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

 6 months to
3 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 392 395 322
Rank change year-on-year +3 -73 +10
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 297 160 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.49% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 5.55% 4.22% 5.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 108 161
10th Percentile £391 £338 £345
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £535
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -11.21% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £578 £609
90th Percentile £709 £650 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £557
% change year-on-year +8.11% -16.97% +6.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 12
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £35.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +135.90% -79.26%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £76.71
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.75 - £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 5,347 3,788 4,394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.97% 11.65% 11.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,528 2,395 2,988
10th Percentile £217 £225 £220
25th Percentile £400 £385 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.44%
75th Percentile £590 £594 £602
90th Percentile £675 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 232 112 130
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £17.50
Median hourly rate £60.00 £31.39 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +91.17% +29.80% -51.64%
75th Percentile £74.08 £79.03 £59.58
90th Percentile £87.25 £91.50 £71.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year - +127.27% -

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -2 275 £500 +5.26% 194
UK excluding London 0 168 £500 +8.11% 103
London -33 108 £532 +6.40% 102
Work from Home -32 79 £500 +8.11% 80
North of England -1 77 £500 +20.12% 23
South East -24 54 £475 -15.56% 31
North West -11 38 £483 +43.11% 12
Yorkshire -18 38 £523 +18.26% 6
Midlands -47 17 £487 +0.41% 9
South West -31 16 £558 +23.89% 9
West Midlands -51 11 £406 -17.98% 7
East of England -18 5 £425 +9.68% 29
East Midlands -17 4 £500 +5.26% 2
Scotland -25 4 £375 -25.00% 4
North East - 1 £400 - 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 6 (2.02%) Confluence
2 4 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.35%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.01%) Apache
3 3 (1.01%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.01%) IIS
4 2 (0.67%) CMS
4 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.67%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.34%) JBoss
5 1 (0.34%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.34%) nginx
5 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.35%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.35%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.67%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 142 (47.81%) Azure
2 53 (17.85%) Entra ID
3 46 (15.49%) AWS
4 38 (12.79%) Azure Monitor
5 35 (11.78%) Azure DevOps
6 25 (8.42%) Azure AKS
7 24 (8.08%) GitHub
7 24 (8.08%) OpenShift
8 23 (7.74%) IaaS
9 18 (6.06%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (4.38%) Azure Key Vault
10 13 (4.38%) Microsoft 365
10 13 (4.38%) PaaS
11 12 (4.04%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 12 (4.04%) GCP
11 12 (4.04%) Power Platform
11 12 (4.04%) Serverless
12 10 (3.37%) SaaS
13 9 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
14 8 (2.69%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 44 (14.81%) DNS
1 44 (14.81%) Firewall
2 24 (8.08%) VPN
3 23 (7.74%) SSL
4 22 (7.41%) VLAN
5 21 (7.07%) Network Security
6 20 (6.73%) VSAN
7 18 (6.06%) DHCP
7 18 (6.06%) WAN
8 10 (3.37%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.69%) LAN
10 7 (2.36%) FTP
11 6 (2.02%) SAN
11 6 (2.02%) SSH
12 5 (1.68%) HTTPS
12 5 (1.68%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.35%) TCP/IP
14 3 (1.01%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (1.01%) NAS
15 2 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.11%) SQL Server
2 15 (5.05%) MySQL
3 12 (4.04%) Power BI
4 11 (3.70%) Azure SQL Database
4 11 (3.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 10 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
6 8 (2.69%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.01%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.01%) Big Data
7 3 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.01%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.01%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.01%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.34%) OpenStack Swift
8 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.39%) Git
2 15 (5.05%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.03%) GitLab
4 7 (2.36%) JIRA
5 6 (2.02%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.01%) PVCS
7 3 (1.01%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.67%) CppUnit
8 2 (0.67%) Maven
8 2 (0.67%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.67%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.34%) Selenium
9 1 (0.34%) Vagrant
9 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 43 (14.48%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.09%) Finance
3 12 (4.04%) Legal
4 10 (3.37%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (3.03%) Public Sector
6 8 (2.69%) Banking
7 6 (2.02%) Front Office
8 5 (1.68%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.68%) Retail
9 4 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.35%) Marketing
10 2 (0.67%) Law
10 2 (0.67%) Local Government
10 2 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.67%) Publishing
11 1 (0.34%) Advertising
11 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (15.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 35 (11.78%) Azure Engineer
3 32 (10.77%) Cloud Engineer
3 32 (10.77%) DevOps Engineer
4 27 (9.09%) Senior
5 25 (8.42%) Lead
6 19 (6.40%) Architect
7 17 (5.72%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (4.71%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 13 (4.38%) DBA
10 12 (4.04%) Analyst
10 12 (4.04%) Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.70%) Administrator
11 11 (3.70%) Consultant
11 11 (3.70%) SQL DBA
12 10 (3.37%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (3.03%) Solutions Architect
13 9 (3.03%) VMware Engineer
13 9 (3.03%) Wintel Engineer
14 8 (2.69%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (22.22%) Terraform
2 10 (3.37%) ARM Templates
3 8 (2.69%) REST
3 8 (2.69%) YAML
4 5 (1.68%) Middleware
5 3 (1.01%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.01%) JSON
6 2 (0.67%) SOAP
6 2 (0.67%) Web Services
7 1 (0.34%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.34%) Java SE
7 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.34%) Node.js
7 1 (0.34%) NumPy
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 1 (0.34%) Pandas
7 1 (0.34%) SAP Basis
7 1 (0.34%) SciPy
7 1 (0.34%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 40 (13.47%) Replication
2 30 (10.10%) Clustering
3 19 (6.40%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (5.05%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.70%) Cloud Native
5 11 (3.70%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.03%) Public Cloud
7 8 (2.69%) Enterprise Storage
7 8 (2.69%) Mainframe
7 8 (2.69%) Onboarding
7 8 (2.69%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.36%) PKI
9 6 (2.02%) Fixed Income
9 6 (2.02%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.02%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.68%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.01%) Enterprise Cloud
11 3 (1.01%) Private Cloud
11 3 (1.01%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 102 (34.34%) Windows
2 77 (25.93%) Linux
3 63 (21.21%) Windows Server
4 33 (11.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (10.44%) VMS
6 9 (3.03%) Ubuntu
7 8 (2.69%) Unix
8 5 (1.68%) SUSE
9 4 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (1.35%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (1.01%) AIX
10 3 (1.01%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.67%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.67%) Rocky
12 1 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.34%) Android
12 1 (0.34%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.34%) Solaris
12 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
12 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (27.61%) DevOps
2 77 (25.93%) CI/CD
3 67 (22.56%) Migration
4 61 (20.54%) Infrastructure as Code
4 61 (20.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 44 (14.81%) Performance Tuning
6 37 (12.46%) Disaster Recovery
6 37 (12.46%) RBAC
6 37 (12.46%) Validation
7 36 (12.12%) Continuous Improvement
7 36 (12.12%) High Availability
8 30 (10.10%) Runbook
9 29 (9.76%) Problem-Solving
10 28 (9.43%) ITIL
11 27 (9.09%) Platform Engineering
11 27 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
12 25 (8.42%) Network Virtualisation
13 24 (8.08%) Capacity Planning
14 22 (7.41%) Containerisation
15 20 (6.73%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 88 (29.63%) PowerShell
2 61 (20.54%) Python
3 43 (14.48%) SQL
4 35 (11.78%) Bash
5 12 (4.04%) Bicep
6 11 (3.70%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.69%) C#
7 8 (2.69%) Shell Script
8 6 (2.02%) C
9 5 (1.68%) Java
10 4 (1.35%) Groovy
10 4 (1.35%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.67%) C++
11 2 (0.67%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.67%) Korn
12 1 (0.34%) Cypher
12 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.34%) Go
12 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 84 (28.28%) Security Cleared
2 68 (22.90%) SC Cleared
3 22 (7.41%) Azure Certification
4 21 (7.07%) Degree
5 20 (6.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (5.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (4.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 11 (3.70%) VCAP
9 10 (3.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 10 (3.37%) MCSA
9 10 (3.37%) MCSE
10 8 (2.69%) DV Cleared
11 6 (2.02%) ISTQB
12 5 (1.68%) CCNA
12 5 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (1.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 3 (1.01%) CISSP
13 3 (1.01%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (1.01%) PMI Certification
13 3 (1.01%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.37%) QA
2 4 (1.35%) SLA
3 3 (1.01%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.01%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.67%) GMP
4 2 (0.67%) GxP
4 2 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.67%) NIST
5 1 (0.34%) GDPR
5 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (29.63%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (15.15%) Active Directory
3 44 (14.81%) vSphere
4 39 (13.13%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (9.09%) Docker
6 24 (8.08%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.71%) VMware NSX
8 8 (2.69%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (2.36%) Ceph
10 6 (2.02%) KVM
11 5 (1.68%) Firmware
12 4 (1.35%) NFS
13 3 (1.01%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (1.01%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.67%) HDFS
14 2 (0.67%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.34%) DFS Replication
15 1 (0.34%) Dovecot
15 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
15 1 (0.34%) Squid
Systems Management
1 45 (15.15%) Ansible
1 45 (15.15%) Kubernetes
2 27 (9.09%) vCenter Server
3 20 (6.73%) Grafana
4 15 (5.05%) SCOM
5 14 (4.71%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.04%) PowerCLI
7 11 (3.70%) Failover Clustering
8 8 (2.69%) SCCM
8 8 (2.69%) VxRail
9 7 (2.36%) Packer
9 7 (2.36%) Podman
9 7 (2.36%) vMotion
10 6 (2.02%) Microsoft Clustering
10 6 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (2.02%) Proxmox
11 4 (1.35%) Avamar
11 4 (1.35%) OPNET
12 3 (1.01%) EMC VPLEX
12 3 (1.01%) WSUS
Vendors
1 98 (33.00%) Microsoft
2 93 (31.31%) VMware
3 29 (9.76%) Cisco
4 25 (8.42%) ServiceNow
5 23 (7.74%) Oracle
6 16 (5.39%) Dell
7 13 (4.38%) Red Hat
8 12 (4.04%) NetApp
8 12 (4.04%) Veeam
9 11 (3.70%) IBM
10 9 (3.03%) CyberArk
10 9 (3.03%) Splunk
11 8 (2.69%) Google
11 8 (2.69%) Qualys
11 8 (2.69%) SolarWinds
12 7 (2.36%) Commvault
13 5 (1.68%) Databricks
13 5 (1.68%) EMC
13 5 (1.68%) Meraki
13 5 (1.68%) Palo Alto
214 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide