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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 122 109
Rank change year-on-year -2 -13 +33
Contract jobs citing Virtual Machines 13 4 14
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.56% 0.22% 0.68%
As % of the System Software category 7.10% 2.72% 5.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 1 11
10th Percentile £340 - £425
25th Percentile £463 £513 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +16.67% -16.28%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £569
90th Percentile £658 - £600
Central London median daily rate £575 £525 £475
% change year-on-year +9.52% +10.53% -11.63%

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 183 147 236
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 7.84% 7.98% 11.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 102 171
10th Percentile £221 £264 £321
25th Percentile £416 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £546 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.89% -0.68% -5.98%
75th Percentile £629 £638 £688
90th Percentile £681 £688 £730
Central London median daily rate £525 £525 £527
% change year-on-year - -0.28% -8.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 1
10th Percentile £20.23 £22.48 -
25th Percentile £21.69 £23.19 £77.50
Median hourly rate £24.75 £25.25 £85.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.98% -70.29% +134.48%
75th Percentile £28.19 £28.19 £92.50
90th Percentile £29.88 £29.43 -
Central London median hourly rate £30.00 £26.45 £85.00
% change year-on-year +13.42% -68.88% +134.48%

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 20 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 (7.69%) Microsoft Exchange
1 1 (7.69%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (15.38%) Adobe Illustrator
1 2 (15.38%) Photoshop
2 1 (7.69%) InDesign
Cloud Services
1 8 (61.54%) Azure
2 5 (38.46%) Azure Monitor
3 4 (30.77%) Azure AKS
3 4 (30.77%) GitHub
3 4 (30.77%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (7.69%) Azure ExpressRoute
4 1 (7.69%) Azure Logic Apps
4 1 (7.69%) Azure Sentinel
4 1 (7.69%) Azure Stack
4 1 (7.69%) Cloudflare
4 1 (7.69%) Entra ID
4 1 (7.69%) GCP
4 1 (7.69%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (7.69%) Microsoft Purview
4 1 (7.69%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 4 (30.77%) VPN
2 3 (23.08%) Firewall
3 2 (15.38%) DNS
3 2 (15.38%) Network Security
3 2 (15.38%) SD-WAN
3 2 (15.38%) VSAN
3 2 (15.38%) WAN
4 1 (7.69%) BGP
4 1 (7.69%) DHCP
4 1 (7.69%) DKIM
4 1 (7.69%) DMARC
4 1 (7.69%) LAN
4 1 (7.69%) MPLS
4 1 (7.69%) OSPF
4 1 (7.69%) TCP/IP
4 1 (7.69%) VLAN
4 1 (7.69%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (38.46%) SQL Server
General
1 5 (38.46%) Social Skills
2 2 (15.38%) Documentation Skills
2 2 (15.38%) Retail
3 1 (7.69%) Law
3 1 (7.69%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 3 (23.08%) Cloud Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Azure Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Designer
2 2 (15.38%) DevOps Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Network Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Senior
3 1 (7.69%) Creative Designer
3 1 (7.69%) Creative Graphic Designer
3 1 (7.69%) Firewall Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Graphic Designer
3 1 (7.69%) Migration Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Network Security Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Security Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Senior DevOps Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Senior VMware Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Storage Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Systems Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (53.85%) Terraform
2 1 (7.69%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 2 (15.38%) Self-Motivation
2 1 (7.69%) Clustering
2 1 (7.69%) Data Centre
2 1 (7.69%) Enterprise Software
2 1 (7.69%) Enterprise Storage
2 1 (7.69%) Graphic Design
2 1 (7.69%) Linux Command Line
2 1 (7.69%) Private Cloud
2 1 (7.69%) Replication
2 1 (7.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 7 (53.85%) Windows
2 2 (15.38%) VMS
2 2 (15.38%) Windows Server
3 1 (7.69%) Linux
3 1 (7.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (7.69%) SUSE
3 1 (7.69%) Windows Server 2012
3 1 (7.69%) Windows Server 2016
3 1 (7.69%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (46.15%) Infrastructure as Code
2 5 (38.46%) CI/CD
2 5 (38.46%) Mentoring
3 4 (30.77%) Change Control
4 2 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
4 2 (15.38%) DevOps
4 2 (15.38%) Iconography
4 2 (15.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 2 (15.38%) Kalman Filter
4 2 (15.38%) Migration
4 2 (15.38%) Prototyping
4 2 (15.38%) Storytelling
4 2 (15.38%) Test Automation
4 2 (15.38%) Visualisation
4 2 (15.38%) Zero Trust
5 1 (7.69%) Cloud Security
5 1 (7.69%) Incident Response
5 1 (7.69%) RBAC
5 1 (7.69%) Storyboarding
5 1 (7.69%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 8 (61.54%) PowerShell
2 4 (30.77%) C#
3 2 (15.38%) Python
3 2 (15.38%) SQL
4 1 (7.69%) Bash
Qualifications
1 6 (46.15%) Security Cleared
2 5 (38.46%) SC Cleared
3 2 (15.38%) Degree
4 1 (7.69%) Azure Certification
4 1 (7.69%) CCNA
4 1 (7.69%) CCNP
4 1 (7.69%) Cisco Certification
4 1 (7.69%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (7.69%) VCAP
4 1 (7.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
System Software
1 3 (23.08%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (15.38%) VMware ESXi
2 2 (15.38%) vSphere
3 1 (7.69%) Active Directory
3 1 (7.69%) Firmware
3 1 (7.69%) Hyper-V
3 1 (7.69%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 5 (38.46%) Kubernetes
2 2 (15.38%) PowerCLI
2 2 (15.38%) vCenter Server
3 1 (7.69%) Ansible
3 1 (7.69%) Failover Clustering
3 1 (7.69%) Microsoft Clustering
3 1 (7.69%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (7.69%) Packer
3 1 (7.69%) PingFederate
3 1 (7.69%) VxRail
Vendors
1 6 (46.15%) VMware
2 2 (15.38%) Cisco
2 2 (15.38%) Dell
2 2 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 2 (15.38%) Palo Alto
2 2 (15.38%) ServiceNow
3 1 (7.69%) Adobe
3 1 (7.69%) Citrix
3 1 (7.69%) EMC
3 1 (7.69%) Forcepoint
3 1 (7.69%) ForeScout
3 1 (7.69%) Isilon
3 1 (7.69%) Juniper
3 1 (7.69%) LogicMonitor
3 1 (7.69%) Meraki
3 1 (7.69%) Okta
3 1 (7.69%) Zscaler