Virtual Machines Contract Job Trends in London

Virtual Machine (VM)
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in London requiring Virtual Machines skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 309 260 280
Rank change year-on-year -49 +20 +49
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 83 92 116
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.51% 0.71% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 4.87% 6.52% 6.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 59 60 79
10th Percentile £335 £422 £240
25th Percentile £405 £480 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £575 £485
Median % change year-on-year -17.39% +18.56% -11.82%
75th Percentile £638 £673 £613
90th Percentile £654 £763 £775
England median daily rate £500 £522 £500
% change year-on-year -4.12% +4.30% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £34.50 -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £63.00 £14.63
% change year-on-year +11.11% +330.77% -77.84%

All System Software Skills
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 London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 1,705 1,412 1,832
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 10.56% 10.91% 10.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,152 966 1,286
10th Percentile £313 £263 £208
25th Percentile £425 £425 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +10.00% -13.04%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £625
90th Percentile £747 £813 £719
England median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 14 36
10th Percentile £21.00 £21.95 £16.43
25th Percentile £21.61 £23.80 £20.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £28.71 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.38% +27.58% -18.18%
75th Percentile £42.94 £80.19 £40.00
90th Percentile £67.70 £112.00 £60.00
England median hourly rate £37.97 £30.75 £22.50
% change year-on-year +23.48% +36.67% -41.56%

Virtual Machines
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

Virtual Machines job vacancy trend in London

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Trend in London

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

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

Virtual Machines
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Machines in London over the 6 months to 11 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Machines in London

Virtual Machines
Hourly Rate Trend in London

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

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

Virtual Machines
Contract Job Locations in London

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 London region over the 6 months to 11 March 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
Central London -12 15 £475 -17.39% 10
Virtual Machines
England

Virtual Machines
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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 8 (9.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (2.41%) Ethereum
2 2 (2.41%) Hyperledger
2 2 (2.41%) Palantir Foundry
3 1 (1.20%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.20%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 47 (56.63%) Azure
2 21 (25.30%) GitHub
3 16 (19.28%) AWS
4 14 (16.87%) GitHub Actions
5 8 (9.64%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (8.43%) Azure Monitor
6 7 (8.43%) Microsoft 365
7 5 (6.02%) Entra ID
7 5 (6.02%) GCP
7 5 (6.02%) Serverless
8 4 (4.82%) AWS CodePipeline
8 4 (4.82%) Azure AKS
8 4 (4.82%) Azure Data Factory
8 4 (4.82%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (3.61%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (3.61%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (3.61%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (3.61%) Power Platform
10 2 (2.41%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (2.41%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 20 (24.10%) Firewall
2 12 (14.46%) DNS
3 8 (9.64%) TCP/IP
4 7 (8.43%) Network Security
4 7 (8.43%) WAN
5 6 (7.23%) DHCP
5 6 (7.23%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (4.82%) VPN
7 3 (3.61%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (2.41%) SAN
8 2 (2.41%) Skype
8 2 (2.41%) SSL
9 1 (1.20%) BGP
9 1 (1.20%) Internet
9 1 (1.20%) IPsec
9 1 (1.20%) NAS
9 1 (1.20%) OSPF
9 1 (1.20%) SD-WAN
9 1 (1.20%) SSH
9 1 (1.20%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (3.61%) Azure SQL Database
1 3 (3.61%) Data Lake
1 3 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (3.61%) Power BI
2 2 (2.41%) Data Hub
2 2 (2.41%) Data Vault
2 2 (2.41%) ImageNet
2 2 (2.41%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 5 (6.02%) Git
1 5 (6.02%) GitLab
2 3 (3.61%) RStudio
3 2 (2.41%) Hardhat
3 2 (2.41%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.20%) JIRA
4 1 (1.20%) JMeter
4 1 (1.20%) Postman
4 1 (1.20%) Selenium
4 1 (1.20%) Terragrunt
General
1 15 (18.07%) Social Skills
2 8 (9.64%) Finance
3 7 (8.43%) Public Sector
4 6 (7.23%) Spanish Language
5 4 (4.82%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (4.82%) Banking
6 3 (3.61%) Social Science
7 2 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.20%) Italian Language
8 1 (1.20%) Police
Job Titles
1 22 (26.51%) DevOps Engineer
2 14 (16.87%) Senior
3 13 (15.66%) Security Engineer
4 12 (14.46%) Azure Engineer
5 9 (10.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 8 (9.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 7 (8.43%) Site Engineer
8 6 (7.23%) Cloud Engineer
8 6 (7.23%) Data Engineer
8 6 (7.23%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
8 6 (7.23%) Senior DevOps
8 6 (7.23%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 5 (6.02%) Kubernetes Engineer
10 4 (4.82%) Analyst
10 4 (4.82%) Azure DevOps Engineer
10 4 (4.82%) Platform Engineer
11 3 (3.61%) Applications Engineer
11 3 (3.61%) Network Engineer
11 3 (3.61%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
11 3 (3.61%) Network Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (3.61%) ARM Templates
1 3 (3.61%) YAML
2 2 (2.41%) Kafka
2 2 (2.41%) PySpark
2 2 (2.41%) Smart Contracts
2 2 (2.41%) Truffle
2 2 (2.41%) web3js
3 1 (1.20%) .NET
3 1 (1.20%) RabbitMQ
3 1 (1.20%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 10 (12.05%) Private Cloud
2 9 (10.84%) Cloud Native
3 7 (8.43%) Data Centre
4 3 (3.61%) NHS
4 3 (3.61%) Product Ownership
4 3 (3.61%) Public Cloud
5 2 (2.41%) Blockchain
5 2 (2.41%) Clustering
5 2 (2.41%) Cyber Threat
5 2 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.41%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (2.41%) PACS
6 1 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.20%) Anti-Spyware
6 1 (1.20%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.20%) Replication
6 1 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.20%) Shadow IT
Operating Systems
1 17 (20.48%) Linux
2 12 (14.46%) VMS
3 11 (13.25%) Windows
4 7 (8.43%) Windows Server
5 1 (1.20%) Data ONTAP
5 1 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (42.17%) CI/CD
1 35 (42.17%) DevOps
2 31 (37.35%) Infrastructure as Code
3 15 (18.07%) Continuous Improvement
3 15 (18.07%) Cybersecurity
4 14 (16.87%) Migration
5 12 (14.46%) Security Operations
5 12 (14.46%) Site Reliability Engineering
6 11 (13.25%) Agile
7 10 (12.05%) Cloud Security
7 10 (12.05%) Information Security
7 10 (12.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 10 (12.05%) Technical Leadership
8 9 (10.84%) Containerisation
8 9 (10.84%) Incident Management
9 8 (9.64%) Analytics
9 8 (9.64%) High Availability
10 7 (8.43%) Change Control
10 7 (8.43%) Identity Management
10 7 (8.43%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 19 (22.89%) Python
2 16 (19.28%) SQL
3 14 (16.87%) PowerShell
4 8 (9.64%) Bash
5 4 (4.82%) Java
6 3 (3.61%) Ruby
7 2 (2.41%) C
7 2 (2.41%) PHP
7 2 (2.41%) Solidity
8 1 (1.20%) Bicep
8 1 (1.20%) C#
8 1 (1.20%) Go
8 1 (1.20%) Korn
Qualifications
1 20 (24.10%) Security Cleared
2 17 (20.48%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.82%) Azure Certification
4 2 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (2.41%) Degree
4 2 (2.41%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.41%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
4 2 (2.41%) Master's Degree
5 1 (1.20%) CCNP
5 1 (1.20%) Cisco Certification
5 1 (1.20%) CISSP
5 1 (1.20%) CompTIA Security+
5 1 (1.20%) VCAP
5 1 (1.20%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.61%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (2.41%) GDPR
2 2 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.20%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.20%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.20%) QA
System Software
1 12 (14.46%) Active Directory
2 8 (9.64%) Docker
3 7 (8.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (3.61%) Firmware
4 3 (3.61%) Virtual Desktop
4 3 (3.61%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (3.61%) vSphere
5 2 (2.41%) Xen
6 1 (1.20%) Ceph
6 1 (1.20%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.20%) KVM
6 1 (1.20%) NFS
6 1 (1.20%) NLBS
6 1 (1.20%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 34 (40.96%) Terraform
2 21 (25.30%) Kubernetes
3 13 (15.66%) Ansible
4 10 (12.05%) SCCM
5 8 (9.64%) Microsoft Intune
6 6 (7.23%) CASB
6 6 (7.23%) SCOrch
7 4 (4.82%) WSUS
8 3 (3.61%) Rancher
8 3 (3.61%) vCenter Server
9 2 (2.41%) Opsview
10 1 (1.20%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (1.20%) Fluentd
10 1 (1.20%) Pacemaker
10 1 (1.20%) Packer
10 1 (1.20%) PowerCLI
10 1 (1.20%) QRadar
10 1 (1.20%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 25 (30.12%) Microsoft
2 7 (8.43%) VMware
3 6 (7.23%) Databricks
4 5 (6.02%) Tenable
5 4 (4.82%) Sophos
6 2 (2.41%) Foundry
6 2 (2.41%) NetApp
6 2 (2.41%) OpenAI
6 2 (2.41%) Palantir
6 2 (2.41%) Palo Alto
7 1 (1.20%) Cloudera
7 1 (1.20%) Qualys
7 1 (1.20%) Red Hat
7 1 (1.20%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.20%) Splunk