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 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 127 111
Rank change year-on-year +5 -16 +28
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 15 3 14
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.63% 0.16% 0.68%
As % of the System Software category 7.89% 1.96% 5.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 3 11
10th Percentile £310 £533 £425
25th Percentile £356 £563 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £625 £450
Median % change year-on-year -16.00% +38.89% -17.24%
75th Percentile £588 £694 £569
90th Percentile £648 £728 £600
Central London median daily rate £550 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +4.76% - -3.45%

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 190 153 235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 7.93% 8.19% 11.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 109 172
10th Percentile £224 £255 £313
25th Percentile £411 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -8.70%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £658
90th Percentile £679 £688 £725
Central London median daily rate £525 £531 £525
% change year-on-year -1.04% +1.05% -8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 1
10th Percentile £21.20 £22.95 -
25th Percentile £24.13 £24.38 £77.50
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.50 £85.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -66.47% +134.48%
75th Percentile £45.36 £108.88 £92.50
90th Percentile £53.98 £156.05 -
Central London median hourly rate £32.50 £27.48 £85.00
% change year-on-year +18.29% -67.68% +240.00%

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 6 August 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 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Exchange
1 1 (6.67%) Palantir Foundry
1 1 (6.67%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (13.33%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (13.33%) Photoshop
2 1 (6.67%) InDesign
Cloud Services
1 8 (53.33%) Azure
2 3 (20.00%) Azure Monitor
2 3 (20.00%) GitHub
3 2 (13.33%) Azure AKS
3 2 (13.33%) Azure Sentinel
3 2 (13.33%) GCP
3 2 (13.33%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (6.67%) AWS
4 1 (6.67%) Azure ExpressRoute
4 1 (6.67%) Azure Logic Apps
4 1 (6.67%) Azure Stack
4 1 (6.67%) Cloudflare
4 1 (6.67%) Entra ID
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Purview
4 1 (6.67%) OneDrive
4 1 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 1 (6.67%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 5 (33.33%) VPN
2 4 (26.67%) Firewall
3 3 (20.00%) DNS
3 3 (20.00%) Network Security
4 2 (13.33%) BGP
4 2 (13.33%) OSPF
4 2 (13.33%) SD-WAN
4 2 (13.33%) TCP/IP
4 2 (13.33%) VSAN
4 2 (13.33%) WAN
5 1 (6.67%) DHCP
5 1 (6.67%) DKIM
5 1 (6.67%) DMARC
5 1 (6.67%) IPsec
5 1 (6.67%) LAN
5 1 (6.67%) MPLS
5 1 (6.67%) SSL
5 1 (6.67%) VLAN
5 1 (6.67%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (20.00%) SQL Server
2 1 (6.67%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 1 (6.67%) Git
General
1 3 (20.00%) Documentation Skills
1 3 (20.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (13.33%) Finance
2 2 (13.33%) Retail
3 1 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (6.67%) Law
3 1 (6.67%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 2 (13.33%) Cloud Engineer
1 2 (13.33%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
1 2 (13.33%) Designer
1 2 (13.33%) DevOps Engineer
1 2 (13.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
1 2 (13.33%) Network Engineer
1 2 (13.33%) Senior
2 1 (6.67%) Azure Engineer
2 1 (6.67%) Creative Designer
2 1 (6.67%) Creative Graphic Designer
2 1 (6.67%) Firewall Engineer
2 1 (6.67%) Graphic Designer
2 1 (6.67%) Migration Engineer
2 1 (6.67%) Security Administrator
2 1 (6.67%) Security Engineer
2 1 (6.67%) Senior VMware Engineer
2 1 (6.67%) Storage Engineer
2 1 (6.67%) Systems Engineer
2 1 (6.67%) Vulnerability Analyst
2 1 (6.67%) Vulnerability Management Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Graph
1 1 (6.67%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 2 (13.33%) Data Centre
1 2 (13.33%) Private Cloud
2 1 (6.67%) Anti-Spyware
2 1 (6.67%) Cloud Native
2 1 (6.67%) Clustering
2 1 (6.67%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (6.67%) Enterprise Storage
2 1 (6.67%) Graphic Design
2 1 (6.67%) Linux Command Line
2 1 (6.67%) Replication
2 1 (6.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 5 (33.33%) Windows
2 2 (13.33%) VMS
2 2 (13.33%) Windows Server
3 1 (6.67%) Linux
3 1 (6.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (6.67%) SUSE
3 1 (6.67%) Windows Server 2012
3 1 (6.67%) Windows Server 2016
3 1 (6.67%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (46.67%) Infrastructure as Code
2 6 (40.00%) CI/CD
3 3 (20.00%) DevOps
3 3 (20.00%) Kalman Filter
3 3 (20.00%) Mentoring
3 3 (20.00%) Zero Trust
4 2 (13.33%) AI
4 2 (13.33%) Change Control
4 2 (13.33%) Cloud Security
4 2 (13.33%) Deployment Automation
4 2 (13.33%) High Availability
4 2 (13.33%) Iconography
4 2 (13.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 2 (13.33%) ITIL
4 2 (13.33%) Migration
4 2 (13.33%) Prototyping
4 2 (13.33%) SIEM
4 2 (13.33%) Storytelling
4 2 (13.33%) Visualisation
5 1 (6.67%) Threat and Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 7 (46.67%) PowerShell
2 4 (26.67%) Python
3 2 (13.33%) C#
4 1 (6.67%) Bash
4 1 (6.67%) SQL
Qualifications
1 4 (26.67%) Security Cleared
2 3 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 2 (13.33%) CCNP
3 2 (13.33%) Cisco Certification
3 2 (13.33%) Degree
4 1 (6.67%) Azure Certification
4 1 (6.67%) CCNA
4 1 (6.67%) CISSP
4 1 (6.67%) CompTIA Security+
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (6.67%) VCAP
4 1 (6.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
System Software
1 3 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (13.33%) VMware ESXi
2 2 (13.33%) vSphere
3 1 (6.67%) Active Directory
3 1 (6.67%) Firmware
3 1 (6.67%) Hyper-V
3 1 (6.67%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 8 (53.33%) Terraform
2 4 (26.67%) Kubernetes
3 2 (13.33%) Ansible
3 2 (13.33%) PowerCLI
3 2 (13.33%) vCenter Server
4 1 (6.67%) Failover Clustering
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Clustering
4 1 (6.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (6.67%) PingFederate
4 1 (6.67%) QRadar
4 1 (6.67%) VxRail
Vendors
1 6 (40.00%) VMware
2 3 (20.00%) Palo Alto
3 2 (13.33%) Cisco
3 2 (13.33%) Dell
3 2 (13.33%) Microsoft
3 2 (13.33%) ServiceNow
4 1 (6.67%) Adobe
4 1 (6.67%) Citrix
4 1 (6.67%) Databricks
4 1 (6.67%) EMC
4 1 (6.67%) Forcepoint
4 1 (6.67%) ForeScout
4 1 (6.67%) Foundry
4 1 (6.67%) Isilon
4 1 (6.67%) Juniper
4 1 (6.67%) LogicMonitor
4 1 (6.67%) Meraki
4 1 (6.67%) Palantir
4 1 (6.67%) Splunk
4 1 (6.67%) Zscaler