38 (13.92%) Disaster Recovery
7 38 (13.92%) High Availability
8 37 (13.55%) Continuous Improvement
9 33 (12.09%) RBAC
10 30 (10.99%) Validation
11 29 (10.62%) Problem-Solving
12 26 (9.52%) Platform Engineering
12 26 (9.52%) Stakeholder Management
13 25 (9.16%) Network Virtualisation
14 24 (8.79%) Capacity Planning
14 24 (8.79%) Runbook
15 21 (7.69%) ITIL
15 21 (7.69%) Storage Management
15 21 (7.69%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 84 (30.77%) PowerShell
2 53 (19.41%) Python
3 40 (14.65%) SQL
4 30 (10.99%) Bash
5 12 (4.40%) Bicep
6 9 (3.30%) C#
7 7 (2.56%) T-SQL
8 6 (2.20%) C
9 4 (1.47%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.47%) Shell Script
10 3 (1.10%) Java
10 3 (1.10%) Korn
11 2 (0.73%) C++
11 2 (0.73%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.73%) Groovy
12 1 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.37%) Go
12 1 (0.37%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.37%) RPG
12 1 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 76 (27.84%) Security Cleared
2 61 (22.34%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.33%) Azure Certification
4 18 (6.59%) Degree
5 17 (6.23%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (5.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 11 (4.03%) VCAP
8 10 (3.66%) BPSS Clearance
8 10 (3.66%) MCSA
8 10 (3.66%) MCSE
9 7 (2.56%) DV Cleared
10 6 (2.20%) ISTQB
10 6 (2.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 5 (1.83%) CCNA
11 5 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.83%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (1.10%) CISSP
12 3 (1.10%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.10%) PMI Certification
12 3 (1.10%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.66%) QA
2 3 (1.10%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.10%) SLA
3 2 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
3 2 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (0.73%) GMP
3 2 (0.73%) GxP
3 2 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.73%) NIST
4 1 (0.37%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.37%) GDPR
4 1 (0.37%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.37%) WCAG
System Software
1 82 (30.04%) VMware Infrastructure
2 42 (15.38%) vSphere
3 40 (14.65%) Active Directory
4 34 (12.45%) VMware ESXi
5 24 (8.79%) Docker
6 18 (6.59%) Hyper-V
7 14 (5.13%) VMware NSX
8 7 (2.56%) Ceph
8 7 (2.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (1.83%) KVM
10 4 (1.47%) Firmware
10 4 (1.47%) NFS
11 3 (1.10%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (1.10%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.73%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.37%) DFS Replication
13 1 (0.37%) Dovecot
13 1 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.37%) Postfix
13 1 (0.37%) Squid
Systems Management
1 43 (15.75%) Ansible
1 43 (15.75%) Kubernetes
2 26 (9.52%) vCenter Server
3 14 (5.13%) Grafana
4 12 (4.40%) PowerCLI
5 11 (4.03%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.03%) SCOM
6 9 (3.30%) Failover Clustering
7 8 (2.93%) SCCM
7 8 (2.93%) VxRail
8 6 (2.20%) Microsoft Clustering
8 6 (2.20%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (2.20%) Packer
8 6 (2.20%) Podman
8 6 (2.20%) vMotion
9 5 (1.83%) Proxmox
10 4 (1.47%) Argo
10 4 (1.47%) Avamar
10 4 (1.47%) OPNET
11 3 (1.10%) WSUS
Vendors
1 91 (33.33%) Microsoft
2 87 (31.87%) VMware
3 29 (10.62%) Cisco
4 22 (8.06%) Oracle
5 20 (7.33%) ServiceNow
6 15 (5.49%) Dell
7 13 (4.76%) NetApp
8 12 (4.40%) Veeam
9 11 (4.03%) IBM
9 11 (4.03%) Red Hat
10 9 (3.30%) CyberArk
11 8 (2.93%) Qualys
11 8 (2.93%) SolarWinds
12 6 (2.20%) Databricks
12 6 (2.20%) Google
12 6 (2.20%) Splunk
13 5 (1.83%) Commvault
13 5 (1.83%) EMC
13 5 (1.83%) Meraki
13 5 (1.83%) Palo Alto
126 Virtual Machines jobs in England