VMS Contracts

VMS
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring VMS skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited VMS over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 446 487 549
Rank change year-on-year +41 +62 +114
Contract jobs citing VMS 73 113 164
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.25% 0.26% 0.27%
As % of the Operating Systems category 1.79% 1.94% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 76 119
10th Percentile £303 £353 £441
25th Percentile £450 £380 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £445 £643
Median % change year-on-year +21.48% -30.82% +14.22%
75th Percentile £623 £569 £800
90th Percentile £663 £638 £847
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.13% -8.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 3
10th Percentile - - £59.00
25th Percentile £78.75 - £68.75
Median hourly rate £82.50 £25.25 £85.00
Median % change year-on-year +226.73% -70.29% +28.79%
75th Percentile £86.25 - -
90th Percentile - £34.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £82.50 £25.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +226.73% -54.09% +29.41%

All Operating Systems
UK

VMS falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,075 5,812 9,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.94% 13.33% 16.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,687 3,913 6,831
10th Percentile £200 £183 £190
25th Percentile £319 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £468 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% -7.33% +1.00%
75th Percentile £594 £588 £638
90th Percentile £699 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 397 416
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.75 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £15.50 £17.75
Median hourly rate £24.18 £22.00 £39.30
Median % change year-on-year +9.91% -44.02% +74.67%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £22.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +4.55% -29.60% +56.25%

VMS
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing VMS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for VMS in the UK

VMS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing VMS.

Daily rate trend for VMS in the UK

VMS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VMS over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for VMS in the UK

VMS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing VMS.

Hourly rate trend for VMS in the UK

VMS
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VMS within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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 +34 68 £540 +18.36% 67
UK excluding London +40 39 £550 +10.00% 48
London +17 27 £475 +11.76% 25
Work from Home +31 26 £550 +15.79% 41
North of England +26 17 £525 -6.67% 9
North West +20 14 £525 +5.00% 4
Midlands +33 13 £551 -44.90% 4
West Midlands +25 12 £551 -44.90% 3
South East +35 5 £550 -8.33% 17
South West +36 3 £550 +25.22% 3
Yorkshire +3 2 £445 -20.89% 5
East Midlands +10 1 - - 1
Scotland +6 1 £350 -2.23% 5
North East - 1 £350 -

