Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 25 July 2021

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Virtual Machines skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 25 July 2021 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Virtual Machine (VM)
UK
6 months to
25 Jul 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 417 344 388
Rank change year-on-year -73 +44 +56
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 367 240 586
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.52% 0.64% 0.64%
As % of the System Software category 3.65% 4.23% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 166 398
10th Percentile £325 £313 £281
25th Percentile £400 £405 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +5.26% -1.04%
75th Percentile £593 £550 £575
90th Percentile £700 £600 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -18.00% +11.11% -1.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 11
10th Percentile £63.23 £17.91 £15.49
25th Percentile £66.19 £20.77 £19.89
Median hourly rate £71.75 £22.29 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year +221.97% -49.92% +61.82%
75th Percentile £76.69 £23.80 £45.44
90th Percentile £79.28 £45.52 £47.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.75 £21.64 £16.18
% change year-on-year +231.52% +33.80% -28.55%

Virtual Machines is in the System Software category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for system software skills.

All System Software Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 10,068 5,678 14,251
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.23% 15.13% 15.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,968 3,827 9,582
10th Percentile £226 £198 £180
25th Percentile £394 £358 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% - +5.56%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £430 £425
% change year-on-year -1.16% +1.18% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 313 248 591
10th Percentile £11.63 £11.34 £11.17
25th Percentile £13.50 £13.00 £13.00
Median hourly rate £19.00 £17.50 £16.95
Median % change year-on-year +8.57% +3.24% +5.94%
75th Percentile £42.17 £25.07 £27.00
90th Percentile £64.90 £51.86 £47.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.60 £16.50 £16.00
% change year-on-year +6.67% +3.13% +0.88%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Virtual Machines.

Daily rate trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 25 July 2021.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Virtual Machines.

Hourly rate trend for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 25 July 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the UK

Virtual Machines
Top 16 Contract 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 25 July 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -72 269 £450 -10.00% 124
UK excluding London -50 152 £410 -18.00% 79
Work from Home -171 120 £574 +4.36% 22
London -111 115 £524 +10.26% 47
South East -18 64 £400 -23.08% 18
South West -13 20 £463 -12.74% 10
Midlands -39 19 £375 -16.67% 23
North of England -24 17 £450 +26.76% 14
East of England -9 16 £337 -32.70% 10
Scotland -54 16 £435 -17.14% 4
West Midlands -34 14 £350 -22.22% 17
Yorkshire -16 11 £470 +4.44% 2
East Midlands -12 5 £388 +11.51% 6
Wales -6 4 £440 -
North West -28 4 £413 +17.86% 11
North East -2 2 - - 1

For the 6 months to 25 July 2021, IT contractor jobs citing Virtual Machines also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Virtual Machines.

1 155 (42.23%) Windows
2 147 (40.05%) Azure
3 134 (36.51%) Linux
4 118 (32.15%) DevOps
5 117 (31.88%) VMware
6 100 (27.25%) Active Directory
7 99 (26.98%) VMware Infrastructure
8 90 (24.52%) Microsoft
9 80 (21.80%) Security Cleared
10 77 (20.98%) SQL
10 77 (20.98%) Ansible
10 77 (20.98%) Windows Server
11 68 (18.53%) Migration
11 68 (18.53%) Agile Software Development
12 66 (17.98%) PowerShell
12 66 (17.98%) Terraform
12 66 (17.98%) Kubernetes
13 64 (17.44%) Finance
14 63 (17.17%) Python
15 58 (15.80%) Firewall
15 58 (15.80%) AWS
16 51 (13.90%) Data Centre
16 51 (13.90%) SC Cleared
17 50 (13.62%) DNS
17 50 (13.62%) IaaS
18 48 (13.08%) Social Skills
18 48 (13.08%) Oracle
19 46 (12.53%) PaaS
20 44 (11.99%) Git (software)
21 43 (11.72%) ITIL

Virtual Machines
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 28 (7.63%) SharePoint
2 26 (7.08%) nginx
3 21 (5.72%) Apache
4 17 (4.63%) MS Exchange
5 12 (3.27%) MS Project Server
6 9 (2.45%) IIS
6 9 (2.45%) JBoss
6 9 (2.45%) Skype for Business
7 6 (1.63%) Apache Spark
7 6 (1.63%) OpenStack
8 5 (1.36%) Confluence
8 5 (1.36%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.54%) CICS
10 1 (0.27%) CMS
10 1 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
10 1 (0.27%) Mule
10 1 (0.27%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.54%) GIMP
2 2 (0.54%) Photoshop
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.63%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (1.63%) Sentinel
2 1 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
2 1 (0.27%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 147 (40.05%) Azure
2 58 (15.80%) AWS
3 50 (13.62%) IaaS
4 46 (12.53%) PaaS
5 41 (11.17%) Microsoft 365
6 35 (9.54%) GCP
7 34 (9.26%) Azure Active Directory
8 22 (5.99%) Azure Key Vault
9 21 (5.72%) SaaS
10 20 (5.45%) npm
11 15 (4.09%) dbt
12 13 (3.54%) Azure Storage
13 11 (3.00%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 10 (2.72%) Azure Data Factory
14 10 (2.72%) Azure Service Bus
15 9 (2.45%) Azure App Service
15 9 (2.45%) Serverless
16 8 (2.18%) Cloud Computing
17 7 (1.91%) Amazon EKS
17 7 (1.91%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 58 (15.80%) Firewall
2 50 (13.62%) DNS
3 33 (8.99%) Network Security
4 29 (7.90%) DHCP
5 26 (7.08%) VPN
6 23 (6.27%) WAN
7 22 (5.99%) SAN
8 18 (4.90%) VSAN
9 15 (4.09%) LAN
10 14 (3.81%) Internet
11 12 (3.27%) NAS
11 12 (3.27%) TCP/IP
12 10 (2.72%) Ethernet
12 10 (2.72%) Skype
12 10 (2.72%) Unified Communications
13 9 (2.45%) SSL
13 9 (2.45%) VLAN
14 8 (2.18%) HTTP
15 7 (1.91%) Cisco ICM
16 4 (1.09%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (8.17%) SQL Server
2 16 (4.36%) BigQuery
3 13 (3.54%) Azure SQL Database
4 12 (3.27%) MySQL
5 10 (2.72%) MongoDB
6 8 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
7 7 (1.91%) Oracle Database
8 6 (1.63%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (1.36%) Amazon Athena
9 5 (1.36%) Amazon DynamoDB
9 5 (1.36%) InterSystems Cache
9 5 (1.36%) MariaDB
9 5 (1.36%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.36%) Spark SQL
10 3 (0.82%) Big Data
10 3 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (0.82%) DB2
10 3 (0.82%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.82%) SAP HANA
11 2 (0.54%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 44 (11.99%) Git (software)
2 43 (11.72%) Jenkins
3 26 (7.08%) gulp
4 21 (5.72%) Gradle
4 21 (5.72%) Maven
5 17 (4.63%) CircleCI
5 17 (4.63%) Travis CI
6 12 (3.27%) JIRA
7 8 (2.18%) SonarQube
8 7 (1.91%) GitLab
8 7 (1.91%) Grunt
8 7 (1.91%) Jasmine
9 6 (1.63%) Bitbucket
10 5 (1.36%) CppUnit
10 5 (1.36%) Postman
10 5 (1.36%) PVCS
10 5 (1.36%) Rational DOORS
10 5 (1.36%) SoapUI
10 5 (1.36%) Visual Studio
11 3 (0.82%) JUnit
General
1 64 (17.44%) Finance
2 48 (13.08%) Social Skills
3 21 (5.72%) Public Sector
4 16 (4.36%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (4.36%) Banking
5 15 (4.09%) Documentation Skills
6 13 (3.54%) Telecoms
7 6 (1.63%) Billing
8 5 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.36%) Law
9 4 (1.09%) Legal
9 4 (1.09%) Retail
10 3 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.54%) Back Office
11 2 (0.54%) French Language
11 2 (0.54%) Front Office
11 2 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.27%) Danish Language
12 1 (0.27%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.27%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 54 (14.71%) Azure Engineer
2 51 (13.90%) Architect
3 49 (13.35%) DevOps Engineer
4 31 (8.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 27 (7.36%) Developer
6 25 (6.81%) Azure Architect
7 24 (6.54%) Consultant
8 22 (5.99%) Build Engineer
9 21 (5.72%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 20 (5.45%) Cloud Engineer
11 15 (4.09%) Technical Architect
12 14 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
13 12 (3.27%) Support Engineer
13 12 (3.27%) Virtualisation Engineer
14 11 (3.00%) Analyst
14 11 (3.00%) Hyper-V Engineer
14 11 (3.00%) Systems Engineer
15 10 (2.72%) AWS Engineer
15 10 (2.72%) Solutions Architect
15 10 (2.72%) Voice Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (7.63%) Node.js
2 24 (6.54%) JSON
3 22 (5.99%) Web Services
4 21 (5.72%) XML
5 13 (3.54%) REST
5 13 (3.54%) RESTful
5 13 (3.54%) SOAP
6 12 (3.27%) HTML
7 10 (2.72%) .NET
7 10 (2.72%) React
8 9 (2.45%) CSS
8 9 (2.45%) YAML
9 8 (2.18%) AngularJS
9 8 (2.18%) Django
10 7 (1.91%) HTML5
10 7 (1.91%) jQuery
11 6 (1.63%) Oracle Fusion
12 5 (1.36%) Ajax
12 5 (1.36%) VXML
12 5 (1.36%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 51 (13.90%) Data Centre
2 29 (7.90%) Clustering
3 21 (5.72%) Public Cloud
4 14 (3.81%) Self-Motivation
5 13 (3.54%) Replication
6 12 (3.27%) User Experience
7 11 (3.00%) Linux Command Line
8 10 (2.72%) Video Conferencing
8 10 (2.72%) Virtual Team
9 9 (2.45%) Tandem
10 8 (2.18%) Hybrid Cloud
11 7 (1.91%) Cloud Native
11 7 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.36%) Enterprise Storage
12 5 (1.36%) PKI
13 4 (1.09%) EMC VMAX
13 4 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
13 4 (1.09%) Mobile App
14 3 (0.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 3 (0.82%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 155 (42.23%) Windows
2 134 (36.51%) Linux
3 77 (20.98%) Windows Server
4 31 (8.45%) Windows Server 2012
5 29 (7.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (6.54%) Windows Server 2016
7 23 (6.27%) Windows 10
8 20 (5.45%) Unix
8 20 (5.45%) VMS
9 16 (4.36%) Windows Server 2008
10 11 (3.00%) Windows Server 2003
11 10 (2.72%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (2.18%) Solaris
12 8 (2.18%) Ubuntu
13 6 (1.63%) Windows Vista
13 6 (1.63%) Windows XP
14 5 (1.36%) CentOS
15 4 (1.09%) AIX
15 4 (1.09%) Android
15 4 (1.09%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (32.15%) DevOps
2 68 (18.53%) Agile Software Development
2 68 (18.53%) Migration
3 43 (11.72%) ITIL
4 39 (10.63%) Infrastructure as Code
5 37 (10.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 32 (8.72%) Analytics
7 29 (7.90%) Problem-Solving
8 27 (7.36%) Open Source
9 25 (6.81%) Storage Management
10 23 (6.27%) Configuration Management
10 23 (6.27%) Data Protection
