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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 618 490 525
Rank change year-on-year -128 +35 +101
Contract jobs citing Virtual Servers 12 34 57
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.025% 0.12% 0.13%
As % of the System Software category 0.24% 0.93% 1.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 27 28
10th Percentile £358 £241 £300
25th Percentile £363 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -16.12% +2.19%
75th Percentile £478 £606 £626
90th Percentile £493 £638 £695
UK excluding London median daily rate £358 £450 £550
% change year-on-year -20.44% -18.18% +4.76%
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 4,901 3,650 4,662
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.37% 12.47% 10.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,305 2,485 3,188
10th Percentile £213 £214 £199
25th Percentile £400 £400 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £594 £623 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £460
% change year-on-year -0.84% +4.13% -4.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 90 233
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.73 £15.49 £15.50
Median hourly rate £53.00 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +92.73% +22.22% -57.88%
75th Percentile £74.13 £64.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £91.50 £88.00 £77.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +87.50% +27.27% -47.46%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 -113 8 £468 -15.00% 16
London -53 6 £485 +21.25% 5
UK excluding London -120 4 £358 -20.44% 12
Scotland -13 3 £358 -20.44%
Work from Home -43 3 £429 +7.25% 6
South East - 1 £450 - 5

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 (8.33%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (8.33%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 3 (25.00%) Amazon EC2
1 3 (25.00%) Amazon ECS
1 3 (25.00%) Amazon EKS
1 3 (25.00%) Amazon MSK
1 3 (25.00%) AWS
1 3 (25.00%) AWS CloudFormation
1 3 (25.00%) AWS Lambda
1 3 (25.00%) Microsoft 365
1 3 (25.00%) Serverless
1 3 (25.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
2 2 (16.67%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 5 (41.67%) Firewall
2 4 (33.33%) Cisco Nexus
3 3 (25.00%) DNS
3 3 (25.00%) LAN
3 3 (25.00%) WAN
4 2 (16.67%) BGP
4 2 (16.67%) BIG-IP
4 2 (16.67%) Cisco IOS
4 2 (16.67%) EIGRP
4 2 (16.67%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
4 2 (16.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 2 (16.67%) OSPF
4 2 (16.67%) SNMP
4 2 (16.67%) SSL
4 2 (16.67%) VPN
4 2 (16.67%) VXLAN
4 2 (16.67%) WLAN
5 1 (8.33%) Multicast
5 1 (8.33%) Network Security
5 1 (8.33%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (25.00%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (8.33%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (50.00%) Sonatype Nexus
2 3 (25.00%) Bitbucket
2 3 (25.00%) Git
2 3 (25.00%) GitLab
2 3 (25.00%) Jenkins
2 3 (25.00%) JIRA
General
1 3 (25.00%) Banking
1 3 (25.00%) Finance
2 2 (16.67%) Public Sector
2 2 (16.67%) Social Skills
3 1 (8.33%) Documentation Skills
3 1 (8.33%) Military
3 1 (8.33%) Police
3 1 (8.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 5 (41.67%) Network Engineer
1 5 (41.67%) Senior
2 4 (33.33%) Senior Network Engineer
3 3 (25.00%) DevOps Engineer
3 3 (25.00%) Network Security Engineer
3 3 (25.00%) Security Engineer
4 2 (16.67%) IP Engineer
4 2 (16.67%) IP Network Engineer
4 2 (16.67%) IP Security Engineer
4 2 (16.67%) Senior IP Engineer
4 2 (16.67%) Senior IP Network Engineer
4 2 (16.67%) Senior Network Security Engineer
4 2 (16.67%) Senior Security Engineer
5 1 (8.33%) Implementation Engineer
5 1 (8.33%) Linux Engineer
5 1 (8.33%) Network Design Engineer
5 1 (8.33%) Senior Implementation Engineer
5 1 (8.33%) Senior Linux Engineer
5 1 (8.33%) Senior Network Design Engineer
5 1 (8.33%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (25.00%) Node.js
2 2 (16.67%) 802.1X
3 1 (8.33%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 2 (16.67%) Data Centre
1 2 (16.67%) Data Protection Act
1 2 (16.67%) Onboarding
2 1 (8.33%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 4 (33.33%) Linux
2 3 (25.00%) Windows
2 3 (25.00%) Windows Server
3 1 (8.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (8.33%) Windows 10
3 1 (8.33%) Windows Server 2012
3 1 (8.33%) Windows Server 2016
3 1 (8.33%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (33.33%) DevOps
2 3 (25.00%) Microservices
2 3 (25.00%) Migration
2 3 (25.00%) Validation
3 2 (16.67%) Client Onboarding
3 2 (16.67%) Configuration Management
3 2 (16.67%) Data Protection
3 2 (16.67%) Knowledge Transfer
3 2 (16.67%) Task Automation
4 1 (8.33%) Analytics
4 1 (8.33%) Build Automation
4 1 (8.33%) Capacity Planning
4 1 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
4 1 (8.33%) Deployment Automation
4 1 (8.33%) IT Asset Management
4 1 (8.33%) Roadmaps
4 1 (8.33%) Runbook
4 1 (8.33%) Service Management
4 1 (8.33%) Technology Roadmap
4 1 (8.33%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 4 (33.33%) PowerShell
1 4 (33.33%) Python
2 3 (25.00%) Java
2 3 (25.00%) Perl
2 3 (25.00%) Ruby
3 2 (16.67%) ActionScript
4 1 (8.33%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 5 (41.67%) Security Cleared
2 3 (25.00%) AWS Certification
2 3 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 2 (16.67%) CCNP
3 2 (16.67%) Cisco Certification
3 2 (16.67%) DV Cleared
4 1 (8.33%) CCIE
4 1 (8.33%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (8.33%) SLA
System Software
1 3 (25.00%) Active Directory
1 3 (25.00%) Docker
2 1 (8.33%) Ceph
2 1 (8.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 4 (33.33%) Ansible
2 3 (25.00%) Kubernetes
3 2 (16.67%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 5 (41.67%) F5
2 4 (33.33%) Cisco
3 2 (16.67%) Ekahau
3 2 (16.67%) Fortinet
3 2 (16.67%) Infoblox
3 2 (16.67%) Oracle
3 2 (16.67%) Palo Alto
4 1 (8.33%) Microsoft
4 1 (8.33%) Red Hat
4 1 (8.33%) ServiceNow