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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 343 349 296
Rank change year-on-year +6 -53 +30
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 275 149 276
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.64% 0.60% 0.73%
As % of the System Software category 6.35% 4.76% 6.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 101 199
10th Percentile £356 £350 £343
25th Percentile £417 £413 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.75% -6.82% +4.76%
75th Percentile £579 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK median daily rate £497 £513 £535
% change year-on-year -3.06% -4.21% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 6 25
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £48.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +39.13% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.31 £15.19
90th Percentile - £65.25 £56.21
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +39.13% +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 4,328 3,128 4,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.02% 12.56% 11.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,909 2,080 2,914
10th Percentile £213 £214 £206
25th Percentile £400 £381 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £608
90th Percentile £681 £700 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 74 205
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £23.00 £19.91 £14.48
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.75 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +82.61% +27.78% -55.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £77.15 £58.69
90th Percentile £77.50 £90.68 £72.45
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +82.14% +15.80% -55.22%

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 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 -52 105 £525 -4.55% 15
North of England +1 95 £483 +27.78% 11
Yorkshire -9 55 £500 +5.26% 3
South East -37 41 £475 -17.39% 25
North West -16 38 £463 +23.17% 8
Midlands -62 15 £438 -12.15% 4
South West -17 13 £500 +5.26% 6
West Midlands -63 12 £425 -14.66% 3
East of England -32 6 £425 -19.12% 9
North East -35 2 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -19 1 £500 -4.76% 1
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 4 (1.45%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.09%) Confluence
2 3 (1.09%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.73%) Apache
3 2 (0.73%) CMS
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.73%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.73%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.36%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.36%) IIS
4 1 (0.36%) nginx
4 1 (0.36%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.45%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.45%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.73%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.36%) InDesign
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 113 (41.09%) Azure
2 39 (14.18%) AWS
3 34 (12.36%) OpenShift
4 30 (10.91%) Entra ID
5 26 (9.45%) GitHub
6 25 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (7.64%) Azure Monitor
8 19 (6.91%) Azure AKS
9 18 (6.55%) GitHub Actions
10 16 (5.82%) GCP
11 15 (5.45%) Azure Key Vault
11 15 (5.45%) Serverless
12 12 (4.36%) Azure Storage
13 11 (4.00%) Azure Functions
13 11 (4.00%) Microsoft 365
14 9 (3.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 8 (2.91%) Nutanix
16 7 (2.55%) Azure Logic Apps
17 6 (2.18%) Cohesity
17 6 (2.18%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 38 (13.82%) DNS
2 33 (12.00%) Firewall
3 24 (8.73%) VPN
4 22 (8.00%) Network Security
5 18 (6.55%) DHCP
5 18 (6.55%) VLAN
6 16 (5.82%) WAN
7 15 (5.45%) SSL
7 15 (5.45%) VSAN
8 10 (3.64%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.91%) FTP
9 8 (2.91%) SAN
10 6 (2.18%) LAN
11 4 (1.45%) SSH
11 4 (1.45%) TCP/IP
11 4 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
12 3 (1.09%) HTTPS
13 2 (0.73%) IPsec
13 2 (0.73%) NAS
13 2 (0.73%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.00%) SQL Server
2 11 (4.00%) Azure SQL Database
3 7 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (2.18%) Db2
4 6 (2.18%) Power BI
5 4 (1.45%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.09%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.36%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.36%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.36%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.36%) Power Query
7 1 (0.36%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 19 (6.91%) Git
2 13 (4.73%) Jenkins
3 10 (3.64%) GitLab
4 7 (2.55%) JIRA
5 2 (0.73%) JMeter
5 2 (0.73%) Postman
5 2 (0.73%) PVCS
5 2 (0.73%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (0.73%) Selenium
5 2 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.73%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.73%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.36%) Gradle
6 1 (0.36%) RStudio
General
1 40 (14.55%) Social Skills
2 28 (10.18%) Finance
3 13 (4.73%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (4.73%) Banking
3 13 (4.73%) Legal
4 9 (3.27%) Public Sector
5 7 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (2.18%) Retail
7 5 (1.82%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.45%) Front Office
9 3 (1.09%) Marketing
10 2 (0.73%) Electronics
10 2 (0.73%) Law
10 2 (0.73%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.73%) Publishing
11 1 (0.36%) Advertising
11 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 34 (12.36%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (8.73%) Azure Engineer
2 24 (8.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 22 (8.00%) Senior
4 18 (6.55%) Cloud Engineer
5 16 (5.82%) Architect
6 14 (5.09%) Lead
6 14 (5.09%) Wintel Engineer
7 13 (4.73%) Analyst
8 10 (3.64%) VMware Engineer
9 9 (3.27%) Administrator
9 9 (3.27%) Technical Specialist
10 8 (2.91%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 8 (2.91%) Linux Engineer
11 7 (2.55%) Azure Architect
11 7 (2.55%) Migration Engineer
12 6 (2.18%) Platform Engineer
12 6 (2.18%) Product Owner
12 6 (2.18%) Security Engineer
12 6 (2.18%) Senior VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.91%) ARM Templates
1 8 (2.91%) REST
2 6 (2.18%) YAML
3 4 (1.45%) Middleware
4 3 (1.09%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.09%) JSON
5 2 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.73%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.73%) PySpark
5 2 (0.73%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.73%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.73%) SOAP
5 2 (0.73%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.73%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.36%) Kafka
6 1 (0.36%) Node.js
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.36%) Pandas
6 1 (0.36%) SciPy
6 1 (0.36%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 25 (9.09%) Replication
2 23 (8.36%) Data Centre
3 19 (6.91%) Clustering
4 17 (6.18%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.73%) Linux Command Line
6 10 (3.64%) Cloud Native
7 9 (3.27%) Product Ownership
8 8 (2.91%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.18%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.18%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.18%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.82%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.82%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.82%) PKI
10 5 (1.82%) Public Cloud
11 4 (1.45%) Fixed Income
11 4 (1.45%) Market Risk
11 4 (1.45%) Security Posture
12 3 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 87 (31.64%) Windows
2 73 (26.55%) Linux
3 49 (17.82%) Windows Server
4 29 (10.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (8.36%) VMS
6 11 (4.00%) Unix
7 9 (3.27%) AIX
8 7 (2.55%) CoreOS
9 6 (2.18%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.45%) SUSE
11 3 (1.09%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.09%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.36%) Android
13 1 (0.36%) Solaris
13 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (26.91%) CI/CD
2 69 (25.09%) DevOps
3 62 (22.55%) Migration
4 49 (17.82%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (15.27%) High Availability
6 39 (14.18%) Disaster Recovery
7 38 (13.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 36 (13.09%) Performance Tuning
9 33 (12.00%) Continuous Improvement
9 33 (12.00%) Network Virtualisation
10 28 (10.18%) Capacity Planning
11 26 (9.45%) Problem-Solving
12 24 (8.73%) RBAC
12 24 (8.73%) Validation
12 24 (8.73%) Vulnerability Management
13 23 (8.36%) Cybersecurity
14 22 (8.00%) Containerisation
15 20 (7.27%) Platform Engineering
15 20 (7.27%) Storage Management
15 20 (7.27%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 74 (26.91%) PowerShell
2 66 (24.00%) Python
3 45 (16.36%) Bash
4 39 (14.18%) SQL
5 8 (2.91%) Bicep
6 6 (2.18%) C#
7 5 (1.82%) C
7 5 (1.82%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.45%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.09%) Java
10 2 (0.73%) C++
10 2 (0.73%) Embedded C
10 2 (0.73%) Embedded C++
10 2 (0.73%) Korn
11 1 (0.36%) Go
11 1 (0.36%) Groovy
11 1 (0.36%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.36%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.36%) RPG
11 1 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 66 (24.00%) Security Cleared
2 50 (18.18%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 15 (5.45%) Microsoft Certification
4 15 (5.45%) VCAP
5 14 (5.09%) MCSA
5 14 (5.09%) MCSE
6 12 (4.36%) Azure Certification
7 8 (2.91%) Degree
8 6 (2.18%) OCP
8 6 (2.18%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.82%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.82%) ISTQB
9 5 (1.82%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 4 (1.45%) CISSP
11 3 (1.09%) CISM
11 3 (1.09%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.09%) PMP
12 2 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.36%) QA
2 2 (0.73%) GMP
2 2 (0.73%) GxP
2 2 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (0.73%) NIST
2 2 (0.73%) SLA
3 1 (0.36%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.36%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.36%) GDPR
3 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
3 1 (0.36%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 90 (32.73%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (17.45%) vSphere
3 41 (14.91%) VMware ESXi
4 36 (13.09%) Active Directory
5 29 (10.55%) Hyper-V
6 20 (7.27%) Docker
7 19 (6.91%) KVM
8 10 (3.64%) Virtual Desktop
8 10 (3.64%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.27%) Firmware
9 9 (3.27%) NFS
10 7 (2.55%) Ceph
11 3 (1.09%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.73%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.73%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.36%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.36%) NLBS
13 1 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 62 (22.55%) Terraform
2 59 (21.45%) Ansible
3 47 (17.09%) Kubernetes
4 36 (13.09%) vCenter Server
5 14 (5.09%) PowerCLI
6 11 (4.00%) Grafana
7 9 (3.27%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.91%) SCCM
9 6 (2.18%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.18%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.18%) VxRail
10 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (1.82%) vMotion
11 4 (1.45%) Argo
11 4 (1.45%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.45%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.45%) SCOM
12 3 (1.09%) Podman
12 3 (1.09%) Progress Chef
13 2 (0.73%) SELinux
Vendors
1 94 (34.18%) VMware
2 74 (26.91%) Microsoft
3 33 (12.00%) Cisco
4 16 (5.82%) IBM
5 15 (5.45%) Oracle
5 15 (5.45%) Red Hat
6 12 (4.36%) Google
6 12 (4.36%) NetApp
6 12 (4.36%) ServiceNow
7 10 (3.64%) Qualys
8 9 (3.27%) Dell
8 9 (3.27%) Veeam
9 8 (2.91%) CyberArk
10 7 (2.55%) SolarWinds
10 7 (2.55%) Tenable
11 6 (2.18%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.82%) Commvault
12 5 (1.82%) Databricks
12 5 (1.82%) Splunk
13 4 (1.45%) Xerox