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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 403 339 314
Rank change year-on-year -64 -25 +10
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 236 202 294
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.69% 0.67%
As % of the System Software category 4.82% 5.41% 6.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 131 194
10th Percentile £355 £350 £277
25th Percentile £413 £452 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -7.88%
75th Percentile £573 £625 £608
90th Percentile £650 £744 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 26
10th Percentile - £35.23 -
25th Percentile - £59.38 £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 4,900 3,736 4,750
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.67% 12.75% 10.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,339 2,554 3,239
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £485
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +8.25% -7.62%
75th Percentile £589 £623 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £484 £460
% change year-on-year -1.86% +5.22% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 95 229
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.12 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.36 £15.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £29.00 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year +81.03% +30.04% -55.40%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £87.20 £87.30 £70.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.75 £37.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +38.00% +78.57% -46.22%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 -55 220 £500 -4.76% 52
UK excluding London -56 124 £488 -2.50% 49
Work from Home -18 91 £500 - 35
London -55 91 £518 -10.00% 16
North of England -22 75 £479 +26.59% 15
Yorkshire -18 43 £500 +14.29% 4
North West -20 31 £458 +20.21% 10
South East -50 18 £500 -6.45% 15
Midlands -69 13 £425 -15.00% 4
East of England -43 10 £550 +2.33% 8
West Midlands -62 10 £375 -18.92% 3
South West -26 8 £538 +0.47%
Scotland +2 4 £550 +7.32% 5
North East -19 1 £400 +10.34% 1
East Midlands -33 1 £500 -13.04% 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 5 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (2.12%) OpenStack
2 3 (1.27%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.27%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.85%) Apache
3 2 (0.85%) nginx
3 2 (0.85%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.42%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.42%) JBoss
4 1 (0.42%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (0.85%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (0.85%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.85%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.42%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 105 (44.49%) Azure
2 44 (18.64%) AWS
3 33 (13.98%) GitHub
3 33 (13.98%) OpenShift
4 24 (10.17%) Azure DevOps
5 23 (9.75%) GitHub Actions
6 19 (8.05%) GCP
6 19 (8.05%) Serverless
7 17 (7.20%) Azure Monitor
7 17 (7.20%) Entra ID
8 12 (5.08%) Azure AKS
9 11 (4.66%) Azure Storage
9 11 (4.66%) Microsoft 365
10 9 (3.81%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.39%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.39%) PaaS
12 7 (2.97%) Azure Functions
13 6 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
13 6 (2.54%) AWS CodePipeline
13 6 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 31 (13.14%) Firewall
2 27 (11.44%) DNS
3 15 (6.36%) VPN
3 15 (6.36%) VSAN
4 12 (5.08%) DHCP
4 12 (5.08%) Network Security
4 12 (5.08%) VLAN
5 10 (4.24%) SAN
5 10 (4.24%) SSL
6 9 (3.81%) Reverse Proxy
7 8 (3.39%) TCP/IP
8 5 (2.12%) FTP
8 5 (2.12%) WAN
9 4 (1.69%) SSH
10 3 (1.27%) NAS
10 3 (1.27%) SD-WAN
10 3 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.85%) Cisco Nexus
11 2 (0.85%) IPsec
11 2 (0.85%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (4.66%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.81%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.97%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.54%) DB2
4 6 (2.54%) Oracle Database
5 5 (2.12%) Power BI
6 4 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.27%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.27%) Big Data
7 3 (1.27%) Data Hub
7 3 (1.27%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.27%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.27%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.27%) MySQL
8 2 (0.85%) Data Vault
8 2 (0.85%) ImageNet
Development Applications
1 31 (13.14%) Git
2 14 (5.93%) GitLab
3 9 (3.81%) JIRA
3 9 (3.81%) PVCS
4 8 (3.39%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.39%) Rational DOORS
5 3 (1.27%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.85%) JMeter
6 2 (0.85%) Postman
6 2 (0.85%) RStudio
6 2 (0.85%) Selenium
6 2 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.42%) Gradle
7 1 (0.42%) Terragrunt
General
1 29 (12.29%) Social Skills
2 17 (7.20%) Finance
3 15 (6.36%) Public Sector
4 11 (4.66%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (4.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 9 (3.81%) Banking
6 9 (3.81%) Legal
7 8 (3.39%) Electronics
8 4 (1.69%) Retail
9 2 (0.85%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.85%) Marketing
9 2 (0.85%) Social Science
9 2 (0.85%) Spanish Language
10 1 (0.42%) Advertising
10 1 (0.42%) Front Office
10 1 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.42%) Italian Language
10 1 (0.42%) Law
10 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.42%) Police
Job Titles
1 29 (12.29%) DevOps Engineer
2 25 (10.59%) Azure Engineer
3 22 (9.32%) Senior
4 16 (6.78%) Architect
5 15 (6.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 12 (5.08%) VMware Engineer
7 11 (4.66%) Cloud Engineer
8 10 (4.24%) Analyst
8 10 (4.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 10 (4.24%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 9 (3.81%) Consultant
9 9 (3.81%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (3.81%) Wintel Engineer
10 8 (3.39%) Data Engineer
10 8 (3.39%) Lead
10 8 (3.39%) Migration Engineer
10 8 (3.39%) Security Engineer
10 8 (3.39%) Site Engineer
10 8 (3.39%) Software Engineer
11 7 (2.97%) C/C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.39%) ARM Templates
1 8 (3.39%) REST
1 8 (3.39%) YAML
2 4 (1.69%) Middleware
3 3 (1.27%) Hugging Face
3 3 (1.27%) JSON
4 2 (0.85%) .NET
4 2 (0.85%) Kafka
4 2 (0.85%) OpenCV
4 2 (0.85%) PySpark
4 2 (0.85%) PyTorch
4 2 (0.85%) Regular Expression
4 2 (0.85%) SpaCy
4 2 (0.85%) TensorFlow
5 1 (0.42%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.42%) LDAP
5 1 (0.42%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 1 (0.42%) Pandas
5 1 (0.42%) SOAP
5 1 (0.42%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.32%) Data Centre
2 17 (7.20%) Replication
3 15 (6.36%) Cloud Native
4 14 (5.93%) Clustering
5 13 (5.51%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (5.08%) Private Cloud
7 11 (4.66%) Linux Command Line
8 8 (3.39%) Product Ownership
9 6 (2.54%) FlexPod
9 6 (2.54%) Onboarding
10 5 (2.12%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (1.69%) Public Cloud
12 3 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.27%) SCADA
13 2 (0.85%) Celerra
13 2 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
13 2 (0.85%) Enterprise Storage
13 2 (0.85%) IBM XIV
13 2 (0.85%) PACS
13 2 (0.85%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 71 (30.08%) Linux
2 55 (23.31%) Windows
3 38 (16.10%) VMS
4 32 (13.56%) Windows Server
5 24 (10.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (2.97%) AIX
6 7 (2.97%) Data ONTAP
6 7 (2.97%) Unix
7 6 (2.54%) CoreOS
8 4 (1.69%) SUSE
9 3 (1.27%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.27%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.42%) Android
11 1 (0.42%) Rocky
11 1 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (30.08%) DevOps
2 66 (27.97%) CI/CD
3 54 (22.88%) Migration
4 48 (20.34%) Infrastructure as Code
5 35 (14.83%) High Availability
6 33 (13.98%) Disaster Recovery
7 29 (12.29%) Performance Tuning
8 28 (11.86%) Containerisation
8 28 (11.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 28 (11.86%) Network Virtualisation
9 24 (10.17%) Continuous Improvement
10 23 (9.75%) Platform Engineering
11 21 (8.90%) Technical Leadership
12 20 (8.47%) Cybersecurity
13 18 (7.63%) AI
13 18 (7.63%) Capacity Planning
13 18 (7.63%) Deployment Automation
14 17 (7.20%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (6.78%) Runbook
16 15 (6.36%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 64 (27.12%) Python
2 58 (24.58%) PowerShell
3 36 (15.25%) Bash
4 34 (14.41%) SQL
5 11 (4.66%) Shell Script
6 10 (4.24%) C
7 8 (3.39%) Bicep
7 8 (3.39%) C++
8 7 (2.97%) Embedded C
8 7 (2.97%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.54%) Ruby
10 5 (2.12%) Java
11 4 (1.69%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.85%) C#
12 2 (0.85%) Korn
12 2 (0.85%) PHP
13 1 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.42%) Go
13 1 (0.42%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.42%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 55 (23.31%) Security Cleared
2 43 (18.22%) SC Cleared
3 17 (7.20%) OCP
3 17 (7.20%) Oracle Certification
4 15 (6.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 14 (5.93%) Azure Certification
6 12 (5.08%) VCAP
7 9 (3.81%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (3.39%) MCSA
8 8 (3.39%) MCSE
9 6 (2.54%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (1.27%) Degree
12 2 (0.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 1 (0.42%) CompTIA Security+
13 1 (0.42%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.42%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.42%) PMP
13 1 (0.42%) RHCE
13 1 (0.42%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.54%) GDPR
1 6 (2.54%) QA
2 3 (1.27%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.42%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.42%) NIST
4 1 (0.42%) WCAG
System Software
1 68 (28.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 39 (16.53%) vSphere
3 35 (14.83%) VMware ESXi
4 30 (12.71%) Active Directory
5 26 (11.02%) Hyper-V
6 17 (7.20%) KVM
7 14 (5.93%) Docker
8 10 (4.24%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.81%) Firmware
9 9 (3.81%) NFS
10 5 (2.12%) Ceph
10 5 (2.12%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.85%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 2 (0.85%) HDFS
11 2 (0.85%) Xen
12 1 (0.42%) iptables
12 1 (0.42%) NLBS
12 1 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.42%) Samba
12 1 (0.42%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 68 (28.81%) Terraform
2 54 (22.88%) Ansible
2 54 (22.88%) Kubernetes
3 32 (13.56%) vCenter Server
4 13 (5.51%) PowerCLI
5 8 (3.39%) Grafana
5 8 (3.39%) SCCM
6 7 (2.97%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (2.97%) SnapMirror
7 6 (2.54%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 6 (2.54%) VxRail
8 5 (2.12%) WSUS
9 4 (1.69%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.69%) Failover Clustering
9 4 (1.69%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.69%) systemd
10 3 (1.27%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (1.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.85%) Rancher
Vendors
1 71 (30.08%) VMware
2 66 (27.97%) Microsoft
3 18 (7.63%) IBM
4 17 (7.20%) Red Hat
5 14 (5.93%) Cisco
6 12 (5.08%) Oracle
7 10 (4.24%) Dell
7 10 (4.24%) Google
7 10 (4.24%) NetApp
7 10 (4.24%) Tenable
8 8 (3.39%) ANSYS
9 6 (2.54%) Databricks
9 6 (2.54%) OpenAI
9 6 (2.54%) Veeam
10 5 (2.12%) Splunk
11 4 (1.69%) OpenText
11 4 (1.69%) Pure Storage
11 4 (1.69%) Qualys
11 4 (1.69%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.69%) Sophos