vSphere Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

VMware vSphere
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring vSphere skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 275 247 228
Rank change year-on-year -28 -19 +34
Contract jobs citing vSphere 200 111 167
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.74% 0.74% 0.82%
As % of the System Software category 6.85% 5.81% 6.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 139 64 124
10th Percentile £346 £406 £325
25th Percentile £425 £500 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £569 £508
Median % change year-on-year -14.69% +12.02% +11.54%
75th Percentile £550 £626 £625
90th Percentile £625 £650 £662
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £515
% change year-on-year -9.09% +6.80% +8.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 2
10th Percentile £49.60 - £39.09
25th Percentile - - £44.35
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £53.41
75th Percentile £82.15 - £62.18
90th Percentile £98.94 - £67.27
UK median hourly rate £51.00 - £53.41
% change year-on-year - - -14.54%

All System Software Skills
UK excluding London

vSphere 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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 2,920 1,909 2,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.79% 12.78% 12.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,925 1,259 1,691
10th Percentile £200 £200 £190
25th Percentile £363 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year - -4.04% +4.21%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 60 167
10th Percentile £13.97 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.86 £14.16
Median hourly rate £51.00 £59.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +170.45% -18.52%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.50 £58.69
90th Percentile £82.80 £91.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £51.75 £32.77 £23.80
% change year-on-year +57.92% +37.69% -52.40%

vSphere
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing vSphere relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

vSphere job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

vSphere
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing vSphere.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing vSphere

vSphere
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing vSphere in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for vSphere in the UK excluding London

vSphere
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing vSphere.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing vSphere

vSphere
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing vSphere in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for vSphere in the UK excluding London

vSphere
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing vSphere within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 19 July 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
North of England -31 70 £485 +4.30% 9
South East -87 42 £515 -11.21% 12
Midlands -18 40 £450 -17.05% 7
Yorkshire -34 36 £500 +7.53% 4
North West -23 34 £458 - 5
West Midlands -38 30 £450 -17.05% 3
South West -18 26 £600 +4.35% 6
Scotland - 14 £466 -
East of England -11 12 £510 -7.27% 2
East Midlands -4 10 £450 - 4
vSphere
UK

