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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 398 333 313
Rank change year-on-year -65 -20 +7
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 239 202 294
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 0.69% 0.67%
As % of the System Software category 4.89% 5.40% 6.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 164 131 195
10th Percentile £355 £350 £278
25th Percentile £413 £452 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -7.88%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £608
90th Percentile £650 £744 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 26
10th Percentile - £35.23 -
25th Percentile - £59.38 £14.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.84%
75th Percentile - £66.00 £15.19
90th Percentile - - £88.75
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 4,890 3,740 4,750
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.63% 12.74% 10.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,328 2,559 3,242
10th Percentile £213 £214 £195
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £486
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +8.02% -7.43%
75th Percentile £588 £623 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £460
% change year-on-year -0.94% +4.24% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 92 232
10th Percentile £14.12 £15.10 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.19 £15.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £29.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +81.03% +28.89% -55.00%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £87.35 £87.83 £70.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £37.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% +78.57% -46.22%

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 17 April 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
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 17 April 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 -73 222 £500 -4.76% 57
UK excluding London -50 126 £488 -2.50% 48
London -70 92 £525 -8.70% 19
Work from Home -8 91 £500 - 28
North of England -19 76 £479 +26.59% 14
Yorkshire -15 44 £500 +14.29% 3
North West -19 31 £458 +20.21% 10
South East -52 18 £500 -6.45% 15
Midlands -73 14 £425 -15.00% 4
West Midlands -61 11 £375 -18.92% 3
East of England -36 10 £550 +2.33% 8
South West -29 8 £538 +0.47% 1
Scotland +2 5 £550 +7.32% 5
North East -20 1 £400 +10.34% 1
East Midlands -32 1 £500 -13.04% 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 5 (2.09%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (2.09%) OpenStack
2 3 (1.26%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.26%) Palantir Foundry
3 2 (0.84%) Apache
3 2 (0.84%) nginx
3 2 (0.84%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.42%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.42%) JBoss
4 1 (0.42%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (0.84%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (0.84%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.84%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 1 (0.42%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 105 (43.93%) Azure
2 44 (18.41%) AWS
3 34 (14.23%) OpenShift
4 33 (13.81%) GitHub
5 24 (10.04%) Azure DevOps
6 23 (9.62%) GitHub Actions
7 20 (8.37%) GCP
8 19 (7.95%) Serverless
9 17 (7.11%) Azure Monitor
9 17 (7.11%) Entra ID
10 12 (5.02%) Azure AKS
11 11 (4.60%) Azure Storage
11 11 (4.60%) Microsoft 365
12 9 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (3.35%) Azure Key Vault
13 8 (3.35%) PaaS
14 7 (2.93%) Azure Functions
15 6 (2.51%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
15 6 (2.51%) AWS CodePipeline
Communications & Networking
1 31 (12.97%) Firewall
2 27 (11.30%) DNS
3 16 (6.69%) VPN
4 15 (6.28%) VSAN
5 13 (5.44%) Network Security
6 12 (5.02%) DHCP
6 12 (5.02%) VLAN
7 10 (4.18%) SAN
7 10 (4.18%) SSL
8 9 (3.77%) Reverse Proxy
9 8 (3.35%) TCP/IP
10 6 (2.51%) WAN
11 5 (2.09%) FTP
12 4 (1.67%) SD-WAN
12 4 (1.67%) SSH
13 3 (1.26%) NAS
13 3 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.84%) Cisco Nexus
14 2 (0.84%) IPsec
14 2 (0.84%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (4.60%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.93%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (2.51%) DB2
4 6 (2.51%) Oracle Database
5 5 (2.09%) Power BI
6 4 (1.67%) Oracle Reports
7 3 (1.26%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (1.26%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.26%) Big Data
7 3 (1.26%) Data Hub
7 3 (1.26%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.26%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.26%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.26%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.26%) MySQL
8 2 (0.84%) Data Vault
8 2 (0.84%) ImageNet
Development Applications
1 31 (12.97%) Git
2 14 (5.86%) GitLab
3 9 (3.77%) JIRA
3 9 (3.77%) PVCS
4 8 (3.35%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.35%) Rational DOORS
5 3 (1.26%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.84%) JMeter
6 2 (0.84%) Postman
6 2 (0.84%) RStudio
6 2 (0.84%) Selenium
6 2 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.42%) Gradle
7 1 (0.42%) Terragrunt
General
1 29 (12.13%) Social Skills
2 17 (7.11%) Finance
3 15 (6.28%) Public Sector
4 11 (4.60%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (4.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 9 (3.77%) Banking
5 9 (3.77%) Legal
6 8 (3.35%) Electronics
7 4 (1.67%) Retail
8 2 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.84%) Front Office
8 2 (0.84%) Marketing
8 2 (0.84%) Social Science
8 2 (0.84%) Spanish Language
9 1 (0.42%) Advertising
9 1 (0.42%) Back Office
9 1 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.42%) Law
9 1 (0.42%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.42%) Police
Job Titles
1 29 (12.13%) DevOps Engineer
2 25 (10.46%) Azure Engineer
3 22 (9.21%) Senior
4 16 (6.69%) Architect
5 15 (6.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 12 (5.02%) VMware Engineer
7 11 (4.60%) Analyst
7 11 (4.60%) Cloud Engineer
8 10 (4.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
8 10 (4.18%) Consultant
8 10 (4.18%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 9 (3.77%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (3.77%) Security Engineer
9 9 (3.77%) Wintel Engineer
10 8 (3.35%) Lead
10 8 (3.35%) Migration Engineer
10 8 (3.35%) Site Engineer
10 8 (3.35%) Software Engineer
11 7 (2.93%) C/C++ Embedded Software Engineer
11 7 (2.93%) C/C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (3.35%) ARM Templates
1 8 (3.35%) REST
1 8 (3.35%) YAML
2 4 (1.67%) Middleware
3 3 (1.26%) Hugging Face
3 3 (1.26%) JSON
4 2 (0.84%) .NET
4 2 (0.84%) Kafka
4 2 (0.84%) OpenCV
4 2 (0.84%) PySpark
4 2 (0.84%) PyTorch
4 2 (0.84%) Regular Expression
4 2 (0.84%) SpaCy
4 2 (0.84%) TensorFlow
5 1 (0.42%) Node.js
5 1 (0.42%) NumPy
5 1 (0.42%) OpenID
5 1 (0.42%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 1 (0.42%) Pandas
5 1 (0.42%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.21%) Data Centre
2 17 (7.11%) Replication
3 15 (6.28%) Cloud Native
4 14 (5.86%) Clustering
5 13 (5.44%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (5.02%) Private Cloud
7 11 (4.60%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (3.77%) Product Ownership
9 6 (2.51%) FlexPod
9 6 (2.51%) Onboarding
10 5 (2.09%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (1.67%) Public Cloud
12 3 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.26%) SCADA
13 2 (0.84%) Celerra
13 2 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
13 2 (0.84%) Enterprise Storage
13 2 (0.84%) IBM XIV
13 2 (0.84%) PACS
13 2 (0.84%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 71 (29.71%) Linux
2 56 (23.43%) Windows
3 38 (15.90%) VMS
4 33 (13.81%) Windows Server
5 24 (10.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (2.93%) AIX
6 7 (2.93%) Data ONTAP
6 7 (2.93%) Unix
7 6 (2.51%) CoreOS
8 4 (1.67%) SUSE
9 3 (1.26%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.26%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.42%) Android
11 1 (0.42%) Rocky
11 1 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (29.71%) DevOps
2 66 (27.62%) CI/CD
3 56 (23.43%) Migration
4 48 (20.08%) Infrastructure as Code
5 35 (14.64%) High Availability
6 33 (13.81%) Disaster Recovery
7 30 (12.55%) Performance Tuning
8 28 (11.72%) Containerisation
8 28 (11.72%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 28 (11.72%) Network Virtualisation
9 24 (10.04%) Continuous Improvement
10 23 (9.62%) Platform Engineering
11 21 (8.79%) Technical Leadership
12 20 (8.37%) Cybersecurity
13 18 (7.53%) AI
13 18 (7.53%) Capacity Planning
13 18 (7.53%) Deployment Automation
14 17 (7.11%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (6.69%) Analytics
15 16 (6.69%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 66 (27.62%) Python
2 59 (24.69%) PowerShell
3 37 (15.48%) Bash
4 33 (13.81%) SQL
5 11 (4.60%) Shell Script
6 10 (4.18%) C
7 8 (3.35%) Bicep
7 8 (3.35%) C++
8 7 (2.93%) Embedded C
8 7 (2.93%) Embedded C++
9 6 (2.51%) Ruby
10 5 (2.09%) Java
11 4 (1.67%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.84%) C#
12 2 (0.84%) Korn
12 2 (0.84%) PHP
13 1 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.42%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.42%) RPG
13 1 (0.42%) VBA
Qualifications
1 55 (23.01%) Security Cleared
2 43 (17.99%) SC Cleared
3 17 (7.11%) OCP
3 17 (7.11%) Oracle Certification
4 15 (6.28%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 14 (5.86%) Azure Certification
6 12 (5.02%) VCAP
7 9 (3.77%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (3.35%) MCSA
8 8 (3.35%) MCSE
9 6 (2.51%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (1.26%) Degree
12 2 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 1 (0.42%) CCNP
13 1 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
13 1 (0.42%) CISSP
13 1 (0.42%) CompTIA Security+
13 1 (0.42%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.42%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.51%) GDPR
1 6 (2.51%) QA
2 3 (1.26%) Accessibility
2 3 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.42%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.42%) NIST
4 1 (0.42%) WCAG
System Software
1 69 (28.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 39 (16.32%) vSphere
3 36 (15.06%) VMware ESXi
4 31 (12.97%) Active Directory
5 27 (11.30%) Hyper-V
6 17 (7.11%) KVM
7 14 (5.86%) Docker
8 10 (4.18%) VMware NSX
9 9 (3.77%) Firmware
9 9 (3.77%) NFS
10 6 (2.51%) Ceph
11 5 (2.09%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.84%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (0.84%) HDFS
12 2 (0.84%) Xen
13 1 (0.42%) iptables
13 1 (0.42%) NLBS
13 1 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.42%) Samba
13 1 (0.42%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 69 (28.87%) Terraform
2 54 (22.59%) Ansible
2 54 (22.59%) Kubernetes
3 32 (13.39%) vCenter Server
4 13 (5.44%) PowerCLI
5 8 (3.35%) Grafana
5 8 (3.35%) SCCM
6 7 (2.93%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (2.93%) SnapMirror
7 6 (2.51%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 6 (2.51%) VxRail
8 5 (2.09%) WSUS
9 4 (1.67%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.67%) Failover Clustering
9 4 (1.67%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.67%) systemd
10 3 (1.26%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (1.26%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.84%) vMotion
Vendors
1 72 (30.13%) VMware
2 66 (27.62%) Microsoft
3 18 (7.53%) IBM
4 17 (7.11%) Red Hat
5 14 (5.86%) Cisco
6 12 (5.02%) Oracle
7 10 (4.18%) Dell
7 10 (4.18%) Google
7 10 (4.18%) NetApp
7 10 (4.18%) Tenable
8 8 (3.35%) ANSYS
9 6 (2.51%) OpenAI
9 6 (2.51%) Veeam
10 5 (2.09%) Databricks
10 5 (2.09%) Splunk
11 4 (1.67%) OpenText
11 4 (1.67%) Pure Storage
11 4 (1.67%) Qualys
11 4 (1.67%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.67%) Sophos