11 22 (5.99%) Continuous Integration
12 21 (5.72%) High Availability
13 18 (4.90%) Disaster Recovery
14 17 (4.63%) Mentoring
14 17 (4.63%) Network Virtualisation
15 16 (4.36%) Microservices
16 15 (4.09%) Patch Management
16 15 (4.09%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 77 (20.98%) SQL
2 66 (17.98%) PowerShell
3 63 (17.17%) Python
4 37 (10.08%) Java
5 24 (6.54%) Bash Shell
6 22 (5.99%) Shell Script
7 19 (5.18%) Groovy
8 14 (3.81%) JavaScript
9 12 (3.27%) C++
10 10 (2.72%) C
11 9 (2.45%) PHP
12 8 (2.18%) C#
13 7 (1.91%) Perl
14 6 (1.63%) PL/SQL
14 6 (1.63%) Scala
15 5 (1.36%) Embedded C
15 5 (1.36%) Embedded C++
15 5 (1.36%) Ruby
16 2 (0.54%) Go
16 2 (0.54%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 80 (21.80%) Security Cleared
2 51 (13.90%) SC Cleared
3 33 (8.99%) DV Cleared
4 10 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
5 8 (2.18%) MCSE
6 7 (1.91%) Degree
7 6 (1.63%) MCSA
8 5 (1.36%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (1.36%) ISTQB
9 4 (1.09%) CISM
9 4 (1.09%) CISSP
9 4 (1.09%) MCITP
9 4 (1.09%) PMP
10 3 (0.82%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 3 (0.82%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.54%) CCNA
11 2 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 1 (0.27%) CAPM
12 1 (0.27%) ISSAP
12 1 (0.27%) ISSEP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (6.81%) QA
2 7 (1.91%) Data Quality
3 5 (1.36%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.09%) SLA
5 3 (0.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.27%) Basel II
7 1 (0.27%) COBIT
7 1 (0.27%) GDPR
7 1 (0.27%) NIST
7 1 (0.27%) OpenSCAP
System Software
1 100 (27.25%) Active Directory
2 99 (26.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (11.44%) VMware ESXi
4 36 (9.81%) Hyper-V
5 25 (6.81%) Docker
6 23 (6.27%) vSphere
7 18 (4.90%) VMware NSX
8 17 (4.63%) Virtual Desktop
9 13 (3.54%) Virtual Servers
10 11 (3.00%) Microsoft App-V
11 10 (2.72%) DFS Replication
12 9 (2.45%) NFS
13 8 (2.18%) vCloud
14 6 (1.63%) Firmware
15 4 (1.09%) KVM
15 4 (1.09%) Veritas Cluster Server
15 4 (1.09%) Veritas Volume Manager
16 2 (0.54%) SRDF
16 2 (0.54%) VirtualBox
16 2 (0.54%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 77 (20.98%) Ansible
2 66 (17.98%) Kubernetes
2 66 (17.98%) Terraform
3 31 (8.45%) SCCM
4 25 (6.81%) Opscode Chef
5 24 (6.54%) vCenter Server
6 22 (5.99%) SCVMM
7 18 (4.90%) WSUS
8 16 (4.36%) vRealize
9 15 (4.09%) Argo
9 15 (4.09%) Puppet
10 14 (3.81%) OpenView Configuration Management
11 13 (3.54%) Microsoft Clustering
11 13 (3.54%) SCOM
12 12 (3.27%) Failover Clustering
13 11 (3.00%) Istio
14 10 (2.72%) Cisco CUCM
14 10 (2.72%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
14 10 (2.72%) Microsoft Intune
14 10 (2.72%) SCSM
Vendors
1 117 (31.88%) VMware
2 90 (24.52%) Microsoft
3 48 (13.08%) Oracle
4 36 (9.81%) Dell
5 31 (8.45%) Cisco
6 28 (7.63%) Red Hat
7 27 (7.36%) HP
8 26 (7.08%) Google
9 17 (4.63%) CheckPoint
9 17 (4.63%) Citrix
9 17 (4.63%) NetApp
10 15 (4.09%) F5
11 14 (3.81%) Lumension
12 13 (3.54%) SAP
13 11 (3.00%) Veritas
14 10 (2.72%) ArcSight
14 10 (2.72%) Borland
14 10 (2.72%) Palo Alto
14 10 (2.72%) Sonus
15 9 (2.45%) Informatica