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

 6 months to
10 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 376 380 326
Rank change year-on-year +4 -54 0
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 309 174 254
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.52% 0.65%
As % of the System Software category 5.85% 4.49% 5.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 122 170
10th Percentile £389 £351 £337
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £725 £666
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £494 £570
% change year-on-year -1.06% -13.33% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 14
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% -77.84%
75th Percentile £68.75 £35.75 £15.19
90th Percentile £69.50 - £63.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.75 - £14.63
% change year-on-year - - -69.09%

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 5,285 3,878 4,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.91% 11.70% 11.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,473 2,485 3,076
10th Percentile £225 £230 £220
25th Percentile £400 £388 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.85%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £607
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 215 104 145
10th Percentile £15.77 £14.12 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.29 £18.03 £16.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.64 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +56.09% +39.10% -51.64%
75th Percentile £74.00 £80.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £81.60 £91.50 £70.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -12.00% +140.38% -1.89%

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 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 10 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 10 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 +10 286 £500 - 150
UK excluding London +16 173 £489 -1.06% 74
London -57 115 £525 - 91
Work from Home -20 94 £500 - 78
North of England +1 79 £492 +17.18% 16
South East -29 54 £475 -15.56% 23
Yorkshire -11 43 £508 +13.53% 3
North West -11 35 £480 +42.22% 11
South West -27 17 £540 -8.09% 7
Midlands -48 17 £487 +2.53% 5
West Midlands -54 11 £406 -11.74% 5
East of England -12 6 £425 +41.67% 13
Scotland -14 5 £375 -26.83% 8
East Midlands -6 4 £500 +5.26%
North East - 1 £400 - 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 5 (1.62%) Confluence
1 5 (1.62%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.97%) Apache
3 3 (0.97%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.97%) IIS
4 2 (0.65%) CMS
4 2 (0.65%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.65%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.32%) JBoss
5 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.29%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.29%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.65%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.65%) InDesign
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 147 (47.57%) Azure
2 50 (16.18%) Entra ID
3 48 (15.53%) AWS
4 37 (11.97%) Azure Monitor
5 34 (11.00%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (9.71%) OpenShift
7 27 (8.74%) GitHub
8 26 (8.41%) Azure AKS
9 21 (6.80%) IaaS
10 19 (6.15%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (5.18%) Microsoft 365
11 16 (5.18%) Serverless
12 15 (4.85%) GCP
13 13 (4.21%) Azure Key Vault
14 12 (3.88%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 11 (3.56%) PaaS
15 11 (3.56%) Power Platform
16 10 (3.24%) Azure Storage
17 9 (2.91%) Azure Logic Apps
17 9 (2.91%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 46 (14.89%) DNS
2 42 (13.59%) Firewall
3 28 (9.06%) VPN
4 22 (7.12%) SSL
4 22 (7.12%) VLAN
5 21 (6.80%) Network Security
6 20 (6.47%) DHCP
6 20 (6.47%) VSAN
7 17 (5.50%) WAN
8 10 (3.24%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.59%) FTP
10 7 (2.27%) LAN
11 6 (1.94%) SAN
11 6 (1.94%) SSH
11 6 (1.94%) TCP/IP
12 5 (1.62%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.29%) HTTPS
14 3 (0.97%) Cisco Nexus
15 2 (0.65%) NAS
15 2 (0.65%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.68%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.56%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (3.56%) Power BI
3 10 (3.24%) MySQL
4 8 (2.59%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (0.97%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.97%) Apache Hive
6 3 (0.97%) Big Data
6 3 (0.97%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.97%) Db2
6 3 (0.97%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.97%) Hadoop
6 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.32%) OpenStack Swift
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.32%) Power Query
7 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.18%) Git
2 12 (3.88%) Jenkins
3 10 (3.24%) GitLab
4 6 (1.94%) JIRA
5 4 (1.29%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.97%) PVCS
6 3 (0.97%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.65%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.65%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.65%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.65%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.32%) Selenium
8 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 44 (14.24%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.39%) Finance
3 13 (4.21%) Legal
4 12 (3.88%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (3.88%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.56%) Banking
6 7 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (2.27%) Retail
7 6 (1.94%) Front Office
7 6 (1.94%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.62%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.29%) Marketing
10 2 (0.65%) Law
10 2 (0.65%) Local Government
10 2 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.65%) Publishing
11 1 (0.32%) Advertising
11 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (13.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 38 (12.30%) Azure Engineer
3 34 (11.00%) DevOps Engineer
4 33 (10.68%) Cloud Engineer
5 27 (8.74%) Senior
6 22 (7.12%) Lead
7 18 (5.83%) Architect
8 17 (5.50%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (5.18%) Analyst
10 15 (4.85%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
11 12 (3.88%) Consultant
12 11 (3.56%) Administrator
13 10 (3.24%) Linux Engineer
14 9 (2.91%) DBA
14 9 (2.91%) VMware Engineer
14 9 (2.91%) Wintel Engineer
15 8 (2.59%) Migration Engineer
15 8 (2.59%) Platform Engineer
15 8 (2.59%) Solutions Architect
15 8 (2.59%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (3.88%) ARM Templates
2 9 (2.91%) REST
3 8 (2.59%) YAML
4 5 (1.62%) Middleware
5 3 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (0.97%) JSON
6 2 (0.65%) SOAP
7 1 (0.32%) cloud-init
7 1 (0.32%) Java SE
7 1 (0.32%) Kafka
7 1 (0.32%) Lambda Expressions
7 1 (0.32%) LDAP
7 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.32%) Node.js
7 1 (0.32%) NumPy
7 1 (0.32%) OpenID
7 1 (0.32%) Pandas
7 1 (0.32%) PySpark
7 1 (0.32%) SciPy
7 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 32 (10.36%) Replication
2 22 (7.12%) Clustering
3 20 (6.47%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.85%) Data Centre
5 14 (4.53%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (2.91%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.59%) PKI
7 8 (2.59%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.27%) Enterprise Storage
8 7 (2.27%) Mainframe
8 7 (2.27%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.27%) Public Cloud
8 7 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.94%) Fixed Income
9 6 (1.94%) Market Risk
9 6 (1.94%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.62%) Security Posture
11 4 (1.29%) FlexPod
12 3 (0.97%) IBM XIV
12 3 (0.97%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 100 (32.36%) Windows
2 81 (26.21%) Linux
3 57 (18.45%) Windows Server
4 37 (11.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (10.36%) VMS
6 8 (2.59%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.59%) Unix
7 6 (1.94%) AIX
7 6 (1.94%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.62%) Data ONTAP
8 5 (1.62%) SUSE
9 4 (1.29%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.32%) Android
11 1 (0.32%) Rocky
11 1 (0.32%) Solaris
11 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (25.89%) DevOps
2 75 (24.27%) CI/CD
3 67 (21.68%) Migration
4 60 (19.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 58 (18.77%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (13.59%) Performance Tuning
7 41 (13.27%) High Availability
8 37 (11.97%) Disaster Recovery
9 36 (11.65%) Validation
10 34 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 33 (10.68%) RBAC
12 30 (9.71%) Problem-Solving
13 29 (9.39%) Network Virtualisation
14 27 (8.74%) Vulnerability Management
15 26 (8.41%) Stakeholder Management
16 25 (8.09%) Capacity Planning
16 25 (8.09%) Runbook
17 23 (7.44%) Analytics
17 23 (7.44%) ITIL
17 23 (7.44%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 89 (28.80%) PowerShell
2 65 (21.04%) Python
3 45 (14.56%) SQL
4 38 (12.30%) Bash
5 10 (3.24%) Bicep
6 9 (2.91%) C#
7 8 (2.59%) C
8 6 (1.94%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.94%) T-SQL
9 4 (1.29%) Korn
9 4 (1.29%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.97%) Java
11 2 (0.65%) C++
11 2 (0.65%) Embedded C
12 1 (0.32%) Cypher
12 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.32%) Go
12 1 (0.32%) Groovy
12 1 (0.32%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 81 (26.21%) Security Cleared
2 66 (21.36%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.47%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.50%) Degree
4 17 (5.50%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (4.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.56%) VCAP
7 10 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.24%) MCSA
7 10 (3.24%) MCSE
8 7 (2.27%) OCP
8 7 (2.27%) Oracle Certification
9 6 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (1.94%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.94%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.94%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 5 (1.62%) CCNA
10 5 (1.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.29%) CISSP
12 3 (0.97%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.24%) QA
2 4 (1.29%) SLA
3 3 (0.97%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.65%) GMP
4 2 (0.65%) GxP
4 2 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.65%) NIST
5 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.32%) GDPR
5 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 94 (30.42%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (16.83%) Active Directory
3 47 (15.21%) vSphere
4 41 (13.27%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (8.74%) Docker
6 25 (8.09%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.53%) VMware NSX
8 10 (3.24%) KVM
9 9 (2.91%) NFS
10 7 (2.27%) Ceph
10 7 (2.27%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (1.94%) Firmware
12 3 (0.97%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.97%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.65%) HDFS
13 2 (0.65%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.32%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.32%) iptables
14 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.32%) Samba
Systems Management
1 71 (22.98%) Terraform
2 51 (16.50%) Kubernetes
3 49 (15.86%) Ansible
4 31 (10.03%) vCenter Server
5 16 (5.18%) Grafana
6 13 (4.21%) PowerCLI
7 12 (3.88%) Prometheus
8 9 (2.91%) SCOM
9 8 (2.59%) SCCM
9 8 (2.59%) VxRail
10 7 (2.27%) vMotion
11 6 (1.94%) Failover Clustering
11 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (1.94%) Podman
12 5 (1.62%) Proxmox
12 5 (1.62%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.29%) Argo
13 4 (1.29%) Avamar
13 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Clustering
13 4 (1.29%) Packer
Vendors
1 99 (32.04%) VMware
2 94 (30.42%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.39%) Cisco
4 22 (7.12%) Oracle
4 22 (7.12%) ServiceNow
5 17 (5.50%) Red Hat
6 16 (5.18%) NetApp
7 14 (4.53%) Dell
8 13 (4.21%) IBM
9 11 (3.56%) Veeam
10 10 (3.24%) Google
10 10 (3.24%) Qualys
11 9 (2.91%) CyberArk
11 9 (2.91%) Tenable
12 8 (2.59%) Databricks
12 8 (2.59%) Splunk
13 7 (2.27%) Commvault
13 7 (2.27%) SolarWinds
14 6 (1.94%) Palo Alto
15 5 (1.62%) Meraki
179 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide