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

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 116 109 107
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 +37
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 16 10 20
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.72% 0.57% 0.89%
As % of the System Software category 9.94% 5.08% 8.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 8 17
10th Percentile £356 £475 £347
25th Percentile £403 £503 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £684 £550
Median % change year-on-year -30.53% +24.32% -0.90%
75th Percentile £518 £751 £775
90th Percentile £594 £799 -
Central London median daily rate £475 £684 £565
% change year-on-year -30.53% +21.02% +2.73%

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 161 197 250
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 7.29% 11.29% 11.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 136 184
10th Percentile £245 £253 £250
25th Percentile £406 £411 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £488
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +12.82% -14.29%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £680 £722 £738
Central London median daily rate £525 £539 £475
% change year-on-year -2.64% +13.53% -13.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 5
10th Percentile £24.32 - -
25th Percentile £29.57 £162.50 £21.25
Median hourly rate £40.02 £175.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -77.13% +337.50% +136.20%
75th Percentile £50.72 £187.50 -
90th Percentile £56.12 - £46.15
Central London median hourly rate £25.47 £26.45 £40.00
% change year-on-year -3.71% -33.88% +81.82%

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 13 April 2026.

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 2 (12.50%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (12.50%) Palantir Foundry
Cloud Services
1 9 (56.25%) Azure
2 4 (25.00%) GitHub
3 2 (12.50%) AWS
3 2 (12.50%) Entra ID
3 2 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
3 2 (12.50%) Microsoft 365
3 2 (12.50%) Power Platform
3 2 (12.50%) Serverless
4 1 (6.25%) Azure ExpressRoute
4 1 (6.25%) Azure Functions
4 1 (6.25%) Azure Monitor
4 1 (6.25%) Azure Sentinel
4 1 (6.25%) Azure Stack
4 1 (6.25%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 4 (25.00%) Firewall
1 4 (25.00%) VPN
2 3 (18.75%) DNS
3 2 (12.50%) DHCP
3 2 (12.50%) Network Security
3 2 (12.50%) SAN
3 2 (12.50%) VSAN
4 1 (6.25%) BGP
4 1 (6.25%) IPsec
4 1 (6.25%) NAS
4 1 (6.25%) OSPF
4 1 (6.25%) SSL
4 1 (6.25%) TCP/IP
4 1 (6.25%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (12.50%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 2 (12.50%) Git
General
1 3 (18.75%) Finance
1 3 (18.75%) Social Skills
2 2 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (6.25%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 6 (37.50%) Senior
2 4 (25.00%) DevOps Engineer
3 3 (18.75%) Azure Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Analyst
4 2 (12.50%) Service Desk Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) VMware Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Administrator
5 1 (6.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Migration Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Security Administrator
5 1 (6.25%) Senior DevOps
5 1 (6.25%) Senior DevOps Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Senior VMware Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Site Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Vulnerability Analyst
5 1 (6.25%) Vulnerability Management Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (12.50%) PySpark
2 1 (6.25%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 3 (18.75%) Cloud Native
1 3 (18.75%) Private Cloud
2 1 (6.25%) Anti-Spyware
2 1 (6.25%) Clustering
2 1 (6.25%) Data Centre
2 1 (6.25%) Linux Command Line
2 1 (6.25%) Public Cloud
2 1 (6.25%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 3 (18.75%) VMS
2 2 (12.50%) Windows
3 1 (6.25%) Linux
3 1 (6.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (6.25%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 6 (37.50%) DevOps
2 6 (37.50%) Infrastructure as Code
3 3 (18.75%) Change Management
3 3 (18.75%) Disaster Recovery
3 3 (18.75%) High Availability
3 3 (18.75%) ITIL
3 3 (18.75%) Migration
3 3 (18.75%) Root Cause Analysis
3 3 (18.75%) Site Reliability Engineering
4 2 (12.50%) Agile
4 2 (12.50%) AI
4 2 (12.50%) Change Control
4 2 (12.50%) Data Analysis
4 2 (12.50%) ITSM
4 2 (12.50%) Performance Improvement
4 2 (12.50%) Process Improvement
4 2 (12.50%) Service Delivery
4 2 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 2 (12.50%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 4 (25.00%) PowerShell
2 3 (18.75%) Python
3 2 (12.50%) SQL
Qualifications
1 5 (31.25%) Security Cleared
2 4 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 2 (12.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
3 2 (12.50%) VCAP
3 2 (12.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 1 (6.25%) Azure Certification
4 1 (6.25%) CCNP
4 1 (6.25%) Cisco Certification
4 1 (6.25%) CISSP
4 1 (6.25%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (18.75%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (12.50%) GDPR
2 2 (12.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 3 (18.75%) VMware ESXi
1 3 (18.75%) VMware Infrastructure
1 3 (18.75%) vSphere
2 2 (12.50%) Active Directory
2 2 (12.50%) Hyper-V
2 2 (12.50%) VMware NSX
3 1 (6.25%) Docker
3 1 (6.25%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 7 (43.75%) Terraform
2 4 (25.00%) Kubernetes
3 3 (18.75%) Ansible
3 3 (18.75%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (18.75%) vCenter Server
4 2 (12.50%) PowerCLI
5 1 (6.25%) Failover Clustering
5 1 (6.25%) Microsoft Clustering
5 1 (6.25%) QRadar
5 1 (6.25%) VxRail
Vendors
1 5 (31.25%) Microsoft
2 3 (18.75%) VMware
3 2 (12.50%) Databricks
3 2 (12.50%) Foundry
3 2 (12.50%) Palantir
3 2 (12.50%) Tenable
4 1 (6.25%) Dell
4 1 (6.25%) Palo Alto
4 1 (6.25%) Splunk