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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 394 300 303
Rank change year-on-year -94 +3 +65
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 146 222 290
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.48% 0.71% 0.74%
As % of the System Software category 3.75% 5.98% 5.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 149 197
10th Percentile £357 £345 £273
25th Percentile £424 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.98% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £615
90th Percentile £650 £665 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 10
10th Percentile £37.95 £26.84 £68.21
25th Percentile £45.00 £43.66 £73.09
Median hourly rate £58.50 £59.50 £78.73
Median % change year-on-year -1.68% -24.42% +12.46%
75th Percentile £65.13 £66.00 £87.65
90th Percentile £68.05 - £90.00
UK median hourly rate £58.50 £59.50 £78.73
% change year-on-year -1.68% -24.42% +12.46%

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 3,892 3,711 5,118
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.77% 11.95% 13.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,548 2,385 3,522
10th Percentile £213 £214 £198
25th Percentile £400 £381 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +3.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £675 £709 £713
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 79 234
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.02 £15.50
25th Percentile £21.00 £21.46 £18.61
Median hourly rate £32.32 £50.00 £43.79
Median % change year-on-year -35.37% +14.17% +75.17%
75th Percentile £74.26 £67.84 £68.29
90th Percentile £89.96 £75.00 £77.21
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £36.17 £46.18
% change year-on-year -17.05% -21.69% +84.72%

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 20 November 2025.

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 20 November 2025.

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 20 November 2025. 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 -20 73 £525 +5.00% 45
South East -36 20 £525 +1.16% 30
South West -13 19 £550 -3.51% 7
North of England -48 19 £480 -2.04% 19
Yorkshire -35 17 £480 +9.09% 4
East of England -32 6 £475 - 5
Midlands -51 4 £508 -12.80% 13
West Midlands -57 3 £508 -12.80% 6
North West -25 2 £528 -8.26% 15
East Midlands -18 1 - - 7
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 15 (10.27%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (4.11%) IIS
3 5 (3.42%) Confluence
4 4 (2.74%) Apache
4 4 (2.74%) SharePoint
5 3 (2.05%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.37%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.37%) Hyperledger
7 1 (0.68%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.68%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.68%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.68%) nginx
7 1 (0.68%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.68%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.68%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 61 (41.78%) Azure
2 22 (15.07%) Azure DevOps
3 19 (13.01%) GitHub
4 16 (10.96%) AWS
5 9 (6.16%) Azure AKS
5 9 (6.16%) Azure Monitor
5 9 (6.16%) GitHub Actions
6 8 (5.48%) Entra ID
6 8 (5.48%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (4.79%) Cloud Computing
8 6 (4.11%) Azure Key Vault
8 6 (4.11%) Azure Storage
8 6 (4.11%) GCP
8 6 (4.11%) OpenShift
9 5 (3.42%) Azure API Management
9 5 (3.42%) Azure Logic Apps
9 5 (3.42%) Azure Service Bus
9 5 (3.42%) IaaS
10 4 (2.74%) Serverless
11 3 (2.05%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 30 (20.55%) Firewall
2 24 (16.44%) DNS
3 10 (6.85%) DHCP
3 10 (6.85%) Network Security
3 10 (6.85%) VPN
4 9 (6.16%) WAN
5 7 (4.79%) Skype
6 6 (4.11%) Wi-Fi
7 5 (3.42%) TCP/IP
7 5 (3.42%) VLAN
8 4 (2.74%) Intrusion Detection
8 4 (2.74%) NAS
8 4 (2.74%) SAN
8 4 (2.74%) VSAN
9 2 (1.37%) Modbus
10 1 (0.68%) Cisco Wireless
10 1 (0.68%) HTTPS
10 1 (0.68%) MQTT
10 1 (0.68%) NX-OS
10 1 (0.68%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (7.53%) SQL Server
2 7 (4.79%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (3.42%) Data Lake
4 4 (2.74%) OLTP
5 3 (2.05%) Data Mining
6 2 (1.37%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (1.37%) Data Vault
7 1 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.68%) Big Data
7 1 (0.68%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.68%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.68%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 18 (12.33%) JIRA
2 13 (8.90%) Git
3 10 (6.85%) Jenkins
4 6 (4.11%) GitLab
5 3 (2.05%) RStudio
6 2 (1.37%) Hardhat
6 2 (1.37%) PVCS
6 2 (1.37%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (1.37%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.68%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.68%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.68%) Snyk
7 1 (0.68%) SonarQube
General
1 31 (21.23%) Social Skills
2 16 (10.96%) Public Sector
3 9 (6.16%) Finance
4 8 (5.48%) Law
5 7 (4.79%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (4.79%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (4.11%) Banking
6 6 (4.11%) Telecoms
7 5 (3.42%) Spanish Language
8 3 (2.05%) Electronics
8 3 (2.05%) Social Science
9 2 (1.37%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.68%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.68%) Back Office
10 1 (0.68%) Front Office
10 1 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.68%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.68%) Legal
10 1 (0.68%) Marketing
10 1 (0.68%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 20 (13.70%) DevOps Engineer
2 15 (10.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 15 (10.27%) Senior
3 14 (9.59%) Security Engineer
4 12 (8.22%) Platform Engineer
5 11 (7.53%) Azure Engineer
6 9 (6.16%) Data Engineer
7 8 (5.48%) Developer
7 8 (5.48%) Software Engineer
8 7 (4.79%) Architect
9 6 (4.11%) C++ Software Engineer
9 6 (4.11%) Embedded C++ Engineer
9 6 (4.11%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
9 6 (4.11%) Embedded Engineer
9 6 (4.11%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 6 (4.11%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
10 5 (3.42%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 5 (3.42%) IT Engineer
10 5 (3.42%) Kubernetes Engineer
10 5 (3.42%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (8.90%) ARM Templates
2 10 (6.85%) Middleware
3 7 (4.79%) TensorFlow
4 6 (4.11%) Hugging Face
4 6 (4.11%) OpenCV
4 6 (4.11%) OpenTelemetry
4 6 (4.11%) PyTorch
4 6 (4.11%) Regular Expression
4 6 (4.11%) SpaCy
5 5 (3.42%) ADO
5 5 (3.42%) YAML
6 3 (2.05%) Kafka
7 2 (1.37%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (1.37%) JSON
7 2 (1.37%) Loki
7 2 (1.37%) RESTful
7 2 (1.37%) Smart Contracts
7 2 (1.37%) Truffle
7 2 (1.37%) Web Services
7 2 (1.37%) web3js
Miscellaneous
1 11 (7.53%) Data Centre
2 10 (6.85%) Private Cloud
3 8 (5.48%) Onboarding
4 7 (4.79%) Management Information System
4 7 (4.79%) Replication
5 6 (4.11%) CAN bus
5 6 (4.11%) PKI
6 4 (2.74%) Cloud Native
6 4 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (2.74%) Public Cloud
6 4 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (2.05%) Algorithms
7 3 (2.05%) Legacy Code
7 3 (2.05%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (2.05%) Operational Technology
7 3 (2.05%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (1.37%) Blockchain
8 2 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.37%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 52 (35.62%) Windows
2 43 (29.45%) Linux
3 26 (17.81%) Windows Server
4 16 (10.96%) VMS
5 10 (6.85%) Windows 10
6 8 (5.48%) Windows Server 2016
7 6 (4.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (2.05%) Ubuntu
8 3 (2.05%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (2.05%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.68%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.68%) CentOS
9 1 (0.68%) SUSE
9 1 (0.68%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.68%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.68%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (36.99%) DevOps
2 43 (29.45%) CI/CD
3 35 (23.97%) Agile
4 34 (23.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 25 (17.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 25 (17.12%) Problem-Solving
6 22 (15.07%) Migration
7 18 (12.33%) Cybersecurity
8 17 (11.64%) Analytics
9 16 (10.96%) High Availability
10 14 (9.59%) Continuous Integration
11 13 (8.90%) Root Cause Analysis
12 12 (8.22%) Infrastructure Automation
12 12 (8.22%) Platform Engineering
13 11 (7.53%) AI
13 11 (7.53%) Continuous Improvement
13 11 (7.53%) Information Security
13 11 (7.53%) Machine Learning
14 10 (6.85%) Cloud Security
14 10 (6.85%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 32 (21.92%) Python
2 31 (21.23%) PowerShell
3 14 (9.59%) SQL
4 10 (6.85%) Bash
4 10 (6.85%) C++
4 10 (6.85%) Java
5 8 (5.48%) Bicep
5 8 (5.48%) C#
6 7 (4.79%) Embedded C++
7 6 (4.11%) Shell Script
8 4 (2.74%) Scala
9 2 (1.37%) C
9 2 (1.37%) JavaScript
9 2 (1.37%) Solidity
10 1 (0.68%) Embedded C
10 1 (0.68%) Go
10 1 (0.68%) PHP
10 1 (0.68%) Ruby
10 1 (0.68%) Swift
10 1 (0.68%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 49 (33.56%) Security Cleared
2 36 (24.66%) SC Cleared
3 11 (7.53%) DV Cleared
4 9 (6.16%) Degree
5 4 (2.74%) Azure Certification
5 4 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.74%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 3 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
6 3 (2.05%) VCAP
7 2 (1.37%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.37%) CCNA
7 2 (1.37%) CCNP
7 2 (1.37%) CISM
7 2 (1.37%) CISSP
7 2 (1.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 2 (1.37%) Master's Degree
7 2 (1.37%) OCP
7 2 (1.37%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (2.74%) Accessibility
2 4 (2.74%) NIST
3 3 (2.05%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (2.05%) QA
3 3 (2.05%) SLA
4 2 (1.37%) GDPR
4 2 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 1 (0.68%) GRC
5 1 (0.68%) RMADS
System Software
1 38 (26.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (21.23%) Active Directory
3 16 (10.96%) vSphere
4 12 (8.22%) Docker
4 12 (8.22%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (7.53%) VMware NSX
6 7 (4.79%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (4.11%) Hyper-V
8 3 (2.05%) Firmware
8 3 (2.05%) KVM
9 1 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 34 (23.29%) Terraform
2 25 (17.12%) vCenter Server
3 24 (16.44%) Kubernetes
4 15 (10.27%) Ansible
5 10 (6.85%) SCCM
6 8 (5.48%) WSUS
7 7 (4.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (4.11%) CASB
8 6 (4.11%) SCOrch
8 6 (4.11%) vRealize
9 4 (2.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (2.74%) Rancher
9 4 (2.74%) vMotion
10 3 (2.05%) PowerCLI
11 2 (1.37%) Fluentd
11 2 (1.37%) Grafana
11 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (1.37%) NetApp OnCommand
11 2 (1.37%) Prometheus
11 2 (1.37%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 46 (31.51%) Microsoft
1 46 (31.51%) VMware
2 11 (7.53%) Cisco
3 7 (4.79%) Oracle
4 6 (4.11%) NetApp
4 6 (4.11%) Veeam
5 5 (3.42%) Databricks
6 4 (2.74%) IBM
6 4 (2.74%) Remedy
6 4 (2.74%) SolarWinds
7 3 (2.05%) Dell
7 3 (2.05%) F5
7 3 (2.05%) Red Hat
7 3 (2.05%) Sophos
7 3 (2.05%) Tenable
8 2 (1.37%) Citrix
8 2 (1.37%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.37%) Pure Storage
8 2 (1.37%) Rockwell
8 2 (1.37%) ServiceNow