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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 337 317
Rank change year-on-year -21 -20 +7
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 280 195 279
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.67% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 5.83% 5.39% 6.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 123 191
10th Percentile £356 £352 £310
25th Percentile £424 £455 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.79% - -5.53%
75th Percentile £566 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.40% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 11 27
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £65.25 £15.19
90th Percentile - £66.00 £86.97
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 4,799 3,619 4,583
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.97% 12.41% 10.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,221 2,448 3,170
10th Percentile £220 £213 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £512 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.39% +2.45% -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £607 £600
90th Percentile £680 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £465
% change year-on-year - +2.16% -3.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 87 230
10th Percentile £16.03 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.44 £14.48
Median hourly rate £51.75 £28.41 £22.40
Median % change year-on-year +82.15% +26.83% -58.52%
75th Percentile £71.00 £64.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £79.45 £88.30 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £37.07 £19.18
% change year-on-year +37.57% +93.34% -59.42%

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 -34 260 £493 -4.76% 64
UK excluding London -11 159 £483 -3.40% 43
Work from Home -15 99 £500 - 35
London -53 96 £525 -8.70% 21
North of England +1 89 £480 +28.00% 10
Yorkshire -14 48 £500 +5.26% 3
North West -15 40 £465 +23.89% 7
South East -38 38 £514 -10.61% 15
Midlands -70 15 £425 -15.00% 6
West Midlands -58 12 £375 -25.00% 4
East of England -32 9 £425 -19.05% 4
South West -32 9 £450 -15.89% 5
Scotland -13 5 £550 +7.32% 2
North East -24 1 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -30 1 £500 -4.76% 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 (2.14%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.79%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.07%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.07%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.71%) Apache
4 2 (0.71%) CMS
4 2 (0.71%) Confluence
4 2 (0.71%) nginx
4 2 (0.71%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.36%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.36%) IIS
5 1 (0.36%) JBoss
5 1 (0.36%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.07%) Adobe Illustrator
1 3 (1.07%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.71%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) SAP SD
1 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 112 (40.00%) Azure
2 50 (17.86%) AWS
3 39 (13.93%) OpenShift
4 31 (11.07%) GitHub
5 27 (9.64%) Azure DevOps
6 22 (7.86%) Entra ID
6 22 (7.86%) GitHub Actions
7 19 (6.79%) Azure Monitor
7 19 (6.79%) Serverless
8 17 (6.07%) GCP
9 16 (5.71%) Azure AKS
10 12 (4.29%) Microsoft 365
11 11 (3.93%) Azure Storage
12 10 (3.57%) Azure Key Vault
12 10 (3.57%) Nutanix
13 9 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (2.86%) PaaS
15 7 (2.50%) Amazon EC2
15 7 (2.50%) Azure Functions
16 6 (2.14%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 35 (12.50%) DNS
1 35 (12.50%) Firewall
2 21 (7.50%) VLAN
2 21 (7.50%) VPN
3 19 (6.79%) Network Security
4 16 (5.71%) DHCP
5 15 (5.36%) VSAN
6 12 (4.29%) WAN
7 11 (3.93%) SSL
8 9 (3.21%) SAN
8 9 (3.21%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.86%) Reverse Proxy
9 8 (2.86%) TCP/IP
10 7 (2.50%) LAN
11 5 (1.79%) FTP
11 5 (1.79%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.43%) SSH
13 2 (0.71%) Cisco Nexus
13 2 (0.71%) IPsec
13 2 (0.71%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.43%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.14%) DB2
4 6 (2.14%) Oracle Database
5 5 (1.79%) Power BI
6 4 (1.43%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.07%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.07%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.07%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.07%) Big Data
7 3 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.07%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.07%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.07%) MySQL
8 2 (0.71%) Data Hub
8 2 (0.71%) ImageNet
9 1 (0.36%) Power Query
9 1 (0.36%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 29 (10.36%) Git
2 15 (5.36%) GitLab
3 11 (3.93%) Jenkins
4 9 (3.21%) JIRA
5 7 (2.50%) PVCS
6 6 (2.14%) Rational DOORS
7 3 (1.07%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.07%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.71%) JMeter
8 2 (0.71%) Postman
8 2 (0.71%) Selenium
8 2 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.36%) Gradle
9 1 (0.36%) RStudio
General
1 36 (12.86%) Social Skills
2 18 (6.43%) Finance
3 14 (5.00%) Public Sector
4 13 (4.64%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (3.57%) Legal
7 9 (3.21%) Banking
8 6 (2.14%) Electronics
9 5 (1.79%) Retail
10 3 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.07%) Front Office
10 3 (1.07%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.07%) Marketing
11 2 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.36%) Advertising
12 1 (0.36%) Back Office
12 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.36%) Social Science
12 1 (0.36%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 33 (11.79%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (8.57%) Azure Engineer
3 23 (8.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 20 (7.14%) Senior
5 18 (6.43%) Architect
6 17 (6.07%) Wintel Engineer
7 13 (4.64%) Analyst
7 13 (4.64%) Cloud Engineer
8 12 (4.29%) Lead
9 11 (3.93%) Consultant
10 10 (3.57%) VMware Engineer
11 9 (3.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 9 (3.21%) Security Engineer
12 8 (2.86%) Administrator
13 7 (2.50%) Linux Engineer
13 7 (2.50%) Migration Engineer
13 7 (2.50%) Platform Engineer
14 6 (2.14%) Embedded C/C++ Engineer
14 6 (2.14%) Embedded C/C++ Software Engineer
14 6 (2.14%) Product Owner
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.86%) ARM Templates
1 8 (2.86%) REST
1 8 (2.86%) YAML
2 5 (1.79%) Middleware
3 3 (1.07%) Hugging Face
3 3 (1.07%) JSON
4 2 (0.71%) .NET
4 2 (0.71%) OpenCV
4 2 (0.71%) PySpark
4 2 (0.71%) PyTorch
4 2 (0.71%) Regular Expression
4 2 (0.71%) SpaCy
4 2 (0.71%) TensorFlow
5 1 (0.36%) Kafka
5 1 (0.36%) LDAP
5 1 (0.36%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 1 (0.36%) Pandas
5 1 (0.36%) SOAP
5 1 (0.36%) Software Packaging
5 1 (0.36%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.71%) Replication
2 24 (8.57%) Data Centre
3 22 (7.86%) Clustering
4 16 (5.71%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.64%) Cloud Native
5 13 (4.64%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.21%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.86%) Private Cloud
8 7 (2.50%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.50%) PKI
9 6 (2.14%) FlexPod
9 6 (2.14%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.79%) Cyber Threat
11 3 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.07%) Mainframe
11 3 (1.07%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.07%) SCADA
11 3 (1.07%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
12 2 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 82 (29.29%) Windows
2 79 (28.21%) Linux
3 48 (17.14%) Windows Server
4 33 (11.79%) VMS
5 30 (10.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (2.86%) AIX
6 8 (2.86%) CoreOS
6 8 (2.86%) Unix
7 7 (2.50%) Data ONTAP
8 4 (1.43%) SUSE
9 3 (1.07%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.07%) Ubuntu
9 3 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.36%) Android
11 1 (0.36%) Rocky
11 1 (0.36%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (27.86%) CI/CD
2 76 (27.14%) DevOps
3 66 (23.57%) Migration
4 53 (18.93%) Infrastructure as Code
5 41 (14.64%) Disaster Recovery
5 41 (14.64%) High Availability
6 37 (13.21%) Performance Tuning
7 36 (12.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 36 (12.86%) Network Virtualisation
8 32 (11.43%) Continuous Improvement
9 31 (11.07%) Capacity Planning
10 28 (10.00%) Containerisation
11 23 (8.21%) Cybersecurity
11 23 (8.21%) Platform Engineering
12 21 (7.50%) RBAC
12 21 (7.50%) Validation
12 21 (7.50%) Vulnerability Management
13 19 (6.79%) Problem-Solving
14 18 (6.43%) Deployment Automation
14 18 (6.43%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 71 (25.36%) Python
2 68 (24.29%) PowerShell
3 44 (15.71%) Bash
4 36 (12.86%) SQL
5 9 (3.21%) Bicep
5 9 (3.21%) Shell Script
6 8 (2.86%) C
7 6 (2.14%) C++
7 6 (2.14%) Embedded C
7 6 (2.14%) Embedded C++
7 6 (2.14%) Java
8 5 (1.79%) C#
8 5 (1.79%) Ruby
9 4 (1.43%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.71%) Go
10 2 (0.71%) Korn
10 2 (0.71%) PHP
11 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.36%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.36%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 71 (25.36%) Security Cleared
2 57 (20.36%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 18 (6.43%) VCAP
5 16 (5.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (5.36%) MCSA
6 15 (5.36%) MCSE
6 15 (5.36%) OCP
6 15 (5.36%) Oracle Certification
7 14 (5.00%) Azure Certification
8 7 (2.50%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.79%) Degree
11 3 (1.07%) CISSP
11 3 (1.07%) ISTQB
11 3 (1.07%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.07%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.07%) PMP
12 2 (0.71%) CISM
12 2 (0.71%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.29%) QA
2 4 (1.43%) GDPR
3 3 (1.07%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.71%) GMP
4 2 (0.71%) GxP
5 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.36%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.36%) NIST
5 1 (0.36%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.36%) SLA
5 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 90 (32.14%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (18.21%) vSphere
3 45 (16.07%) VMware ESXi
4 38 (13.57%) Active Directory
5 31 (11.07%) Hyper-V
6 18 (6.43%) Docker
7 17 (6.07%) KVM
8 10 (3.57%) Firmware
8 10 (3.57%) NFS
9 9 (3.21%) VMware NSX
10 8 (2.86%) Ceph
11 5 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.71%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.71%) HDFS
12 2 (0.71%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.71%) Xen
13 1 (0.36%) iptables
13 1 (0.36%) NLBS
13 1 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.36%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 70 (25.00%) Terraform
2 64 (22.86%) Ansible
3 55 (19.64%) Kubernetes
4 39 (13.93%) vCenter Server
5 12 (4.29%) PowerCLI
6 11 (3.93%) Grafana
7 10 (3.57%) SCCM
8 8 (2.86%) Prometheus
9 7 (2.50%) SnapMirror
10 6 (2.14%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (2.14%) VxRail
10 6 (2.14%) WSUS
11 4 (1.43%) Argo
11 4 (1.43%) Data Guard
11 4 (1.43%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.43%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.43%) Oracle RMAN
11 4 (1.43%) systemd
11 4 (1.43%) vMotion
Vendors
1 94 (33.57%) VMware
2 75 (26.79%) Microsoft
3 31 (11.07%) Cisco
4 22 (7.86%) Red Hat
5 17 (6.07%) IBM
6 13 (4.64%) NetApp
6 13 (4.64%) Oracle
7 12 (4.29%) Google
8 10 (3.57%) Dell
8 10 (3.57%) Tenable
8 10 (3.57%) Veeam
9 7 (2.50%) Commvault
10 6 (2.14%) ANSYS
10 6 (2.14%) ServiceNow
10 6 (2.14%) SolarWinds
11 5 (1.79%) CyberArk
11 5 (1.79%) Databricks
11 5 (1.79%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.79%) Qualys
11 5 (1.79%) Splunk