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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 286 292
Rank change year-on-year -88 +6 +19
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 210 187 270
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.55% 0.77% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 4.90% 5.86% 6.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 147 123 182
10th Percentile £343 £350 £283
25th Percentile £413 £425 £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 £518 £500
% change year-on-year -3.43% +3.55% -7.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 11 24
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 4,288 3,191 4,141
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.21% 13.16% 11.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,941 2,211 2,861
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 £725 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £485
% change year-on-year -4.76% +8.25% -7.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 81 199
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.06 £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 £74.00 £66.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £79.75 £86.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.75 £22.50
% change year-on-year +62.60% +36.67% -54.55%

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 2 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 2 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 -70 86 £505 -12.17% 27
North of England -24 71 £482 +26.51% 17
Yorkshire -24 41 £500 +5.26% 4
North West -20 29 £458 +20.21% 13
South East -54 17 £531 +7.54% 14
East of England -40 11 £600 +11.63% 11
Midlands -69 9 £425 -15.08% 4
South West -25 8 £563 +5.14% 2
West Midlands -68 7 £375 -25.07% 3
North East -15 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 (3.33%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.90%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.43%) Palantir Foundry
3 3 (1.43%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.48%) Apache
4 1 (0.48%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.48%) nginx
4 1 (0.48%) SharePoint Server
4 1 (0.48%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (0.95%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.48%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.48%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.48%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 99 (47.14%) Azure
2 37 (17.62%) AWS
3 31 (14.76%) GitHub
4 27 (12.86%) OpenShift
5 24 (11.43%) Azure DevOps
6 23 (10.95%) GitHub Actions
7 18 (8.57%) GCP
8 17 (8.10%) Azure Monitor
9 15 (7.14%) Entra ID
9 15 (7.14%) Serverless
10 12 (5.71%) Azure AKS
11 11 (5.24%) Azure Storage
11 11 (5.24%) Microsoft 365
12 8 (3.81%) Azure Key Vault
13 7 (3.33%) Azure Functions
14 6 (2.86%) Azure Data Factory
15 5 (2.38%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (2.38%) AWS CodePipeline
15 5 (2.38%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 5 (2.38%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 31 (14.76%) Firewall
2 23 (10.95%) DNS
3 15 (7.14%) VSAN
4 14 (6.67%) VPN
5 13 (6.19%) Network Security
6 9 (4.29%) DHCP
6 9 (4.29%) SAN
7 8 (3.81%) SSL
7 8 (3.81%) TCP/IP
7 8 (3.81%) VLAN
8 7 (3.33%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (2.38%) WAN
10 3 (1.43%) NAS
10 3 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.95%) Cisco Nexus
11 2 (0.95%) FTP
11 2 (0.95%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.95%) SSH
12 1 (0.48%) MQTT
12 1 (0.48%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.24%) SQL Server
2 7 (3.33%) Azure SQL Database
2 7 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.86%) DB2
4 5 (2.38%) Power BI
5 4 (1.90%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (1.43%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.43%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.95%) Data Hub
7 2 (0.95%) Data Vault
7 2 (0.95%) ImageNet
8 1 (0.48%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.48%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 28 (13.33%) Git
2 11 (5.24%) JIRA
3 10 (4.76%) GitLab
3 10 (4.76%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.81%) PVCS
4 8 (3.81%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (0.95%) JMeter
5 2 (0.95%) Postman
5 2 (0.95%) RStudio
5 2 (0.95%) Selenium
5 2 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.48%) Gradle
6 1 (0.48%) Terragrunt
General
1 30 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 15 (7.14%) Finance
3 11 (5.24%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (5.24%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.29%) Banking
4 9 (4.29%) Legal
5 8 (3.81%) Electronics
6 6 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.43%) Retail
7 3 (1.43%) Spanish Language
8 2 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.95%) Social Science
9 1 (0.48%) Advertising
9 1 (0.48%) Back Office
9 1 (0.48%) Front Office
9 1 (0.48%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.48%) Law
9 1 (0.48%) Marketing
9 1 (0.48%) Police
Job Titles
1 28 (13.33%) DevOps Engineer
2 25 (11.90%) Azure Engineer
3 22 (10.48%) Senior
4 16 (7.62%) Architect
5 14 (6.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 12 (5.71%) VMware Engineer
7 11 (5.24%) Cloud Engineer
8 10 (4.76%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 10 (4.76%) Software Engineer
8 10 (4.76%) Wintel Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Analyst
9 9 (4.29%) C++ Software Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Data Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Embedded Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Security Engineer
9 9 (4.29%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.81%) ARM Templates
2 6 (2.86%) YAML
3 4 (1.90%) Middleware
4 3 (1.43%) Hugging Face
5 2 (0.95%) .NET
5 2 (0.95%) Kafka
5 2 (0.95%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.95%) PySpark
5 2 (0.95%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.95%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.95%) REST
5 2 (0.95%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.95%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.48%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.48%) JSON
6 1 (0.48%) LDAP
6 1 (0.48%) OpenID
6 1 (0.48%) Retrofit
6 1 (0.48%) SOAP
6 1 (0.48%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 21 (10.00%) Data Centre
2 15 (7.14%) Replication
3 14 (6.67%) Cloud Native
3 14 (6.67%) Clustering
4 12 (5.71%) Private Cloud
5 11 (5.24%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (5.24%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (2.38%) Cyber Threat
6 5 (2.38%) FlexPod
6 5 (2.38%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.38%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.43%) PKI
7 3 (1.43%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.43%) SCADA
8 2 (0.95%) Celerra
8 2 (0.95%) EMC Centera
8 2 (0.95%) PACS
8 2 (0.95%) Symmetrix
8 2 (0.95%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 65 (30.95%) Linux
2 55 (26.19%) Windows
3 32 (15.24%) VMS
4 31 (14.76%) Windows Server
5 19 (9.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (2.86%) AIX
6 6 (2.86%) Data ONTAP
6 6 (2.86%) Unix
7 5 (2.38%) CoreOS
8 4 (1.90%) SUSE
9 3 (1.43%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.95%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.95%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.95%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.48%) Android
11 1 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (31.90%) DevOps
2 59 (28.10%) CI/CD
3 46 (21.90%) Infrastructure as Code
4 43 (20.48%) Migration
5 34 (16.19%) High Availability
6 32 (15.24%) Disaster Recovery
7 28 (13.33%) Network Virtualisation
8 25 (11.90%) Containerisation
9 24 (11.43%) Continuous Improvement
9 24 (11.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 24 (11.43%) Performance Tuning
10 22 (10.48%) Platform Engineering
11 21 (10.00%) Cybersecurity
11 21 (10.00%) Technical Leadership
12 18 (8.57%) Capacity Planning
13 17 (8.10%) Deployment Automation
14 16 (7.62%) Agile
15 15 (7.14%) AI
15 15 (7.14%) Problem-Solving
15 15 (7.14%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 54 (25.71%) PowerShell
2 52 (24.76%) Python
3 33 (15.71%) SQL
4 32 (15.24%) Bash
5 10 (4.76%) C
5 10 (4.76%) C++
6 9 (4.29%) Embedded C++
7 8 (3.81%) Bicep
7 8 (3.81%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.33%) Embedded C
9 5 (2.38%) Java
9 5 (2.38%) Ruby
10 4 (1.90%) C#
11 3 (1.43%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.95%) Korn
12 2 (0.95%) PHP
13 1 (0.48%) Go
13 1 (0.48%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.48%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 50 (23.81%) Security Cleared
2 40 (19.05%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.67%) Azure Certification
3 14 (6.67%) OCP
3 14 (6.67%) Oracle Certification
3 14 (6.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 12 (5.71%) VCAP
5 9 (4.29%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (3.81%) MCSA
6 8 (3.81%) MCSE
7 6 (2.86%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.95%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.48%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (0.48%) Degree
10 1 (0.48%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.48%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.48%) PMP
10 1 (0.48%) RHCE
10 1 (0.48%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.86%) GDPR
2 5 (2.38%) QA
3 4 (1.90%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.95%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.95%) NIST
6 1 (0.48%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.48%) GRC
6 1 (0.48%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (29.52%) VMware Infrastructure
2 37 (17.62%) vSphere
3 31 (14.76%) VMware ESXi
4 27 (12.86%) Active Directory
5 22 (10.48%) Hyper-V
6 17 (8.10%) KVM
7 14 (6.67%) Docker
8 10 (4.76%) VMware NSX
9 8 (3.81%) Firmware
10 6 (2.86%) NFS
11 5 (2.38%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.95%) Ceph
12 2 (0.95%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.95%) Xen
13 1 (0.48%) NLBS
Systems Management
1 62 (29.52%) Terraform
2 52 (24.76%) Ansible
3 47 (22.38%) Kubernetes
4 32 (15.24%) vCenter Server
5 13 (6.19%) PowerCLI
6 8 (3.81%) SCCM
7 7 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (2.86%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (2.86%) SnapMirror
8 6 (2.86%) VxRail
8 6 (2.86%) WSUS
9 4 (1.90%) Failover Clustering
10 3 (1.43%) CASB
10 3 (1.43%) Data Guard
10 3 (1.43%) Grafana
10 3 (1.43%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (1.43%) Prometheus
10 3 (1.43%) SCOrch
10 3 (1.43%) systemd
10 3 (1.43%) vRealize
Vendors
1 66 (31.43%) VMware
2 61 (29.05%) Microsoft
3 18 (8.57%) IBM
4 14 (6.67%) Cisco
5 13 (6.19%) Red Hat
6 9 (4.29%) Dell
6 9 (4.29%) Google
6 9 (4.29%) Oracle
7 8 (3.81%) ANSYS
7 8 (3.81%) NetApp
8 7 (3.33%) Databricks
9 6 (2.86%) Tenable
9 6 (2.86%) Veeam
10 5 (2.38%) OpenAI
11 4 (1.90%) Pure Storage
11 4 (1.90%) Sophos
12 3 (1.43%) Alibaba
12 3 (1.43%) Foundry
12 3 (1.43%) Palantir
12 3 (1.43%) ServiceNow