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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 380 377 318
Rank change year-on-year -3 -59 +10
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 304 170 255
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.52% 0.65%
As % of the System Software category 5.74% 4.42% 5.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 118 170
10th Percentile £390 £350 £337
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £598 £608
90th Percentile £675 £690 £666
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £494 £570
% change year-on-year -0.96% -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 5,293 3,842 4,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.92% 11.65% 11.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,486 2,457 3,076
10th Percentile £225 £235 £220
25th Percentile £400 £388 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.85%
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 215 105 144
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.24 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.66 £18.13 £16.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 £32.77 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +60.21% +35.53% -49.75%
75th Percentile £74.00 £80.00 £58.98
90th Percentile £81.60 £91.50 £70.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year -12.00% +127.27% +10.00%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +14 282 £500 - 145
UK excluding London +6 173 £489 -0.96% 70
London -45 110 £525 - 88
Work from Home -30 91 £500 - 74
North of England -9 80 £492 +17.18% 12
South East -25 54 £475 -15.56% 24
Yorkshire -13 43 £508 +13.53% 1
North West -14 36 £480 +42.22% 9
South West -26 17 £540 -8.09% 7
Midlands -51 17 £487 +2.53% 6
West Midlands -50 11 £406 -11.74% 5
East of England -13 6 £425 +41.67% 14
East Midlands -5 4 £500 +5.26% 1
Scotland -10 4 £375 -26.83% 6
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 (1.64%) Confluence
1 5 (1.64%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.99%) Apache
3 3 (0.99%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.99%) IIS
4 2 (0.66%) CMS
4 2 (0.66%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.66%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.33%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.33%) JBoss
5 1 (0.33%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.32%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.32%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.66%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.66%) InDesign
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 145 (47.70%) Azure
2 51 (16.78%) Entra ID
3 48 (15.79%) AWS
4 35 (11.51%) Azure Monitor
5 33 (10.86%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (9.87%) OpenShift
7 27 (8.88%) Azure AKS
7 27 (8.88%) GitHub
8 21 (6.91%) IaaS
9 19 (6.25%) GitHub Actions
10 16 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
10 16 (5.26%) Serverless
11 14 (4.61%) GCP
12 13 (4.28%) Azure Key Vault
13 12 (3.95%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 11 (3.62%) PaaS
14 11 (3.62%) Power Platform
15 10 (3.29%) Azure Storage
16 9 (2.96%) Azure Functions
16 9 (2.96%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 43 (14.14%) DNS
2 41 (13.49%) Firewall
3 27 (8.88%) VPN
4 22 (7.24%) VLAN
5 21 (6.91%) Network Security
5 21 (6.91%) SSL
6 20 (6.58%) DHCP
6 20 (6.58%) VSAN
7 17 (5.59%) WAN
8 10 (3.29%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.63%) FTP
10 7 (2.30%) LAN
10 7 (2.30%) SAN
11 5 (1.64%) SSH
11 5 (1.64%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (1.32%) HTTPS
13 3 (0.99%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (0.99%) TCP/IP
14 2 (0.66%) ICMP
14 2 (0.66%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.86%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.62%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (3.62%) Power BI
3 10 (3.29%) MySQL
4 8 (2.63%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (0.99%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.99%) Apache Hive
6 3 (0.99%) Big Data
6 3 (0.99%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.99%) Db2
6 3 (0.99%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.99%) Hadoop
6 3 (0.99%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.33%) OpenStack Swift
7 1 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.33%) Power Query
7 1 (0.33%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.26%) Git
2 12 (3.95%) Jenkins
3 8 (2.63%) GitLab
4 6 (1.97%) JIRA
5 4 (1.32%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.99%) PVCS
6 3 (0.99%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.66%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.66%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.66%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.33%) Selenium
8 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 43 (14.14%) Social Skills
2 28 (9.21%) Finance
3 13 (4.28%) Legal
4 12 (3.95%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.62%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.62%) Banking
6 7 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.30%) Retail
7 6 (1.97%) Front Office
8 5 (1.64%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.32%) Marketing
10 2 (0.66%) Law
10 2 (0.66%) Local Government
10 2 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.66%) Publishing
11 1 (0.33%) Advertising
11 1 (0.33%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.33%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.33%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (14.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 37 (12.17%) Azure Engineer
3 33 (10.86%) Cloud Engineer
4 32 (10.53%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (8.55%) Senior
6 22 (7.24%) Lead
7 18 (5.92%) Architect
8 17 (5.59%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (4.93%) Analyst
9 15 (4.93%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.28%) Consultant
11 10 (3.29%) Administrator
11 10 (3.29%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (2.96%) DBA
12 9 (2.96%) VMware Engineer
12 9 (2.96%) Wintel Engineer
13 8 (2.63%) Migration Engineer
13 8 (2.63%) Platform Engineer
13 8 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
13 8 (2.63%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.29%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.63%) REST
2 8 (2.63%) YAML
3 5 (1.64%) Middleware
4 3 (0.99%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (0.99%) JSON
5 2 (0.66%) SOAP
6 1 (0.33%) .NET
6 1 (0.33%) ADO
6 1 (0.33%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.33%) Java SE
6 1 (0.33%) Kafka
6 1 (0.33%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.33%) LDAP
6 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.33%) OpenID
6 1 (0.33%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.33%) Pandas
6 1 (0.33%) PySpark
6 1 (0.33%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 32 (10.53%) Replication
2 23 (7.57%) Clustering
3 20 (6.58%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.61%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.61%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (2.63%) Cloud Native
5 8 (2.63%) PKI
5 8 (2.63%) Product Ownership
6 7 (2.30%) Enterprise Storage
6 7 (2.30%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.30%) Onboarding
6 7 (2.30%) Public Cloud
6 7 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
7 6 (1.97%) Fixed Income
7 6 (1.97%) Market Risk
7 6 (1.97%) Operational Technology
8 5 (1.64%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.32%) FlexPod
10 3 (0.99%) Celerra
10 3 (0.99%) IBM XIV
Operating Systems
1 101 (33.22%) Windows
2 81 (26.64%) Linux
3 58 (19.08%) Windows Server
4 37 (12.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (10.53%) VMS
6 8 (2.63%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.63%) Unix
7 6 (1.97%) AIX
7 6 (1.97%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.64%) Data ONTAP
8 5 (1.64%) SUSE
9 4 (1.32%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.99%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.99%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.99%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.33%) Android
11 1 (0.33%) Rocky
11 1 (0.33%) Solaris
11 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (25.66%) DevOps
2 74 (24.34%) CI/CD
3 67 (22.04%) Migration
4 61 (20.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 55 (18.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (13.82%) Performance Tuning
7 40 (13.16%) High Availability
8 38 (12.50%) Disaster Recovery
9 36 (11.84%) Validation
10 34 (11.18%) Continuous Improvement
11 33 (10.86%) RBAC
12 30 (9.87%) Network Virtualisation
12 30 (9.87%) Problem-Solving
13 26 (8.55%) Stakeholder Management
14 25 (8.22%) Capacity Planning
14 25 (8.22%) Runbook
15 24 (7.89%) Platform Engineering
15 24 (7.89%) Vulnerability Management
16 23 (7.57%) Analytics
17 22 (7.24%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 87 (28.62%) PowerShell
2 62 (20.39%) Python
3 43 (14.14%) SQL
4 36 (11.84%) Bash
5 10 (3.29%) Bicep
6 9 (2.96%) C#
7 6 (1.97%) C
7 6 (1.97%) Shell Script
7 6 (1.97%) T-SQL
8 4 (1.32%) Korn
8 4 (1.32%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.99%) Java
10 2 (0.66%) C++
10 2 (0.66%) Embedded C
11 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.33%) Go
11 1 (0.33%) Groovy
11 1 (0.33%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.33%) RPG
11 1 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 81 (26.64%) Security Cleared
2 66 (21.71%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.58%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.59%) Degree
4 17 (5.59%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (4.93%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.62%) VCAP
7 10 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.29%) MCSA
7 10 (3.29%) MCSE
8 7 (2.30%) OCP
8 7 (2.30%) Oracle Certification
9 6 (1.97%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.97%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 5 (1.64%) CCNA
10 5 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.64%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.99%) CISSP
11 3 (0.99%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.29%) QA
2 4 (1.32%) SLA
3 3 (0.99%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.66%) GMP
4 2 (0.66%) GxP
4 2 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.66%) NIST
5 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.33%) GDPR
5 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 94 (30.92%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (17.11%) Active Directory
3 47 (15.46%) vSphere
4 41 (13.49%) VMware ESXi
5 26 (8.55%) Hyper-V
6 25 (8.22%) Docker
7 14 (4.61%) VMware NSX
8 10 (3.29%) KVM
9 9 (2.96%) NFS
10 8 (2.63%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (2.30%) Ceph
12 6 (1.97%) Firmware
13 3 (0.99%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.99%) VMware Workstation
14 2 (0.66%) HDFS
14 2 (0.66%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.33%) BitLocker
15 1 (0.33%) iptables
15 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
15 1 (0.33%) Samba
Systems Management
1 68 (22.37%) Terraform
2 51 (16.78%) Kubernetes
3 46 (15.13%) Ansible
4 31 (10.20%) vCenter Server
5 16 (5.26%) Grafana
6 13 (4.28%) PowerCLI
7 12 (3.95%) Prometheus
8 9 (2.96%) SCOM
9 8 (2.63%) SCCM
9 8 (2.63%) VxRail
10 7 (2.30%) Failover Clustering
10 7 (2.30%) vMotion
11 6 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (1.97%) Podman
12 5 (1.64%) Microsoft Clustering
12 5 (1.64%) Proxmox
12 5 (1.64%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.32%) Argo
13 4 (1.32%) OPNET
13 4 (1.32%) Packer
Vendors
1 99 (32.57%) VMware
2 96 (31.58%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.54%) Cisco
4 22 (7.24%) Oracle
5 21 (6.91%) ServiceNow
6 17 (5.59%) Red Hat
7 16 (5.26%) NetApp
8 14 (4.61%) Dell
9 13 (4.28%) IBM
10 11 (3.62%) Veeam
11 10 (3.29%) Google
11 10 (3.29%) Qualys
12 9 (2.96%) CyberArk
13 8 (2.63%) Databricks
14 7 (2.30%) Commvault
14 7 (2.30%) SolarWinds
14 7 (2.30%) Splunk
14 7 (2.30%) Tenable
15 5 (1.64%) EMC
15 5 (1.64%) Meraki