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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 615 493 529
Rank change year-on-year -122 +36 +94
Contract jobs citing Virtual Servers 15 32 61
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.034% 0.11% 0.14%
As % of the System Software category 0.31% 0.83% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 25 29
10th Percentile £312 £225 £300
25th Percentile - £356 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £358 £450 £543
Median % change year-on-year -20.44% -17.13% +3.43%
75th Percentile £368 £606 £650
90th Percentile £490 £610 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £358 £450 £555
% change year-on-year -20.44% -18.92% +16.84%
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 4,877 3,846 4,793
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.95% 13.13% 10.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,324 2,621 3,253
10th Percentile £213 £213 £190
25th Percentile £400 £400 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £596 £623 £600
90th Percentile £688 £706 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £460
% change year-on-year +0.53% +3.26% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 93 225
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.35 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.00 £21.46 £15.76
Median hourly rate £48.72 £29.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.00% +16.00% -48.93%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £85.60 £85.50 £71.01
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £37.50 £30.45
% change year-on-year +29.92% +23.15% +10.73%

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 March 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 6 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 March 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 -116 10 £368 -13.41% 14
London -58 7 £427 +3.39% 3
UK excluding London -115 7 £358 -20.44% 11
Scotland +2 5 £358 -20.44%
Work from Home -25 4 £358 -1.24% 6
South East - 2 £325 - 2

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 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (40.00%) Amazon EC2
1 6 (40.00%) Amazon ECS
1 6 (40.00%) Amazon EKS
1 6 (40.00%) Amazon MSK
1 6 (40.00%) AWS
1 6 (40.00%) AWS CloudFormation
1 6 (40.00%) AWS Lambda
1 6 (40.00%) Serverless
2 5 (33.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
3 3 (20.00%) Microsoft 365
4 2 (13.33%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 7 (46.67%) Firewall
2 3 (20.00%) DNS
3 2 (13.33%) Cisco IOS
3 2 (13.33%) Cisco Nexus
3 2 (13.33%) SNMP
3 2 (13.33%) VSAN
4 1 (6.67%) LAN
4 1 (6.67%) VoIP
4 1 (6.67%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (40.00%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 8 (53.33%) Sonatype Nexus
2 6 (40.00%) Bitbucket
2 6 (40.00%) Git
2 6 (40.00%) GitLab
2 6 (40.00%) Jenkins
2 6 (40.00%) JIRA
General
1 8 (53.33%) Banking
2 6 (40.00%) Finance
3 3 (20.00%) Social Skills
4 2 (13.33%) Public Sector
5 1 (6.67%) Military
5 1 (6.67%) Police
Job Titles
1 6 (40.00%) DevOps Engineer
2 5 (33.33%) Senior
3 3 (20.00%) Migration Engineer
3 3 (20.00%) Network Engineer
3 3 (20.00%) Support Engineer
4 2 (13.33%) Senior DevOps
4 2 (13.33%) Senior DevOps Engineer
4 2 (13.33%) Senior Network Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Automation Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) AWS DevOps
5 1 (6.67%) AWS DevOps Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) AWS Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Linux Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Network Security Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Security Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Senior Automation Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Senior Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (40.00%) Node.js
2 1 (6.67%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 4 (26.67%) Data Protection Act
2 2 (13.33%) Onboarding
3 1 (6.67%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 7 (46.67%) Linux
2 5 (33.33%) Windows
3 3 (20.00%) Windows 10
3 3 (20.00%) Windows Server
4 1 (6.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (6.67%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (6.67%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (6.67%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (46.67%) DevOps
2 6 (40.00%) Microservices
3 4 (26.67%) Data Protection
3 4 (26.67%) Migration
4 2 (13.33%) Application Virtualisation
4 2 (13.33%) Client Onboarding
4 2 (13.33%) Configuration Management
4 2 (13.33%) Deployment Automation
4 2 (13.33%) Knowledge Transfer
4 2 (13.33%) Stakeholder Management
4 2 (13.33%) Task Automation
4 2 (13.33%) Virtual Infrastructure
5 1 (6.67%) Build Automation
5 1 (6.67%) CI/CD
5 1 (6.67%) Containerisation
5 1 (6.67%) Continuous Improvement
5 1 (6.67%) Roadmaps
5 1 (6.67%) Runbook
5 1 (6.67%) Technology Roadmap
5 1 (6.67%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 9 (60.00%) PowerShell
2 6 (40.00%) Java
2 6 (40.00%) Perl
2 6 (40.00%) Python
2 6 (40.00%) Ruby
3 2 (13.33%) ActionScript
4 1 (6.67%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 6 (40.00%) AWS Certification
2 3 (20.00%) Security Cleared
3 2 (13.33%) DV Cleared
4 1 (6.67%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
4 1 (6.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
4 1 (6.67%) Degree
4 1 (6.67%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (6.67%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (40.00%) Docker
2 3 (20.00%) Active Directory
3 2 (13.33%) NFS
3 2 (13.33%) Virtual Desktop
3 2 (13.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (6.67%) Ceph
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 6 (40.00%) Kubernetes
2 3 (20.00%) Ansible
3 2 (13.33%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 4 (26.67%) Oracle
2 3 (20.00%) F5
3 2 (13.33%) Cisco
3 2 (13.33%) Infoblox
3 2 (13.33%) Palo Alto
3 2 (13.33%) VMware
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft
4 1 (6.67%) Red Hat
4 1 (6.67%) ServiceNow