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

 6 months to
9 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 398 391 337
Rank change year-on-year -7 -54 -13
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 306 168 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.51% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 5.67% 4.18% 5.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 183 115 163
10th Percentile £390 £350 £346
25th Percentile £425 £425 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £581 £608
90th Percentile £733 £640 £659
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £500 £520
% change year-on-year -2.80% -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 3
10th Percentile £26.90 - £27.96
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £48.81
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £83.55
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% -58.71% +6.13%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £84.67
90th Percentile - £50.45 £85.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 £58.50 £83.55
% change year-on-year +45.30% -29.98% +6.13%

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 5,393 4,018 4,313
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.90% 12.11% 11.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,561 2,553 2,818
10th Percentile £225 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £688 £671 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +0.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 123 97
10th Percentile £16.00 £13.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £17.35 £20.50
Median hourly rate £62.00 £30.00 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +106.67% -17.05% -24.44%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £88.60 £84.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.82 £58.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +7.38% +17.00% +25.00%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 -1 276 £500 - 238
UK excluding London +7 183 £486 -2.80% 129
Work from Home -25 97 £475 - 68
London -67 95 £532 +5.35% 113
North of England -6 76 £500 +15.34% 34
South East -19 59 £475 -13.64% 37
Yorkshire -6 43 £523 +10.11% 12
North West -22 31 £484 +48.92% 22
East of England -16 16 £377 -20.74% 23
South West -33 15 £575 +4.55% 12
Midlands -37 14 £487 -4.04% 14
West Midlands -40 11 £487 -4.51% 10
Scotland -26 6 £425 -19.05% 7
East Midlands -17 3 £500 +5.26% 4
North East - 2 £413 -

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 (3.27%) IIS
2 7 (2.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.96%) Confluence
3 6 (1.96%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.65%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.65%) CMS
4 2 (0.65%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.33%) Apache
5 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.33%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.33%) nginx
5 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
Applications
1 3 (0.98%) Adobe Illustrator
1 3 (0.98%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.65%) InDesign
2 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.33%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 149 (48.69%) Azure
2 73 (23.86%) Entra ID
3 42 (13.73%) AWS
4 38 (12.42%) Azure Monitor
5 34 (11.11%) IaaS
6 33 (10.78%) Azure DevOps
7 25 (8.17%) Microsoft 365
8 24 (7.84%) Azure AKS
9 23 (7.52%) GitHub
9 23 (7.52%) OpenShift
10 16 (5.23%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (4.90%) PaaS
12 13 (4.25%) Azure Key Vault
12 13 (4.25%) GCP
13 11 (3.59%) Power Platform
14 10 (3.27%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (3.27%) Datadog
14 10 (3.27%) SaaS
14 10 (3.27%) Serverless
15 9 (2.94%) Cohesity
Communications & Networking
1 49 (16.01%) DNS
2 40 (13.07%) Firewall
3 29 (9.48%) VPN
4 19 (6.21%) DHCP
4 19 (6.21%) WAN
5 18 (5.88%) Network Security
6 17 (5.56%) SSL
6 17 (5.56%) VLAN
7 10 (3.27%) LAN
7 10 (3.27%) SD-WAN
8 9 (2.94%) HTTP
9 7 (2.29%) TCP/IP
9 7 (2.29%) Wi-Fi
10 6 (1.96%) SAN
10 6 (1.96%) VSAN
11 5 (1.63%) FTP
11 5 (1.63%) HTTPS
12 4 (1.31%) SSH
13 3 (0.98%) Kerberos
13 3 (0.98%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.78%) SQL Server
2 14 (4.58%) MySQL
3 12 (3.92%) Azure SQL Database
4 11 (3.59%) Power BI
5 10 (3.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 8 (2.61%) Data Lake
6 8 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.98%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.65%) Apache Hive
9 2 (0.65%) Big Data
9 2 (0.65%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.65%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.65%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.33%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.33%) Amazon QuickSight
10 1 (0.33%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 17 (5.56%) Jenkins
2 14 (4.58%) Git
3 10 (3.27%) GitLab
4 8 (2.61%) JIRA
5 7 (2.29%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.31%) CppUnit
6 4 (1.31%) PVCS
6 4 (1.31%) Rational DOORS
7 3 (0.98%) Maven
7 3 (0.98%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.98%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.65%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.65%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.33%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.33%) Selenium
9 1 (0.33%) Vagrant
9 1 (0.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 48 (15.69%) Social Skills
2 26 (8.50%) Finance
3 14 (4.58%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (3.27%) Legal
5 9 (2.94%) Banking
5 9 (2.94%) Public Sector
6 8 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (2.61%) Manufacturing
7 6 (1.96%) Back Office
7 6 (1.96%) Front Office
8 4 (1.31%) Law
8 4 (1.31%) Retail
9 3 (0.98%) Marketing
10 2 (0.65%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.65%) Automotive
10 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.65%) Investment Banking
10 2 (0.65%) Local Government
10 2 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.65%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 53 (17.32%) Azure Engineer
1 53 (17.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 45 (14.71%) Cloud Engineer
3 31 (10.13%) DevOps Engineer
4 26 (8.50%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
5 23 (7.52%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
5 23 (7.52%) Lead
5 23 (7.52%) Senior
6 19 (6.21%) Architect
7 13 (4.25%) Analyst
7 13 (4.25%) DBA
8 12 (3.92%) Platform Engineer
8 12 (3.92%) Security Engineer
8 12 (3.92%) Wintel Engineer
9 11 (3.59%) Administrator
9 11 (3.59%) Consultant
9 11 (3.59%) SQL DBA
10 9 (2.94%) Linux Engineer
10 9 (2.94%) Storage Engineer
11 8 (2.61%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (23.86%) Terraform
2 17 (5.56%) ARM Templates
3 8 (2.61%) JSON
3 8 (2.61%) Regular Expression
4 7 (2.29%) LDAP
5 4 (1.31%) Middleware
6 3 (0.98%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (0.98%) REST
6 3 (0.98%) Web Services
7 2 (0.65%) ADO
7 2 (0.65%) YAML
8 1 (0.33%) Lambda Expressions
8 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (0.33%) OpenTofu
8 1 (0.33%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 1 (0.33%) SAP Basis
8 1 (0.33%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 39 (12.75%) Replication
2 31 (10.13%) Clustering
3 19 (6.21%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.90%) Onboarding
5 14 (4.58%) Data Centre
6 13 (4.25%) Cloud Native
7 12 (3.92%) Enterprise Storage
8 10 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (3.27%) Mainframe
9 9 (2.94%) Linux Command Line
9 9 (2.94%) PKI
9 9 (2.94%) Public Cloud
10 8 (2.61%) Cyber Threat
11 7 (2.29%) Operational Technology
11 7 (2.29%) Security Posture
12 6 (1.96%) Fixed Income
12 6 (1.96%) Market Risk
12 6 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (1.63%) Product Ownership
14 4 (1.31%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 105 (34.31%) Windows
2 68 (22.22%) Linux
3 61 (19.93%) Windows Server
4 26 (8.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 26 (8.50%) VMS
5 11 (3.59%) Unix
6 6 (1.96%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.31%) Data ONTAP
7 4 (1.31%) Windows Server 2016
7 4 (1.31%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.98%) AIX
8 3 (0.98%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.98%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (0.98%) zOS
