VMS Contracts in the UK excluding London

VMS
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London 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 25 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 317 332 368
Rank change year-on-year +15 +36 +107
Contract jobs citing VMS 49 55 73
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.33% 0.28% 0.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 2.01% 1.70% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 41 54
10th Percentile £406 £313 £386
25th Percentile £450 £356 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -16.67% +1.05%
75th Percentile £537 £619 £675
90th Percentile £575 £650 £775
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £36.75 £52.50
Median hourly rate - £38.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -30.00% -8.92%
75th Percentile - £40.25 £57.50
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate - £38.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -45.00% +6.06%

All Operating Systems
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 2,442 3,241 4,026
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 16.25% 16.69% 17.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,549 2,086 2,694
10th Percentile £180 £180 £165
25th Percentile £250 £300 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £468 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.76% +3.91% +1.41%
75th Percentile £551 £575 £575
90th Percentile £623 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £463 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 206 331 299
10th Percentile £15.33 £12.38 £13.99
25th Percentile £17.33 £16.13 £17.72
Median hourly rate £21.59 £31.25 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.91% +4.17% +50.00%
75th Percentile £58.39 £65.00 £64.75
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £24.18 £42.50
% change year-on-year -4.88% -43.11% +86.81%

VMS
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing VMS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for VMS in the UK excluding London

VMS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing VMS in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for VMS in the UK excluding London

VMS
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VMS in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 25 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for VMS in the UK excluding London

VMS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing VMS in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for VMS in the UK excluding London

VMS
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VMS within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 25 July 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
Midlands +18 18 £475 -9.52% 8
West Midlands +16 15 £475 +2.70% 6
North of England -8 15 £500 -11.11% 11
South East +20 10 £600 +33.33% 14
North West +10 10 £525 +5.00% 5
Yorkshire -10 4 £413 -26.67% 4
East of England +13 3 £450 +100.00% 11
East Midlands +1 3 £450 -28.00% 2
South West +29 1 £475 -8.65% 5
Wales +1 1 - -
Scotland -2 1 £350 -2.23% 2
North East - 1 £350 - 2
VMS
UK

