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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 397 385 317
Rank change year-on-year -12 -68 +16
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 297 162 256
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.49% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 5.56% 4.25% 5.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 183 111 171
10th Percentile £391 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £535
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -7.48% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £608
90th Percentile £675 £650 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £494 £570
% change year-on-year -0.71% -13.42% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 14
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% -77.84%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £63.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.75 - £14.63
% change year-on-year - - -69.09%

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 5,337 3,813 4,448
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.96% 11.60% 11.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,524 2,424 3,072
10th Percentile £223 £230 £220
25th Percentile £400 £387 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.44%
75th Percentile £592 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 217 108 142
10th Percentile £15.79 £13.75 £14.06
25th Percentile £22.41 £18.03 £16.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £33.64 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +63.52% +39.10% -49.45%
75th Percentile £74.00 £80.00 £59.58
90th Percentile £85.00 £91.50 £73.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.37 £64.25 £27.50
% change year-on-year -7.60% +133.64% +11.70%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -9 276 £500 +1.01% 110
UK excluding London 0 167 £490 -0.71% 62
London -39 110 £532 +6.40% 62
Work from Home -29 84 £500 +5.26% 53
North of England -22 74 £497 +18.29% 8
South East -34 54 £475 -15.56% 22
Yorkshire -17 40 £515 +15.21% 2
North West -18 33 £480 +42.22% 4
South West -26 17 £540 -8.09% 11
Midlands -53 17 £487 +0.41% 8
West Midlands -51 11 £406 -17.98% 7
East of England -18 6 £425 +41.67% 7
Scotland -14 4 £375 -25.93% 5
East Midlands -16 4 £500 +5.26% 1
North East - 1 £400 - 2

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 (1.68%) Confluence
1 5 (1.68%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.01%) Apache
3 3 (1.01%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.01%) IIS
4 2 (0.67%) CMS
4 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.67%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.34%) JBoss
5 1 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.35%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.35%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.67%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 143 (48.15%) Azure
2 53 (17.85%) Entra ID
3 48 (16.16%) AWS
4 37 (12.46%) Azure Monitor
5 32 (10.77%) Azure DevOps
6 28 (9.43%) Azure AKS
6 28 (9.43%) OpenShift
7 26 (8.75%) GitHub
8 23 (7.74%) IaaS
9 19 (6.40%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (5.05%) Microsoft 365
10 15 (5.05%) Serverless
11 13 (4.38%) Azure Key Vault
11 13 (4.38%) GCP
11 13 (4.38%) PaaS
12 12 (4.04%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 10 (3.37%) Azure Storage
13 10 (3.37%) Power Platform
13 10 (3.37%) SaaS
14 9 (3.03%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 43 (14.48%) DNS
2 41 (13.80%) Firewall
3 26 (8.75%) VPN
4 22 (7.41%) VLAN
5 21 (7.07%) Network Security
5 21 (7.07%) SSL
6 20 (6.73%) DHCP
6 20 (6.73%) VSAN
7 17 (5.72%) WAN
8 10 (3.37%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.69%) FTP
10 7 (2.36%) LAN
10 7 (2.36%) SAN
11 5 (1.68%) SSH
11 5 (1.68%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.35%) HTTPS
13 3 (1.01%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (1.01%) NAS
13 3 (1.01%) TCP/IP
14 2 (0.67%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.10%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.70%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (3.37%) MySQL
3 10 (3.37%) Power BI
4 8 (2.69%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (1.01%) Apache Hive
6 3 (1.01%) Big Data
6 3 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.01%) DynamoDB
6 3 (1.01%) Hadoop
6 3 (1.01%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.34%) MariaDB
7 1 (0.34%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.34%) OpenStack Swift
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.39%) Git
2 12 (4.04%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.03%) GitLab
4 6 (2.02%) JIRA
5 4 (1.35%) SonarQube
6 3 (1.01%) PVCS
6 3 (1.01%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.67%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.67%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.34%) Selenium
8 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 44 (14.81%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.09%) Finance
3 13 (4.38%) Legal
4 12 (4.04%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.70%) Banking
6 10 (3.37%) Analytical Skills
7 7 (2.36%) Retail
8 6 (2.02%) Front Office
9 5 (1.68%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.35%) Marketing
11 2 (0.67%) Law
11 2 (0.67%) Local Government
11 2 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.67%) Publishing
12 1 (0.34%) Advertising
12 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (15.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (11.45%) Azure Engineer
3 32 (10.77%) Cloud Engineer
4 31 (10.44%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (8.75%) Senior
6 22 (7.41%) Lead
7 18 (6.06%) Architect
8 17 (5.72%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (5.05%) Analyst
9 15 (5.05%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 11 (3.70%) Consultant
11 10 (3.37%) Administrator
11 10 (3.37%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (3.03%) DBA
12 9 (3.03%) VMware Engineer
12 9 (3.03%) Wintel Engineer
13 8 (2.69%) Migration Engineer
13 8 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
13 8 (2.69%) Solutions Architect
13 8 (2.69%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.70%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.69%) REST
2 8 (2.69%) YAML
3 5 (1.68%) Middleware
4 3 (1.01%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.01%) JSON
5 2 (0.67%) SOAP
6 1 (0.34%) ADO
6 1 (0.34%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.34%) Java SE
6 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.34%) LDAP
6 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.34%) Node.js
6 1 (0.34%) NumPy
6 1 (0.34%) OpenID
6 1 (0.34%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.34%) Pandas
6 1 (0.34%) SciPy
6 1 (0.34%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 33 (11.11%) Replication
2 24 (8.08%) Clustering
3 20 (6.73%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.71%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.70%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.03%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.69%) Enterprise Storage
7 8 (2.69%) PKI
7 8 (2.69%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.36%) Mainframe
8 7 (2.36%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.36%) Public Cloud
8 7 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.02%) Fixed Income
9 6 (2.02%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.02%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.68%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.01%) Celerra
11 3 (1.01%) SCADA
11 3 (1.01%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 98 (33.00%) Windows
2 77 (25.93%) Linux
3 56 (18.86%) Windows Server
4 36 (12.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (10.77%) VMS
6 8 (2.69%) Ubuntu
7 5 (1.68%) CoreOS
7 5 (1.68%) SUSE
7 5 (1.68%) Unix
8 4 (1.35%) Data ONTAP
8 4 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.35%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.01%) AIX
9 3 (1.01%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.01%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.34%) Android
10 1 (0.34%) Rocky
10 1 (0.34%) Solaris
10 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (25.93%) DevOps
2 74 (24.92%) CI/CD
3 67 (22.56%) Migration
4 64 (21.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 57 (19.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 41 (13.80%) Performance Tuning
7 40 (13.47%) High Availability
8 38 (12.79%) Disaster Recovery
9 36 (12.12%) Validation
10 35 (11.78%) Continuous Improvement
11 34 (11.45%) RBAC
12 30 (10.10%) Problem-Solving
13 28 (9.43%) Network Virtualisation
13 28 (9.43%) Stakeholder Management
14 27 (9.09%) Runbook
15 25 (8.42%) Capacity Planning
15 25 (8.42%) Platform Engineering
16 23 (7.74%) ITIL
16 23 (7.74%) Vulnerability Management
17 22 (7.41%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 83 (27.95%) PowerShell
2 62 (20.88%) Python
3 39 (13.13%) SQL
4 33 (11.11%) Bash
5 11 (3.70%) Bicep
6 9 (3.03%) C#
7 6 (2.02%) C
7 6 (2.02%) Shell Script
7 6 (2.02%) T-SQL
8 4 (1.35%) Korn
8 4 (1.35%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.01%) Java
10 2 (0.67%) C++
10 2 (0.67%) Embedded C
11 1 (0.34%) Cypher
11 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.34%) Go
11 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.34%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 82 (27.61%) Security Cleared
2 66 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 19 (6.40%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.72%) Degree
4 17 (5.72%) Microsoft Certification
5 14 (4.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.70%) VCAP
7 10 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.37%) MCSA
7 10 (3.37%) MCSE
8 7 (2.36%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.02%) ISTQB
9 6 (2.02%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 6 (2.02%) OCP
9 6 (2.02%) Oracle Certification
10 5 (1.68%) CCNA
10 5 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.01%) CISSP
11 3 (1.01%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.37%) QA
2 4 (1.35%) SLA
3 3 (1.01%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.67%) GMP
4 2 (0.67%) GxP
4 2 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.67%) NIST
5 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.34%) GDPR
5 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 93 (31.31%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (17.17%) Active Directory
3 46 (15.49%) vSphere
4 40 (13.47%) VMware ESXi
5 25 (8.42%) Docker
6 23 (7.74%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.71%) VMware NSX
8 8 (2.69%) NFS
8 8 (2.69%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (2.36%) Ceph
10 6 (2.02%) Firmware
10 6 (2.02%) KVM
11 3 (1.01%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (1.01%) VMware Workstation
12 2 (0.67%) HDFS
12 2 (0.67%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.34%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.34%) iptables
13 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.34%) Samba
Systems Management
1 69 (23.23%) Terraform
2 51 (17.17%) Kubernetes
3 45 (15.15%) Ansible
4 27 (9.09%) vCenter Server
5 17 (5.72%) Grafana
6 13 (4.38%) Prometheus
7 12 (4.04%) PowerCLI
8 10 (3.37%) SCOM
9 8 (2.69%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (2.69%) SCCM
9 8 (2.69%) VxRail
10 7 (2.36%) vMotion
11 6 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (2.02%) Podman
12 5 (1.68%) Microsoft Clustering
12 5 (1.68%) Proxmox
13 4 (1.35%) Argo
13 4 (1.35%) Avamar
13 4 (1.35%) Packer
13 4 (1.35%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 98 (33.00%) Microsoft
1 98 (33.00%) VMware
2 29 (9.76%) Cisco
3 22 (7.41%) Oracle
4 21 (7.07%) ServiceNow
5 16 (5.39%) NetApp
5 16 (5.39%) Red Hat
6 15 (5.05%) Dell
7 12 (4.04%) Veeam
8 10 (3.37%) IBM
8 10 (3.37%) Qualys
9 9 (3.03%) CyberArk
9 9 (3.03%) Google
9 9 (3.03%) Splunk
10 7 (2.36%) Commvault
10 7 (2.36%) Databricks
10 7 (2.36%) SolarWinds
11 6 (2.02%) Tenable
12 5 (1.68%) Meraki
12 5 (1.68%) Palo Alto