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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 369 354 310
Rank change year-on-year -15 -44 +22
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 292 175 303
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.60% 0.69%
As % of the System Software category 5.99% 4.85% 6.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 116 211
10th Percentile £357 £350 £320
25th Percentile £422 £425 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.55% -3.48% -2.33%
75th Percentile £563 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £530
% change year-on-year -4.50% -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 26
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +102.90% +135.90% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £65.25 £15.19
90th Percentile - £66.00 £84.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £64.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +8.53% +341.03% -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 4,872 3,605 4,758
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.85% 12.27% 10.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,240 2,387 3,299
10th Percentile £213 £214 £205
25th Percentile £400 £386 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £697 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -0.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 85 226
10th Percentile £15.94 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +82.14% +15.80% -55.90%
75th Percentile £73.00 £66.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £88.45 £79.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £37.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +36.00% +36.36% -43.18%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -7 272 £490 -3.31% 61
UK excluding London +4 168 £478 -4.50% 47
London -58 102 £525 -4.55% 17
North of England 0 93 £478 +26.32% 7
Work from Home -20 91 £500 - 34
Yorkshire -11 49 £500 +5.26% 4
North West -6 42 £463 +23.17% 3
South East -42 42 £483 -12.27% 22
Midlands -65 16 £438 -12.15% 3
West Midlands -55 13 £425 -14.66% 3
South West -12 12 £450 -5.26% 6
East of England -23 6 £425 -19.12% 7
Scotland -16 5 £550 +7.32% 3
North East -23 2 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -28 1 £500 -4.76%

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 (1.71%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.37%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.03%) Apache
3 3 (1.03%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.03%) Confluence
3 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.03%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.68%) CMS
4 2 (0.68%) nginx
4 2 (0.68%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.34%) IIS
5 1 (0.34%) JBoss
5 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.37%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.37%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.68%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) SAP SD
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 115 (39.38%) Azure
2 46 (15.75%) AWS
3 36 (12.33%) OpenShift
4 29 (9.93%) Entra ID
5 27 (9.25%) GitHub
6 26 (8.90%) Azure DevOps
7 20 (6.85%) Azure Monitor
8 19 (6.51%) GCP
9 17 (5.82%) Azure AKS
9 17 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (5.82%) Serverless
10 13 (4.45%) Azure Key Vault
11 12 (4.11%) Microsoft 365
12 11 (3.77%) Azure Storage
13 10 (3.42%) Azure Functions
13 10 (3.42%) Nutanix
14 8 (2.74%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 7 (2.40%) Azure Logic Apps
16 6 (2.05%) Cohesity
16 6 (2.05%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 39 (13.36%) DNS
2 36 (12.33%) Firewall
3 25 (8.56%) VPN
4 22 (7.53%) VLAN
5 21 (7.19%) Network Security
6 19 (6.51%) DHCP
7 15 (5.14%) SSL
7 15 (5.14%) VSAN
7 15 (5.14%) WAN
8 10 (3.42%) SD-WAN
9 9 (3.08%) SAN
10 8 (2.74%) FTP
11 7 (2.40%) LAN
12 5 (1.71%) TCP/IP
13 4 (1.37%) SSH
13 4 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
14 3 (1.03%) Reverse Proxy
15 2 (0.68%) IPsec
15 2 (0.68%) NAS
15 2 (0.68%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (7.53%) SQL Server
2 10 (3.42%) Azure SQL Database
3 7 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (2.05%) Db2
4 6 (2.05%) Power BI
5 3 (1.03%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.03%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.03%) Apache Hive
5 3 (1.03%) Big Data
5 3 (1.03%) Data Lake
5 3 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.03%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.03%) Hadoop
5 3 (1.03%) MySQL
5 3 (1.03%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
6 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.34%) Power Query
6 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 21 (7.19%) Git
2 14 (4.79%) GitLab
3 13 (4.45%) Jenkins
4 8 (2.74%) JIRA
5 4 (1.37%) PVCS
6 3 (1.03%) Rational DOORS
6 3 (1.03%) SonarQube
6 3 (1.03%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.68%) JMeter
7 2 (0.68%) Postman
7 2 (0.68%) Selenium
7 2 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.34%) Gradle
8 1 (0.34%) RStudio
General
1 40 (13.70%) Social Skills
2 26 (8.90%) Finance
3 14 (4.79%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (4.11%) Banking
4 12 (4.11%) Legal
4 12 (4.11%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (2.05%) Retail
7 5 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.37%) Front Office
9 3 (1.03%) Electronics
9 3 (1.03%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.03%) Marketing
10 2 (0.68%) Law
10 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.68%) Publishing
11 1 (0.34%) Advertising
11 1 (0.34%) Back Office
11 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.34%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 37 (12.67%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (8.22%) Azure Engineer
2 24 (8.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 21 (7.19%) Senior
4 18 (6.16%) Wintel Engineer
5 16 (5.48%) Architect
5 16 (5.48%) Cloud Engineer
6 15 (5.14%) Lead
7 13 (4.45%) Analyst
8 12 (4.11%) Consultant
9 10 (3.42%) Administrator
9 10 (3.42%) VMware Engineer
10 9 (3.08%) Technical Specialist
11 8 (2.74%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 8 (2.74%) Linux Engineer
12 7 (2.40%) Migration Engineer
12 7 (2.40%) Platform Engineer
13 6 (2.05%) Data Engineer
13 6 (2.05%) Security Engineer
13 6 (2.05%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (3.08%) REST
2 8 (2.74%) ARM Templates
3 6 (2.05%) YAML
4 5 (1.71%) Middleware
5 3 (1.03%) Hugging Face
5 3 (1.03%) JSON
6 2 (0.68%) OpenCV
6 2 (0.68%) PySpark
6 2 (0.68%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.68%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.68%) SOAP
6 2 (0.68%) SpaCy
6 2 (0.68%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.34%) .NET
7 1 (0.34%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.34%) Java SE
7 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.34%) LDAP
7 1 (0.34%) Retrofit
7 1 (0.34%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 31 (10.62%) Replication
2 26 (8.90%) Data Centre
3 23 (7.88%) Clustering
4 17 (5.82%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (3.77%) Linux Command Line
6 10 (3.42%) Cloud Native
7 9 (3.08%) Product Ownership
8 8 (2.74%) Onboarding
9 7 (2.40%) PKI
10 6 (2.05%) FlexPod
10 6 (2.05%) Operational Technology
10 6 (2.05%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.71%) Cyber Threat
11 5 (1.71%) Mainframe
12 4 (1.37%) Public Cloud
12 4 (1.37%) Security Posture
12 4 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
13 3 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (1.03%) Market Risk
13 3 (1.03%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 95 (32.53%) Windows
2 77 (26.37%) Linux
3 57 (19.52%) Windows Server
4 35 (11.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (10.27%) VMS
6 10 (3.42%) Unix
7 9 (3.08%) AIX
8 8 (2.74%) CoreOS
9 7 (2.40%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.37%) SUSE
10 4 (1.37%) Ubuntu
11 3 (1.03%) Apple iOS
11 3 (1.03%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.34%) Android
13 1 (0.34%) Rocky
13 1 (0.34%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (26.37%) CI/CD
2 74 (25.34%) DevOps
3 66 (22.60%) Migration
4 53 (18.15%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (14.38%) Disaster Recovery
5 42 (14.38%) High Availability
6 41 (14.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 37 (12.67%) Network Virtualisation
8 35 (11.99%) Performance Tuning
9 33 (11.30%) Capacity Planning
9 33 (11.30%) Continuous Improvement
10 25 (8.56%) RBAC
11 24 (8.22%) Problem-Solving
11 24 (8.22%) Validation
11 24 (8.22%) Vulnerability Management
12 23 (7.88%) Cybersecurity
13 22 (7.53%) Containerisation
13 22 (7.53%) Platform Engineering
14 20 (6.85%) Storage Management
15 19 (6.51%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 77 (26.37%) PowerShell
2 72 (24.66%) Python
3 46 (15.75%) Bash
4 37 (12.67%) SQL
5 8 (2.74%) Bicep
6 6 (2.05%) C
6 6 (2.05%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.71%) C#
8 4 (1.37%) Java
8 4 (1.37%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.03%) C++
9 3 (1.03%) Embedded C
9 3 (1.03%) Embedded C++
10 2 (0.68%) Go
10 2 (0.68%) Korn
11 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.34%) Groovy
11 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.34%) RPG
11 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 76 (26.03%) Security Cleared
2 60 (20.55%) SC Cleared
3 24 (8.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.51%) Microsoft Certification
4 19 (6.51%) VCAP
5 18 (6.16%) MCSA
5 18 (6.16%) MCSE
6 12 (4.11%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.08%) OCP
7 9 (3.08%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (2.74%) Degree
9 6 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.71%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.71%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.71%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.37%) CISSP
12 3 (1.03%) CISM
12 3 (1.03%) PMI Certification
12 3 (1.03%) PMP
13 2 (0.68%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.11%) QA
2 2 (0.68%) GMP
2 2 (0.68%) GxP
2 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (0.68%) NIST
2 2 (0.68%) SLA
3 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.34%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.34%) GDPR
3 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
3 1 (0.34%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
3 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 99 (33.90%) VMware Infrastructure
2 55 (18.84%) vSphere
3 50 (17.12%) VMware ESXi
4 42 (14.38%) Active Directory
5 34 (11.64%) Hyper-V
6 19 (6.51%) Docker
7 17 (5.82%) KVM
8 11 (3.77%) NFS
9 10 (3.42%) Firmware
9 10 (3.42%) VMware NSX
10 9 (3.08%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (2.74%) Ceph
12 3 (1.03%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.68%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 2 (0.68%) HDFS
13 2 (0.68%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.34%) iptables
14 1 (0.34%) NLBS
14 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.34%) Samba
Systems Management
1 68 (23.29%) Terraform
2 66 (22.60%) Ansible
3 49 (16.78%) Kubernetes
4 42 (14.38%) vCenter Server
5 14 (4.79%) PowerCLI
6 13 (4.45%) Grafana
7 10 (3.42%) Prometheus
8 9 (3.08%) SCCM
9 7 (2.40%) SnapMirror
10 6 (2.05%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (2.05%) vMotion
10 6 (2.05%) VxRail
11 5 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (1.37%) Argo
12 4 (1.37%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (1.37%) Microsoft Clustering
12 4 (1.37%) SCOM
13 3 (1.03%) Packer
13 3 (1.03%) Podman
13 3 (1.03%) systemd
Vendors
1 104 (35.62%) VMware
2 81 (27.74%) Microsoft
3 37 (12.67%) Cisco
4 20 (6.85%) Red Hat
5 16 (5.48%) IBM
6 15 (5.14%) Google
7 13 (4.45%) NetApp
8 12 (4.11%) Oracle
8 12 (4.11%) ServiceNow
9 11 (3.77%) Tenable
10 10 (3.42%) Dell
10 10 (3.42%) Qualys
10 10 (3.42%) Veeam
11 8 (2.74%) SolarWinds
11 8 (2.74%) Splunk
12 7 (2.40%) Commvault
13 6 (2.05%) CyberArk
13 6 (2.05%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.71%) Databricks
15 4 (1.37%) Meraki