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

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 336 310 296
Rank change year-on-year -26 -14 +28
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 246 169 267
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.62% 0.69% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 5.73% 5.41% 6.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 111 183
10th Percentile £356 £350 £300
25th Percentile £418 £455 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK median daily rate £498 £523 £501
% change year-on-year -4.70% +4.50% -7.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 27
10th Percentile - £33.25 -
25th Percentile - £48.06 £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 4,296 3,121 4,059
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.75% 12.76% 10.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,920 2,164 2,812
10th Percentile £213 £213 £190
25th Percentile £400 £400 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
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 158 76 211
10th Percentile £17.64 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.85 £18.13 £14.48
Median hourly rate £56.25 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +100.89% +27.27% -56.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £64.63 £58.09
90th Percentile £95.00 £87.13 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £28.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +87.50% +24.44% -57.14%

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 26 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 26 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 -64 99 £525 -8.70% 16
North of England -4 88 £482 +26.51% 10
Yorkshire -17 48 £500 +5.26% 3
North West -11 39 £460 +20.73% 6
South East -55 22 £500 -13.04% 23
Midlands -58 15 £425 -15.00% 1
West Midlands -60 12 £375 -18.92% 1
East of England -39 10 £550 +2.33% 5
South West -27 8 £538 +7.50% 2
North East -20 1 £400 +10.34% 1
East Midlands -37 1 £500 -13.04%
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 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.63%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.22%) Palantir Foundry
3 3 (1.22%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.81%) CMS
4 2 (0.81%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.41%) Apache
5 1 (0.41%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.41%) IIS
5 1 (0.41%) nginx
5 1 (0.41%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.22%) Adobe Illustrator
1 3 (1.22%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.81%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.41%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 108 (43.90%) Azure
2 37 (15.04%) AWS
3 35 (14.23%) OpenShift
4 33 (13.41%) GitHub
5 25 (10.16%) Azure DevOps
5 25 (10.16%) GitHub Actions
6 20 (8.13%) Azure Monitor
7 18 (7.32%) Entra ID
7 18 (7.32%) GCP
8 16 (6.50%) Azure AKS
9 15 (6.10%) Serverless
10 12 (4.88%) Microsoft 365
11 11 (4.47%) Azure Storage
12 8 (3.25%) Azure Key Vault
13 7 (2.85%) Azure Functions
14 6 (2.44%) Azure Logic Apps
15 5 (2.03%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (2.03%) AWS CodePipeline
15 5 (2.03%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 5 (2.03%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 34 (13.82%) Firewall
2 30 (12.20%) DNS
3 18 (7.32%) VPN
4 15 (6.10%) VSAN
5 14 (5.69%) Network Security
6 13 (5.28%) DHCP
7 10 (4.07%) SSL
7 10 (4.07%) VLAN
8 9 (3.66%) SAN
8 9 (3.66%) WAN
9 8 (3.25%) TCP/IP
10 7 (2.85%) Reverse Proxy
11 5 (2.03%) FTP
11 5 (2.03%) SD-WAN
12 4 (1.63%) LAN
13 3 (1.22%) NAS
13 3 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.81%) Cisco Nexus
14 2 (0.81%) IPsec
14 2 (0.81%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (6.10%) SQL Server
2 8 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.85%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.44%) DB2
5 5 (2.03%) Oracle Database
5 5 (2.03%) Power BI
6 4 (1.63%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.81%) Data Hub
8 2 (0.81%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.81%) ImageNet
9 1 (0.41%) Data Vault
9 1 (0.41%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.41%) Power Query
9 1 (0.41%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 1 (0.41%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 29 (11.79%) Git
2 10 (4.07%) GitLab
3 9 (3.66%) JIRA
4 8 (3.25%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.25%) PVCS
4 8 (3.25%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (0.81%) JMeter
5 2 (0.81%) Postman
5 2 (0.81%) RStudio
5 2 (0.81%) Selenium
5 2 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.81%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.41%) Gradle
6 1 (0.41%) Terragrunt
General
1 34 (13.82%) Social Skills
2 18 (7.32%) Finance
3 13 (5.28%) Public Sector
4 11 (4.47%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (3.66%) Banking
5 9 (3.66%) Legal
6 8 (3.25%) Electronics
7 7 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (2.03%) Retail
9 3 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.22%) Marketing
10 2 (0.81%) Front Office
10 2 (0.81%) Social Science
10 2 (0.81%) Spanish Language
11 1 (0.41%) Advertising
11 1 (0.41%) Back Office
11 1 (0.41%) Italian Language
11 1 (0.41%) Law
11 1 (0.41%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 29 (11.79%) DevOps Engineer
2 26 (10.57%) Azure Engineer
3 22 (8.94%) Senior
4 17 (6.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 16 (6.50%) Architect
5 16 (6.50%) Wintel Engineer
6 13 (5.28%) Cloud Engineer
7 12 (4.88%) VMware Engineer
8 10 (4.07%) Analyst
8 10 (4.07%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 10 (4.07%) Security Engineer
9 9 (3.66%) Lead
9 9 (3.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 8 (3.25%) Software Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) C Software Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) C++ Software Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) Embedded C Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) Embedded C Software Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
11 7 (2.85%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.25%) ARM Templates
1 8 (3.25%) YAML
2 7 (2.85%) REST
3 4 (1.63%) Middleware
4 3 (1.22%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.22%) JSON
5 2 (0.81%) .NET
5 2 (0.81%) Kafka
5 2 (0.81%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.81%) PySpark
5 2 (0.81%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.81%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.81%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.81%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.41%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.41%) Node.js
6 1 (0.41%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.41%) Pandas
6 1 (0.41%) SciPy
6 1 (0.41%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 22 (8.94%) Replication
2 21 (8.54%) Clustering
2 21 (8.54%) Data Centre
3 14 (5.69%) Cloud Native
4 12 (4.88%) Linux Command Line
4 12 (4.88%) Private Cloud
5 11 (4.47%) Hybrid Cloud
6 10 (4.07%) Product Ownership
7 5 (2.03%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (2.03%) FlexPod
8 4 (1.63%) Onboarding
9 3 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.22%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.22%) SCADA
9 3 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
10 2 (0.81%) Celerra
10 2 (0.81%) EMC Centera
10 2 (0.81%) PACS
10 2 (0.81%) PKI
10 2 (0.81%) Symmetrix
Operating Systems
1 68 (27.64%) Windows
2 65 (26.42%) Linux
3 41 (16.67%) Windows Server
4 34 (13.82%) VMS
5 23 (9.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (2.85%) AIX
6 7 (2.85%) CoreOS
6 7 (2.85%) Unix
7 6 (2.44%) Data ONTAP
8 4 (1.63%) SUSE
9 3 (1.22%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.81%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.81%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.41%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (27.24%) DevOps
2 65 (26.42%) CI/CD
3 53 (21.54%) Migration
4 49 (19.92%) Infrastructure as Code
5 43 (17.48%) High Availability
6 41 (16.67%) Disaster Recovery
7 35 (14.23%) Network Virtualisation
8 34 (13.82%) Performance Tuning
9 30 (12.20%) Capacity Planning
10 27 (10.98%) Continuous Improvement
10 27 (10.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 25 (10.16%) Containerisation
12 21 (8.54%) Technical Leadership
13 20 (8.13%) Cybersecurity
13 20 (8.13%) Platform Engineering
14 18 (7.32%) Deployment Automation
14 18 (7.32%) Root Cause Analysis
15 17 (6.91%) Problem-Solving
16 16 (6.50%) Change Management
16 16 (6.50%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 67 (27.24%) PowerShell
2 59 (23.98%) Python
3 39 (15.85%) Bash
4 35 (14.23%) SQL
5 10 (4.07%) C
6 9 (3.66%) Shell Script
7 8 (3.25%) Bicep
7 8 (3.25%) C++
8 7 (2.85%) Embedded C
8 7 (2.85%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.44%) Java
10 5 (2.03%) C#
10 5 (2.03%) Ruby
11 4 (1.63%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.81%) Go
12 2 (0.81%) Korn
12 2 (0.81%) PHP
13 1 (0.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.41%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.41%) RPG
Qualifications
1 64 (26.02%) Security Cleared
2 52 (21.14%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 18 (7.32%) VCAP
5 15 (6.10%) Azure Certification
5 15 (6.10%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (5.69%) MCSA
6 14 (5.69%) MCSE
6 14 (5.69%) OCP
6 14 (5.69%) Oracle Certification
7 6 (2.44%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.22%) Degree
10 2 (0.81%) CISSP
10 2 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 2 (0.81%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.81%) PMP
10 2 (0.81%) RHCA
10 2 (0.81%) RHCE
11 1 (0.41%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.44%) GDPR
1 6 (2.44%) QA
2 3 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
2 3 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.81%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.41%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.41%) GMP
4 1 (0.41%) GxP
4 1 (0.41%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.41%) NIST
4 1 (0.41%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.41%) SLA
4 1 (0.41%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.41%) WCAG
System Software
1 78 (31.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (18.29%) vSphere
3 41 (16.67%) VMware ESXi
4 32 (13.01%) Active Directory
5 25 (10.16%) Hyper-V
6 17 (6.91%) KVM
7 14 (5.69%) Docker
8 10 (4.07%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.66%) Firmware
10 8 (3.25%) Ceph
10 8 (3.25%) NFS
11 5 (2.03%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.81%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.81%) Xen
13 1 (0.41%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.41%) NLBS
13 1 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.41%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 68 (27.64%) Terraform
2 62 (25.20%) Ansible
3 52 (21.14%) Kubernetes
4 40 (16.26%) vCenter Server
5 13 (5.28%) PowerCLI
6 8 (3.25%) Microsoft Intune
6 8 (3.25%) SCCM
7 6 (2.44%) Grafana
7 6 (2.44%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (2.44%) SnapMirror
7 6 (2.44%) VxRail
7 6 (2.44%) WSUS
8 5 (2.03%) Prometheus
9 4 (1.63%) Argo
9 4 (1.63%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.63%) Failover Clustering
9 4 (1.63%) Microsoft Clustering
9 4 (1.63%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (1.22%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 3 (1.22%) vMotion
Vendors
1 82 (33.33%) VMware
2 74 (30.08%) Microsoft
3 23 (9.35%) Cisco
4 18 (7.32%) IBM
5 17 (6.91%) Red Hat
6 11 (4.47%) Oracle
7 10 (4.07%) Dell
8 9 (3.66%) Google
8 9 (3.66%) NetApp
9 8 (3.25%) ANSYS
10 7 (2.85%) Veeam
11 6 (2.44%) Tenable
12 5 (2.03%) Databricks
12 5 (2.03%) OpenAI
13 4 (1.63%) OpenText
13 4 (1.63%) Palo Alto
13 4 (1.63%) Pure Storage
13 4 (1.63%) Qualys
13 4 (1.63%) Sophos
14 3 (1.22%) Alibaba