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 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
7 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 377 382 332
Rank change year-on-year +5 -50 -11
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 312 175 252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.53% 0.65%
As % of the System Software category 5.90% 4.52% 5.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 192 124 171
10th Percentile £385 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £725 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £494 £573
% change year-on-year -1.42% -13.71% +9.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 14
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £63.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.75 - £14.63
% change year-on-year - - -69.09%

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 5,286 3,873 4,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.90% 11.79% 11.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,476 2,488 3,088
10th Percentile £222 £229 £220
25th Percentile £400 £388 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.85%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 214 103 145
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.27 £17.94 £15.76
Median hourly rate £52.50 £32.77 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +60.21% +37.69% -52.40%
75th Percentile £74.00 £79.35 £58.69
90th Percentile £79.35 £91.50 £70.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £61.50 £24.18
% change year-on-year -14.63% +154.34% -10.44%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +19 289 £500 - 90
UK excluding London +8 175 £487 -1.42% 57
London -45 116 £525 - 42
Work from Home -29 93 £500 - 48
North of England -11 82 £486 +16.82% 13
South East -27 54 £475 -20.83% 19
Yorkshire -8 45 £500 +11.86% 2
North West -11 35 £480 +37.14% 10
Midlands -56 17 £487 +2.53% 3
South West -20 16 £540 -8.09% 8
West Midlands -66 11 £406 -11.74% 3
East of England -16 6 £425 +41.67% 11
Scotland -14 5 £375 -26.83% 4
East Midlands -11 4 £500 +5.26%
North East - 2 £400 - 1

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 5 (1.60%) Confluence
1 5 (1.60%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.96%) Apache
3 3 (0.96%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.96%) IIS
4 2 (0.64%) CMS
4 2 (0.64%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.64%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.64%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.32%) JBoss
5 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.28%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.28%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.64%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.64%) InDesign
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.64%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 146 (46.79%) Azure
2 49 (15.71%) Entra ID
3 48 (15.38%) AWS
4 36 (11.54%) Azure Monitor
5 34 (10.90%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (9.62%) OpenShift
7 27 (8.65%) GitHub
8 25 (8.01%) Azure AKS
9 20 (6.41%) IaaS
10 19 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
12 16 (5.13%) Serverless
13 15 (4.81%) GCP
14 13 (4.17%) Azure Key Vault
15 12 (3.85%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 11 (3.53%) Power Platform
17 10 (3.21%) Azure Storage
17 10 (3.21%) PaaS
18 9 (2.88%) Azure Functions
18 9 (2.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 46 (14.74%) DNS
2 42 (13.46%) Firewall
3 28 (8.97%) VPN
4 22 (7.05%) SSL
4 22 (7.05%) VLAN
5 21 (6.73%) Network Security
6 20 (6.41%) DHCP
7 19 (6.09%) VSAN
8 17 (5.45%) WAN
9 10 (3.21%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.56%) FTP
11 7 (2.24%) LAN
12 6 (1.92%) SAN
12 6 (1.92%) SSH
12 6 (1.92%) TCP/IP
13 5 (1.60%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (1.28%) HTTPS
15 3 (0.96%) Cisco Nexus
16 2 (0.64%) NAS
16 2 (0.64%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.58%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.53%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (3.53%) Power BI
3 10 (3.21%) MySQL
4 8 (2.56%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.96%) Apache Hive
6 3 (0.96%) Big Data
6 3 (0.96%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.96%) Db2
6 3 (0.96%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.96%) Hadoop
6 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.32%) OpenStack Swift
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.32%) Power Query
7 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.13%) Git
2 12 (3.85%) Jenkins
3 9 (2.88%) GitLab
4 6 (1.92%) JIRA
5 4 (1.28%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.96%) PVCS
6 3 (0.96%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.64%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.64%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.64%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.32%) Selenium
8 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 44 (14.10%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.29%) Finance
3 14 (4.49%) Legal
4 12 (3.85%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.53%) Banking
5 11 (3.53%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.24%) Retail
7 6 (1.92%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.92%) Front Office
7 6 (1.92%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.28%) Marketing
9 2 (0.64%) Law
9 2 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.64%) Publishing
10 1 (0.32%) Advertising
10 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.32%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 43 (13.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 38 (12.18%) Azure Engineer
3 37 (11.86%) DevOps Engineer
4 32 (10.26%) Cloud Engineer
5 27 (8.65%) Senior
6 22 (7.05%) Lead
7 17 (5.45%) Architect
7 17 (5.45%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.13%) Analyst
9 15 (4.81%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.85%) Consultant
11 11 (3.53%) Administrator
12 10 (3.21%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.88%) DBA