vSphere
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 6 (3.00%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.00%) Apache
2 2 (1.00%) CloudStack
2 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.50%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 3 (1.50%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.00%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.00%) Houdini
2 2 (1.00%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.50%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 51 (25.50%) AWS
2 50 (25.00%) Azure
3 30 (15.00%) OpenShift
4 18 (9.00%) GitHub
5 12 (6.00%) GCP
6 10 (5.00%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (3.50%) Entra ID
8 6 (3.00%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (3.00%) Nutanix
9 3 (1.50%) Catchpoint
9 3 (1.50%) IaaS
9 3 (1.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 2 (1.00%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (1.00%) Azure Storage
10 2 (1.00%) Datadog
10 2 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (1.00%) Rubrik
11 1 (0.50%) Azure AKS
11 1 (0.50%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 1 (0.50%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 53 (26.50%) DNS
2 38 (19.00%) VSAN
3 34 (17.00%) Firewall
4 33 (16.50%) DHCP
5 25 (12.50%) SAN
6 18 (9.00%) VLAN
7 16 (8.00%) TCP/IP
8 14 (7.00%) NAS
9 12 (6.00%) WAN
10 11 (5.50%) LAN
10 11 (5.50%) VPN
11 7 (3.50%) Cisco Nexus
11 7 (3.50%) Wi-Fi
12 6 (3.00%) BGP
12 6 (3.00%) OSPF
12 6 (3.00%) SSL
13 5 (2.50%) NetScaler
13 5 (2.50%) Network Security
13 5 (2.50%) SD-WAN
14 3 (1.50%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.00%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.50%) Data Mining
3 2 (1.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 19 (9.50%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.50%) Git
General
1 50 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 15 (7.50%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (7.00%) Finance
4 13 (6.50%) Public Sector
5 12 (6.00%) Banking
6 9 (4.50%) Legal
7 3 (1.50%) Advertising
8 2 (1.00%) Military
9 1 (0.50%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.50%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 59 (29.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 30 (15.00%) VMware Engineer
3 18 (9.00%) Senior
4 17 (8.50%) Architect
4 17 (8.50%) Wintel Engineer
5 13 (6.50%) Cloud Engineer
5 13 (6.50%) Consultant
5 13 (6.50%) Network Engineer
6 11 (5.50%) Server Engineer
6 11 (5.50%) VMware Consultant
7 10 (5.00%) Analyst
7 10 (5.00%) Senior VMware Engineer
7 10 (5.00%) Storage Engineer
8 9 (4.50%) Infrastructure Analyst
8 9 (4.50%) Virtualisation Engineer
9 7 (3.50%) Lead
9 7 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
9 7 (3.50%) Storage Analyst
9 7 (3.50%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 6 (3.00%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.50%) OpenTelemetry
2 9 (4.50%) Flash
3 2 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (1.00%) Unreal Engine
4 1 (0.50%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 38 (19.00%) Replication
2 36 (18.00%) Data Centre
3 33 (16.50%) Hybrid Cloud
4 18 (9.00%) Cloud Native
5 15 (7.50%) Clustering
6 10 (5.00%) Linux Command Line
7 8 (4.00%) Enterprise Storage
8 7 (3.50%) PKI
8 7 (3.50%) Public Cloud
9 6 (3.00%) Private Cloud
10 5 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (2.50%) FlexPod
11 3 (1.50%) EMC VMAX
11 3 (1.50%) EMC VNX
12 2 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
12 2 (1.00%) Management Information System
12 2 (1.00%) Motion Graphics
12 2 (1.00%) Onboarding
12 2 (1.00%) Social Media
13 1 (0.50%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 91 (45.50%) Windows
2 70 (35.00%) Windows Server
3 48 (24.00%) Linux
4 15 (7.50%) Windows Server 2019
5 12 (6.00%) VMS
6 10 (5.00%) Windows Server 2016
7 9 (4.50%) Data ONTAP
8 8 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (4.00%) Ubuntu
9 5 (2.50%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.50%) Unix
9 5 (2.50%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.50%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (31.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 60 (30.00%) Disaster Recovery
3 52 (26.00%) Migration
4 49 (24.50%) High Availability
5 41 (20.50%) Problem-Solving
6 33 (16.50%) Network Virtualisation
7 29 (14.50%) CI/CD
8 28 (14.00%) Capacity Planning
9 24 (12.00%) DevOps
9 24 (12.00%) Performance Tuning
10 23 (11.50%) Containerisation
11 21 (10.50%) Platform Engineering
12 20 (10.00%) Project Delivery
13 19 (9.50%) Load Balancing
13 19 (9.50%) Root Cause Analysis
13 19 (9.50%) Technical Leadership
14 17 (8.50%) Infrastructure as Code
15 16 (8.00%) Continuous Improvement
15 16 (8.00%) RBAC
15 16 (8.00%) Virtual Infrastructure
Programming Languages
1 52 (26.00%) PowerShell
2 38 (19.00%) Python
3 29 (14.50%) Bash
4 1 (0.50%) Go
4 1 (0.50%) Perl
4 1 (0.50%) SQL
Qualifications
1 81 (40.50%) Security Cleared
2 50 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 35 (17.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 29 (14.50%) DV Cleared
5 23 (11.50%) VCAP
6 15 (7.50%) MCSA
6 15 (7.50%) MCSE
6 15 (7.50%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (5.00%) OCP
7 10 (5.00%) Oracle Certification
8 9 (4.50%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (4.00%) CCNP
10 5 (2.50%) Azure Certification
11 4 (2.00%) AWS Certification
12 3 (1.50%) CCA
12 3 (1.50%) Citrix Certification
13 2 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
13 2 (1.00%) CCIE
13 2 (1.00%) NCDA
13 2 (1.00%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.00%) SLA
2 3 (1.50%) Government Security Classifications
2 3 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.50%) NCSC
3 2 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (1.00%) RMADS
4 1 (0.50%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.50%) NIST
4 1 (0.50%) QA
System Software
1 156 (78.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 97 (48.50%) VMware ESXi
3 67 (33.50%) VMware NSX
4 47 (23.50%) Virtual Machines
5 44 (22.00%) Active Directory
6 27 (13.50%) Hyper-V
7 16 (8.00%) NFS
8 12 (6.00%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (5.00%) Docker
10 9 (4.50%) GPFS
11 5 (2.50%) KVM
12 2 (1.00%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (1.00%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 73 (36.50%) vCenter Server
2 63 (31.50%) Ansible
3 42 (21.00%) Kubernetes
4 34 (17.00%) Terraform
5 23 (11.50%) vRealize
6 18 (9.00%) Argo
7 17 (8.50%) PowerCLI
7 17 (8.50%) VxRail
8 15 (7.50%) Grafana
9 12 (6.00%) NetBackup
9 12 (6.00%) SCCM
10 9 (4.50%) vMotion
11 8 (4.00%) SnapMirror
12 7 (3.50%) Microsoft Intune
12 7 (3.50%) SCOM
13 4 (2.00%) Prometheus
13 4 (2.00%) WSUS
14 3 (1.50%) EMC NetWorker
14 3 (1.50%) EMC VPLEX
14 3 (1.50%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 195 (97.50%) VMware
2 50 (25.00%) Microsoft
3 49 (24.50%) Cisco
4 26 (13.00%) Veeam
5 20 (10.00%) Red Hat
6 19 (9.50%) Pure Storage
7 18 (9.00%) NetApp
8 17 (8.50%) Dell
9 13 (6.50%) Zerto
10 12 (6.00%) ServiceNow
10 12 (6.00%) Splunk
11 11 (5.50%) SolarWinds
12 10 (5.00%) IBM
13 9 (4.50%) Oracle
13 9 (4.50%) Veritas
14 7 (3.50%) 3PAR
14 7 (3.50%) Citrix
15 6 (3.00%) Commvault
16 5 (2.50%) Google
17 4 (2.00%) CheckPoint