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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 398 398 330
Rank change year-on-year 0 -68 -9
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 310 161 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.49% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 5.71% 4.13% 5.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 114 169
10th Percentile £393 £352 £344
25th Percentile £444 £425 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £706 £639 £664
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £489 £525
% change year-on-year +2.25% -6.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 7
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 £49.37
90th Percentile - - £84.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 - £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 5,429 3,900 4,405
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.90% 11.84% 11.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,559 2,461 2,959
10th Percentile £220 £218 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £592 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 114 111
10th Percentile £15.85 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.02 £17.69
Median hourly rate £63.14 £34.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +85.69% +36.00% -50.00%
75th Percentile £74.83 £80.00 £61.19
90th Percentile £92.11 £91.05 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £28.75
% change year-on-year - +126.09% -28.13%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +11 284 £500 +0.50% 205
UK excluding London -8 176 £500 +2.25% 124
London -39 109 £529 +4.24% 87
Work from Home -40 87 £500 +5.26% 74
North of England -12 81 £500 +16.62% 25
South East -19 53 £483 -17.87% 42
Yorkshire -10 45 £519 +16.11% 5
North West -24 34 £485 +49.23% 19
South West -32 16 £558 +1.36% 6
Midlands -48 14 £487 +0.41% 12
East of England -15 13 £300 -36.84% 35
West Midlands -51 9 £487 -1.62% 8
East Midlands -12 4 £500 +5.26% 4
Scotland -19 4 £375 -28.57% 2
North East - 2 £413 - 1

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 (3.23%) IIS
2 6 (1.94%) Confluence
3 5 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.29%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.65%) Apache
6 2 (0.65%) CMS
6 2 (0.65%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.32%) nginx
7 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.29%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.29%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.65%) InDesign
2 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 147 (47.42%) Azure
2 58 (18.71%) Entra ID
3 50 (16.13%) AWS
4 40 (12.90%) Azure Monitor
5 32 (10.32%) Azure DevOps
6 26 (8.39%) Azure AKS
6 26 (8.39%) OpenShift
7 25 (8.06%) IaaS
8 23 (7.42%) GitHub
9 16 (5.16%) GitHub Actions
10 14 (4.52%) Microsoft 365
10 14 (4.52%) PaaS
11 13 (4.19%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 13 (4.19%) Serverless
12 12 (3.87%) Azure Key Vault
12 12 (3.87%) GCP
13 11 (3.55%) Amazon EC2
13 11 (3.55%) Power Platform
14 10 (3.23%) Azure Storage
14 10 (3.23%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 50 (16.13%) DNS
2 43 (13.87%) Firewall
3 28 (9.03%) VPN
4 22 (7.10%) Network Security
4 22 (7.10%) VLAN
5 21 (6.77%) DHCP
6 20 (6.45%) SSL
7 19 (6.13%) WAN
8 15 (4.84%) VSAN
9 10 (3.23%) SD-WAN
10 9 (2.90%) HTTP
10 9 (2.90%) LAN
11 7 (2.26%) FTP
11 7 (2.26%) SAN
11 7 (2.26%) TCP/IP
12 5 (1.61%) HTTPS
12 5 (1.61%) SSH
12 5 (1.61%) Wi-Fi
13 3 (0.97%) NAS
13 3 (0.97%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.65%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.84%) MySQL
3 11 (3.55%) Power BI
3 11 (3.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (3.23%) Azure SQL Database
5 8 (2.58%) Data Lake
5 8 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.97%) Apache Hive
6 3 (0.97%) Big Data
6 3 (0.97%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.97%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
8 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.32%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (5.16%) Jenkins
2 15 (4.84%) Git
3 10 (3.23%) GitLab
4 7 (2.26%) JIRA
5 6 (1.94%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.61%) PVCS
7 4 (1.29%) CppUnit
7 4 (1.29%) Rational DOORS
7 4 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.97%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.65%) Maven
9 2 (0.65%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.65%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.32%) Selenium
10 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
10 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 50 (16.13%) Social Skills
2 27 (8.71%) Finance
3 14 (4.52%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (3.87%) Legal
5 8 (2.58%) Banking
5 8 (2.58%) Manufacturing
6 7 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.94%) Back Office
7 6 (1.94%) Front Office
7 6 (1.94%) Public Sector
8 5 (1.61%) Retail
9 4 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.29%) Law
9 4 (1.29%) Marketing
10 2 (0.65%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.65%) Local Government
10 2 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.65%) Publishing
11 1 (0.32%) Advertising
11 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (14.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 44 (14.19%) Azure Engineer
3 34 (10.97%) Cloud Engineer
4 32 (10.32%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (8.06%) Senior
6 23 (7.42%) Lead
7 18 (5.81%) Architect
8 17 (5.48%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 14 (4.52%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.19%) Analyst
10 13 (4.19%) DBA
11 11 (3.55%) Administrator
11 11 (3.55%) Consultant
11 11 (3.55%) Migration Engineer
11 11 (3.55%) Security Engineer
11 11 (3.55%) SQL DBA
12 10 (3.23%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.23%) Wintel Engineer
13 9 (2.90%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.90%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (22.26%) Terraform
2 15 (4.84%) ARM Templates
3 10 (3.23%) JSON
4 9 (2.90%) REST
5 8 (2.58%) Regular Expression
6 7 (2.26%) LDAP
7 5 (1.61%) Middleware
7 5 (1.61%) YAML
8 3 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.65%) ADO
9 2 (0.65%) SOAP
9 2 (0.65%) Web Services
10 1 (0.32%) Java SE
10 1 (0.32%) Node.js
10 1 (0.32%) NumPy
10 1 (0.32%) OpenTofu
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 1 (0.32%) Pandas
10 1 (0.32%) SAP Basis
10 1 (0.32%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 42 (13.55%) Replication
2 33 (10.65%) Clustering
3 20 (6.45%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.52%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.87%) Linux Command Line
6 11 (3.55%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.55%) Enterprise Storage
7 9 (2.90%) Mainframe
7 9 (2.90%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.90%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.90%) Public Cloud
8 7 (2.26%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (2.26%) Operational Technology
8 7 (2.26%) PKI
9 6 (1.94%) Fixed Income
9 6 (1.94%) Market Risk
9 6 (1.94%) Security Posture
9 6 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.29%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 110 (35.48%) Windows
2 73 (23.55%) Linux
3 64 (20.65%) Windows Server
4 33 (10.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (10.00%) VMS
6 9 (2.90%) Unix
7 8 (2.58%) Ubuntu
8 5 (1.61%) SUSE
9 4 (1.29%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (1.29%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.97%) AIX
10 3 (0.97%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.65%) Android
11 2 (0.65%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.65%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.65%) zOS
12 1 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.32%) Rocky
12 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (25.16%) DevOps
2 76 (24.52%) CI/CD
3 75 (24.19%) Migration
4 63 (20.32%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (20.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 44 (14.19%) Disaster Recovery
6 43 (13.87%) RBAC
7 42 (13.55%) Performance Tuning
8 40 (12.90%) Continuous Improvement
8 40 (12.90%) High Availability
9 39 (12.58%) Validation
10 32 (10.32%) Problem-Solving
11 30 (9.68%) Runbook
12 29 (9.35%) ITIL
13 28 (9.03%) Stakeholder Management
14 26 (8.39%) Cybersecurity
14 26 (8.39%) Platform Engineering
15 25 (8.06%) Capacity Planning
15 25 (8.06%) Network Virtualisation
15 25 (8.06%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 99 (31.94%) PowerShell
2 69 (22.26%) Python
3 38 (12.26%) SQL
4 34 (10.97%) Bash
5 12 (3.87%) Bicep
6 11 (3.55%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.58%) C
7 8 (2.58%) C#
7 8 (2.58%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.94%) Java
9 4 (1.29%) C++
9 4 (1.29%) Groovy
10 3 (0.97%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.65%) Korn
11 2 (0.65%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.32%) Go
12 1 (0.32%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.32%) RPG
12 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 94 (30.32%) Security Cleared
2 77 (24.84%) SC Cleared
3 25 (8.06%) Azure Certification
4 23 (7.42%) Microsoft Certification
5 22 (7.10%) Degree
6 14 (4.52%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (4.19%) DV Cleared
7 13 (4.19%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 10 (3.23%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 10 (3.23%) MCSA
8 10 (3.23%) MCSE
8 10 (3.23%) VCAP
9 6 (1.94%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.61%) CCNA
10 5 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.97%) CISSP
11 3 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.97%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.97%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.23%) QA
2 4 (1.29%) SLA
3 3 (0.97%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.97%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.65%) GMP
4 2 (0.65%) GxP
4 2 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.65%) NIST
5 1 (0.32%) GDPR
5 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 99 (31.94%) VMware Infrastructure
2 59 (19.03%) Active Directory
3 45 (14.52%) vSphere
4 40 (12.90%) VMware ESXi
5 33 (10.65%) Hyper-V
6 26 (8.39%) Docker
7 13 (4.19%) NFS
8 11 (3.55%) VMware NSX
9 9 (2.90%) Virtual Desktop
10 8 (2.58%) Firmware
11 7 (2.26%) Ceph
12 6 (1.94%) KVM
13 3 (0.97%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.97%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.65%) HDFS
14 2 (0.65%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.32%) BitLocker
15 1 (0.32%) DFS Replication
15 1 (0.32%) Dovecot
15 1 (0.32%) Squid
Systems Management
1 45 (14.52%) Ansible
2 44 (14.19%) Kubernetes
3 30 (9.68%) vCenter Server
4 17 (5.48%) Grafana
5 16 (5.16%) SCOM
6 12 (3.87%) Prometheus
7 11 (3.55%) Failover Clustering
8 9 (2.90%) PowerCLI
8 9 (2.90%) SCCM
9 7 (2.26%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (2.26%) Packer
9 7 (2.26%) Podman
9 7 (2.26%) vMotion
10 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Clustering
10 6 (1.94%) Proxmox
10 6 (1.94%) VxRail
11 4 (1.29%) Avamar
11 4 (1.29%) OPNET
11 4 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.97%) WSUS
Vendors
1 107 (34.52%) Microsoft
2 106 (34.19%) VMware
3 29 (9.35%) Cisco
4 25 (8.06%) ServiceNow
5 20 (6.45%) Oracle
6 17 (5.48%) Dell
7 15 (4.84%) NetApp
8 12 (3.87%) IBM
8 12 (3.87%) Veeam
9 10 (3.23%) Red Hat
9 10 (3.23%) Splunk
10 9 (2.90%) CyberArk
11 8 (2.58%) Google
11 8 (2.58%) Qualys
11 8 (2.58%) SolarWinds
12 6 (1.94%) Commvault
12 6 (1.94%) Palo Alto
13 5 (1.61%) Databricks
13 5 (1.61%) Meraki
13 5 (1.61%) Okta