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 13 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 417 324 318
Rank change year-on-year -93 -6 +43
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 159 240 339
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.45% 0.66% 0.73%
As % of the System Software category 3.64% 5.56% 5.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 160 235
10th Percentile £348 £345 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% -4.76% -0.10%
75th Percentile £588 £608 £615
90th Percentile £650 £663 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £504 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.71% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 10
10th Percentile - £26.84 £68.21
25th Percentile £33.25 £43.66 £73.09
Median hourly rate £46.50 £59.50 £78.73
Median % change year-on-year -21.85% -24.42% +12.46%
75th Percentile £62.69 £66.00 £87.65
90th Percentile £67.08 - £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.25 £66.00 £78.73
% change year-on-year -2.65% -16.16% +12.46%

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 4,368 4,317 6,002
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.30% 11.84% 12.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,832 2,766 4,088
10th Percentile £213 £213 £198
25th Percentile £384 £380 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £590 £613 £620
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 137 89 247
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.02 £15.50
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.46 £18.73
Median hourly rate £27.50 £38.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -27.63% -17.71% +91.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £68.63
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.50 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +13.00% +25.00% +100.00%

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 13 November 2025.

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 13 November 2025.

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 13 November 2025. 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 -120 139 £503 -0.74% 105
UK excluding London -100 72 £504 -1.71% 73
London -19 68 £509 +1.80% 50
Work from Home +7 59 £475 -9.31% 52
South East -36 20 £525 +0.57% 26
South West -8 19 £550 -3.51% 7
North of England -38 17 £447 -8.78% 9
Yorkshire -33 15 £475 +7.95% 4
East of England -27 6 £475 +15.85% 7
Scotland +6 5 £525 +5.00% 8
Midlands -62 4 £508 -12.27% 11
West Midlands -54 3 £508 -12.80% 4
North West -24 2 £363 -36.96% 5
East Midlands -11 1 - - 7
Wales - 1 - - 5

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 13 (8.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (4.40%) IIS
3 5 (3.14%) Confluence
4 4 (2.52%) Apache
4 4 (2.52%) SharePoint
5 3 (1.89%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.26%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.26%) Hyperledger
7 1 (0.63%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.63%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.63%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.63%) nginx
7 1 (0.63%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.63%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.63%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 70 (44.03%) Azure
2 24 (15.09%) Azure DevOps
3 18 (11.32%) AWS
4 17 (10.69%) Entra ID
4 17 (10.69%) GitHub
5 11 (6.92%) Cloud Computing
6 10 (6.29%) Azure Monitor
7 9 (5.66%) Azure Key Vault
7 9 (5.66%) Azure Storage
7 9 (5.66%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (5.03%) Azure AKS
8 8 (5.03%) Serverless
9 7 (4.40%) Microsoft 365
10 6 (3.77%) Azure Logic Apps
10 6 (3.77%) Azure Service Bus
10 6 (3.77%) GCP
10 6 (3.77%) IaaS
11 5 (3.14%) Azure API Management
11 5 (3.14%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 5 (3.14%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 34 (21.38%) Firewall
2 23 (14.47%) DNS
3 16 (10.06%) VPN
4 13 (8.18%) WAN
5 9 (5.66%) DHCP
5 9 (5.66%) Network Security
6 7 (4.40%) Skype
7 6 (3.77%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (3.14%) Intrusion Detection
8 5 (3.14%) TCP/IP
8 5 (3.14%) VLAN
8 5 (3.14%) VSAN
9 4 (2.52%) SAN
10 3 (1.89%) NAS
11 2 (1.26%) Modbus
12 1 (0.63%) Cisco Wireless
12 1 (0.63%) iSCSI
12 1 (0.63%) MQTT
12 1 (0.63%) NX-OS
12 1 (0.63%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (8.81%) SQL Server
2 8 (5.03%) Data Lake
2 8 (5.03%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (3.14%) Azure SQL Database
4 4 (2.52%) OLTP
5 3 (1.89%) Data Mining
6 2 (1.26%) Data Vault
6 2 (1.26%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.63%) Big Data
7 1 (0.63%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.63%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 18 (11.32%) JIRA
2 14 (8.81%) Git
3 10 (6.29%) Jenkins
4 6 (3.77%) GitLab
5 2 (1.26%) Artifactory
5 2 (1.26%) Hardhat
5 2 (1.26%) PVCS
5 2 (1.26%) Rational DOORS
5 2 (1.26%) RStudio
5 2 (1.26%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.63%) Cucumber
6 1 (0.63%) EasyMock
6 1 (0.63%) GDB
6 1 (0.63%) JBehave
6 1 (0.63%) JUnit
6 1 (0.63%) Mockito
6 1 (0.63%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.63%) Snyk
6 1 (0.63%) VisualVM
6 1 (0.63%) YourKit
General
1 32 (20.13%) Social Skills
2 19 (11.95%) Public Sector
3 11 (6.92%) Finance
4 8 (5.03%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (5.03%) Law
5 7 (4.40%) Banking
5 7 (4.40%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (3.77%) Telecoms
7 5 (3.14%) Spanish Language
8 3 (1.89%) Electronics
8 3 (1.89%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.26%) Marketing
9 2 (1.26%) Social Science
10 1 (0.63%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.63%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.63%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.63%) Legal
10 1 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.63%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 17 (10.69%) DevOps Engineer
2 16 (10.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 15 (9.43%) Azure Engineer
3 15 (9.43%) Security Engineer
4 13 (8.18%) Senior
5 12 (7.55%) Platform Engineer
6 9 (5.66%) Architect
6 9 (5.66%) Data Engineer
6 9 (5.66%) Developer
7 8 (5.03%) Software Engineer
8 7 (4.40%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) C++ Software Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) Embedded Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) Embedded Software Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) Network Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) Network Security Engineer
9 6 (3.77%) Project Manager
9 6 (3.77%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (8.81%) ARM Templates
2 11 (6.92%) Middleware
3 7 (4.40%) TensorFlow
4 6 (3.77%) Hugging Face
4 6 (3.77%) OpenCV
4 6 (3.77%) OpenTelemetry
4 6 (3.77%) PyTorch
4 6 (3.77%) Regular Expression
4 6 (3.77%) SpaCy
5 5 (3.14%) ADO
5 5 (3.14%) YAML
6 4 (2.52%) Kafka
7 3 (1.89%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (1.26%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (1.26%) JSON
8 2 (1.26%) Loki
8 2 (1.26%) Smart Contracts
8 2 (1.26%) Web Services
8 2 (1.26%) web3js
8 2 (1.26%) XHTML
Miscellaneous
1 13 (8.18%) Data Centre
2 10 (6.29%) Onboarding
3 8 (5.03%) Hybrid Cloud
3 8 (5.03%) Replication
4 7 (4.40%) Management Information System
5 6 (3.77%) CAN bus
5 6 (3.77%) PKI
5 6 (3.77%) Private Cloud
6 5 (3.14%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (3.14%) Security Posture
7 4 (2.52%) Algorithms
7 4 (2.52%) Operational Technology
7 4 (2.52%) Public Cloud
7 4 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (1.89%) Cloud Native
8 3 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.89%) Legacy Code
8 3 (1.89%) Life Science
8 3 (1.89%) Renewable Energy
8 3 (1.89%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 60 (37.74%) Windows
2 47 (29.56%) Linux
3 30 (18.87%) Windows Server
4 13 (8.18%) VMS
5 10 (6.29%) Windows 10
5 10 (6.29%) Windows Server 2016
6 7 (4.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (3.14%) Windows Server 2012
8 4 (2.52%) Ubuntu
8 4 (2.52%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.63%) CentOS
9 1 (0.63%) SUSE
9 1 (0.63%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 1 (0.63%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (32.08%) DevOps
2 45 (28.30%) CI/CD
3 35 (22.01%) Infrastructure as Code
4 34 (21.38%) Agile
5 28 (17.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 28 (17.61%) Problem-Solving
6 26 (16.35%) Migration
7 23 (14.47%) Analytics
8 18 (11.32%) Cybersecurity
9 15 (9.43%) High Availability
10 14 (8.81%) Cloud Security
10 14 (8.81%) Continuous Integration
11 13 (8.18%) AI
11 13 (8.18%) Root Cause Analysis
12 12 (7.55%) Information Security
12 12 (7.55%) Machine Learning
12 12 (7.55%) Platform Engineering
13 10 (6.29%) Containerisation
13 10 (6.29%) Infrastructure Automation
13 10 (6.29%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 35 (22.01%) Python
2 32 (20.13%) PowerShell
3 21 (13.21%) SQL
4 16 (10.06%) Bicep
5 11 (6.92%) Bash
5 11 (6.92%) C++
5 11 (6.92%) Java
6 9 (5.66%) C#
7 7 (4.40%) Embedded C++
8 4 (2.52%) JavaScript
8 4 (2.52%) Scala
8 4 (2.52%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.89%) C
10 2 (1.26%) PHP
10 2 (1.26%) Solidity
11 1 (0.63%) Go
11 1 (0.63%) Korn
11 1 (0.63%) Ruby
11 1 (0.63%) Swift
11 1 (0.63%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 47 (29.56%) Security Cleared
2 35 (22.01%) SC Cleared
3 13 (8.18%) Degree
4 10 (6.29%) DV Cleared
5 8 (5.03%) Azure Certification
6 4 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (1.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 2 (1.26%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.26%) CCNA
8 2 (1.26%) CCNP
8 2 (1.26%) CISM
8 2 (1.26%) CISSP
8 2 (1.26%) Master's Degree
8 2 (1.26%) VCAP
9 1 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.63%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 1 (0.63%) CCSP
9 1 (0.63%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (5.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (3.14%) Accessibility
2 5 (3.14%) NIST
2 5 (3.14%) SLA
3 3 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
3 3 (1.89%) QA
4 2 (1.26%) GRC
5 1 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.63%) RMADS
System Software
1 40 (25.16%) VMware Infrastructure
2 37 (23.27%) Active Directory
3 16 (10.06%) Docker
4 14 (8.81%) vSphere
5 13 (8.18%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (6.29%) VMware NSX
7 9 (5.66%) Hyper-V
8 7 (4.40%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (1.89%) Firmware
9 3 (1.89%) KVM
10 1 (0.63%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 33 (20.75%) Terraform
2 24 (15.09%) Kubernetes
2 24 (15.09%) vCenter Server
3 11 (6.92%) Ansible
4 10 (6.29%) SCCM
5 9 (5.66%) WSUS
6 6 (3.77%) CASB
6 6 (3.77%) SCOrch
6 6 (3.77%) vRealize
7 5 (3.14%) Microsoft Intune
7 5 (3.14%) vMotion
8 4 (2.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 3 (1.89%) Grafana
9 3 (1.89%) Microsoft Clustering
9 3 (1.89%) NetApp OnCommand
9 3 (1.89%) Rancher
10 2 (1.26%) Fluentd
10 2 (1.26%) Pacemaker
10 2 (1.26%) Packer
10 2 (1.26%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 50 (31.45%) Microsoft
2 49 (30.82%) VMware
3 11 (6.92%) Cisco
4 10 (6.29%) Databricks
5 7 (4.40%) NetApp
5 7 (4.40%) Oracle
6 6 (3.77%) Veeam
7 5 (3.14%) IBM
8 4 (2.52%) Remedy
8 4 (2.52%) SolarWinds
9 3 (1.89%) Citrix
9 3 (1.89%) F5
9 3 (1.89%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.89%) Rockwell
9 3 (1.89%) Sophos
9 3 (1.89%) Tenable
10 2 (1.26%) ANSYS
10 2 (1.26%) OpenAI
10 2 (1.26%) ServiceNow
11 1 (0.63%) New Relic