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 31 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 384 296 298
Rank change year-on-year -88 +2 +21
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 211 186 271
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.55% 0.77% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 4.92% 5.83% 6.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 145 122 182
10th Percentile £337 £350 £283
25th Percentile £410 £432 £395
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 £696
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -7.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 11 23
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 4,285 3,190 4,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.26% 13.14% 11.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,935 2,212 2,862
10th Percentile £213 £213 £188
25th Percentile £400 £400 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £480
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +9.38% -8.57%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £694 £738 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £488
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 149 81 200
10th Percentile £15.90 £15.22 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.00 £21.46 £15.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £29.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.41% +31.82% -45.00%
75th Percentile £72.54 £66.00 £59.02
90th Percentile £79.60 £86.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £49.36 £29.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +70.21% +16.00% -49.49%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 -70 86 £505 -12.17% 27
North of England -26 70 £479 +25.59% 17
Yorkshire -23 40 £500 +5.26% 4
North West -19 29 £458 +20.21% 13
South East -51 18 £531 +7.54% 14
East of England -44 11 £600 +14.29% 11
South West -24 10 £525 -1.87% 2
Midlands -72 8 £425 -15.08% 4
West Midlands -61 7 £375 -25.07% 3
North East -14 1 £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 7 (3.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.90%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.42%) Palantir Foundry
3 3 (1.42%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.47%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.47%) nginx
4 1 (0.47%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 2 (0.95%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.47%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.47%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.47%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 100 (47.39%) Azure
2 40 (18.96%) AWS
3 34 (16.11%) GitHub
4 26 (12.32%) Azure DevOps
4 26 (12.32%) OpenShift
5 23 (10.90%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (8.53%) GCP
7 17 (8.06%) Azure Monitor
8 14 (6.64%) Entra ID
8 14 (6.64%) Serverless
9 11 (5.21%) Azure AKS
9 11 (5.21%) Microsoft 365
10 10 (4.74%) Azure Storage
11 7 (3.32%) Azure Functions
11 7 (3.32%) Azure Key Vault
12 6 (2.84%) AWS CodePipeline
12 6 (2.84%) Azure Data Factory
12 6 (2.84%) Cloud Computing
13 5 (2.37%) IaaS
13 5 (2.37%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 30 (14.22%) Firewall
2 22 (10.43%) DNS
3 15 (7.11%) VSAN
4 13 (6.16%) VPN
5 12 (5.69%) Network Security
6 9 (4.27%) DHCP
6 9 (4.27%) SAN
7 8 (3.79%) SSL
7 8 (3.79%) TCP/IP
7 8 (3.79%) VLAN
8 6 (2.84%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (2.37%) WAN
10 3 (1.42%) NAS
10 3 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.95%) Cisco Nexus
11 2 (0.95%) FTP
11 2 (0.95%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.95%) Skype
11 2 (0.95%) SSH
12 1 (0.47%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.74%) SQL Server
2 7 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
2 7 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.84%) DB2
4 5 (2.37%) Power BI
5 4 (1.90%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (1.42%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.42%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.95%) Data Hub
7 2 (0.95%) Data Vault
7 2 (0.95%) ImageNet
8 1 (0.47%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.47%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 29 (13.74%) Git
2 14 (6.64%) JIRA
3 11 (5.21%) Jenkins
4 10 (4.74%) GitLab
5 8 (3.79%) PVCS
5 8 (3.79%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (0.95%) JMeter
6 2 (0.95%) Postman
6 2 (0.95%) RStudio
6 2 (0.95%) Selenium
6 2 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.47%) Gradle
7 1 (0.47%) Terragrunt
General
1 31 (14.69%) Social Skills
2 14 (6.64%) Finance
3 12 (5.69%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (5.69%) Public Sector
4 10 (4.74%) Banking
5 8 (3.79%) Electronics
5 8 (3.79%) Legal
6 6 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.42%) Retail
7 3 (1.42%) Spanish Language
8 2 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.95%) Social Science
9 1 (0.47%) Advertising
9 1 (0.47%) Back Office
9 1 (0.47%) Front Office
9 1 (0.47%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.47%) Law
9 1 (0.47%) Marketing
9 1 (0.47%) Police
Job Titles
1 28 (13.27%) DevOps Engineer
2 25 (11.85%) Azure Engineer
3 21 (9.95%) Senior
4 15 (7.11%) Architect
5 14 (6.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 12 (5.69%) VMware Engineer
7 11 (5.21%) Cloud Engineer
7 11 (5.21%) Software Engineer
8 10 (4.74%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 10 (4.74%) C++ Software Engineer
8 10 (4.74%) Embedded C++ Engineer
8 10 (4.74%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
8 10 (4.74%) Embedded Engineer
8 10 (4.74%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 10 (4.74%) Wintel Engineer
9 9 (4.27%) Analyst
9 9 (4.27%) Data Engineer
9 9 (4.27%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (4.27%) Security Engineer
9 9 (4.27%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.21%) ARM Templates
2 6 (2.84%) YAML
3 3 (1.42%) Hugging Face
3 3 (1.42%) Middleware
4 2 (0.95%) .NET
4 2 (0.95%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (0.95%) Kafka
4 2 (0.95%) OpenCV
4 2 (0.95%) PySpark
4 2 (0.95%) PyTorch
4 2 (0.95%) Regular Expression
4 2 (0.95%) REST
4 2 (0.95%) SpaCy
4 2 (0.95%) TensorFlow
5 1 (0.47%) LangChain
5 1 (0.47%) LangGraph
5 1 (0.47%) LDAP
5 1 (0.47%) OpenID
5 1 (0.47%) Retrofit
5 1 (0.47%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 21 (9.95%) Data Centre
2 15 (7.11%) Replication
3 14 (6.64%) Cloud Native
3 14 (6.64%) Clustering
4 12 (5.69%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (5.69%) Private Cloud
5 11 (5.21%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (2.37%) Cyber Threat
6 5 (2.37%) FlexPod
6 5 (2.37%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.42%) CAN bus
7 3 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.42%) PKI
7 3 (1.42%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.42%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.42%) SCADA
8 2 (0.95%) AI Agents
8 2 (0.95%) Celerra
8 2 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 65 (30.81%) Linux
2 59 (27.96%) Windows
3 31 (14.69%) VMS
3 31 (14.69%) Windows Server
4 18 (8.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (2.84%) AIX
5 6 (2.84%) Data ONTAP
5 6 (2.84%) Unix
6 5 (2.37%) CoreOS
6 5 (2.37%) Windows Server 2016
7 4 (1.90%) SUSE
8 3 (1.42%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.95%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.95%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.47%) Android
10 1 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (33.65%) DevOps
2 61 (28.91%) CI/CD
3 48 (22.75%) Infrastructure as Code
4 45 (21.33%) Migration
5 37 (17.54%) High Availability
6 32 (15.17%) Disaster Recovery
7 28 (13.27%) Network Virtualisation
8 26 (12.32%) Containerisation
9 24 (11.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 23 (10.90%) Continuous Improvement
10 23 (10.90%) Performance Tuning
11 21 (9.95%) Cybersecurity
11 21 (9.95%) Technical Leadership
12 20 (9.48%) Platform Engineering
13 19 (9.00%) Agile
14 18 (8.53%) Capacity Planning
15 17 (8.06%) Deployment Automation
16 15 (7.11%) AI
16 15 (7.11%) Problem-Solving
16 15 (7.11%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 57 (27.01%) PowerShell
2 52 (24.64%) Python
3 33 (15.64%) SQL
4 32 (15.17%) Bash
5 11 (5.21%) C++
6 10 (4.74%) C
6 10 (4.74%) Embedded C++
7 9 (4.27%) Shell Script
8 8 (3.79%) Bicep
9 7 (3.32%) Embedded C
10 5 (2.37%) C#
10 5 (2.37%) Ruby
11 3 (1.42%) Java
11 3 (1.42%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.95%) Korn
12 2 (0.95%) PHP
13 1 (0.47%) Go
Qualifications
1 54 (25.59%) Security Cleared
2 44 (20.85%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.64%) Azure Certification
3 14 (6.64%) OCP
3 14 (6.64%) Oracle Certification
3 14 (6.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 12 (5.69%) VCAP
5 9 (4.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (3.79%) MCSA
6 8 (3.79%) MCSE
7 6 (2.84%) DV Cleared
8 3 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.95%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (0.47%) Degree
10 1 (0.47%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.47%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.47%) PMP
10 1 (0.47%) RHCE
10 1 (0.47%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.84%) GDPR
2 5 (2.37%) QA
3 4 (1.90%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.95%) NIST
6 1 (0.47%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.47%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.47%) GRC
System Software
1 61 (28.91%) VMware Infrastructure
2 37 (17.54%) vSphere
3 31 (14.69%) VMware ESXi
4 26 (12.32%) Active Directory
5 22 (10.43%) Hyper-V
6 18 (8.53%) KVM
7 16 (7.58%) Docker
8 10 (4.74%) VMware NSX
9 9 (4.27%) Firmware
10 8 (3.79%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (2.84%) NFS
12 2 (0.95%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.95%) Xen
13 1 (0.47%) Ceph
13 1 (0.47%) NLBS
Systems Management
1 65 (30.81%) Terraform
2 51 (24.17%) Ansible
3 47 (22.27%) Kubernetes
4 32 (15.17%) vCenter Server
5 13 (6.16%) PowerCLI
6 8 (3.79%) SCCM
7 7 (3.32%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (2.84%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (2.84%) SnapMirror
8 6 (2.84%) VxRail
8 6 (2.84%) WSUS
9 4 (1.90%) Failover Clustering
9 4 (1.90%) Grafana
9 4 (1.90%) Prometheus
10 3 (1.42%) CASB
10 3 (1.42%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (1.42%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 3 (1.42%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (1.42%) SCOrch
10 3 (1.42%) vRealize
Vendors
1 65 (30.81%) VMware
2 61 (28.91%) Microsoft
3 17 (8.06%) IBM
4 14 (6.64%) Cisco
5 13 (6.16%) Red Hat
6 11 (5.21%) NetApp
7 9 (4.27%) Dell
7 9 (4.27%) Google
8 8 (3.79%) ANSYS
8 8 (3.79%) Oracle
9 7 (3.32%) Databricks
10 6 (2.84%) Tenable
10 6 (2.84%) Veeam
11 5 (2.37%) OpenAI
12 4 (1.90%) Pure Storage
12 4 (1.90%) Sophos
13 3 (1.42%) Alibaba
13 3 (1.42%) Foundry
13 3 (1.42%) Palantir
13 3 (1.42%) ServiceNow