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 22 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 360 340 311
Rank change year-on-year -20 -29 +17
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 280 186 279
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.65% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 5.83% 5.19% 6.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 117 191
10th Percentile £356 £350 £310
25th Percentile £424 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year -4.39% -0.49% -5.07%
75th Percentile £550 £613 £608
90th Percentile £650 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 8 27
10th Percentile £26.00 - -
25th Percentile £48.00 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £48.75 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +43.59% +233.33% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £64.88 £15.19
90th Percentile - £66.00 £86.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
% change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.33%

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 4,801 3,586 4,572
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.94% 12.45% 10.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,208 2,419 3,166
10th Percentile £220 £213 £200
25th Percentile £400 £388 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% +0.20% -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £606 £600
90th Percentile £680 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £463
% change year-on-year - +2.70% -3.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 81 227
10th Percentile £16.03 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.44 £14.48
Median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +82.14% +24.44% -58.33%
75th Percentile £71.00 £64.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £79.45 £88.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £36.65 £19.18
% change year-on-year +39.17% +91.06% -56.16%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 -27 260 £490 -4.39% 63
UK excluding London -25 161 £483 -3.50% 45
Work from Home -7 96 £500 -2.44% 35
London -52 94 £525 -8.70% 19
North of England -4 89 £475 +26.67% 9
Yorkshire -10 47 £500 +5.26% 4
North West -18 40 £465 +23.89% 5
South East -29 39 £514 -10.61% 17
Midlands -71 15 £425 -14.66% 6
West Midlands -60 12 £375 -24.70% 4
South West -18 11 £450 -10.00% 5
East of England -30 8 £425 -19.05% 5
Scotland -7 5 £550 +7.32% 3
North East -28 2 £400 +10.34%
East Midlands -25 1 £500 -4.76% 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 6 (2.14%) OpenStack
2 5 (1.79%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.07%) Apache
3 3 (1.07%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.07%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.71%) CMS
4 2 (0.71%) Confluence
4 2 (0.71%) nginx
4 2 (0.71%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.36%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.36%) IIS
5 1 (0.36%) JBoss
5 1 (0.36%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.43%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.43%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.71%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.36%) InDesign
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) SAP SD
1 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 111 (39.64%) Azure
2 50 (17.86%) AWS
3 37 (13.21%) OpenShift
4 31 (11.07%) GitHub
5 27 (9.64%) Azure DevOps
6 22 (7.86%) Entra ID
7 21 (7.50%) GitHub Actions
8 19 (6.79%) Serverless
9 18 (6.43%) Azure Monitor
9 18 (6.43%) GCP
10 16 (5.71%) Azure AKS
11 12 (4.29%) Microsoft 365
12 11 (3.93%) Azure Storage
13 10 (3.57%) Azure Key Vault
13 10 (3.57%) Nutanix
14 9 (3.21%) AWS Lambda
15 8 (2.86%) PaaS
16 7 (2.50%) Amazon EC2
16 7 (2.50%) Azure Functions
17 6 (2.14%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 37 (13.21%) DNS
2 34 (12.14%) Firewall
3 21 (7.50%) VLAN
3 21 (7.50%) VPN
4 19 (6.79%) Network Security
5 18 (6.43%) DHCP
6 15 (5.36%) VSAN
7 12 (4.29%) WAN
8 11 (3.93%) SSL
9 9 (3.21%) SAN
9 9 (3.21%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.86%) Reverse Proxy
10 8 (2.86%) TCP/IP
11 7 (2.50%) LAN
12 5 (1.79%) FTP
12 5 (1.79%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.43%) SSH
14 2 (0.71%) Cisco Nexus
14 2 (0.71%) IPsec
14 2 (0.71%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (6.43%) SQL Server
2 7 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
2 7 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (2.14%) DB2
3 6 (2.14%) Oracle Database
3 6 (2.14%) Power BI
4 4 (1.43%) Oracle Reports
5 3 (1.07%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (1.07%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.07%) Apache Hive
5 3 (1.07%) Big Data
5 3 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (1.07%) DynamoDB
5 3 (1.07%) Hadoop
5 3 (1.07%) MySQL
6 2 (0.71%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.36%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.36%) Power Query
7 1 (0.36%) Weaviate
Development Applications
1 28 (10.00%) Git
2 15 (5.36%) GitLab
3 12 (4.29%) Jenkins
4 8 (2.86%) JIRA
5 6 (2.14%) PVCS
6 5 (1.79%) Rational DOORS
7 3 (1.07%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.07%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.71%) JMeter
8 2 (0.71%) Postman
8 2 (0.71%) Selenium
8 2 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.36%) Gradle
9 1 (0.36%) RStudio
General
1 36 (12.86%) Social Skills
2 18 (6.43%) Finance
3 14 (5.00%) Public Sector
4 13 (4.64%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (3.57%) Legal
7 9 (3.21%) Banking
8 6 (2.14%) Retail
9 5 (1.79%) Electronics
10 3 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.07%) Front Office
10 3 (1.07%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.07%) Marketing
11 2 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.36%) Advertising
12 1 (0.36%) Back Office
12 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.36%) Social Science
12 1 (0.36%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 34 (12.14%) DevOps Engineer
2 24 (8.57%) Azure Engineer
3 23 (8.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (6.79%) Senior
5 18 (6.43%) Wintel Engineer
6 15 (5.36%) Architect
7 14 (5.00%) Analyst
8 13 (4.64%) Cloud Engineer
8 13 (4.64%) Lead
9 11 (3.93%) Consultant
10 10 (3.57%) Administrator
10 10 (3.57%) VMware Engineer
11 9 (3.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
11 9 (3.21%) Security Engineer
12 7 (2.50%) Linux Engineer
12 7 (2.50%) Migration Engineer
13 6 (2.14%) DBA
13 6 (2.14%) Product Owner
13 6 (2.14%) Senior VMware Engineer
13 6 (2.14%) Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (3.21%) REST
2 8 (2.86%) ARM Templates
3 6 (2.14%) YAML
4 5 (1.79%) Middleware
5 3 (1.07%) Hugging Face
5 3 (1.07%) JSON
6 2 (0.71%) OpenCV
6 2 (0.71%) PySpark
6 2 (0.71%) PyTorch
6 2 (0.71%) Regular Expression
6 2 (0.71%) SOAP
6 2 (0.71%) SpaCy
6 2 (0.71%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.36%) Kafka
7 1 (0.36%) LDAP
7 1 (0.36%) Node.js
7 1 (0.36%) NumPy
7 1 (0.36%) OpenID
7 1 (0.36%) SciPy
7 1 (0.36%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 31 (11.07%) Replication
2 25 (8.93%) Data Centre
3 23 (8.21%) Clustering
4 16 (5.71%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (4.29%) Cloud Native
6 11 (3.93%) Linux Command Line
7 8 (2.86%) Private Cloud
7 8 (2.86%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.50%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.50%) PKI
9 6 (2.14%) FlexPod
9 6 (2.14%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.79%) Cyber Threat
11 3 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.07%) Mainframe
11 3 (1.07%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.07%) SCADA
11 3 (1.07%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
12 2 (0.71%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 86 (30.71%) Windows
2 79 (28.21%) Linux
3 51 (18.21%) Windows Server
4 31 (11.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (11.07%) VMS
5 8 (2.86%) AIX
5 8 (2.86%) CoreOS
5 8 (2.86%) Unix
6 7 (2.50%) Data ONTAP
7 4 (1.43%) SUSE
7 4 (1.43%) Ubuntu
8 3 (1.07%) Apple iOS
8 3 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.36%) Android
10 1 (0.36%) Rocky
10 1 (0.36%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (28.21%) CI/CD
2 76 (27.14%) DevOps
3 64 (22.86%) Migration
4 52 (18.57%) Infrastructure as Code
5 42 (15.00%) Disaster Recovery
5 42 (15.00%) High Availability
6 37 (13.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 37 (13.21%) Network Virtualisation
6 37 (13.21%) Performance Tuning
7 33 (11.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 32 (11.43%) Capacity Planning
9 26 (9.29%) Containerisation
10 23 (8.21%) Cybersecurity
10 23 (8.21%) Validation
11 21 (7.50%) Platform Engineering
11 21 (7.50%) RBAC
11 21 (7.50%) Vulnerability Management
12 19 (6.79%) Problem-Solving
12 19 (6.79%) Storage Management
13 18 (6.43%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 73 (26.07%) Python
2 70 (25.00%) PowerShell
3 43 (15.36%) Bash
4 35 (12.50%) SQL
5 9 (3.21%) Bicep
6 8 (2.86%) Shell Script
7 7 (2.50%) C
8 5 (1.79%) C++
8 5 (1.79%) Embedded C
8 5 (1.79%) Embedded C++
8 5 (1.79%) Ruby
9 4 (1.43%) C#
9 4 (1.43%) Java
9 4 (1.43%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.71%) Go
10 2 (0.71%) Korn
11 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.36%) Groovy
11 1 (0.36%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.36%) RPG
Qualifications
1 72 (25.71%) Security Cleared
2 58 (20.71%) SC Cleared
3 22 (7.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (6.79%) VCAP
5 17 (6.07%) Microsoft Certification
6 16 (5.71%) MCSA
6 16 (5.71%) MCSE
7 14 (5.00%) Azure Certification
8 13 (4.64%) OCP
8 13 (4.64%) Oracle Certification
9 7 (2.50%) Degree
9 7 (2.50%) DV Cleared
10 6 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (1.07%) CISSP
11 3 (1.07%) ISTQB
11 3 (1.07%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (1.07%) PMI Certification
11 3 (1.07%) PMP
12 2 (0.71%) CISM
12 2 (0.71%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.29%) QA
2 4 (1.43%) GDPR
3 3 (1.07%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.71%) GMP
4 2 (0.71%) GxP
5 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.36%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.36%) NIST
5 1 (0.36%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.36%) SLA
5 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 92 (32.86%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (18.57%) vSphere
3 46 (16.43%) VMware ESXi
4 38 (13.57%) Active Directory
5 33 (11.79%) Hyper-V
6 18 (6.43%) Docker
7 17 (6.07%) KVM
8 10 (3.57%) Firmware
8 10 (3.57%) NFS
9 9 (3.21%) VMware NSX
10 8 (2.86%) Ceph
11 5 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (1.07%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.71%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 2 (0.71%) HDFS
14 1 (0.36%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.36%) iptables
14 1 (0.36%) NLBS
14 1 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.36%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 68 (24.29%) Terraform
2 61 (21.79%) Ansible
3 55 (19.64%) Kubernetes
4 40 (14.29%) vCenter Server
5 12 (4.29%) PowerCLI
6 11 (3.93%) Grafana
7 10 (3.57%) SCCM
8 8 (2.86%) Prometheus
9 7 (2.50%) SnapMirror
10 6 (2.14%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (2.14%) VxRail
10 6 (2.14%) WSUS
11 4 (1.43%) Argo
11 4 (1.43%) Data Guard
11 4 (1.43%) Failover Clustering
11 4 (1.43%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (1.43%) Oracle RMAN
11 4 (1.43%) systemd
11 4 (1.43%) vMotion
Vendors
1 96 (34.29%) VMware
2 71 (25.36%) Microsoft
3 32 (11.43%) Cisco
4 22 (7.86%) Red Hat
5 16 (5.71%) IBM
6 13 (4.64%) Google
6 13 (4.64%) NetApp
6 13 (4.64%) Oracle
7 10 (3.57%) Tenable
7 10 (3.57%) Veeam
8 8 (2.86%) Dell
9 7 (2.50%) Commvault
10 6 (2.14%) ServiceNow
10 6 (2.14%) SolarWinds
11 5 (1.79%) ANSYS
11 5 (1.79%) CyberArk
11 5 (1.79%) Databricks
11 5 (1.79%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.79%) Qualys
11 5 (1.79%) Splunk