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 17 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 277 259 266
Rank change year-on-year -18 +7 +2
Contract jobs citing vSphere 179 90 131
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.73% 0.70% 0.65%
As % of the System Software category 6.88% 4.93% 5.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 57 100
10th Percentile £323 £415 £300
25th Percentile £413 £510 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £569 £475
Median % change year-on-year -14.86% +19.68% +4.40%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £543
90th Percentile £600 £650 £638
UK median daily rate £496 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.78% +10.00% +4.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile £48.40 - -
25th Percentile £50.50 - -
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
% change year-on-year - - +7.06%

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 2,600 1,824 2,394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.61% 14.10% 11.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,763 1,252 1,625
10th Percentile £190 £190 £179
25th Percentile £351 £313 £299
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year - +2.70% -3.65%
75th Percentile £572 £575 £584
90th Percentile £644 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £512 £500
% change year-on-year -2.39% +2.45% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 55 189
10th Percentile £15.74 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.28 £14.16
Median hourly rate £52.50 £36.65 £19.17
Median % change year-on-year +43.27% +91.16% -57.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £64.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £88.25 £88.00 £78.40
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £28.21 £22.30
% change year-on-year +86.14% +26.48% -58.70%

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 17 May 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
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 17 May 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 -23 71 £482 -1.13% 14
North West -10 39 £456 -10.59% 5
Midlands -33 38 £425 -21.66% 12
South East -65 38 £563 -2.17% 21
West Midlands -31 33 £414 -23.78% 7
Yorkshire -41 32 £500 +5.26% 5
Scotland - 13 £463 - 2
East of England -23 12 £510 -7.27% 4
South West -28 11 £485 -8.49% 9
East Midlands -20 5 £450 - 5
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 2 (1.12%) Apache
1 2 (1.12%) CloudStack
1 2 (1.12%) Confluence
2 1 (0.56%) IIS
2 1 (0.56%) MS Project Server
2 1 (0.56%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.12%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 49 (27.37%) AWS
2 43 (24.02%) Azure
3 27 (15.08%) OpenShift
4 17 (9.50%) GitHub
5 10 (5.59%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (4.47%) Nutanix
7 7 (3.91%) GCP
8 6 (3.35%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (3.35%) IaaS
9 5 (2.79%) Datadog
10 4 (2.23%) Entra ID
11 3 (1.68%) Catchpoint
12 2 (1.12%) PaaS
13 1 (0.56%) