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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 392 393 334
Rank change year-on-year +1 -59 -4
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 311 167 240
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.50% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 5.74% 4.19% 5.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 115 165
10th Percentile £390 £346 £345
25th Percentile £425 £425 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £591 £588 £608
90th Percentile £713 £640 £662
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £500 £520
% change year-on-year -2.60% -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 5
10th Percentile £26.90 - -
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £83.55
90th Percentile - £50.45 £84.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 £58.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +45.30% +300.00% -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 5,422 3,981 4,335
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.88% 12.02% 11.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,548 2,513 2,865
10th Percentile £225 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £371
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £588 £606
90th Percentile £688 £670 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 123 102
10th Percentile £16.00 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £17.35 £19.30
Median hourly rate £62.50 £34.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.82% +23.64% -42.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.25 £68.20
90th Percentile £90.00 £89.45 £83.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £58.50 £30.50
% change year-on-year +8.51% +91.80% -20.88%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +1 280 £500 - 254
UK excluding London +5 183 £487 -2.60% 154
London -55 100 £532 +5.35% 105
Work from Home -36 94 £487 +2.53% 79
North of England -13 76 £500 +19.05% 41
South East -22 59 £475 -17.39% 49
Yorkshire -4 43 £523 +13.45% 16
North West -22 31 £484 +48.92% 25
South West -34 16 £558 +1.36% 10
Midlands -49 16 £494 -0.30% 19
East of England -13 15 £353 -25.68% 28
West Midlands -38 12 £487 -2.84% 14
Scotland -29 6 £425 -19.05% 6
East Midlands -12 4 £500 +5.26% 5
North East - 2 £413 -

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 10 (3.22%) IIS
2 6 (1.93%) Confluence
2 6 (1.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.61%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.96%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.64%) CMS
5 2 (0.64%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.32%) Apache
6 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.32%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (1.29%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.29%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.64%) InDesign
2 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.64%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 147 (47.27%) Azure
2 70 (22.51%) Entra ID
3 42 (13.50%) AWS
4 37 (11.90%) Azure Monitor
5 32 (10.29%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (9.65%) IaaS
7 26 (8.36%) OpenShift
8 25 (8.04%) Azure AKS
9 24 (7.72%) GitHub
10 21 (6.75%) Microsoft 365
11 16 (5.14%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (4.82%) PaaS
13 13 (4.18%) Azure Key Vault
14 12 (3.86%) GCP
14 12 (3.86%) Serverless
15 11 (3.54%) Amazon EC2
15 11 (3.54%) Power Platform
15 11 (3.54%) SaaS
16 10 (3.22%) Azure Storage
16 10 (3.22%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 52 (16.72%) DNS
2 40 (12.86%) Firewall
3 29 (9.32%) VPN
4 21 (6.75%) DHCP
5 19 (6.11%) SSL
5 19 (6.11%) WAN
6 18 (5.79%) Network Security
7 17 (5.47%) VLAN
8 10 (3.22%) LAN
8 10 (3.22%) SD-WAN
9 9 (2.89%) HTTP
10 7 (2.25%) FTP
10 7 (2.25%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (1.93%) SAN
11 6 (1.93%) TCP/IP
11 6 (1.93%) VSAN
12 5 (1.61%) HTTPS
13 4 (1.29%) SSH
14 3 (0.96%) Kerberos
14 3 (0.96%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.29%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.82%) MySQL
3 11 (3.54%) Azure SQL Database
3 11 (3.54%) Power BI
4 10 (3.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 8 (2.57%) Data Lake
5 8 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (0.96%) Apache Hive
7 3 (0.96%) Big Data
7 3 (0.96%) DynamoDB
7 3 (0.96%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.64%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.32%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.32%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 17 (5.47%) Git
1 17 (5.47%) Jenkins
2 11 (3.54%) GitLab
3 8 (2.57%) JIRA
3 8 (2.57%) SonarQube
4 4 (1.29%) CppUnit
4 4 (1.29%) PVCS
4 4 (1.29%) Rational DOORS
5 3 (0.96%) Maven
5 3 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.96%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.64%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.64%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.32%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.32%) Selenium
7 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 50 (16.08%) Social Skills
2 28 (9.00%) Finance
3 14 (4.50%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (3.54%) Legal
5 9 (2.89%) Banking
5 9 (2.89%) Public Sector
6 8 (2.57%) Manufacturing
7 7 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.93%) Back Office
8 6 (1.93%) Front Office
9 5 (1.61%) Retail
10 4 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.29%) Law
10 4 (1.29%) Marketing
11 2 (0.64%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.64%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.64%) Local Government
11 2 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.64%) Publishing
12 1 (0.32%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 50 (16.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 48 (15.43%) Azure Engineer
3 41 (13.18%) Cloud Engineer
4 32 (10.29%) DevOps Engineer
5 24 (7.72%) Senior
6 23 (7.40%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
7 22 (7.07%) Lead
8 20 (6.43%) Architect
