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 10 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 299 291
Rank change year-on-year -68 -8 +24
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 221 184 273
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.56% 0.76% 0.73%
As % of the System Software category 5.09% 5.81% 6.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 150 122 185
10th Percentile £325 £350 £268
25th Percentile £413 £425 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £518 £500
% change year-on-year -3.43% +3.55% -7.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 11 25
10th Percentile - £33.25 -
25th Percentile - £57.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £15.19
90th Percentile - - £88.75
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
% change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -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 4,341 3,167 4,103
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.07% 13.01% 10.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,967 2,203 2,838
10th Percentile £213 £213 £190
25th Percentile £400 £400 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £485
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +8.36% -7.71%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £694 £725 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £488
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 152 82 203
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.22 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.30 £15.50
Median hourly rate £51.75 £28.71 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +80.28% +36.69% -47.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.75 £58.09
90th Percentile £79.95 £85.88 £69.73
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £29.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +75.86% +28.89% -55.00%

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 10 April 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
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 10 April 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 -69 92 £518 -10.00% 27
North of England -27 74 £475 +24.67% 17
Yorkshire -17 43 £500 +14.29% 4
North West -16 30 £456 +19.69% 13
South East -47 19 £500 +1.21% 14
Midlands -67 13 £425 -10.53% 4
East of England -43 10 £550 +2.33% 11
West Midlands -67 10 £375 -18.92% 3
South West -27 8 £538 +0.47% 2
North East -19 1 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -34 1 £500 -2.44% 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 (2.71%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.81%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.36%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.90%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.45%) Apache
5 1 (0.45%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.45%) nginx
5 1 (0.45%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (0.90%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (0.90%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.90%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.45%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 100 (45.25%) Azure
2 37 (16.74%) AWS
3 31 (14.03%) GitHub
4 30 (13.57%) OpenShift
5 24 (10.86%) Azure DevOps
6 23 (10.41%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (7.69%) Azure Monitor
7 17 (7.69%) Entra ID
7 17 (7.69%) GCP
8 15 (6.79%) Serverless
9 12 (5.43%) Azure AKS
10 11 (4.98%) Azure Storage
10 11 (4.98%) Microsoft 365
11 8 (3.62%) Azure Key Vault
12 7 (3.17%) Azure Functions
13 6 (2.71%) Azure Data Factory
13 6 (2.71%) Azure Logic Apps
14 5 (2.26%) Amazon ECS
14 5 (2.26%) AWS CodePipeline
14 5 (2.26%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 32 (14.48%) Firewall
2 26 (11.76%) DNS
3 15 (6.79%) VPN
3 15 (6.79%) VSAN
4 12 (5.43%) DHCP
4 12 (5.43%) Network Security
5 10 (4.52%) SSL
6 9 (4.07%) SAN
6 9 (4.07%) VLAN
7 8 (3.62%) TCP/IP
8 7 (3.17%) Reverse Proxy
9 6 (2.71%) WAN
10 5 (2.26%) FTP
11 4 (1.81%) Wi-Fi
12 3 (1.36%) NAS
12 3 (1.36%) SD-WAN
13 2 (0.90%) Cisco Nexus
13 2 (0.90%) LAN
13 2 (0.90%) SSH
14 1 (0.45%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.52%) SQL Server
2 8 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (3.17%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.71%) DB2
5 5 (2.26%) Power BI
6 4 (1.81%) Oracle Database
7 3 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.36%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.36%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.90%) Data Hub
8 2 (0.90%) Data Vault
8 2 (0.90%) ImageNet
9 1 (0.45%) Power Query
9 1 (0.45%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.45%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 30 (13.57%) Git
2 10 (4.52%) GitLab
2 10 (4.52%) JIRA
3 9 (4.07%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.62%) PVCS
4 8 (3.62%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (0.90%) JMeter
5 2 (0.90%) Postman
5 2 (0.90%) RStudio
5 2 (0.90%) Selenium
5 2 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.45%) Gradle
6 1 (0.45%) Terragrunt
General
1 30 (13.57%) Social Skills
2 16 (7.24%) Finance
3 11 (4.98%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (4.98%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.07%) Banking
4 9 (4.07%) Legal
5 8 (3.62%) Electronics
6 7 (3.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (1.81%) Retail
8 3 (1.36%) Spanish Language
9 2 (0.90%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.90%) Marketing
9 2 (0.90%) Social Science
10 1 (0.45%) Advertising
10 1 (0.45%) Back Office
10 1 (0.45%) Front Office
10 1 (0.45%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.45%) Law
10 1 (0.45%) Police
Job Titles
1 28 (12.67%) DevOps Engineer
2 25 (11.31%) Azure Engineer
3 23 (10.41%) Senior
4 16 (7.24%) Architect
5 14 (6.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 12 (5.43%) VMware Engineer
7 11 (4.98%) Cloud Engineer
8 10 (4.52%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 9 (4.07%) Analyst
9 9 (4.07%) Data Engineer
9 9 (4.07%) Security Engineer
9 9 (4.07%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 9 (4.07%) Software Engineer
9 9 (4.07%) Wintel Engineer
10 8 (3.62%) C++ Software Engineer
10 8 (3.62%) Embedded C++ Engineer
10 8 (3.62%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
10 8 (3.62%) Embedded Engineer
10 8 (3.62%) Embedded Software Engineer
10 8 (3.62%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.62%) ARM Templates
1 8 (3.62%) YAML
2 7 (3.17%) REST
3 4 (1.81%) Middleware
4 3 (1.36%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.36%) JSON
5 2 (0.90%) .NET
5 2 (0.90%) Kafka
5 2 (0.90%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.90%) PySpark
5 2 (0.90%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.90%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.90%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.90%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.45%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.45%) LDAP
6 1 (0.45%) Pandas
6 1 (0.45%) SOAP
6 1 (0.45%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.45%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.95%) Data Centre
2 15 (6.79%) Replication
3 14 (6.33%) Cloud Native
3 14 (6.33%) Clustering
4 12 (5.43%) Private Cloud
5 11 (4.98%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (4.98%) Linux Command Line
6 8 (3.62%) Product Ownership
7 5 (2.26%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (2.26%) FlexPod
8 4 (1.81%) Onboarding
9 3 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.36%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.36%) SCADA
10 2 (0.90%) Celerra
10 2 (0.90%) EMC VNX
10 2 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
10 2 (0.90%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (0.90%) IBM XIV
10 2 (0.90%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 64 (28.96%) Linux
2 55 (24.89%) Windows
3 33 (14.93%) VMS
4 31 (14.03%) Windows Server
5 20 (9.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (3.17%) AIX
6 7 (3.17%) Unix
7 6 (2.71%) Data ONTAP
8 5 (2.26%) CoreOS
9 4 (1.81%) SUSE
10 3 (1.36%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.90%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.45%) Android
12 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (29.86%) DevOps
2 61 (27.60%) CI/CD
3 47 (21.27%) Migration
4 46 (20.81%) Infrastructure as Code
5 35 (15.84%) High Availability
6 32 (14.48%) Disaster Recovery
7 28 (12.67%) Network Virtualisation
8 27 (12.22%) Performance Tuning
9 25 (11.31%) Containerisation
10 24 (10.86%) Continuous Improvement
10 24 (10.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 21 (9.50%) Platform Engineering
11 21 (9.50%) Technical Leadership
12 20 (9.05%) Cybersecurity
13 18 (8.14%) Capacity Planning
13 18 (8.14%) Deployment Automation
14 17 (7.69%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (7.24%) AI
16 15 (6.79%) Agile
16 15 (6.79%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 58 (26.24%) PowerShell
2 56 (25.34%) Python
3 35 (15.84%) Bash
4 34 (15.38%) SQL
5 10 (4.52%) C
6 9 (4.07%) C++
7 8 (3.62%) Bicep
7 8 (3.62%) Embedded C++
7 8 (3.62%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.17%) Embedded C
9 5 (2.26%) Java
9 5 (2.26%) Ruby
10 3 (1.36%) C#
10 3 (1.36%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.90%) Korn
11 2 (0.90%) PHP
12 1 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.45%) Go
12 1 (0.45%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.45%) VBA
Qualifications
1 51 (23.08%) Security Cleared
2 40 (18.10%) SC Cleared
3 15 (6.79%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 14 (6.33%) Azure Certification
4 14 (6.33%) OCP
4 14 (6.33%) Oracle Certification
5 12 (5.43%) VCAP
6 9 (4.07%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (3.62%) MCSA
7 8 (3.62%) MCSE
8 6 (2.71%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.36%) Degree
11 2 (0.90%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 1 (0.45%) CompTIA Security+
12 1 (0.45%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.45%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.45%) PMP
12 1 (0.45%) RHCE
12 1 (0.45%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.71%) GDPR
1 6 (2.71%) QA
2 3 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.90%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.45%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.45%) NIST
4 1 (0.45%) WCAG
System Software
1 65 (29.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 38 (17.19%) vSphere
3 33 (14.93%) VMware ESXi
4 29 (13.12%) Active Directory
5 24 (10.86%) Hyper-V
6 17 (7.69%) KVM
7 14 (6.33%) Docker
8 10 (4.52%) VMware NSX
9 9 (4.07%) Firmware
10 7 (3.17%) NFS
11 5 (2.26%) Ceph
11 5 (2.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.90%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.90%) Xen
13 1 (0.45%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.45%) NLBS
13 1 (0.45%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 62 (28.05%) Terraform
2 52 (23.53%) Ansible
3 47 (21.27%) Kubernetes
4 32 (14.48%) vCenter Server
5 13 (5.88%) PowerCLI
6 9 (4.07%) SCCM
7 7 (3.17%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (2.71%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (2.71%) SnapMirror
8 6 (2.71%) VxRail
9 5 (2.26%) WSUS
10 4 (1.81%) Failover Clustering
10 4 (1.81%) Grafana
11 3 (1.36%) CASB
11 3 (1.36%) Data Guard
11 3 (1.36%) Microsoft Clustering
11 3 (1.36%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (1.36%) Prometheus
11 3 (1.36%) SCOrch
11 3 (1.36%) systemd
Vendors
1 68 (30.77%) VMware
2 65 (29.41%) Microsoft
3 18 (8.14%) IBM
4 14 (6.33%) Cisco
4 14 (6.33%) Red Hat
5 10 (4.52%) Dell
5 10 (4.52%) Oracle
6 9 (4.07%) Google
6 9 (4.07%) NetApp
7 8 (3.62%) ANSYS
8 7 (3.17%) Databricks
9 6 (2.71%) OpenAI
9 6 (2.71%) Tenable
9 6 (2.71%) Veeam
10 4 (1.81%) OpenText
10 4 (1.81%) Pure Storage
10 4 (1.81%) Sophos
11 3 (1.36%) Foundry
11 3 (1.36%) Palantir
11 3 (1.36%) Qualys