VMS Contracts in the North West

VMS
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring VMS skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited VMS 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 106 132 153
Rank change year-on-year +26 +21 +15
Contract jobs citing VMS 14 5 4
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.71% 0.18% 0.13%
As % of the Operating Systems category 4.75% 1.41% 0.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 1 4
10th Percentile £505 - -
25th Percentile £513 £475 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £413
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +21.21% -31.25%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £488
90th Percentile £560 - -
England median daily rate £540 £450 £713
% change year-on-year +20.00% -36.84% +21.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 0
Median hourly rate - £25.25 -
England median hourly rate £82.50 £25.25 £85.00
% change year-on-year +226.73% -70.29% +100.00%

All Operating Systems
North West

VMS falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 295 355 536
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.99% 12.89% 16.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 226 368
10th Percentile £156 £174 £173
25th Percentile £208 £284 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £393 £438 £476
Median % change year-on-year -10.17% -7.99% +11.88%
75th Percentile £510 £582 £575
90th Percentile £593 £825 £650
England median daily rate £475 £463 £513
% change year-on-year +2.70% -9.76% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 65 47
10th Percentile £13.00 - £15.53
25th Percentile £13.60 £10.95 £21.83
Median hourly rate £17.44 £16.00 £29.30
Median % change year-on-year +9.00% -45.39% +62.78%
75th Percentile £23.22 £18.75 £45.38
90th Percentile £80.59 £40.30 £49.52
England median hourly rate £24.18 £22.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +9.91% -42.11% +76.74%

VMS
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Job vacancy trend for VMS in the North West

VMS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

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

Daily rate trend for VMS in the North West

VMS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

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

Hourly rate trend for VMS in the North West

VMS
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 VMS 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
Cumbria - 7 £525 -
Manchester +18 6 £525 +5.00% 4
Cheshire - 1 - - 1
VMS
England

VMS
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 10 (71.43%) Microsoft Exchange
1 10 (71.43%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (64.29%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 13 (92.86%) Azure
2 12 (85.71%) Entra ID
3 11 (78.57%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (7.14%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 11 (78.57%) DHCP
1 11 (78.57%) DNS
2 2 (14.29%) Kerberos
General
1 5 (35.71%) Public Sector
2 4 (28.57%) Military
3 1 (7.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 11 (78.57%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
2 2 (14.29%) Linux Engineer
3 1 (7.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (14.29%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 1 (7.14%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 10 (71.43%) Windows
1 10 (71.43%) Windows Server
2 2 (14.29%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (78.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 10 (71.43%) DevOps
2 10 (71.43%) ITIL
2 10 (71.43%) ITSM
3 8 (57.14%) Collaborative Working
4 2 (14.29%) Containerisation
5 1 (7.14%) Agile
5 1 (7.14%) Configuration Management
5 1 (7.14%) Infrastructure Management
Programming Languages
1 2 (14.29%) Bash
1 2 (14.29%) Python
System Software
1 13 (92.86%) Active Directory
2 1 (7.14%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 11 (78.57%) WSUS
2 10 (71.43%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (14.29%) Ansible
3 2 (14.29%) Grafana
3 2 (14.29%) Kubernetes
3 2 (14.29%) Puppet
3 2 (14.29%) ZABBIX
4 1 (7.14%) Graylog
Vendors
1 12 (85.71%) VMware
2 11 (78.57%) Microsoft
3 1 (7.14%) Cisco
3 1 (7.14%) Citrix
3 1 (7.14%) EMC
3 1 (7.14%) NetApp
3 1 (7.14%) Veeam