Virtual Machines Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Virtual Machine (VM)
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 117 108 127
Rank change year-on-year -9 +19 +24
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 10 12 8
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.54% 0.59% 0.33%
As % of the System Software category 5.95% 5.45% 3.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 10 5
10th Percentile £413 £353 £410
25th Percentile £438 £466 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £513 £475
Median % change year-on-year -7.32% +7.89% -17.39%
75th Percentile £505 £694 £700
90th Percentile £571 £761 £745
Central London median daily rate £475 £513 £520
% change year-on-year -7.32% -1.44% -7.56%

All System Software Skills
City of London

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 City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 168 220 266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 9.13% 10.82% 10.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 136 197
10th Percentile £278 £319 £290
25th Percentile £406 £435 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £558 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% +11.50% -13.04%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £690 £725 £780
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £500
% change year-on-year - +10.00% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
10th Percentile - £84.40 -
25th Percentile £20.82 £94.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £22.27 £112.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -80.12% +397.78% +9.76%
75th Percentile £23.71 - £23.75
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate £25.47 £98.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year -74.14% +337.78% +9.76%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in the City of London

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in the City of London over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in the City of London

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Virtual Machines.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 3 (30.00%) Microsoft Exchange
Cloud Services
1 6 (60.00%) Azure
2 3 (30.00%) Microsoft 365
3 2 (20.00%) Entra ID
3 2 (20.00%) GitHub
3 2 (20.00%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (10.00%) AWS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (50.00%) Firewall
2 3 (30.00%) VPN
3 2 (20.00%) DHCP
3 2 (20.00%) DNS
3 2 (20.00%) Intrusion Detection
3 2 (20.00%) Modbus
4 1 (10.00%) NAS
4 1 (10.00%) SAN
General
1 3 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (20.00%) Manufacturing
2 2 (20.00%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 6 (60.00%) Senior
2 3 (30.00%) DevOps Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Azure Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Cybersecurity Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Security Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Senior Security Engineer
3 2 (20.00%) Service Desk Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Azure DevOps Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Cloud Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Microsoft Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Microsoft Infrastructure Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Network Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Senior DevOps
4 1 (10.00%) Senior DevOps Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Senior Network Security Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Site Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 1 (10.00%) VMware Engineer
Miscellaneous
1 2 (20.00%) Cloud Native
1 2 (20.00%) Insider Threat
1 2 (20.00%) Life Science
1 2 (20.00%) Management Information System
1 2 (20.00%) Operational Technology
1 2 (20.00%) Private Cloud
1 2 (20.00%) Renewable Energy
1 2 (20.00%) SCADA
1 2 (20.00%) Security Posture
2 1 (10.00%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 1 (10.00%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (40.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (30.00%) DevOps
3 2 (20.00%) Antivirus Management
3 2 (20.00%) Change Control
3 2 (20.00%) Change Management
3 2 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (20.00%) Cybersecurity
3 2 (20.00%) Data Flow Diagram
3 2 (20.00%) Identity Management
3 2 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 2 (20.00%) ITIL
3 2 (20.00%) ITSM
3 2 (20.00%) Mentoring
3 2 (20.00%) Patch Management
3 2 (20.00%) Performance Improvement
3 2 (20.00%) Performance Metrics
3 2 (20.00%) Process Improvement
3 2 (20.00%) Root Cause Analysis
3 2 (20.00%) Service Delivery
3 2 (20.00%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 2 (20.00%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 3 (30.00%) SC Cleared
1 3 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 2 (20.00%) BPSS Clearance
2 2 (20.00%) CCNA
2 2 (20.00%) CCNP
2 2 (20.00%) Cisco Certification
2 2 (20.00%) Degree
2 2 (20.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
3 1 (10.00%) VCAP
3 1 (10.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (40.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (20.00%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (20.00%) GDPR
2 2 (20.00%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 2 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 1 (10.00%) Docker
2 1 (10.00%) Virtual Desktop
2 1 (10.00%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (10.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (10.00%) VMware NSX
2 1 (10.00%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 3 (30.00%) Kubernetes
1 3 (30.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (20.00%) Terraform
3 1 (10.00%) Ansible
3 1 (10.00%) PowerCLI
3 1 (10.00%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 5 (50.00%) Microsoft
2 2 (20.00%) Rockwell
3 1 (10.00%) Palo Alto
3 1 (10.00%) VMware