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

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 342 334 296
Rank change year-on-year -8 -38 +48
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 286 159 273
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.65% 0.60% 0.73%
As % of the System Software category 6.45% 4.87% 6.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 197 109 194
10th Percentile £358 £350 £336
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £501 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.84% -8.91% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £608 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £674
UK median daily rate £493 £500 £535
% change year-on-year -1.32% -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 4,435 3,267 4,238
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.06% 12.32% 11.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,151 2,935
10th Percentile £210 £221 £211
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 169 77 197
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.05 £14.06
25th Percentile £23.00 £22.50 £15.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year +83.33% +34.53% -55.40%
75th Percentile £74.00 £72.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £88.30 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +82.14% +16.72% -55.57%

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 5 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 5 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 -59 108 £525 -4.55% 16
North of England +5 99 £483 +26.77% 12
Yorkshire -7 55 £500 +7.47% 3
South East -30 43 £475 -17.39% 30
North West -10 42 £463 +23.17% 9
Midlands -59 18 £450 -7.22% 2
South West -10 15 £540 +13.68% 8
West Midlands -66 12 £425 -7.61% 2
East Midlands -14 4 £500 -4.76%
East of England -31 4 £425 -19.12% 8
North East -36 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 (1.75%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.05%) Confluence
2 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (1.05%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.70%) Apache
3 2 (0.70%) CMS
3 2 (0.70%) 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 (1.75%) Adobe Illustrator
1 5 (1.75%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.70%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.70%) InDesign
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 125 (43.71%) Azure
2 42 (14.69%) AWS
3 34 (11.89%) Entra ID
3 34 (11.89%) OpenShift
4 32 (11.19%) Azure Monitor
5 29 (10.14%) Azure DevOps
6 24 (8.39%) GitHub
7 23 (8.04%) Azure AKS
8 18 (6.29%) GCP
9 16 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (5.24%) Serverless
11 13 (4.55%) Azure Key Vault
11 13 (4.55%) Azure Storage
12 12 (4.20%) Microsoft 365
13 11 (3.85%) Azure Functions
14 10 (3.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 10 (3.50%) Power Platform
15 9 (3.15%) IaaS
16 8 (2.80%) Azure Logic Apps
16 8 (2.80%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 41 (14.34%) DNS
2 37 (12.94%) Firewall
3 27 (9.44%) VPN
4 21 (7.34%) Network Security
5 19 (6.64%) DHCP
5 19 (6.64%) SSL
6 18 (6.29%) VLAN
7 17 (5.94%) WAN
8 15 (5.24%) VSAN
9 11 (3.85%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.80%) FTP
10 8 (2.80%) SAN
11 7 (2.45%) LAN
12 5 (1.75%) SSH
12 5 (1.75%) TCP/IP
12 5 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.40%) HTTPS
14 3 (1.05%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (1.05%) Reverse Proxy
15 2 (0.70%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.49%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.85%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (3.85%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.50%) Power BI
4 7 (2.45%) Data Lake
5 6 (2.10%) Db2
6 5 (1.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 4 (1.40%) MySQL
8 3 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.05%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.35%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.35%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.35%) Power Query
9 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.59%) Git
2 12 (4.20%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.15%) GitLab
4 5 (1.75%) JIRA
5 2 (0.70%) JMeter
5 2 (0.70%) Postman
5 2 (0.70%) Selenium
5 2 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.70%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.35%) RStudio
General
1 41 (14.34%) Social Skills
2 30 (10.49%) Finance
3 13 (4.55%) Banking
3 13 (4.55%) Legal
4 12 (4.20%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (3.15%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.45%) Retail
7 5 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.75%) Front Office
8 4 (1.40%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.40%) Marketing
9 2 (0.70%) Law
9 2 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.70%) Publishing
10 1 (0.35%) Advertising
10 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.35%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 33 (11.54%) DevOps Engineer
2 28 (9.79%) Azure Engineer
3 26 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (8.39%) Cloud Engineer
5 23 (8.04%) Senior
6 18 (6.29%) Lead
7 14 (4.90%) Analyst
7 14 (4.90%) Architect
7 14 (4.90%) Wintel Engineer
8 10 (3.50%) Administrator
8 10 (3.50%) VMware Engineer
9 9 (3.15%) Technical Specialist
10 8 (2.80%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 8 (2.80%) Linux Engineer
11 7 (2.45%) DBA
11 7 (2.45%) Migration Engineer
11 7 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
12 6 (2.10%) Consultant
12 6 (2.10%) Platform Engineer
12 6 (2.10%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.85%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.80%) REST
3 7 (2.45%) YAML
4 5 (1.75%) Middleware
5 3 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.05%) Hugging Face
5 3 (1.05%) JSON
6 2 (0.70%) OpenCV
6 2 (0.70%) PySpark
6 2 (0.70%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.70%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.70%) SOAP
6 2 (0.70%) SpaCy
6 2 (0.70%) 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%) Software Packaging
7 1 (0.35%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.14%) Replication
2 23 (8.04%) Clustering
3 21 (7.34%) Data Centre
4 17 (5.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 16 (5.59%) Linux Command Line
6 10 (3.50%) Cloud Native
7 9 (3.15%) Onboarding
7 9 (3.15%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.10%) Mainframe
8 6 (2.10%) Operational Technology
8 6 (2.10%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.75%) Fixed Income
9 5 (1.75%) FlexPod
9 5 (1.75%) Market Risk
9 5 (1.75%) PKI
9 5 (1.75%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.75%) Security Posture
10 4 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.05%) EMC VNX
11 3 (1.05%) IBM XIV
Operating Systems
1 99 (34.62%) Windows
2 82 (28.67%) Linux
3 55 (19.23%) Windows Server
4 33 (11.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (8.04%) VMS
6 11 (3.85%) Unix
7 9 (3.15%) AIX
8 7 (2.45%) CoreOS
8 7 (2.45%) Ubuntu
9 6 (2.10%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.40%) SUSE
11 3 (1.05%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.35%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (25.87%) DevOps
2 72 (25.17%) CI/CD
3 63 (22.03%) Migration
4 50 (17.48%) Infrastructure as Code
5 45 (15.73%) High Availability
6 41 (14.34%) Disaster Recovery
7 40 (13.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 40 (13.99%) Performance Tuning
8 36 (12.59%) Network Virtualisation
9 31 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
10 28 (9.79%) Capacity Planning
10 28 (9.79%) Problem-Solving
11 26 (9.09%) RBAC
11 26 (9.09%) Validation
11 26 (9.09%) Vulnerability Management
12 22 (7.69%) Analytics
12 22 (7.69%) Platform Engineering
13 21 (7.34%) AI
13 21 (7.34%) Cybersecurity
13 21 (7.34%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 82 (28.67%) PowerShell
2 68 (23.78%) Python
3 44 (15.38%) Bash
3 44 (15.38%) SQL
4 8 (2.80%) Bicep
5 7 (2.45%) C#
6 5 (1.75%) C
6 5 (1.75%) Shell Script
7 4 (1.40%) PL/SQL
7 4 (1.40%) T-SQL
8 3 (1.05%) Java
8 3 (1.05%) Korn
9 1 (0.35%) Cypher
9 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.35%) Go
9 1 (0.35%) Groovy
9 1 (0.35%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.35%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.35%) RPG
9 1 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 75 (26.22%) Security Cleared
2 59 (20.63%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.99%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.64%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (5.24%) Azure Certification
5 15 (5.24%) VCAP
6 14 (4.90%) Degree
6 14 (4.90%) MCSA
6 14 (4.90%) MCSE
7 7 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (2.10%) OCP
8 6 (2.10%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.75%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.75%) ISTQB
9 5 (1.75%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (1.40%) CCNA
10 4 (1.40%) CISSP
10 4 (1.40%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 3 (1.05%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.85%) QA
2 3 (1.05%) SLA
3 2 (0.70%) GMP
3 2 (0.70%) GxP
3 2 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.70%) NIST
3 2 (0.70%) 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 87 (30.42%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (16.78%) vSphere
3 42 (14.69%) Active Directory
4 41 (14.34%) VMware ESXi
5 28 (9.79%) Hyper-V
6 23 (8.04%) Docker
7 18 (6.29%) KVM
8 10 (3.50%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.15%) NFS
10 8 (2.80%) Firmware
10 8 (2.80%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (2.45%) Ceph
12 3 (1.05%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (1.05%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.70%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.35%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.35%) NLBS
14 1 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 63 (22.03%) Terraform
2 56 (19.58%) Ansible
3 52 (18.18%) Kubernetes
4 36 (12.59%) vCenter Server
5 14 (4.90%) PowerCLI
6 12 (4.20%) Grafana
7 9 (3.15%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.80%) SCCM
8 8 (2.80%) SCOM
9 6 (2.10%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.10%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.10%) VxRail
10 5 (1.75%) vMotion
11 4 (1.40%) Argo
11 4 (1.40%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.40%) Podman
12 3 (1.05%) Avamar
12 3 (1.05%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 92 (32.17%) VMware
2 81 (28.32%) Microsoft
3 35 (12.24%) Cisco
4 18 (6.29%) Oracle
4 18 (6.29%) ServiceNow
5 16 (5.59%) Red Hat
6 15 (5.24%) IBM
7 13 (4.55%) Google
7 13 (4.55%) NetApp
8 10 (3.50%) Qualys
8 10 (3.50%) Veeam
9 9 (3.15%) CyberArk
9 9 (3.15%) Dell
10 8 (2.80%) Databricks
11 7 (2.45%) Palo Alto
11 7 (2.45%) SolarWinds
11 7 (2.45%) Tenable
12 5 (1.75%) EMC
12 5 (1.75%) Meraki
12 5 (1.75%) Splunk