9 19 (6.11%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.18%) Analyst
10 13 (4.18%) DBA
11 12 (3.86%) Platform Engineer
11 12 (3.86%) Wintel Engineer
12 11 (3.54%) Administrator
12 11 (3.54%) Consultant
12 11 (3.54%) Security Engineer
12 11 (3.54%) SQL DBA
13 9 (2.89%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.89%) Storage Engineer
14 8 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (23.15%) Terraform
2 15 (4.82%) ARM Templates
3 10 (3.22%) JSON
4 8 (2.57%) Regular Expression
4 8 (2.57%) REST
5 7 (2.25%) LDAP
6 4 (1.29%) YAML
7 3 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (0.96%) Middleware
7 3 (0.96%) Web Services
8 2 (0.64%) ADO
9 1 (0.32%) Lambda Expressions
9 1 (0.32%) Node.js
9 1 (0.32%) NumPy
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 1 (0.32%) Pandas
9 1 (0.32%) SAP Basis
9 1 (0.32%) SciPy
9 1 (0.32%) SOAP
9 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 38 (12.22%) Replication
2 31 (9.97%) Clustering
3 18 (5.79%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.50%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.86%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.86%) Enterprise Storage
5 12 (3.86%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.89%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (2.89%) PKI
6 9 (2.89%) Public Cloud
7 8 (2.57%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.57%) Mainframe
8 7 (2.25%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (2.25%) Operational Technology
8 7 (2.25%) Product Ownership
9 6 (1.93%) Fixed Income
9 6 (1.93%) Market Risk
9 6 (1.93%) Security Posture
9 6 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.29%) Device Driver
Operating Systems
1 109 (35.05%) Windows
2 66 (21.22%) Linux
3 64 (20.58%) Windows Server
4 28 (9.00%) VMS
5 25 (8.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (3.22%) Unix
7 6 (1.93%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.29%) Data ONTAP
8 4 (1.29%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.96%) AIX
9 3 (0.96%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.64%) Android
10 2 (0.64%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.64%) CoreOS
10 2 (0.64%) zOS
11 1 (0.32%) Solaris
11 1 (0.32%) SUSE
11 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (25.08%) CI/CD
1 78 (25.08%) DevOps
2 71 (22.83%) Migration
3 68 (21.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 67 (21.54%) Infrastructure as Code
5 41 (13.18%) Disaster Recovery
5 41 (13.18%) RBAC
6 40 (12.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 38 (12.22%) Validation
8 35 (11.25%) Runbook
9 34 (10.93%) High Availability
9 34 (10.93%) Performance Tuning
10 31 (9.97%) Stakeholder Management
11 30 (9.65%) ITIL
11 30 (9.65%) Problem-Solving
12 26 (8.36%) Cybersecurity
12 26 (8.36%) Platform Engineering
13 25 (8.04%) AI
14 24 (7.72%) Containerisation
14 24 (7.72%) Network Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 106 (34.08%) PowerShell
2 70 (22.51%) Python
3 37 (11.90%) SQL
4 33 (10.61%) Bash
5 14 (4.50%) Bicep
6 11 (3.54%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.57%) C
7 8 (2.57%) C#
7 8 (2.57%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.61%) Groovy
8 5 (1.61%) Java
9 4 (1.29%) C++
10 3 (0.96%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.64%) Korn
12 1 (0.32%) Cypher
12 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.32%) Go
12 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.32%) RPG
12 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 94 (30.23%) Security Cleared
2 80 (25.72%) SC Cleared
3 26 (8.36%) Microsoft Certification
4 22 (7.07%) Azure Certification
4 22 (7.07%) Degree
5 13 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (3.86%) MCSA
6 12 (3.86%) MCSE
6 12 (3.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 11 (3.54%) DV Cleared
8 10 (3.22%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 8 (2.57%) VCAP
10 6 (1.93%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.61%) CCNA
11 5 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (0.96%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.96%) CCA
12 3 (0.96%) CISSP
12 3 (0.96%) Citrix Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.86%) QA
2 4 (1.29%) SLA
3 3 (0.96%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.64%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.64%) GMP
4 2 (0.64%) GxP
4 2 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.32%) NIST
5 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 94 (30.23%) VMware Infrastructure
2 66 (21.22%) Active Directory
3 39 (12.54%) vSphere
4 31 (9.97%) Hyper-V
4 31 (9.97%) VMware ESXi
5 28 (9.00%) Docker
6 13 (4.18%) NFS
7 9 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (2.57%) VMware NSX
9 6 (1.93%) Ceph
9 6 (1.93%) Firmware
9 6 (1.93%) KVM
10 4 (1.29%) BitLocker
10 4 (1.29%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.96%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.64%) HDFS
12 2 (0.64%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.32%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 1 (0.32%) Postfix
13 1 (0.32%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 43 (13.83%) Kubernetes
2 41 (13.18%) Ansible
3 23 (7.40%) vCenter Server
4 18 (5.79%) Grafana
5 16 (5.14%) SCOM
6 12 (3.86%) Prometheus
7 11 (3.54%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (3.22%) SCCM
9 9 (2.89%) Failover Clustering
10 7 (2.25%) Packer
10 7 (2.25%) Podman
11 6 (1.93%) Proxmox
12 5 (1.61%) Microsoft Clustering
12 5 (1.61%) vMotion
13 4 (1.29%) OPNET
13 4 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (1.29%) WSUS
14 3 (0.96%) Argo
14 3 (0.96%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.96%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 118 (37.94%) Microsoft
2 99 (31.83%) VMware
3 28 (9.00%) Cisco
4 24 (7.72%) ServiceNow
5 18 (5.79%) Oracle
6 15 (4.82%) NetApp
7 13 (4.18%) Dell
8 12 (3.86%) CyberArk
9 11 (3.54%) Red Hat
9 11 (3.54%) Veeam
10 10 (3.22%) Google
10 10 (3.22%) IBM
10 10 (3.22%) Splunk
11 9 (2.89%) Commvault
11 9 (2.89%) SolarWinds
12 8 (2.57%) Qualys
13 7 (2.25%) Citrix
14 6 (1.93%) Databricks
14 6 (1.93%) Meraki
14 6 (1.93%) Palo Alto