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 5 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 377 347 309
Rank change year-on-year -30 -38 +18
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 289 179 298
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.62% 0.69%
As % of the System Software category 5.91% 5.01% 6.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 198 117 205
10th Percentile £357 £350 £316
25th Percentile £424 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.79% -2.38% -2.33%
75th Percentile £566 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £498 £525
% change year-on-year -3.02% -5.24% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 8 26
10th Percentile £26.00 - -
25th Percentile £37.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +102.90% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £64.88 £15.19
90th Percentile - £66.00 £84.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £64.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +8.53% +341.03% -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 4,889 3,572 4,690
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.96% 12.35% 10.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,259 2,374 3,258
10th Percentile £219 £215 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £606
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -0.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 86 224
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.91 £15.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.46 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +84.50% +17.68% -55.90%
75th Percentile £73.00 £65.63 £60.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £88.00 £79.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £36.65 £27.50
% change year-on-year +39.17% +33.25% -42.85%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 -4 270 £496 -3.18% 67
UK excluding London -16 166 £483 -3.02% 51
London -52 101 £525 -4.55% 18
North of England -6 93 £478 +27.33% 9
Work from Home -12 93 £500 - 39
Yorkshire -7 49 £500 +5.26% 5
North West -7 42 £463 +24.16% 4
South East -37 42 £514 -10.61% 22
Midlands -53 16 £438 -12.15% 3
West Midlands -58 13 £425 -14.66% 3
South West -23 9 £360 -24.21% 6
East of England -26 7 £425 -19.12% 8
Scotland -9 5 £550 +7.32% 4
North East -28 2 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -25 1 £500 -4.76%

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 (1.73%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.38%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.04%) Apache
3 3 (1.04%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.04%) Confluence
3 3 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.04%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.69%) CMS
4 2 (0.69%) nginx
4 2 (0.69%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.35%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.35%) IIS
5 1 (0.35%) JBoss
5 1 (0.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.38%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.38%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.69%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.35%) InDesign
3 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.35%) SAP SD
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 112 (38.75%) Azure
2 49 (16.96%) AWS
3 37 (12.80%) OpenShift
4 27 (9.34%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (9.00%) GitHub
6 23 (7.96%) Entra ID
7 18 (6.23%) Azure Monitor
7 18 (6.23%) GCP
8 16 (5.54%) Azure AKS
8 16 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
9 15 (5.19%) Serverless
10 13 (4.50%) Microsoft 365
11 11 (3.81%) Azure Storage
12 10 (3.46%) Azure Key Vault
12 10 (3.46%) Nutanix
13 8 (2.77%) PaaS
14 7 (2.42%) Amazon EC2
14 7 (2.42%) Azure Functions
14 7 (2.42%) IaaS
15 6 (2.08%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 35 (12.11%) DNS
2 33 (11.42%) Firewall
3 23 (7.96%) VPN
4 21 (7.27%) Network Security
4 21 (7.27%) VLAN
5 18 (6.23%) DHCP
6 15 (5.19%) VSAN
7 12 (4.15%) SSL
7 12 (4.15%) WAN
8 10 (3.46%) SD-WAN
9 9 (3.11%) SAN
10 7 (2.42%) LAN
11 6 (2.08%) FTP
11 6 (2.08%) TCP/IP
12 4 (1.38%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (1.38%) SSH
12 4 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
13 2 (0.69%) IPsec
13 2 (0.69%) NAS
13 2 (0.69%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (6.92%) SQL Server
2 7 (2.42%) Azure SQL Database
2 7 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.08%) Db2
3 6 (2.08%) Oracle Database
3 6 (2.08%) Power BI
4 4 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
5 3 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.04%) Apache Hive
5 3 (1.04%) Big Data
5 3 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.04%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.04%) Hadoop
5 3 (1.04%) MySQL
6 1 (0.35%) OpenStack Swift
6 1 (0.35%) Power Query
6 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.35%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 22 (7.61%) Git
2 15 (5.19%) GitLab
3 14 (4.84%) Jenkins
4 9 (3.11%) JIRA
5 5 (1.73%) PVCS
6 4 (1.38%) Rational DOORS
7 3 (1.04%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.04%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.69%) JMeter
8 2 (0.69%) Postman
8 2 (0.69%) Selenium
8 2 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.69%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.35%) Gradle
9 1 (0.35%) RStudio
General
1 38 (13.15%) Social Skills
2 25 (8.65%) Finance
3 14 (4.84%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (4.15%) Banking
4 12 (4.15%) Legal
4 12 (4.15%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (2.08%) Retail
7 4 (1.38%) Electronics
7 4 (1.38%) Front Office
8 3 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.04%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.04%) Marketing
9 2 (0.69%) Law
9 2 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.35%) Advertising
10 1 (0.35%) Back Office
10 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.35%) Publishing
10 1 (0.35%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 37 (12.80%) DevOps Engineer
2 23 (7.96%) Azure Engineer
3 22 (7.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 21 (7.27%) Senior
5 18 (6.23%) Wintel Engineer
6 15 (5.19%) Cloud Engineer
7 14 (4.84%) Lead
8 13 (4.50%) Analyst
9 12 (4.15%) Administrator
9 12 (4.15%) Architect
9 12 (4.15%) Consultant
10 10 (3.46%) VMware Engineer
11 8 (2.77%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 8 (2.77%) Linux Engineer
12 7 (2.42%) Migration Engineer
12 7 (2.42%) Security Engineer
13 6 (2.08%) Data Engineer
13 6 (2.08%) DBA
13 6 (2.08%) Solutions Architect
13 6 (2.08%) Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (3.11%) REST
2 8 (2.77%) ARM Templates
3 6 (2.08%) YAML
4 5 (1.73%) Middleware
5 3 (1.04%) Hugging Face
5 3 (1.04%) JSON
6 2 (0.69%) OpenCV
6 2 (0.69%) PySpark
6 2 (0.69%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.69%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.69%) SOAP
6 2 (0.69%) SpaCy
6 2 (0.69%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.35%) .NET
7 1 (0.35%) Java SE
7 1 (0.35%) LDAP
7 1 (0.35%) NumPy
7 1 (0.35%) OpenID
7 1 (0.35%) SciPy
7 1 (0.35%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 31 (10.73%) Replication
2 25 (8.65%) Data Centre
3 23 (7.96%) Clustering
4 16 (5.54%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (4.15%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.81%) Linux Command Line
7 9 (3.11%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.42%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.42%) PKI
9 6 (2.08%) FlexPod
9 6 (2.08%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.08%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.73%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.73%) Mainframe
11 4 (1.38%) Public Cloud
11 4 (1.38%) Security Posture
12 3 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.04%) Fixed Income
12 3 (1.04%) SCADA
12 3 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 92 (31.83%) Windows
2 82 (28.37%) Linux
3 54 (18.69%) Windows Server
