Virtual Machines Job Trends in the South West

Virtual Machine (VM)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 177 196
Rank change year-on-year +15 +19 +9
Permanent jobs citing Virtual Machines 15 12 22
As % of all permanent jobs in the South West 0.30% 0.29% 0.46%
As % of the System Software category 3.42% 1.90% 2.33%
Number of salaries quoted 10 4 13
10th Percentile £29,000 - £33,458
25th Percentile £29,250 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £35,000 £49,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -28.57% -6.67% +23.99%
75th Percentile £48,125 £75,482 £67,070
90th Percentile £58,900 £114,599 £109,500
England median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% - +9.09%

All System Software Skills
South West

Virtual Machines falls under the System Software category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring system software skills in the South West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 439 631 943
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South West 8.64% 15.22% 19.87%
Number of salaries quoted 304 343 762
10th Percentile £26,110 £28,500 £28,000
25th Percentile £30,750 £32,500 £35,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £52,500 £49,000
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +7.14% +3.16%
75th Percentile £62,500 £71,875 £65,000
90th Percentile £78,725 £87,200 £77,500
England median annual salary £48,790 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -15.15% +4.55% -

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in the South West

Virtual Machines
Salary Trend in the South West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Virtual Machines.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Salary Histogram in the South West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in the South West over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Virtual Machines in the South West

Virtual Machines
Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Virtual Machines within the South West region over the 6 months to 14 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Dorset - 6 £30,500 - 1
Gloucestershire +25 4 £42,500 - 2
Cornwall - 3 - -
Bristol +7 1 £58,500 -52.35% 3
Wiltshire - 1 £57,500 - 3
Virtual Machines
England

Virtual Machines
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 2 (13.33%) Apache
2 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 10 (66.67%) Azure
2 5 (33.33%) SaaS
3 4 (26.67%) Entra ID
3 4 (26.67%) IaaS
3 4 (26.67%) Microsoft 365
3 4 (26.67%) PaaS
4 3 (20.00%) AWS
5 2 (13.33%) Azure Sentinel
6 1 (6.67%) Azure AKS
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Key Vault
6 1 (6.67%) Azure Storage
6 1 (6.67%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 8 (53.33%) Firewall
2 5 (33.33%) VPN
3 3 (20.00%) DNS
4 2 (13.33%) DHCP
4 2 (13.33%) LAN
4 2 (13.33%) NAS
4 2 (13.33%) TCP/IP
4 2 (13.33%) VLAN
4 2 (13.33%) WAN
5 1 (6.67%) Network Security
5 1 (6.67%) Remote Desktop
5 1 (6.67%) Telnet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (13.33%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (6.67%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (13.33%) Jenkins
General
1 7 (46.67%) Social Skills
2 3 (20.00%) Legal
3 2 (13.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 6 (40.00%) IT Support
1 6 (40.00%) Support Engineer
2 5 (33.33%) 2nd Line Support
3 3 (20.00%) Cloud Engineer
4 2 (13.33%) 1st/2nd Line Support
4 2 (13.33%) Administrator
4 2 (13.33%) Developer
4 2 (13.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 2 (13.33%) IT Administrator
4 2 (13.33%) IT Engineer
4 2 (13.33%) Software Developer
4 2 (13.33%) Systems Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Applications Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Applications Support
5 1 (6.67%) Applications Support Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) IT Support Engineer
5 1 (6.67%) Systems Support
5 1 (6.67%) Systems Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (13.33%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 4 (26.67%) Public Cloud
2 3 (20.00%) Cloud Native
2 3 (20.00%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 9 (60.00%) Windows
2 7 (46.67%) Windows Server
3 5 (33.33%) Windows Server 2019
4 1 (6.67%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (46.67%) Cybersecurity
2 5 (33.33%) CI/CD
3 4 (26.67%) Infrastructure as Code
3 4 (26.67%) Problem-Solving
4 3 (20.00%) AI
4 3 (20.00%) Containerisation
4 3 (20.00%) Cost Optimisation
4 3 (20.00%) DevOps
4 3 (20.00%) Disaster Recovery
4 3 (20.00%) Microservices
4 3 (20.00%) Platform Engineering
4 3 (20.00%) Server Patching
5 2 (13.33%) Analytics
5 2 (13.33%) Data Pipeline
5 2 (13.33%) Incident Management
5 2 (13.33%) Infrastructure Management
5 2 (13.33%) Machine Learning
5 2 (13.33%) RBAC
5 2 (13.33%) Service Desk Management
5 2 (13.33%) Software Licensing
Programming Languages
1 6 (40.00%) PowerShell
2 3 (20.00%) Bicep
3 1 (6.67%) Bash
Qualifications
1 2 (13.33%) DV Cleared
1 2 (13.33%) SC Cleared
1 2 (13.33%) Security Cleared
2 1 (6.67%) A+ Certification
2 1 (6.67%) Azure Certification
2 1 (6.67%) MCP
2 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Certification
2 1 (6.67%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (20.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (6.67%) Cyber Essentials
2 1 (6.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 1 (6.67%) NCSC
System Software
1 7 (46.67%) Active Directory
2 5 (33.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (20.00%) Hyper-V
4 2 (13.33%) Docker
5 1 (6.67%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 5 (33.33%) Microsoft Intune
2 3 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 3 (20.00%) Terraform
3 2 (13.33%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 13 (86.67%) Microsoft
2 5 (33.33%) Cisco
2 5 (33.33%) Datto
2 5 (33.33%) VMware
3 3 (20.00%) CrowdStrike
3 3 (20.00%) Fortinet
3 3 (20.00%) Palo Alto
4 1 (6.67%) Red Hat