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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 386 383 338
Rank change year-on-year -3 -45 +3
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 312 170 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.51% 0.64%
As % of the System Software category 5.74% 4.31% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 117 167
10th Percentile £391 £348 £342
25th Percentile £428 £425 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £711 £638 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -0.32% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 6
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 £66.46
90th Percentile - - £84.67
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 5,440 3,948 4,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.91% 11.94% 11.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,565 2,489 2,903
10th Percentile £218 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £588 £600
90th Percentile £680 £669 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +0.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 250 120 107
10th Percentile £15.92 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.59 £17.93
Median hourly rate £62.82 £33.39 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +88.16% +21.40% -45.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £76.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £90.21 £90.15 £82.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £62.25 £28.75
% change year-on-year +1.98% +116.52% -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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +12 283 £500 +0.50% 230
UK excluding London +4 184 £498 -0.32% 136
London -53 100 £532 +6.40% 98
Work from Home -19 92 £500 +6.38% 77
North of England -12 79 £500 +19.05% 30
South East -27 59 £475 -17.39% 43
Yorkshire -12 45 £519 +12.58% 10
North West -15 32 £484 +48.92% 19
Midlands -40 17 £487 -1.62% 19
South West -38 16 £558 +1.36% 8
East of England -23 14 £327 -31.26% 33
West Midlands -43 12 £487 -2.84% 16
East Midlands -13 4 £500 +5.26% 3
Scotland -26 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 (3.21%) IIS
2 6 (1.92%) Confluence
3 5 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.28%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.64%) Apache
6 2 (0.64%) CMS
6 2 (0.64%) 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 (1.28%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.28%) 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
1 144 (46.15%) Azure
2 64 (20.51%) Entra ID
3 43 (13.78%) AWS
4 37 (11.86%) Azure Monitor
5 33 (10.58%) Azure DevOps
6 29 (9.29%) OpenShift
7 28 (8.97%) IaaS
8 25 (8.01%) Azure AKS
9 24 (7.69%) GitHub
10 18 (5.77%) Microsoft 365
11 16 (5.13%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (4.49%) Azure Key Vault
12 14 (4.49%) PaaS
13 12 (3.85%) Serverless
14 11 (3.53%) Amazon EC2
14 11 (3.53%) GCP
14 11 (3.53%) Power Platform
15 10 (3.21%) Azure Storage
15 10 (3.21%) SaaS
16 9 (2.88%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 49 (15.71%) DNS
2 39 (12.50%) Firewall
3 27 (8.65%) VPN
4 21 (6.73%) DHCP
5 19 (6.09%) SSL
5 19 (6.09%) WAN
6 18 (5.77%) Network Security
6 18 (5.77%) VLAN
7 10 (3.21%) LAN
7 10 (3.21%) SD-WAN
8 9 (2.88%) HTTP
9 7 (2.24%) FTP
9 7 (2.24%) VSAN
9 7 (2.24%) Wi-Fi
10 6 (1.92%) TCP/IP
11 5 (1.60%) HTTPS
11 5 (1.60%) SAN
12 4 (1.28%) SSH
13 3 (0.96%) NetScaler
14 2 (0.64%) ICMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.58%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.81%) MySQL
3 11 (3.53%) Azure SQL Database
3 11 (3.53%) Power BI
3 11 (3.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (2.56%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (0.96%) Apache Hive
5 3 (0.96%) Big Data
5 3 (0.96%) DynamoDB
5 3 (0.96%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.64%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.32%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.32%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (5.13%) Git
1 16 (5.13%) Jenkins
2 11 (3.53%) GitLab
3 8 (2.56%) JIRA
4 7 (2.24%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.60%) PVCS
6 4 (1.28%) CppUnit
6 4 (1.28%) Rational DOORS
7 3 (0.96%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.64%) Maven
8 2 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.64%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.64%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.32%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.32%) Selenium
9 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
9 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 51 (16.35%) Social Skills
2 28 (8.97%) Finance
3 14 (4.49%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (3.85%) Legal
5 9 (2.88%) Banking
6 8 (2.56%) Manufacturing
7 7 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.92%) Back Office
8 6 (1.92%) Front Office
8 6 (1.92%) Public Sector
9 5 (1.60%) Retail
10 4 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.28%) Law
10 4 (1.28%) 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%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 48 (15.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 46 (14.74%) Azure Engineer
3 37 (11.86%) Cloud Engineer
4 32 (10.26%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (8.01%) Senior
6 22 (7.05%) Lead
7 20 (6.41%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 19 (6.09%) Architect
9 17 (5.45%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.17%) Analyst
10 13 (4.17%) DBA
11 12 (3.85%) Platform Engineer
12 11 (3.53%) Administrator
12 11 (3.53%) Security Engineer
12 11 (3.53%) SQL DBA
13 10 (3.21%) Consultant
