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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 376 294 292
Rank change year-on-year -82 -2 +27
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 206 193 273
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.56% 0.78% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 4.88% 5.94% 6.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 136 126 185
10th Percentile £348 £350 £278
25th Percentile £410 £425 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £518 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.28% +3.55% -8.26%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £700
UK median daily rate £496 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -3.18% +2.50% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 11 21
10th Percentile £66.03 £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 4,218 3,251 4,169
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.47% 13.14% 11.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,883 2,225 2,867
10th Percentile £206 £206 £188
25th Percentile £400 £393 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £600
90th Percentile £700 £738 £692
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 82 208
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.23 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.30 £15.91
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.75 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.39% +36.67% -42.68%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £79.10 £87.83 £70.84
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £32.50 £30.45
% change year-on-year +31.34% +6.73% -24.84%

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 16 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Virtual Machines in England over the 6 months to 16 March 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 16 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 -65 84 £475 -17.39% 24
North of England -21 64 £472 +23.91% 7
Yorkshire -28 39 £500 +13.64% 2
North West -30 24 £456 +19.69% 5
South East -45 20 £500 +2.04% 16
South West -23 12 £550 +2.80% 2
East of England -41 11 £600 +15.66% 10
Midlands -66 5 £475 -5.19% 4
West Midlands -69 4 £450 -10.18% 2
North East -13 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 11 (5.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.94%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.94%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.46%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.97%) Ethereum
4 2 (0.97%) Hyperledger
4 2 (0.97%) SharePoint Server
5 1 (0.49%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.49%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.97%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.49%) Adobe Illustrator
2 1 (0.49%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.49%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 88 (42.72%) Azure
2 37 (17.96%) GitHub
3 35 (16.99%) AWS
4 26 (12.62%) Azure DevOps
5 25 (12.14%) GitHub Actions
5 25 (12.14%) OpenShift
6 17 (8.25%) GCP
7 15 (7.28%) Entra ID
8 13 (6.31%) Azure Monitor
8 13 (6.31%) Serverless
9 11 (5.34%) Microsoft 365
10 10 (4.85%) Azure AKS
10 10 (4.85%) Azure Storage
11 7 (3.40%) Azure Key Vault
12 6 (2.91%) AWS CodePipeline
12 6 (2.91%) Azure Functions
12 6 (2.91%) Cloud Computing
13 5 (2.43%) Amazon ECS
13 5 (2.43%) IaaS
13 5 (2.43%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 27 (13.11%) Firewall
2 22 (10.68%) DNS
3 10 (4.85%) VPN
4 9 (4.37%) WAN
5 8 (3.88%) DHCP
5 8 (3.88%) Network Security
6 7 (3.40%) SAN
6 7 (3.40%) TCP/IP
7 6 (2.91%) Reverse Proxy
7 6 (2.91%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (2.43%) SSL
9 4 (1.94%) Skype
9 4 (1.94%) VSAN
10 2 (0.97%) FTP
10 2 (0.97%) VLAN
11 1 (0.49%) BGP
11 1 (0.49%) Internet
11 1 (0.49%) LAN
11 1 (0.49%) NAS
11 1 (0.49%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.34%) SQL Server
2 7 (3.40%) Azure SQL Database
2 7 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.91%) DB2
4 5 (2.43%) Power BI
5 4 (1.94%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (1.46%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.97%) Data Hub
7 2 (0.97%) Data Vault
7 2 (0.97%) ImageNet
8 1 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.49%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.49%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.49%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 32 (15.53%) Git
2 18 (8.74%) JIRA
3 14 (6.80%) Jenkins
4 10 (4.85%) GitLab
5 8 (3.88%) PVCS
5 8 (3.88%) Rational DOORS
6 3 (1.46%) RStudio
7 2 (0.97%) Hardhat
7 2 (0.97%) JMeter
7 2 (0.97%) Postman
7 2 (0.97%) Selenium
8 1 (0.49%) Gradle
8 1 (0.49%) Terragrunt
General
1 35 (16.99%) Social Skills
2 13 (6.31%) Analytical Skills
2 13 (6.31%) Finance
3 11 (5.34%) Banking
3 11 (5.34%) Public Sector
4 8 (3.88%) Electronics
5 7 (3.40%) Legal
6 6 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (2.91%) Spanish Language
7 4 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.46%) Retail
8 3 (1.46%) Social Science
9 1 (0.49%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.49%) Back Office
9 1 (0.49%) Front Office
9 1 (0.49%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.49%) Law
9 1 (0.49%) Marketing
9 1 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 33 (16.02%) DevOps Engineer
2 22 (10.68%) Azure Engineer
3 21 (10.19%) Senior
4 14 (6.80%) Architect
4 14 (6.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 14 (6.80%) Software Engineer
5 12 (5.83%) C++ Software Engineer
5 12 (5.83%) Embedded C++ Engineer
5 12 (5.83%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
5 12 (5.83%) Embedded Engineer
5 12 (5.83%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 12 (5.83%) Security Engineer
6 11 (5.34%) Cloud Engineer
7 10 (4.85%) Azure DevOps Engineer
7 10 (4.85%) Platform Engineer
7 10 (4.85%) Wintel Engineer
8 9 (4.37%) Analyst
8 9 (4.37%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 8 (3.88%) Data Engineer
9 8 (3.88%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (4.85%) ARM Templates
2 4 (1.94%) YAML
3 3 (1.46%) Hugging Face
4 2 (0.97%) .NET
4 2 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (0.97%) Kafka
4 2 (0.97%) OpenCV
4 2 (0.97%) PySpark
4 2 (0.97%) PyTorch
4 2 (0.97%) Regular Expression
4 2 (0.97%) Smart Contracts
4 2 (0.97%) SpaCy
4 2 (0.97%) TensorFlow
4 2 (0.97%) Truffle
4 2 (0.97%) web3js
5 1 (0.49%) LDAP
5 1 (0.49%) Middleware
5 1 (0.49%) OpenID
5 1 (0.49%) RabbitMQ
5 1 (0.49%) Retrofit
Miscellaneous
1 25 (12.14%) Data Centre
2 14 (6.80%) Cloud Native
2 14 (6.80%) Private Cloud
3 12 (5.83%) Replication
4 11 (5.34%) Clustering
4 11 (5.34%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (4.37%) Linux Command Line
6 6 (2.91%) CAN bus
7 5 (2.43%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (2.43%) FlexPod
7 5 (2.43%) Onboarding
7 5 (2.43%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.94%) PKI
9 3 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.46%) NHS
9 3 (1.46%) Product Ownership
10 2 (0.97%) AI Agents
10 2 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 62 (30.10%) Linux
2 56 (27.18%) Windows
3 30 (14.56%) Windows Server
4 26 (12.62%) VMS
5 11 (5.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (2.91%) AIX
6 6 (2.91%) Data ONTAP
6 6 (2.91%) Unix
6 6 (2.91%) Windows Server 2016
7 5 (2.43%) CoreOS
8 4 (1.94%) Windows 10
9 3 (1.46%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.49%) Android
11 1 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (36.41%) DevOps
2 67 (32.52%) CI/CD
3 50 (24.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 37 (17.96%) Migration
5 32 (15.53%) High Availability
6 28 (13.59%) Disaster Recovery
7 24 (11.65%) Containerisation
7 24 (11.65%) Cybersecurity
8 23 (11.17%) Agile
8 23 (11.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 23 (11.17%) Network Virtualisation
9 21 (10.19%) Continuous Improvement
9 21 (10.19%) Technical Leadership
10 19 (9.22%) Platform Engineering
11 16 (7.77%) Problem-Solving
11 16 (7.77%) Runbook
12 15 (7.28%) AI
12 15 (7.28%) Analytics
12 15 (7.28%) Deployment Automation
13 14 (6.80%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 51 (24.76%) PowerShell
2 50 (24.27%) Python
3 31 (15.05%) SQL
4 29 (14.08%) Bash
5 14 (6.80%) C++
6 13 (6.31%) Embedded C++
7 10 (4.85%) C
8 9 (4.37%) Shell Script
9 8 (3.88%) C#
10 7 (3.40%) Bicep
10 7 (3.40%) Embedded C
11 5 (2.43%) Java
11 5 (2.43%) Ruby
12 2 (0.97%) Korn
12 2 (0.97%) PHP
12 2 (0.97%) Solidity
13 1 (0.49%) Go
Qualifications
1 55 (26.70%) Security Cleared
2 47 (22.82%) SC Cleared
3 14 (6.80%) OCP
3 14 (6.80%) Oracle Certification
3 14 (6.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 12 (5.83%) VCAP
5 10 (4.85%) Azure Certification
6 9 (4.37%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (3.88%) MCSA
7 8 (3.88%) MCSE
8 5 (2.43%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.46%) Degree
9 3 (1.46%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 1 (0.49%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
11 1 (0.49%) RHCE
11 1 (0.49%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.91%) QA
2 5 (2.43%) GDPR
3 4 (1.94%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.49%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.49%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.49%) GRC
5 1 (0.49%) NIST
System Software
1 51 (24.76%) VMware Infrastructure
2 29 (14.08%) Active Directory
2 29 (14.08%) vSphere
3 21 (10.19%) VMware ESXi
4 20 (9.71%) Docker
5 18 (8.74%) Hyper-V
5 18 (8.74%) KVM
6 8 (3.88%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (3.88%) VMware NSX
7 7 (3.40%) Firmware
8 6 (2.91%) NFS
9 2 (0.97%) Xen
10 1 (0.49%) Ceph
10 1 (0.49%) NLBS
Systems Management
1 67 (32.52%) Terraform
2 50 (24.27%) Kubernetes
3 46 (22.33%) Ansible
4 28 (13.59%) vCenter Server
5 10 (4.85%) SCCM
6 7 (3.40%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (3.40%) PowerCLI
7 6 (2.91%) CASB
7 6 (2.91%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (2.91%) SCOrch
7 6 (2.91%) SnapMirror
7 6 (2.91%) WSUS
8 3 (1.46%) Data Guard
8 3 (1.46%) Grafana
8 3 (1.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 3 (1.46%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (1.46%) Prometheus
8 3 (1.46%) Rancher
9 2 (0.97%) systemd
9 2 (0.97%) vMotion
Vendors
1 65 (31.55%) Microsoft
2 55 (26.70%) VMware
3 14 (6.80%) Cisco
3 14 (6.80%) IBM
4 12 (5.83%) Red Hat
5 9 (4.37%) Databricks
5 9 (4.37%) Google
5 9 (4.37%) NetApp
6 8 (3.88%) ANSYS
7 6 (2.91%) Tenable
8 5 (2.43%) OpenAI
8 5 (2.43%) Oracle
9 4 (1.94%) Dell
9 4 (1.94%) Pure Storage
10 3 (1.46%) Alibaba
10 3 (1.46%) Foundry
10 3 (1.46%) Palantir
10 3 (1.46%) SolarWinds
10 3 (1.46%) Sophos
10 3 (1.46%) Veeam