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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 362 307
Rank change year-on-year +4 -55 +33
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 300 177 293
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.59% 0.67%
As % of the System Software category 6.05% 4.82% 6.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 117 203
10th Percentile £358 £350 £346
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £535
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -4.21% +1.90%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £552
% change year-on-year -3.40% -9.42% +5.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 7 25
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £48.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +39.13% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.25 £15.19
90th Percentile - £66.00 £56.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.00 £64.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year -25.58% +341.03% -77.84%

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 4,956 3,672 4,752
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.74% 12.23% 10.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,301 2,410 3,279
10th Percentile £218 £218 £205
25th Percentile £400 £388 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 87 228
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.39 £15.50
Median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +82.14% +15.80% -55.22%
75th Percentile £73.00 £66.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £89.85 £71.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £39.48 £27.50
% change year-on-year +29.20% +43.55% -30.56%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +2 278 £500 -2.44% 49
UK excluding London +5 171 £483 -3.40% 47
London -50 106 £525 -4.55% 11
North of England 0 96 £483 +27.78% 10
Work from Home -25 94 £500 - 28
Yorkshire -2 56 £500 +5.26% 3
South East -35 41 £475 -17.39% 21
North West -20 38 £463 +23.17% 7
Midlands -56 16 £450 -9.64% 4
South West -18 14 £520 +9.47% 6
West Midlands -60 12 £425 -14.66% 3
East of England -26 6 £425 -19.12% 3
Scotland -19 4 - - 1
East Midlands -18 2 £500 -4.76% 1
North East -35 2 £400 +10.34%

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 4 (1.33%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.00%) Apache
2 3 (1.00%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.00%) Confluence
2 3 (1.00%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.67%) CMS
3 2 (0.67%) IIS
3 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.67%) nginx
3 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.67%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.33%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.33%) JBoss
4 1 (0.33%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.33%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.33%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.33%) InDesign
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 125 (41.67%) Azure
2 48 (16.00%) AWS
3 38 (12.67%) OpenShift
4 34 (11.33%) Entra ID
5 27 (9.00%) GitHub
6 26 (8.67%) Azure DevOps
7 23 (7.67%) Azure Monitor
8 21 (7.00%) Azure AKS
9 20 (6.67%) GCP
10 19 (6.33%) Serverless
11 17 (5.67%) GitHub Actions
12 16 (5.33%) Azure Key Vault
13 14 (4.67%) Azure Storage
14 12 (4.00%) Azure Functions
15 11 (3.67%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 11 (3.67%) Microsoft 365
16 10 (3.33%) Nutanix
17 7 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
17 7 (2.33%) IaaS
17 7 (2.33%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (13.67%) DNS
2 36 (12.00%) Firewall
3 25 (8.33%) VPN
4 24 (8.00%) Network Security
5 21 (7.00%) VLAN
6 18 (6.00%) DHCP
7 17 (5.67%) SSL
7 17 (5.67%) WAN
8 15 (5.00%) VSAN
9 10 (3.33%) SD-WAN
10 9 (3.00%) SAN
11 8 (2.67%) FTP
12 6 (2.00%) LAN
12 6 (2.00%) SSH
13 4 (1.33%) Reverse Proxy
13 4 (1.33%) TCP/IP
13 4 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
14 3 (1.00%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (1.00%) HTTPS
15 2 (0.67%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (7.33%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.33%) Azure SQL Database
3 9 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (2.00%) Data Lake
4 6 (2.00%) Db2
4 6 (2.00%) Power BI
5 3 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.00%) Apache Hive
5 3 (1.00%) Big Data
5 3 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.00%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.00%) Hadoop
5 3 (1.00%) MySQL
5 3 (1.00%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.33%) OpenStack Swift
6 1 (0.33%) Oracle Exadata
6 1 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.33%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 19 (6.33%) Git
2 13 (4.33%) GitLab
3 12 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 7 (2.33%) JIRA
5 3 (1.00%) PVCS
5 3 (1.00%) SonarQube
5 3 (1.00%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.67%) JMeter
6 2 (0.67%) Postman
6 2 (0.67%) Rational DOORS
6 2 (0.67%) Selenium
6 2 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.33%) Gradle
7 1 (0.33%) RStudio
General
1 39 (13.00%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.67%) Finance
3 15 (5.00%) Legal
4 13 (4.33%) Banking
5 12 (4.00%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (3.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 11 (3.67%) Public Sector
7 6 (2.00%) Retail
8 5 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.33%) Front Office
9 4 (1.33%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.00%) Marketing
11 2 (0.67%) Electronics
11 2 (0.67%) Law
11 2 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.67%) Publishing
12 1 (0.33%) Advertising
12 1 (0.33%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.33%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.33%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 38 (12.67%) DevOps Engineer
2 28 (9.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 26 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
4 23 (7.67%) Senior
5 20 (6.67%) Cloud Engineer
6 17 (5.67%) Architect
7 16 (5.33%) Lead
8 14 (4.67%) Analyst
8 14 (4.67%) Wintel Engineer
9 11 (3.67%) Consultant
10 10 (3.33%) Technical Specialist
10 10 (3.33%) VMware Engineer
11 9 (3.00%) Administrator
11 9 (3.00%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (3.00%) Migration Engineer
12 8 (2.67%) Azure DevOps Engineer
13 7 (2.33%) Azure Architect
13 7 (2.33%) Platform Engineer
13 7 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
14 6 (2.00%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (3.00%) ARM Templates
1 9 (3.00%) REST
2 7 (2.33%) YAML
3 4 (1.33%) Middleware
4 3 (1.00%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.00%) JSON
5 2 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.67%) OpenCV
5 2 (0.67%) PySpark
5 2 (0.67%) PyTorch
5 2 (0.67%) Regular Expression
5 2 (0.67%) SOAP
5 2 (0.67%) SpaCy
5 2 (0.67%) TensorFlow
6 1 (0.33%) .NET
6 1 (0.33%) Java SE
6 1 (0.33%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.33%) LDAP
6 1 (0.33%) Pandas
6 1 (0.33%) Retrofit
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.00%) Replication
2 23 (7.67%) Data Centre
3 19 (6.33%) Clustering
3 19 (6.33%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.67%) Linux Command Line
5 12 (4.00%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.67%) Onboarding
7 9 (3.00%) Product Ownership
8 8 (2.67%) PKI
9 6 (2.00%) FlexPod
9 6 (2.00%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.00%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.00%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.67%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.67%) Private Cloud
11 4 (1.33%) Fixed Income
11 4 (1.33%) Market Risk
11 4 (1.33%) Security Posture
12 3 (1.00%) Celerra
12 3 (1.00%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 95 (31.67%) Windows
2 86 (28.67%) Linux
3 53 (17.67%) Windows Server
4 35 (11.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 29 (9.67%) VMS
6 11 (3.67%) Unix
7 9 (3.00%) AIX
8 8 (2.67%) CoreOS
9 7 (2.33%) Data ONTAP
10 5 (1.67%) Ubuntu
11 4 (1.33%) SUSE
12 3 (1.00%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.33%) Android
14 1 (0.33%) Rocky
14 1 (0.33%) Solaris
14 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (26.67%) CI/CD
2 77 (25.67%) DevOps
3 71 (23.67%) Migration
4 54 (18.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 44 (14.67%) High Availability
5 44 (14.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 41 (13.67%) Disaster Recovery
7 36 (12.00%) Performance Tuning
8 34 (11.33%) Network Virtualisation
9 33 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
10 30 (10.00%) Validation
11 29 (9.67%) RBAC
12 28 (9.33%) Capacity Planning
13 27 (9.00%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (8.67%) Vulnerability Management
15 25 (8.33%) Containerisation
15 25 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
16 23 (7.67%) Platform Engineering
17 22 (7.33%) AI
18 20 (6.67%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 76 (25.33%) PowerShell
2 74 (24.67%) Python
3 46 (15.33%) Bash
4 41 (13.67%) SQL
5 8 (2.67%) Bicep
6 7 (2.33%) Shell Script
7 6 (2.00%) C#
8 5 (1.67%) C
9 4 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.00%) Java
11 2 (0.67%) C++
11 2 (0.67%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.67%) Embedded C++
11 2 (0.67%) Korn
12 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.33%) Go
12 1 (0.33%) Groovy
12 1 (0.33%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.33%) RPG
12 1 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 75 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 58 (19.33%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 15 (5.00%) Microsoft Certification
4 15 (5.00%) VCAP
5 14 (4.67%) MCSA
5 14 (4.67%) MCSE
6 13 (4.33%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.00%) OCP
7 9 (3.00%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (2.67%) Degree
9 6 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.67%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.67%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.33%) CISSP
12 3 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
12 3 (1.00%) CISM
12 3 (1.00%) PMI Certification
12 3 (1.00%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.67%) QA
2 3 (1.00%) SLA
3 2 (0.67%) GMP
3 2 (0.67%) GxP
3 2 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.67%) NIST
4 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.33%) GDPR
4 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.33%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 97 (32.33%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (17.00%) vSphere
3 45 (15.00%) VMware ESXi
4 43 (14.33%) Active Directory
5 33 (11.00%) Hyper-V
6 23 (7.67%) Docker
7 20 (6.67%) KVM
8 11 (3.67%) NFS
8 11 (3.67%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (3.33%) Firmware
9 10 (3.33%) VMware NSX
10 7 (2.33%) Ceph
11 3 (1.00%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (1.00%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.67%) HDFS
12 2 (0.67%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.33%) iptables
13 1 (0.33%) NLBS
13 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.33%) Samba
Systems Management
1 70 (23.33%) Terraform
2 60 (20.00%) Ansible
3 55 (18.33%) Kubernetes
4 37 (12.33%) vCenter Server
5 15 (5.00%) Grafana
6 14 (4.67%) PowerCLI
7 12 (4.00%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.67%) SCCM
9 7 (2.33%) SnapMirror
10 6 (2.00%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (2.00%) vMotion
10 6 (2.00%) VxRail
11 5 (1.67%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (1.33%) Argo
12 4 (1.33%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (1.33%) Microsoft Clustering
12 4 (1.33%) Podman
12 4 (1.33%) SCOM
13 3 (1.00%) Avamar
13 3 (1.00%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 101 (33.67%) VMware
2 79 (26.33%) Microsoft
3 34 (11.33%) Cisco
4 19 (6.33%) Red Hat
5 17 (5.67%) IBM
6 16 (5.33%) Oracle
7 15 (5.00%) Google
7 15 (5.00%) ServiceNow
8 14 (4.67%) NetApp
9 11 (3.67%) Tenable
10 10 (3.33%) Dell
10 10 (3.33%) Qualys
10 10 (3.33%) Veeam
11 8 (2.67%) CyberArk
11 8 (2.67%) Splunk
12 7 (2.33%) Commvault
12 7 (2.33%) SolarWinds
13 6 (2.00%) Databricks
13 6 (2.00%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.67%) EMC