4 37 (12.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (10.38%) VMS
6 10 (3.46%) Unix
7 9 (3.11%) AIX
8 8 (2.77%) CoreOS
9 7 (2.42%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.38%) SUSE
10 4 (1.38%) Ubuntu
11 3 (1.04%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.69%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.35%) Android
13 1 (0.35%) Rocky
13 1 (0.35%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (27.34%) CI/CD
2 75 (25.95%) DevOps
3 65 (22.49%) Migration
4 50 (17.30%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (14.53%) High Availability
6 41 (14.19%) Disaster Recovery
7 38 (13.15%) Performance Tuning
8 37 (12.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 37 (12.80%) Network Virtualisation
9 35 (12.11%) Continuous Improvement
10 33 (11.42%) Capacity Planning
11 24 (8.30%) Cybersecurity
11 24 (8.30%) Validation
11 24 (8.30%) Vulnerability Management
12 23 (7.96%) Containerisation
13 22 (7.61%) Problem-Solving
13 22 (7.61%) Storage Management
14 21 (7.27%) RBAC
15 20 (6.92%) Platform Engineering
15 20 (6.92%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 77 (26.64%) PowerShell
2 73 (25.26%) Python
3 45 (15.57%) Bash
4 36 (12.46%) SQL
5 9 (3.11%) Bicep
5 9 (3.11%) Shell Script
6 7 (2.42%) C
7 4 (1.38%) C#
7 4 (1.38%) C++
7 4 (1.38%) Embedded C
7 4 (1.38%) Embedded C++
7 4 (1.38%) Java
7 4 (1.38%) PL/SQL
8 2 (0.69%) Go
8 2 (0.69%) Korn
9 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.35%) Groovy
9 1 (0.35%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.35%) RPG
9 1 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 73 (25.26%) Security Cleared
2 58 (20.07%) SC Cleared
3 24 (8.30%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.57%) Microsoft Certification
4 19 (6.57%) VCAP
5 18 (6.23%) MCSA
5 18 (6.23%) MCSE
6 15 (5.19%) Azure Certification
7 13 (4.50%) OCP
7 13 (4.50%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (2.77%) Degree
9 5 (1.73%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.38%) CISSP
10 4 (1.38%) ISTQB
10 4 (1.38%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.04%) CISM
11 3 (1.04%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.04%) PMP
12 2 (0.69%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.81%) QA
2 4 (1.38%) GDPR
3 2 (0.69%) GMP
3 2 (0.69%) GxP
3 2 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.69%) NIST
3 2 (0.69%) SLA
4 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.35%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.35%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 96 (33.22%) VMware Infrastructure
2 54 (18.69%) vSphere
3 48 (16.61%) VMware ESXi
4 40 (13.84%) Active Directory
5 32 (11.07%) Hyper-V
6 21 (7.27%) Docker
7 17 (5.88%) KVM
8 11 (3.81%) NFS
9 10 (3.46%) Firmware
10 9 (3.11%) VMware NSX
11 8 (2.77%) Ceph
12 6 (2.08%) Virtual Desktop
13 3 (1.04%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.69%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 2 (0.69%) HDFS
14 2 (0.69%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.35%) BitLocker
15 1 (0.35%) iptables
15 1 (0.35%) NLBS
15 1 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 66 (22.84%) Terraform
2 64 (22.15%) Ansible
3 50 (17.30%) Kubernetes
4 42 (14.53%) vCenter Server
5 14 (4.84%) PowerCLI
6 12 (4.15%) Grafana
7 10 (3.46%) SCCM
8 9 (3.11%) Prometheus
9 7 (2.42%) SnapMirror
10 6 (2.08%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (2.08%) vMotion
10 6 (2.08%) VxRail
11 4 (1.38%) Argo
11 4 (1.38%) Data Guard
11 4 (1.38%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.38%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.38%) SCOM
11 4 (1.38%) systemd
11 4 (1.38%) WSUS
Vendors
1 100 (34.60%) VMware
2 76 (26.30%) Microsoft
3 35 (12.11%) Cisco
4 23 (7.96%) Red Hat
5 17 (5.88%) IBM
6 15 (5.19%) Oracle
7 14 (4.84%) Google
8 13 (4.50%) NetApp
9 11 (3.81%) ServiceNow
9 11 (3.81%) Tenable
10 10 (3.46%) Dell
10 10 (3.46%) Qualys
10 10 (3.46%) Veeam
11 8 (2.77%) SolarWinds
12 7 (2.42%) Commvault
13 6 (2.08%) CyberArk
13 6 (2.08%) Palo Alto
13 6 (2.08%) Splunk
14 5 (1.73%) Databricks
15 4 (1.38%) Meraki