Virtual Machines Contracts in the North West

Virtual Machine (VM)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring Virtual Machines skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Virtual Machines over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 105 123 130
Rank change year-on-year +18 +7 +26
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 15 14 27
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.76% 0.51% 0.85%
As % of the System Software category 5.42% 5.47% 5.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 12 24
10th Percentile £320 £494 £463
25th Percentile £350 £550 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £381 £618 £538
Median % change year-on-year -38.32% +14.93% +2.38%
75th Percentile £500 £670 £602
90th Percentile £538 - £670
England median daily rate £525 £513 £545
% change year-on-year +2.44% -5.96% +3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 1
Median hourly rate - £83.55 £66.00
Median % change year-on-year - +26.59% +66.14%
England median hourly rate £63.00 £14.63 £66.00
% change year-on-year +330.77% -77.84% +38.28%

All System Software Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 277 256 504
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.08% 9.29% 15.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 182 366
10th Percentile £157 £178 £200
25th Percentile £250 £299 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% -10.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £525 £575 £575
90th Percentile £564 £670 £650
England median daily rate £525 £494 £525
% change year-on-year +6.33% -5.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 26 29
10th Percentile £33.73 - £13.99
25th Percentile £40.81 £15.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £55.75 £17.72 £22.41
Median % change year-on-year +214.62% -20.93% +23.71%
75th Percentile £73.81 £26.38 £52.13
90th Percentile £82.78 £46.18 £65.00
England median hourly rate £27.94 £21.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +33.05% -58.00% +163.16%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Virtual Machines as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Virtual Machines in the North West

Virtual Machines
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Virtual Machines in the North West.

Daily rate trend for Virtual Machines in the North West

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in the North West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the North West

Virtual Machines
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Virtual Machines in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for Virtual Machines in the North West

Virtual Machines
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 North West region over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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
Cheshire - 9 £375 - 3
Lancashire - 5 £500 - 4
Cumbria -7 1 £525 -21.64%
Virtual Machines
England

Virtual Machines
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 5 (33.33%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (33.33%) SharePoint
2 3 (20.00%) IIS
Applications
1 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (40.00%) AWS
1 6 (40.00%) Azure
2 5 (33.33%) Entra ID
2 5 (33.33%) Microsoft 365
3 4 (26.67%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 4 (26.67%) DHCP
1 4 (26.67%) DNS
1 4 (26.67%) SAN
2 1 (6.67%) Firewall
General
1 4 (26.67%) Legal
2 2 (13.33%) Public Sector
2 2 (13.33%) Social Skills
3 1 (6.67%) Banking
3 1 (6.67%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 4 (26.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 3 (20.00%) Administrator
2 3 (20.00%) VMWare Administrator
2 3 (20.00%) Wintel Administrator
3 2 (13.33%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
3 2 (13.33%) Consultant
4 1 (6.67%) Azure Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Management Consultant
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) Security Consultant
4 1 (6.67%) Software Consultant
4 1 (6.67%) Software Manager
Miscellaneous
1 6 (40.00%) Mainframe
1 6 (40.00%) Product Ownership
2 4 (26.67%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 8 (53.33%) Windows
1 8 (53.33%) Windows Server
2 7 (46.67%) Windows Server 2012
2 7 (46.67%) Windows Server 2016
2 7 (46.67%) Windows Server 2019
3 4 (26.67%) Linux
3 4 (26.67%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (46.67%) High Availability
2 6 (40.00%) Validation
3 5 (33.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 4 (26.67%) E-Discovery
4 4 (26.67%) ITIL
4 4 (26.67%) Multi-Factor Authentication
4 4 (26.67%) RBAC
4 4 (26.67%) Root Cause Analysis
5 3 (20.00%) Patch Management
5 3 (20.00%) Performance Tuning
5 3 (20.00%) Resource Management
6 2 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
7 1 (6.67%) Critical Thinking
7 1 (6.67%) Decision-Making
7 1 (6.67%) DevOps
7 1 (6.67%) Knowledge Transfer
7 1 (6.67%) Line Management
7 1 (6.67%) Software License Management
7 1 (6.67%) Time Management
7 1 (6.67%) Vulnerability Management
Qualifications
1 4 (26.67%) MCSE
1 4 (26.67%) Microsoft Certification
1 4 (26.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
2 3 (20.00%) SC Cleared
2 3 (20.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (20.00%) SLA
System Software
1 8 (53.33%) Active Directory
1 8 (53.33%) VMware Infrastructure
2 7 (46.67%) VMware ESXi
3 3 (20.00%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 8 (53.33%) WSUS
2 7 (46.67%) vCenter Server
3 3 (20.00%) Microsoft Clustering
3 3 (20.00%) NetApp OnCommand
3 3 (20.00%) vMotion
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 8 (53.33%) Microsoft
1 8 (53.33%) VMware
2 6 (40.00%) IBM
3 4 (26.67%) Citrix
4 1 (6.67%) CheckPoint
4 1 (6.67%) Palo Alto