Virtual Machines Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Virtual Machine (VM)
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 104 79
Rank change year-on-year -56 -25 +25
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 11 15 25
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.31% 0.89% 1.35%
As % of the System Software category 3.11% 5.88% 11.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 12 18
10th Percentile £319 £351 £366
25th Percentile £325 £399 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £406 £460 £576
Median % change year-on-year -11.74% -20.14% +4.73%
75th Percentile £512 £519 £615
90th Percentile £575 £523 £627
England median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% +4.76%

All System Software Skills
West Midlands

Virtual Machines 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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 354 255 209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 10.13% 15.12% 11.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 212 182 153
10th Percentile £213 £250 £190
25th Percentile £350 £400 £345
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -9.52% +23.53%
75th Percentile £537 £580 £625
90th Percentile £626 £675 £675
England median daily rate £500 £500 £515
% change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 1 2
10th Percentile £44.09 - £15.69
25th Percentile £58.43 £54.75 £15.74
Median hourly rate £66.57 £56.50 £15.83
Median % change year-on-year +17.82% +257.03% -28.88%
75th Percentile £75.00 £58.25 £15.91
90th Percentile - - £15.97
England median hourly rate £60.00 £40.00 £23.80
% change year-on-year +50.00% +68.07% -40.50%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Virtual Machines relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 8 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the West Midlands

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Virtual Machines within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 8 August 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
Birmingham -10 6 £625 +47.06%
Warwickshire -18 5 £325 -23.53%
Virtual Machines
England

Virtual Machines
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 (45.45%) OpenShift
2 3 (27.27%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 5 (45.45%) Firewall
2 3 (27.27%) SSL
3 2 (18.18%) ICMP
3 2 (18.18%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (9.09%) SQL Server
General
1 1 (9.09%) Law
1 1 (9.09%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 5 (45.45%) Product Owner
2 3 (27.27%) Lead
3 1 (9.09%) Storage Engineer
Miscellaneous
1 5 (45.45%) Product Ownership
2 3 (27.27%) SCADA
3 1 (9.09%) Data Centre
3 1 (9.09%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 4 (36.36%) Windows
2 3 (27.27%) Linux
2 3 (27.27%) Windows Server
3 1 (9.09%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (90.91%) Performance Tuning
2 5 (45.45%) Migration
2 5 (45.45%) Product Vision
2 5 (45.45%) RBAC
2 5 (45.45%) Secrets Management
3 3 (27.27%) Change Management
3 3 (27.27%) Identity Access Management
3 3 (27.27%) ITSM
3 3 (27.27%) Network Virtualisation
3 3 (27.27%) Service Management
3 3 (27.27%) Storage Management
3 3 (27.27%) Vulnerability Remediation
4 2 (18.18%) Dashboard Development
4 2 (18.18%) Infrastructure Monitoring
4 2 (18.18%) Knowledge Transfer
4 2 (18.18%) Observability
4 2 (18.18%) Performance Monitoring
4 2 (18.18%) Runbook
4 2 (18.18%) Server Patching
4 2 (18.18%) Technology Transformation
Programming Languages
1 3 (27.27%) PL/SQL
1 3 (27.27%) SQL
2 1 (9.09%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 5 (45.45%) SC Cleared
1 5 (45.45%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 6 (54.55%) VMware Infrastructure
2 5 (45.45%) Ceph
3 3 (27.27%) Active Directory
4 2 (18.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 1 (9.09%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 6 (54.55%) VMware
2 3 (27.27%) Oracle
3 2 (18.18%) Microsoft
4 1 (9.09%) Cisco
4 1 (9.09%) Dell
4 1 (9.09%) EMC
4 1 (9.09%) Isilon
4 1 (9.09%) ServiceNow