9 2 (0.65%) Android
9 2 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.65%) CoreOS
10 1 (0.33%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.33%) Rocky
10 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (25.82%) DevOps
2 75 (24.51%) CI/CD
3 72 (23.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 70 (22.88%) Migration
5 69 (22.55%) Infrastructure as Code
6 44 (14.38%) Disaster Recovery
7 39 (12.75%) RBAC
8 37 (12.09%) Continuous Improvement
9 36 (11.76%) Runbook
10 35 (11.44%) Validation
11 32 (10.46%) Performance Tuning
12 31 (10.13%) High Availability
13 30 (9.80%) ITIL
13 30 (9.80%) Stakeholder Management
14 29 (9.48%) Problem-Solving
15 27 (8.82%) Cybersecurity
16 26 (8.50%) Platform Engineering
17 25 (8.17%) Network Virtualisation
18 24 (7.84%) AI
18 24 (7.84%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 108 (35.29%) PowerShell
2 67 (21.90%) Python
3 37 (12.09%) SQL
4 30 (9.80%) Bash
5 17 (5.56%) Bicep
6 11 (3.59%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.61%) C
7 8 (2.61%) C#
7 8 (2.61%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.63%) Groovy
8 5 (1.63%) Java
9 4 (1.31%) C++
10 3 (0.98%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.65%) Korn
12 1 (0.33%) Cypher
12 1 (0.33%) Go
12 1 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.33%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.33%) RPG
Qualifications
1 91 (29.74%) Security Cleared
2 77 (25.16%) SC Cleared
3 26 (8.50%) Microsoft Certification
4 23 (7.52%) Azure Certification
5 21 (6.86%) Degree
6 13 (4.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (3.92%) MCSA
7 12 (3.92%) MCSE
8 11 (3.59%) DV Cleared
8 11 (3.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 10 (3.27%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 8 (2.61%) VCAP
11 6 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.96%) ISTQB
12 5 (1.63%) CCNA
12 5 (1.63%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 4 (1.31%) CISSP
14 3 (0.98%) CCA
14 3 (0.98%) CISM
14 3 (0.98%) Citrix Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.59%) QA
2 4 (1.31%) SLA
3 3 (0.98%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.65%) Accessibility
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
5 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.33%) NIST
5 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
System Software
1 90 (29.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 64 (20.92%) Active Directory
3 38 (12.42%) vSphere
4 28 (9.15%) Hyper-V
4 28 (9.15%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (8.82%) Docker
6 13 (4.25%) NFS
7 9 (2.94%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (2.61%) KVM
9 7 (2.29%) VMware NSX
10 5 (1.63%) Firmware
11 4 (1.31%) Ceph
11 4 (1.31%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.98%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.98%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.65%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.33%) Dovecot
14 1 (0.33%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 1 (0.33%) HDFS
14 1 (0.33%) Squid
Systems Management
1 43 (14.05%) Kubernetes
2 42 (13.73%) Ansible
3 22 (7.19%) vCenter Server
4 16 (5.23%) Grafana
4 16 (5.23%) SCOM
5 13 (4.25%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (3.59%) Prometheus
7 9 (2.94%) Failover Clustering
7 9 (2.94%) SCCM
8 7 (2.29%) Packer
8 7 (2.29%) Podman
9 6 (1.96%) Proxmox
10 5 (1.63%) Microsoft Clustering
10 5 (1.63%) vMotion
11 4 (1.31%) OPNET
11 4 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
11 4 (1.31%) WSUS
12 3 (0.98%) Argo
12 3 (0.98%) PowerCLI
12 3 (0.98%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 119 (38.89%) Microsoft
2 95 (31.05%) VMware
3 28 (9.15%) Cisco
4 24 (7.84%) ServiceNow
5 19 (6.21%) Oracle
6 15 (4.90%) NetApp
7 14 (4.58%) CyberArk
7 14 (4.58%) Dell
8 12 (3.92%) IBM
8 12 (3.92%) Red Hat
9 11 (3.59%) Google
9 11 (3.59%) Veeam
10 9 (2.94%) Commvault
10 9 (2.94%) SolarWinds
10 9 (2.94%) Splunk
11 7 (2.29%) Citrix
11 7 (2.29%) Qualys
12 6 (1.96%) Databricks
12 6 (1.96%) Meraki
12 6 (1.96%) Palo Alto
267 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide