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 12 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 110 105 113
Rank change year-on-year -5 +8 +32
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 14 13 18
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.73% 0.71% 0.76%
As % of the System Software category 8.92% 6.07% 6.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 11 15
10th Percentile £358 £463 £304
25th Percentile £403 £475 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £704 £501
Median % change year-on-year -36.08% +40.66% -14.81%
75th Percentile £500 £751 £775
90th Percentile £637 £913 -
Central London median daily rate £475 £704 £533
% change year-on-year -32.53% +32.14% -7.35%

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 157 214 260
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 8.19% 11.68% 10.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 133 189
10th Percentile £241 £270 £248
25th Percentile £377 £453 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £575 £488
Median % change year-on-year -10.43% +17.95% -11.36%
75th Percentile £625 £653 £625
90th Percentile £730 £730 £738
Central London median daily rate £525 £551 £475
% change year-on-year -4.72% +16.00% -13.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 5
10th Percentile £24.32 - -
25th Percentile £29.57 - £21.25
Median hourly rate £40.02 £112.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -64.27% +180.00% +105.13%
75th Percentile £50.72 - -
90th Percentile £56.12 - £46.15
Central London median hourly rate £25.47 £112.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -77.26% +180.00% +95.12%

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 12 February 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 (14.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (7.14%) Palantir Foundry
Cloud Services
1 7 (50.00%) Azure
2 3 (21.43%) GitHub
3 2 (14.29%) AWS
3 2 (14.29%) Entra ID
3 2 (14.29%) GitHub Actions
3 2 (14.29%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (7.14%) Azure Functions
4 1 (7.14%) Azure Sentinel
4 1 (7.14%) GCP
4 1 (7.14%) Power Platform
4 1 (7.14%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 5 (35.71%) Firewall
2 3 (21.43%) DNS
2 3 (21.43%) VPN
3 2 (14.29%) DHCP
3 2 (14.29%) Intrusion Detection
3 2 (14.29%) Modbus
3 2 (14.29%) SAN
4 1 (7.14%) BGP
4 1 (7.14%) IPsec
4 1 (7.14%) NAS
4 1 (7.14%) Network Security
4 1 (7.14%) OSPF
4 1 (7.14%) SSL
4 1 (7.14%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (7.14%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 1 (7.14%) Git
General
1 3 (21.43%) Social Skills
2 2 (14.29%) Finance
2 2 (14.29%) Manufacturing
2 2 (14.29%) Telecoms
3 1 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (7.14%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (50.00%) Senior
2 4 (28.57%) DevOps Engineer
3 2 (14.29%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 2 (14.29%) Azure Engineer
3 2 (14.29%) Cybersecurity Engineer
3 2 (14.29%) Security Engineer
3 2 (14.29%) Senior Security Engineer
3 2 (14.29%) Service Desk Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Administrator
4 1 (7.14%) Analyst
4 1 (7.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Network Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Network Security Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Security Administrator
4 1 (7.14%) Senior DevOps
4 1 (7.14%) Senior Network Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Senior Network Security Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Site Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 1 (7.14%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (7.14%) PySpark
1 1 (7.14%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 3 (21.43%) Cloud Native
1 3 (21.43%) Private Cloud
2 2 (14.29%) Data Centre
2 2 (14.29%) Insider Threat
2 2 (14.29%) Life Science
2 2 (14.29%) Management Information System
2 2 (14.29%) Operational Technology
2 2 (14.29%) Renewable Energy
2 2 (14.29%) SCADA
2 2 (14.29%) Security Posture
3 1 (7.14%) Anti-Spyware
3 1 (7.14%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 2 (14.29%) VMS
2 1 (7.14%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (42.86%) CI/CD
2 5 (35.71%) DevOps
3 4 (28.57%) Infrastructure as Code
4 3 (21.43%) Change Management
4 3 (21.43%) ITIL
4 3 (21.43%) Vulnerability Assessment
5 2 (14.29%) Agile
5 2 (14.29%) Data Flow Diagram
5 2 (14.29%) Disaster Recovery
5 2 (14.29%) Identity Management
5 2 (14.29%) Information Security
5 2 (14.29%) Information Security Management
5 2 (14.29%) ITSM
5 2 (14.29%) Migration
5 2 (14.29%) Network Architecture
5 2 (14.29%) Network Design
5 2 (14.29%) Risk Assessment
5 2 (14.29%) Security Management
5 2 (14.29%) Service Delivery
5 2 (14.29%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 3 (21.43%) PowerShell
2 2 (14.29%) Python
3 1 (7.14%) SQL
Qualifications
1 3 (21.43%) CCNP
1 3 (21.43%) Cisco Certification
1 3 (21.43%) SC Cleared
1 3 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 2 (14.29%) BPSS Clearance
2 2 (14.29%) CCNA
2 2 (14.29%) Degree
2 2 (14.29%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
3 1 (7.14%) CISSP
3 1 (7.14%) CompTIA Security+
3 1 (7.14%) VCAP
3 1 (7.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (28.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (21.43%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (14.29%) GDPR
3 2 (14.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 2 (14.29%) Active Directory
2 1 (7.14%) Docker
2 1 (7.14%) Hyper-V
2 1 (7.14%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (7.14%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (7.14%) VMware NSX
2 1 (7.14%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 5 (35.71%) Terraform
2 4 (28.57%) Kubernetes
3 3 (21.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (14.29%) Ansible
5 1 (7.14%) PowerCLI
5 1 (7.14%) QRadar
5 1 (7.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 5 (35.71%) Microsoft
2 2 (14.29%) Rockwell
3 1 (7.14%) Databricks
3 1 (7.14%) Foundry
3 1 (7.14%) Palantir
3 1 (7.14%) Palo Alto
3 1 (7.14%) Splunk
3 1 (7.14%) Tenable
3 1 (7.14%) VMware