Virtual Machines Contract Job Trends

Virtual Machine (VM)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 397 392 335
Rank change year-on-year -5 -57 -7
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 308 164 236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.50% 0.62%
As % of the System Software category 5.68% 4.29% 5.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 111 158
10th Percentile £391 £350 £345
25th Percentile £425 £419 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £708 £650 £672
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £525
% change year-on-year +3.09% -7.62% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 4 8
10th Percentile £26.00 - -
25th Percentile £50.63 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £85.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +146.38% +135.90% -81.42%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £32.28
90th Percentile - - £84.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.24 - £14.63
% change year-on-year - - -81.42%

All System Software Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 5,420 3,826 4,358
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.95% 11.69% 11.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,562 2,412 2,943
10th Percentile £218 £225 £218
25th Percentile £400 £381 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.44%
75th Percentile £590 £590 £608
90th Percentile £675 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £480
% change year-on-year - -1.04% +1.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 244 111 117
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £17.44
Median hourly rate £60.92 £32.77 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +85.89% +33.76% -51.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £59.88
90th Percentile £91.48 £91.50 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -2.87% +136.36% -30.56%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in the UK

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 9 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 9 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Top 15 Contract Job 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 9 September 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 +19 286 £500 +1.01% 187
UK excluding London +4 179 £500 +3.09% 109
London -53 108 £532 +5.35% 90
North of England -5 82 £500 +19.05% 21
Work from Home -56 82 £500 +5.82% 77
South East -27 53 £483 -19.58% 38
Yorkshire -8 42 £523 +18.26% 4
North West -15 38 £483 +48.62% 13
Midlands -47 17 £487 -1.62% 12
South West -41 16 £558 +1.36% 8
East of England -12 12 £425 -10.53% 29
West Midlands -47 11 £406 -19.00% 8
East Midlands -13 4 £500 +5.26% 4
Scotland -29 4 £375 -26.83% 2
North East - 2 £413 - 4

Virtual Machines
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 10 (3.25%) IIS
2 6 (1.95%) Confluence
3 4 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (1.30%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.97%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.65%) Apache
5 2 (0.65%) CMS
5 2 (0.65%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.32%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.30%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.30%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.65%) InDesign
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 144 (46.75%) Azure
2 56 (18.18%) Entra ID
3 47 (15.26%) AWS
4 39 (12.66%) Azure Monitor
5 35 (11.36%) Azure DevOps
6 25 (8.12%) Azure AKS
6 25 (8.12%) OpenShift
7 24 (7.79%) GitHub
7 24 (7.79%) IaaS
8 18 (5.84%) GitHub Actions
9 14 (4.55%) Azure Key Vault
9 14 (4.55%) PaaS
10 13 (4.22%) Microsoft 365
11 12 (3.90%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 12 (3.90%) GCP
11 12 (3.90%) Power Platform
11 12 (3.90%) Serverless
12 10 (3.25%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (3.25%) SaaS
13 9 (2.92%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 47 (15.26%) DNS
2 45 (14.61%) Firewall
3 26 (8.44%) VPN
4 22 (7.14%) Network Security
4 22 (7.14%) SSL
5 21 (6.82%) VLAN
6 20 (6.49%) VSAN
7 19 (6.17%) DHCP
8 18 (5.84%) WAN
9 10 (3.25%) SD-WAN
10 9 (2.92%) HTTP
11 8 (2.60%) LAN
12 7 (2.27%) FTP
13 6 (1.95%) SAN
14 5 (1.62%) HTTPS
14 5 (1.62%) SSH
14 5 (1.62%) TCP/IP
14 5 (1.62%) Wi-Fi
15 3 (0.97%) Cisco Nexus
15 3 (0.97%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.71%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.87%) MySQL
3 12 (3.90%) Power BI
4 11 (3.57%) Azure SQL Database
4 11 (3.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 10 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
6 8 (2.60%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (0.97%) Apache Hive
7 3 (0.97%) Big Data
7 3 (0.97%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.97%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.97%) Hadoop
7 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.32%) Amazon QuickSight
9 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (4.87%) Git
1 15 (4.87%) Jenkins
2 9 (2.92%) GitLab
3 7 (2.27%) JIRA
4 6 (1.95%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.97%) PVCS
6 3 (0.97%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.65%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.65%) Maven
7 2 (0.65%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.65%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.65%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.32%) Selenium
8 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 44 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 27 (8.77%) Finance
3 12 (3.90%) Legal
4 11 (3.57%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (2.60%) Banking
5 8 (2.60%) Public Sector
6 6 (1.95%) Back Office
6 6 (1.95%) Front Office
7 5 (1.62%) Manufacturing
7 5 (1.62%) Retail
8 4 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.30%) Marketing
9 3 (0.97%) Law
10 2 (0.65%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.65%) Local Government
10 2 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.65%) Publishing
11 1 (0.32%) Advertising
11 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 47 (15.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 38 (12.34%) Azure Engineer
3 32 (10.39%) Cloud Engineer
3 32 (10.39%) DevOps Engineer
4 27 (8.77%) Senior
5 25 (8.12%) Lead
6 19 (6.17%) Architect
7 17 (5.52%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (4.87%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 13 (4.22%) Analyst
9 13 (4.22%) DBA
10 12 (3.90%) Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.57%) Administrator
11 11 (3.57%) Consultant
11 11 (3.57%) Security Engineer
11 11 (3.57%) SQL DBA
12 10 (3.25%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
13 9 (2.92%) VMware Engineer
13 9 (2.92%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (22.40%) Terraform
2 11 (3.57%) ARM Templates
3 9 (2.92%) JSON
4 8 (2.60%) REST
5 7 (2.27%) LDAP
5 7 (2.27%) Regular Expression
5 7 (2.27%) YAML
6 5 (1.62%) Middleware
7 3 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.65%) ADO
8 2 (0.65%) SOAP
8 2 (0.65%) Web Services
9 1 (0.32%) Java SE
9 1 (0.32%) Node.js
9 1 (0.32%) NumPy
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 1 (0.32%) Pandas
9 1 (0.32%) SAP Basis
9 1 (0.32%) SciPy
9 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 42 (13.64%) Replication
2 30 (9.74%) Clustering
3 20 (6.49%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.87%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.90%) Linux Command Line
6 10 (3.25%) Cloud Native
7 9 (2.92%) Mainframe
7 9 (2.92%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.92%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.60%) Enterprise Storage
8 8 (2.60%) Onboarding
9 7 (2.27%) Cyber Threat
10 6 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.95%) Fixed Income
10 6 (1.95%) Market Risk
10 6 (1.95%) Operational Technology
10 6 (1.95%) PKI
10 6 (1.95%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.95%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.97%) Symmetrix
Operating Systems
1 110 (35.71%) Windows
2 79 (25.65%) Linux
3 62 (20.13%) Windows Server
4 33 (10.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (9.74%) VMS
6 9 (2.92%) Unix
7 8 (2.60%) Ubuntu
8 5 (1.62%) SUSE
9 4 (1.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (1.30%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.97%) AIX
10 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.65%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.65%) zOS
12 1 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.32%) Android
12 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.32%) Rocky
12 1 (0.32%) Solaris
12 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (26.30%) DevOps
2 76 (24.68%) CI/CD
3 70 (22.73%) Migration
4 64 (20.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 62 (20.13%) Infrastructure as Code
6 44 (14.29%) Performance Tuning
7 41 (13.31%) RBAC
8 39 (12.66%) Disaster Recovery
9 38 (12.34%) Continuous Improvement
10 37 (12.01%) High Availability
11 36 (11.69%) Validation
12 30 (9.74%) Problem-Solving
12 30 (9.74%) Runbook
13 29 (9.42%) Platform Engineering
14 28 (9.09%) ITIL
14 28 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
15 26 (8.44%) Network Virtualisation
16 25 (8.12%) Root Cause Analysis
17 24 (7.79%) Capacity Planning
17 24 (7.79%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 95 (30.84%) PowerShell
2 66 (21.43%) Python
3 43 (13.96%) SQL
4 35 (11.36%) Bash
5 13 (4.22%) Bicep
6 11 (3.57%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.60%) C#
7 8 (2.60%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.95%) C
9 5 (1.62%) Java
10 4 (1.30%) Groovy
10 4 (1.30%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.65%) C++
11 2 (0.65%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.65%) Korn
12 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.32%) Go
12 1 (0.32%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.32%) RPG
12 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 91 (29.55%) Security Cleared
2 74 (24.03%) SC Cleared
3 22 (7.14%) Azure Certification
3 22 (7.14%) Degree
4 20 (6.49%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (4.87%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (4.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 13 (4.22%) DV Cleared
8 11 (3.57%) VCAP
9 10 (3.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 10 (3.25%) MCSA
9 10 (3.25%) MCSE
10 6 (1.95%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.62%) CCNA
11 5 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (0.97%) CISM
12 3 (0.97%) CISSP
12 3 (0.97%) PMI Certification
12 3 (0.97%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.25%) QA
2 4 (1.30%) SLA
3 3 (0.97%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.97%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.65%) GMP
4 2 (0.65%) GxP
4 2 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.65%) NIST
5 1 (0.32%) GDPR
5 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 97 (31.49%) VMware Infrastructure
2 55 (17.86%) Active Directory
3 46 (14.94%) vSphere
4 41 (13.31%) VMware ESXi
5 32 (10.39%) Hyper-V
6 28 (9.09%) Docker
7 14 (4.55%) VMware NSX
8 10 (3.25%) NFS
9 8 (2.60%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (2.27%) Ceph
11 6 (1.95%) KVM
12 5 (1.62%) Firmware
13 3 (0.97%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.97%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.65%) HDFS
14 2 (0.65%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.32%) BitLocker
15 1 (0.32%) DFS Replication
15 1 (0.32%) Dovecot
15 1 (0.32%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 47 (15.26%) Ansible
2 46 (14.94%) Kubernetes
3 29 (9.42%) vCenter Server
4 19 (6.17%) Grafana
5 15 (4.87%) SCOM
6 14 (4.55%) Prometheus
7 12 (3.90%) PowerCLI
8 11 (3.57%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (2.60%) SCCM
9 8 (2.60%) VxRail
10 7 (2.27%) Packer
10 7 (2.27%) Podman
10 7 (2.27%) vMotion
11 6 (1.95%) Microsoft Clustering
11 6 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (1.95%) Proxmox
12 4 (1.30%) Avamar
12 4 (1.30%) OPNET
13 3 (0.97%) EMC VPLEX
13 3 (0.97%) WSUS
Vendors
1 102 (33.12%) Microsoft
1 102 (33.12%) VMware
2 29 (9.42%) Cisco
3 25 (8.12%) ServiceNow
4 23 (7.47%) Oracle
5 17 (5.52%) Dell
6 12 (3.90%) IBM
6 12 (3.90%) NetApp
6 12 (3.90%) Red Hat
6 12 (3.90%) Veeam
7 9 (2.92%) CyberArk
7 9 (2.92%) Splunk
8 8 (2.60%) Google
8 8 (2.60%) Qualys
8 8 (2.60%) SolarWinds
9 6 (1.95%) Commvault
9 6 (1.95%) Databricks
10 5 (1.62%) EMC
10 5 (1.62%) Meraki
10 5 (1.62%) Palo Alto