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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
1 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 372 388 317
Rank change year-on-year +16 -71 +19
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 283 141 224
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.61% 0.50% 0.69%
As % of the System Software category 6.08% 4.08% 6.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 165 98 158
10th Percentile £390 £343 £343
25th Percentile £425 £413 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -6.13% +0.95%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £729 £644 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 5
10th Percentile £26.90 - -
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £83.55
90th Percentile - £50.45 £84.89
UK median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%

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 4,652 3,456 3,734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.99% 12.37% 11.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,021 2,222 2,463
10th Percentile £218 £213 £220
25th Percentile £387 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.86% +1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £610
90th Percentile £688 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 230 103 91
10th Percentile £17.73 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.50 £18.67
Median hourly rate £65.00 £34.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +88.41% +25.45% -40.22%
75th Percentile £74.83 £80.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £89.93 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £62.82 £34.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +84.76% +23.64% -42.50%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 -56 101 £532 +5.87% 103
North of England -12 77 £500 +19.05% 37
South East -17 59 £475 -17.39% 50
Yorkshire -9 44 £523 +13.45% 14
North West -20 31 £484 +48.92% 21
Midlands -44 17 £487 -1.62% 16
South West -34 16 £558 +1.36% 10
East of England -14 15 £353 -25.68% 27
West Midlands -36 12 £487 -2.84% 12
East Midlands -13 4 £500 +5.26% 4
North East - 2 £413 - 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 9 (3.18%) IIS
2 6 (2.12%) Confluence
2 6 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.77%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.71%) Apache
4 2 (0.71%) CMS
4 2 (0.71%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.35%) nginx
5 1 (0.35%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.41%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.41%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.71%) InDesign
2 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 131 (46.29%) Azure
2 61 (21.55%) Entra ID
3 34 (12.01%) AWS
3 34 (12.01%) Azure Monitor
4 30 (10.60%) Azure DevOps
4 30 (10.60%) IaaS
5 24 (8.48%) Azure AKS
5 24 (8.48%) OpenShift
6 21 (7.42%) Microsoft 365
7 20 (7.07%) GitHub
8 15 (5.30%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (4.24%) PaaS
10 11 (3.89%) Azure Key Vault
10 11 (3.89%) GCP
10 11 (3.89%) Power Platform
10 11 (3.89%) SaaS
11 9 (3.18%) Azure Storage
11 9 (3.18%) Datadog
12 8 (2.83%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 8 (2.83%) Cohesity
Communications & Networking
1 45 (15.90%) DNS
2 36 (12.72%) Firewall
3 26 (9.19%) VPN
4 21 (7.42%) DHCP
5 18 (6.36%) WAN
6 17 (6.01%) SSL
7 16 (5.65%) Network Security
8 15 (5.30%) VLAN
9 10 (3.53%) LAN
9 10 (3.53%) SD-WAN
10 9 (3.18%) HTTP
11 7 (2.47%) FTP
11 7 (2.47%) Wi-Fi
12 6 (2.12%) TCP/IP
13 5 (1.77%) HTTPS
13 5 (1.77%) SAN
13 5 (1.77%) VSAN
14 4 (1.41%) SSH
15 3 (1.06%) NetScaler
16 2 (0.71%) ICMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.66%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.89%) MySQL
2 11 (3.89%) Power BI
2 11 (3.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 9 (3.18%) Azure SQL Database
4 8 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.47%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.71%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.35%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.35%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.35%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.35%) Power Query
7 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 17 (6.01%) Jenkins
2 16 (5.65%) Git
3 8 (2.83%) GitLab
3 8 (2.83%) JIRA
4 4 (1.41%) CppUnit
4 4 (1.41%) PVCS
4 4 (1.41%) Rational DOORS
4 4 (1.41%) SonarQube
5 3 (1.06%) Maven
5 3 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.71%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.71%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.35%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.35%) Selenium
7 1 (0.35%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio
General
1 49 (17.31%) Social Skills
2 26 (9.19%) Finance
3 13 (4.59%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (3.18%) Legal
5 8 (2.83%) Banking
6 7 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.12%) Back Office
7 6 (2.12%) Front Office
7 6 (2.12%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.77%) Retail
9 4 (1.41%) Law
9 4 (1.41%) Marketing
9 4 (1.41%) Public Sector
10 2 (0.71%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.71%) Local Government
10 2 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.71%) Publishing
11 1 (0.35%) Automotive
11 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 46 (16.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 40 (14.13%) Azure Engineer
3 38 (13.43%) Cloud Engineer
4 29 (10.25%) DevOps Engineer
5 22 (7.77%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
6 21 (7.42%) Lead
6 21 (7.42%) Senior
7 19 (6.71%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.65%) Architect
9 13 (4.59%) Analyst
9 13 (4.59%) DBA
10 11 (3.89%) Security Engineer
10 11 (3.89%) SQL DBA
11 10 (3.53%) Administrator
11 10 (3.53%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.53%) Wintel Engineer
12 9 (3.18%) Storage Engineer
