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

 6 months to
1 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 392 394 337
Rank change year-on-year +2 -57 -4
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 314 166 239
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.50% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 5.77% 4.19% 5.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 116 164
10th Percentile £391 £347 £345
25th Percentile £425 £424 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £711 £639 £662
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £500 £523
% change year-on-year -2.60% -4.31% -0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 5
10th Percentile £26.90 - -
25th Percentile £58.44 £33.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £77.50 £34.50 £14.63
Median % change year-on-year +124.64% +135.90% -81.42%
75th Percentile £92.11 £35.75 £83.55
90th Percentile - £50.45 £84.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 £58.50 £14.63
% change year-on-year +45.30% +300.00% -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 5,438 3,965 4,297
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.90% 11.99% 11.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,561 2,507 2,839
10th Percentile £225 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £371
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £588 £602
90th Percentile £682 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 119 102
10th Percentile £16.00 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £17.56 £19.30
Median hourly rate £62.82 £34.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +84.76% +23.64% -42.50%
75th Percentile £74.00 £69.88 £68.20
90th Percentile £90.00 £89.70 £83.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.48 £58.50 £30.50
% change year-on-year +8.51% +91.80% -20.88%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 +16 283 £500 +0.50% 244
UK excluding London +11 185 £487 -2.60% 148
London -56 101 £532 +5.87% 103
Work from Home -31 95 £487 +3.07% 80
North of England -12 77 £500 +19.05% 37
South East -17 59 £475 -17.39% 50
Yorkshire -9 44 £523 +13.45% 14
North West -20 31 £484 +48.92% 21
Midlands -44 17 £487 -1.62% 16
South West -34 16 £558 +1.36% 10
East of England -14 15 £353 -25.68% 27
West Midlands -36 12 £487 -2.84% 12
Scotland -22 6 £425 -19.05% 7
East Midlands -13 4 £500 +5.26% 4
North East - 2 £413 - 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 10 (3.18%) IIS
2 6 (1.91%) Confluence
2 6 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.59%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.96%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.64%) Apache
5 2 (0.64%) CMS
5 2 (0.64%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.32%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.27%) Adobe Illustrator
1 4 (1.27%) Photoshop
2 2 (0.64%) InDesign
2 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.64%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 148 (47.13%) Azure
2 70 (22.29%) Entra ID
3 42 (13.38%) AWS
4 37 (11.78%) Azure Monitor
5 33 (10.51%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (9.55%) IaaS
7 27 (8.60%) OpenShift
8 25 (7.96%) Azure AKS
9 24 (7.64%) GitHub
10 21 (6.69%) Microsoft 365
11 16 (5.10%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (4.78%) PaaS
13 14 (4.46%) Azure Key Vault
14 12 (3.82%) GCP
14 12 (3.82%) Serverless
15 11 (3.50%) Amazon EC2
15 11 (3.50%) Power Platform
15 11 (3.50%) SaaS
16 10 (3.18%) Azure Storage
16 10 (3.18%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 52 (16.56%) DNS
2 40 (12.74%) Firewall
3 29 (9.24%) VPN
4 21 (6.69%) DHCP
5 19 (6.05%) SSL
5 19 (6.05%) WAN
6 18 (5.73%) Network Security
7 17 (5.41%) VLAN
8 10 (3.18%) LAN
8 10 (3.18%) SD-WAN
9 9 (2.87%) HTTP
10 7 (2.23%) FTP
10 7 (2.23%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (1.91%) SAN
11 6 (1.91%) TCP/IP
11 6 (1.91%) VSAN
12 5 (1.59%) HTTPS
13 4 (1.27%) SSH
14 3 (0.96%) Kerberos
14 3 (0.96%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (10.51%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.78%) MySQL
3 11 (3.50%) Azure SQL Database
3 11 (3.50%) Power BI
3 11 (3.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (2.55%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.96%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.96%) Apache Hive
6 3 (0.96%) Big Data
6 3 (0.96%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.96%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.64%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.32%) Amazon QuickSight
8 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
8 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 17 (5.41%) Git
1 17 (5.41%) Jenkins
2 11 (3.50%) GitLab
3 8 (2.55%) JIRA
3 8 (2.55%) SonarQube
4 4 (1.27%) CppUnit
4 4 (1.27%) PVCS
4 4 (1.27%) Rational DOORS
5 3 (0.96%) Maven
5 3 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.96%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.64%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.64%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.32%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.32%) Selenium
7 1 (0.32%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 51 (16.24%) Social Skills
2 28 (8.92%) Finance
3 14 (4.46%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (3.50%) Legal
5 9 (2.87%) Banking
5 9 (2.87%) Public Sector
6 8 (2.55%) Manufacturing
7 7 (2.23%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.91%) Back Office
8 6 (1.91%) Front Office
9 5 (1.59%) Retail
10 4 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.27%) Law
10 4 (1.27%) Marketing
11 2 (0.64%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.64%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.64%) Local Government
11 2 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
11 2 (0.64%) Publishing
12 1 (0.32%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 50 (15.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 48 (15.29%) Azure Engineer
3 41 (13.06%) Cloud Engineer
4 32 (10.19%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (7.96%) Senior
6 23 (7.32%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
7 22 (7.01%) Lead
8 20 (6.37%) Architect
9 19 (6.05%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
10 13 (4.14%) Analyst
10 13 (4.14%) DBA
11 12 (3.82%) Platform Engineer
11 12 (3.82%) Wintel Engineer
12 11 (3.50%) Administrator
12 11 (3.50%) Consultant
12 11 (3.50%) Security Engineer
12 11 (3.50%) SQL DBA
13 9 (2.87%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.87%) Storage Engineer
14 8 (2.55%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (22.93%) Terraform
2 15 (4.78%) ARM Templates
3 10 (3.18%) JSON
4 8 (2.55%) Regular Expression
4 8 (2.55%) REST
5 7 (2.23%) LDAP
6 4 (1.27%) Middleware
6 4 (1.27%) YAML
7 3 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (0.96%) Web Services
8 2 (0.64%) ADO
8 2 (0.64%) SOAP
9 1 (0.32%) cloud-init
9 1 (0.32%) Java SE
9 1 (0.32%) Lambda Expressions
9 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Graph
9 1 (0.32%) NumPy
9 1 (0.32%) OpenTofu
9 1 (0.32%) SAP Basis
9 1 (0.32%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 38 (12.10%) Replication
2 31 (9.87%) Clustering
3 18 (5.73%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.46%) Data Centre
5 12 (3.82%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.82%) Enterprise Storage
5 12 (3.82%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.87%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (2.87%) PKI
6 9 (2.87%) Product Ownership
6 9 (2.87%) Public Cloud
7 8 (2.55%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.55%) Mainframe
8 7 (2.23%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (2.23%) Operational Technology
9 6 (1.91%) Fixed Income
9 6 (1.91%) Market Risk
9 6 (1.91%) Security Posture
9 6 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.27%) Device Driver
Operating Systems
1 109 (34.71%) Windows
2 67 (21.34%) Linux
3 64 (20.38%) Windows Server
4 28 (8.92%) VMS
5 25 (7.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (3.18%) Unix
7 6 (1.91%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.27%) Data ONTAP
8 4 (1.27%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.96%) AIX
9 3 (0.96%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.64%) Android
10 2 (0.64%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.64%) CoreOS
10 2 (0.64%) zOS
11 1 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.32%) Rocky
11 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (25.48%) CI/CD
2 79 (25.16%) DevOps
3 72 (22.93%) Migration
4 68 (21.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 67 (21.34%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (13.38%) RBAC
7 41 (13.06%) Disaster Recovery
8 40 (12.74%) Continuous Improvement
9 39 (12.42%) Validation
10 35 (11.15%) Performance Tuning
10 35 (11.15%) Runbook
11 34 (10.83%) High Availability
12 31 (9.87%) Problem-Solving
12 31 (9.87%) Stakeholder Management
13 30 (9.55%) ITIL
14 27 (8.60%) Platform Engineering
15 26 (8.28%) Cybersecurity
16 25 (7.96%) AI
17 24 (7.64%) Containerisation
17 24 (7.64%) Network Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 106 (33.76%) PowerShell
2 70 (22.29%) Python
3 37 (11.78%) SQL
4 33 (10.51%) Bash
5 14 (4.46%) Bicep
6 11 (3.50%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.55%) C
7 8 (2.55%) C#
7 8 (2.55%) Shell Script
8 7 (2.23%) Java
9 5 (1.59%) Groovy
10 4 (1.27%) C++
11 3 (0.96%) Embedded C
12 2 (0.64%) Korn
13 1 (0.32%) Cypher
13 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.32%) Go
13 1 (0.32%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.32%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 94 (29.94%) Security Cleared
2 80 (25.48%) SC Cleared
3 26 (8.28%) Microsoft Certification
4 22 (7.01%) Azure Certification
4 22 (7.01%) Degree
5 14 (4.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (3.82%) MCSA
6 12 (3.82%) MCSE
6 12 (3.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 11 (3.50%) DV Cleared
8 10 (3.18%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 8 (2.55%) VCAP
10 6 (1.91%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.59%) CCNA
11 5 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.59%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (0.96%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.96%) CCA
12 3 (0.96%) CISSP
12 3 (0.96%) Citrix Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.82%) QA
2 4 (1.27%) SLA
3 3 (0.96%) Accessibility
3 3 (0.96%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.64%) GMP
4 2 (0.64%) GxP
4 2 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.32%) NIST
5 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 95 (30.25%) VMware Infrastructure
2 66 (21.02%) Active Directory
3 39 (12.42%) vSphere
4 31 (9.87%) Hyper-V
4 31 (9.87%) VMware ESXi
5 28 (8.92%) Docker
6 13 (4.14%) NFS
7 9 (2.87%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (2.55%) VMware NSX
9 7 (2.23%) Ceph
10 6 (1.91%) Firmware
10 6 (1.91%) KVM
11 4 (1.27%) BitLocker
11 4 (1.27%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.96%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.64%) HDFS
13 2 (0.64%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.32%) Dovecot
14 1 (0.32%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 1 (0.32%) Squid
Systems Management
1 44 (14.01%) Kubernetes
2 42 (13.38%) Ansible
3 23 (7.32%) vCenter Server
4 18 (5.73%) Grafana
5 16 (5.10%) SCOM
6 12 (3.82%) Prometheus
7 11 (3.50%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (3.18%) SCCM
9 9 (2.87%) Failover Clustering
10 7 (2.23%) Packer
10 7 (2.23%) Podman
11 6 (1.91%) Proxmox
12 5 (1.59%) Microsoft Clustering
12 5 (1.59%) vMotion
13 4 (1.27%) Argo
13 4 (1.27%) OPNET
13 4 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (1.27%) WSUS
14 3 (0.96%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.96%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 118 (37.58%) Microsoft
2 100 (31.85%) VMware
3 28 (8.92%) Cisco
4 25 (7.96%) ServiceNow
5 19 (6.05%) Oracle
6 15 (4.78%) NetApp
7 13 (4.14%) Dell
8 12 (3.82%) CyberArk
9 11 (3.50%) Red Hat
9 11 (3.50%) Veeam
10 10 (3.18%) Google
10 10 (3.18%) IBM
10 10 (3.18%) Splunk
11 9 (2.87%) Commvault
11 9 (2.87%) SolarWinds
12 8 (2.55%) Qualys
13 7 (2.23%) Citrix
14 6 (1.91%) Databricks
14 6 (1.91%) Meraki
14 6 (1.91%) Palo Alto
269 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide