Virtual Servers Contract Job Trends

Virtual Servers
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Virtual Servers skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 29 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 644 498 537
Rank change year-on-year -146 +39 +52
Contract jobs citing Virtual Servers 17 46 37
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.032% 0.14% 0.093%
As % of the System Software category 0.33% 1.20% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 39 22
10th Percentile £313 £423 £279
25th Percentile £373 £522 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +4.76% -
75th Percentile £506 £575 £584
90th Percentile £538 £608 £624
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £550 £469
% change year-on-year -25.00% +17.33% -10.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - £18.40
25th Percentile - - £22.00
Median hourly rate - - £28.50
75th Percentile - - £34.50
90th Percentile - - £37.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £40.00
% change year-on-year - - +8.36%

All System Software Skills
UK

Virtual Servers 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 5,162 3,834 4,520
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.82% 11.68% 11.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,401 2,459 3,138
10th Percentile £225 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £383 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.91%
75th Percentile £590 £600 £603
90th Percentile £675 £683 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 206 103 161
10th Percentile £13.97 £13.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.06 £17.33 £15.65
Median hourly rate £51.75 £30.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +72.50% +26.05% -52.40%
75th Percentile £73.94 £75.60 £58.69
90th Percentile £78.25 £91.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £57.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year -11.30% +167.44% -21.82%

Virtual Servers
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Virtual Servers relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Virtual Servers job vacancy trend in the UK

Virtual Servers
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Virtual Servers.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Virtual Servers

Virtual Servers
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Servers over the 6 months to 29 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Servers in the UK

Virtual Servers
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Virtual Servers.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Virtual Servers

Virtual Servers
Top 8 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 Servers within the UK over the 6 months to 29 July 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 -137 14 £450 -18.18% 24
London -56 11 £450 -27.27% 11
UK excluding London -136 5 £413 -25.00% 17
Scotland -23 2 - -
Work from Home -69 2 £386 -24.63% 3
South East - 2 £413 - 6
West Midlands -61 1 - - 2
Midlands -62 1 - - 4

Virtual Servers
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:

Cloud Services
1 5 (29.41%) AWS
1 5 (29.41%) Azure
2 1 (5.88%) Azure DevOps
2 1 (5.88%) GitHub
2 1 (5.88%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 7 (41.18%) DNS
2 5 (29.41%) DHCP
3 4 (23.53%) Cisco Nexus
3 4 (23.53%) VPN
4 3 (17.65%) BIG-IP
4 3 (17.65%) Firewall
4 3 (17.65%) SSL
5 2 (11.76%) BGP
5 2 (11.76%) Cisco IOS
5 2 (11.76%) EIGRP
5 2 (11.76%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 2 (11.76%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 2 (11.76%) LAN
5 2 (11.76%) Network Security
5 2 (11.76%) OSPF
5 2 (11.76%) SNMP
5 2 (11.76%) VXLAN
5 2 (11.76%) WAN
5 2 (11.76%) WLAN
6 1 (5.88%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (17.65%) SQL Server
2 1 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (17.65%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (5.88%) Git
General
1 3 (17.65%) Analytical Skills
1 3 (17.65%) Finance
1 3 (17.65%) Social Skills
2 2 (11.76%) Banking
3 1 (5.88%) Documentation Skills
3 1 (5.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1 (5.88%) Military
3 1 (5.88%) Public Sector
3 1 (5.88%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 7 (41.18%) Senior
2 5 (29.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 4 (23.53%) Network Engineer
3 4 (23.53%) Senior Network Engineer
4 3 (17.65%) Security Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) Cloud Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) IP Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) IP Network Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) IP Security Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) Lead
5 2 (11.76%) Lead Cloud Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) Network Security Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) Senior IP Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) Senior IP Network Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) Senior Network Security Engineer
5 2 (11.76%) Senior Security Engineer
6 1 (5.88%) Network Implementation Engineer
6 1 (5.88%) Platform Engineer
6 1 (5.88%) Senior Design Engineer
6 1 (5.88%) Windows Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (11.76%) 802.1X
Miscellaneous
1 5 (29.41%) Data Protection Act
2 4 (23.53%) Data Centre
3 2 (11.76%) Onboarding
4 1 (5.88%) Enterprise Storage
4 1 (5.88%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (5.88%) PKI
4 1 (5.88%) Replication
4 1 (5.88%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 9 (52.94%) Linux
2 8 (47.06%) Windows
2 8 (47.06%) Windows Server
3 2 (11.76%) Windows Server 2016
3 2 (11.76%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (5.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (5.88%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (41.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 6 (35.29%) Migration
3 5 (29.41%) Data Protection
4 4 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
4 4 (23.53%) Runbook
4 4 (23.53%) Validation
4 4 (23.53%) Vulnerability Remediation
5 3 (17.65%) Cybersecurity
5 3 (17.65%) Server Management
6 2 (11.76%) Client Onboarding
6 2 (11.76%) DevOps
6 2 (11.76%) Information Security
6 2 (11.76%) Infrastructure as Code
6 2 (11.76%) ITIL
6 2 (11.76%) Mentoring
6 2 (11.76%) Root Cause Analysis
6 2 (11.76%) Service Management
6 2 (11.76%) Stakeholder Management
6 2 (11.76%) Task Automation
6 2 (11.76%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 5 (29.41%) PowerShell
2 2 (11.76%) ActionScript
2 2 (11.76%) Bash
2 2 (11.76%) Python
Qualifications
1 6 (35.29%) SC Cleared
1 6 (35.29%) Security Cleared
2 2 (11.76%) AWS Certification
2 2 (11.76%) CCNP
2 2 (11.76%) Cisco Certification
2 2 (11.76%) Microsoft Certification
3 1 (5.88%) Azure Certification
3 1 (5.88%) CCIE
3 1 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (5.88%) Degree
3 1 (5.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (11.76%) SOC 2
2 1 (5.88%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (35.29%) Active Directory
2 5 (29.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (23.53%) vSphere
4 2 (11.76%) Hyper-V
5 1 (5.88%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 5 (29.41%) Ansible
2 2 (11.76%) FortiGate
2 2 (11.76%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (11.76%) SCCM
3 1 (5.88%) Kubernetes
3 1 (5.88%) Terraform
Vendors
1 5 (29.41%) Cisco
1 5 (29.41%) F5
1 5 (29.41%) VMware
2 3 (17.65%) Microsoft
3 2 (11.76%) Ekahau
3 2 (11.76%) Fortinet
3 2 (11.76%) Infoblox
3 2 (11.76%) Palo Alto
4 1 (5.88%) CheckPoint
4 1 (5.88%) Red Hat