13 8 (2.83%) Linux Engineer
13 8 (2.83%) Solutions Architect
14 7 (2.47%) Cybersecurity Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (21.55%) Terraform
2 13 (4.59%) ARM Templates
3 9 (3.18%) JSON
4 7 (2.47%) LDAP
4 7 (2.47%) Regular Expression
4 7 (2.47%) REST
5 4 (1.41%) Middleware
5 4 (1.41%) YAML
6 3 (1.06%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (1.06%) Web Services
7 2 (0.71%) SOAP
8 1 (0.35%) ADO
8 1 (0.35%) Java SE
8 1 (0.35%) Lambda Expressions
8 1 (0.35%) Node.js
8 1 (0.35%) NumPy
8 1 (0.35%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 1 (0.35%) Pandas
8 1 (0.35%) SciPy
8 1 (0.35%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 33 (11.66%) Replication
2 29 (10.25%) Clustering
3 17 (6.01%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (4.59%) Data Centre
5 12 (4.24%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.89%) Enterprise Storage
7 9 (3.18%) Linux Command Line
7 9 (3.18%) Onboarding
7 9 (3.18%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.83%) Mainframe
8 8 (2.83%) Product Ownership
9 7 (2.47%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (2.47%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (2.47%) Operational Technology
10 6 (2.12%) Fixed Income
10 6 (2.12%) Market Risk
10 6 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.77%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.41%) Device Driver
12 4 (1.41%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 99 (34.98%) Windows
2 61 (21.55%) Linux
3 56 (19.79%) Windows Server
4 24 (8.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (7.77%) VMS
6 10 (3.53%) Unix
7 6 (2.12%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.41%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.06%) AIX
9 3 (1.06%) Data ONTAP
9 3 (1.06%) Windows 10
9 3 (1.06%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.71%) Android
10 2 (0.71%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.71%) CoreOS
10 2 (0.71%) zOS
11 1 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.35%) Solaris
11 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (25.44%) CI/CD
2 71 (25.09%) DevOps
3 62 (21.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 59 (20.85%) Migration
5 58 (20.49%) Infrastructure as Code
6 39 (13.78%) Disaster Recovery
7 37 (13.07%) Continuous Improvement
8 35 (12.37%) Performance Tuning
8 35 (12.37%) RBAC
9 33 (11.66%) High Availability
10 30 (10.60%) Runbook
10 30 (10.60%) Validation
11 28 (9.89%) Problem-Solving
12 26 (9.19%) Cybersecurity
12 26 (9.19%) ITIL
13 25 (8.83%) Stakeholder Management
14 24 (8.48%) AI
14 24 (8.48%) Platform Engineering
15 22 (7.77%) Vulnerability Management
16 21 (7.42%) Capacity Planning
Programming Languages
1 100 (35.34%) PowerShell
2 62 (21.91%) Python
3 35 (12.37%) SQL
4 30 (10.60%) Bash
5 12 (4.24%) Bicep
6 11 (3.89%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.83%) C
7 8 (2.83%) C#
8 7 (2.47%) Java
8 7 (2.47%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.77%) Groovy
10 4 (1.41%) C++
11 3 (1.06%) Embedded C
12 2 (0.71%) Korn
13 1 (0.35%) Cypher
13 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.35%) Go
13 1 (0.35%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.35%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 84 (29.68%) Security Cleared
2 70 (24.73%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.13%) Microsoft Certification
4 22 (7.77%) Degree
5 20 (7.07%) Azure Certification
6 13 (4.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.89%) DV Cleared
7 11 (3.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 10 (3.53%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 10 (3.53%) MCSA
8 10 (3.53%) MCSE
9 8 (2.83%) VCAP
10 6 (2.12%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.77%) CCNA
11 5 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (1.06%) CISM
12 3 (1.06%) CISSP
12 3 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
13 2 (0.71%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.24%) QA
2 3 (1.06%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.06%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.06%) SLA
3 2 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
3 2 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (0.71%) GMP
3 2 (0.71%) GxP
3 2 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.35%) NIST
4 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 84 (29.68%) VMware Infrastructure
2 55 (19.43%) Active Directory
3 34 (12.01%) vSphere
4 26 (9.19%) Docker
4 26 (9.19%) VMware ESXi
5 25 (8.83%) Hyper-V
6 13 (4.59%) NFS
7 8 (2.83%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (2.47%) Ceph
9 6 (2.12%) VMware NSX
10 5 (1.77%) KVM
11 4 (1.41%) BitLocker
11 4 (1.41%) Firmware
12 3 (1.06%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.71%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.35%) DFS Replication
14 1 (0.35%) Dovecot
14 1 (0.35%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 1 (0.35%) Postfix
14 1 (0.35%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 40 (14.13%) Ansible
1 40 (14.13%) Kubernetes
2 21 (7.42%) vCenter Server
3 16 (5.65%) SCOM
4 15 (5.30%) Grafana
5 10 (3.53%) Microsoft Intune
6 9 (3.18%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.83%) SCCM
8 7 (2.47%) Failover Clustering
8 7 (2.47%) Podman
9 6 (2.12%) Packer
10 5 (1.77%) Proxmox
11 4 (1.41%) OPNET
11 4 (1.41%) vMotion
12 3 (1.06%) Argo
12 3 (1.06%) Microsoft Clustering
12 3 (1.06%) PowerCLI
12 3 (1.06%) SnapMirror
13 2 (0.71%) Avamar
13 2 (0.71%) VxRail
Vendors
1 105 (37.10%) Microsoft
2 87 (30.74%) VMware
3 28 (9.89%) Cisco
4 23 (8.13%) ServiceNow
5 18 (6.36%) Oracle
6 14 (4.95%) NetApp
7 12 (4.24%) CyberArk
7 12 (4.24%) Dell
8 9 (3.18%) Google
8 9 (3.18%) IBM
8 9 (3.18%) SolarWinds
8 9 (3.18%) Veeam
9 8 (2.83%) Qualys
9 8 (2.83%) Red Hat
10 7 (2.47%) Splunk
11 6 (2.12%) Commvault
11 6 (2.12%) Meraki
12 5 (1.77%) Okta
12 5 (1.77%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.77%) Xerox
244 Virtual Machines jobs in England