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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 370 354 315
Rank change year-on-year -16 -39 +21
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 310 182 291
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.59% 0.67%
As % of the System Software category 6.18% 4.90% 6.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 120 203
10th Percentile £357 £350 £345
25th Percentile £424 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £507 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -7.86% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £570
% change year-on-year -3.40% -12.28% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 7 24
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £26.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year -24.64% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile £48.00 £65.25 £15.19
90th Percentile £61.20 £66.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £64.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year -59.69% +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 5,020 3,714 4,757
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 12.14% 11.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,327 2,424 3,283
10th Percentile £216 £225 £205
25th Percentile £400 £385 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £694 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -0.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 87 220
10th Percentile £13.97 £14.49 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £23.99
Median % change year-on-year +82.14% +16.72% -55.03%
75th Percentile £73.00 £66.00 £59.20
90th Percentile £77.50 £89.85 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £41.45 £24.34
% change year-on-year +23.04% +70.30% -27.34%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +2 287 £498 -1.65% 52
UK excluding London +4 177 £483 -3.40% 45
London -64 109 £525 -4.55% 14
North of England +5 100 £483 +27.78% 8
Work from Home -29 93 £500 - 29
Yorkshire -2 56 £500 +5.26% 2
North West -14 42 £463 +23.17% 6
South East -42 41 £475 -17.39% 22
Midlands -61 18 £450 -7.22% 4
South West -16 15 £540 +13.68% 5
West Midlands -59 12 £425 -7.61% 3
East of England -26 5 £425 -19.12% 3
East Midlands -15 4 £500 -4.76% 1
Scotland -17 4 - - 1
North East -34 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 5 (1.61%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.97%) Apache
2 3 (0.97%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.97%) Confluence
2 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (0.97%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.65%) CMS
3 2 (0.65%) IIS
3 2 (0.65%) nginx
3 2 (0.65%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.65%) Umbraco
4 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.32%) JBoss
4 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 5 (1.61%) Adobe Illustrator
1 5 (1.61%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.65%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.65%) InDesign
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 135 (43.55%) Azure
2 49 (15.81%) AWS
3 38 (12.26%) OpenShift
4 37 (11.94%) Entra ID
5 32 (10.32%) Azure Monitor
6 31 (10.00%) Azure DevOps
7 28 (9.03%) GitHub
8 25 (8.06%) Azure AKS
9 21 (6.77%) GCP
10 19 (6.13%) Serverless
11 18 (5.81%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (4.84%) Azure Key Vault
13 14 (4.52%) Azure Storage
14 12 (3.87%) Azure Functions
14 12 (3.87%) Microsoft 365
15 11 (3.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 10 (3.23%) Nutanix
16 10 (3.23%) Power Platform
17 9 (2.90%) IaaS
17 9 (2.90%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 44 (14.19%) DNS
2 39 (12.58%) Firewall
3 28 (9.03%) VPN
4 23 (7.42%) Network Security
5 21 (6.77%) SSL
5 21 (6.77%) VLAN
6 19 (6.13%) DHCP
7 18 (5.81%) WAN
8 15 (4.84%) VSAN
9 11 (3.55%) SD-WAN
10 9 (2.90%) SAN
11 8 (2.58%) FTP
12 7 (2.26%) LAN
12 7 (2.26%) SSH
13 5 (1.61%) TCP/IP
13 5 (1.61%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (1.29%) HTTPS
14 4 (1.29%) Reverse Proxy
15 3 (0.97%) Cisco Nexus
16 2 (0.65%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (9.68%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.19%) Azure SQL Database
3 12 (3.87%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (3.23%) Power BI
5 8 (2.58%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.26%) MySQL
7 6 (1.94%) Db2
8 5 (1.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 3 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.97%) Apache Hive
9 3 (0.97%) Big Data
9 3 (0.97%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.97%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.97%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.32%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.32%) OpenStack Swift
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 18 (5.81%) Git
2 13 (4.19%) GitLab
3 12 (3.87%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.94%) JIRA
5 3 (0.97%) SonarQube
5 3 (0.97%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.65%) JMeter
6 2 (0.65%) Postman
6 2 (0.65%) PVCS
6 2 (0.65%) Selenium
6 2 (0.65%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.65%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (0.32%) RStudio
General
1 41 (13.23%) Social Skills
2 31 (10.00%) Finance
3 15 (4.84%) Legal
4 13 (4.19%) Banking
5 12 (3.87%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (3.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 11 (3.55%) Public Sector
7 7 (2.26%) Retail
8 5 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.61%) Front Office
8 5 (1.61%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.29%) Marketing
10 2 (0.65%) Law
10 2 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.65%) Publishing
11 1 (0.32%) Advertising
11 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.32%) Electronics
11 1 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.32%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 37 (11.94%) DevOps Engineer
2 30 (9.68%) Azure Engineer
3 28 (9.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 25 (8.06%) Cloud Engineer
5 24 (7.74%) Senior
6 19 (6.13%) Lead
7 16 (5.16%) Architect
8 15 (4.84%) Analyst
9 14 (4.52%) Wintel Engineer
10 11 (3.55%) Consultant
11 10 (3.23%) Administrator
11 10 (3.23%) Technical Specialist
11 10 (3.23%) VMware Engineer
12 9 (2.90%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (2.90%) Migration Engineer
13 8 (2.58%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 7 (2.26%) DBA
14 7 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
14 7 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
15 6 (1.94%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (3.87%) ARM Templates
2 9 (2.90%) REST
3 7 (2.26%) YAML
4 4 (1.29%) Middleware
5 3 (0.97%) Hugging Face
5 3 (0.97%) JSON
6 2 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
6 2 (0.65%) OpenCV
6 2 (0.65%) PySpark
6 2 (0.65%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.65%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.65%) SOAP
6 2 (0.65%) SpaCy
6 2 (0.65%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.32%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.32%) Java SE
7 1 (0.32%) LDAP
7 1 (0.32%) NumPy
7 1 (0.32%) OpenID
7 1 (0.32%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 31 (10.00%) Replication
2 23 (7.42%) Clustering
2 23 (7.42%) Data Centre
3 19 (6.13%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (5.16%) Linux Command Line
5 12 (3.87%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.87%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.90%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.58%) PKI
8 7 (2.26%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.94%) FlexPod
9 6 (1.94%) Mainframe
9 6 (1.94%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.61%) Fixed Income
10 5 (1.61%) Market Risk
10 5 (1.61%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.61%) Security Posture
11 4 (1.29%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 105 (33.87%) Windows
2 90 (29.03%) Linux
3 58 (18.71%) Windows Server
4 37 (11.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (10.00%) VMS
6 11 (3.55%) Unix
7 9 (2.90%) AIX
8 8 (2.58%) CoreOS
9 7 (2.26%) Data ONTAP
9 7 (2.26%) Ubuntu
10 4 (1.29%) SUSE
11 3 (0.97%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.32%) Rocky
13 1 (0.32%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (26.77%) DevOps
2 81 (26.13%) CI/CD
3 72 (23.23%) Migration
4 56 (18.06%) Infrastructure as Code
5 45 (14.52%) High Availability
6 44 (14.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 42 (13.55%) Disaster Recovery
8 40 (12.90%) Performance Tuning
9 36 (11.61%) Network Virtualisation
10 33 (10.65%) Continuous Improvement
11 32 (10.32%) Validation
12 30 (9.68%) RBAC
13 29 (9.35%) Problem-Solving
14 28 (9.03%) Capacity Planning
15 27 (8.71%) Vulnerability Management
16 24 (7.74%) Containerisation
16 24 (7.74%) Cybersecurity
16 24 (7.74%) Platform Engineering
17 23 (7.42%) AI
17 23 (7.42%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 85 (27.42%) PowerShell
2 78 (25.16%) Python
3 47 (15.16%) Bash
4 46 (14.84%) SQL
5 9 (2.90%) Bicep
6 7 (2.26%) C#
6 7 (2.26%) Shell Script
7 4 (1.29%) C
7 4 (1.29%) PL/SQL
7 4 (1.29%) T-SQL
8 3 (0.97%) Java
9 2 (0.65%) Korn
10 1 (0.32%) C++
10 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.32%) Embedded C
10 1 (0.32%) Embedded C++
10 1 (0.32%) Groovy
10 1 (0.32%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.32%) RPG
10 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 82 (26.45%) Security Cleared
2 65 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.45%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.13%) Microsoft Certification
5 16 (5.16%) Azure Certification
6 15 (4.84%) VCAP
7 14 (4.52%) Degree
7 14 (4.52%) MCSA
7 14 (4.52%) MCSE
8 9 (2.90%) OCP
8 9 (2.90%) Oracle Certification
9 8 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.61%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.61%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.29%) CCNA
11 4 (1.29%) CISSP
11 4 (1.29%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 3 (0.97%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.55%) QA
2 3 (0.97%) SLA
3 2 (0.65%) GMP
3 2 (0.65%) GxP
3 2 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.65%) NIST
4 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.32%) GDPR
4 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.32%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 96 (30.97%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (16.45%) vSphere
3 47 (15.16%) Active Directory
4 45 (14.52%) VMware ESXi
5 33 (10.65%) Hyper-V
6 23 (7.42%) Docker
7 20 (6.45%) KVM
8 11 (3.55%) NFS
9 10 (3.23%) Firmware
9 10 (3.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (3.23%) VMware NSX
10 7 (2.26%) Ceph
11 3 (0.97%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (0.97%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.65%) HDFS
12 2 (0.65%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.32%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.32%) iptables
13 1 (0.32%) NLBS
13 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 72 (23.23%) Terraform
2 59 (19.03%) Ansible
2 59 (19.03%) Kubernetes
3 37 (11.94%) vCenter Server
4 15 (4.84%) Grafana
5 14 (4.52%) PowerCLI
6 12 (3.87%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.58%) SCCM
7 8 (2.58%) SCOM
8 7 (2.26%) SnapMirror
9 6 (1.94%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (1.94%) vMotion
9 6 (1.94%) VxRail
10 4 (1.29%) Argo
10 4 (1.29%) Failover Clustering
10 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Clustering
10 4 (1.29%) Podman
10 4 (1.29%) Proxmox
11 3 (0.97%) Avamar
Vendors
1 101 (32.58%) VMware
2 86 (27.74%) Microsoft
3 35 (11.29%) Cisco
4 21 (6.77%) ServiceNow
5 19 (6.13%) Red Hat
6 18 (5.81%) Oracle
7 16 (5.16%) IBM
8 15 (4.84%) Google
9 14 (4.52%) NetApp
10 11 (3.55%) Tenable
11 10 (3.23%) Dell
11 10 (3.23%) Qualys
11 10 (3.23%) Veeam
12 9 (2.90%) CyberArk
13 8 (2.58%) Databricks
13 8 (2.58%) Splunk
14 7 (2.26%) Commvault
14 7 (2.26%) Palo Alto
14 7 (2.26%) SolarWinds
15 5 (1.61%) EMC