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

 6 months to
14 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 306 303
Rank change year-on-year -53 -3 +31
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 205 182 272
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.60% 0.70% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 4.89% 5.64% 6.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 145 118 186
10th Percentile £321 £350 £291
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £580 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -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 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +150.85% -61.95%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £84.36
90th Percentile - - £88.75
UK median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £25.12
% change year-on-year +11.11% +150.85% -61.95%

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 4,189 3,226 4,408
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.24% 12.38% 11.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,857 2,115 3,047
10th Percentile £200 £200 £188
25th Percentile £400 £373 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £480
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +9.38% -8.57%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £600
90th Percentile £697 £738 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £480
% change year-on-year -2.91% +7.29% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 78 224
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.08 £21.01 £17.64
Median hourly rate £32.93 £28.71 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.72% -28.24% +3.90%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.75 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £34.50 £29.00 £43.80
% change year-on-year +18.97% -33.78% +11.58%

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 14 February 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 14 February 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 14 February 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 -33 84 £507 -13.70% 7
North of England -35 51 £472 +23.91% 18
Yorkshire -34 35 £491 +19.76% 7
South West -5 22 £550 +2.33% 2
South East -24 20 £525 +50.00% 13
North West -30 15 £460 +20.73% 11
East of England -33 12 £475 -8.43% 7
West Midlands -51 6 £500 -6.98% 6
Midlands -58 6 £500 -6.98% 9
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 13 (6.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (2.93%) IIS
3 5 (2.44%) Confluence
3 5 (2.44%) SharePoint
4 4 (1.95%) Apache
4 4 (1.95%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.46%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (0.98%) Ethereum
6 2 (0.98%) Hyperledger
6 2 (0.98%) nginx
6 2 (0.98%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.49%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.49%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.49%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.49%) Adobe Illustrator
1 1 (0.49%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.49%) OmniGraffle
1 1 (0.49%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.49%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 79 (38.54%) Azure
2 34 (16.59%) AWS
2 34 (16.59%) GitHub
3 21 (10.24%) Azure DevOps
4 20 (9.76%) GitHub Actions
4 20 (9.76%) OpenShift
5 14 (6.83%) GCP
6 11 (5.37%) Microsoft 365
7 10 (4.88%) Azure Monitor
7 10 (4.88%) Serverless
8 9 (4.39%) Azure AKS
8 9 (4.39%) Entra ID
9 8 (3.90%) Azure Storage
9 8 (3.90%) Cloud Computing
10 6 (2.93%) AWS CodePipeline
11 5 (2.44%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (2.44%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (2.44%) Azure Key Vault
11 5 (2.44%) IaaS
11 5 (2.44%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 28 (13.66%) DNS
1 28 (13.66%) Firewall
2 11 (5.37%) TCP/IP
2 11 (5.37%) VPN
3 10 (4.88%) DHCP
3 10 (4.88%) Network Security
4 9 (4.39%) WAN
5 6 (2.93%) Reverse Proxy
5 6 (2.93%) Skype
5 6 (2.93%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (1.95%) SAN
6 4 (1.95%) VLAN
7 2 (0.98%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.98%) SSH
7 2 (0.98%) SSL
7 2 (0.98%) Wireless
8 1 (0.49%) Cisco IOS
8 1 (0.49%) IPsec
8 1 (0.49%) NAS
8 1 (0.49%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.39%) SQL Server
2 7 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (2.44%) Azure SQL Database
4 4 (1.95%) Data Lake
4 4 (1.95%) OLTP
5 3 (1.46%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.46%) Data Mining
5 3 (1.46%) DB2
5 3 (1.46%) Oracle Database
5 3 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.98%) Data Hub
6 2 (0.98%) Data Vault
6 2 (0.98%) ImageNet
6 2 (0.98%) Power BI
7 1 (0.49%) Big Data
7 1 (0.49%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.49%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.49%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 28 (13.66%) Git
2 23 (11.22%) JIRA
3 14 (6.83%) Jenkins
4 12 (5.85%) GitLab
5 8 (3.90%) PVCS
5 8 (3.90%) Rational DOORS
6 4 (1.95%) RStudio
7 2 (0.98%) Hardhat
7 2 (0.98%) JMeter
7 2 (0.98%) Postman
7 2 (0.98%) Selenium
7 2 (0.98%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.49%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.49%) Gradle
8 1 (0.49%) SonarQube
General
1 39 (19.02%) Social Skills
2 14 (6.83%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (5.37%) Finance
3 11 (5.37%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.39%) Electronics
5 8 (3.90%) Banking
6 6 (2.93%) Legal
6 6 (2.93%) Spanish Language
7 5 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.95%) Social Science
8 4 (1.95%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.98%) Law
11 1 (0.49%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.49%) Back Office
11 1 (0.49%) Front Office
11 1 (0.49%) Italian Language
11 1 (0.49%) Marketing
11 1 (0.49%) Police
11 1 (0.49%) Retail
Job Titles
1 33 (16.10%) DevOps Engineer
2 18 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
3 17 (8.29%) Senior
4 16 (7.80%) Security Engineer
5 15 (7.32%) Platform Engineer
6 14 (6.83%) Software Engineer
7 13 (6.34%) Architect
8 12 (5.85%) C++ Software Engineer
8 12 (5.85%) Embedded C++ Engineer
8 12 (5.85%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
8 12 (5.85%) Embedded Engineer
8 12 (5.85%) Embedded Software Engineer
8 12 (5.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 11 (5.37%) Cloud Engineer
9 11 (5.37%) Data Engineer
10 10 (4.88%) Wintel Engineer
11 9 (4.39%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 9 (4.39%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 7 (3.41%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
12 7 (3.41%) Kubernetes Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (4.88%) ARM Templates
2 5 (2.44%) Middleware
3 4 (1.95%) Hugging Face
3 4 (1.95%) Kafka
3 4 (1.95%) OpenTelemetry
3 4 (1.95%) TensorFlow
4 3 (1.46%) .NET
4 3 (1.46%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.46%) OpenCV
4 3 (1.46%) PyTorch
4 3 (1.46%) Regular Expression
4 3 (1.46%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.98%) PySpark
5 2 (0.98%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (0.98%) Truffle
5 2 (0.98%) web3js
5 2 (0.98%) YAML
6 1 (0.49%) Express.js
6 1 (0.49%) Retrofit
6 1 (0.49%) UIKit
Miscellaneous
1 23 (11.22%) Data Centre
2 16 (7.80%) Private Cloud
3 14 (6.83%) Cloud Native
4 13 (6.34%) Replication
5 10 (4.88%) Clustering
6 8 (3.90%) Hybrid Cloud
7 7 (3.41%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (2.93%) CAN bus
8 6 (2.93%) Onboarding
8 6 (2.93%) Public Cloud
9 5 (2.44%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.95%) PKI
11 3 (1.46%) Algorithms
11 3 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (1.46%) NHS
11 3 (1.46%) Product Ownership
12 2 (0.98%) FlexPod
Operating Systems
1 61 (29.76%) Linux
2 60 (29.27%) Windows
3 29 (14.15%) Windows Server
4 26 (12.68%) VMS
5 10 (4.88%) Windows 10
6 8 (3.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 7 (3.41%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (1.46%) AIX
8 3 (1.46%) Unix
8 3 (1.46%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.98%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.98%) CoreOS
9 2 (0.98%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.49%) Android
10 1 (0.49%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (35.61%) DevOps
2 67 (32.68%) CI/CD
3 49 (23.90%) Infrastructure as Code
4 33 (16.10%) Agile
5 32 (15.61%) Migration
6 29 (14.15%) High Availability
7 25 (12.20%) Cybersecurity
8 24 (11.71%) Continuous Improvement
9 23 (11.22%) Containerisation
10 21 (10.24%) Disaster Recovery
10 21 (10.24%) Platform Engineering
10 21 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
10 21 (10.24%) Technical Leadership
11 18 (8.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 17 (8.29%) Analytics
12 17 (8.29%) Network Virtualisation
13 15 (7.32%) AI
13 15 (7.32%) Root Cause Analysis
13 15 (7.32%) Runbook
14 14 (6.83%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 49 (23.90%) Python
2 43 (20.98%) PowerShell
3 25 (12.20%) Bash
3 25 (12.20%) SQL
4 14 (6.83%) C++
5 13 (6.34%) Embedded C++
6 10 (4.88%) C
6 10 (4.88%) Java
7 9 (4.39%) C#
7 9 (4.39%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.41%) Embedded C
9 5 (2.44%) Ruby
10 4 (1.95%) Bicep
10 4 (1.95%) Scala
11 2 (0.98%) PHP
11 2 (0.98%) Solidity
12 1 (0.49%) Go
12 1 (0.49%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.49%) Swift
12 1 (0.49%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 61 (29.76%) Security Cleared
2 50 (24.39%) SC Cleared
3 12 (5.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 11 (5.37%) VCAP
5 10 (4.88%) DV Cleared
5 10 (4.88%) OCP
5 10 (4.88%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (3.90%) MCSA
6 8 (3.90%) MCSE
6 8 (3.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (2.93%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.95%) Degree
9 2 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.98%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (0.98%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.49%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
10 1 (0.49%) RHCE
10 1 (0.49%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.93%) QA
2 5 (2.44%) GDPR
3 4 (1.95%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.98%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.98%) SLA
6 1 (0.49%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.49%) GRC
6 1 (0.49%) NIST
System Software
1 54 (26.34%) VMware Infrastructure
2 29 (14.15%) Active Directory
3 25 (12.20%) vSphere
4 19 (9.27%) VMware ESXi
5 18 (8.78%) Docker
6 16 (7.80%) Hyper-V
7 14 (6.83%) KVM
8 10 (4.88%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (3.41%) VMware NSX
10 6 (2.93%) Firmware
11 2 (0.98%) NFS
11 2 (0.98%) Xen
12 1 (0.49%) Ceph
12 1 (0.49%) NLBS
Systems Management
1 62 (30.24%) Terraform
2 46 (22.44%) Kubernetes
3 40 (19.51%) Ansible
4 32 (15.61%) vCenter Server
5 12 (5.85%) SCCM
6 11 (5.37%) WSUS
7 9 (4.39%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (2.93%) CASB
8 6 (2.93%) SCOrch
9 5 (2.44%) Rancher
10 4 (1.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.95%) PowerCLI
10 4 (1.95%) vMotion
11 3 (1.46%) Data Guard
11 3 (1.46%) IBM BigFix
11 3 (1.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 3 (1.46%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (1.46%) vRealize
12 2 (0.98%) Fluentd
12 2 (0.98%) Grafana
Vendors
1 64 (31.22%) Microsoft
2 60 (29.27%) VMware
3 21 (10.24%) Cisco
4 12 (5.85%) IBM
5 8 (3.90%) ANSYS
5 8 (3.90%) Oracle
5 8 (3.90%) Red Hat
6 7 (3.41%) NetApp
7 6 (2.93%) Databricks
7 6 (2.93%) Google
8 5 (2.44%) OpenAI
8 5 (2.44%) SolarWinds
8 5 (2.44%) Sophos
8 5 (2.44%) Veeam
9 4 (1.95%) Dell
9 4 (1.95%) Pure Storage
9 4 (1.95%) Remedy
10 3 (1.46%) Alibaba
10 3 (1.46%) Tenable
11 2 (0.98%) Palo Alto
53 Virtual Machines jobs in England