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 23 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
23 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 347 323 299
Rank change year-on-year -24 -24 +32
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 262 158 261
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.63% 0.66% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 6.20% 5.20% 6.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 102 186
10th Percentile £354 £350 £309
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £513 £524
Median % change year-on-year -4.39% -2.15% -3.90%
75th Percentile £556 £625 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £687
UK median daily rate £490 £513 £514
% change year-on-year -4.39% -0.24% -5.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 8 27
10th Percentile £26.00 - -
25th Percentile £48.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +102.90% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £64.50 £15.19
90th Percentile - £64.95 £86.97
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +102.90% +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 4,224 3,040 3,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.17% 12.76% 10.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,849 2,085 2,795
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £400 £381 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% +4.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £505 £500
% change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 67 206
10th Percentile £17.00 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.72 £18.13 £14.48
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.41 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +84.79% +29.14% -56.00%
75th Percentile £71.00 £63.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £88.00 £76.50
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £28.21 £23.15
% change year-on-year +80.82% +21.84% -57.13%

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 23 May 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 94 £525 -8.70% 19
North of England -7 91 £475 +26.67% 10
Yorkshire -18 48 £500 +5.26% 4
North West -12 41 £460 +22.67% 6
South East -41 39 £514 -10.61% 19
Midlands -75 15 £425 -14.66% 7
West Midlands -68 12 £375 -24.70% 5
South West -24 11 £450 -10.00% 5
East of England -33 8 £425 -19.05% 6
North East -26 2 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -31 1 £500 -4.76% 2
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 (1.91%) OpenStack
1 5 (1.91%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.15%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.76%) Apache
4 2 (0.76%) CMS
4 2 (0.76%) Confluence
4 2 (0.76%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.38%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.38%) IIS
5 1 (0.38%) nginx
5 1 (0.38%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.53%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.53%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.38%) InDesign
3 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.38%) SAP SD
1 1 (0.38%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 105 (40.08%) Azure
2 41 (15.65%) AWS
3 34 (12.98%) OpenShift
4 28 (10.69%) GitHub
5 26 (9.92%) Azure DevOps
6 23 (8.78%) Entra ID
7 20 (7.63%) GitHub Actions
8 18 (6.87%) Azure Monitor
9 16 (6.11%) Azure AKS
9 16 (6.11%) GCP
10 15 (5.73%) Serverless
11 13 (4.96%) Microsoft 365
12 11 (4.20%) Azure Storage
13 10 (3.82%) Azure Key Vault
14 9 (3.44%) Nutanix
15 7 (2.67%) Azure Functions
16 6 (2.29%) Azure Logic Apps
16 6 (2.29%) Cohesity
16 6 (2.29%) IaaS
16 6 (2.29%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 35 (13.36%) DNS
2 33 (12.60%) Firewall
3 21 (8.02%) VPN
4 20 (7.63%) Network Security
5 18 (6.87%) DHCP
5 18 (6.87%) VLAN
6 15 (5.73%) VSAN
7 12 (4.58%) WAN
8 10 (3.82%) SSL
9 9 (3.44%) SD-WAN
10 8 (3.05%) SAN
10 8 (3.05%) TCP/IP
11 7 (2.67%) LAN
12 6 (2.29%) Reverse Proxy
13 5 (1.91%) FTP
13 5 (1.91%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.76%) Cisco Nexus
14 2 (0.76%) IPsec
14 2 (0.76%) NAS
14 2 (0.76%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.49%) SQL Server
2 7 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (2.29%) DB2
3 6 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.29%) Power BI
4 5 (1.91%) Oracle Database
5 4 (1.53%) Oracle Reports
6 3 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.38%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.38%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.38%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.38%) Power Query
7 1 (0.38%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.38%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 26 (9.92%) Git
2 12 (4.58%) Jenkins
3 11 (4.20%) GitLab
4 8 (3.05%) JIRA
5 5 (1.91%) PVCS
5 5 (1.91%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (0.76%) JMeter
6 2 (0.76%) Postman
6 2 (0.76%) Selenium
6 2 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.76%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.76%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.38%) Gradle
7 1 (0.38%) RStudio
General
1 36 (13.74%) Social Skills
2 19 (7.25%) Finance
3 13 (4.96%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.20%) Legal
5 10 (3.82%) Banking
5 10 (3.82%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (2.29%) Retail
8 5 (1.91%) Electronics
9 3 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.15%) Front Office
9 3 (1.15%) Marketing
10 2 (0.76%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.38%) Advertising
11 1 (0.38%) Back Office
11 1 (0.38%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.38%) Social Science
11 1 (0.38%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 31 (11.83%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (9.16%) Azure Engineer
3 22 (8.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 20 (7.63%) Senior
5 18 (6.87%) Wintel Engineer
6 15 (5.73%) Architect
7 13 (4.96%) Analyst
7 13 (4.96%) Cloud Engineer
8 12 (4.58%) Lead
9 10 (3.82%) Administrator
9 10 (3.82%) VMware Engineer
10 9 (3.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 9 (3.44%) Security Engineer
11 6 (2.29%) Consultant
11 6 (2.29%) Data Engineer
11 6 (2.29%) Linux Engineer
11 6 (2.29%) Product Owner
11 6 (2.29%) Senior VMware Engineer
11 6 (2.29%) Technical Specialist
12 5 (1.91%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.05%) ARM Templates
1 8 (3.05%) REST
2 6 (2.29%) YAML
3 5 (1.91%) Middleware
4 3 (1.15%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.15%) JSON
5 2 (0.76%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.76%) PySpark
5 2 (0.76%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.76%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.76%) SOAP
5 2 (0.76%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.76%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.38%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.38%) Kafka
6 1 (0.38%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.38%) OpenID
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.38%) Pandas
6 1 (0.38%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 29 (11.07%) Replication
2 24 (9.16%) Data Centre
3 23 (8.78%) Clustering
4 14 (5.34%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (4.20%) Cloud Native
5 11 (4.20%) Linux Command Line
6 8 (3.05%) Private Cloud
6 8 (3.05%) Product Ownership
7 6 (2.29%) Operational Technology
8 5 (1.91%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (1.91%) FlexPod
8 5 (1.91%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.91%) PKI
9 4 (1.53%) Mainframe
10 3 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.15%) SCADA
10 3 (1.15%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.76%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 82 (31.30%) Windows
2 69 (26.34%) Linux
3 49 (18.70%) Windows Server
4 27 (10.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (9.92%) VMS
6 8 (3.05%) AIX
6 8 (3.05%) Unix
7 7 (2.67%) CoreOS
8 6 (2.29%) Data ONTAP
9 4 (1.53%) SUSE
10 3 (1.15%) Apple iOS
10 3 (1.15%) Ubuntu
10 3 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.76%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.38%) Android
12 1 (0.38%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (27.48%) CI/CD
2 68 (25.95%) DevOps
3 57 (21.76%) Migration
4 47 (17.94%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (16.03%) High Availability
6 41 (15.65%) Disaster Recovery
7 37 (14.12%) Network Virtualisation
8 36 (13.74%) Performance Tuning
9 34 (12.98%) Continuous Improvement
10 33 (12.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 32 (12.21%) Capacity Planning
12 23 (8.78%) Containerisation
13 22 (8.40%) Cybersecurity
14 20 (7.63%) Vulnerability Management
15 19 (7.25%) Problem-Solving
15 19 (7.25%) RBAC
15 19 (7.25%) Storage Management
15 19 (7.25%) Validation
16 18 (6.87%) Platform Engineering
16 18 (6.87%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 70 (26.72%) PowerShell
2 64 (24.43%) Python
3 42 (16.03%) Bash
4 35 (13.36%) SQL
5 9 (3.44%) Bicep
6 7 (2.67%) C
7 6 (2.29%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.91%) C++
8 5 (1.91%) Embedded C
8 5 (1.91%) Embedded C++
9 4 (1.53%) C#
9 4 (1.53%) Java
9 4 (1.53%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.53%) Ruby
10 2 (0.76%) Go
10 2 (0.76%) Korn
11 1 (0.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.38%) Groovy
11 1 (0.38%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.38%) RPG
Qualifications
1 66 (25.19%) Security Cleared
2 53 (20.23%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.40%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (7.25%) VCAP
5 17 (6.49%) Microsoft Certification
6 16 (6.11%) MCSA
6 16 (6.11%) MCSE
7 14 (5.34%) Azure Certification
8 10 (3.82%) OCP
8 10 (3.82%) Oracle Certification
9 7 (2.67%) Degree
9 7 (2.67%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (1.15%) CISSP
11 3 (1.15%) ISTQB
11 3 (1.15%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.15%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.15%) PMP
12 2 (0.76%) CISM
12 2 (0.76%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.58%) QA
2 4 (1.53%) GDPR
3 2 (0.76%) Accessibility
3 2 (0.76%) GMP
3 2 (0.76%) GxP
4 1 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.38%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.38%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.38%) NIST
4 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.38%) SLA
4 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 87 (33.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 49 (18.70%) vSphere
3 42 (16.03%) VMware ESXi
4 35 (13.36%) Active Directory
5 29 (11.07%) Hyper-V
6 17 (6.49%) Docker
7 16 (6.11%) KVM
8 9 (3.44%) Firmware
8 9 (3.44%) VMware NSX
9 8 (3.05%) Ceph
9 8 (3.05%) NFS
10 5 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (1.15%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.76%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 1 (0.38%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.38%) NLBS
13 1 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.38%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 60 (22.90%) Ansible
1 60 (22.90%) Terraform
2 48 (18.32%) Kubernetes
3 39 (14.89%) vCenter Server
4 12 (4.58%) PowerCLI
5 10 (3.82%) SCCM
6 7 (2.67%) Grafana
7 6 (2.29%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (2.29%) SnapMirror
7 6 (2.29%) VxRail
7 6 (2.29%) WSUS
8 5 (1.91%) Prometheus
9 4 (1.53%) Argo
9 4 (1.53%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.53%) Failover Clustering
9 4 (1.53%) Microsoft Clustering
9 4 (1.53%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (1.15%) systemd
10 3 (1.15%) vMotion
Vendors
1 91 (34.73%) VMware
2 69 (26.34%) Microsoft
3 32 (12.21%) Cisco
4 19 (7.25%) Red Hat
5 17 (6.49%) IBM
6 12 (4.58%) Google
6 12 (4.58%) NetApp
6 12 (4.58%) Oracle
7 10 (3.82%) Veeam
8 7 (2.67%) Dell
9 6 (2.29%) SolarWinds
9 6 (2.29%) Tenable
10 5 (1.91%) ANSYS
10 5 (1.91%) Commvault
10 5 (1.91%) CyberArk
10 5 (1.91%) Databricks
10 5 (1.91%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.91%) Qualys
11 4 (1.53%) CheckPoint
11 4 (1.53%) OpenText
67 Virtual Machines jobs in England