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

 6 months to
29 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 407 400 324
Rank change year-on-year -7 -76 -10
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 295 161 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.49% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 5.49% 4.17% 5.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 109 163
10th Percentile £390 £340 £345
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £535
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -11.21% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £609
90th Percentile £693 £650 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £450 £564
% change year-on-year +8.22% -20.14% +7.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 12
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% -78.88%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £76.71
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.75 - £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 5,373 3,860 4,403
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.97% 11.72% 11.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,533 2,443 3,011
10th Percentile £220 £225 £220
25th Percentile £400 £385 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.44%
75th Percentile £590 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 227 111 130
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.51 £18.87 £17.50
Median hourly rate £58.74 £30.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +95.78% +24.07% -51.64%
75th Percentile £74.00 £79.35 £59.58
90th Percentile £86.00 £91.50 £71.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.33 £62.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year -3.47% +127.27% -

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +8 273 £500 +5.26% 126
UK excluding London +2 162 £487 +8.22% 79
London -36 112 £532 +6.40% 55
Work from Home -42 81 £500 +7.24% 52
North of England -15 72 £491 +17.93% 17
South East -27 52 £475 -15.56% 26
Yorkshire -20 38 £519 +17.35% 5
North West -29 33 £480 +42.22% 11
South West -30 17 £540 +20.00% 9
Midlands -45 17 £487 +0.41% 7
West Midlands -40 11 £406 -17.98% 7
East of England -19 5 £425 +41.67% 22
East Midlands -12 4 £500 +5.26%
Scotland -23 4 £375 -25.00% 2
North East - 1 £400 - 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 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%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.34%) nginx
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%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 143 (48.47%) Azure
2 54 (18.31%) 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 21 (7.12%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (4.41%) Azure Key Vault
10 13 (4.41%) Microsoft 365
10 13 (4.41%) PaaS
10 13 (4.41%) Serverless
11 12 (4.07%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 11 (3.73%) GCP
13 10 (3.39%) SaaS
14 9 (3.05%) Amazon EC2
14 9 (3.05%) Azure Storage
14 9 (3.05%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 45 (15.25%) DNS
2 42 (14.24%) Firewall
3 24 (8.14%) 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
11 7 (2.37%) SAN
12 6 (2.03%) SSH
13 5 (1.69%) HTTPS
13 5 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (1.36%) TCP/IP
15 3 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
15 3 (1.02%) NAS
16 2 (0.68%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (10.51%) SQL Server
2 12 (4.07%) Azure SQL Database
3 11 (3.73%) MySQL
4 10 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (3.05%) Power BI
6 8 (2.71%) Data Lake
7 7 (2.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (1.02%) Apache Hive
8 3 (1.02%) Big Data
8 3 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.02%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.02%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.02%) Oracle Database
9 1 (0.34%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.34%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.34%) SAP HANA
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%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.34%) Selenium
8 1 (0.34%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 43 (14.58%) Social Skills
2 28 (9.49%) Finance
3 13 (4.41%) Legal
4 11 (3.73%) Public Sector
5 10 (3.39%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (3.05%) Banking
7 6 (2.03%) Front Office
7 6 (2.03%) Retail
8 5 (1.69%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.36%) Marketing
10 2 (0.68%) Law
10 2 (0.68%) Local Government
10 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.68%) Publishing
11 1 (0.34%) Advertising
11 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
11 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
4 31 (10.51%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (8.81%) Senior
6 22 (7.46%) Lead
7 19 (6.44%) Architect
8 17 (5.76%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (5.08%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 14 (4.75%) Analyst
11 12 (4.07%) Consultant
11 12 (4.07%) Platform Engineer
