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

 6 months to
2 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 347 341 297
Rank change year-on-year -6 -44 +35
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 288 156 274
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.66% 0.60% 0.73%
As % of the System Software category 6.54% 4.87% 6.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 197 106 196
10th Percentile £357 £350 £339
25th Percentile £424 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £507 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.33% -7.86% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £606 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK median daily rate £498 £501 £543
% change year-on-year -0.42% -7.74% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 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 £48.00 £57.31 £15.19
90th Percentile £61.20 £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 4,401 3,205 4,198
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.03% 12.41% 11.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,946 2,117 2,916
10th Percentile £210 £223 £210
25th Percentile £400 £379 £374
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £595 £603 £608
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 169 75 197
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.03 £14.06
25th Percentile £23.00 £22.50 £14.48
Median hourly rate £53.00 £29.00 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year +82.76% +30.04% -55.40%
75th Percentile £74.00 £69.25 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £88.45 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +82.14% +16.72% -55.03%

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 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Virtual Machines in England over the 6 months to 2 July 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 2 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 -50 111 £525 -4.55% 16
North of England +4 99 £483 +27.78% 14
Yorkshire +4 55 £500 +5.26% 4
North West -18 42 £463 +23.17% 10
South East -34 41 £475 -17.39% 32
Midlands -50 18 £450 -7.22% 2
South West -20 15 £540 +13.68% 7
West Midlands -62 12 £425 -7.61% 2
East of England -20 5 £425 -19.12% 9
East Midlands -17 4 £500 -4.76%
North East -30 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 (1.74%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.04%) Confluence
2 3 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (1.04%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.69%) Apache
3 2 (0.69%) CMS
3 2 (0.69%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.35%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.35%) IIS
4 1 (0.35%) nginx
4 1 (0.35%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 5 (1.74%) Adobe Illustrator
1 5 (1.74%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.69%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.69%) InDesign
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 128 (44.44%) Azure
2 42 (14.58%) AWS
3 35 (12.15%) Entra ID
4 34 (11.81%) OpenShift
5 32 (11.11%) Azure Monitor
6 29 (10.07%) Azure DevOps
7 25 (8.68%) GitHub
8 24 (8.33%) Azure AKS
9 18 (6.25%) GCP
10 17 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (5.21%) Serverless
12 14 (4.86%) Azure Key Vault
13 13 (4.51%) Azure Storage
14 12 (4.17%) Microsoft 365
15 11 (3.82%) Azure Functions
16 10 (3.47%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 10 (3.47%) Power Platform
17 9 (3.13%) IaaS
18 8 (2.78%) Azure Logic Apps
18 8 (2.78%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 41 (14.24%) DNS
2 38 (13.19%) Firewall
3 27 (9.38%) VPN
4 22 (7.64%) Network Security
5 19 (6.60%) DHCP
5 19 (6.60%) SSL
6 18 (6.25%) VLAN
7 17 (5.90%) WAN
8 15 (5.21%) VSAN
9 11 (3.82%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.78%) FTP
10 8 (2.78%) SAN
11 7 (2.43%) LAN
12 5 (1.74%) SSH
12 5 (1.74%) TCP/IP
12 5 (1.74%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.39%) HTTPS
14 3 (1.04%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (1.04%) Reverse Proxy
15 2 (0.69%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.42%) SQL Server
2 12 (4.17%) Azure SQL Database
3 11 (3.82%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (3.47%) Power BI
5 7 (2.43%) Data Lake
6 6 (2.08%) Db2
7 5 (1.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (1.39%) MySQL
9 3 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.04%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
10 1 (0.35%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.35%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.35%) Power Query
10 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 17 (5.90%) Git
2 12 (4.17%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.13%) GitLab
4 6 (2.08%) JIRA
5 2 (0.69%) JMeter
5 2 (0.69%) Postman
5 2 (0.69%) Selenium
5 2 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.69%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.69%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.35%) PVCS
6 1 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
6 1 (0.35%) RStudio
General
1 41 (14.24%) Social Skills
2 30 (10.42%) Finance
3 13 (4.51%) Banking
3 13 (4.51%) Legal
4 12 (4.17%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (3.13%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.43%) Retail
7 5 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.74%) Front Office
8 4 (1.39%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.39%) Marketing
9 2 (0.69%) Law
9 2 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.69%) Publishing
10 1 (0.35%) Advertising
10 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.35%) Electronics
10 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.35%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 34 (11.81%) DevOps Engineer
2 28 (9.72%) Azure Engineer
3 26 (9.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 25 (8.68%) Cloud Engineer
5 23 (7.99%) Senior
6 18 (6.25%) Lead
7 15 (5.21%) Architect
8 14 (4.86%) Analyst
8 14 (4.86%) Wintel Engineer
9 10 (3.47%) Administrator
9 10 (3.47%) VMware Engineer
10 9 (3.13%) Technical Specialist
11 8 (2.78%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 8 (2.78%) Linux Engineer
12 7 (2.43%) DBA
12 7 (2.43%) Migration Engineer
12 7 (2.43%) Solutions Architect
13 6 (2.08%) Consultant
13 6 (2.08%) Platform Engineer
13 6 (2.08%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.82%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.78%) REST
3 7 (2.43%) YAML
4 5 (1.74%) Middleware
5 3 (1.04%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.04%) Hugging Face
5 3 (1.04%) JSON
6 2 (0.69%) OpenCV
6 2 (0.69%) PySpark
6 2 (0.69%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.69%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.69%) SOAP
6 2 (0.69%) SpaCy
6 2 (0.69%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.35%) .NET
7 1 (0.35%) Java SE
7 1 (0.35%) Kafka
7 1 (0.35%) LDAP
7 1 (0.35%) Node.js
7 1 (0.35%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.07%) Replication
2 23 (7.99%) Clustering
3 21 (7.29%) Data Centre
4 17 (5.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 16 (5.56%) Linux Command Line
6 11 (3.82%) Cloud Native
7 9 (3.13%) Onboarding
7 9 (3.13%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.08%) Mainframe
8 6 (2.08%) Operational Technology
8 6 (2.08%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.74%) Fixed Income
9 5 (1.74%) FlexPod
9 5 (1.74%) Market Risk
9 5 (1.74%) PKI
9 5 (1.74%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.74%) Security Posture
10 4 (1.39%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.04%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 99 (34.38%) Windows
2 80 (27.78%) Linux
3 55 (19.10%) Windows Server
4 33 (11.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (7.99%) VMS
6 11 (3.82%) Unix
7 9 (3.13%) AIX
8 7 (2.43%) CoreOS
8 7 (2.43%) Ubuntu
9 6 (2.08%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.39%) SUSE
11 3 (1.04%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.04%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.35%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (26.04%) DevOps
2 74 (25.69%) CI/CD
3 65 (22.57%) Migration
4 51 (17.71%) Infrastructure as Code
5 45 (15.63%) High Availability
6 41 (14.24%) Disaster Recovery
7 40 (13.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 40 (13.89%) Performance Tuning
8 36 (12.50%) Network Virtualisation
9 33 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
10 28 (9.72%) Capacity Planning
10 28 (9.72%) Problem-Solving
11 26 (9.03%) RBAC
11 26 (9.03%) Validation
11 26 (9.03%) Vulnerability Management
12 23 (7.99%) Cybersecurity
13 22 (7.64%) Analytics
13 22 (7.64%) Containerisation
13 22 (7.64%) Platform Engineering
14 21 (7.29%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 82 (28.47%) PowerShell
2 68 (23.61%) Python
3 45 (15.63%) SQL
4 44 (15.28%) Bash
5 8 (2.78%) Bicep
6 7 (2.43%) C#
7 5 (1.74%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.39%) C
8 4 (1.39%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.39%) T-SQL
9 3 (1.04%) Java
9 3 (1.04%) Korn
10 1 (0.35%) C++
10 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.35%) Embedded C
10 1 (0.35%) Embedded C++
10 1 (0.35%) Groovy
10 1 (0.35%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.35%) RPG
10 1 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 75 (26.04%) Security Cleared
2 59 (20.49%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.94%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.60%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (5.21%) Azure Certification
5 15 (5.21%) VCAP
6 14 (4.86%) Degree
6 14 (4.86%) MCSA
6 14 (4.86%) MCSE
7 7 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (2.08%) OCP
8 6 (2.08%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.74%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.74%) ISTQB
9 5 (1.74%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (1.39%) CCNA
10 4 (1.39%) CISSP
10 4 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 3 (1.04%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.82%) QA
2 3 (1.04%) SLA
3 2 (0.69%) GMP
3 2 (0.69%) GxP
3 2 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.69%) NIST
3 2 (0.69%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.35%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.35%) GDPR
4 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (30.56%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (16.67%) vSphere
3 42 (14.58%) Active Directory
4 41 (14.24%) VMware ESXi
5 28 (9.72%) Hyper-V
6 22 (7.64%) Docker
7 18 (6.25%) KVM
8 10 (3.47%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.13%) NFS
9 9 (3.13%) Virtual Desktop
10 8 (2.78%) Firmware
11 7 (2.43%) Ceph
12 3 (1.04%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (1.04%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.69%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.35%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.35%) NLBS
14 1 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 64 (22.22%) Terraform
2 57 (19.79%) Ansible
3 53 (18.40%) Kubernetes
4 36 (12.50%) vCenter Server
5 14 (4.86%) PowerCLI
6 12 (4.17%) Grafana
7 9 (3.13%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.78%) SCCM
8 8 (2.78%) SCOM
9 6 (2.08%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.08%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.08%) VxRail
10 5 (1.74%) vMotion
11 4 (1.39%) Argo
11 4 (1.39%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.39%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.39%) Podman
12 3 (1.04%) Avamar
12 3 (1.04%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 93 (32.29%) VMware
2 82 (28.47%) Microsoft
3 35 (12.15%) Cisco
4 18 (6.25%) Oracle
4 18 (6.25%) ServiceNow
5 16 (5.56%) IBM
5 16 (5.56%) Red Hat
6 13 (4.51%) Google
6 13 (4.51%) NetApp
7 10 (3.47%) Qualys
7 10 (3.47%) Veeam
8 9 (3.13%) CyberArk
8 9 (3.13%) Dell
9 8 (2.78%) Databricks
10 7 (2.43%) Palo Alto
10 7 (2.43%) SolarWinds
10 7 (2.43%) Tenable
11 5 (1.74%) EMC
11 5 (1.74%) Meraki
11 5 (1.74%) Splunk
77 Virtual Machines jobs in England