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

 6 months to
29 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 346 357 307
Rank change year-on-year +11 -50 +20
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 291 149 239
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.65% 0.54% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 6.51% 4.55% 6.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 107 170
10th Percentile £389 £350 £331
25th Percentile £425 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £610 £608
90th Percentile £653 £750 £670
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 18
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% -78.65%
75th Percentile £30.50 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £33.20 - £35.70
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 4,468 3,277 3,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.97% 11.91% 11.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,951 2,142 2,736
10th Percentile £213 £225 £225
25th Percentile £400 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £692 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 88 148
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.14 £14.06
25th Percentile £26.66 £22.50 £15.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £35.57 £22.28
Median % change year-on-year +54.61% +59.70% -44.31%
75th Percentile £74.00 £80.00 £59.64
90th Percentile £83.75 £90.45 £70.84
UK median hourly rate £51.75 £30.00 £23.80
% change year-on-year +72.50% +26.05% -52.40%

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 29 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 29 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 -38 112 £525 -2.33% 31
North of England -3 91 £492 +18.23% 15
Yorkshire -4 53 £500 +11.86% 6
South East -26 53 £475 -15.56% 23
North West -18 36 £476 +36.00% 9
Midlands -58 18 £487 +2.53% 5
South West -24 16 £540 -8.09% 5
West Midlands -62 12 £425 -7.61% 4
East Midlands -10 4 £500 +5.26% 1
East of England -16 4 £425 -19.12% 7
North East -46 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 (1.72%) Confluence
1 5 (1.72%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.69%) Apache
3 2 (0.69%) CMS
3 2 (0.69%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.69%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.34%) IIS
4 1 (0.34%) nginx
4 1 (0.34%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 5 (1.72%) Adobe Illustrator
1 5 (1.72%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.69%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.69%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 131 (45.02%) Azure
2 43 (14.78%) Entra ID
3 41 (14.09%) AWS
4 34 (11.68%) OpenShift
5 33 (11.34%) Azure DevOps
5 33 (11.34%) Azure Monitor
6 23 (7.90%) Azure AKS
6 23 (7.90%) GitHub
7 16 (5.50%) GitHub Actions
7 16 (5.50%) IaaS
8 15 (5.15%) GCP
8 15 (5.15%) Microsoft 365
9 13 (4.47%) Serverless
10 12 (4.12%) Azure Key Vault
11 10 (3.44%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 10 (3.44%) Azure Storage
11 10 (3.44%) Power Platform
12 9 (3.09%) Azure Functions
12 9 (3.09%) Azure Logic Apps
13 8 (2.75%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 41 (14.09%) DNS
2 39 (13.40%) Firewall
3 26 (8.93%) VPN
4 20 (6.87%) DHCP
4 20 (6.87%) Network Security
5 19 (6.53%) SSL
5 19 (6.53%) VLAN
6 16 (5.50%) VSAN
6 16 (5.50%) WAN
7 10 (3.44%) SD-WAN
8 8 (2.75%) FTP
9 7 (2.41%) LAN
9 7 (2.41%) SAN
10 6 (2.06%) TCP/IP
11 5 (1.72%) SSH
11 5 (1.72%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.37%) HTTPS
13 3 (1.03%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (1.03%) Reverse Proxy
14 2 (0.69%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.31%) SQL Server
2 10 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
2 10 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (3.44%) Power BI
3 7 (2.41%) Data Lake
4 6 (2.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 5 (1.72%) MySQL
6 4 (1.37%) Db2
7 3 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.03%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.69%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.34%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.34%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 17 (5.84%) Git
2 16 (5.50%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.09%) GitLab
4 7 (2.41%) JIRA
5 3 (1.03%) Selenium
6 2 (0.69%) JMeter
6 2 (0.69%) Postman
6 2 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.69%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.69%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.34%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 43 (14.78%) Social Skills
2 30 (10.31%) Finance
3 15 (5.15%) Banking
4 13 (4.47%) Legal
5 12 (4.12%) Analytical Skills
6 8 (2.75%) Public Sector
7 7 (2.41%) Retail
8 6 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.06%) Front Office
9 5 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.37%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.37%) Marketing
11 2 (0.69%) Law
11 2 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.69%) Publishing
12 1 (0.34%) Advertising
12 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 39 (13.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 35 (12.03%) Azure Engineer
3 34 (11.68%) DevOps Engineer
4 28 (9.62%) Cloud Engineer
5 21 (7.22%) Senior
6 20 (6.87%) Lead
7 15 (5.15%) Analyst
7 15 (5.15%) Architect
7 15 (5.15%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (4.81%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 10 (3.44%) Administrator
9 10 (3.44%) VMware Engineer
10 9 (3.09%) Linux Engineer
10 9 (3.09%) Storage Engineer
10 9 (3.09%) Wintel Engineer
11 8 (2.75%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 8 (2.75%) DBA
11 8 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
12 7 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
12 7 (2.41%) Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.78%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.75%) REST
2 8 (2.75%) YAML
3 5 (1.72%) Middleware
4 3 (1.03%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.03%) JSON
5 2 (0.69%) Hugging Face
5 2 (0.69%) SOAP
6 1 (0.34%) .NET
6 1 (0.34%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.34%) Java SE
6 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.34%) LangChain
6 1 (0.34%) LDAP
6 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.34%) PySpark
6 1 (0.34%) PyTorch
6 1 (0.34%) SpaCy
6 1 (0.34%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.34%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 29 (9.97%) Replication
2 19 (6.53%) Clustering
3 18 (6.19%) Data Centre
3 18 (6.19%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (5.15%) Linux Command Line
5 9 (3.09%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.75%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.41%) Enterprise Storage
7 7 (2.41%) Mainframe
7 7 (2.41%) Onboarding
8 6 (2.06%) Fixed Income
8 6 (2.06%) Market Risk
8 6 (2.06%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.72%) FlexPod
9 5 (1.72%) PKI
9 5 (1.72%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.37%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.03%) IBM XIV
11 3 (1.03%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 90 (30.93%) Windows
2 79 (27.15%) Linux
3 49 (16.84%) Windows Server
4 34 (11.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (8.93%) VMS
6 9 (3.09%) Unix
7 7 (2.41%) AIX
7 7 (2.41%) CoreOS
7 7 (2.41%) Ubuntu
8 6 (2.06%) Data ONTAP
9 4 (1.37%) SUSE
10 3 (1.03%) Apple iOS
10 3 (1.03%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (1.03%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.69%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.34%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (26.12%) DevOps
2 72 (24.74%) CI/CD
3 61 (20.96%) Migration
4 55 (18.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 51 (17.53%) Infrastructure as Code
6 43 (14.78%) Performance Tuning
7 41 (14.09%) High Availability
8 39 (13.40%) Disaster Recovery
9 31 (10.65%) Problem-Solving
10 30 (10.31%) Continuous Improvement
10 30 (10.31%) Network Virtualisation
11 28 (9.62%) RBAC
12 27 (9.28%) Validation
13 26 (8.93%) Vulnerability Management
14 25 (8.59%) Capacity Planning
15 23 (7.90%) Analytics
15 23 (7.90%) Platform Engineering
15 23 (7.90%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 21 (7.22%) Root Cause Analysis
16 21 (7.22%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 84 (28.87%) PowerShell
2 63 (21.65%) Python
3 42 (14.43%) SQL
4 39 (13.40%) Bash
5 8 (2.75%) Bicep
6 7 (2.41%) C#
7 6 (2.06%) C
8 5 (1.72%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.72%) T-SQL
9 4 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.03%) Java
10 3 (1.03%) Korn
11 1 (0.34%) Cypher
11 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.34%) Go
11 1 (0.34%) Groovy
11 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.34%) RPG
11 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 74 (25.43%) Security Cleared
2 58 (19.93%) SC Cleared
3 18 (6.19%) Azure Certification
4 16 (5.50%) Degree
4 16 (5.50%) Microsoft Certification
4 16 (5.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 11 (3.78%) VCAP
6 10 (3.44%) MCSA
6 10 (3.44%) MCSE
7 8 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (2.06%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.06%) ISTQB
8 6 (2.06%) OCP
8 6 (2.06%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.72%) CCNA
9 5 (1.72%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 5 (1.72%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 4 (1.37%) CISSP
11 3 (1.03%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.12%) QA
2 3 (1.03%) 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 (0.34%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.34%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.34%) GDPR
4 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 85 (29.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (16.49%) vSphere
3 44 (15.12%) Active Directory
4 38 (13.06%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (9.28%) Docker
6 23 (7.90%) Hyper-V
7 13 (4.47%) KVM
8 12 (4.12%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.09%) NFS
10 7 (2.41%) Ceph
11 6 (2.06%) Firmware
12 5 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
13 3 (1.03%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (1.03%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.69%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.34%) BitLocker
15 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 63 (21.65%) Terraform
2 53 (18.21%) Ansible
3 52 (17.87%) Kubernetes
4 31 (10.65%) vCenter Server
5 15 (5.15%) PowerCLI
6 12 (4.12%) Grafana
7 9 (3.09%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.75%) SCCM
8 8 (2.75%) SCOM
9 6 (2.06%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.06%) Podman
9 6 (2.06%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.06%) VxRail
10 5 (1.72%) vMotion
11 4 (1.37%) Argo
11 4 (1.37%) Avamar
11 4 (1.37%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.37%) IBM BigFix
11 4 (1.37%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.37%) OPNET
Vendors
1 90 (30.93%) VMware
2 85 (29.21%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.97%) Cisco
4 19 (6.53%) Oracle
4 19 (6.53%) ServiceNow
5 17 (5.84%) NetApp
6 15 (5.15%) Red Hat
7 14 (4.81%) IBM
8 13 (4.47%) Dell
9 11 (3.78%) Google
9 11 (3.78%) Veeam
10 10 (3.44%) Qualys
11 9 (3.09%) CyberArk
12 8 (2.75%) Databricks
13 7 (2.41%) SolarWinds
14 6 (2.06%) Palo Alto
14 6 (2.06%) Tenable
15 5 (1.72%) Commvault
15 5 (1.72%) EMC
15 5 (1.72%) Meraki
78 Virtual Machines jobs in England