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 19 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 577 490 519
Rank change year-on-year -87 +29 +98
Contract jobs citing Virtual Servers 24 39 71
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.059% 0.13% 0.16%
As % of the System Software category 0.50% 1.02% 1.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 27 33
10th Percentile £344 £211 £263
25th Percentile £358 £334 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £409 £425 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.76% -19.81% +2.42%
75th Percentile £556 £525 £650
90th Percentile £575 £609 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £363 £450 £530
% change year-on-year -19.33% -15.09% +11.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 10
10th Percentile - - £16.00
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate - - £40.00
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £40.00
% change year-on-year - - +53.85%

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 4,758 3,826 4,985
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.69% 12.42% 11.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,244 2,502 3,383
10th Percentile £205 £200 £188
25th Percentile £400 £375 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £516 £480
Median % change year-on-year -3.15% +7.55% -8.57%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £688 £723 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £450
% change year-on-year +1.17% +4.33% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 89 246
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.59 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.46 £21.25 £17.70
Median hourly rate £34.00 £29.00 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +17.24% -33.71% +9.38%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £83.80 £75.50 £77.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £37.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +11.84% -18.80% +90.43%

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 19 February 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 9 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 19 February 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 -87 19 £468 +10.00% 18
UK excluding London -72 14 £363 -19.33% 15
London -49 9 £450 +5.88% 5
Work from Home -28 7 £450 +38.46% 3
Scotland +4 5 £358 -20.44%
South West -23 5 £550 -5.38% 3
South East -27 2 £325 - 5
North West -30 2 £363 +68.84% 4
North of England -76 2 £363 +65.00% 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:

Application Platforms
1 6 (25.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (20.83%) SharePoint
2 5 (20.83%) Skype for Business
3 1 (4.17%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (25.00%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 11 (45.83%) Serverless
2 8 (33.33%) Amazon EC2
2 8 (33.33%) Amazon ECS
2 8 (33.33%) Amazon EKS
2 8 (33.33%) Amazon MSK
2 8 (33.33%) AWS
2 8 (33.33%) AWS CloudFormation
2 8 (33.33%) AWS Lambda
3 7 (29.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 3 (12.50%) IaaS
4 3 (12.50%) Microsoft 365
5 2 (8.33%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 9 (37.50%) Firewall
2 7 (29.17%) DNS
3 5 (20.83%) DHCP
3 5 (20.83%) Skype
3 5 (20.83%) Unified Communications
4 3 (12.50%) Network Security
5 2 (8.33%) VSAN
6 1 (4.17%) Cisco IOS
6 1 (4.17%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (4.17%) LAN
6 1 (4.17%) SNMP
6 1 (4.17%) VoIP
6 1 (4.17%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (33.33%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 9 (37.50%) Sonatype Nexus
2 8 (33.33%) Bitbucket
2 8 (33.33%) Git
2 8 (33.33%) GitLab
2 8 (33.33%) Jenkins
2 8 (33.33%) JIRA
General
1 10 (41.67%) Banking
2 9 (37.50%) Social Skills
3 8 (33.33%) Finance
4 6 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (25.00%) Public Sector
5 3 (12.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (4.17%) Marketing
6 1 (4.17%) Police
Job Titles
1 6 (25.00%) DevOps Engineer
2 5 (20.83%) Wintel Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) Migration Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) Senior
3 3 (12.50%) Support Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Cloud Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Network Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Senior DevOps
4 2 (8.33%) Senior DevOps Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Audio Visual Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Automation Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) AWS DevOps
5 1 (4.17%) AWS DevOps Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) AWS Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Network Security Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Senior Automation Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Senior Network Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (33.33%) Node.js
2 1 (4.17%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 5 (20.83%) PKI
2 3 (12.50%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (4.17%) Digital Signage
3 1 (4.17%) Graphic Design
3 1 (4.17%) iPhone
3 1 (4.17%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 14 (58.33%) Windows
2 12 (50.00%) Linux
3 11 (45.83%) Windows Server
4 3 (12.50%) Windows 10
5 1 (4.17%) Windows Server 2012
5 1 (4.17%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (4.17%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (45.83%) DevOps
2 8 (33.33%) Microservices
3 7 (29.17%) Service Management
4 5 (20.83%) Computer Science
4 5 (20.83%) Critical Thinking
4 5 (20.83%) ITIL
4 5 (20.83%) System Testing
5 4 (16.67%) CI/CD
5 4 (16.67%) Continuous Integration
5 4 (16.67%) Migration
5 4 (16.67%) Test Automation
6 3 (12.50%) Continuous Delivery
6 3 (12.50%) Data Protection
6 3 (12.50%) Infrastructure Automation
6 3 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 3 (12.50%) Performance Testing
6 3 (12.50%) Roadmaps
6 3 (12.50%) Secrets Management
6 3 (12.50%) Technology Roadmap
7 2 (8.33%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 16 (66.67%) PowerShell
2 8 (33.33%) Java
2 8 (33.33%) Perl
2 8 (33.33%) Python
2 8 (33.33%) Ruby
3 5 (20.83%) SQL
4 1 (4.17%) ActionScript
4 1 (4.17%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 8 (33.33%) AWS Certification
2 7 (29.17%) Degree
2 7 (29.17%) Security Cleared
3 5 (20.83%) CCNA
3 5 (20.83%) CCNP
3 5 (20.83%) Cisco Certification
3 5 (20.83%) ITIL Certification
3 5 (20.83%) Master's Degree
3 5 (20.83%) MCSE
3 5 (20.83%) Microsoft Certification
3 5 (20.83%) SC Cleared
4 2 (8.33%) DV Cleared
5 1 (4.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.17%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 8 (33.33%) Active Directory
1 8 (33.33%) Docker
2 7 (29.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (25.00%) Microsoft Virtual Server
4 2 (8.33%) NFS
4 2 (8.33%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 8 (33.33%) Kubernetes
2 5 (20.83%) SCCM
2 5 (20.83%) WSUS
3 3 (12.50%) Terraform
4 2 (8.33%) vCenter Server
5 1 (4.17%) Ansible
Vendors
1 7 (29.17%) VMware
2 6 (25.00%) Cisco
2 6 (25.00%) Microsoft
2 6 (25.00%) Oracle
3 5 (20.83%) SolarWinds
3 5 (20.83%) Splunk
3 5 (20.83%) Veeam
4 2 (8.33%) F5
5 1 (4.17%) Infoblox
5 1 (4.17%) Palo Alto
5 1 (4.17%) ServiceNow