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

 6 months to
31 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 402 405 341
Rank change year-on-year +3 -64 -8
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 293 161 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.49% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 5.49% 4.17% 5.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 109 162
10th Percentile £390 £340 £345
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £535
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -11.21% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £610
90th Percentile £693 £650 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £450 £564
% change year-on-year +8.22% -20.14% +7.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 12
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% -79.26%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £76.71
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.75 - £14.63
% change year-on-year - - -81.42%

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 5,339 3,860 4,416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.93% 11.71% 11.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,509 2,442 3,007
10th Percentile £220 £225 £220
25th Percentile £400 £385 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.44%
75th Percentile £590 £588 £601
90th Percentile £675 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 226 111 130
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.38 £18.87 £17.50
Median hourly rate £59.37 £30.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +97.89% +24.07% -51.64%
75th Percentile £74.00 £79.35 £59.58
90th Percentile £86.25 £91.50 £71.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.92 £62.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year -2.54% +127.27% -

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 +12 271 £500 +5.26% 131
UK excluding London +11 162 £487 +8.22% 86
London -32 110 £532 +6.40% 53
Work from Home -32 81 £500 +7.24% 55
North of England -16 72 £491 +17.93% 19
South East -28 52 £475 -15.56% 25
Yorkshire -21 38 £519 +17.35% 6
North West -19 33 £480 +42.22% 12
South West -32 17 £540 +20.00% 9
Midlands -47 17 £487 +0.41% 7
West Midlands -46 11 £406 -17.98% 7
East of England -12 5 £425 +41.67% 29
East Midlands -11 4 £500 +5.26%
Scotland -21 4 £375 -25.00% 2
North East - 1 £400 - 1

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 (2.05%) Confluence
2 5 (1.71%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (1.02%) Apache
4 3 (1.02%) Apache Spark
4 3 (1.02%) IIS
5 2 (0.68%) CMS
5 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.68%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.34%) JBoss
6 1 (0.34%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.34%) nginx
6 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.37%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.37%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.68%) InDesign
3 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 141 (48.12%) Azure
2 54 (18.43%) Entra ID
3 47 (16.04%) AWS
4 35 (11.95%) Azure Monitor
5 33 (11.26%) Azure DevOps
6 26 (8.87%) Azure AKS
6 26 (8.87%) GitHub
6 26 (8.87%) OpenShift
7 23 (7.85%) IaaS
8 20 (6.83%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (4.44%) Azure Key Vault
9 13 (4.44%) Microsoft 365
9 13 (4.44%) PaaS
9 13 (4.44%) Serverless
10 12 (4.10%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 11 (3.75%) GCP
12 10 (3.41%) SaaS
13 9 (3.07%) Amazon EC2
13 9 (3.07%) Azure Storage
13 9 (3.07%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 45 (15.36%) DNS
2 42 (14.33%) Firewall
3 24 (8.19%) VPN
4 22 (7.51%) VLAN
5 21 (7.17%) Network Security
6 20 (6.83%) VSAN
7 19 (6.48%) SSL
8 18 (6.14%) DHCP
9 17 (5.80%) WAN
10 10 (3.41%) SD-WAN
11 7 (2.39%) FTP
11 7 (2.39%) LAN
11 7 (2.39%) SAN
12 6 (2.05%) SSH
13 5 (1.71%) HTTPS
13 5 (1.71%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (1.37%) TCP/IP
15 3 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
15 3 (1.02%) NAS
16 2 (0.68%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (9.90%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.75%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (3.75%) MySQL
3 10 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (3.07%) Power BI
5 8 (2.73%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.02%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.02%) Big Data
7 3 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.02%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.02%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.02%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.34%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.34%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
8 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.34%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (5.46%) Git
2 13 (4.44%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.07%) GitLab
4 7 (2.39%) JIRA
5 4 (1.37%) SonarQube
6 3 (1.02%) PVCS
6 3 (1.02%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.68%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.68%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.68%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.34%) Selenium
8 1 (0.34%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 42 (14.33%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.22%) Finance
3 13 (4.44%) Legal
4 10 (3.41%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (3.41%) Public Sector
5 9 (3.07%) Banking
6 6 (2.05%) Front Office
6 6 (2.05%) Retail
7 5 (1.71%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.37%) Marketing
9 2 (0.68%) Law
9 2 (0.68%) Local Government
9 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.68%) Publishing
10 1 (0.34%) Advertising
10 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (15.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 35 (11.95%) Azure Engineer
3 32 (10.92%) Cloud Engineer
4 31 (10.58%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (8.87%) Senior
6 22 (7.51%) Lead
7 19 (6.48%) Architect
8 17 (5.80%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 14 (4.78%) Analyst
9 14 (4.78%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (4.10%) Consultant
10 12 (4.10%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.41%) Administrator
11 10 (3.41%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (3.07%) DBA
12 9 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
12 9 (3.07%) VMware Engineer
12 9 (3.07%) Wintel Engineer
13 8 (2.73%) Migration Engineer
13 8 (2.73%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (23.21%) Terraform
2 11 (3.75%) ARM Templates
3 8 (2.73%) REST
3 8 (2.73%) YAML
4 5 (1.71%) Middleware
5 3 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.02%) JSON
6 2 (0.68%) OpenTofu
6 2 (0.68%) SOAP
7 1 (0.34%) ADO
7 1 (0.34%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.34%) Java SE
7 1 (0.34%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.34%) LDAP
7 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.34%) OpenID
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 1 (0.34%) Pandas
7 1 (0.34%) SAP Basis
7 1 (0.34%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 36 (12.29%) Replication
2 24 (8.19%) Clustering
3 18 (6.14%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (5.12%) Data Centre
5 11 (3.75%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (3.07%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.73%) Enterprise Storage
7 8 (2.73%) Mainframe
7 8 (2.73%) PKI
7 8 (2.73%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.39%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.39%) Public Cloud
9 6 (2.05%) Fixed Income
9 6 (2.05%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.05%) Operational Technology
9 6 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.71%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.02%) EMC VMAX
11 3 (1.02%) EMC VNX
11 3 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 96 (32.76%) Windows
2 77 (26.28%) Linux
3 57 (19.45%) Windows Server
4 34 (11.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (10.24%) VMS
6 9 (3.07%) Ubuntu
7 6 (2.05%) Unix
8 5 (1.71%) SUSE
9 4 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (1.37%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (1.02%) AIX
10 3 (1.02%) CoreOS
10 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.34%) Android
11 1 (0.34%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.34%) Solaris
11 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (26.62%) DevOps
2 76 (25.94%) CI/CD
3 66 (22.53%) Migration
4 61 (20.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 60 (20.48%) Infrastructure as Code
6 41 (13.99%) Performance Tuning
7 38 (12.97%) RBAC
8 37 (12.63%) Disaster Recovery
8 37 (12.63%) High Availability
8 37 (12.63%) Validation
9 36 (12.29%) Continuous Improvement
10 30 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
11 28 (9.56%) Platform Engineering
11 28 (9.56%) Runbook
11 28 (9.56%) Stakeholder Management
12 26 (8.87%) Network Virtualisation
13 24 (8.19%) Capacity Planning
14 23 (7.85%) ITIL
15 21 (7.17%) Storage Management
15 21 (7.17%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 85 (29.01%) PowerShell
2 61 (20.82%) Python
3 39 (13.31%) SQL
4 33 (11.26%) Bash
5 13 (4.44%) Bicep
6 8 (2.73%) C#
7 7 (2.39%) T-SQL
8 6 (2.05%) C
8 6 (2.05%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.02%) Java
10 3 (1.02%) Korn
11 2 (0.68%) C++
11 2 (0.68%) Embedded C
11 2 (0.68%) Groovy
12 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.34%) Go
12 1 (0.34%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.34%) RPG
12 1 (0.34%) VBA
Qualifications
1 80 (27.30%) Security Cleared
2 65 (22.18%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.83%) Azure Certification
4 18 (6.14%) Degree
5 17 (5.80%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (4.78%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 11 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (3.75%) VCAP
8 10 (3.41%) MCSA
8 10 (3.41%) MCSE
9 7 (2.39%) DV Cleared
10 6 (2.05%) ISTQB
10 6 (2.05%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 5 (1.71%) CCNA
11 5 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.71%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 4 (1.37%) OCP
12 4 (1.37%) Oracle Certification
13 3 (1.02%) CISSP
13 3 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.41%) QA
2 4 (1.37%) SLA
3 3 (1.02%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.68%) GMP
4 2 (0.68%) GxP
4 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.68%) NIST
5 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.34%) GDPR
5 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (30.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 46 (15.70%) Active Directory
3 44 (15.02%) vSphere
4 38 (12.97%) VMware ESXi
5 25 (8.53%) Docker
6 22 (7.51%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.78%) VMware NSX
8 8 (2.73%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (2.39%) Ceph
10 6 (2.05%) KVM
11 5 (1.71%) Firmware
11 5 (1.71%) NFS
12 3 (1.02%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (1.02%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.68%) HDFS
13 2 (0.68%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.34%) DFS Replication
14 1 (0.34%) Dovecot
14 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.34%) Squid
Systems Management
1 47 (16.04%) Kubernetes
2 44 (15.02%) Ansible
3 27 (9.22%) vCenter Server
4 18 (6.14%) Grafana
5 14 (4.78%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.10%) PowerCLI
7 11 (3.75%) SCOM
8 9 (3.07%) Failover Clustering
9 8 (2.73%) SCCM
9 8 (2.73%) VxRail
10 7 (2.39%) Packer
10 7 (2.39%) vMotion
11 6 (2.05%) Microsoft Clustering
11 6 (2.05%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (2.05%) Podman
11 6 (2.05%) Proxmox
12 4 (1.37%) Argo
12 4 (1.37%) Avamar
12 4 (1.37%) OPNET
13 3 (1.02%) SELinux
Vendors
1 96 (32.76%) Microsoft
2 93 (31.74%) VMware
3 29 (9.90%) Cisco
4 23 (7.85%) Oracle
5 22 (7.51%) ServiceNow
6 16 (5.46%) Dell
7 14 (4.78%) Red Hat
8 13 (4.44%) NetApp
9 12 (4.10%) Veeam
10 11 (3.75%) IBM
11 9 (3.07%) CyberArk
11 9 (3.07%) Splunk
12 8 (2.73%) Qualys
12 8 (2.73%) SolarWinds
13 7 (2.39%) Commvault
13 7 (2.39%) Google
14 6 (2.05%) Databricks
15 5 (1.71%) Meraki
15 5 (1.71%) Palo Alto
15 5 (1.71%) Tenable
139 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide