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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 381 389 304
Rank change year-on-year +8 -85 +17
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 299 165 256
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.50% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 5.65% 4.32% 5.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 114 169
10th Percentile £390 £350 £344
25th Percentile £425 £421 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £588 £584 £608
90th Percentile £675 £654 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £493 £570
% change year-on-year -0.86% -13.51% +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 5,289 3,817 4,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.91% 11.60% 11.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,485 2,427 3,081
10th Percentile £225 £231 £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 £606
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 214 108 143
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £14.06
25th Percentile £22.56 £18.03 £16.50
Median hourly rate £54.00 £33.64 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +60.55% +39.10% -49.45%
75th Percentile £74.00 £80.00 £59.28
90th Percentile £84.63 £91.50 £71.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.37 £63.50 £26.00
% change year-on-year -6.51% +144.23% +4.00%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +16 278 £500 - 95
UK excluding London +11 172 £489 -0.86% 58
London -49 107 £532 +3.80% 47
Work from Home -23 88 £500 +3.90% 55
North of England -2 79 £492 +17.18% 10
South East -28 54 £475 -15.56% 20
Yorkshire -10 42 £508 +13.53% 2
North West -10 36 £480 +42.22% 7
South West -32 17 £540 -8.09% 8
Midlands -48 17 £487 +2.53% 7
West Midlands -57 11 £406 -11.74% 6
East of England -14 6 £425 +41.67% 10
Scotland -10 4 £375 -25.93% 4
East Midlands -18 4 £500 +5.26% 1
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 5 (1.67%) Confluence
1 5 (1.67%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.00%) Apache
3 3 (1.00%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.00%) IIS
4 2 (0.67%) CMS
4 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.67%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.33%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.33%) JBoss
5 1 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (0.33%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.34%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.34%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.67%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.67%) InDesign
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 140 (46.82%) Azure
2 51 (17.06%) Entra ID
3 47 (15.72%) AWS
4 35 (11.71%) Azure Monitor
5 32 (10.70%) Azure DevOps
6 29 (9.70%) OpenShift
7 27 (9.03%) Azure AKS
8 26 (8.70%) GitHub
9 21 (7.02%) IaaS
10 19 (6.35%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (5.02%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (5.02%) Serverless
12 13 (4.35%) Azure Key Vault
12 13 (4.35%) GCP
13 12 (4.01%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 11 (3.68%) PaaS
15 10 (3.34%) Azure Storage
15 10 (3.34%) Power Platform
16 9 (3.01%) Azure Functions
16 9 (3.01%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 43 (14.38%) DNS
2 41 (13.71%) Firewall
3 26 (8.70%) VPN
4 22 (7.36%) VLAN
5 21 (7.02%) Network Security
5 21 (7.02%) SSL
6 20 (6.69%) DHCP
6 20 (6.69%) VSAN
7 17 (5.69%) WAN
8 10 (3.34%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.68%) FTP
10 7 (2.34%) LAN
11 6 (2.01%) SAN
12 5 (1.67%) SSH
12 5 (1.67%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.34%) HTTPS
14 3 (1.00%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (1.00%) TCP/IP
15 2 (0.67%) NAS
15 2 (0.67%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.04%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.68%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (3.34%) MySQL
3 10 (3.34%) Power BI
4 8 (2.68%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 3 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (1.00%) Apache Hive
6 3 (1.00%) Big Data
6 3 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.00%) Db2
6 3 (1.00%) DynamoDB
6 3 (1.00%) Hadoop
6 3 (1.00%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.33%) MariaDB
7 1 (0.33%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.33%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (5.35%) Git
2 12 (4.01%) Jenkins
3 8 (2.68%) GitLab
4 6 (2.01%) JIRA
5 4 (1.34%) SonarQube
6 3 (1.00%) PVCS
6 3 (1.00%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.67%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.67%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.33%) Selenium
8 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 42 (14.05%) Social Skills
2 27 (9.03%) Finance
3 13 (4.35%) Legal
4 12 (4.01%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.68%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (3.34%) Banking
7 7 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (2.34%) Retail
8 6 (2.01%) Front Office
9 5 (1.67%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.34%) Marketing
11 2 (0.67%) Law
11 2 (0.67%) Local Government
11 2 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.67%) Publishing
12 1 (0.33%) Advertising
12 1 (0.33%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.33%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.33%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (14.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (11.37%) Azure Engineer
3 32 (10.70%) Cloud Engineer
4 31 (10.37%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (8.70%) Senior
6 22 (7.36%) Lead
7 18 (6.02%) Architect
8 17 (5.69%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (5.35%) Analyst
10 15 (5.02%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (3.68%) Consultant
12 10 (3.34%) Administrator
12 10 (3.34%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (3.01%) DBA
13 9 (3.01%) Storage Engineer
13 9 (3.01%) VMware Engineer
13 9 (3.01%) Wintel Engineer
14 8 (2.68%) Migration Engineer
14 8 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
14 8 (2.68%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.68%) ARM Templates
2 8 (2.68%) REST
2 8 (2.68%) YAML
3 5 (1.67%) Middleware
4 3 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.00%) JSON
5 2 (0.67%) SOAP
6 1 (0.33%) ADO
6 1 (0.33%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.33%) Java SE
6 1 (0.33%) Lambda Expressions
6 1 (0.33%) LDAP
6 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.33%) Node.js
6 1 (0.33%) NumPy
6 1 (0.33%) OpenID
6 1 (0.33%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 1 (0.33%) Pandas
6 1 (0.33%) SciPy
6 1 (0.33%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 33 (11.04%) Replication
2 23 (7.69%) Clustering
3 18 (6.02%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.68%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.68%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (2.68%) Cloud Native
5 8 (2.68%) Enterprise Storage
5 8 (2.68%) PKI
5 8 (2.68%) Product Ownership
6 7 (2.34%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.34%) Onboarding
6 7 (2.34%) Public Cloud
6 7 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
7 6 (2.01%) Fixed Income
7 6 (2.01%) Market Risk
7 6 (2.01%) Operational Technology
8 5 (1.67%) Security Posture
9 3 (1.00%) Celerra
9 3 (1.00%) SCADA
9 3 (1.00%) Symmetrix DMX
Operating Systems
1 100 (33.44%) Windows
2 80 (26.76%) Linux
3 58 (19.40%) Windows Server
4 36 (12.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (10.37%) VMS
6 8 (2.68%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.68%) Unix
7 6 (2.01%) AIX
8 5 (1.67%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.67%) SUSE
9 4 (1.34%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (1.00%) Apple iOS
10 3 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (1.00%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.33%) Android
11 1 (0.33%) Rocky
11 1 (0.33%) Solaris
11 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (25.75%) DevOps
2 74 (24.75%) CI/CD
3 65 (21.74%) Migration
4 63 (21.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 55 (18.39%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (14.05%) Performance Tuning
7 40 (13.38%) High Availability
8 37 (12.37%) Disaster Recovery
9 36 (12.04%) Validation
10 34 (11.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 33 (11.04%) RBAC
12 30 (10.03%) Problem-Solving
13 29 (9.70%) Network Virtualisation
14 26 (8.70%) Runbook
14 26 (8.70%) Stakeholder Management
15 25 (8.36%) Capacity Planning
16 24 (8.03%) Platform Engineering
16 24 (8.03%) Vulnerability Management
17 22 (7.36%) Analytics
17 22 (7.36%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 86 (28.76%) PowerShell
2 62 (20.74%) Python
3 42 (14.05%) SQL
4 36 (12.04%) Bash
5 11 (3.68%) Bicep
6 9 (3.01%) C#
7 6 (2.01%) C
7 6 (2.01%) Shell Script
7 6 (2.01%) T-SQL
8 4 (1.34%) Korn
8 4 (1.34%) PL/SQL
9 3 (1.00%) Java
10 2 (0.67%) C++
10 2 (0.67%) Embedded C
11 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.33%) Go
11 1 (0.33%) Groovy
11 1 (0.33%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.33%) RPG
11 1 (0.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 81 (27.09%) Security Cleared
2 66 (22.07%) SC Cleared
3 19 (6.35%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.69%) Degree
4 17 (5.69%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (5.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.68%) VCAP
7 10 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.34%) MCSA
7 10 (3.34%) MCSE
8 6 (2.01%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.01%) ISTQB
8 6 (2.01%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 6 (2.01%) OCP
8 6 (2.01%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.67%) CCNA
9 5 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.67%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 3 (1.00%) PMI Certification
10 3 (1.00%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.34%) QA
2 4 (1.34%) SLA
3 3 (1.00%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.67%) GMP
4 2 (0.67%) GxP
4 2 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.67%) NIST
5 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.33%) GDPR
5 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 94 (31.44%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (17.06%) Active Directory
3 47 (15.72%) vSphere
4 41 (13.71%) VMware ESXi
5 26 (8.70%) Hyper-V
6 25 (8.36%) Docker
7 14 (4.68%) VMware NSX
8 10 (3.34%) KVM
9 8 (2.68%) NFS
9 8 (2.68%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (2.34%) Ceph
11 6 (2.01%) Firmware
12 3 (1.00%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (1.00%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.67%) HDFS
13 2 (0.67%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.33%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.33%) iptables
14 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.33%) Samba
Systems Management
1 67 (22.41%) Terraform
2 50 (16.72%) Kubernetes
3 45 (15.05%) Ansible
4 31 (10.37%) vCenter Server
5 16 (5.35%) Grafana
6 13 (4.35%) PowerCLI
7 12 (4.01%) Prometheus
8 9 (3.01%) SCOM
9 8 (2.68%) SCCM
9 8 (2.68%) VxRail
10 7 (2.34%) Failover Clustering
10 7 (2.34%) vMotion
11 6 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (2.01%) Podman
12 5 (1.67%) Microsoft Clustering
12 5 (1.67%) Proxmox
13 4 (1.34%) Argo
13 4 (1.34%) Avamar
13 4 (1.34%) Packer
13 4 (1.34%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 99 (33.11%) VMware
2 95 (31.77%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.70%) Cisco
4 22 (7.36%) Oracle
5 21 (7.02%) ServiceNow
6 16 (5.35%) NetApp
6 16 (5.35%) Red Hat
7 15 (5.02%) Dell
8 13 (4.35%) IBM
9 11 (3.68%) Veeam
10 10 (3.34%) Qualys
11 9 (3.01%) CyberArk
11 9 (3.01%) Google
12 7 (2.34%) Commvault
12 7 (2.34%) Databricks
12 7 (2.34%) SolarWinds
12 7 (2.34%) Splunk
12 7 (2.34%) Tenable
13 5 (1.67%) Meraki
13 5 (1.67%) Palo Alto