Hybrid/Remote Virtual Machines Job Trends

Virtual Machine (VM)
UK > Work from Home

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for remote or hybrid work requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 340 339 368
Rank change year-on-year -1 +29 +150
Permanent jobs citing Virtual Machines 84 168 166
As % of all permanent jobs with a WFH option 0.52% 0.72% 0.67%
As % of the System Software category 4.23% 6.02% 4.25%
Number of salaries quoted 61 121 145
10th Percentile £44,000 £40,000 £37,500
25th Percentile £52,500 £52,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £62,500 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -3.85% +8.33%
75th Percentile £85,000 £85,000 £74,250
90th Percentile £102,500 £95,000 £85,000
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,918 £65,000
% change year-on-year -9.71% -6.28% +28.71%

All System Software Skills
Work from Home

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 with remote or hybrid options requiring system software skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 1,986 2,790 3,907
As % of all permanent jobs with a WFH option 12.18% 11.90% 15.83%
Number of salaries quoted 1,098 1,746 3,367
10th Percentile £28,925 £31,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £41,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,750 £56,763 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.07% -5.40% -
75th Percentile £72,500 £72,500 £77,715
90th Percentile £85,000 £87,500 £90,000
UK median annual salary £50,000 £54,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -7.41% -1.82% -

Virtual Machines
Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

Job vacancies with remote working options citing Virtual Machines as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Virtual Machines trend for jobs with Hybrid/Remote/WFH options

Virtual Machines
Salary Trend for Jobs with Hybrid Work Options

Salary distribution trend for jobs with remote work options citing Virtual Machines.

Salary distribution trend for jobs with remote work options citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Salary Histogram for Jobs with a WFH Option

Salary distribution for jobs with remote working options citing Virtual Machines over the 6 months to 19 September 2025.

Virtual Machines salary histogram for jobs with a WFH option

Virtual Machines
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities with WFH Options 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 5 (5.95%) IIS
2 4 (4.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (4.76%) nginx
3 1 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.19%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 55 (65.48%) Azure
2 39 (46.43%) AWS
3 32 (38.10%) Azure Monitor
4 30 (35.71%) Entra ID
5 29 (34.52%) Azure DevOps
5 29 (34.52%) IaaS
6 27 (32.14%) PaaS
7 23 (27.38%) SaaS
8 21 (25.00%) Azure Service Bus
9 17 (20.24%) Power Automate
9 17 (20.24%) Power Platform
10 16 (19.05%) Azure AI
10 16 (19.05%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 16 (19.05%) Azure Key Vault
11 11 (13.10%) Microsoft 365
12 10 (11.90%) GCP
13 8 (9.52%) GitHub
13 8 (9.52%) GitHub Actions
14 7 (8.33%) Azure Sentinel
15 6 (7.14%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 29 (34.52%) Firewall
2 25 (29.76%) VPN
3 24 (28.57%) DNS
4 20 (23.81%) SD-WAN
4 20 (23.81%) WAN
5 2 (2.38%) DHCP
5 2 (2.38%) HTTPS
5 2 (2.38%) VLAN
5 2 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (20.24%) Data Lake
2 16 (19.05%) MySQL
2 16 (19.05%) Power BI
3 7 (8.33%) SQL Server
4 5 (5.95%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (3.57%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 24 (28.57%) Git
2 7 (8.33%) TeamCity
3 4 (4.76%) Octopus Deploy
4 3 (3.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 3 (3.57%) GitLab
4 3 (3.57%) Maven
4 3 (3.57%) Subversion
5 1 (1.19%) Artifactory
General
1 21 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
2 17 (20.24%) Social Skills
3 12 (14.29%) Finance
4 6 (7.14%) Banking
5 3 (3.57%) Aviation
5 3 (3.57%) Public Sector
6 2 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (2.38%) Telecoms
7 1 (1.19%) Retail
Job Titles
1 22 (26.19%) Architect
1 22 (26.19%) Cloud Architect
2 17 (20.24%) Vulnerability Manager
3 15 (17.86%) DevOps Engineer
4 11 (13.10%) Senior
5 10 (11.90%) Azure Engineer
6 9 (10.71%) Senior DevOps
6 9 (10.71%) Senior DevOps Engineer
7 6 (7.14%) Cloud Engineer
8 5 (5.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 5 (5.95%) Lead
9 4 (4.76%) AWS DevOps
9 4 (4.76%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 4 (4.76%) AWS Engineer
9 4 (4.76%) Azure DevOps Engineer
9 4 (4.76%) Kubernetes Engineer
10 3 (3.57%) Lead Architect
10 3 (3.57%) Lead Cloud Architect
10 3 (3.57%) Software Engineer
10 3 (3.57%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (8.33%) Node.js
2 4 (4.76%) .NET
2 4 (4.76%) ARM Templates
2 4 (4.76%) Kafka
2 4 (4.76%) Loki
2 4 (4.76%) RabbitMQ
2 4 (4.76%) REST
3 3 (3.57%) AngularJS
3 3 (3.57%) Ionic Framework
3 3 (3.57%) Spring
3 3 (3.57%) Spring Boot
4 1 (1.19%) Anaconda
4 1 (1.19%) Pandas
4 1 (1.19%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 40 (47.62%) Data Centre
2 16 (19.05%) NHS
3 9 (10.71%) Public Cloud
4 8 (9.52%) Product Ownership
5 6 (7.14%) Onboarding
5 6 (7.14%) Private Cloud
6 5 (5.95%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (3.57%) Cloud Native
7 3 (3.57%) Replication
7 3 (3.57%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (2.38%) Security Posture
9 1 (1.19%) IoT
9 1 (1.19%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (1.19%) Smart City
Operating Systems
1 14 (16.67%) Linux
1 14 (16.67%) Windows
2 7 (8.33%) Windows Server
3 2 (2.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.19%) Debian
4 1 (1.19%) Mac OS
4 1 (1.19%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (51.19%) DevOps
2 37 (44.05%) Infrastructure as Code
3 31 (36.90%) Agile
3 31 (36.90%) Continuous Improvement
4 30 (35.71%) Cybersecurity
5 29 (34.52%) CI/CD
6 28 (33.33%) Analytics
7 27 (32.14%) ITIL
7 27 (32.14%) Log Analytics
8 25 (29.76%) Migration
8 25 (29.76%) Roadmaps
9 22 (26.19%) Artificial Intelligence
10 19 (22.62%) Problem-Solving
11 17 (20.24%) API Management
11 17 (20.24%) Incident Response
11 17 (20.24%) Vulnerability Management
12 16 (19.05%) Data Integration
12 16 (19.05%) Network Virtualisation
12 16 (19.05%) RBAC
12 16 (19.05%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 36 (42.86%) PowerShell
2 26 (30.95%) Bicep
3 23 (27.38%) SQL
4 12 (14.29%) Python
5 10 (11.90%) Bash
6 5 (5.95%) C#
7 4 (4.76%) Go
7 4 (4.76%) Java
7 4 (4.76%) Shell Script
8 1 (1.19%) C
8 1 (1.19%) C++
Qualifications
1 23 (27.38%) Azure Certification
2 17 (20.24%) DBS Check
3 16 (19.05%) Security Cleared
4 12 (14.29%) Degree
4 12 (14.29%) SC Cleared
5 9 (10.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (8.33%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (5.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (4.76%) DV Cleared
9 2 (2.38%) AWS Certification
9 2 (2.38%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (8.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 16 (19.05%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (15.48%) Active Directory
3 10 (11.90%) Docker
4 9 (10.71%) vSphere
5 8 (9.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (7.14%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 19 (22.62%) Terraform
2 16 (19.05%) Single Sign-On
3 10 (11.90%) Kubernetes
4 9 (10.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (5.95%) Prometheus
5 5 (5.95%) SCOM
6 4 (4.76%) Ansible
6 4 (4.76%) Grafana
6 4 (4.76%) Istio
7 1 (1.19%) Packer
Vendors
1 30 (35.71%) Microsoft
2 18 (21.43%) VMware
3 17 (20.24%) Qualys
3 17 (20.24%) Tenable
4 16 (19.05%) Databricks
4 16 (19.05%) Meraki
5 4 (4.76%) Confluent
6 2 (2.38%) Aruba
7 1 (1.19%) Apple
7 1 (1.19%) Veeam