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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 355 332 318
Rank change year-on-year -23 -14 -1
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 284 190 284
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.65% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 5.83% 5.26% 6.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 196 122 190
10th Percentile £357 £360 £307
25th Percentile £425 £463 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £507
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +1.18% -6.20%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £608
90th Percentile £652 £748 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 9 28
10th Percentile - £33.25 -
25th Percentile - £61.50 £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 4,871 3,610 4,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.21% 12.38% 10.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,280 2,459 3,181
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £400 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £600
90th Percentile £680 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £463
% change year-on-year - +2.70% -4.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 86 235
10th Percentile £16.33 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.73 £15.44 £14.99
Median hourly rate £53.00 £27.97 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +89.49% +24.31% -58.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £64.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £91.50 £88.00 £79.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £28.00 £20.98
% change year-on-year +87.50% +33.49% -54.51%

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 May 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 9 May 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 -19 265 £500 -4.76% 72
UK excluding London -28 156 £485 -3.00% 55
Work from Home +1 104 £500 - 32
London -52 104 £525 -8.70% 25
North of England +3 90 £482 +27.51% 13
Yorkshire -7 50 £500 +5.26% 4
North West -10 39 £460 +21.69% 8
South East -45 32 £514 -10.61% 21
Midlands -64 15 £425 -15.00% 5
West Midlands -62 12 £375 -25.00% 4
East of England -40 11 £425 -20.93% 3
South West -29 9 £500 -6.54% 4
Scotland -3 5 £550 +7.32% 2
North East -20 1 £400 +10.34% 1
East Midlands -33 1 £500 -4.76% 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 6 (2.11%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.06%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.06%) Palantir Foundry
3 3 (1.06%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.70%) Apache
4 2 (0.70%) CMS
4 2 (0.70%) nginx
4 2 (0.70%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.35%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.35%) IIS
5 1 (0.35%) JBoss
5 1 (0.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.06%) Adobe Illustrator
1 3 (1.06%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.70%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.35%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 116 (40.85%) Azure
2 51 (17.96%) AWS
3 41 (14.44%) OpenShift
4 35 (12.32%) GitHub
5 25 (8.80%) Azure DevOps
5 25 (8.80%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (7.39%) Entra ID
7 20 (7.04%) Azure Monitor
8 19 (6.69%) GCP
9 18 (6.34%) Serverless
10 16 (5.63%) Azure AKS
11 12 (4.23%) Microsoft 365
12 11 (3.87%) Azure Storage
13 8 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (2.82%) Azure Key Vault
13 8 (2.82%) Nutanix
13 8 (2.82%) PaaS
14 7 (2.46%) Azure Functions
15 6 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (2.11%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 35 (12.32%) Firewall
2 33 (11.62%) DNS
3 20 (7.04%) VPN
4 18 (6.34%) Network Security
4 18 (6.34%) VLAN
5 15 (5.28%) DHCP
5 15 (5.28%) VSAN
6 11 (3.87%) SSL
7 10 (3.52%) SAN
7 10 (3.52%) WAN
8 8 (2.82%) Reverse Proxy
8 8 (2.82%) TCP/IP
9 7 (2.46%) SD-WAN
10 5 (1.76%) FTP
10 5 (1.76%) LAN
11 4 (1.41%) SSH
12 3 (1.06%) NAS
12 3 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
13 2 (0.70%) Cisco Nexus
13 2 (0.70%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.63%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.46%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.11%) DB2
4 6 (2.11%) Oracle Database
5 5 (1.76%) Power BI
6 4 (1.41%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.06%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.06%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.06%) Big Data
7 3 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.06%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.06%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.06%) MySQL
8 2 (0.70%) Data Hub
8 2 (0.70%) ImageNet
9 1 (0.35%) Power Query
9 1 (0.35%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 30 (10.56%) Git
2 14 (4.93%) GitLab
3 9 (3.17%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.17%) JIRA
3 9 (3.17%) PVCS
4 8 (2.82%) Rational DOORS
5 3 (1.06%) SonarQube
5 3 (1.06%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.70%) JMeter
6 2 (0.70%) Postman
6 2 (0.70%) RStudio
6 2 (0.70%) Selenium
6 2 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.35%) Gradle
General
1 37 (13.03%) Social Skills
2 19 (6.69%) Finance
3 15 (5.28%) Public Sector
4 12 (4.23%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (3.52%) Banking
6 10 (3.52%) Legal
7 8 (2.82%) Electronics
8 5 (1.76%) Retail
9 3 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.06%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.06%) Marketing
10 2 (0.70%) Front Office
10 2 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.70%) Social Science
11 1 (0.35%) Advertising
11 1 (0.35%) Back Office
11 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Police
11 1 (0.35%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 36 (12.68%) DevOps Engineer
2 25 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
2 25 (8.80%) Senior
3 20 (7.04%) Architect
3 20 (7.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 16 (5.63%) Wintel Engineer
5 14 (4.93%) Cloud Engineer
6 12 (4.23%) Lead
6 12 (4.23%) VMware Engineer
7 11 (3.87%) Analyst
8 10 (3.52%) Consultant
8 10 (3.52%) Security Engineer
9 9 (3.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 9 (3.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 8 (2.82%) Migration Engineer
10 8 (2.82%) Software Engineer
11 7 (2.46%) Administrator
11 7 (2.46%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
11 7 (2.46%) C/C++ Software Engineer
11 7 (2.46%) Embedded Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.82%) ARM Templates
1 8 (2.82%) REST
1 8 (2.82%) YAML
2 4 (1.41%) Middleware
3 3 (1.06%) Hugging Face
3 3 (1.06%) JSON
4 2 (0.70%) .NET
4 2 (0.70%) OpenCV
4 2 (0.70%) PySpark
4 2 (0.70%) PyTorch
4 2 (0.70%) Regular Expression
4 2 (0.70%) SpaCy
4 2 (0.70%) TensorFlow
5 1 (0.35%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.35%) Java SE
5 1 (0.35%) LDAP
5 1 (0.35%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 1 (0.35%) Pandas
5 1 (0.35%) Retrofit
5 1 (0.35%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.51%) Replication
2 22 (7.75%) Data Centre
3 21 (7.39%) Clustering
4 16 (5.63%) Cloud Native
5 14 (4.93%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (4.23%) Linux Command Line
6 12 (4.23%) Private Cloud
7 10 (3.52%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.46%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.46%) Operational Technology
8 7 (2.46%) PKI
9 6 (2.11%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.76%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (1.41%) Public Cloud
12 3 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.06%) Mainframe
12 3 (1.06%) SCADA
12 3 (1.06%) Security Posture
12 3 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
13 2 (0.70%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 80 (28.17%) Linux
2 78 (27.46%) Windows
3 45 (15.85%) Windows Server
4 39 (13.73%) VMS
5 30 (10.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (2.82%) AIX
6 8 (2.82%) CoreOS
6 8 (2.82%) Unix
7 7 (2.46%) Data ONTAP
8 4 (1.41%) SUSE
9 3 (1.06%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.06%) Ubuntu
9 3 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.70%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.35%) Android
11 1 (0.35%) Rocky
11 1 (0.35%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (28.17%) CI/CD
2 78 (27.46%) DevOps
3 66 (23.24%) Migration
4 56 (19.72%) Infrastructure as Code
5 43 (15.14%) Disaster Recovery
5 43 (15.14%) High Availability
6 36 (12.68%) Performance Tuning
7 35 (12.32%) Network Virtualisation
8 33 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
8 33 (11.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 30 (10.56%) Capacity Planning
9 30 (10.56%) Containerisation
10 25 (8.80%) Cybersecurity
11 23 (8.10%) Platform Engineering
12 22 (7.75%) Technical Leadership
13 20 (7.04%) Vulnerability Management
14 18 (6.34%) Deployment Automation
14 18 (6.34%) Problem-Solving
14 18 (6.34%) RBAC
14 18 (6.34%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 69 (24.30%) Python
2 68 (23.94%) PowerShell
3 42 (14.79%) Bash
4 38 (13.38%) SQL
5 11 (3.87%) Shell Script
6 10 (3.52%) C
7 8 (2.82%) Bicep
7 8 (2.82%) C++
8 7 (2.46%) Embedded C
8 7 (2.46%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.11%) Java
10 5 (1.76%) C#
10 5 (1.76%) Ruby
11 4 (1.41%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.70%) Go
12 2 (0.70%) Korn
12 2 (0.70%) PHP
13 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.35%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 74 (26.06%) Security Cleared
2 58 (20.42%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.39%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 18 (6.34%) VCAP
5 17 (5.99%) OCP
5 17 (5.99%) Oracle Certification
6 15 (5.28%) Azure Certification
6 15 (5.28%) Microsoft Certification
7 14 (4.93%) MCSA
7 14 (4.93%) MCSE
8 9 (3.17%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.41%) Degree
11 3 (1.06%) CISSP
11 3 (1.06%) ISTQB
11 3 (1.06%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.06%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.06%) PMP
12 2 (0.70%) CISM
12 2 (0.70%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.52%) QA
2 6 (2.11%) GDPR
3 3 (1.06%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.70%) GMP
4 2 (0.70%) GxP
5 1 (0.35%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.35%) NIST
5 1 (0.35%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.35%) SLA
5 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 90 (31.69%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (16.90%) vSphere
3 44 (15.49%) VMware ESXi
4 36 (12.68%) Active Directory
5 30 (10.56%) Hyper-V
6 18 (6.34%) KVM
7 16 (5.63%) Docker
8 10 (3.52%) NFS
8 10 (3.52%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.17%) Firmware
10 8 (2.82%) Ceph
11 5 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.70%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.70%) HDFS
12 2 (0.70%) Xen
13 1 (0.35%) iptables
13 1 (0.35%) NLBS
13 1 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.35%) Samba
13 1 (0.35%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 76 (26.76%) Terraform
2 66 (23.24%) Ansible
3 59 (20.77%) Kubernetes
4 40 (14.08%) vCenter Server
5 13 (4.58%) PowerCLI
6 10 (3.52%) Grafana
7 8 (2.82%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (2.82%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.82%) SCCM
8 7 (2.46%) SnapMirror
9 6 (2.11%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (2.11%) VxRail
9 6 (2.11%) WSUS
10 4 (1.41%) Argo
10 4 (1.41%) Data Guard
10 4 (1.41%) Failover Clustering
10 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Clustering
10 4 (1.41%) Oracle RMAN
10 4 (1.41%) systemd
11 3 (1.06%) vMotion
Vendors
1 94 (33.10%) VMware
2 76 (26.76%) Microsoft
3 27 (9.51%) Cisco
4 22 (7.75%) Red Hat
5 19 (6.69%) IBM
6 13 (4.58%) Oracle
7 12 (4.23%) Google
8 11 (3.87%) Dell
8 11 (3.87%) NetApp
9 10 (3.52%) Tenable
10 8 (2.82%) ANSYS
10 8 (2.82%) Veeam
11 5 (1.76%) Commvault
11 5 (1.76%) Databricks
11 5 (1.76%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.76%) Splunk
12 4 (1.41%) OpenAI
12 4 (1.41%) OpenText
12 4 (1.41%) Pure Storage
12 4 (1.41%) SolarWinds