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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 157 117 84
Rank change year-on-year -40 -33 +23
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 11 7 30
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.31% 0.37% 1.58%
As % of the System Software category 3.48% 2.31% 14.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 6 18
10th Percentile - £425 £366
25th Percentile £425 £495 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £510 £576
Median % change year-on-year -4.51% -11.46% +4.73%
75th Percentile £512 £519 £615
90th Percentile £587 £578 £627
England median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -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 316 303 204
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 8.89% 16.23% 10.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 215 139
10th Percentile £210 £187 £157
25th Percentile £302 £359 £253
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £508 £489
Median % change year-on-year -11.33% +3.78% +17.13%
75th Percentile £512 £586 £612
90th Percentile £601 £690 £670
England median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 1 1
10th Percentile £17.30 - -
25th Percentile £17.75 £54.75 -
Median hourly rate £24.50 £56.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.64% +253.13% -15.79%
75th Percentile £74.38 £58.25 -
90th Percentile £75.00 - -
England median hourly rate £63.14 £34.50 £31.00
% change year-on-year +83.00% +11.29% -32.87%

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 October 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 October 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
Warwickshire -7 6 £469 -25.04% 1
Birmingham -1 5 £625 +23.15% 4
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 4 (36.36%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (18.18%) Firewall
1 2 (18.18%) ICMP
1 2 (18.18%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (9.09%) SQL Server
General
1 1 (9.09%) Finance
1 1 (9.09%) Law
Job Titles
1 4 (36.36%) CyberArk Engineer
1 4 (36.36%) Onboarding Engineer
2 3 (27.27%) Product Owner
3 1 (9.09%) Automation Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Senior
3 1 (9.09%) Senior Automation Engineer
3 1 (9.09%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (9.09%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 4 (36.36%) Onboarding
2 3 (27.27%) Product Ownership
3 1 (9.09%) Data Centre
3 1 (9.09%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (9.09%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 5 (45.45%) Windows
2 4 (36.36%) Linux
3 1 (9.09%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (54.55%) Runbook
2 5 (45.45%) Migration
2 5 (45.45%) Performance Tuning
3 4 (36.36%) Validation
4 3 (27.27%) Product Vision
4 3 (27.27%) RBAC
4 3 (27.27%) Secrets Management
5 2 (18.18%) Capacity Management
5 2 (18.18%) Capacity Planning
5 2 (18.18%) CI/CD
5 2 (18.18%) Dashboard Development
5 2 (18.18%) Infrastructure Monitoring
5 2 (18.18%) Knowledge Transfer
5 2 (18.18%) Observability
5 2 (18.18%) Performance Monitoring
5 2 (18.18%) Root Cause Analysis
6 1 (9.09%) GitOps
6 1 (9.09%) Privileged Access Management
6 1 (9.09%) Storage Management
6 1 (9.09%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 5 (45.45%) PowerShell
2 4 (36.36%) Python
Qualifications
1 2 (18.18%) SC Cleared
1 2 (18.18%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 3 (27.27%) Active Directory
1 3 (27.27%) Ceph
1 3 (27.27%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (18.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 1 (9.09%) Ansible
1 1 (9.09%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 4 (36.36%) CyberArk
2 3 (27.27%) VMware
3 1 (9.09%) Cisco
3 1 (9.09%) Dell
3 1 (9.09%) EMC
3 1 (9.09%) Isilon
3 1 (9.09%) ServiceNow