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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 385 404 338
Rank change year-on-year +19 -66 -11
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 308 164 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.50% 0.62%
As % of the System Software category 5.68% 4.24% 5.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 112 160
10th Percentile £391 £351 £345
25th Percentile £425 £424 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -7.01% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £709 £649 £671
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £525
% change year-on-year +3.09% -7.62% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 8
10th Percentile £26.90 - -
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £32.28
90th Percentile - - £84.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 - £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 5,419 3,869 4,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.92% 11.72% 11.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,557 2,443 2,969
10th Percentile £218 £225 £218
25th Percentile £400 £381 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.96%
75th Percentile £590 £589 £608
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £476
% change year-on-year - -0.21% +0.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 112 118
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.80 £18.87 £17.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £33.39 £24.35
Median % change year-on-year +87.21% +37.10% -51.30%
75th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £92.11 £91.35 £73.78
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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +12 286 £500 +1.21% 132
UK excluding London +9 180 £500 +3.09% 87
London -39 107 £532 +4.93% 51
North of England -5 83 £500 +19.05% 20
Work from Home -58 82 £500 +5.82% 56
South East -17 53 £483 -19.58% 33
Yorkshire -11 44 £519 +17.35% 6
North West -6 37 £483 +48.62% 11
South West -43 16 £558 +1.36% 5
Midlands -46 16 £487 -1.62% 11
East of England -22 13 £300 -36.84% 19
West Midlands -48 11 £406 -19.00% 8
East Midlands -11 4 £500 +5.26% 3
Scotland -18 4 £375 -26.83% 1
North East - 2 £413 - 3

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 5 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.30%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.65%) Apache
6 2 (0.65%) CMS
6 2 (0.65%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.32%) nginx
7 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
7 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 55 (17.86%) Entra ID
3 49 (15.91%) AWS
4 39 (12.66%) Azure Monitor
5 34 (11.04%) Azure DevOps
6 25 (8.12%) Azure AKS
6 25 (8.12%) GitHub
6 25 (8.12%) IaaS
6 25 (8.12%) OpenShift
7 18 (5.84%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (4.55%) Microsoft 365
8 14 (4.55%) PaaS
9 13 (4.22%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 13 (4.22%) Azure Key Vault
9 13 (4.22%) Serverless
10 12 (3.90%) GCP
11 11 (3.57%) Power Platform
12 10 (3.25%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (3.25%) Azure Storage
12 10 (3.25%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 48 (15.58%) DNS
2 47 (15.26%) Firewall
3 27 (8.77%) VPN
4 22 (7.14%) Network Security
4 22 (7.14%) SSL
4 22 (7.14%) VLAN
5 20 (6.49%) DHCP
6 19 (6.17%) VSAN
6 19 (6.17%) WAN
7 10 (3.25%) SD-WAN
8 9 (2.92%) HTTP
8 9 (2.92%) LAN
9 7 (2.27%) FTP
10 6 (1.95%) SAN
10 6 (1.95%) TCP/IP
11 5 (1.62%) HTTPS
11 5 (1.62%) SSH
11 5 (1.62%) Wi-Fi
12 3 (0.97%) Cisco Nexus
12 3 (0.97%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.71%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.87%) MySQL
3 11 (3.57%) Power BI
3 11 (3.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
4 10 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
5 8 (2.60%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.97%) Apache Hive
6 3 (0.97%) Big Data
6 3 (0.97%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.97%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.32%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.32%) SAP HANA
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 5 (1.62%) PVCS
6 4 (1.30%) CppUnit
6 4 (1.30%) Rational DOORS
6 4 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.97%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.65%) Maven
8 2 (0.65%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.65%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.32%) Selenium
9 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
9 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 45 (14.61%) Social Skills
2 28 (9.09%) Finance
3 12 (3.90%) Legal
4 11 (3.57%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (2.60%) Banking
6 7 (2.27%) Public Sector
7 6 (1.95%) Back Office
7 6 (1.95%) Front Office
8 5 (1.62%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.62%) Retail
9 4 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.30%) Law
9 4 (1.30%) Marketing
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 25 (8.12%) Senior
5 24 (7.79%) Lead
6 19 (6.17%) Architect
7 17 (5.52%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (4.55%) 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%) Wintel Engineer
14 8 (2.60%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (22.40%) Terraform
2 12 (3.90%) ARM Templates
3 9 (2.92%) JSON
4 8 (2.60%) REST
5 7 (2.27%) LDAP
5 7 (2.27%) Regular Expression
6 6 (1.95%) YAML
7 5 (1.62%) Middleware
8 3 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.65%) ADO
9 2 (0.65%) SOAP
9 2 (0.65%) Web Services
10 1 (0.32%) Java SE
10 1 (0.32%) Node.js
10 1 (0.32%) NumPy
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 1 (0.32%) Pandas
10 1 (0.32%) SAP Basis
10 1 (0.32%) SciPy
10 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 42 (13.64%) Replication
2 30 (9.74%) Clustering
3 20 (6.49%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (5.19%) 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
9 7 (2.27%) 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 4 (1.30%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 110 (35.71%) Windows
2 78 (25.32%) Linux
3 63 (20.45%) 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%) Android
11 2 (0.65%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.65%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.65%) zOS
12 1 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.32%) Rocky
12 1 (0.32%) Solaris
12 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (25.97%) DevOps
2 75 (24.35%) CI/CD
3 70 (22.73%) Migration
4 65 (21.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 63 (20.45%) Infrastructure as Code
6 43 (13.96%) Performance Tuning
7 40 (12.99%) Disaster Recovery
7 40 (12.99%) RBAC
8 39 (12.66%) Continuous Improvement
9 38 (12.34%) High Availability
10 36 (11.69%) Validation
11 32 (10.39%) Problem-Solving
12 29 (9.42%) Platform Engineering
12 29 (9.42%) Runbook
13 28 (9.09%) ITIL
13 28 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
14 27 (8.77%) Network Virtualisation
15 26 (8.44%) Cybersecurity
16 25 (8.12%) Root Cause Analysis
17 24 (7.79%) AI
Programming Languages
1 96 (31.17%) PowerShell
2 66 (21.43%) Python
3 41 (13.31%) SQL
4 36 (11.69%) Bash
5 14 (4.55%) Bicep
6 11 (3.57%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.60%) C
7 8 (2.60%) C#
7 8 (2.60%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.62%) Java
9 4 (1.30%) C++
9 4 (1.30%) Groovy
9 4 (1.30%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.97%) 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 14 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (4.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 13 (4.22%) DV Cleared
7 11 (3.57%) VCAP
8 10 (3.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 10 (3.25%) MCSA
8 10 (3.25%) MCSE
9 6 (1.95%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.62%) CCNA
10 5 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.97%) CISM
11 3 (0.97%) CISSP
11 3 (0.97%) PMI Certification
11 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 99 (32.14%) VMware Infrastructure
2 56 (18.18%) 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 13 (4.22%) 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%) DFS Replication
15 1 (0.32%) Dovecot
15 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
15 1 (0.32%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 46 (14.94%) Ansible
1 46 (14.94%) Kubernetes
2 30 (9.74%) vCenter Server
3 19 (6.17%) Grafana
4 15 (4.87%) SCOM
5 14 (4.55%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.57%) Failover Clustering
6 11 (3.57%) PowerCLI
7 8 (2.60%) SCCM
7 8 (2.60%) VxRail
8 7 (2.27%) Packer
8 7 (2.27%) Podman
8 7 (2.27%) vMotion
9 6 (1.95%) Microsoft Clustering
9 6 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (1.95%) Proxmox
10 4 (1.30%) Avamar
10 4 (1.30%) OPNET
11 3 (0.97%) Argo
11 3 (0.97%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 104 (33.77%) VMware
2 103 (33.44%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.42%) Cisco
4 25 (8.12%) ServiceNow
5 22 (7.14%) Oracle
6 17 (5.52%) Dell
7 12 (3.90%) IBM
7 12 (3.90%) NetApp
7 12 (3.90%) Red Hat
7 12 (3.90%) Veeam
8 9 (2.92%) CyberArk
8 9 (2.92%) Splunk
9 8 (2.60%) Google
9 8 (2.60%) Qualys
9 8 (2.60%) SolarWinds
10 6 (1.95%) Commvault
11 5 (1.62%) Databricks
11 5 (1.62%) EMC
11 5 (1.62%) Meraki
11 5 (1.62%) Palo Alto