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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 391 396 323
Rank change year-on-year +5 -73 -7
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 295 157 254
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.48% 0.65%
As % of the System Software category 5.55% 4.09% 5.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 105 167
10th Percentile £391 £346 £342
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £535
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -11.21% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £608
90th Percentile £702 £650 £667
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £554
% change year-on-year +2.84% -14.18% +5.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 14
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% -78.25%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £63.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.75 - £14.63
% change year-on-year - - -80.33%

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 5,315 3,835 4,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.91% 11.71% 11.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,500 2,426 3,029
10th Percentile £219 £228 £220
25th Percentile £400 £385 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.44%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £499
% change year-on-year - -4.81% +5.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 110 139
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £14.06
25th Percentile £24.25 £18.87 £16.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £31.39 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +75.24% +29.80% -51.64%
75th Percentile £74.00 £79.68 £58.69
90th Percentile £85.00 £91.50 £71.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £63.50 £24.50
% change year-on-year -5.51% +159.18% -9.26%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 +11 274 £500 +5.26% 101
UK excluding London +3 164 £489 +2.84% 57
London -33 111 £532 +6.40% 51
Work from Home -45 81 £500 +5.82% 48
North of England -10 73 £497 +18.29% 10
South East -25 52 £475 -20.83% 17
Yorkshire -13 39 £523 +17.00% 1
North West -9 33 £480 +42.22% 7
South West -31 17 £540 +27.06% 10
Midlands -63 17 £487 -2.21% 8
West Midlands -50 11 £406 -18.96% 7
East of England -16 6 £425 +41.67% 7
Scotland -14 4 £375 -25.00% 4
East Midlands -16 4 £500 +5.26% 1
North East - 1 £400 - 2

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 (2.03%) Confluence
2 5 (1.69%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (1.02%) Apache
4 3 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.02%) IIS
5 2 (0.68%) CMS
5 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.68%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.34%) JBoss
6 1 (0.34%) nginx
6 1 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.36%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.36%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.68%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 141 (47.80%) Azure
2 52 (17.63%) Entra ID
3 47 (15.93%) AWS
4 36 (12.20%) Azure Monitor
5 33 (11.19%) Azure DevOps
6 27 (9.15%) Azure AKS
6 27 (9.15%) GitHub
7 26 (8.81%) OpenShift
8 23 (7.80%) IaaS
9 20 (6.78%) GitHub Actions
10 14 (4.75%) Microsoft 365
10 14 (4.75%) Serverless
11 13 (4.41%) Azure Key Vault
11 13 (4.41%) PaaS
12 12 (4.07%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 11 (3.73%) GCP
14 10 (3.39%) Power Platform
15 9 (3.05%) Amazon EC2
15 9 (3.05%) Azure Storage
15 9 (3.05%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 44 (14.92%) DNS
2 42 (14.24%) Firewall
3 25 (8.47%) VPN
4 22 (7.46%) VLAN
5 21 (7.12%) Network Security
6 20 (6.78%) VSAN
7 19 (6.44%) SSL
8 18 (6.10%) DHCP
9 17 (5.76%) WAN
10 10 (3.39%) SD-WAN
11 7 (2.37%) FTP
11 7 (2.37%) LAN
12 6 (2.03%) SAN
12 6 (2.03%) SSH
13 5 (1.69%) HTTPS
13 5 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
14 3 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (1.02%) NAS
14 3 (1.02%) TCP/IP
15 2 (0.68%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.17%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.73%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (3.39%) MySQL
3 10 (3.39%) Power BI
4 9 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
5 8 (2.71%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.02%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.02%) Big Data
7 3 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.02%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.02%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.02%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.34%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.34%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
8 1 (0.34%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 16 (5.42%) Git
2 13 (4.41%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.05%) GitLab
4 7 (2.37%) JIRA
5 4 (1.36%) SonarQube
6 3 (1.02%) PVCS
6 3 (1.02%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.68%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.68%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.34%) Selenium
8 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.34%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 43 (14.58%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.15%) Finance
3 13 (4.41%) Legal
4 11 (3.73%) Public Sector
5 9 (3.05%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (3.05%) Banking
6 6 (2.03%) Front Office
6 6 (2.03%) Retail
7 5 (1.69%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.36%) Marketing
9 2 (0.68%) Law
9 2 (0.68%) Local Government
9 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.68%) Publishing
10 1 (0.34%) Advertising
10 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (15.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 36 (12.20%) Azure Engineer
3 32 (10.85%) Cloud Engineer
3 32 (10.85%) DevOps Engineer
4 27 (9.15%) Senior
5 22 (7.46%) Lead
6 19 (6.44%) Architect
7 17 (5.76%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (5.08%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 14 (4.75%) Analyst
10 12 (4.07%) Consultant
11 11 (3.73%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.39%) Administrator
12 10 (3.39%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (3.05%) DBA
13 9 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
13 9 (3.05%) VMware Engineer
13 9 (3.05%) Wintel Engineer
14 8 (2.71%) Migration Engineer
14 8 (2.71%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (23.39%) Terraform
2 10 (3.39%) ARM Templates
3 8 (2.71%) REST
3 8 (2.71%) YAML
4 5 (1.69%) Middleware
5 3 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.02%) JSON
6 2 (0.68%) OpenTofu
6 2 (0.68%) SOAP
7 1 (0.34%) ADO
7 1 (0.34%) Java SE
7 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.34%) LDAP
7 1 (0.34%) Node.js
7 1 (0.34%) NumPy
7 1 (0.34%) OpenID
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 1 (0.34%) Pandas
7 1 (0.34%) SciPy
7 1 (0.34%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 34 (11.53%) Replication
2 25 (8.47%) Clustering
3 18 (6.10%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.75%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.73%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.05%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.71%) Enterprise Storage
7 8 (2.71%) PKI
7 8 (2.71%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.37%) Mainframe
8 7 (2.37%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.37%) Public Cloud
8 7 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.03%) Fixed Income
9 6 (2.03%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.03%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.69%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.02%) EMC Centera
11 3 (1.02%) Private Cloud
11 3 (1.02%) Symmetrix
Operating Systems
1 97 (32.88%) Windows
2 76 (25.76%) Linux
3 56 (18.98%) Windows Server
4 34 (11.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (10.17%) VMS
6 9 (3.05%) Ubuntu
7 5 (1.69%) SUSE
7 5 (1.69%) Unix
8 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.02%) AIX
9 3 (1.02%) CoreOS
9 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.68%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.68%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.34%) Android
11 1 (0.34%) Rocky
11 1 (0.34%) Solaris
11 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (26.78%) DevOps
2 75 (25.42%) CI/CD
3 65 (22.03%) Migration
4 62 (21.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 59 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (14.24%) Performance Tuning
7 37 (12.54%) Disaster Recovery
7 37 (12.54%) High Availability
7 37 (12.54%) Validation
8 36 (12.20%) RBAC
9 35 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
10 28 (9.49%) Problem-Solving
10 28 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
11 27 (9.15%) Network Virtualisation
11 27 (9.15%) Platform Engineering
11 27 (9.15%) Runbook
12 25 (8.47%) Capacity Planning
13 23 (7.80%) ITIL
14 22 (7.46%) Vulnerability Management
15 21 (7.12%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 84 (28.47%) PowerShell
2 61 (20.68%) Python
3 40 (13.56%) SQL
4 33 (11.19%) Bash
5 12 (4.07%) Bicep
6 9 (3.05%) C#
7 6 (2.03%) C
7 6 (2.03%) Shell Script
7 6 (2.03%) T-SQL
8 4 (1.36%) Korn
8 4 (1.36%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.02%) Java
10 2 (0.68%) C++
10 2 (0.68%) Embedded C
10 2 (0.68%) Groovy
11 1 (0.34%) Cypher
11 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.34%) Go
11 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 82 (27.80%) Security Cleared
2 67 (22.71%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.78%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.76%) Degree
4 17 (5.76%) Microsoft Certification
5 14 (4.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.73%) VCAP
7 10 (3.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.39%) MCSA
7 10 (3.39%) MCSE
8 7 (2.37%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.03%) ISTQB
9 6 (2.03%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 5 (1.69%) CCNA
10 5 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.36%) OCP
11 4 (1.36%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (1.02%) PMI Certification
12 3 (1.02%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.39%) QA
2 4 (1.36%) SLA
3 3 (1.02%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.68%) GMP
4 2 (0.68%) GxP
4 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.68%) NIST
5 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.34%) GDPR
5 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 89 (30.17%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (15.93%) Active Directory
3 44 (14.92%) vSphere
4 38 (12.88%) VMware ESXi
5 25 (8.47%) Docker
6 22 (7.46%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.75%) VMware NSX
8 8 (2.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (2.37%) Ceph
10 6 (2.03%) Firmware
10 6 (2.03%) KVM
10 6 (2.03%) NFS
11 3 (1.02%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (1.02%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.68%) HDFS
12 2 (0.68%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.34%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.34%) DFS Replication
13 1 (0.34%) Dovecot
13 1 (0.34%) iptables
Systems Management
1 48 (16.27%) Kubernetes
2 43 (14.58%) Ansible
3 27 (9.15%) vCenter Server
4 18 (6.10%) Grafana
5 14 (4.75%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.07%) PowerCLI
7 10 (3.39%) SCOM
8 9 (3.05%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (2.71%) SCCM
9 8 (2.71%) VxRail
10 7 (2.37%) vMotion
11 6 (2.03%) Microsoft Clustering
11 6 (2.03%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (2.03%) Packer
11 6 (2.03%) Podman
11 6 (2.03%) Proxmox
12 4 (1.36%) Argo
12 4 (1.36%) Avamar
12 4 (1.36%) OPNET
13 3 (1.02%) WSUS
Vendors
1 95 (32.20%) Microsoft
2 94 (31.86%) VMware
3 29 (9.83%) Cisco
4 22 (7.46%) Oracle
4 22 (7.46%) ServiceNow
5 15 (5.08%) Dell
6 14 (4.75%) NetApp
6 14 (4.75%) Red Hat
7 12 (4.07%) Veeam
8 10 (3.39%) IBM
9 9 (3.05%) CyberArk
9 9 (3.05%) Qualys
9 9 (3.05%) Splunk
10 7 (2.37%) Commvault
10 7 (2.37%) Databricks
10 7 (2.37%) Google
10 7 (2.37%) SolarWinds
11 6 (2.03%) Tenable
12 5 (1.69%) Meraki
12 5 (1.69%) Palo Alto