Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 18 September 2018

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Virtual Machines skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 18 September 2018 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Virtual Machine (VM)
UK
6 months to
18 Sep 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 440 441 408
Rank change year-on-year +1 -33 -19
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 537 492 600
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 0.52% 0.50% 0.56%
As % of the System Software category 3.58% 4.20% 4.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 375 288 391
UK median daily rate £493 £418 £425
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +17.96% -1.76% +6.25%
10th Percentile £275 £221 £300
90th Percentile £700 £600 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £375 £400
% change year-on-year +23.33% -6.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 11 18
UK median hourly rate £21.26 £45.00 £26.25
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -52.75% +71.43% -11.02%
10th Percentile £15.24 £16.00 £14.35
90th Percentile £46.29 £47.83 £45.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £16.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +31.25% -28.89% -19.64%

Virtual Machines is in the System Software category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for system software skills.

All System Software Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 14,996 11,716 13,035
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.55% 11.96% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,693 7,532 8,174
UK median daily rate £450 £425 £400
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +5.88% +6.25% +14.29%
10th Percentile £180 £160 £175
90th Percentile £625 £588 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £375 £365
% change year-on-year +6.67% +2.74% +8.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 902 667 866
UK median hourly rate £16.10 £16.81 £16.50
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -4.20% +1.85% +3.13%
10th Percentile £10.75 £10.40 £10.50
90th Percentile £43.75 £47.00 £41.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.86 £15.50 £16.50
% change year-on-year +2.32% -6.06% +6.45%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Virtual Machines as a percentage of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor daily rate trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 18 September 2018.

Contractor daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor hourly rate trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 18 September 2018.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Top 15 Contract 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 18 September 2018. 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
Job
Vacancies
England +19 515 £493 +15.88% 124
UK excluding London -2 317 £463 +23.33% 90
London -7 212 £550 +15.79% 44
North of England +51 111 £490 +22.50% 15
South East +14 107 £422 +35.04% 24
North West +32 69 £500 +25.00% 11
Yorkshire +1 36 £450 +16.13% 4
Midlands -40 36 £365 -13.10% 10
South West -10 30 £493 +10.36% 13
Scotland -14 25 £700 +154.55% 8
West Midlands -23 21 £334 -7.29% 7
East of England -14 17 £575 +35.29% 18
East Midlands -27 15 £480 +9.09% 3
North East -9 6 £525 +31.25%
Wales -20 2 £419 +21.38% 1

For the 6 months to 18 September 2018, IT contractor jobs citing Virtual Machines also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Virtual Machines.

1 228 (42.46%) Windows
2 202 (37.62%) Linux
3 184 (34.26%) DevOps
4 170 (31.66%) VMware
5 154 (28.68%) Microsoft Azure
6 151 (28.12%) Puppet
7 144 (26.82%) Ansible
8 136 (25.33%) VMware Infrastructure
9 132 (24.58%) Java
10 130 (24.21%) Jenkins
11 128 (23.84%) Microsoft
12 117 (21.79%) Opscode Chef
13 114 (21.23%) Agile Software Development
14 113 (21.04%) Amazon AWS
15 112 (20.86%) Windows Server
16 111 (20.67%) Python
17 110 (20.48%) Continuous Integration
18 107 (19.93%) Security Cleared
19 105 (19.55%) Active Directory
20 104 (19.37%) Docker
21 98 (18.25%) Open Source
22 93 (17.32%) SC Cleared
23 91 (16.95%) PowerShell
24 90 (16.76%) Configuration Management
25 79 (14.71%) Travis CI
26 78 (14.53%) Groovy
27 77 (14.34%) Git (software)
28 76 (14.15%) Terraform
29 72 (13.41%) DNS
29 72 (13.41%) SQL

Virtual Machines
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 59 (10.99%) nginx
2 38 (7.08%) Tomcat
3 36 (6.70%) Cloud Foundry
4 32 (5.96%) MS Exchange
5 27 (5.03%) SharePoint
6 22 (4.10%) Apache
6 22 (4.10%) Confluence
7 20 (3.72%) Exchange Server 2010
8 17 (3.17%) JBoss
9 11 (2.05%) Exchange Server 2013
9 11 (2.05%) IIS
9 11 (2.05%) OpenStack
10 8 (1.49%) Elasticsearch
11 5 (0.93%) WebSphere
12 4 (0.74%) Apache Spark
12 4 (0.74%) SAS
12 4 (0.74%) Skype for Business
13 3 (0.56%) Apache Solr
13 3 (0.56%) Mule ESB
13 3 (0.56%) WildFly
Applications
1 34 (6.33%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (1.68%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.56%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.19%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.19%) Towers Watson Igloo
Cloud Services
1 154 (28.68%) Microsoft Azure
2 113 (21.04%) Amazon AWS
3 66 (12.29%) PaaS
4 61 (11.36%) Office 365
5 44 (8.19%) npm
6 42 (7.82%) AWS CloudFormation
6 42 (7.82%) Google Cloud Platform
7 31 (5.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 30 (5.59%) Azure Active Directory
9 29 (5.40%) GitHub
9 29 (5.40%) IaaS
10 26 (4.84%) Amazon EC2
11 17 (3.17%) Datadog
11 17 (3.17%) SaaS
12 16 (2.98%) Serverless
13 13 (2.42%) Amazon S3
13 13 (2.42%) Azure Functions
14 10 (1.86%) Amazon ELB
14 10 (1.86%) Dynamics 365
14 10 (1.86%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 72 (13.41%) DNS
2 53 (9.87%) TCP/IP
3 47 (8.75%) Firewall
4 46 (8.57%) DHCP
5 42 (7.82%) VPN
6 40 (7.45%) HTTP
7 36 (6.70%) SAN
8 21 (3.91%) SSL
9 20 (3.72%) FTP
10 19 (3.54%) LAN
10 19 (3.54%) WAN
11 18 (3.35%) Internet
12 17 (3.17%) iSCSI
13 16 (2.98%) NAS
13 16 (2.98%) Network Security
14 15 (2.79%) SSH
15 13 (2.42%) IPsec
15 13 (2.42%) VLAN
16 12 (2.23%) OpenVPN
17 11 (2.05%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (9.68%) SQL Server
2 34 (6.33%) MySQL
3 33 (6.15%) NoSQL
4 31 (5.77%) MongoDB
5 26 (4.84%) Relational Database
6 22 (4.10%) PostgreSQL
7 18 (3.35%) RDBMS
8 16 (2.98%) Azure SQL Database
9 14 (2.61%) Big Data
10 12 (2.23%) Data Lake
10 12 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
11 11 (2.05%) Redis
12 10 (1.86%) Apache Cassandra
12 10 (1.86%) Cosmos DB
13 9 (1.68%) Amazon RDS
13 9 (1.68%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 8 (1.49%) DB2
14 8 (1.49%) Oracle Database
14 8 (1.49%) SQL Server 2012
14 8 (1.49%) SQL Server 2016
Development Applications
1 130 (24.21%) Jenkins
2 79 (14.71%) Travis CI
3 77 (14.34%) Git (software)
4 52 (9.68%) Maven
5 45 (8.38%) gulp
6 44 (8.19%) Gradle
7 36 (6.70%) IBM UrbanCode
7 36 (6.70%) Vagrant
8 35 (6.52%) CircleCI
9 33 (6.15%) JIRA
10 31 (5.77%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 30 (5.59%) Team Foundation Server
11 30 (5.59%) Visual Studio Team System
12 26 (4.84%) Selenium
13 22 (4.10%) Mercurial
14 21 (3.91%) Ant
15 20 (3.72%) JUnit
16 16 (2.98%) GitLab
17 13 (2.42%) SonarQube
18 12 (2.23%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 44 (8.19%) Finance
2 22 (4.10%) Banking
2 22 (4.10%) Telecoms
3 12 (2.23%) Publishing
3 12 (2.23%) Retail
4 9 (1.68%) Marketing
5 8 (1.49%) Manufacturing
6 7 (1.30%) Back Office
6 7 (1.30%) Legal
7 6 (1.12%) Games
8 4 (0.74%) Law
9 3 (0.56%) Advertising
9 3 (0.56%) Billing
9 3 (0.56%) Electronics
9 3 (0.56%) Financial Institution
9 3 (0.56%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
10 2 (0.37%) Front Office
11 1 (0.19%) Military
Job Titles
1 150 (27.93%) DevOps Engineer
2 45 (8.38%) Architect
3 32 (5.96%) Consultant
4 31 (5.77%) Administrator
5 30 (5.59%) Developer
6 27 (5.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 23 (4.28%) Systems Administrator
8 22 (4.10%) Analyst
8 22 (4.10%) Azure Engineer
8 22 (4.10%) Support Engineer
9 17 (3.17%) Systems Engineer
10 16 (2.98%) AWS Engineer
10 16 (2.98%) Java Developer
10 16 (2.98%) VMware Engineer
11 15 (2.79%) Cloud Engineer
11 15 (2.79%) Senior DevOps
11 15 (2.79%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 15 (2.79%) Solutions Architect
12 13 (2.42%) AWS DevOps
12 13 (2.42%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (6.33%) RESTful
2 33 (6.15%) Elastic Stack
3 29 (5.40%) .NET
4 22 (4.10%) SAML
5 20 (3.72%) JSON
6 19 (3.54%) HTML
7 18 (3.35%) Node.js
8 16 (2.98%) CSS
8 16 (2.98%) JSP
9 13 (2.42%) LDAP
9 13 (2.42%) Struts
10 12 (2.23%) HTML5
10 12 (2.23%) SOAP
11 11 (2.05%) Kafka
11 11 (2.05%) Web Services
11 11 (2.05%) XML
12 10 (1.86%) ASP.NET
12 10 (1.86%) CSS3
12 10 (1.86%) REST
13 9 (1.68%) LAMP
Miscellaneous
1 39 (7.26%) Data Centre
2 33 (6.15%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (5.77%) Clustering
4 26 (4.84%) Linux Command Line
5 19 (3.54%) Management Information System
5 19 (3.54%) PKI
6 16 (2.98%) Fat Client
6 16 (2.98%) Thin Client
7 15 (2.79%) Mobile App
8 14 (2.61%) Replication
9 12 (2.23%) Computer Science
10 10 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
11 9 (1.68%) iPhone
11 9 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (1.30%) Blackberry
12 7 (1.30%) FMCG
12 7 (1.30%) User Experience
13 6 (1.12%) MPEG
13 6 (1.12%) Private Cloud
14 5 (0.93%) iPad
Operating Systems
1 228 (42.46%) Windows
2 202 (37.62%) Linux
3 112 (20.86%) Windows Server
4 70 (13.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 53 (9.87%) CentOS
6 50 (9.31%) Windows Server 2012
7 45 (8.38%) Windows Server 2008
8 36 (6.70%) Ubuntu
8 36 (6.70%) Unix
9 25 (4.66%) Windows 10
10 24 (4.47%) Windows 7
11 20 (3.72%) Windows Server 2003
12 18 (3.35%) DC/OS
13 12 (2.23%) Solaris
14 9 (1.68%) Data ONTAP
14 9 (1.68%) VMS
15 8 (1.49%) Oracle Linux
15 8 (1.49%) SUSE
16 5 (0.93%) HPUX
17 4 (0.74%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (34.26%) DevOps
2 114 (21.23%) Agile Software Development
3 110 (20.48%) Continuous Integration
4 98 (18.25%) Open Source
5 90 (16.76%) Configuration Management
6 69 (12.85%) ITIL
7 63 (11.73%) Problem-Solving
8 54 (10.06%) Migration
9 53 (9.87%) Test Automation
10 52 (9.68%) Microservices
11 44 (8.19%) Scrum
12 40 (7.45%) Deployment Automation
13 39 (7.26%) Digital Transformation Programme
13 39 (7.26%) OO
13 39 (7.26%) OOP
14 38 (7.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 36 (6.70%) Mentoring
16 33 (6.15%) Data Protection
16 33 (6.15%) SOA
17 30 (5.59%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 132 (24.58%) Java
2 111 (20.67%) Python
3 91 (16.95%) PowerShell
4 78 (14.53%) Groovy
5 72 (13.41%) SQL
6 48 (8.94%) Shell Script
7 45 (8.38%) Bash Shell
8 39 (7.26%) JavaScript
9 26 (4.84%) Scala
10 18 (3.35%) Clojure
10 18 (3.35%) Perl
11 17 (3.17%) C#
11 17 (3.17%) Ruby
12 10 (1.86%) C
12 10 (1.86%) Go
12 10 (1.86%) VBScript
13 8 (1.49%) PHP
14 5 (0.93%) VB
15 4 (0.74%) Apex Code
15 4 (0.74%) C++
Qualifications
1 107 (19.93%) Security Cleared
2 93 (17.32%) SC Cleared
3 34 (6.33%) Microsoft Certification
4 20 (3.72%) Degree
5 19 (3.54%) MCSE
6 16 (2.98%) Cisco Certification
6 16 (2.98%) DV Cleared
7 15 (2.79%) MCSA
8 11 (2.05%) CCNP
9 9 (1.68%) CCNA
10 8 (1.49%) AWS Certification
10 8 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.30%) RHCE
12 6 (1.12%) CISSP
12 6 (1.12%) MCP
12 6 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 5 (0.93%) CISM
13 5 (0.93%) NCDA
13 5 (0.93%) NCIE
13 5 (0.93%) NCSIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.98%) QA
2 12 (2.23%) SLA
3 9 (1.68%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.74%) GCP
6 3 (0.56%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.37%) COBIT
7 2 (0.37%) GDPR
7 2 (0.37%) PMO
8 1 (0.19%) HL7
8 1 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.19%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.19%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 136 (25.33%) VMware Infrastructure
2 105 (19.55%) Active Directory
3 104 (19.37%) Docker
4 70 (13.04%) Hyper-V
5 35 (6.52%) vSphere
6 29 (5.40%) VMware ESXi
7 25 (4.66%) VirtualBox
8 18 (3.35%) NFS
9 16 (2.98%) XenApp
10 15 (2.79%) Virtual Servers
11 13 (2.42%) Firmware
11 13 (2.42%) VMware NSX
12 12 (2.23%) Postfix
12 12 (2.23%) Squid
13 11 (2.05%) Oracle RAC
14 10 (1.86%) vCloud
15 8 (1.49%) iptables
16 7 (1.30%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (1.12%) Xen
18 5 (0.93%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 151 (28.12%) Puppet
2 144 (26.82%) Ansible
3 117 (21.79%) Opscode Chef
4 76 (14.15%) Terraform
5 65 (12.10%) Kubernetes
6 50 (9.31%) SCCM
7 40 (7.45%) Packer
8 27 (5.03%) Docker Swarm
9 25 (4.66%) vCenter Server
10 21 (3.91%) SCOM
11 20 (3.72%) WSUS
12 18 (3.35%) Failover Clustering
12 18 (3.35%) Microsoft Clustering
13 17 (3.17%) SCVMM
14 15 (2.79%) Single Sign-On
15 14 (2.61%) ZABBIX
16 11 (2.05%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
16 11 (2.05%) Microsoft Intune
17 10 (1.86%) Data Guard
17 10 (1.86%) yum
Vendors
1 170 (31.66%) VMware
2 128 (23.84%) Microsoft
3 65 (12.10%) Citrix
4 48 (8.94%) Cisco
5 46 (8.57%) Oracle
6 43 (8.01%) Google
7 38 (7.08%) Red Hat
8 36 (6.70%) HP
9 28 (5.21%) Splunk
10 25 (4.66%) NetApp
11 23 (4.28%) New Relic
12 19 (3.54%) IBM
13 17 (3.17%) McAfee
14 14 (2.61%) MKS
15 11 (2.05%) Ivanti
15 11 (2.05%) SAP
16 9 (1.68%) CheckPoint
16 9 (1.68%) Symantec
16 9 (1.68%) Veritas
17 8 (1.49%) Dell