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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 348 295
Rank change year-on-year 0 -53 +42
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 293 163 271
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.65% 0.60% 0.73%
As % of the System Software category 6.44% 4.92% 6.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 114 193
10th Percentile £358 £350 £334
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £670
UK median daily rate £498 £500 £535
% change year-on-year -0.32% -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% -77.84%
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 4,550 3,315 4,225
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.10% 12.23% 11.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,041 2,175 2,931
10th Percentile £210 £214 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £599 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 87 190
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.75 £22.50 £14.48
Median hourly rate £55.00 £34.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +59.42% +55.76% -54.24%
75th Percentile £74.00 £75.60 £58.24
90th Percentile £81.20 £89.85 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £29.25 £23.80
% change year-on-year +74.36% +22.90% -54.67%

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 11 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 11 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 -35 109 £525 -4.55% 21
North of England +1 100 £483 +17.09% 12
Yorkshire -6 56 £500 +13.06% 4
South East -31 47 £475 -17.39% 22
North West -19 42 £463 +23.17% 8
Midlands -59 18 £450 -7.22% 4
South West -20 16 £540 +13.68% 4
West Midlands -69 12 £425 -7.61% 4
East Midlands -19 4 £500 -4.76%
East of England -26 4 £425 -19.12% 3
North East -32 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 (1.71%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.02%) Confluence
2 3 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (1.02%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.68%) Apache
3 2 (0.68%) CMS
3 2 (0.68%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.34%) IIS
4 1 (0.34%) nginx
4 1 (0.34%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 5 (1.71%) Adobe Illustrator
1 5 (1.71%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.68%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.68%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 128 (43.69%) Azure
2 42 (14.33%) AWS
3 36 (12.29%) Entra ID
4 34 (11.60%) OpenShift
5 32 (10.92%) Azure Monitor
6 29 (9.90%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (8.19%) GitHub
8 23 (7.85%) Azure AKS
9 18 (6.14%) GCP
10 16 (5.46%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (5.12%) Serverless
12 13 (4.44%) Azure Key Vault
12 13 (4.44%) Azure Storage
12 13 (4.44%) Microsoft 365
13 11 (3.75%) Azure Functions
13 11 (3.75%) IaaS
14 10 (3.41%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 10 (3.41%) Power Platform
15 8 (2.73%) Azure Logic Apps
15 8 (2.73%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 41 (13.99%) DNS
2 37 (12.63%) Firewall
3 27 (9.22%) VPN
4 21 (7.17%) Network Security
5 19 (6.48%) DHCP
5 19 (6.48%) SSL
5 19 (6.48%) VLAN
6 17 (5.80%) WAN
7 16 (5.46%) VSAN
8 11 (3.75%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.73%) FTP
9 8 (2.73%) SAN
10 7 (2.39%) LAN
11 5 (1.71%) SSH
11 5 (1.71%) TCP/IP
11 5 (1.71%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.37%) HTTPS
13 3 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (1.02%) Reverse Proxy
14 2 (0.68%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.24%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.75%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (3.75%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.41%) Power BI
4 7 (2.39%) Data Lake
5 6 (2.05%) Db2
6 5 (1.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (1.37%) MySQL
8 3 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.02%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.34%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.34%) Power Query
9 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.46%) Git
2 12 (4.10%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.07%) GitLab
4 5 (1.71%) JIRA
5 2 (0.68%) JMeter
5 2 (0.68%) Postman
5 2 (0.68%) Selenium
5 2 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.68%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.34%) RStudio
General
1 41 (13.99%) Social Skills
2 31 (10.58%) Finance
3 13 (4.44%) Banking
3 13 (4.44%) Legal
4 12 (4.10%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (3.07%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.39%) Retail
7 6 (2.05%) Front Office
8 5 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.37%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.37%) Marketing
10 2 (0.68%) Law
10 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.68%) Publishing
11 1 (0.34%) Advertising
11 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.34%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 33 (11.26%) DevOps Engineer
2 30 (10.24%) Azure Engineer
2 30 (10.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 26 (8.87%) Cloud Engineer
4 23 (7.85%) Senior
5 19 (6.48%) Lead
6 15 (5.12%) Analyst
7 14 (4.78%) Architect
7 14 (4.78%) Wintel Engineer
8 10 (3.41%) Administrator
8 10 (3.41%) VMware Engineer
9 9 (3.07%) Technical Specialist
10 8 (2.73%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 8 (2.73%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 8 (2.73%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
10 8 (2.73%) Linux Engineer
11 7 (2.39%) DBA
11 7 (2.39%) Migration Engineer
11 7 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
12 6 (2.05%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.75%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.73%) REST
3 7 (2.39%) YAML
4 5 (1.71%) Middleware
5 3 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.02%) Hugging Face
5 3 (1.02%) JSON
6 2 (0.68%) OpenCV
6 2 (0.68%) PySpark
6 2 (0.68%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.68%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.68%) SOAP
6 2 (0.68%) SpaCy
6 2 (0.68%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.34%) .NET
7 1 (0.34%) Java SE
7 1 (0.34%) Kafka
7 1 (0.34%) LDAP
7 1 (0.34%) Software Packaging
7 1 (0.34%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.24%) Replication
2 23 (7.85%) Clustering
3 22 (7.51%) Data Centre
4 17 (5.80%) Hybrid Cloud
4 17 (5.80%) Linux Command Line
5 10 (3.41%) Cloud Native
6 9 (3.07%) Onboarding
6 9 (3.07%) Product Ownership
7 6 (2.05%) Fixed Income
7 6 (2.05%) Mainframe
7 6 (2.05%) Market Risk
7 6 (2.05%) Operational Technology
7 6 (2.05%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.71%) FlexPod
8 5 (1.71%) PKI
8 5 (1.71%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.71%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.37%) Enterprise Storage
9 4 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (1.02%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 100 (34.13%) Windows
2 84 (28.67%) Linux
3 55 (18.77%) Windows Server
4 33 (11.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (8.19%) VMS
6 11 (3.75%) Unix
7 9 (3.07%) AIX
8 7 (2.39%) CoreOS
8 7 (2.39%) Ubuntu
9 6 (2.05%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.37%) SUSE
11 3 (1.02%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.34%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (25.26%) DevOps
2 72 (24.57%) CI/CD
3 63 (21.50%) Migration
4 50 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
5 45 (15.36%) High Availability
6 44 (15.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 42 (14.33%) Disaster Recovery
8 40 (13.65%) Performance Tuning
9 36 (12.29%) Network Virtualisation
10 31 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
11 28 (9.56%) Capacity Planning
11 28 (9.56%) Problem-Solving
12 27 (9.22%) RBAC
12 27 (9.22%) Validation
12 27 (9.22%) Vulnerability Management
13 23 (7.85%) Analytics
14 22 (7.51%) AI
14 22 (7.51%) Cybersecurity
14 22 (7.51%) Platform Engineering
15 21 (7.17%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 84 (28.67%) PowerShell
2 69 (23.55%) Python
3 44 (15.02%) Bash
3 44 (15.02%) SQL
4 8 (2.73%) Bicep
5 7 (2.39%) C#
6 6 (2.05%) C
7 5 (1.71%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.37%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.37%) T-SQL
9 3 (1.02%) Java
9 3 (1.02%) Korn
10 1 (0.34%) Cypher
10 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.34%) Go
10 1 (0.34%) Groovy
10 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.34%) RPG
10 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 77 (26.28%) Security Cleared
2 61 (20.82%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.48%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (5.12%) Azure Certification
5 15 (5.12%) VCAP
6 14 (4.78%) Degree
6 14 (4.78%) MCSA
6 14 (4.78%) MCSE
7 7 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (2.05%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.05%) OCP
8 6 (2.05%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.71%) CCNA
9 5 (1.71%) ISTQB
9 5 (1.71%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (1.37%) CISSP
10 4 (1.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 3 (1.02%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.75%) QA
2 3 (1.02%) SLA
3 2 (0.68%) GMP
3 2 (0.68%) GxP
3 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.68%) NIST
3 2 (0.68%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.34%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.34%) GDPR
4 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 89 (30.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 50 (17.06%) vSphere
3 43 (14.68%) Active Directory
4 42 (14.33%) VMware ESXi
5 28 (9.56%) Hyper-V
6 24 (8.19%) Docker
7 18 (6.14%) KVM
8 10 (3.41%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.07%) NFS
10 8 (2.73%) Firmware
10 8 (2.73%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (2.39%) Ceph
12 3 (1.02%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (1.02%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.68%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.34%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.34%) NLBS
14 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 63 (21.50%) Terraform
2 56 (19.11%) Ansible
3 53 (18.09%) Kubernetes
4 37 (12.63%) vCenter Server
5 15 (5.12%) PowerCLI
6 12 (4.10%) Grafana
7 9 (3.07%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.73%) SCCM
8 8 (2.73%) SCOM
9 6 (2.05%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.05%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.05%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.05%) VxRail
10 5 (1.71%) vMotion
11 4 (1.37%) Argo
11 4 (1.37%) Avamar
11 4 (1.37%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.37%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.37%) OPNET
11 4 (1.37%) Podman
Vendors
1 94 (32.08%) VMware
2 83 (28.33%) Microsoft
3 35 (11.95%) Cisco
4 19 (6.48%) Oracle
5 18 (6.14%) ServiceNow
6 16 (5.46%) Red Hat
7 15 (5.12%) IBM
8 14 (4.78%) NetApp
9 13 (4.44%) Google
10 11 (3.75%) Veeam
11 10 (3.41%) Dell
11 10 (3.41%) Qualys
12 9 (3.07%) CyberArk
13 8 (2.73%) Databricks
14 7 (2.39%) Palo Alto
14 7 (2.39%) SolarWinds
14 7 (2.39%) Tenable
15 5 (1.71%) EMC
15 5 (1.71%) Meraki
15 5 (1.71%) Splunk