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 25 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 378 336 313
Rank change year-on-year -42 -23 +3
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 263 196 288
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.66% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 5.38% 5.29% 6.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 126 191
10th Percentile £356 £350 £300
25th Percentile £424 £456 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £518 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% +3.55% -7.83%
75th Percentile £575 £622 £608
90th Percentile £650 £738 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.40% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 13 27
10th Percentile - £33.25 -
25th Percentile - £53.00 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £15.19
90th Percentile - - £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
% change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.33%

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 4,887 3,708 4,706
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.48% 12.56% 10.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,300 2,537 3,218
10th Percentile £213 £213 £197
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £594 £623 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £484 £460
% change year-on-year -1.86% +5.22% -5.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 92 234
10th Percentile £16.19 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £27.97 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +87.70% +24.31% -56.84%
75th Percentile £74.13 £64.63 £60.00
90th Percentile £92.50 £87.83 £73.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £36.65 £21.00
% change year-on-year +43.27% +74.50% -47.50%

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 25 April 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
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 25 April 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 -37 245 £498 -5.07% 56
UK excluding London -32 141 £483 -3.40% 46
London -58 99 £525 -8.70% 15
Work from Home 0 95 £500 -2.44% 65
North of England -6 88 £482 +27.51% 10
Yorkshire -17 48 £500 +14.29% 3
North West -15 39 £460 +20.73% 6
South East -57 21 £488 -15.22% 24
Midlands -59 15 £425 -15.00% 2
West Midlands -60 12 £375 -18.92% 2
East of England -46 10 £550 - 5
South West -38 8 £538 +7.50% 2
Scotland +5 5 £550 +7.32% 3
North East -20 1 £400 +10.34% 1
East Midlands -33 1 £500 -13.04%

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 6 (2.28%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.90%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.14%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.14%) Palantir Foundry
3 3 (1.14%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.76%) Apache
4 2 (0.76%) CMS
4 2 (0.76%) nginx
4 2 (0.76%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.38%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.38%) IIS
5 1 (0.38%) JBoss
5 1 (0.38%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Adobe Illustrator
1 3 (1.14%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.76%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.38%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 115 (43.73%) Azure
2 45 (17.11%) AWS
3 39 (14.83%) OpenShift
4 36 (13.69%) GitHub
5 26 (9.89%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (9.89%) GitHub Actions
6 20 (7.60%) Azure Monitor
6 20 (7.60%) GCP
7 19 (7.22%) Serverless
8 18 (6.84%) Entra ID
9 16 (6.08%) Azure AKS
10 12 (4.56%) Microsoft 365
11 11 (4.18%) Azure Storage
12 9 (3.42%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (3.04%) Azure Key Vault
13 8 (3.04%) PaaS
14 7 (2.66%) Azure Functions
15 6 (2.28%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (2.28%) AWS CodePipeline
15 6 (2.28%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 35 (13.31%) Firewall
2 32 (12.17%) DNS
3 18 (6.84%) VPN
4 15 (5.70%) VSAN
5 14 (5.32%) Network Security
6 13 (4.94%) DHCP
6 13 (4.94%) VLAN
7 11 (4.18%) SSL
8 10 (3.80%) SAN
9 9 (3.42%) Reverse Proxy
9 9 (3.42%) WAN
10 8 (3.04%) TCP/IP
11 5 (1.90%) FTP
11 5 (1.90%) SD-WAN
12 4 (1.52%) LAN
12 4 (1.52%) SSH
13 3 (1.14%) NAS
13 3 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.76%) Cisco Nexus
14 2 (0.76%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (6.08%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.66%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.28%) DB2
4 6 (2.28%) Oracle Database
5 5 (1.90%) Power BI
6 4 (1.52%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.14%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.14%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.14%) Big Data
7 3 (1.14%) Data Hub
7 3 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.14%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.14%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.14%) MySQL
8 2 (0.76%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.76%) ImageNet
9 1 (0.38%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 31 (11.79%) Git
2 14 (5.32%) GitLab
3 9 (3.42%) JIRA
3 9 (3.42%) PVCS
4 8 (3.04%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.04%) Rational DOORS
5 3 (1.14%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.76%) JMeter
6 2 (0.76%) Postman
6 2 (0.76%) RStudio
6 2 (0.76%) Selenium
6 2 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.76%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.38%) Gradle
7 1 (0.38%) Terragrunt
General
1 34 (12.93%) Social Skills
2 18 (6.84%) Finance
3 17 (6.46%) Public Sector
4 11 (4.18%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 9 (3.42%) Banking
5 9 (3.42%) Legal
6 8 (3.04%) Electronics
7 5 (1.90%) Retail
8 3 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.14%) Marketing
9 2 (0.76%) Front Office
9 2 (0.76%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.76%) Social Science
9 2 (0.76%) Spanish Language
10 1 (0.38%) Back Office
10 1 (0.38%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.38%) Law
10 1 (0.38%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.38%) Police
Job Titles
1 30 (11.41%) DevOps Engineer
2 26 (9.89%) Azure Engineer
3 23 (8.75%) Senior
4 19 (7.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 16 (6.08%) Architect
5 16 (6.08%) Wintel Engineer
6 13 (4.94%) Cloud Engineer
7 12 (4.56%) VMware Engineer
8 11 (4.18%) Analyst
9 10 (3.80%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 10 (3.80%) Consultant
9 10 (3.80%) Lead
9 10 (3.80%) Security Engineer
9 10 (3.80%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 8 (3.04%) Migration Engineer
10 8 (3.04%) Platform Engineer
10 8 (3.04%) Site Engineer
10 8 (3.04%) Software Engineer
11 7 (2.66%) C++ Software Engineer
11 7 (2.66%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.04%) ARM Templates
1 8 (3.04%) REST
1 8 (3.04%) YAML
2 4 (1.52%) Middleware
3 3 (1.14%) Hugging Face
3 3 (1.14%) JSON
4 2 (0.76%) .NET
4 2 (0.76%) Kafka
4 2 (0.76%) OpenCV
4 2 (0.76%) PySpark
4 2 (0.76%) PyTorch
4 2 (0.76%) Regular Expression
4 2 (0.76%) SpaCy
4 2 (0.76%) TensorFlow
5 1 (0.38%) cloud-init
5 1 (0.38%) Java SE
5 1 (0.38%) LDAP
5 1 (0.38%) Retrofit
5 1 (0.38%) SOAP
5 1 (0.38%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 24 (9.13%) Replication
2 22 (8.37%) Data Centre
3 21 (7.98%) Clustering
4 15 (5.70%) Cloud Native
5 13 (4.94%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (4.56%) Linux Command Line
6 12 (4.56%) Private Cloud
7 10 (3.80%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.28%) FlexPod
8 6 (2.28%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.90%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.52%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.14%) PKI
11 3 (1.14%) SCADA
11 3 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
12 2 (0.76%) AI Agents
12 2 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
12 2 (0.76%) EMC VNX
12 2 (0.76%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 75 (28.52%) Linux
2 72 (27.38%) Windows
3 44 (16.73%) Windows Server
4 39 (14.83%) VMS
5 28 (10.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (3.04%) CoreOS
7 7 (2.66%) AIX
7 7 (2.66%) Data ONTAP
7 7 (2.66%) Unix
8 4 (1.52%) SUSE
9 3 (1.14%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.14%) Ubuntu
9 3 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.76%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.38%) Android
11 1 (0.38%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (27.76%) DevOps
2 70 (26.62%) CI/CD
3 60 (22.81%) Migration
4 53 (20.15%) Infrastructure as Code
5 43 (16.35%) High Availability
6 42 (15.97%) Disaster Recovery
7 35 (13.31%) Network Virtualisation
7 35 (13.31%) Performance Tuning
8 32 (12.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 30 (11.41%) Capacity Planning
10 28 (10.65%) Containerisation
11 27 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
12 23 (8.75%) Platform Engineering
13 22 (8.37%) Technical Leadership
14 21 (7.98%) Cybersecurity
15 18 (6.84%) Deployment Automation
15 18 (6.84%) Root Cause Analysis
16 17 (6.46%) AI
16 17 (6.46%) Problem-Solving
17 16 (6.08%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 69 (26.24%) Python
2 68 (25.86%) PowerShell
3 41 (15.59%) Bash
4 35 (13.31%) SQL
5 11 (4.18%) Shell Script
6 10 (3.80%) C
7 8 (3.04%) Bicep
7 8 (3.04%) C++
8 7 (2.66%) Embedded C
8 7 (2.66%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.28%) Java
9 6 (2.28%) Ruby
10 5 (1.90%) C#
11 4 (1.52%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.76%) Go
12 2 (0.76%) Korn
12 2 (0.76%) PHP
13 1 (0.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.38%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 69 (26.24%) Security Cleared
2 56 (21.29%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 18 (6.84%) VCAP
5 17 (6.46%) OCP
5 17 (6.46%) Oracle Certification
6 15 (5.70%) Azure Certification
6 15 (5.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 14 (5.32%) MCSA
7 14 (5.32%) MCSE
8 6 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.14%) Degree
11 2 (0.76%) CISSP
11 2 (0.76%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 2 (0.76%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.76%) PMP
11 2 (0.76%) RHCA
11 2 (0.76%) RHCE
12 1 (0.38%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.28%) GDPR
1 6 (2.28%) QA
2 3 (1.14%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
2 3 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.38%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.38%) GMP
3 1 (0.38%) GxP
3 1 (0.38%) HIPAA
3 1 (0.38%) NIST
3 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.38%) SLA
3 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 83 (31.56%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (17.87%) vSphere
3 44 (16.73%) VMware ESXi
4 36 (13.69%) Active Directory
5 29 (11.03%) Hyper-V
6 18 (6.84%) KVM
7 15 (5.70%) Docker
8 10 (3.80%) NFS
8 10 (3.80%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.42%) Firmware
10 8 (3.04%) Ceph
11 5 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.76%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.76%) HDFS
12 2 (0.76%) Xen
13 1 (0.38%) iptables
13 1 (0.38%) NLBS
13 1 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.38%) Samba
13 1 (0.38%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 75 (28.52%) Terraform
2 64 (24.33%) Ansible
3 59 (22.43%) Kubernetes
4 40 (15.21%) vCenter Server
5 13 (4.94%) PowerCLI
6 10 (3.80%) Grafana
7 8 (3.04%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (3.04%) Prometheus
7 8 (3.04%) SCCM
8 7 (2.66%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.28%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.28%) VxRail
9 6 (2.28%) WSUS
10 4 (1.52%) Argo
10 4 (1.52%) Data Guard
10 4 (1.52%) Failover Clustering
10 4 (1.52%) Microsoft Clustering
10 4 (1.52%) Oracle RMAN
10 4 (1.52%) systemd
11 3 (1.14%) vMotion
Vendors
1 87 (33.08%) VMware
2 76 (28.90%) Microsoft
3 23 (8.75%) Cisco
4 20 (7.60%) Red Hat
5 18 (6.84%) IBM
6 12 (4.56%) Oracle
7 10 (3.80%) Dell
7 10 (3.80%) Google
7 10 (3.80%) NetApp
7 10 (3.80%) Tenable
8 8 (3.04%) ANSYS
9 7 (2.66%) Veeam
10 5 (1.90%) Databricks
10 5 (1.90%) OpenAI
10 5 (1.90%) Splunk
11 4 (1.52%) Commvault
11 4 (1.52%) OpenText
11 4 (1.52%) Palo Alto
11 4 (1.52%) Pure Storage
11 4 (1.52%) Qualys