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

 6 months to
25 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 363 367 314
Rank change year-on-year +4 -53 +18
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 287 140 229
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.62% 0.50% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 6.15% 4.09% 6.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 96 161
10th Percentile £391 £347 £338
25th Percentile £425 £413 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £718 £638 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 6
10th Percentile £26.90 - -
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £66.46
90th Percentile - - £84.67
UK median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%

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 4,669 3,424 3,805
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.03% 12.29% 11.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,038 2,193 2,532
10th Percentile £213 £213 £220
25th Percentile £384 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% +0.99%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 104 96
10th Percentile £17.75 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £29.56 £22.50 £17.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £34.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +88.41% +25.45% -42.31%
75th Percentile £74.66 £80.00 £69.77
90th Percentile £92.11 £89.89 £84.28
UK median hourly rate £63.14 £32.77 £27.50
% change year-on-year +92.66% +19.16% -45.00%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 -61 105 £532 +5.87% 95
North of England 0 79 £500 +19.05% 30
South East -28 57 £475 -19.15% 42
Yorkshire -8 45 £519 +12.58% 10
North West -24 32 £484 +48.92% 19
Midlands -39 18 £487 -1.62% 18
South West -36 16 £558 +1.36% 8
East of England -22 14 £327 -31.26% 33
West Midlands -36 13 £487 -2.84% 15
East Midlands -9 4 £500 +5.26% 3
North East - 2 £413 - 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 9 (3.14%) IIS
2 6 (2.09%) Confluence
3 5 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.39%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.70%) Apache
5 2 (0.70%) CMS
5 2 (0.70%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.35%) nginx
6 1 (0.35%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.39%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.39%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.70%) InDesign
2 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 133 (46.34%) Azure
2 56 (19.51%) Entra ID
3 38 (13.24%) AWS
4 37 (12.89%) Azure Monitor
5 30 (10.45%) Azure DevOps
6 27 (9.41%) IaaS
7 25 (8.71%) Azure AKS
7 25 (8.71%) OpenShift
8 20 (6.97%) GitHub
9 17 (5.92%) Microsoft 365
10 15 (5.23%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (3.83%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 11 (3.83%) Azure Key Vault
11 11 (3.83%) PaaS
11 11 (3.83%) Power Platform
12 10 (3.48%) GCP
12 10 (3.48%) SaaS
13 9 (3.14%) Azure Storage
13 9 (3.14%) Serverless
14 8 (2.79%) Cohesity
Communications & Networking
1 45 (15.68%) DNS
2 40 (13.94%) Firewall
3 26 (9.06%) VPN
4 20 (6.97%) DHCP
5 18 (6.27%) Network Security
5 18 (6.27%) SSL
5 18 (6.27%) VLAN
5 18 (6.27%) WAN
6 10 (3.48%) SD-WAN
6 10 (3.48%) VSAN
7 9 (3.14%) HTTP
7 9 (3.14%) LAN
8 7 (2.44%) FTP
9 6 (2.09%) TCP/IP
9 6 (2.09%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (1.74%) HTTPS
10 5 (1.74%) SAN
11 4 (1.39%) SSH
12 3 (1.05%) Cisco Nexus
12 3 (1.05%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.50%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.83%) MySQL
2 11 (3.83%) Power BI
2 11 (3.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 9 (3.14%) Azure SQL Database
4 8 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.44%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.70%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.35%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.35%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.35%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.35%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.35%) Power Query
7 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.57%) Jenkins
2 15 (5.23%) Git
3 8 (2.79%) GitLab
3 8 (2.79%) JIRA
4 4 (1.39%) CppUnit
4 4 (1.39%) PVCS
4 4 (1.39%) Rational DOORS
4 4 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.05%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.70%) Maven
6 2 (0.70%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.70%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.35%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.35%) Selenium
7 1 (0.35%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio
General
1 50 (17.42%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.41%) Finance
3 13 (4.53%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (3.48%) Legal
5 8 (2.79%) Banking
6 7 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.09%) Back Office
7 6 (2.09%) Front Office
7 6 (2.09%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.74%) Retail
9 4 (1.39%) Law
9 4 (1.39%) Marketing
9 4 (1.39%) Public Sector
10 2 (0.70%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.70%) Local Government
10 2 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.70%) Publishing
11 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 44 (15.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 38 (13.24%) Azure Engineer
3 34 (11.85%) Cloud Engineer
4 29 (10.10%) DevOps Engineer
5 22 (7.67%) Lead
5 22 (7.67%) Senior
6 19 (6.62%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
7 16 (5.57%) Architect
7 16 (5.57%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
8 13 (4.53%) Analyst
8 13 (4.53%) DBA
9 11 (3.83%) Security Engineer
9 11 (3.83%) SQL DBA
10 10 (3.48%) Administrator
10 10 (3.48%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.48%) Wintel Engineer
11 9 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
11 9 (3.14%) Storage Engineer
12 8 (2.79%) Linux Engineer
12 8 (2.79%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (20.91%) Terraform
2 13 (4.53%) ARM Templates
3 9 (3.14%) JSON
3 9 (3.14%) REST
4 7 (2.44%) LDAP
4 7 (2.44%) Regular Expression
5 6 (2.09%) Middleware
6 5 (1.74%) YAML
7 3 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.70%) SOAP
8 2 (0.70%) Web Services
9 1 (0.35%) ADO
9 1 (0.35%) cloud-init
9 1 (0.35%) Java SE
9 1 (0.35%) Lambda Expressions
9 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Graph
9 1 (0.35%) Node.js
9 1 (0.35%) NumPy
9 1 (0.35%) Pandas
9 1 (0.35%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 35 (12.20%) Replication
2 31 (10.80%) Clustering
3 17 (5.92%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (4.53%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.83%) Cloud Native
5 11 (3.83%) Enterprise Storage
5 11 (3.83%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.14%) Mainframe
6 9 (3.14%) Onboarding
7 8 (2.79%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.79%) Public Cloud
8 7 (2.44%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (2.44%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (2.44%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.09%) Fixed Income
9 6 (2.09%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.74%) Security Posture
11 4 (1.39%) EMC VNX
11 4 (1.39%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 104 (36.24%) Windows
2 65 (22.65%) Linux
3 57 (19.86%) Windows Server
4 27 (9.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (7.67%) VMS
6 9 (3.14%) Unix
7 6 (2.09%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.39%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.39%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.05%) AIX
9 3 (1.05%) Data ONTAP
9 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.70%) Android
10 2 (0.70%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.70%) CoreOS
10 2 (0.70%) SUSE
10 2 (0.70%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.70%) zOS
11 1 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (25.09%) CI/CD
1 72 (25.09%) DevOps
2 62 (21.60%) Migration
3 60 (20.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 57 (19.86%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (14.63%) Disaster Recovery
6 38 (13.24%) Continuous Improvement
6 38 (13.24%) Performance Tuning
7 37 (12.89%) High Availability
7 37 (12.89%) RBAC
8 32 (11.15%) Validation
9 30 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
9 30 (10.45%) Runbook
10 26 (9.06%) Cybersecurity
10 26 (9.06%) ITIL
11 25 (8.71%) Stakeholder Management
12 24 (8.36%) AI
12 24 (8.36%) Platform Engineering
13 22 (7.67%) Capacity Planning
13 22 (7.67%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 99 (34.49%) PowerShell
2 62 (21.60%) Python
3 37 (12.89%) SQL
4 29 (10.10%) Bash
5 11 (3.83%) Bicep
5 11 (3.83%) T-SQL
6 8 (2.79%) C
6 8 (2.79%) C#
7 6 (2.09%) Java
7 6 (2.09%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.39%) C++
8 4 (1.39%) Groovy
9 3 (1.05%) Embedded C
10 2 (0.70%) Korn
10 2 (0.70%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.35%) Go
11 1 (0.35%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.35%) RPG
11 1 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 86 (29.97%) Security Cleared
2 70 (24.39%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.01%) Azure Certification
3 23 (8.01%) Microsoft Certification
4 22 (7.67%) Degree
5 13 (4.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (4.53%) DV Cleared
6 11 (3.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 10 (3.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 10 (3.48%) MCSA
7 10 (3.48%) MCSE
8 8 (2.79%) VCAP
9 6 (2.09%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.74%) CCNA
10 5 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.74%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.05%) CISM
11 3 (1.05%) CISSP
11 3 (1.05%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.05%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.18%) QA
2 3 (1.05%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.05%) PCI DSS
2 3 (1.05%) SLA
3 2 (0.70%) Actionable Recommendations
3 2 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
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%) GDPR
4 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (30.66%) VMware Infrastructure
2 55 (19.16%) Active Directory
3 38 (13.24%) vSphere
4 31 (10.80%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (9.41%) Hyper-V
6 25 (8.71%) Docker
7 13 (4.53%) NFS
8 8 (2.79%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (2.44%) Ceph
9 7 (2.44%) VMware NSX
10 6 (2.09%) Firmware
11 5 (1.74%) KVM
12 3 (1.05%) BitLocker
12 3 (1.05%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (1.05%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.70%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.35%) DFS Replication
14 1 (0.35%) Dovecot
14 1 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 42 (14.63%) Ansible
2 40 (13.94%) Kubernetes
3 25 (8.71%) vCenter Server
4 16 (5.57%) SCOM
5 14 (4.88%) Grafana
6 9 (3.14%) Failover Clustering
6 9 (3.14%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.79%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (2.79%) SCCM
8 7 (2.44%) Podman
9 6 (2.09%) Packer
9 6 (2.09%) PowerCLI
10 5 (1.74%) Microsoft Clustering
10 5 (1.74%) Proxmox
11 4 (1.39%) Avamar
11 4 (1.39%) OPNET
11 4 (1.39%) vMotion
11 4 (1.39%) VxRail
12 3 (1.05%) EMC VPLEX
12 3 (1.05%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 101 (35.19%) Microsoft
2 92 (32.06%) VMware
3 29 (10.10%) Cisco
4 23 (8.01%) ServiceNow
5 19 (6.62%) Oracle
6 15 (5.23%) NetApp
7 14 (4.88%) Dell
8 12 (4.18%) CyberArk
8 12 (4.18%) IBM
8 12 (4.18%) Veeam
9 8 (2.79%) Qualys
9 8 (2.79%) Red Hat
9 8 (2.79%) SolarWinds
10 7 (2.44%) Google
10 7 (2.44%) Splunk
11 5 (1.74%) Commvault
11 5 (1.74%) EMC
11 5 (1.74%) Meraki
11 5 (1.74%) Okta
11 5 (1.74%) Palo Alto
224 Virtual Machines jobs in England