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 20 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 334 342 301
Rank change year-on-year +8 -41 +23
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 299 163 268
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.67% 0.59% 0.75%
As % of the System Software category 6.67% 4.94% 6.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 115 192
10th Percentile £358 £350 £331
25th Percentile £424 £413 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £543
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% -7.65% +3.33%
75th Percentile £575 £610 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £670
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 6 24
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £26.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year -24.64% +135.90% -78.65%
75th Percentile - £57.31 £15.19
90th Percentile - £65.25 -
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year -24.64% +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 4,484 3,302 4,106
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.99% 12.04% 11.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,162 2,853
10th Percentile £213 £214 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 87 178
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £14.06
25th Percentile £26.00 £22.50 £14.48
Median hourly rate £55.00 £34.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +59.42% +55.76% -46.63%
75th Percentile £74.20 £79.35 £58.64
90th Percentile £85.00 £90.38 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £32.77 £22.45
% change year-on-year +60.21% +45.97% -55.10%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 -49 111 £525 -4.55% 25
North of England 0 102 £483 +17.09% 12
Yorkshire -8 58 £500 +13.06% 4
South East -35 49 £475 -17.39% 21
North West -17 42 £463 +23.17% 8
Midlands -44 18 £450 -7.22% 2
South West -22 16 £540 -8.09% 4
West Midlands -65 12 £425 -7.61% 2
East Midlands -12 4 £500 -4.76%
East of England -16 4 £425 -19.12% 7
North East -36 2 £400 +10.34%
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 (1.67%) Confluence
1 5 (1.67%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.67%) Apache
3 2 (0.67%) CMS
3 2 (0.67%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.67%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.33%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.33%) IIS
4 1 (0.33%) nginx
4 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.33%) WebLogic
Applications
1 5 (1.67%) Adobe Illustrator
1 5 (1.67%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.67%) InDesign
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 128 (42.81%) Azure
2 42 (14.05%) AWS
3 38 (12.71%) Entra ID
4 35 (11.71%) OpenShift
5 32 (10.70%) Azure Monitor
6 30 (10.03%) Azure DevOps
7 23 (7.69%) Azure AKS
7 23 (7.69%) GitHub
8 17 (5.69%) GitHub Actions
9 16 (5.35%) GCP
10 13 (4.35%) IaaS
10 13 (4.35%) Microsoft 365
10 13 (4.35%) Serverless
11 12 (4.01%) Azure Key Vault
11 12 (4.01%) Azure Storage
12 10 (3.34%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 9 (3.01%) Azure Functions
13 9 (3.01%) Azure Logic Apps
13 9 (3.01%) Power Platform
14 8 (2.68%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 42 (14.05%) DNS
2 38 (12.71%) Firewall
3 26 (8.70%) VPN
4 21 (7.02%) Network Security
5 20 (6.69%) DHCP
6 19 (6.35%) VLAN
7 18 (6.02%) SSL
8 16 (5.35%) VSAN
8 16 (5.35%) WAN
9 10 (3.34%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.68%) FTP
10 8 (2.68%) SAN
11 7 (2.34%) LAN
12 6 (2.01%) TCP/IP
13 5 (1.67%) SSH
13 5 (1.67%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (1.34%) HTTPS
15 3 (1.00%) Cisco Nexus
15 3 (1.00%) Reverse Proxy
16 2 (0.67%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (10.37%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.68%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (3.01%) Power BI
5 7 (2.34%) Data Lake
6 6 (2.01%) Db2
7 5 (1.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (1.34%) MySQL
9 3 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.00%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.67%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.33%) Amazon QuickSight
11 1 (0.33%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.33%) Oracle Exadata
11 1 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.33%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 17 (5.69%) Git
2 16 (5.35%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.01%) GitLab
4 7 (2.34%) JIRA
5 3 (1.00%) Selenium
6 2 (0.67%) JMeter
6 2 (0.67%) Postman
6 2 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.67%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 42 (14.05%) Social Skills
2 31 (10.37%) Finance
3 14 (4.68%) Banking
4 13 (4.35%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (4.35%) Legal
5 8 (2.68%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.34%) Retail
7 6 (2.01%) Front Office
8 5 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.34%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.34%) Marketing
10 2 (0.67%) Law
10 2 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.67%) Publishing
11 1 (0.33%) Advertising
11 1 (0.33%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.33%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 35 (11.71%) DevOps Engineer
1 35 (11.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 32 (10.70%) Azure Engineer
3 26 (8.70%) Cloud Engineer
4 22 (7.36%) Senior
5 19 (6.35%) Lead
6 16 (5.35%) Analyst
7 14 (4.68%) Architect
7 14 (4.68%) Wintel Engineer
8 10 (3.34%) Administrator
8 10 (3.34%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
8 10 (3.34%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 10 (3.34%) VMware Engineer
9 9 (3.01%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 9 (3.01%) Linux Engineer
9 9 (3.01%) Technical Specialist
10 8 (2.68%) Storage Engineer
11 7 (2.34%) DBA
11 7 (2.34%) Migration Engineer
11 7 (2.34%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.68%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.68%) REST
2 8 (2.68%) YAML
3 5 (1.67%) Middleware
4 3 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.00%) JSON
5 2 (0.67%) Hugging Face
5 2 (0.67%) SOAP
6 1 (0.33%) .NET
6 1 (0.33%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.33%) Java SE
6 1 (0.33%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.33%) LangChain
6 1 (0.33%) LDAP
6 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.33%) PySpark
6 1 (0.33%) PyTorch
6 1 (0.33%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.33%) SpaCy
6 1 (0.33%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 32 (10.70%) Replication
2 23 (7.69%) Clustering
3 21 (7.02%) Data Centre
4 17 (5.69%) Hybrid Cloud
4 17 (5.69%) Linux Command Line
5 10 (3.34%) Cloud Native
6 9 (3.01%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.68%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.34%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.01%) Enterprise Storage
9 6 (2.01%) Fixed Income
9 6 (2.01%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.01%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.67%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.67%) PKI
10 5 (1.67%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.67%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.00%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 101 (33.78%) Windows
2 84 (28.09%) Linux
3 56 (18.73%) Windows Server
4 34 (11.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (8.70%) VMS
6 11 (3.68%) Unix
7 9 (3.01%) AIX
8 7 (2.34%) CoreOS
8 7 (2.34%) Ubuntu
9 6 (2.01%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.34%) SUSE
10 4 (1.34%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (1.00%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.00%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.33%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (24.75%) CI/CD
1 74 (24.75%) DevOps
2 63 (21.07%) Migration
3 50 (16.72%) Infrastructure as Code
3 50 (16.72%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 46 (15.38%) High Availability
5 44 (14.72%) Disaster Recovery
6 41 (13.71%) Performance Tuning
7 35 (11.71%) Network Virtualisation
8 31 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
9 30 (10.03%) Problem-Solving
10 29 (9.70%) Capacity Planning
11 27 (9.03%) RBAC
11 27 (9.03%) Validation
11 27 (9.03%) Vulnerability Management
12 23 (7.69%) Vulnerability Remediation
13 22 (7.36%) Analytics
13 22 (7.36%) Platform Engineering
14 21 (7.02%) Change Management
15 20 (6.69%) AI
Programming Languages
1 87 (29.10%) PowerShell
2 66 (22.07%) Python
3 45 (15.05%) SQL
4 44 (14.72%) Bash
5 8 (2.68%) Bicep
6 7 (2.34%) C#
7 6 (2.01%) C
8 5 (1.67%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.34%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.34%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.00%) Java
10 3 (1.00%) Korn
11 1 (0.33%) Cypher
11 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.33%) Go
11 1 (0.33%) Groovy
11 1 (0.33%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.33%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.33%) RPG
11 1 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 78 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 62 (20.74%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.35%) Microsoft Certification
5 16 (5.35%) Azure Certification
6 15 (5.02%) Degree
6 15 (5.02%) VCAP
7 14 (4.68%) MCSA
7 14 (4.68%) MCSE
8 7 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (2.01%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.01%) ISTQB
9 6 (2.01%) OCP
9 6 (2.01%) Oracle Certification
10 5 (1.67%) CCNA
10 5 (1.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.34%) CISSP
11 4 (1.34%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 3 (1.00%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.01%) QA
2 3 (1.00%) SLA
3 2 (0.67%) GMP
3 2 (0.67%) GxP
3 2 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.67%) NIST
3 2 (0.67%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.33%) GDPR
4 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 92 (30.77%) VMware Infrastructure
2 53 (17.73%) vSphere
3 43 (14.38%) Active Directory
3 43 (14.38%) VMware ESXi
4 28 (9.36%) Hyper-V
5 27 (9.03%) Docker
6 18 (6.02%) KVM
7 11 (3.68%) VMware NSX
8 9 (3.01%) NFS
9 8 (2.68%) Firmware
10 7 (2.34%) Ceph
10 7 (2.34%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (1.00%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (1.00%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.67%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.33%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 62 (20.74%) Terraform
2 58 (19.40%) Ansible
3 53 (17.73%) Kubernetes
4 38 (12.71%) vCenter Server
5 15 (5.02%) PowerCLI
6 12 (4.01%) Grafana
7 9 (3.01%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.68%) SCCM
8 8 (2.68%) SCOM
9 6 (2.01%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.01%) Podman
9 6 (2.01%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.01%) VxRail
10 5 (1.67%) vMotion
11 4 (1.34%) Argo
11 4 (1.34%) Avamar
11 4 (1.34%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.34%) OPNET
Vendors
1 97 (32.44%) VMware
2 86 (28.76%) Microsoft
3 35 (11.71%) Cisco
4 19 (6.35%) Oracle
5 18 (6.02%) ServiceNow
6 16 (5.35%) IBM
6 16 (5.35%) NetApp
6 16 (5.35%) Red Hat
7 12 (4.01%) Dell
7 12 (4.01%) Google
8 11 (3.68%) Veeam
9 10 (3.34%) Qualys
10 9 (3.01%) CyberArk
11 7 (2.34%) Databricks
11 7 (2.34%) SolarWinds
11 7 (2.34%) Tenable
12 6 (2.01%) Palo Alto
13 5 (1.67%) EMC
13 5 (1.67%) Meraki
13 5 (1.67%) Splunk