Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 17 April 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 17 April 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
17 Apr 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 358 343 345
Rank change year-on-year -15 +2 +110
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 328 396 729
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.62% 0.68% 0.76%
As % of the System Software category 4.24% 4.40% 4.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 197 296 508
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £406 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £625 £545 £588
90th Percentile £675 £600 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £460
% change year-on-year -5.26% +3.26% +2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 6 21
10th Percentile £40.00 £13.50 £14.50
25th Percentile £40.31 £17.19 £16.04
Median hourly rate £42.50 £21.64 £36.67
Median % change year-on-year +96.37% -40.98% -23.33%
75th Percentile £45.25 £23.79 £41.00
90th Percentile £51.00 £41.90 £46.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £21.64 £16.18
% change year-on-year +103.30% +33.80% -73.04%

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 7,729 8,995 14,716
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.55% 15.51% 15.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,329 6,051 9,932
10th Percentile £233 £168 £180
25th Percentile £375 £320 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £563 £575
90th Percentile £650 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 289 496 652
10th Percentile £11.60 £11.26 £10.92
25th Percentile £13.95 £13.34 £12.76
Median hourly rate £20.00 £17.00 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% +6.25% +0.88%
75th Percentile £46.50 £22.00 £25.75
90th Percentile £60.05 £47.67 £47.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.55 £16.40 £15.37
% change year-on-year +7.01% +6.70% +2.47%

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 17 April 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
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 17 April 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 -32 248 £500 +5.26% 87
UK excluding London -11 134 £450 -5.26% 66
London +12 120 £520 +10.64% 26
Work from Home -159 115 £574 +27.56% 17
South East +19 55 £500 - 18
Midlands +28 20 £350 -22.22% 12
West Midlands +18 18 £350 -22.22% 7
North of England +17 18 £500 +33.33% 16
East of England +36 13 £500 +24.88% 5
South West +19 13 £475 -7.32% 10
Scotland +10 10 £418 -8.74% 5
Yorkshire +19 7 £500 +23.65% 6
North West +8 7 £360 -4.00% 8
Wales +25 5 £300 -
North East +36 4 £575 +4.55% 2
East Midlands +27 2 £306 -11.87% 5

For the 6 months to 17 April 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.

1 120 (36.59%) DevOps
2 118 (35.98%) Linux
3 114 (34.76%) Windows
4 96 (29.27%) Azure
5 91 (27.74%) Kubernetes
6 90 (27.44%) VMware
7 85 (25.91%) Ansible
8 84 (25.61%) Python
9 82 (25.00%) Terraform
10 76 (23.17%) Java
11 72 (21.95%) VMware Infrastructure
12 67 (20.43%) Jenkins
13 65 (19.82%) AWS
13 65 (19.82%) Microsoft
14 63 (19.21%) GCP
15 62 (18.90%) Active Directory
16 58 (17.68%) Git (software)
17 57 (17.38%) Migration
18 55 (16.77%) Security Cleared
19 54 (16.46%) Node.js
19 54 (16.46%) Opscode Chef
20 52 (15.85%) Agile Software Development
21 48 (14.63%) Maven
22 47 (14.33%) PowerShell
22 47 (14.33%) nginx
23 46 (14.02%) Firewall
23 46 (14.02%) Windows Server
24 45 (13.72%) gulp
24 45 (13.72%) Gradle
24 45 (13.72%) SQL

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 47 (14.33%) nginx
2 14 (4.27%) Cloud Foundry
2 14 (4.27%) SharePoint
3 12 (3.66%) Apache
4 10 (3.05%) MS Exchange
5 9 (2.74%) IIS
5 9 (2.74%) Skype for Business
6 7 (2.13%) Confluence
6 7 (2.13%) Tomcat
7 5 (1.52%) Apache Spark
7 5 (1.52%) MS Project Server
7 5 (1.52%) OpenStack
8 4 (1.22%) JBoss
9 3 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.30%) CICS
10 1 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
10 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.30%) WebSphere
Applications
1 5 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.22%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Sentinel
2 2 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.61%) Temenos T24
3 1 (0.30%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.30%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.30%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 96 (29.27%) Azure
2 65 (19.82%) AWS
3 63 (19.21%) GCP
4 44 (13.41%) npm
5 33 (10.06%) PaaS
6 29 (8.84%) Microsoft 365
7 25 (7.62%) IaaS
8 17 (5.18%) Serverless
9 16 (4.88%) Azure Active Directory
10 10 (3.05%) Cloud Computing
11 9 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
12 8 (2.44%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (2.13%) Azure Functions
14 6 (1.83%) Amazon EC2
14 6 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
15 5 (1.52%) OpenShift
16 4 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 4 (1.22%) Amazon ELB
16 4 (1.22%) AWS CodeDeploy
16 4 (1.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 46 (14.02%) Firewall
2 35 (10.67%) DNS
3 20 (6.10%) Network Security
4 16 (4.88%) DHCP
5 15 (4.57%) VPN
5 15 (4.57%) WAN
6 14 (4.27%) LAN
6 14 (4.27%) VSAN
7 13 (3.96%) Internet
7 13 (3.96%) SAN
8 12 (3.66%) HTTP
8 12 (3.66%) TCP/IP
9 11 (3.35%) Ethernet
9 11 (3.35%) NAS
10 10 (3.05%) Unified Communications
11 9 (2.74%) Skype
12 8 (2.44%) SSL
12 8 (2.44%) VLAN
13 5 (1.52%) iSCSI
14 4 (1.22%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (10.98%) BigQuery
2 18 (5.49%) MySQL
2 18 (5.49%) SQL Server
3 11 (3.35%) Big Data
4 10 (3.05%) MongoDB
5 9 (2.74%) Azure SQL Database
6 8 (2.44%) Amazon Aurora
6 8 (2.44%) Oracle Database
7 7 (2.13%) Redis
7 7 (2.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 5 (1.52%) MariaDB
8 5 (1.52%) Relational Database
8 5 (1.52%) SAP HANA
9 3 (0.91%) Apache Hive
9 3 (0.91%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.91%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.91%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.91%) HBase
9 3 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.61%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 67 (20.43%) Jenkins
2 58 (17.68%) Git (software)
3 48 (14.63%) Maven
4 45 (13.72%) Gradle
4 45 (13.72%) gulp
5 43 (13.11%) CircleCI
5 43 (13.11%) Travis CI
6 16 (4.88%) JIRA
7 10 (3.05%) SonarQube
8 6 (1.83%) Bitbucket
8 6 (1.83%) Octopus Deploy
8 6 (1.83%) Subversion
8 6 (1.83%) TeamCity
9 5 (1.52%) Artifactory
9 5 (1.52%) GitLab
9 5 (1.52%) JMeter
10 4 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.91%) ClearQuest
11 3 (0.91%) MSI
11 3 (0.91%) Visual Studio
General
1 41 (12.50%) Finance
2 17 (5.18%) Public Sector
3 10 (3.05%) Telecoms
4 9 (2.74%) Banking
5 5 (1.52%) Back Office
5 5 (1.52%) Front Office
5 5 (1.52%) Law
6 3 (0.91%) French Language
6 3 (0.91%) Legal
6 3 (0.91%) Retail
7 2 (0.61%) Billing
7 2 (0.61%) Manufacturing
7 2 (0.61%) Publishing
8 1 (0.30%) Danish Language
8 1 (0.30%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.30%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 70 (21.34%) DevOps Engineer
2 41 (12.50%) Architect
3 29 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
3 29 (8.84%) Consultant
4 18 (5.49%) Administrator
5 17 (5.18%) Developer
6 16 (4.88%) Kubernetes Engineer
7 14 (4.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
7 14 (4.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 11 (3.35%) AWS DevOps
8 11 (3.35%) AWS Engineer
8 11 (3.35%) Cloud Architect
8 11 (3.35%) Cloud Engineer
9 10 (3.05%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 10 (3.05%) Voice Engineer
10 9 (2.74%) Azure Architect
10 9 (2.74%) Security Consultant
10 9 (2.74%) VMware Engineer
11 8 (2.44%) DBA
11 8 (2.44%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (16.46%) Node.js
2 20 (6.10%) .NET
2 20 (6.10%) XML
3 16 (4.88%) Web Services
4 9 (2.74%) AngularJS
4 9 (2.74%) RESTful
5 8 (2.44%) .NET Core
5 8 (2.44%) J2EE
5 8 (2.44%) JSP
5 8 (2.44%) Middleware
5 8 (2.44%) Servlets
5 8 (2.44%) SOAP
6 7 (2.13%) JSON
6 7 (2.13%) REST
6 7 (2.13%) XML Schema
6 7 (2.13%) XSLT
7 5 (1.52%) ASP.NET
7 5 (1.52%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (1.52%) HTML
7 5 (1.52%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.67%) Data Centre
2 19 (5.79%) Analytical Skills
2 19 (5.79%) Clustering
3 17 (5.18%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.27%) Self-Motivation
5 12 (3.66%) Replication
6 11 (3.35%) Private Cloud
7 9 (2.74%) Tandem
7 9 (2.74%) Video Conferencing
8 6 (1.83%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (1.83%) Public Cloud
8 6 (1.83%) User Experience
9 5 (1.52%) Cloud Native
9 5 (1.52%) iPad
10 4 (1.22%) Enterprise Cloud
10 4 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.22%) PKI
11 3 (0.91%) CMDB
11 3 (0.91%) Device Driver
11 3 (0.91%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 118 (35.98%) Linux
2 114 (34.76%) Windows
3 46 (14.02%) Windows Server
4 39 (11.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (9.15%) Unix
6 22 (6.71%) Windows Server 2012
7 21 (6.40%) Windows Server 2008
8 19 (5.79%) Windows 10
9 16 (4.88%) Windows Server 2016
10 15 (4.57%) VMS
11 10 (3.05%) Windows Server 2019
12 7 (2.13%) CentOS
12 7 (2.13%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (1.83%) Solaris
13 6 (1.83%) Windows XP
14 5 (1.52%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (1.52%) Ubuntu
14 5 (1.52%) Windows Vista
15 3 (0.91%) Mac OS X
15 3 (0.91%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (36.59%) DevOps
2 57 (17.38%) Migration
3 52 (15.85%) Agile Software Development
4 42 (12.80%) Mentoring
5 41 (12.50%) Open Source
6 32 (9.76%) High Availability
7 29 (8.84%) Infrastructure as Code
8 27 (8.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 26 (7.93%) Capacity Planning
9 26 (7.93%) ITIL
9 26 (7.93%) Problem-Solving
10 22 (6.71%) Disaster Recovery
11 21 (6.40%) Configuration Management
11 21 (6.40%) Continuous Integration
12 16 (4.88%) Microservices
13 15 (4.57%) Scrum
13 15 (4.57%) Software Engineering
14 14 (4.27%) Information Security
15 13 (3.96%) Performance Monitoring
15 13 (3.96%) Resource Management
Programming Languages
1 84 (25.61%) Python
2 76 (23.17%) Java
3 47 (14.33%) PowerShell
4 45 (13.72%) SQL
5 38 (11.59%) Groovy
6 22 (6.71%) Bash Shell
7 17 (5.18%) C#
8 13 (3.96%) Shell Script
9 8 (2.44%) Perl
10 6 (1.83%) JavaScript
11 5 (1.52%) C++
11 5 (1.52%) PHP
11 5 (1.52%) VBScript
12 4 (1.22%) C
12 4 (1.22%) Go
12 4 (1.22%) Ruby
12 4 (1.22%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.91%) VB
14 2 (0.61%) Scala
14 2 (0.61%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 55 (16.77%) Security Cleared
2 35 (10.67%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.71%) DV Cleared
4 7 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
4 7 (2.13%) Degree
5 6 (1.83%) CISSP
6 5 (1.52%) CISM
7 4 (1.22%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 3 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (0.91%) PMI Certification
9 2 (0.61%) CAPM
9 2 (0.61%) CCNP
9 2 (0.61%) MCSE
9 2 (0.61%) PMP
9 2 (0.61%) VCAP
10 1 (0.30%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.30%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (0.30%) CCNA
10 1 (0.30%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.35%) QA
2 3 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (0.91%) SLA
3 2 (0.61%) Government Security Classifications
3 2 (0.61%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 1 (0.30%) Basel II
4 1 (0.30%) COBIT
4 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (0.30%) NCSC
4 1 (0.30%) NIST
4 1 (0.30%) PMO
System Software
1 72 (21.95%) VMware Infrastructure
2 62 (18.90%) Active Directory
3 40 (12.20%) Docker
4 38 (11.59%) VMware ESXi
5 26 (7.93%) Hyper-V
6 23 (7.01%) vSphere
7 19 (5.79%) VMware NSX
8 18 (5.49%) NFS
9 8 (2.44%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (2.13%) Microsoft App-V
10 7 (2.13%) Virtual Servers
11 6 (1.83%) Firmware
11 6 (1.83%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 6 (1.83%) VMFS
12 5 (1.52%) VirtualBox
12 5 (1.52%) VMware Server
13 4 (1.22%) DFS Replication
13 4 (1.22%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 3 (0.91%) Platform Symphony
14 3 (0.91%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 91 (27.74%) Kubernetes
2 85 (25.91%) Ansible
3 82 (25.00%) Terraform
4 54 (16.46%) Opscode Chef
5 34 (10.37%) Argo
6 24 (7.32%) Puppet
6 24 (7.32%) vCenter Server
7 22 (6.71%) vRealize
8 19 (5.79%) SCCM
9 15 (4.57%) SCOM
10 13 (3.96%) SCVMM
11 11 (3.35%) vRealize Orchestrator
12 10 (3.05%) Cisco CUCM
12 10 (3.05%) vMotion
13 9 (2.74%) Istio
13 9 (2.74%) Microsoft Clustering
14 7 (2.13%) Red Hat Satellite
14 7 (2.13%) WSUS
15 5 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
15 5 (1.52%) Red Hat Spacewalk
Vendors
1 90 (27.44%) VMware
2 65 (19.82%) Microsoft
3 44 (13.41%) Google
4 36 (10.98%) Oracle
5 31 (9.45%) Red Hat
6 25 (7.62%) Cisco
7 17 (5.18%) Dell
8 16 (4.88%) Citrix
8 16 (4.88%) HP
9 13 (3.96%) Palo Alto
10 9 (2.74%) Atlassian
10 9 (2.74%) CheckPoint
10 9 (2.74%) SAP
10 9 (2.74%) Sonus
11 8 (2.44%) ServiceNow
12 7 (2.13%) Veritas
13 6 (1.83%) F5
13 6 (1.83%) IBM
13 6 (1.83%) New Relic
13 6 (1.83%) SolarWinds