VMS
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 11 (15.07%) SharePoint
2 10 (13.70%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (6.85%) Confluence
4 3 (4.11%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 13 (17.81%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 30 (41.10%) Azure
2 16 (21.92%) Entra ID
2 16 (21.92%) Microsoft 365
3 9 (12.33%) GitHub
4 5 (6.85%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (5.48%) AWS
5 4 (5.48%) GCP
5 4 (5.48%) OpenShift
6 3 (4.11%) Azure Storage
6 3 (4.11%) IaaS
7 2 (2.74%) Azure App Service
7 2 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
7 2 (2.74%) Azure Key Vault
7 2 (2.74%) OCI
7 2 (2.74%) PaaS
7 2 (2.74%) SAP Fieldglass
8 1 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
8 1 (1.37%) Kong
8 1 (1.37%) SaaS
8 1 (1.37%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 14 (19.18%) DNS
2 12 (16.44%) DHCP
3 7 (9.59%) Firewall
3 7 (9.59%) SAN
4 6 (8.22%) iSCSI
5 5 (6.85%) VPN
6 4 (5.48%) VoIP
7 3 (4.11%) Skype
8 2 (2.74%) Kerberos
9 1 (1.37%) 5G
9 1 (1.37%) Network Security
9 1 (1.37%) Structured Cabling
9 1 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
9 1 (1.37%) Wireless
9 1 (1.37%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (10.96%) SQL Server
2 4 (5.48%) MySQL
3 2 (2.74%) Oracle Database
4 1 (1.37%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (1.37%) BigQuery
4 1 (1.37%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 7 (9.59%) Jenkins
2 5 (6.85%) JIRA
3 4 (5.48%) Git
4 2 (2.74%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.37%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.37%) Newman
5 1 (1.37%) Octopus Deploy
5 1 (1.37%) Postman
5 1 (1.37%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (1.37%) Vagrant
General
1 10 (13.70%) Public Sector
2 7 (9.59%) Social Skills
3 6 (8.22%) Finance
4 5 (6.85%) Military
5 3 (4.11%) Financial Institution
6 2 (2.74%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (2.74%) Law
7 1 (1.37%) Aviation
7 1 (1.37%) Billing
7 1 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.37%) Local Government
7 1 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.37%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 11 (15.07%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
2 7 (9.59%) DevOps Engineer
3 6 (8.22%) Consultant
3 6 (8.22%) Senior
3 6 (8.22%) Systems Engineer
4 5 (6.85%) Azure Engineer
5 4 (5.48%) Administrator
5 4 (5.48%) Support Engineer
6 3 (4.11%) 2nd Line Engineer
6 3 (4.11%) 2nd Line Support
6 3 (4.11%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
6 3 (4.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 3 (4.11%) Linux Engineer
6 3 (4.11%) Voice Engineer
7 2 (2.74%) Azure Specialist
7 2 (2.74%) Cloud Engineer
7 2 (2.74%) Control Systems Engineer
7 2 (2.74%) Platform Engineer
7 2 (2.74%) Senior DevOps
7 2 (2.74%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.74%) Flash
1 2 (2.74%) LDAP
1 2 (2.74%) Qt
1 2 (2.74%) YAML
2 1 (1.37%) FastAPI
2 1 (1.37%) JSON
2 1 (1.37%) Node.js
2 1 (1.37%) React
2 1 (1.37%) STL
2 1 (1.37%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 10 (13.70%) CSOC
2 4 (5.48%) Clustering
3 3 (4.11%) PKI
4 2 (2.74%) CCTV
4 2 (2.74%) GNSS
4 2 (2.74%) Hedge funds
4 2 (2.74%) Legacy Applications
4 2 (2.74%) Replication
4 2 (2.74%) SCADA
5 1 (1.37%) Algorithms
5 1 (1.37%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.37%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.37%) Driving Licence
5 1 (1.37%) Fibre Optics
5 1 (1.37%) IoT
5 1 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.37%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.37%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.37%) Reinsurance
5 1 (1.37%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 30 (41.10%) Windows
2 19 (26.03%) Linux
3 15 (20.55%) Windows Server
4 12 (16.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (4.11%) Windows 10
5 3 (4.11%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (2.74%) Android
6 2 (2.74%) Apple iOS
6 2 (2.74%) OpenVMS
7 1 (1.37%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (1.37%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (32.88%) DevOps
2 19 (26.03%) ITIL
3 17 (23.29%) ITSM
4 14 (19.18%) Agile
4 14 (19.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 10 (13.70%) CI/CD
5 10 (13.70%) Event Correlation
5 10 (13.70%) Infrastructure as Code
5 10 (13.70%) SIEM
6 9 (12.33%) Collaborative Working
7 8 (10.96%) Containerisation
7 8 (10.96%) Migration
8 7 (9.59%) Problem-Solving
9 6 (8.22%) Configuration Management
9 6 (8.22%) High Availability
10 5 (6.85%) Deployment Automation
10 5 (6.85%) Runbook
11 4 (5.48%) Storage Management
11 4 (5.48%) Storage Virtualisation
11 4 (5.48%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 11 (15.07%) Python
2 10 (13.70%) Bash
3 9 (12.33%) SQL
4 5 (6.85%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.74%) C
5 2 (2.74%) C#
5 2 (2.74%) C++
5 2 (2.74%) COBOL
6 1 (1.37%) Bicep
6 1 (1.37%) Java
6 1 (1.37%) PHP
6 1 (1.37%) PL/SQL
6 1 (1.37%) Rust
6 1 (1.37%) Shell Script
6 1 (1.37%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 22 (30.14%) Security Cleared
2 19 (26.03%) SC Cleared
3 6 (8.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 3 (4.11%) Azure Certification
4 3 (4.11%) Degree
4 3 (4.11%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (2.74%) CCNA
5 2 (2.74%) CCNP
5 2 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
5 2 (2.74%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.74%) Master's Degree
5 2 (2.74%) MCSA
5 2 (2.74%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.74%) SLA
2 1 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (1.37%) JSP 440
2 1 (1.37%) NIST
System Software
1 20 (27.40%) Active Directory
2 13 (17.81%) Virtual Machines
3 12 (16.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (10.96%) Docker
5 6 (8.22%) Virtual Desktop
5 6 (8.22%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (5.48%) VMware NSX
7 3 (4.11%) KVM
8 2 (2.74%) vSphere
9 1 (1.37%) Hyper-V
9 1 (1.37%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (1.37%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 13 (17.81%) Microsoft Intune
2 11 (15.07%) Kubernetes
2 11 (15.07%) Terraform
2 11 (15.07%) WSUS
3 10 (13.70%) Ansible
4 4 (5.48%) Puppet
5 2 (2.74%) Data Guard
5 2 (2.74%) Grafana
5 2 (2.74%) SCOM
5 2 (2.74%) vCenter Server
5 2 (2.74%) ZABBIX
6 1 (1.37%) CASB
6 1 (1.37%) Graylog
6 1 (1.37%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 1 (1.37%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (1.37%) PowerCLI
6 1 (1.37%) SCCM
Vendors
1 27 (36.99%) VMware
2 22 (30.14%) Microsoft
3 16 (21.92%) Cisco
4 14 (19.18%) Palo Alto
5 11 (15.07%) Red Hat
5 11 (15.07%) ServiceNow
5 11 (15.07%) Splunk
6 10 (13.70%) F5
6 10 (13.70%) Fortinet
6 10 (13.70%) SolarWinds
7 6 (8.22%) Oracle
8 2 (2.74%) Atlassian
8 2 (2.74%) Google
8 2 (2.74%) SAP
9 1 (1.37%) CheckPoint
9 1 (1.37%) Citrix
9 1 (1.37%) EMC
9 1 (1.37%) NetApp
9 1 (1.37%) Siemens
9 1 (1.37%) Veeam