13 9 (2.88%) VMware Engineer
13 9 (2.88%) Wintel Engineer
14 8 (2.56%) Migration Engineer
14 8 (2.56%) Platform Engineer
14 8 (2.56%) Solutions Architect
14 8 (2.56%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (3.85%) ARM Templates
2 9 (2.88%) REST
3 8 (2.56%) YAML
4 5 (1.60%) Middleware
5 3 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (0.96%) JSON
6 2 (0.64%) SOAP
7 1 (0.32%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.32%) Kafka
7 1 (0.32%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.32%) LDAP
7 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.32%) Node.js
7 1 (0.32%) NumPy
7 1 (0.32%) OpenID
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 1 (0.32%) Pandas
7 1 (0.32%) PySpark
7 1 (0.32%) SciPy
7 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 32 (10.26%) Replication
2 21 (6.73%) Clustering
3 20 (6.41%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (5.13%) Data Centre
5 14 (4.49%) Linux Command Line
6 8 (2.56%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.56%) PKI
6 8 (2.56%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.24%) Enterprise Storage
7 7 (2.24%) Mainframe
7 7 (2.24%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.24%) Public Cloud
7 7 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.92%) Fixed Income
8 6 (1.92%) Market Risk
8 6 (1.92%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.60%) Security Posture
10 4 (1.28%) FlexPod
10 4 (1.28%) Private Cloud
11 3 (0.96%) IBM XIV
Operating Systems
1 101 (32.37%) Windows
2 82 (26.28%) Linux
3 56 (17.95%) Windows Server
4 37 (11.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (10.26%) VMS
6 8 (2.56%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.56%) Unix
7 6 (1.92%) AIX
7 6 (1.92%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.60%) Data ONTAP
8 5 (1.60%) SUSE
9 4 (1.28%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.32%) Android
11 1 (0.32%) Rocky
11 1 (0.32%) Solaris
11 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (26.28%) DevOps
2 75 (24.04%) CI/CD
3 65 (20.83%) Migration
4 60 (19.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 58 (18.59%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (13.46%) Performance Tuning
7 41 (13.14%) High Availability
8 37 (11.86%) Disaster Recovery
9 35 (11.22%) Validation
10 33 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
10 33 (10.58%) RBAC
11 30 (9.62%) Problem-Solving
12 29 (9.29%) Network Virtualisation
13 27 (8.65%) Vulnerability Management
14 26 (8.33%) Runbook
15 25 (8.01%) Capacity Planning
15 25 (8.01%) Stakeholder Management
16 23 (7.37%) Analytics
16 23 (7.37%) ITIL
16 23 (7.37%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 90 (28.85%) PowerShell
2 65 (20.83%) Python
3 45 (14.42%) SQL
4 39 (12.50%) Bash
5 10 (3.21%) Bicep
6 9 (2.88%) C#
7 8 (2.56%) C
8 6 (1.92%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.92%) T-SQL
9 4 (1.28%) Korn
9 4 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.96%) Java
11 2 (0.64%) C++
11 2 (0.64%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.32%) Cypher
12 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.32%) Go
12 1 (0.32%) Groovy
12 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 82 (26.28%) Security Cleared
2 67 (21.47%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.41%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.45%) Degree
4 17 (5.45%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (4.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.53%) VCAP
7 10 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.21%) MCSA
7 10 (3.21%) MCSE
8 7 (2.24%) OCP
8 7 (2.24%) Oracle Certification
9 6 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (1.92%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.92%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.92%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 5 (1.60%) CCNA
10 5 (1.60%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.28%) CISSP
12 3 (0.96%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.21%) QA
2 4 (1.28%) SLA
3 3 (0.96%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.64%) GMP
4 2 (0.64%) GxP
4 2 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.64%) NIST
5 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.32%) GDPR
5 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 94 (30.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (16.67%) Active Directory
3 47 (15.06%) vSphere
4 41 (13.14%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (8.65%) Docker
6 25 (8.01%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.49%) VMware NSX
8 11 (3.53%) KVM
9 9 (2.88%) NFS
10 7 (2.24%) Ceph
10 7 (2.24%) Firmware
11 6 (1.92%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.96%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.96%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.64%) HDFS
13 2 (0.64%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.32%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.32%) iptables
14 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.32%) Samba
Systems Management
1 71 (22.76%) Terraform
2 51 (16.35%) Kubernetes
3 49 (15.71%) Ansible
4 31 (9.94%) vCenter Server
5 16 (5.13%) Grafana
6 13 (4.17%) PowerCLI
7 12 (3.85%) Prometheus
8 9 (2.88%) SCOM
9 8 (2.56%) SCCM
10 7 (2.24%) vMotion
10 7 (2.24%) VxRail
11 6 (1.92%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (1.92%) Podman
12 5 (1.60%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (1.60%) Proxmox
12 5 (1.60%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.28%) Argo
13 4 (1.28%) Avamar
13 4 (1.28%) Microsoft Clustering
13 4 (1.28%) Packer
Vendors
1 99 (31.73%) VMware
2 93 (29.81%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.29%) Cisco
4 22 (7.05%) Oracle
4 22 (7.05%) ServiceNow
5 17 (5.45%) Red Hat
6 16 (5.13%) NetApp
7 14 (4.49%) Dell
8 13 (4.17%) IBM
9 11 (3.53%) Veeam
10 10 (3.21%) Google
10 10 (3.21%) Qualys
11 9 (2.88%) CyberArk
11 9 (2.88%) Tenable
12 8 (2.56%) Databricks
13 7 (2.24%) Commvault
13 7 (2.24%) SolarWinds
13 7 (2.24%) Splunk
14 6 (1.92%) Palo Alto
15 5 (1.60%) Meraki
106 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide