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

 6 months to
25 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 391 400 329
Rank change year-on-year +9 -71 0
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 316 169 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.51% 0.64%
As % of the System Software category 5.80% 4.29% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 117 167
10th Percentile £391 £350 £342
25th Percentile £438 £425 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £707 £638 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 6
10th Percentile £26.90 - -
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £66.46
90th Percentile - - £84.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 - £14.63
% change year-on-year - - -81.42%

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 5,451 3,938 4,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.93% 11.93% 11.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,574 2,483 2,906
10th Percentile £220 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £599 £588 £600
90th Percentile £680 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +0.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 251 121 108
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £18.04
Median hourly rate £63.14 £32.77 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +92.66% +19.16% -45.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £75.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £92.11 £90.00 £81.94
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £62.25 £30.00
% change year-on-year +1.98% +107.50% -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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 +4 287 £500 - 219
UK excluding London +2 183 £500 - 130
London -61 105 £532 +5.87% 95
Work from Home -28 91 £500 +6.38% 76
North of England 0 79 £500 +19.05% 29
South East -28 57 £475 -19.15% 39
Yorkshire -8 45 £519 +12.58% 9
North West -24 32 £484 +48.92% 19
Midlands -39 18 £487 -1.62% 17
South West -36 16 £558 +1.36% 8
East of England -22 14 £327 -31.26% 33
West Midlands -36 13 £487 -2.84% 15
East Midlands -9 4 £500 +5.26% 2
Scotland -30 4 £375 -28.57% 3
North East - 2 £413 - 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 10 (3.16%) IIS
2 6 (1.90%) Confluence
3 5 (1.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.27%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.63%) Apache
6 2 (0.63%) CMS
6 2 (0.63%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.32%) nginx
7 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.27%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.27%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.63%) InDesign
2 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 148 (46.84%) Azure
2 63 (19.94%) Entra ID
3 46 (14.56%) AWS
4 40 (12.66%) Azure Monitor
5 33 (10.44%) Azure DevOps
6 29 (9.18%) OpenShift
7 27 (8.54%) IaaS
8 26 (8.23%) Azure AKS
9 24 (7.59%) GitHub
10 17 (5.38%) Microsoft 365
11 16 (5.06%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (4.43%) Azure Key Vault
12 14 (4.43%) PaaS
13 13 (4.11%) Serverless
14 12 (3.80%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 12 (3.80%) GCP
15 11 (3.48%) Amazon EC2
15 11 (3.48%) Power Platform
16 10 (3.16%) Azure Storage
16 10 (3.16%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 49 (15.51%) DNS
2 44 (13.92%) Firewall
3 28 (8.86%) VPN
4 20 (6.33%) DHCP
4 20 (6.33%) Network Security
4 20 (6.33%) SSL
4 20 (6.33%) VLAN
5 19 (6.01%) WAN
6 10 (3.16%) SD-WAN
6 10 (3.16%) VSAN
7 9 (2.85%) HTTP
7 9 (2.85%) LAN
8 7 (2.22%) FTP
9 6 (1.90%) TCP/IP
9 6 (1.90%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (1.58%) HTTPS
10 5 (1.58%) SAN
11 4 (1.27%) SSH
12 3 (0.95%) Cisco Nexus
12 3 (0.95%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.44%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.75%) MySQL
3 11 (3.48%) Azure SQL Database
3 11 (3.48%) Power BI
3 11 (3.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (2.53%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.95%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.95%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (0.95%) Apache Hive
5 3 (0.95%) Big Data
5 3 (0.95%) DynamoDB
5 3 (0.95%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.63%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.32%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.32%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (5.06%) Git
1 16 (5.06%) Jenkins
2 11 (3.48%) GitLab
3 8 (2.53%) JIRA
4 7 (2.22%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.58%) PVCS
6 4 (1.27%) CppUnit
6 4 (1.27%) Rational DOORS
6 4 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.95%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.63%) Maven
8 2 (0.63%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.63%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.32%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.32%) Selenium
9 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
9 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 52 (16.46%) Social Skills
2 28 (8.86%) Finance
3 14 (4.43%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (3.80%) Legal
5 9 (2.85%) Banking
6 8 (2.53%) Manufacturing
7 7 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.90%) Back Office
8 6 (1.90%) Front Office
8 6 (1.90%) Public Sector
9 5 (1.58%) Retail
10 4 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.27%) Law
10 4 (1.27%) Marketing
11 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.63%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.63%) Local Government
11 2 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.63%) Publishing
12 1 (0.32%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 47 (14.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 46 (14.56%) Azure Engineer
3 36 (11.39%) Cloud Engineer
4 32 (10.13%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (7.91%) Senior
6 23 (7.28%) Lead
7 20 (6.33%) Architect
8 19 (6.01%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (5.06%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.11%) Analyst
10 13 (4.11%) DBA
11 12 (3.80%) Platform Engineer
12 11 (3.48%) Administrator
12 11 (3.48%) Security Engineer
12 11 (3.48%) SQL DBA
13 10 (3.16%) Consultant
13 10 (3.16%) Wintel Engineer
14 9 (2.85%) Linux Engineer
14 9 (2.85%) Migration Engineer
14 9 (2.85%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (22.15%) Terraform
2 15 (4.75%) ARM Templates
3 10 (3.16%) JSON
3 10 (3.16%) REST
4 8 (2.53%) Regular Expression
5 7 (2.22%) LDAP
6 6 (1.90%) Middleware
7 5 (1.58%) YAML
8 3 (0.95%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.63%) ADO
9 2 (0.63%) SOAP
9 2 (0.63%) Web Services
10 1 (0.32%) Java SE
10 1 (0.32%) Lambda Expressions
10 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Graph
10 1 (0.32%) Node.js
10 1 (0.32%) NumPy
10 1 (0.32%) SAP Basis
10 1 (0.32%) SciPy
10 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 38 (12.03%) Replication
2 31 (9.81%) Clustering
3 18 (5.70%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.43%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.80%) Onboarding
6 11 (3.48%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.48%) Enterprise Storage
6 11 (3.48%) Linux Command Line
7 9 (2.85%) Mainframe
7 9 (2.85%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.85%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.53%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (2.22%) Operational Technology
9 7 (2.22%) PKI
10 6 (1.90%) Fixed Income
10 6 (1.90%) Market Risk
10 6 (1.90%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.27%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 111 (35.13%) Windows
2 72 (22.78%) Linux
3 62 (19.62%) Windows Server
4 29 (9.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 29 (9.18%) VMS
5 9 (2.85%) Unix
6 6 (1.90%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.27%) Windows Server 2016
7 4 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.95%) AIX
8 3 (0.95%) Data ONTAP
8 3 (0.95%) SUSE
8 3 (0.95%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.63%) Android
9 2 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.63%) CoreOS
9 2 (0.63%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.63%) zOS
10 1 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.32%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (25.32%) CI/CD
1 80 (25.32%) DevOps
2 74 (23.42%) Migration
3 65 (20.57%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (20.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 45 (14.24%) RBAC
6 43 (13.61%) Disaster Recovery
7 41 (12.97%) Continuous Improvement
7 41 (12.97%) Validation
8 38 (12.03%) High Availability
8 38 (12.03%) Performance Tuning
9 33 (10.44%) Problem-Solving
9 33 (10.44%) Runbook
10 31 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
11 28 (8.86%) ITIL
12 27 (8.54%) Platform Engineering
13 26 (8.23%) AI
13 26 (8.23%) Cybersecurity
14 25 (7.91%) Network Virtualisation
15 24 (7.59%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 102 (32.28%) PowerShell
2 71 (22.47%) Python
3 39 (12.34%) SQL
4 32 (10.13%) Bash
5 12 (3.80%) Bicep
6 11 (3.48%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.53%) C
7 8 (2.53%) C#
7 8 (2.53%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.90%) Java
9 4 (1.27%) C++
9 4 (1.27%) Groovy
10 3 (0.95%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.63%) Korn
11 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.32%) Go
12 1 (0.32%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.32%) RPG
12 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 95 (30.06%) Security Cleared
2 79 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 25 (7.91%) Azure Certification
4 24 (7.59%) Microsoft Certification
5 22 (6.96%) Degree
6 14 (4.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (4.11%) DV Cleared
8 11 (3.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 10 (3.16%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 10 (3.16%) MCSA
9 10 (3.16%) MCSE
10 8 (2.53%) VCAP
11 6 (1.90%) ISTQB
12 5 (1.58%) CCNA
12 5 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (1.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 3 (0.95%) CISSP
13 3 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.95%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.95%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.80%) QA
2 4 (1.27%) SLA
3 3 (0.95%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.95%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.63%) GMP
4 2 (0.63%) GxP
4 2 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.63%) NIST
5 1 (0.32%) GDPR
5 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 96 (30.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 63 (19.94%) Active Directory
3 40 (12.66%) vSphere
4 35 (11.08%) VMware ESXi
5 31 (9.81%) Hyper-V
6 27 (8.54%) Docker
7 13 (4.11%) NFS
8 9 (2.85%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (2.53%) VMware NSX
10 7 (2.22%) Ceph
10 7 (2.22%) Firmware
11 6 (1.90%) KVM
12 3 (0.95%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.95%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.95%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.63%) HDFS
13 2 (0.63%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.32%) DFS Replication
14 1 (0.32%) Dovecot
14 1 (0.32%) Squid
Systems Management
1 45 (14.24%) Kubernetes
2 43 (13.61%) Ansible
3 26 (8.23%) vCenter Server
4 17 (5.38%) Grafana
5 16 (5.06%) SCOM
6 12 (3.80%) Prometheus
7 9 (2.85%) Failover Clustering
8 8 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (2.53%) SCCM
9 7 (2.22%) Packer
9 7 (2.22%) Podman
10 6 (1.90%) PowerCLI
10 6 (1.90%) Proxmox
11 5 (1.58%) Microsoft Clustering
11 5 (1.58%) vMotion
12 4 (1.27%) Argo
12 4 (1.27%) Avamar
12 4 (1.27%) OPNET
12 4 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
12 4 (1.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 111 (35.13%) Microsoft
2 102 (32.28%) VMware
3 29 (9.18%) Cisco
4 25 (7.91%) ServiceNow
5 20 (6.33%) Oracle
6 15 (4.75%) Dell
6 15 (4.75%) NetApp
7 12 (3.80%) CyberArk
7 12 (3.80%) IBM
7 12 (3.80%) Red Hat
7 12 (3.80%) Veeam
8 10 (3.16%) Splunk
9 8 (2.53%) Google
9 8 (2.53%) Qualys
9 8 (2.53%) SolarWinds
10 6 (1.90%) Commvault
10 6 (1.90%) Databricks
10 6 (1.90%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.58%) Meraki
11 5 (1.58%) Okta
238 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide