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 10 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
10 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 416 341 315
Rank change year-on-year -75 -26 +27
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 173 195 299
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.61% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 3.88% 5.16% 5.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 119 205
10th Percentile £325 £350 £300
25th Percentile £456 £395 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £606 £608
90th Percentile £655 £675 £695
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £450 £525
% change year-on-year +16.67% -14.29% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 9 11
10th Percentile £66.03 £29.73 -
25th Percentile - £53.00 £73.09
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £78.73
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -19.97% +12.46%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £88.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £78.73
% change year-on-year +11.11% -19.97% +12.46%

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 4,459 3,777 5,216
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.18% 11.84% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,007 2,446 3,571
10th Percentile £213 £201 £190
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £700 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £459 £463
% change year-on-year +3.54% -0.81% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 90 215
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.86 £15.50
25th Percentile £20.82 £21.10 £19.04
Median hourly rate £47.50 £27.96 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +69.92% -46.75% +96.26%
75th Percentile £74.26 £64.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.85 £75.25 £82.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.50 £35.00 £53.50
% change year-on-year +72.86% -34.58% +167.50%

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 10 January 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 10 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Top 13 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 10 January 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 -71 158 £525 +5.00% 85
UK excluding London -68 84 £525 +16.67% 83
London -22 71 £525 - 14
Work from Home +27 70 £538 +7.50% 20
South West -10 22 £550 +2.33% 12
North of England -41 22 £496 +30.24% 17
South East -29 20 £563 +60.71% 25
Yorkshire -46 15 £500 +13.64% 6
East of England -31 12 £475 -7.32% 11
North West -29 7 £469 +24.13% 10
Scotland +8 5 £538 - 6
West Midlands -47 3 £566 +25.83% 4
Midlands -54 3 £566 +25.83% 12

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 14 (8.09%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (3.47%) IIS
3 5 (2.89%) Confluence
3 5 (2.89%) SharePoint
4 4 (2.31%) Apache
4 4 (2.31%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.73%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (1.16%) Ethereum
6 2 (1.16%) Hyperledger
7 1 (0.58%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.58%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.58%) nginx
7 1 (0.58%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.58%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.58%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 1 (0.58%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 68 (39.31%) Azure
2 30 (17.34%) AWS
2 30 (17.34%) GitHub
3 21 (12.14%) GitHub Actions
4 15 (8.67%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (7.51%) Entra ID
5 13 (7.51%) OpenShift
6 12 (6.94%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (5.20%) Cloud Computing
8 8 (4.62%) GCP
9 7 (4.05%) AWS CodePipeline
9 7 (4.05%) Azure AKS
9 7 (4.05%) Azure Monitor
9 7 (4.05%) IaaS
9 7 (4.05%) Serverless
10 6 (3.47%) Amazon ECS
10 6 (3.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (3.47%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (2.89%) PaaS
12 4 (2.31%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 32 (18.50%) Firewall
2 27 (15.61%) DNS
3 14 (8.09%) VPN
4 12 (6.94%) DHCP
4 12 (6.94%) WAN
5 9 (5.20%) TCP/IP
6 8 (4.62%) Network Security
7 7 (4.05%) Skype
8 6 (3.47%) Reverse Proxy
8 6 (3.47%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (2.89%) Intrusion Detection
10 4 (2.31%) VLAN
11 2 (1.16%) Modbus
11 2 (1.16%) SAN
11 2 (1.16%) Wireless
12 1 (0.58%) Cisco IOS
12 1 (0.58%) MQTT
12 1 (0.58%) NAS
12 1 (0.58%) RTP
12 1 (0.58%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.36%) SQL Server
2 7 (4.05%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (2.31%) Azure SQL Database
3 4 (2.31%) Data Lake
3 4 (2.31%) OLTP
3 4 (2.31%) Oracle Database
4 3 (1.73%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (1.73%) Data Hub
4 3 (1.73%) Data Mining
4 3 (1.73%) Oracle Reports
5 2 (1.16%) Data Vault
5 2 (1.16%) ImageNet
6 1 (0.58%) Big Data
6 1 (0.58%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.58%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 24 (13.87%) Git
2 22 (12.72%) JIRA
3 10 (5.78%) Jenkins
4 8 (4.62%) PVCS
4 8 (4.62%) Rational DOORS
5 7 (4.05%) GitLab
6 3 (1.73%) RStudio
7 2 (1.16%) Hardhat
7 2 (1.16%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.58%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.58%) GDB
8 1 (0.58%) Gradle
8 1 (0.58%) SonarQube
General
1 38 (21.97%) Social Skills
2 14 (8.09%) Public Sector
3 12 (6.94%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (5.20%) Electronics
4 9 (5.20%) Finance
5 6 (3.47%) Spanish Language
5 6 (3.47%) Telecoms
6 4 (2.31%) Banking
7 3 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (1.73%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.73%) Social Science
8 2 (1.16%) Back Office
8 2 (1.16%) Front Office
8 2 (1.16%) Law
9 1 (0.58%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.58%) Italian Language
9 1 (0.58%) Legal
9 1 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 23 (13.29%) DevOps Engineer
2 17 (9.83%) Security Engineer
2 17 (9.83%) Senior
3 15 (8.67%) Architect
4 14 (8.09%) Software Engineer
5 13 (7.51%) Azure Engineer
5 13 (7.51%) Platform Engineer
6 12 (6.94%) C++ Software Engineer
6 12 (6.94%) Embedded C++ Engineer
6 12 (6.94%) Embedded C++ Software Engineer
6 12 (6.94%) Embedded Engineer
6 12 (6.94%) Embedded Software Engineer
7 10 (5.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (5.20%) Cloud Engineer
8 9 (5.20%) Data Engineer
8 9 (5.20%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 7 (4.05%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
9 7 (4.05%) C/C++ Software Engineer
9 7 (4.05%) Embedded C Software Engineer
9 7 (4.05%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (4.62%) ARM Templates
2 6 (3.47%) Middleware
2 6 (3.47%) OpenTelemetry
3 4 (2.31%) TensorFlow
4 3 (1.73%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.73%) Hugging Face
4 3 (1.73%) Kafka
4 3 (1.73%) OpenCV
4 3 (1.73%) PyTorch
4 3 (1.73%) Regular Expression
4 3 (1.73%) SpaCy
5 2 (1.16%) .NET
5 2 (1.16%) Loki
5 2 (1.16%) RabbitMQ
5 2 (1.16%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (1.16%) Truffle
5 2 (1.16%) web3js
5 2 (1.16%) YAML
6 1 (0.58%) Node.js
6 1 (0.58%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.98%) Data Centre
2 12 (6.94%) Private Cloud
3 11 (6.36%) Cloud Native
4 10 (5.78%) Replication
5 6 (3.47%) CAN bus
5 6 (3.47%) Clustering
5 6 (3.47%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (2.89%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.89%) Public Cloud
6 5 (2.89%) Security Posture
6 5 (2.89%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (2.31%) Management Information System
7 4 (2.31%) Operational Technology
7 4 (2.31%) PKI
8 3 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.73%) NHS
8 3 (1.73%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.73%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 52 (30.06%) Linux
2 49 (28.32%) Windows
3 23 (13.29%) Windows Server
4 21 (12.14%) VMS
5 10 (5.78%) Windows 10
6 9 (5.20%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (4.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (1.73%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.58%) Android
10 1 (0.58%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.58%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (34.10%) DevOps
2 55 (31.79%) CI/CD
3 41 (23.70%) Infrastructure as Code
4 32 (18.50%) Agile
5 25 (14.45%) Migration
6 23 (13.29%) High Availability
7 21 (12.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 20 (11.56%) Containerisation
8 20 (11.56%) Cybersecurity
8 20 (11.56%) Problem-Solving
9 19 (10.98%) Technical Leadership
10 17 (9.83%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 15 (8.67%) Analytics
11 15 (8.67%) Information Security
11 15 (8.67%) Platform Engineering
12 14 (8.09%) Mentoring
12 14 (8.09%) Root Cause Analysis
12 14 (8.09%) Software Engineering
13 13 (7.51%) Runbook
14 12 (6.94%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 32 (18.50%) Python
2 27 (15.61%) PowerShell
3 19 (10.98%) SQL
4 17 (9.83%) C++
5 13 (7.51%) Embedded C++
5 13 (7.51%) Java
6 12 (6.94%) Bash
7 9 (5.20%) C
7 9 (5.20%) C#
8 8 (4.62%) Bicep
8 8 (4.62%) Shell Script
9 7 (4.05%) Embedded C
10 6 (3.47%) Ruby
11 4 (2.31%) Scala
12 2 (1.16%) PHP
12 2 (1.16%) Solidity
13 1 (0.58%) Go
13 1 (0.58%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.58%) Swift
13 1 (0.58%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 51 (29.48%) Security Cleared
2 41 (23.70%) SC Cleared
3 11 (6.36%) DV Cleared
4 10 (5.78%) Azure Certification
4 10 (5.78%) Degree
5 8 (4.62%) OCP
5 8 (4.62%) Oracle Certification
6 7 (4.05%) VCAP
6 7 (4.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 5 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (2.31%) MCSA
8 4 (2.31%) MCSE
9 3 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.16%) CCNA
10 2 (1.16%) CCNP
10 2 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (1.16%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 2 (1.16%) Master's Degree
11 1 (0.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (4.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (2.89%) GDPR
2 5 (2.89%) QA
3 4 (2.31%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.73%) Cyber Essentials
4 3 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 3 (1.73%) SLA
5 2 (1.16%) GRC
5 2 (1.16%) NIST
System Software
1 40 (23.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (17.92%) Active Directory
3 15 (8.67%) Docker
4 13 (7.51%) vSphere
5 12 (6.94%) VMware ESXi
6 8 (4.62%) Hyper-V
6 8 (4.62%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (4.05%) VMware NSX
8 5 (2.89%) KVM
9 4 (2.31%) Firmware
10 2 (1.16%) Xen
11 1 (0.58%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 50 (28.90%) Terraform
2 32 (18.50%) Kubernetes
3 25 (14.45%) Ansible
4 22 (12.72%) vCenter Server
5 14 (8.09%) SCCM
6 12 (6.94%) WSUS
7 10 (5.78%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (3.47%) CASB
8 6 (3.47%) SCOrch
9 4 (2.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (2.31%) Rancher
9 4 (2.31%) vMotion
10 3 (1.73%) Data Guard
10 3 (1.73%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 3 (1.73%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (1.73%) vRealize
11 2 (1.16%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (1.16%) Grafana
11 2 (1.16%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (1.16%) NetApp OnCommand
Vendors
1 56 (32.37%) Microsoft
2 47 (27.17%) VMware
3 15 (8.67%) Cisco
4 11 (6.36%) Oracle
5 10 (5.78%) IBM
6 8 (4.62%) ANSYS
7 6 (3.47%) Sophos
8 5 (2.89%) Databricks
8 5 (2.89%) NetApp
8 5 (2.89%) Red Hat
8 5 (2.89%) SolarWinds
8 5 (2.89%) Veeam
9 4 (2.31%) Dell
9 4 (2.31%) Pure Storage
9 4 (2.31%) Remedy
10 3 (1.73%) Citrix
10 3 (1.73%) Rockwell
11 2 (1.16%) OpenAI
12 1 (0.58%) eFront
12 1 (0.58%) Google
95 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide