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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 407 327 331
Rank change year-on-year -80 +4 +44
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 161 242 345
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.49% 0.63% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 4.14% 5.49% 5.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 168 235
10th Percentile £353 £343 £308
25th Percentile £425 £417 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% +1.90% -
75th Percentile £588 £608 £615
90th Percentile £639 £665 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -6.10% - +2.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 7 16
10th Percentile - - £66.00
25th Percentile £33.25 £14.06 £66.56
Median hourly rate £34.50 £14.63 £78.73
Median % change year-on-year +135.90% -81.42% -6.28%
75th Percentile £35.75 £49.37 £84.36
90th Percentile - £84.44 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £14.63 £78.73
% change year-on-year - -81.42% -5.44%

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 3,885 4,408 6,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.79% 11.45% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,454 2,959 4,355
10th Percentile £218 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £375 £371
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year - -0.10% -4.67%
75th Percentile £588 £606 £625
90th Percentile £670 £688 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £472
% change year-on-year - +0.71% +4.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 113 269
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.16 £15.50
25th Percentile £19.02 £17.44 £19.25
Median hourly rate £34.00 £24.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.78% -51.00% +127.27%
75th Percentile £80.00 £59.88 £66.00
90th Percentile £91.05 £74.65 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +136.36% -31.25% +100.00%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Virtual Machines 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 September 2025.

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
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 September 2025. 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 -73 134 £498 -7.01% 76
UK excluding London -68 69 £493 -6.10% 71
London 0 67 £507 -5.23% 20
Work from Home +18 63 £475 -13.64% 37
North of England -17 20 £429 -27.02% 18
Yorkshire -12 17 £447 -8.78% 5
South West +13 13 £550 -3.51% 11
South East -28 13 £588 +2.00% 25
Midlands -33 13 £485 -16.16% 2
West Midlands -28 11 £495 -14.95% 2
Scotland +1 6 £513 +18.84% 3
East of England -2 3 £475 +40.22% 13
North West -21 3 £325 -49.44% 12
East Midlands -1 2 £475 -17.39%
Wales - 1 - - 1

Virtual Machines
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 8 (4.97%) IIS
1 8 (4.97%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (3.11%) Confluence
3 4 (2.48%) Apache
4 3 (1.86%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.86%) Skype for Business
5 1 (0.62%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.62%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.62%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.62%) nginx
5 1 (0.62%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 2 (1.24%) Notion
1 2 (1.24%) Trello
2 1 (0.62%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.62%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 2 (1.24%) SAP IBP
1 2 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 76 (47.20%) Azure
2 29 (18.01%) Azure DevOps
3 28 (17.39%) Entra ID
4 19 (11.80%) Azure Monitor
5 17 (10.56%) AWS
6 13 (8.07%) GitHub
7 12 (7.45%) Azure Storage
7 12 (7.45%) Serverless
8 11 (6.83%) GCP
9 10 (6.21%) Azure Functions
9 10 (6.21%) Azure Logic Apps
10 9 (5.59%) Azure AKS
10 9 (5.59%) Azure API Management
10 9 (5.59%) Azure Key Vault
10 9 (5.59%) Azure Service Bus
10 9 (5.59%) Cloud Computing
10 9 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (4.97%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 8 (4.97%) Microsoft 365
12 7 (4.35%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (19.25%) Firewall
2 27 (16.77%) DNS
3 23 (14.29%) VPN
4 14 (8.70%) DHCP
5 11 (6.83%) Network Security
6 9 (5.59%) WAN
7 8 (4.97%) Intrusion Detection
7 8 (4.97%) TCP/IP
8 6 (3.73%) NAS
8 6 (3.73%) SAN
8 6 (3.73%) VSAN
9 5 (3.11%) Skype
10 4 (2.48%) VLAN
11 2 (1.24%) Modbus
11 2 (1.24%) VoIP
11 2 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
12 1 (0.62%) Cisco Wireless
12 1 (0.62%) NX-OS
12 1 (0.62%) RTP
12 1 (0.62%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (9.94%) SQL Server
2 7 (4.35%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (3.11%) Data Lake
5 4 (2.48%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (2.48%) OLTP
6 3 (1.86%) Data Mining
6 3 (1.86%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (1.24%) MySQL
8 1 (0.62%) Big Data
8 1 (0.62%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.62%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.62%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.62%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.62%) Redis
8 1 (0.62%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 9 (5.59%) Git
1 9 (5.59%) JIRA
2 8 (4.97%) GitLab
3 7 (4.35%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.24%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.62%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.62%) EasyMock
5 1 (0.62%) GDB
5 1 (0.62%) JBehave
5 1 (0.62%) JUnit
5 1 (0.62%) Mockito
5 1 (0.62%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.62%) RStudio
5 1 (0.62%) Snyk
5 1 (0.62%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.62%) Terragrunt
5 1 (0.62%) VisualVM
5 1 (0.62%) YourKit
General
1 26 (16.15%) Social Skills
2 20 (12.42%) Public Sector
3 14 (8.70%) Finance
4 10 (6.21%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (4.35%) Law
6 6 (3.73%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (3.73%) Telecoms
7 4 (2.48%) Banking
7 4 (2.48%) Marketing
8 3 (1.86%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.24%) Financial Institution
9 2 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.62%) Back Office
10 1 (0.62%) Electronics
10 1 (0.62%) Front Office
10 1 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.62%) Legal
10 1 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.62%) Social Science
Job Titles
1 18 (11.18%) Architect
2 17 (10.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 15 (9.32%) DevOps Engineer
4 13 (8.07%) Azure Engineer
4 13 (8.07%) Senior
5 12 (7.45%) Developer
6 11 (6.83%) Technical Architect
7 10 (6.21%) Security Engineer
8 7 (4.35%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 7 (4.35%) Cloud Engineer
8 7 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
9 6 (3.73%) Azure Architect
9 6 (3.73%) Project Manager
9 6 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
10 5 (3.11%) Consultant
10 5 (3.11%) Data Engineer
10 5 (3.11%) IT Engineer
10 5 (3.11%) Lead
10 5 (3.11%) Technical Solutions Architect
11 4 (2.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (9.32%) Middleware
2 14 (8.70%) ARM Templates
3 7 (4.35%) TensorFlow
3 7 (4.35%) YAML
4 6 (3.73%) Hugging Face
4 6 (3.73%) OpenCV
4 6 (3.73%) OpenTelemetry
4 6 (3.73%) PyTorch
4 6 (3.73%) Regular Expression
4 6 (3.73%) SpaCy
5 5 (3.11%) ADO
5 5 (3.11%) RESTful
5 5 (3.11%) Web Services
6 4 (2.48%) .NET
6 4 (2.48%) CSS
6 4 (2.48%) HTML
6 4 (2.48%) XHTML
7 3 (1.86%) Kafka
8 2 (1.24%) Loki
8 2 (1.24%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 10 (6.21%) Management Information System
1 10 (6.21%) Onboarding
2 9 (5.59%) Data Centre
2 9 (5.59%) Hybrid Cloud
3 8 (4.97%) PKI
4 7 (4.35%) Private Cloud
5 6 (3.73%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (3.11%) Algorithms
6 5 (3.11%) Public Cloud
6 5 (3.11%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (2.48%) Cloud Native
7 4 (2.48%) Cyber Threat
7 4 (2.48%) Life Science
7 4 (2.48%) Operational Technology
7 4 (2.48%) Replication
7 4 (2.48%) SCADA
7 4 (2.48%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.86%) Legacy Code
8 3 (1.86%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 56 (34.78%) Windows
2 38 (23.60%) Linux
3 32 (19.88%) Windows Server
4 14 (8.70%) VMS
5 9 (5.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (4.35%) Windows Server 2016
7 6 (3.73%) Ubuntu
7 6 (3.73%) Windows 10
7 6 (3.73%) Windows Server 2012
7 6 (3.73%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.62%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.62%) CentOS
8 1 (0.62%) Data ONTAP
8 1 (0.62%) SUSE
8 1 (0.62%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.62%) Unix
8 1 (0.62%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (30.43%) DevOps
2 43 (26.71%) CI/CD
3 34 (21.12%) Infrastructure as Code
4 33 (20.50%) Agile
4 33 (20.50%) Problem-Solving
5 30 (18.63%) Analytics
5 30 (18.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 30 (18.63%) Migration
6 17 (10.56%) Infrastructure Automation
7 15 (9.32%) Containerisation
7 15 (9.32%) High Availability
8 13 (8.07%) Cybersecurity
8 13 (8.07%) Project Management
8 13 (8.07%) RBAC
9 12 (7.45%) Cloud Security
9 12 (7.45%) Identity Management
9 12 (7.45%) Machine Learning
9 12 (7.45%) Patch Management
10 11 (6.83%) Disaster Recovery
10 11 (6.83%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 41 (25.47%) Python
2 38 (23.60%) PowerShell
3 21 (13.04%) Bicep
3 21 (13.04%) SQL
4 12 (7.45%) Bash
5 10 (6.21%) Java
6 9 (5.59%) Shell Script
7 7 (4.35%) C#
8 6 (3.73%) JavaScript
9 4 (2.48%) PHP
9 4 (2.48%) Scala
10 3 (1.86%) C++
11 1 (0.62%) C
11 1 (0.62%) Go
11 1 (0.62%) Korn
11 1 (0.62%) Perl
11 1 (0.62%) Swift
11 1 (0.62%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.62%) VB
11 1 (0.62%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 39 (24.22%) Security Cleared
2 25 (15.53%) SC Cleared
3 16 (9.94%) Degree
4 10 (6.21%) DV Cleared
5 7 (4.35%) Azure Certification
6 6 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (1.24%) CCNA
8 2 (1.24%) CCNP
8 2 (1.24%) CISM
8 2 (1.24%) CISSP
8 2 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 1 (0.62%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.62%) CCSP
9 1 (0.62%) CEH
9 1 (0.62%) CFA
9 1 (0.62%) SSCP
9 1 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 8 (4.97%) SLA
2 7 (4.35%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.48%) NIST
4 3 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 3 (1.86%) NCSC
5 2 (1.24%) GDPR
5 2 (1.24%) QA
6 1 (0.62%) 21 CFR Part 11
6 1 (0.62%) Basel III
6 1 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.62%) GRC
6 1 (0.62%) GxP
6 1 (0.62%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.62%) RMADS
System Software
1 48 (29.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (29.19%) Active Directory
3 19 (11.80%) VMware ESXi
4 15 (9.32%) vSphere
5 13 (8.07%) Hyper-V
6 9 (5.59%) Docker
6 9 (5.59%) VMware NSX
7 8 (4.97%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (2.48%) KVM
9 1 (0.62%) Firmware
9 1 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 35 (21.74%) Terraform
2 25 (15.53%) vCenter Server
3 24 (14.91%) Kubernetes
4 17 (10.56%) Ansible
5 11 (6.83%) Microsoft Intune
6 9 (5.59%) SCCM
6 9 (5.59%) WSUS
7 8 (4.97%) vRealize
8 4 (2.48%) Microsoft Clustering
8 4 (2.48%) NetApp OnCommand
8 4 (2.48%) vMotion
9 3 (1.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 3 (1.86%) Grafana
9 3 (1.86%) SCOM
10 2 (1.24%) CASB
10 2 (1.24%) Nessus
10 2 (1.24%) PowerCLI
10 2 (1.24%) Rancher
10 2 (1.24%) SCOrch
10 2 (1.24%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 54 (33.54%) VMware
2 48 (29.81%) Microsoft
3 9 (5.59%) Cisco
4 8 (4.97%) Databricks
4 8 (4.97%) Oracle
5 6 (3.73%) Google
6 5 (3.11%) Citrix
6 5 (3.11%) NetApp
6 5 (3.11%) Red Hat
7 4 (2.48%) Broadcom
7 4 (2.48%) Remedy
7 4 (2.48%) Tenable
7 4 (2.48%) Veeam
8 3 (1.86%) F5
8 3 (1.86%) Fortinet
8 3 (1.86%) Palo Alto
8 3 (1.86%) Rockwell
8 3 (1.86%) SAP
8 3 (1.86%) ServiceNow
8 3 (1.86%) Sophos