VMS
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 14 (28.57%) Confluence
2 6 (12.24%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (12.24%) SharePoint
3 4 (8.16%) nginx
4 2 (4.08%) IBM Domino
5 1 (2.04%) Anypoint
5 1 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 6 (12.24%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (8.16%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (2.04%) SAP GRC
1 1 (2.04%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 20 (40.82%) Azure
2 14 (28.57%) AWS
3 12 (24.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 12 (24.49%) Amazon EC2
3 12 (24.49%) Amazon ELB
3 12 (24.49%) Amazon S3
3 12 (24.49%) AWS KMS
3 12 (24.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 11 (22.45%) Entra ID
4 11 (22.45%) Microsoft 365
5 8 (16.33%) Amazon Glacier
6 4 (8.16%) Amazon ECS
6 4 (8.16%) GitHub
6 4 (8.16%) Route 53
7 3 (6.12%) Azure Storage
7 3 (6.12%) IaaS
7 3 (6.12%) OpenShift
7 3 (6.12%) PaaS
8 2 (4.08%) GCP
8 2 (4.08%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 22 (44.90%) DNS
2 16 (32.65%) Firewall
3 12 (24.49%) SMTP
4 11 (22.45%) HTTP
5 10 (20.41%) FTP
5 10 (20.41%) SSH
6 7 (14.29%) DHCP
7 4 (8.16%) IMAP
7 4 (8.16%) OpenLDAP
8 2 (4.08%) Kerberos
8 2 (4.08%) NAS
8 2 (4.08%) SAN
8 2 (4.08%) VPN
9 1 (2.04%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 1 (2.04%) HTTPS
9 1 (2.04%) Network Security
9 1 (2.04%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (24.49%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (8.16%) Amazon Aurora
2 4 (8.16%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (6.12%) Azure SQL Database
3 3 (6.12%) Oracle Database
4 2 (4.08%) MongoDB
4 2 (4.08%) Oracle Database 12c
4 2 (4.08%) SQL Server
5 1 (2.04%) Big Data
5 1 (2.04%) BigQuery
5 1 (2.04%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (2.04%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 17 (34.69%) Jenkins
1 17 (34.69%) JIRA
2 16 (32.65%) Git
3 12 (24.49%) Vagrant
4 2 (4.08%) GitLab
5 1 (2.04%) Artifactory
5 1 (2.04%) Bitbucket
General
1 14 (28.57%) Public Sector
2 10 (20.41%) Social Skills
3 3 (6.12%) Documentation Skills
3 3 (6.12%) Presentation Skills
4 2 (4.08%) Finance
4 2 (4.08%) Military
5 1 (2.04%) French Language
5 1 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 14 (28.57%) DevOps Engineer
2 8 (16.33%) Platform Engineer
3 7 (14.29%) AWS DevOps
3 7 (14.29%) AWS DevOps Engineer
3 7 (14.29%) AWS Engineer
3 7 (14.29%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 7 (14.29%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
4 4 (8.16%) Architect
4 4 (8.16%) AWS Platform Engineer
4 4 (8.16%) DevOps Platform Engineer
5 3 (6.12%) Azure Engineer
5 3 (6.12%) Consultant
5 3 (6.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 3 (6.12%) Linux Engineer
6 2 (4.08%) Lead
6 2 (4.08%) Migration Specialist
6 2 (4.08%) Senior
6 2 (4.08%) Server Migration Specialist
6 2 (4.08%) Server Specialist
6 2 (4.08%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (12.24%) LDAP
2 3 (6.12%) Middleware
3 1 (2.04%) Anaconda
3 1 (2.04%) Qt
3 1 (2.04%) SAP Basis
3 1 (2.04%) SAP Fiori
3 1 (2.04%) SOAP
3 1 (2.04%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 10 (20.41%) Replication
2 3 (6.12%) Legacy Systems
2 3 (6.12%) Management Information System
3 2 (4.08%) CSOC
4 1 (2.04%) CCTV
4 1 (2.04%) CESG
4 1 (2.04%) Cloud Native
4 1 (2.04%) Driving Licence
4 1 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (2.04%) GNSS
4 1 (2.04%) PKI
4 1 (2.04%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 27 (55.10%) Linux
2 26 (53.06%) Windows
3 12 (24.49%) Amazon Linux
4 11 (22.45%) Windows Server
5 5 (10.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (6.12%) Ubuntu
7 2 (4.08%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (2.04%) CentOS
8 1 (2.04%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (2.04%) Unix
8 1 (2.04%) Windows 10
8 1 (2.04%) Windows 7
8 1 (2.04%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (2.04%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (51.02%) DevOps
2 15 (30.61%) Configuration Management
3 13 (26.53%) Platform Engineering
4 12 (24.49%) Change Management
4 12 (24.49%) Cloud Security
4 12 (24.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 11 (22.45%) Patch Management
6 10 (20.41%) Agile
7 8 (16.33%) Containerisation
8 7 (14.29%) Performance Tuning
9 6 (12.24%) CI/CD
9 6 (12.24%) ITIL
9 6 (12.24%) ITSM
9 6 (12.24%) Migration
9 6 (12.24%) Problem-Solving
10 5 (10.20%) Collaborative Working
10 5 (10.20%) Infrastructure as Code
11 4 (8.16%) Machine Learning
12 3 (6.12%) High Availability
12 3 (6.12%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 21 (42.86%) Python
2 19 (38.78%) PowerShell
3 12 (24.49%) Groovy
4 9 (18.37%) SQL
5 8 (16.33%) Java
5 8 (16.33%) Perl
6 3 (6.12%) Bash
7 2 (4.08%) R
7 2 (4.08%) Shell Script
8 1 (2.04%) Bicep
8 1 (2.04%) C
8 1 (2.04%) C#
8 1 (2.04%) C++
8 1 (2.04%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 22 (44.90%) Security Cleared
2 19 (38.78%) SC Cleared
3 5 (10.20%) Degree
4 3 (6.12%) Azure Certification
4 3 (6.12%) DV Cleared
5 2 (4.08%) AWS Certification
5 2 (4.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (2.04%) VCAP
6 1 (2.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.04%) JSP 440
1 1 (2.04%) QA
1 1 (2.04%) RMADS
System Software
1 20 (40.82%) Active Directory
2 17 (34.69%) Docker
3 10 (20.41%) DFS Replication
4 7 (14.29%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (12.24%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (8.16%) Dovecot
6 4 (8.16%) Postfix
6 4 (8.16%) Squid
6 4 (8.16%) vSphere
7 3 (6.12%) VMware NSX
8 2 (4.08%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (4.08%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (2.04%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 19 (38.78%) Terraform
2 14 (28.57%) Grafana
3 12 (24.49%) Prometheus
4 10 (20.41%) Ansible
4 10 (20.41%) Kubernetes
5 7 (14.29%) WSUS
6 6 (12.24%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (8.16%) Nessus
7 4 (8.16%) vCenter Server
8 3 (6.12%) Puppet
8 3 (6.12%) Rsyslog
8 3 (6.12%) SCOM
9 2 (4.08%) Cilium
9 2 (4.08%) Data Guard
9 2 (4.08%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (4.08%) PowerCLI
9 2 (4.08%) Proxmox
9 2 (4.08%) vRealize
9 2 (4.08%) ZABBIX
10 1 (2.04%) SCCM
Vendors
1 15 (30.61%) ServiceNow
1 15 (30.61%) VMware
2 11 (22.45%) Microsoft
3 5 (10.20%) F5
4 4 (8.16%) Jaspersoft
4 4 (8.16%) Oracle
4 4 (8.16%) Red Hat
5 3 (6.12%) Cisco
6 2 (4.08%) Databricks
6 2 (4.08%) Fortinet
6 2 (4.08%) Google
6 2 (4.08%) NVIDIA
6 2 (4.08%) Palo Alto
6 2 (4.08%) SAP
6 2 (4.08%) SolarWinds
6 2 (4.08%) Splunk
7 1 (2.04%) Adobe
7 1 (2.04%) Broadcom
7 1 (2.04%) Concur
7 1 (2.04%) MuleSoft