12 11 (3.73%) Administrator
13 10 (3.39%) DBA
13 10 (3.39%) Linux Engineer
14 9 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
14 9 (3.05%) VMware Engineer
14 9 (3.05%) Wintel Engineer
15 8 (2.71%) Migration Engineer
15 8 (2.71%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (23.39%) Terraform
2 11 (3.73%) 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%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.34%) Java SE
7 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.34%) LDAP
7 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.34%) OpenID
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 1 (0.34%) Pandas
7 1 (0.34%) SAP Basis
7 1 (0.34%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 36 (12.20%) Replication
2 24 (8.14%) Clustering
3 18 (6.10%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (5.08%) 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%) Mainframe
7 8 (2.71%) PKI
7 8 (2.71%) Product Ownership
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 VMAX
11 3 (1.02%) EMC VNX
11 3 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 97 (32.88%) Windows
2 77 (26.10%) Linux
3 57 (19.32%) Windows Server
4 34 (11.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (10.17%) VMS
6 9 (3.05%) Ubuntu
7 6 (2.03%) Unix
8 5 (1.69%) SUSE
9 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (1.02%) AIX
10 3 (1.02%) CoreOS
10 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.34%) Android
11 1 (0.34%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.34%) Solaris
11 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (26.44%) DevOps
2 77 (26.10%) CI/CD
3 67 (22.71%) Migration
4 62 (21.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 61 (20.68%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (14.24%) Performance Tuning
7 38 (12.88%) Disaster Recovery
7 38 (12.88%) High Availability
7 38 (12.88%) RBAC
8 37 (12.54%) Continuous Improvement
8 37 (12.54%) Validation
9 30 (10.17%) Problem-Solving
10 28 (9.49%) Platform Engineering
10 28 (9.49%) Runbook
10 28 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
11 26 (8.81%) Network Virtualisation
12 24 (8.14%) Capacity Planning
13 23 (7.80%) ITIL
14 21 (7.12%) Storage Management
14 21 (7.12%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 86 (29.15%) PowerShell
2 61 (20.68%) Python
3 41 (13.90%) SQL
4 33 (11.19%) Bash
5 13 (4.41%) Bicep
6 9 (3.05%) C#
7 7 (2.37%) T-SQL
8 6 (2.03%) C
8 6 (2.03%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.02%) Java
10 3 (1.02%) Korn
11 2 (0.68%) C++
11 2 (0.68%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.68%) Groovy
12 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.34%) Go
12 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.34%) RPG
12 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 81 (27.46%) Security Cleared
2 66 (22.37%) SC Cleared
3 21 (7.12%) Azure Certification
4 18 (6.10%) Degree
5 17 (5.76%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (4.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 11 (3.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.73%) VCAP
8 10 (3.39%) MCSA
8 10 (3.39%) MCSE
9 7 (2.37%) DV Cleared
10 6 (2.03%) ISTQB
10 6 (2.03%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 5 (1.69%) CCNA
11 5 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 4 (1.36%) OCP
12 4 (1.36%) Oracle Certification
13 3 (1.02%) CISSP
13 3 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
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%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
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%) GDPR
5 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (29.83%) VMware Infrastructure
2 46 (15.59%) 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%) KVM
11 5 (1.69%) Firmware
11 5 (1.69%) NFS
12 3 (1.02%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (1.02%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.68%) HDFS
13 2 (0.68%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.34%) DFS Replication
14 1 (0.34%) Dovecot
14 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.34%) Squid
Systems Management
1 48 (16.27%) Kubernetes
2 44 (14.92%) Ansible
3 27 (9.15%) vCenter Server
4 18 (6.10%) Grafana
5 14 (4.75%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.07%) PowerCLI
7 11 (3.73%) SCOM
8 9 (3.05%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (2.71%) SCCM
9 8 (2.71%) VxRail
10 7 (2.37%) Packer
10 7 (2.37%) vMotion
11 6 (2.03%) Microsoft Clustering
11 6 (2.03%) Microsoft Intune
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%) SELinux
Vendors
1 97 (32.88%) Microsoft
2 93 (31.53%) VMware
3 29 (9.83%) Cisco
4 23 (7.80%) Oracle
5 22 (7.46%) ServiceNow
6 16 (5.42%) Dell
7 14 (4.75%) Red Hat
8 13 (4.41%) NetApp
9 12 (4.07%) Veeam
10 11 (3.73%) IBM
11 9 (3.05%) CyberArk
11 9 (3.05%) Splunk
12 8 (2.71%) Qualys
12 8 (2.71%) SolarWinds
13 7 (2.37%) Commvault
13 7 (2.37%) Google
14 6 (2.03%) Databricks
15 5 (1.69%) Meraki
15 5 (1.69%) Palo Alto
15 5 (1.69%) Tenable
135 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide