Virtual Machines Contracts

Virtual Machine (VM)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Virtual Machines skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Virtual Machines over the 6 months leading up to 19 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 320 303 317
Rank change year-on-year -17 +14 +80
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 193 279 441
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.66% 0.66% 0.77%
As % of the System Software category 5.33% 6.09% 5.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 191 292
10th Percentile £350 £310 £363
25th Percentile £456 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £541
Median % change year-on-year - -5.31% +3.10%
75th Percentile £613 £608 £588
90th Percentile £750 £675 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 27 19
10th Percentile - - £23.96
25th Percentile £33.25 £14.06 £28.25
Median hourly rate £63.00 £14.63 £66.00
Median % change year-on-year +330.77% -77.84% +13.04%
75th Percentile £65.25 £15.19 £70.13
90th Percentile £66.00 £86.97 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £14.63 £64.50
% change year-on-year +330.77% -77.33% -21.82%

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 3,618 4,582 7,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.37% 10.76% 13.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,449 3,168 5,308
10th Percentile £213 £200 £203
25th Percentile £388 £350 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £608 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £480
% change year-on-year +2.16% -3.13% +6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 230 260
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.06 £15.25
25th Percentile £15.44 £14.48 £18.25
Median hourly rate £28.21 £22.40 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.92% -58.52% +176.92%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £88.38 £80.00 £75.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.65 £19.18 £46.11
% change year-on-year +91.11% -58.41% +163.46%

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 19 May 2025.

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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 19 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram 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 19 May 2025. 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 -28 164 £524 +0.29% 237
London +20 89 £575 +7.48% 75
UK excluding London +6 81 £500 - 193
Work from Home +24 72 £506 +1.25% 175
North of England +1 23 £375 -36.84% 39
Midlands +25 20 £500 +25.00% 35
West Midlands +12 18 £500 +25.00% 19
North West +13 15 £375 -37.50% 21
East of England +21 12 £525 -12.79% 25
South East +3 12 £575 +4.55% 51
Scotland +11 9 £513 +15.49% 12
Yorkshire -5 5 £475 +40.74% 15
South West +33 4 £535 +21.80% 30
North East - 3 £363 - 3
East Midlands +12 2 £525 +61.54% 14
Wales +3 2 £300 -29.41% 6

Virtual Machines
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 13 (6.74%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (5.18%) WebSphere
3 7 (3.63%) Confluence
4 6 (3.11%) IIS
4 6 (3.11%) SharePoint
5 5 (2.59%) Skype for Business
6 4 (2.07%) Apache Spark
7 3 (1.55%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
7 3 (1.55%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (1.04%) BizTalk Server
9 1 (0.52%) Apache
9 1 (0.52%) JBoss
9 1 (0.52%) MTS
Applications
1 2 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.04%) Microsoft Project
1 2 (1.04%) Notion
1 2 (1.04%) Trello
2 1 (0.52%) Final Cut Pro
2 1 (0.52%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.52%) QuarkXPress
2 1 (0.52%) SketchUp
Business Applications
1 2 (1.04%) SAP IBP
1 2 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 89 (46.11%) Azure
2 35 (18.13%) AWS
3 31 (16.06%) Entra ID
4 24 (12.44%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (11.40%) Microsoft 365
6 20 (10.36%) Serverless
7 19 (9.84%) GCP
8 17 (8.81%) Azure Monitor
9 16 (8.29%) PaaS
9 16 (8.29%) SaaS
10 13 (6.74%) Azure AKS
10 13 (6.74%) Azure Functions
11 12 (6.22%) IaaS
12 11 (5.70%) Azure Logic Apps
13 9 (4.66%) Azure Event Grid
13 9 (4.66%) Cloud Computing
14 8 (4.15%) Azure API Management
14 8 (4.15%) GitHub
14 8 (4.15%) OCI
15 7 (3.63%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 33 (17.10%) Firewall
2 23 (11.92%) DNS
3 18 (9.33%) VPN
4 17 (8.81%) DHCP
5 13 (6.74%) TCP/IP
6 12 (6.22%) Network Security
7 11 (5.70%) SAN
8 7 (3.63%) WAN
9 5 (2.59%) Intrusion Detection
9 5 (2.59%) Skype
9 5 (2.59%) SNA
10 3 (1.55%) IMAP
10 3 (1.55%) NAS
10 3 (1.55%) NGFW
10 3 (1.55%) SMTP
10 3 (1.55%) VLAN
10 3 (1.55%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (1.04%) Broadband
11 2 (1.04%) VoIP
11 2 (1.04%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (6.74%) Azure SQL Database
2 12 (6.22%) SQL Server
3 10 (5.18%) DB2
4 5 (2.59%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (2.07%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.55%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.55%) Hadoop
6 3 (1.55%) Oracle Database
6 3 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (1.55%) Power BI
6 3 (1.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (1.04%) Big Data
7 2 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (1.04%) MySQL
8 1 (0.52%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.52%) Apache Hive
8 1 (0.52%) HBase
8 1 (0.52%) HDInsight
8 1 (0.52%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.52%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 10 (5.18%) Git
2 9 (4.66%) Jenkins
2 9 (4.66%) JIRA
3 5 (2.59%) GitLab
4 1 (0.52%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.52%) Maven
4 1 (0.52%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 31 (16.06%) Social Skills
2 29 (15.03%) Finance
3 23 (11.92%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (7.77%) Public Sector
5 7 (3.63%) Banking
6 6 (3.11%) Financial Institution
6 6 (3.11%) Marketing
6 6 (3.11%) Telecoms
7 4 (2.07%) Law
7 4 (2.07%) Legal
8 3 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.04%) Electronics
9 2 (1.04%) Manufacturing
9 2 (1.04%) Retail
10 1 (0.52%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.52%) Arabic Language
10 1 (0.52%) Dutch Language
10 1 (0.52%) French Language
10 1 (0.52%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 46 (23.83%) Architect
2 18 (9.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 18 (9.33%) Solutions Architect
3 17 (8.81%) Cloud Architect
3 17 (8.81%) Senior
3 17 (8.81%) Technical Architect
4 14 (7.25%) Azure Architect
4 14 (7.25%) Azure Engineer
4 14 (7.25%) Security Engineer
5 12 (6.22%) Consultant
6 11 (5.70%) Cloud Engineer
6 11 (5.70%) Operations Engineer
7 9 (4.66%) Cloud Infrastructure Architect
7 9 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
8 8 (4.15%) Automation Engineer
8 8 (4.15%) Lead
9 7 (3.63%) Administrator
9 7 (3.63%) Developer
9 7 (3.63%) Oracle Architect
9 7 (3.63%) Systems Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (6.22%) ARM Templates
2 6 (3.11%) Middleware
3 4 (2.07%) Azure Blueprints
3 4 (2.07%) CSS
3 4 (2.07%) HTML
3 4 (2.07%) RESTful
3 4 (2.07%) Web Services
3 4 (2.07%) XHTML
4 3 (1.55%) .NET
4 3 (1.55%) YAML
5 2 (1.04%) OAuth
5 2 (1.04%) OpenID
5 2 (1.04%) SAML
6 1 (0.52%) ADO
6 1 (0.52%) JSP
6 1 (0.52%) Kafka
6 1 (0.52%) Node.js
6 1 (0.52%) React
6 1 (0.52%) REST
6 1 (0.52%) STL
Miscellaneous
1 14 (7.25%) Management Information System
2 12 (6.22%) Mainframe
3 11 (5.70%) Data Centre
3 11 (5.70%) Product Ownership
4 10 (5.18%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (3.63%) Cloud Native
5 7 (3.63%) Cyber Threat
6 6 (3.11%) Linux Command Line
6 6 (3.11%) Public Cloud
7 5 (2.59%) PKI
7 5 (2.59%) Private Cloud
7 5 (2.59%) Replication
8 4 (2.07%) Onboarding
8 4 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (1.55%) Blackberry
9 3 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.55%) Reinsurance
10 2 (1.04%) Clustering
10 2 (1.04%) Hedge funds
10 2 (1.04%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 53 (27.46%) Windows
2 33 (17.10%) Windows Server
3 28 (14.51%) Linux
4 12 (6.22%) Unix
5 11 (5.70%) Windows Server 2019
6 10 (5.18%) Windows Server 2012
6 10 (5.18%) Windows Server 2016
7 9 (4.66%) VMS
8 5 (2.59%) Windows 10
8 5 (2.59%) Windows 7
8 5 (2.59%) zOS
9 4 (2.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (1.55%) Windows XP
11 2 (1.04%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.52%) AIX
12 1 (0.52%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.52%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.52%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (25.39%) DevOps
2 48 (24.87%) Problem-Solving
3 36 (18.65%) Migration
4 32 (16.58%) High Availability
5 31 (16.06%) CI/CD
6 29 (15.03%) Agile
7 26 (13.47%) Infrastructure as Code
8 25 (12.95%) Cloud Security
9 23 (11.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 20 (10.36%) Disaster Recovery
11 19 (9.84%) ITIL
12 18 (9.33%) Project Management
13 17 (8.81%) Analytics
14 15 (7.77%) Roadmaps
15 14 (7.25%) Incident Response
15 14 (7.25%) RBAC
16 13 (6.74%) Security Operations
17 12 (6.22%) Patch Management
17 12 (6.22%) SIEM
17 12 (6.22%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 38 (19.69%) PowerShell
2 32 (16.58%) SQL
3 29 (15.03%) Python
4 14 (7.25%) Bash
5 13 (6.74%) Bicep
6 8 (4.15%) C#
7 7 (3.63%) JavaScript
8 6 (3.11%) Shell Script
9 5 (2.59%) JCL
10 4 (2.07%) Java
10 4 (2.07%) PHP
11 2 (1.04%) Perl
11 2 (1.04%) REXX
12 1 (0.52%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.52%) ActionScript 2.0
12 1 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.52%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.52%) VB
12 1 (0.52%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 47 (24.35%) Security Cleared
2 38 (19.69%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.25%) Degree
4 13 (6.74%) Azure Certification
5 7 (3.63%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.59%) MCSE
8 4 (2.07%) DV Cleared
8 4 (2.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (1.55%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.55%) CTC Cleared
10 2 (1.04%) PMI Certification
10 2 (1.04%) PMP
11 1 (0.52%) CCIE
11 1 (0.52%) CCNP
11 1 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.52%) IBM Certification
11 1 (0.52%) MCSA
11 1 (0.52%) OCP
11 1 (0.52%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.66%) GDPR
2 8 (4.15%) SLA
3 5 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (2.07%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.07%) NCSC
4 4 (2.07%) NIST
4 4 (2.07%) SOC 2
5 3 (1.55%) GRC
5 3 (1.55%) HIPAA
5 3 (1.55%) PCI DSS
6 2 (1.04%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.52%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 1 (0.52%) Basel III
7 1 (0.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.52%) GxP
System Software
1 58 (30.05%) Active Directory
2 37 (19.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (8.29%) VMware ESXi
4 13 (6.74%) Hyper-V
5 10 (5.18%) Docker
6 6 (3.11%) vSphere
7 5 (2.59%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (2.07%) VMware NSX
9 3 (1.55%) KVM
10 1 (0.52%) Apache Flume
10 1 (0.52%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 33 (17.10%) Terraform
2 23 (11.92%) Kubernetes
3 16 (8.29%) Ansible
3 16 (8.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (7.77%) vCenter Server
5 14 (7.25%) WSUS
6 10 (5.18%) SCCM
7 5 (2.59%) Data Guard
7 5 (2.59%) Microsoft Clustering
7 5 (2.59%) NetApp OnCommand
7 5 (2.59%) Tivoli NetView
7 5 (2.59%) vMotion
7 5 (2.59%) vRealize
8 3 (1.55%) Puppet
8 3 (1.55%) SCOM
9 2 (1.04%) CASB
9 2 (1.04%) Proxmox
9 2 (1.04%) SCOrch
9 2 (1.04%) vRealize Orchestrator
10 1 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 70 (36.27%) Microsoft
2 40 (20.73%) VMware
3 17 (8.81%) Google
3 17 (8.81%) Oracle
4 15 (7.77%) Palo Alto
5 12 (6.22%) IBM
6 7 (3.63%) Cisco
7 6 (3.11%) Citrix
7 6 (3.11%) ServiceNow
8 5 (2.59%) Fortinet
8 5 (2.59%) SAP
9 4 (2.07%) Broadcom
9 4 (2.07%) NetApp
9 4 (2.07%) Veeam
10 3 (1.55%) Qualys
10 3 (1.55%) Rapid7
10 3 (1.55%) Sophos
11 2 (1.04%) Apple
11 2 (1.04%) Red Hat
11 2 (1.04%) Symantec
282 Virtual Machines jobs Nationwide