Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 23 May 2018

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Virtual Machines skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 23 May 2018 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Virtual Machine (VM)
UK
6 months to
23 May 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 434 440 393
Rank change year-on-year +6 -47 +47
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 524 438 626
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 0.52% 0.49% 0.59%
As % of the System Software category 3.88% 4.33% 5.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 334 283 365
UK median daily rate £475 £450 £413
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +5.56% +9.09% +3.13%
10th Percentile £275 £300 £281
90th Percentile £638 £648 £538
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £410 £398
% change year-on-year +9.76% +3.14% +2.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 8 21
UK median hourly rate £47.67 £18.10 £42.46
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +163.34% -57.37% +85.98%
10th Percentile £18.26 £14.13 £18.50
90th Percentile £60.00 £41.55 £45.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.75 £17.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +207.14% -46.97% +57.14%

Virtual Machines is in the System Software category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for system software skills.

All System Software Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 13,513 10,119 11,997
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.41% 11.21% 11.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,742 6,443 7,273
UK median daily rate £450 £425 £400
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +5.88% +6.25% +14.29%
10th Percentile £184 £163 £170
90th Percentile £625 £588 £566
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £375 £360
% change year-on-year +6.67% +4.17% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 789 650 929
UK median hourly rate £15.86 £16.00 £15.75
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -0.88% +1.59% +0.08%
10th Percentile £10.75 £10.25 £10.48
90th Percentile £45.90 £46.76 £42.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 £15.50 £16.00
% change year-on-year -3.23% -3.13% +6.67%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Virtual Machines as a percentage of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor daily rate trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 23 May 2018.

Contractor daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor hourly rate trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 23 May 2018.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Top 15 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 23 May 2018. 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
Job
Vacancies
England +19 496 £475 +5.56% 127
UK excluding London +34 294 £450 +9.76% 82
London -34 222 £500 - 51
South East +12 106 £425 +21.43% 27
North of England 0 66 £475 +2.70% 25
South West +24 42 £490 +36.11% 2
Midlands -7 40 £470 +4.44% 8
North West -16 36 £450 -10.00% 16
East Midlands +14 22 £460 -8.00% 3
Yorkshire -7 22 £500 +53.85% 7
East of England +2 21 £403 -10.56% 14
West Midlands -22 18 £500 +11.11% 5
Scotland -39 18 £600 +84.62% 3
North East +15 8 £495 +10.00% 2
Wales -7 3 £418 +28.46% 3

For the 6 months to 23 May 2018, IT contractor jobs citing Virtual Machines also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Virtual Machines.

1 230 (43.89%) Linux
2 228 (43.51%) Windows
3 170 (32.44%) VMware
4 166 (31.68%) DevOps
5 145 (27.67%) VMware Infrastructure
6 133 (25.38%) Security Cleared
7 132 (25.19%) Puppet
8 129 (24.62%) Microsoft
9 128 (24.43%) Microsoft Azure
10 126 (24.05%) Jenkins
11 116 (22.14%) Agile Software Development
12 115 (21.95%) Active Directory
13 106 (20.23%) Python
13 106 (20.23%) Continuous Integration
13 106 (20.23%) SC Cleared
14 104 (19.85%) Ansible
15 103 (19.66%) Java
16 102 (19.47%) Opscode Chef
17 101 (19.27%) Configuration Management
18 95 (18.13%) Amazon AWS
18 95 (18.13%) Windows Server
19 93 (17.75%) Hyper-V
20 91 (17.37%) Open Source
21 87 (16.60%) DNS
22 82 (15.65%) Docker
23 79 (15.08%) PowerShell
24 72 (13.74%) Problem-Solving
25 71 (13.55%) Travis CI
25 71 (13.55%) SQL
26 67 (12.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Virtual Machines
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 49 (9.35%) nginx
2 42 (8.02%) Tomcat
3 26 (4.96%) Apache
4 20 (3.82%) Cloud Foundry
5 19 (3.63%) MS Exchange
6 18 (3.44%) IIS
7 16 (3.05%) JBoss
8 15 (2.86%) SharePoint
9 13 (2.48%) Exchange Server 2010
10 12 (2.29%) Exchange Server 2013
10 12 (2.29%) WebSphere
11 10 (1.91%) Confluence
12 9 (1.72%) OpenStack
13 8 (1.53%) Jetty
13 8 (1.53%) Mule ESB
13 8 (1.53%) SAS
13 8 (1.53%) WildFly
14 6 (1.15%) Apache Spark
15 5 (0.95%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
Applications
1 25 (4.77%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.15%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.57%) Dynamics AX
2 3 (0.57%) NetSuite
2 3 (0.57%) Payment Gateway
3 2 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
3 2 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.38%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 128 (24.43%) Microsoft Azure
2 95 (18.13%) Amazon AWS
3 53 (10.11%) PaaS
4 34 (6.49%) Google Cloud Platform
4 34 (6.49%) Office 365
5 29 (5.53%) IaaS
6 26 (4.96%) AWS CloudFormation
6 26 (4.96%) Azure Active Directory
7 25 (4.77%) npm
8 21 (4.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 21 (4.01%) GitHub
9 17 (3.24%) SaaS
10 14 (2.67%) Datadog
11 10 (1.91%) Amazon EC2
12 9 (1.72%) Serverless
13 8 (1.53%) OpenShift
14 6 (1.15%) Cloud Computing
14 6 (1.15%) Cortana Intelligence Suite
15 5 (0.95%) Amazon ELB
15 5 (0.95%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 87 (16.60%) DNS
2 57 (10.88%) DHCP
3 55 (10.50%) TCP/IP
4 54 (10.31%) Firewall
5 50 (9.54%) HTTP
6 40 (7.63%) VPN
7 38 (7.25%) FTP
8 32 (6.11%) SSL
9 31 (5.92%) IPsec
10 25 (4.77%) SAN
11 19 (3.63%) iSCSI
12 16 (3.05%) NAS
13 15 (2.86%) LAN
14 14 (2.67%) Network Security
15 12 (2.29%) Reverse Proxy
16 11 (2.10%) VLAN
17 9 (1.72%) Internet
17 9 (1.72%) OpenVPN
17 9 (1.72%) WAN
18 7 (1.34%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (11.07%) NoSQL
2 56 (10.69%) MySQL
3 52 (9.92%) MongoDB
4 40 (7.63%) SQL Server
5 37 (7.06%) Relational Database
6 31 (5.92%) RDBMS
7 24 (4.58%) PostgreSQL
8 20 (3.82%) Big Data
9 12 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
10 11 (2.10%) Azure SQL Database
11 10 (1.91%) Oracle Database
11 10 (1.91%) Redis
12 9 (1.72%) Oracle Reports
13 8 (1.53%) Apache Cassandra
13 8 (1.53%) Data Lake
13 8 (1.53%) Hadoop
13 8 (1.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 6 (1.15%) Oracle Database 11g
14 6 (1.15%) SQL Server 2012
15 5 (0.95%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 126 (24.05%) Jenkins
2 71 (13.55%) Travis CI
3 58 (11.07%) Git (software)
4 38 (7.25%) Maven
5 27 (5.15%) Vagrant
6 26 (4.96%) Gradle
6 26 (4.96%) gulp
7 25 (4.77%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 24 (4.58%) JIRA
9 22 (4.20%) JUnit
10 17 (3.24%) CircleCI
11 16 (3.05%) GitLab
12 15 (2.86%) IBM UrbanCode
13 14 (2.67%) Team Foundation Server
14 13 (2.48%) Gerrit
14 13 (2.48%) Visual Studio Team System
15 12 (2.29%) Mercurial
16 11 (2.10%) Ant
16 11 (2.10%) Selenium
16 11 (2.10%) Subversion
General
1 51 (9.73%) Finance
2 28 (5.34%) Banking
2 28 (5.34%) Telecoms
3 14 (2.67%) Manufacturing
4 9 (1.72%) Legal
5 7 (1.34%) Games
5 7 (1.34%) Marketing
6 6 (1.15%) Retail
7 5 (0.95%) Advertising
7 5 (0.95%) Electronics
7 5 (0.95%) Publishing
8 3 (0.57%) Financial Institution
8 3 (0.57%) Law
8 3 (0.57%) Local Government
9 2 (0.38%) Billing
9 2 (0.38%) Corporate Banking
9 2 (0.38%) Investment Banking
9 2 (0.38%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.19%) Military
10 1 (0.19%) Multimedia
Job Titles
1 116 (22.14%) DevOps Engineer
2 38 (7.25%) Consultant
3 37 (7.06%) Architect
4 35 (6.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 28 (5.34%) Developer
6 27 (5.15%) Administrator
6 27 (5.15%) Support Engineer
7 26 (4.96%) Analyst
8 23 (4.39%) Systems Administrator
9 21 (4.01%) Azure Engineer
10 19 (3.63%) Cloud Engineer
10 19 (3.63%) Senior DevOps
11 15 (2.86%) Storage Specialist
12 14 (2.67%) Linux Engineer
12 14 (2.67%) Operations Engineer
13 13 (2.48%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 13 (2.48%) VMware Engineer
14 12 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
15 11 (2.10%) Linux Administrator
15 11 (2.10%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (5.73%) .NET
2 29 (5.53%) Web Services
3 28 (5.34%) JSON
3 28 (5.34%) RESTful
4 24 (4.58%) Elastic Stack
5 23 (4.39%) Node.js
6 22 (4.20%) HTML
7 18 (3.44%) XML
8 16 (3.05%) RabbitMQ
9 13 (2.48%) Middleware
10 12 (2.29%) HTML5
10 12 (2.29%) LAMP
10 12 (2.29%) LAPP Stack
11 11 (2.10%) SOAP
12 10 (1.91%) CSS
12 10 (1.91%) REST
13 9 (1.72%) LEMP Stack
14 8 (1.53%) AngularJS
14 8 (1.53%) JSP
14 8 (1.53%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 44 (8.40%) Data Centre
2 36 (6.87%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (4.96%) Linux Command Line
4 25 (4.77%) Clustering
5 21 (4.01%) Management Information System
6 18 (3.44%) PKI
7 11 (2.10%) Self-Motivation
8 10 (1.91%) Hybrid Cloud
8 10 (1.91%) iPad
8 10 (1.91%) iPhone
8 10 (1.91%) Replication
9 9 (1.72%) Blackberry
9 9 (1.72%) Computer Science
9 9 (1.72%) FMCG
9 9 (1.72%) User Experience
10 8 (1.53%) Greenfield Project
11 7 (1.34%) MPEG
12 6 (1.15%) Client/Server
12 6 (1.15%) HACMP
12 6 (1.15%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 230 (43.89%) Linux
2 228 (43.51%) Windows
3 95 (18.13%) Windows Server
4 67 (12.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 58 (11.07%) Windows Server 2008
5 58 (11.07%) Windows Server 2012
6 41 (7.82%) CentOS
7 38 (7.25%) Ubuntu
8 35 (6.68%) Windows 7
9 26 (4.96%) Unix
9 26 (4.96%) Windows 10
10 24 (4.58%) Windows Server 2003
11 18 (3.44%) Data ONTAP
12 17 (3.24%) DC/OS
12 17 (3.24%) Solaris
13 8 (1.53%) Debian
14 7 (1.34%) HPUX
14 7 (1.34%) VMS
15 6 (1.15%) AIX
16 5 (0.95%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (31.68%) DevOps
2 116 (22.14%) Agile Software Development
3 106 (20.23%) Continuous Integration
4 101 (19.27%) Configuration Management
5 91 (17.37%) Open Source
6 72 (13.74%) Problem-Solving
7 65 (12.40%) Migration
8 57 (10.88%) Microservices
9 54 (10.31%) ITIL
10 49 (9.35%) Test Automation
11 44 (8.40%) Scrum
12 43 (8.21%) OO
12 43 (8.21%) OOP
13 34 (6.49%) Deployment Automation
14 32 (6.11%) SDLC
15 31 (5.92%) Target Operating Model
16 30 (5.73%) High Availability
17 27 (5.15%) Mentoring
18 26 (4.96%) Service Management
19 25 (4.77%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 106 (20.23%) Python
2 103 (19.66%) Java
3 79 (15.08%) PowerShell
4 71 (13.55%) SQL
5 49 (9.35%) Bash Shell
6 45 (8.59%) Groovy
7 42 (8.02%) JavaScript
8 34 (6.49%) Ruby
9 32 (6.11%) Perl
10 29 (5.53%) Shell Script
11 22 (4.20%) C#
12 18 (3.44%) VBScript
13 16 (3.05%) Scala
14 13 (2.48%) PHP
15 12 (2.29%) C
16 10 (1.91%) Clojure
17 9 (1.72%) C++
18 7 (1.34%) Erlang
18 7 (1.34%) Korn
19 6 (1.15%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 133 (25.38%) Security Cleared
2 106 (20.23%) SC Cleared
3 17 (3.24%) Degree
3 17 (3.24%) DV Cleared
4 13 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
5 12 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (1.91%) CCNP
7 7 (1.34%) CCNA
7 7 (1.34%) PRINCE2 Certification
8 6 (1.15%) MCSA
9 5 (0.95%) CCDP
9 5 (0.95%) Chartered Engineer
9 5 (0.95%) CISM
9 5 (0.95%) CISSP
9 5 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.95%) MCP
10 4 (0.76%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 3 (0.57%) MCSE
11 3 (0.57%) VCP5
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (2.10%) QA
2 7 (1.34%) Data Quality
3 5 (0.95%) SLA
4 4 (0.76%) PMO
5 3 (0.57%) GCP
5 3 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.38%) COBIT
6 2 (0.38%) GDPR
6 2 (0.38%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 145 (27.67%) VMware Infrastructure
2 115 (21.95%) Active Directory
3 93 (17.75%) Hyper-V
4 82 (15.65%) Docker
5 36 (6.87%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (6.30%) vSphere
7 25 (4.77%) VirtualBox
8 22 (4.20%) NFS
9 14 (2.67%) Xen
10 10 (1.91%) XenApp
11 9 (1.72%) Postfix
11 9 (1.72%) Squid
12 8 (1.53%) vCloud
13 7 (1.34%) KVM
13 7 (1.34%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (1.15%) PowerHA
14 6 (1.15%) VMware Workstation
15 5 (0.95%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 5 (0.95%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 132 (25.19%) Puppet
2 104 (19.85%) Ansible
3 102 (19.47%) Opscode Chef
4 56 (10.69%) Terraform
5 51 (9.73%) Kubernetes
6 34 (6.49%) SCCM
7 29 (5.53%) Packer
8 26 (4.96%) Docker Swarm
9 23 (4.39%) vCenter Server
10 21 (4.01%) WSUS
11 20 (3.82%) SCOM
12 17 (3.24%) ZABBIX
13 15 (2.86%) HAProxy
14 14 (2.67%) SCVMM
15 10 (1.91%) Microsoft Clustering
15 10 (1.91%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
15 10 (1.91%) PowerCLI
16 9 (1.72%) Backup Exec
16 9 (1.72%) Failover Clustering
16 9 (1.72%) SCSM
Vendors
1 170 (32.44%) VMware
2 129 (24.62%) Microsoft
3 57 (10.88%) Red Hat
4 54 (10.31%) Oracle
5 45 (8.59%) HP
6 40 (7.63%) Google
7 39 (7.44%) Cisco
8 36 (6.87%) NetApp
9 28 (5.34%) Citrix
10 25 (4.77%) IBM
11 24 (4.58%) Splunk
12 19 (3.63%) New Relic
13 16 (3.05%) Dell
14 13 (2.48%) Ivanti
14 13 (2.48%) SAP
14 13 (2.48%) Veritas
15 11 (2.10%) Symantec
16 10 (1.91%) Capita
16 10 (1.91%) Fortinet
16 10 (1.91%) McAfee