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

 6 months to
6 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 379 378 326
Rank change year-on-year -1 -52 -3
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 311 177 251
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.54% 0.64%
As % of the System Software category 5.90% 4.57% 5.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 192 124 169
10th Percentile £385 £350 £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 £583 £600 £608
90th Percentile £673 £725 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £494 £575
% change year-on-year -1.62% -14.09% +9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 15
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 - £56.21
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 5,269 3,872 4,470
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.88% 11.76% 11.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,462 2,489 3,092
10th Percentile £220 £225 £217
25th Percentile £400 £384 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.91%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £499
% change year-on-year - -4.81% +5.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 216 103 147
10th Percentile £15.78 £13.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.94 £15.71
Median hourly rate £52.50 £32.77 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +60.21% +37.69% -52.40%
75th Percentile £74.00 £79.35 £58.69
90th Percentile £79.25 £91.50 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £61.50 £24.18
% change year-on-year -14.63% +154.34% -10.44%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +33 288 £500 - 88
UK excluding London +1 177 £486 -1.62% 54
London -33 113 £525 - 43
Work from Home -37 92 £500 - 55
North of England -3 84 £485 +16.52% 10
South East -16 55 £475 -20.83% 20
Yorkshire -14 47 £500 +11.86% 2
North West -21 35 £480 +37.14% 8
Midlands -52 17 £487 +2.53% 3
South West -32 15 £540 -8.09% 8
West Midlands -59 11 £406 -11.74% 3
East of England -14 6 £425 +41.67% 10
Scotland -9 5 £375 -26.83% 4
East Midlands -5 4 £500 +5.26%
North East - 2 £400 -

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 (1.61%) Confluence
1 5 (1.61%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.96%) Apache
3 3 (0.96%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.64%) CMS
4 2 (0.64%) IIS
4 2 (0.64%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.64%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.64%) 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 (0.64%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.64%) InDesign
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.64%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 144 (46.30%) Azure
2 49 (15.76%) AWS
2 49 (15.76%) Entra ID
3 35 (11.25%) Azure DevOps
3 35 (11.25%) Azure Monitor
4 30 (9.65%) OpenShift
5 26 (8.36%) GitHub
6 23 (7.40%) Azure AKS
7 20 (6.43%) IaaS
8 17 (5.47%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (5.47%) Microsoft 365
8 17 (5.47%) Serverless
9 16 (5.14%) GCP
10 13 (4.18%) Azure Key Vault
11 12 (3.86%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 11 (3.54%) Azure Storage
12 11 (3.54%) Power Platform
13 10 (3.22%) Azure Functions
13 10 (3.22%) PaaS
14 9 (2.89%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 45 (14.47%) DNS
2 42 (13.50%) Firewall
3 28 (9.00%) VPN
4 22 (7.07%) SSL
4 22 (7.07%) VLAN
5 21 (6.75%) Network Security
6 20 (6.43%) DHCP
7 18 (5.79%) VSAN
8 17 (5.47%) WAN
9 10 (3.22%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.57%) FTP
11 7 (2.25%) LAN
12 6 (1.93%) SAN
12 6 (1.93%) SSH
12 6 (1.93%) TCP/IP
13 5 (1.61%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (1.29%) HTTPS
15 3 (0.96%) Cisco Nexus
16 2 (0.64%) NAS
16 2 (0.64%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (9.65%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.54%) Azure SQL Database
2 11 (3.54%) Power BI
3 10 (3.22%) MySQL
4 8 (2.57%) Data Lake
4 8 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
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%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.96%) Db2
6 3 (0.96%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.96%) Hadoop
6 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.32%) MariaDB
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.32%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 17 (5.47%) Git
2 13 (4.18%) Jenkins
3 9 (2.89%) GitLab
4 6 (1.93%) JIRA
5 4 (1.29%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.96%) PVCS
6 3 (0.96%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.64%) CppUnit
7 2 (0.64%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.64%) 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 43 (13.83%) Social Skills
2 29 (9.32%) Finance
3 16 (5.14%) Legal
4 13 (4.18%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.54%) Banking
6 10 (3.22%) Public Sector
7 7 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (2.25%) Retail
8 6 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.93%) Front Office
8 6 (1.93%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.29%) Marketing
10 2 (0.64%) Law
10 2 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.64%) 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 44 (14.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 39 (12.54%) Azure Engineer
3 37 (11.90%) DevOps Engineer
4 31 (9.97%) Cloud Engineer
5 25 (8.04%) Senior
6 22 (7.07%) Lead
7 17 (5.47%) Architect
7 17 (5.47%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 16 (5.14%) Analyst
8 16 (5.14%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
9 11 (3.54%) Administrator
9 11 (3.54%) Consultant
10 10 (3.22%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (2.89%) DBA
11 9 (2.89%) Platform Engineer
11 9 (2.89%) VMware Engineer
11 9 (2.89%) Wintel Engineer
12 8 (2.57%) Azure DevOps Engineer
12 8 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
12 8 (2.57%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (4.18%) ARM Templates
2 9 (2.89%) REST
3 8 (2.57%) YAML
4 5 (1.61%) Middleware
5 3 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (0.96%) JSON
6 2 (0.64%) SOAP
7 1 (0.32%) .NET
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%) PySpark
7 1 (0.32%) SciPy
7 1 (0.32%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 32 (10.29%) Replication
2 20 (6.43%) Clustering
2 20 (6.43%) Hybrid Cloud
3 17 (5.47%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.50%) Linux Command Line
5 9 (2.89%) Cloud Native
6 8 (2.57%) PKI
6 8 (2.57%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.25%) Enterprise Storage
7 7 (2.25%) Mainframe
7 7 (2.25%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.25%) Public Cloud
8 6 (1.93%) Fixed Income
8 6 (1.93%) Market Risk
8 6 (1.93%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.61%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.29%) FlexPod
11 3 (0.96%) EMC VNX
11 3 (0.96%) IBM XIV
Operating Systems
1 97 (31.19%) Windows
2 83 (26.69%) Linux
3 54 (17.36%) Windows Server
4 37 (11.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 31 (9.97%) VMS
6 8 (2.57%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.57%) Unix
7 6 (1.93%) AIX
7 6 (1.93%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.61%) Data ONTAP
8 5 (1.61%) SUSE
9 4 (1.29%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.32%) Android
12 1 (0.32%) Rocky
12 1 (0.32%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (26.37%) DevOps
2 75 (24.12%) CI/CD
3 64 (20.58%) Migration
4 61 (19.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 56 (18.01%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (13.50%) Performance Tuning
7 41 (13.18%) High Availability
8 38 (12.22%) Disaster Recovery
9 33 (10.61%) RBAC
9 33 (10.61%) Validation
10 32 (10.29%) Problem-Solving
11 31 (9.97%) Continuous Improvement
12 30 (9.65%) Network Virtualisation
13 27 (8.68%) Vulnerability Management
14 25 (8.04%) Capacity Planning
14 25 (8.04%) Stakeholder Management
15 24 (7.72%) Analytics
15 24 (7.72%) Platform Engineering
15 24 (7.72%) Runbook
16 23 (7.40%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 89 (28.62%) PowerShell
2 66 (21.22%) Python
3 43 (13.83%) SQL
4 39 (12.54%) Bash
5 10 (3.22%) Bicep
6 8 (2.57%) C
7 7 (2.25%) C#
8 6 (1.93%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.93%) T-SQL
9 4 (1.29%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.96%) Java
10 3 (0.96%) Korn
11 2 (0.64%) C++
11 2 (0.64%) Embedded C
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%) RPG
12 1 (0.32%) VBA
Qualifications
1 80 (25.72%) Security Cleared
2 65 (20.90%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.43%) Azure Certification
4 17 (5.47%) Degree
4 17 (5.47%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (4.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 11 (3.54%) VCAP
7 10 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.22%) MCSA
7 10 (3.22%) MCSE
8 7 (2.25%) OCP
8 7 (2.25%) Oracle Certification
9 6 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (1.93%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.93%) ISTQB
9 6 (1.93%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 5 (1.61%) CCNA
10 5 (1.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 4 (1.29%) CISSP
12 3 (0.96%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.22%) QA
2 4 (1.29%) SLA
3 2 (0.64%) GMP
3 2 (0.64%) GxP
3 2 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.64%) NIST
3 2 (0.64%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.32%) GDPR
4 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 92 (29.58%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (16.40%) Active Directory
3 47 (15.11%) vSphere
4 40 (12.86%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (8.68%) Docker
6 24 (7.72%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.50%) VMware NSX
8 11 (3.54%) KVM
9 9 (2.89%) NFS
10 7 (2.25%) Ceph
10 7 (2.25%) Firmware
11 6 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.96%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.96%) VMware Workstation
13 2 (0.64%) HDFS
13 2 (0.64%) 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 70 (22.51%) Terraform
2 50 (16.08%) Ansible
2 50 (16.08%) Kubernetes
3 31 (9.97%) vCenter Server
4 16 (5.14%) Grafana
5 13 (4.18%) PowerCLI
6 12 (3.86%) Prometheus
7 9 (2.89%) SCOM
8 8 (2.57%) SCCM
9 7 (2.25%) vMotion
10 6 (1.93%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (1.93%) Podman
10 6 (1.93%) VxRail
11 5 (1.61%) Proxmox
11 5 (1.61%) SnapMirror
12 4 (1.29%) Argo
12 4 (1.29%) Avamar
12 4 (1.29%) Failover Clustering
12 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Clustering
12 4 (1.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 97 (31.19%) VMware
2 93 (29.90%) Microsoft
3 29 (9.32%) Cisco
4 22 (7.07%) Oracle
4 22 (7.07%) ServiceNow
5 17 (5.47%) Red Hat
6 16 (5.14%) NetApp
7 14 (4.50%) Dell
8 13 (4.18%) IBM
9 11 (3.54%) Google
9 11 (3.54%) Veeam
10 10 (3.22%) Qualys
11 9 (2.89%) CyberArk
11 9 (2.89%) Tenable
12 8 (2.57%) Databricks
13 7 (2.25%) Commvault
13 7 (2.25%) SolarWinds
13 7 (2.25%) Splunk
14 6 (1.93%) Palo Alto
15 5 (1.61%) Meraki
104 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide