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

 6 months to
10 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 368 315
Rank change year-on-year +10 -53 +14
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 286 143 235
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.63% 0.51% 0.71%
As % of the System Software category 6.24% 4.31% 6.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 101 162
10th Percentile £387 £350 £333
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £738 £670
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 14
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +135.90% -78.65%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £63.04
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +1.45% +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 4,581 3,319 3,864
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.06% 11.93% 11.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,012 2,162 2,691
10th Percentile £218 £225 £225
25th Percentile £400 £382 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £687 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 89 132
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.14 £14.06
25th Percentile £28.00 £23.00 £15.94
Median hourly rate £60.00 £40.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% +65.43% -39.55%
75th Percentile £74.26 £81.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £91.50 £73.05
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £33.64 £24.18
% change year-on-year +56.09% +39.10% -51.64%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 10 August 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 -57 115 £525 - 58
North of England +1 79 £492 +17.18% 11
South East -29 54 £475 -15.56% 23
Yorkshire -11 43 £508 +13.53% 2
North West -11 35 £480 +42.22% 8
South West -27 17 £540 -8.09% 8
Midlands -48 17 £487 +2.53% 4
West Midlands -54 11 £406 -11.74% 4
East of England -12 6 £425 +41.67% 11
East Midlands -6 4 £500 +5.26%
North East - 1 £400 - 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 5 (1.75%) Confluence
1 5 (1.75%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.70%) Apache
3 2 (0.70%) CMS
3 2 (0.70%) IIS
3 2 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.70%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.35%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.35%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.40%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.40%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.70%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.70%) InDesign
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.35%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 137 (47.90%) Azure
2 46 (16.08%) Entra ID
3 39 (13.64%) AWS
4 36 (12.59%) Azure Monitor
5 32 (11.19%) Azure DevOps
6 26 (9.09%) OpenShift
7 25 (8.74%) Azure AKS
8 24 (8.39%) GitHub
9 21 (7.34%) IaaS
10 18 (6.29%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (5.59%) Microsoft 365
12 12 (4.20%) Azure Key Vault
12 12 (4.20%) GCP
12 12 (4.20%) Serverless
13 11 (3.85%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 11 (3.85%) Power Platform
14 9 (3.15%) Azure Logic Apps
14 9 (3.15%) Azure Storage
15 8 (2.80%) Azure Functions
15 8 (2.80%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 43 (15.03%) DNS
2 40 (13.99%) Firewall
3 26 (9.09%) VPN
4 20 (6.99%) DHCP
4 20 (6.99%) Network Security
4 20 (6.99%) SSL
4 20 (6.99%) VSAN
5 19 (6.64%) VLAN
6 16 (5.59%) WAN
7 10 (3.50%) SD-WAN
8 8 (2.80%) FTP
9 7 (2.45%) LAN
10 6 (2.10%) TCP/IP
11 5 (1.75%) SAN
11 5 (1.75%) SSH
11 5 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.40%) HTTPS
13 3 (1.05%) Cisco Nexus
14 2 (0.70%) NAS
14 2 (0.70%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.54%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.85%) Power BI
3 10 (3.50%) Azure SQL Database
4 8 (2.80%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.45%) Data Lake
5 7 (2.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (2.10%) MySQL
7 3 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.05%) Db2
7 3 (1.05%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.35%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.35%) Oracle Exadata
8 1 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.35%) Power Query
8 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (5.24%) Git
2 12 (4.20%) Jenkins
3 7 (2.45%) GitLab
4 6 (2.10%) JIRA
5 2 (0.70%) CppUnit
5 2 (0.70%) PVCS
5 2 (0.70%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.70%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.35%) Selenium
6 1 (0.35%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.35%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio
General
1 44 (15.38%) Social Skills
2 28 (9.79%) Finance
3 12 (4.20%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (3.85%) Banking
4 11 (3.85%) Legal
5 9 (3.15%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.45%) Retail
7 6 (2.10%) Front Office
8 5 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.75%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.40%) Marketing
10 2 (0.70%) Law
10 2 (0.70%) Local Government
10 2 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.70%) Publishing
11 1 (0.35%) Advertising
11 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 40 (13.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 36 (12.59%) Azure Engineer
3 32 (11.19%) Cloud Engineer
4 31 (10.84%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (9.09%) Senior
6 21 (7.34%) Lead
7 17 (5.94%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.59%) Analyst
8 16 (5.59%) Architect
9 15 (5.24%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (3.50%) Administrator
11 9 (3.15%) DBA
11 9 (3.15%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (3.15%) VMware Engineer
11 9 (3.15%) Wintel Engineer
12 8 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
12 8 (2.80%) Storage Engineer
13 7 (2.45%) Consultant
13 7 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
14 6 (2.10%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.85%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.80%) REST
2 8 (2.80%) YAML
3 5 (1.75%) Middleware
4 3 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.05%) JSON
5 2 (0.70%) SOAP
6 1 (0.35%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.35%) Java SE
6 1 (0.35%) Kafka
6 1 (0.35%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.35%) LDAP
6 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.35%) Node.js
6 1 (0.35%) NumPy
6 1 (0.35%) OpenID
6 1 (0.35%) Pandas
6 1 (0.35%) PySpark
6 1 (0.35%) SciPy
6 1 (0.35%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.49%) Replication
2 22 (7.69%) Clustering
3 18 (6.29%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.90%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.90%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (2.80%) Cloud Native
5 8 (2.80%) Product Ownership
6 7 (2.45%) Enterprise Storage
6 7 (2.45%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.45%) Self-Motivation
7 6 (2.10%) Fixed Income
7 6 (2.10%) Market Risk
7 6 (2.10%) Operational Technology
7 6 (2.10%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.75%) Onboarding
8 5 (1.75%) PKI
8 5 (1.75%) Security Posture
9 3 (1.05%) EMC Centera
9 3 (1.05%) SCADA
9 3 (1.05%) Symmetrix
Operating Systems
1 93 (32.52%) Windows
2 71 (24.83%) Linux
3 52 (18.18%) Windows Server
4 32 (11.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (8.39%) VMS
6 8 (2.80%) Unix
7 7 (2.45%) Ubuntu
8 6 (2.10%) AIX
9 5 (1.75%) CoreOS
10 4 (1.40%) Apple iOS
10 4 (1.40%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.40%) SUSE
11 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.35%) Android
12 1 (0.35%) Solaris
12 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (25.17%) DevOps
2 69 (24.13%) CI/CD
3 60 (20.98%) Migration
4 56 (19.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 53 (18.53%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (14.69%) Performance Tuning
7 41 (14.34%) High Availability
8 36 (12.59%) Disaster Recovery
9 34 (11.89%) Continuous Improvement
10 30 (10.49%) Validation
11 29 (10.14%) Problem-Solving
12 28 (9.79%) Network Virtualisation
12 28 (9.79%) RBAC
13 26 (9.09%) Vulnerability Management
14 25 (8.74%) Capacity Planning
15 24 (8.39%) Stakeholder Management
16 23 (8.04%) Vulnerability Remediation
17 22 (7.69%) Analytics
18 21 (7.34%) Root Cause Analysis
18 21 (7.34%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 86 (30.07%) PowerShell
2 56 (19.58%) Python
3 44 (15.38%) SQL
4 35 (12.24%) Bash
5 9 (3.15%) Bicep
5 9 (3.15%) C#
6 8 (2.80%) C
7 6 (2.10%) T-SQL
8 4 (1.40%) Korn
8 4 (1.40%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.40%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.05%) Java
10 2 (0.70%) C++
10 2 (0.70%) Embedded C
11 1 (0.35%) Cypher
11 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.35%) Go
11 1 (0.35%) Groovy
11 1 (0.35%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 76 (26.57%) Security Cleared
2 61 (21.33%) SC Cleared
3 19 (6.64%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.94%) Degree
4 17 (5.94%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (5.24%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.85%) VCAP
7 10 (3.50%) MCSA
7 10 (3.50%) MCSE
8 9 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (2.10%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.10%) ISTQB
9 6 (2.10%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 5 (1.75%) CCNA
10 5 (1.75%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.40%) CISSP
11 4 (1.40%) OCP
11 4 (1.40%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (1.05%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.50%) QA
2 3 (1.05%) PCI DSS
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
4 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
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 46 (16.08%) Active Directory
3 44 (15.38%) vSphere
4 37 (12.94%) VMware ESXi
5 26 (9.09%) Docker
6 21 (7.34%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.90%) VMware NSX
8 9 (3.15%) KVM
9 7 (2.45%) Ceph
9 7 (2.45%) NFS
10 6 (2.10%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (1.75%) Firmware
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%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 63 (22.03%) Terraform
2 47 (16.43%) Ansible
3 45 (15.73%) Kubernetes
4 30 (10.49%) vCenter Server
5 13 (4.55%) PowerCLI
6 12 (4.20%) Grafana
7 9 (3.15%) Prometheus
7 9 (3.15%) SCOM
8 8 (2.80%) SCCM
8 8 (2.80%) VxRail
9 6 (2.10%) Failover Clustering
9 6 (2.10%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (2.10%) Podman
9 6 (2.10%) vMotion
10 4 (1.40%) Argo
10 4 (1.40%) Avamar
10 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Clustering
10 4 (1.40%) OPNET
10 4 (1.40%) Proxmox
10 4 (1.40%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 92 (32.17%) VMware
2 89 (31.12%) Microsoft
3 29 (10.14%) Cisco
4 21 (7.34%) Oracle
5 20 (6.99%) ServiceNow
6 15 (5.24%) NetApp
7 13 (4.55%) Dell
7 13 (4.55%) IBM
7 13 (4.55%) Red Hat
8 11 (3.85%) Veeam
9 10 (3.50%) Qualys
10 9 (3.15%) CyberArk
11 8 (2.80%) Databricks
11 8 (2.80%) Google
12 7 (2.45%) SolarWinds
13 6 (2.10%) Palo Alto
13 6 (2.10%) Tenable
14 5 (1.75%) Commvault
14 5 (1.75%) Meraki
14 5 (1.75%) Splunk
108 Virtual Machines jobs in England