KVM Contract Job Trends

Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring KVM skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 560 507 569
Rank change year-on-year -53 +62 +146
Contract jobs citing KVM 32 22 36
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.080% 0.072% 0.081%
As % of the System Software category 0.68% 0.59% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 15 11 24
10th Percentile £333 £380 -
25th Percentile £358 £410 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £440 £438
Median % change year-on-year +1.59% +0.57% -5.15%
75th Percentile £538 £520 £550
90th Percentile £653 £600 £679
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £420 £325
% change year-on-year +1.19% +29.23% -29.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 2
Median hourly rate £72.54 - £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 - -

All System Software Skills
UK

KVM 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 4,740 3,756 5,076
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.79% 12.33% 11.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,239 2,448 3,449
10th Percentile £205 £200 £190
25th Percentile £400 £374 £324
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £480
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +7.29% -8.57%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £688 £721 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £467 £450
% change year-on-year +1.82% +3.67% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 87 246
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.45 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.25 £17.70
Median hourly rate £34.00 £29.00 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +17.24% -33.71% +9.38%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £83.40 £75.00 £77.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £37.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +11.84% -18.80% +90.43%

KVM
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing KVM relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

KVM job vacancy trend in the UK

KVM
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing KVM.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing KVM

KVM
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing KVM over the 6 months to 17 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for KVM in the UK

KVM
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing KVM.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing KVM

KVM
Top 11 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing KVM within the UK over the 6 months to 17 February 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
England -64 30 £447 +1.59% 42
UK excluding London -72 20 £425 +1.19% 46
North of England -47 15 £365 - 10
Work from Home -22 13 £563 +48.03% 4
Yorkshire - 11 £365 - 8
London -25 7 £390 -35.00% 1
North West -26 4 - - 1
South East -32 3 £471 +12.14% 10
South West - 2 £600 - 8
West Midlands -51 1 £425 -41.38%
Midlands -58 1 £425 -41.38% 6

KVM
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 2 (6.25%) OpenStack
2 1 (3.13%) Apache
Applications
1 1 (3.13%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 7 (21.88%) Azure
1 7 (21.88%) OpenShift
2 6 (18.75%) AWS
3 5 (15.63%) GCP
4 2 (6.25%) Cohesity
4 2 (6.25%) Nutanix
5 1 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (3.13%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 6 (18.75%) VLAN
2 5 (15.63%) Firewall
2 5 (15.63%) TCP/IP
3 3 (9.38%) BGP
3 3 (9.38%) DHCP
3 3 (9.38%) OSPF
3 3 (9.38%) VXLAN
4 2 (6.25%) Cisco Nexus
4 2 (6.25%) DNS
4 2 (6.25%) Ethernet VPN
4 2 (6.25%) LAN
4 2 (6.25%) SAN
4 2 (6.25%) SSH
4 2 (6.25%) WAN
5 1 (3.13%) 3GPP
5 1 (3.13%) IPv4
5 1 (3.13%) IPv6
5 1 (3.13%) Kerberos
5 1 (3.13%) RIP
5 1 (3.13%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (12.50%) DB2
1 4 (12.50%) SQL Server
2 1 (3.13%) MySQL
2 1 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (6.25%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (3.13%) Git
General
1 5 (15.63%) Analytical Skills
1 5 (15.63%) Social Skills
2 4 (12.50%) Finance
2 4 (12.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 3 (9.38%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (6.25%) Financial Institution
4 2 (6.25%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (3.13%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 6 (18.75%) Technical Specialist
2 5 (15.63%) VMware Engineer
3 4 (12.50%) Administrator
3 4 (12.50%) Network Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) Data Centre Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) Systems Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Cisco Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Cisco Network Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Data Centre Technician
5 2 (6.25%) Data Technician
5 2 (6.25%) Hyper-V Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Linux Specialist
5 2 (6.25%) Migration Engineer
6 1 (3.13%) Infrastructure Consultant
6 1 (3.13%) IT Analyst
6 1 (3.13%) LTE Engineer
6 1 (3.13%) Network Design Engineer
6 1 (3.13%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
6 1 (3.13%) Senior
6 1 (3.13%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (6.25%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (3.13%) CrewAI
2 1 (3.13%) JSON
2 1 (3.13%) LAMP
2 1 (3.13%) LangChain
2 1 (3.13%) LAPP Stack
2 1 (3.13%) LDAP
2 1 (3.13%) libvirt
2 1 (3.13%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (34.38%) Data Centre
2 5 (15.63%) Hybrid Cloud
3 4 (12.50%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (6.25%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (6.25%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (6.25%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (6.25%) Enterprise Storage
4 2 (6.25%) Hedge funds
5 1 (3.13%) AI Agents
5 1 (3.13%) Management Information System
5 1 (3.13%) Operational Technology
5 1 (3.13%) PKI
5 1 (3.13%) Private Cloud
5 1 (3.13%) Public Cloud
5 1 (3.13%) Smartphone
5 1 (3.13%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 22 (68.75%) Linux
2 13 (40.63%) Windows
3 7 (21.88%) Unix
4 5 (15.63%) CentOS
4 5 (15.63%) Windows Server
5 4 (12.50%) AIX
5 4 (12.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (9.38%) Ubuntu
7 2 (6.25%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (37.50%) Performance Tuning
2 8 (25.00%) Migration
3 7 (21.88%) Containerisation
4 6 (18.75%) Configuration Management
4 6 (18.75%) DevOps
4 6 (18.75%) Disaster Recovery
5 5 (15.63%) Capacity Planning
5 5 (15.63%) CI/CD
5 5 (15.63%) High Availability
5 5 (15.63%) Virtual Environments
6 4 (12.50%) AI
6 4 (12.50%) Asset Management
6 4 (12.50%) Change Management
6 4 (12.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 4 (12.50%) Network Management
6 4 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
6 4 (12.50%) Task Automation
7 3 (9.38%) Infrastructure Automation
7 3 (9.38%) Open Source
7 3 (9.38%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 17 (53.13%) Python
2 16 (50.00%) Bash
3 13 (40.63%) PowerShell
4 5 (15.63%) Shell Script
5 4 (12.50%) SQL
6 3 (9.38%) Perl
7 1 (3.13%) Go
Qualifications
1 6 (18.75%) Security Cleared
2 5 (15.63%) RHCE
2 5 (15.63%) RHCSA
2 5 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 3 (9.38%) Degree
4 2 (6.25%) CCNP
4 2 (6.25%) Cisco Certification
5 1 (3.13%) CCIE
5 1 (3.13%) CCIE Data Center
5 1 (3.13%) CCNA
5 1 (3.13%) JNCIA
5 1 (3.13%) JNCIS
5 1 (3.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
System Software
1 19 (59.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (46.88%) Hyper-V
2 15 (46.88%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (21.88%) VMware ESXi
4 6 (18.75%) Docker
5 4 (12.50%) Firmware
6 3 (9.38%) Ceph
7 2 (6.25%) Active Directory
7 2 (6.25%) VMware NSX
7 2 (6.25%) vSphere
8 1 (3.13%) iptables
8 1 (3.13%) Lustre
8 1 (3.13%) NFS
8 1 (3.13%) QEMU
8 1 (3.13%) RHEV
8 1 (3.13%) Samba
8 1 (3.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (3.13%) Squid
8 1 (3.13%) Xen
Systems Management
1 16 (50.00%) Ansible
2 9 (28.13%) vCenter Server
3 8 (25.00%) Kubernetes
3 8 (25.00%) Terraform
4 4 (12.50%) IBM BigFix
4 4 (12.50%) Progress Chef
4 4 (12.50%) Puppet
5 3 (9.38%) PowerCLI
6 2 (6.25%) Grafana
6 2 (6.25%) Prometheus
6 2 (6.25%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (3.13%) HAProxy
7 1 (3.13%) Nagios
7 1 (3.13%) Proxmox
7 1 (3.13%) SELinux
7 1 (3.13%) WSUS
Vendors
1 21 (65.63%) VMware
2 8 (25.00%) Red Hat
3 4 (12.50%) Cisco
3 4 (12.50%) IBM
3 4 (12.50%) Microsoft
4 2 (6.25%) Arista
4 2 (6.25%) Brocade
4 2 (6.25%) Juniper
4 2 (6.25%) Oracle
4 2 (6.25%) Pure Storage
4 2 (6.25%) Veeam
5 1 (3.13%) AlgoSec
5 1 (3.13%) F5
5 1 (3.13%) Google
5 1 (3.13%) NetApp
5 1 (3.13%) NVIDIA
5 1 (3.13%) Palo Alto
5 1 (3.13%) SolarWinds