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 9 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 117 121 106
Rank change year-on-year +4 -15 +39
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 18 6 23
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.73% 0.32% 1.07%
As % of the System Software category 10.34% 3.53% 8.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 5 21
10th Percentile £325 £553 £338
25th Percentile £356 £613 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £751 £501
Median % change year-on-year -36.75% +50.05% -7.95%
75th Percentile £588 - £663
90th Percentile £644 £848 £775
Central London median daily rate £525 £625 £525
% change year-on-year -16.00% +19.05% -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 174 170 264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 7.09% 9.16% 12.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 126 120 191
10th Percentile £206 £242 £263
25th Percentile £411 £406 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £546 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.18% +4.05% -8.70%
75th Percentile £614 £653 £681
90th Percentile £669 £700 £750
Central London median daily rate £525 £525 £500
% change year-on-year - +4.95% -13.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 3
10th Percentile £21.20 £22.95 -
25th Percentile £24.13 £24.38 -
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -28.75% +10.34%
75th Percentile £45.36 £108.88 £45.13
90th Percentile £53.98 £156.05 £48.20
Central London median hourly rate £30.00 £27.48 £40.00
% change year-on-year +9.19% -31.31% +60.00%

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 9 July 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 (11.11%) Palantir Foundry
2 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (5.56%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (11.11%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (11.11%) Photoshop
2 1 (5.56%) InDesign
Cloud Services
1 9 (50.00%) Azure
2 4 (22.22%) GitHub
3 3 (16.67%) Azure Monitor
4 2 (11.11%) Azure AKS
4 2 (11.11%) Azure Sentinel
4 2 (11.11%) GCP
4 2 (11.11%) GitHub Actions
4 2 (11.11%) Power Platform
4 2 (11.11%) Serverless
5 1 (5.56%) AWS
5 1 (5.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
5 1 (5.56%) Azure Functions
5 1 (5.56%) Azure Logic Apps
5 1 (5.56%) Azure Stack
5 1 (5.56%) Cloudflare
5 1 (5.56%) Entra ID
5 1 (5.56%) Microsoft 365
5 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Purview
5 1 (5.56%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 5 (27.78%) VPN
2 4 (22.22%) Firewall
3 3 (16.67%) DNS
3 3 (16.67%) Network Security
4 2 (11.11%) BGP
4 2 (11.11%) OSPF
4 2 (11.11%) SD-WAN
4 2 (11.11%) TCP/IP
4 2 (11.11%) VSAN
4 2 (11.11%) WAN
5 1 (5.56%) DHCP
5 1 (5.56%) DKIM
5 1 (5.56%) DMARC
5 1 (5.56%) IPsec
5 1 (5.56%) LAN
5 1 (5.56%) MPLS
5 1 (5.56%) SAN
5 1 (5.56%) SSL
5 1 (5.56%) VLAN
5 1 (5.56%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (16.67%) SQL Server
2 2 (11.11%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 2 (11.11%) Git
General
1 3 (16.67%) Documentation Skills
1 3 (16.67%) Finance
1 3 (16.67%) Social Skills
2 2 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
2 2 (11.11%) Retail
3 1 (5.56%) Law
3 1 (5.56%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 3 (16.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 2 (11.11%) Analyst
2 2 (11.11%) Cloud Engineer
2 2 (11.11%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
2 2 (11.11%) Designer
2 2 (11.11%) DevOps Engineer
2 2 (11.11%) Network Engineer
2 2 (11.11%) Senior
3 1 (5.56%) Administrator
3 1 (5.56%) Azure Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Creative Graphic Designer
3 1 (5.56%) Migration Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Network Security Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Security Administrator
3 1 (5.56%) Security Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Senior VMware Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Systems Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) VMware Engineer
3 1 (5.56%) Vulnerability Analyst
3 1 (5.56%) Vulnerability Management Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (11.11%) PySpark
2 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Graph
2 1 (5.56%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 2 (11.11%) Data Centre
1 2 (11.11%) Private Cloud
2 1 (5.56%) Anti-Spyware
2 1 (5.56%) Cloud Native
2 1 (5.56%) Clustering
2 1 (5.56%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (5.56%) Enterprise Storage
2 1 (5.56%) Graphic Design
2 1 (5.56%) Linux Command Line
2 1 (5.56%) Public Cloud
2 1 (5.56%) Replication
2 1 (5.56%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 6 (33.33%) Windows
2 3 (16.67%) VMS
3 2 (11.11%) Windows Server
4 1 (5.56%) Linux
4 1 (5.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (5.56%) SUSE
4 1 (5.56%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (5.56%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (5.56%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (38.89%) CI/CD
1 7 (38.89%) Infrastructure as Code
2 4 (22.22%) DevOps
3 3 (16.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 3 (16.67%) Kalman Filter
3 3 (16.67%) Mentoring
3 3 (16.67%) Zero Trust
4 2 (11.11%) Analytics
4 2 (11.11%) Cloud Operations
4 2 (11.11%) Cloud Security
4 2 (11.11%) Deployment Automation
4 2 (11.11%) High Availability
4 2 (11.11%) Iconography
4 2 (11.11%) Project Delivery
4 2 (11.11%) Prototyping
4 2 (11.11%) Storytelling
4 2 (11.11%) Threat and Vulnerability Management
4 2 (11.11%) Threat Management
4 2 (11.11%) Visualisation
4 2 (11.11%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 7 (38.89%) PowerShell
2 5 (27.78%) Python
3 2 (11.11%) C#
3 2 (11.11%) SQL
4 1 (5.56%) Bash
Qualifications
1 4 (22.22%) Security Cleared
2 3 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 2 (11.11%) CCNP
3 2 (11.11%) Cisco Certification
3 2 (11.11%) Degree
4 1 (5.56%) Azure Certification
4 1 (5.56%) CCNA
4 1 (5.56%) CISSP
4 1 (5.56%) CompTIA Security+
4 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (5.56%) VCAP
4 1 (5.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (5.56%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 3 (16.67%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (11.11%) Hyper-V
2 2 (11.11%) VMware ESXi
2 2 (11.11%) vSphere
3 1 (5.56%) Active Directory
3 1 (5.56%) Firmware
3 1 (5.56%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 9 (50.00%) Terraform
2 4 (22.22%) Kubernetes
3 2 (11.11%) Ansible
3 2 (11.11%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (11.11%) PowerCLI
3 2 (11.11%) vCenter Server
4 1 (5.56%) Failover Clustering
4 1 (5.56%) Microsoft Clustering
4 1 (5.56%) PingFederate
4 1 (5.56%) QRadar
4 1 (5.56%) VxRail
Vendors
1 6 (33.33%) VMware
2 3 (16.67%) Microsoft
2 3 (16.67%) Palo Alto
3 2 (11.11%) Cisco
3 2 (11.11%) Databricks
3 2 (11.11%) Dell
3 2 (11.11%) Foundry
3 2 (11.11%) Palantir
3 2 (11.11%) ServiceNow
3 2 (11.11%) Tenable
4 1 (5.56%) Adobe
4 1 (5.56%) Citrix
4 1 (5.56%) EMC
4 1 (5.56%) Forcepoint
4 1 (5.56%) ForeScout
4 1 (5.56%) Isilon
4 1 (5.56%) Juniper
4 1 (5.56%) LogicMonitor
4 1 (5.56%) Meraki
4 1 (5.56%) Splunk