13 10 (3.21%) Wintel Engineer
14 9 (2.88%) Linux Engineer
14 9 (2.88%) Storage Engineer
15 8 (2.56%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (22.12%) Terraform
2 14 (4.49%) ARM Templates
3 10 (3.21%) JSON
4 8 (2.56%) Regular Expression
4 8 (2.56%) REST
5 7 (2.24%) LDAP
6 5 (1.60%) YAML
7 4 (1.28%) Middleware
8 3 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.64%) ADO
9 2 (0.64%) SOAP
9 2 (0.64%) Web Services
10 1 (0.32%) Java SE
10 1 (0.32%) Node.js
10 1 (0.32%) NumPy
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 1 (0.32%) Pandas
10 1 (0.32%) SAP Basis
10 1 (0.32%) SciPy
10 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 36 (11.54%) Replication
2 29 (9.29%) Clustering
3 18 (5.77%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.81%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.85%) Onboarding
6 11 (3.53%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.53%) Enterprise Storage
7 9 (2.88%) Linux Command Line
7 9 (2.88%) Mainframe
7 9 (2.88%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.88%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (2.24%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (2.24%) Operational Technology
9 7 (2.24%) PKI
10 6 (1.92%) Fixed Income
10 6 (1.92%) Market Risk
10 6 (1.92%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.28%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 107 (34.29%) Windows
2 69 (22.12%) Linux
3 61 (19.55%) Windows Server
4 27 (8.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 27 (8.65%) VMS
5 9 (2.88%) Unix
6 6 (1.92%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.28%) Windows Server 2016
7 4 (1.28%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (0.96%) AIX
8 3 (0.96%) Data ONTAP
8 3 (0.96%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.64%) Android
9 2 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.64%) CoreOS
9 2 (0.64%) zOS
10 1 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.32%) Rocky
10 1 (0.32%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (25.32%) CI/CD
1 79 (25.32%) DevOps
2 70 (22.44%) Migration
3 65 (20.83%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 64 (20.51%) Infrastructure as Code
5 44 (14.10%) RBAC
6 41 (13.14%) Disaster Recovery
7 40 (12.82%) Continuous Improvement
8 39 (12.50%) Validation
9 37 (11.86%) Performance Tuning
10 35 (11.22%) High Availability
11 33 (10.58%) Runbook
12 32 (10.26%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (9.94%) Stakeholder Management
14 28 (8.97%) ITIL
15 27 (8.65%) Platform Engineering
16 26 (8.33%) AI
16 26 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
17 24 (7.69%) Network Virtualisation
18 23 (7.37%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 101 (32.37%) PowerShell
2 70 (22.44%) Python
3 38 (12.18%) SQL
4 32 (10.26%) Bash
5 12 (3.85%) Bicep
6 11 (3.53%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.56%) C
7 8 (2.56%) C#
7 8 (2.56%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.92%) Java
9 4 (1.28%) C++
9 4 (1.28%) Groovy
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%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 93 (29.81%) Security Cleared
2 79 (25.32%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.69%) Microsoft Certification
4 22 (7.05%) Azure Certification
4 22 (7.05%) Degree
5 14 (4.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (3.85%) DV Cleared
7 11 (3.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 10 (3.21%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 10 (3.21%) MCSA
8 10 (3.21%) MCSE
9 8 (2.56%) VCAP
10 6 (1.92%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.60%) CCNA
11 5 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.60%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (0.96%) CISM
12 3 (0.96%) CISSP
12 3 (0.96%) PMI Certification
12 3 (0.96%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.85%) QA
2 4 (1.28%) SLA
3 3 (0.96%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.96%) PCI DSS
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
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 94 (30.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 62 (19.87%) Active Directory
3 38 (12.18%) vSphere
4 32 (10.26%) VMware ESXi
5 29 (9.29%) Hyper-V
6 27 (8.65%) Docker
7 13 (4.17%) NFS
8 9 (2.88%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (2.56%) VMware NSX
10 7 (2.24%) Ceph
11 6 (1.92%) KVM
12 5 (1.60%) Firmware
13 4 (1.28%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.96%) VMware Workstation
15 2 (0.64%) HDFS
15 2 (0.64%) Veritas Volume Manager
16 1 (0.32%) DFS Replication
16 1 (0.32%) Dovecot
16 1 (0.32%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 1 (0.32%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 44 (14.10%) Kubernetes
2 41 (13.14%) Ansible
3 23 (7.37%) vCenter Server
4 17 (5.45%) Grafana
5 16 (5.13%) SCOM
6 12 (3.85%) Prometheus
7 9 (2.88%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (2.56%) SCCM
9 7 (2.24%) Failover Clustering
9 7 (2.24%) Packer
9 7 (2.24%) Podman
10 6 (1.92%) Proxmox
11 5 (1.60%) PowerCLI
11 5 (1.60%) vMotion
12 4 (1.28%) Argo
12 4 (1.28%) OPNET
12 4 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (0.96%) Microsoft Clustering
13 3 (0.96%) SnapMirror
14 2 (0.64%) systemd
Vendors
1 112 (35.90%) Microsoft
2 99 (31.73%) VMware
3 28 (8.97%) Cisco
4 25 (8.01%) ServiceNow
5 19 (6.09%) Oracle
6 14 (4.49%) NetApp
7 13 (4.17%) Dell
8 12 (3.85%) CyberArk
8 12 (3.85%) Red Hat
9 10 (3.21%) IBM
9 10 (3.21%) Splunk
9 10 (3.21%) Veeam
10 9 (2.88%) SolarWinds
11 8 (2.56%) Google
11 8 (2.56%) Qualys
12 7 (2.24%) Commvault
13 6 (1.92%) Databricks
13 6 (1.92%) Meraki
13 6 (1.92%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.60%) Xerox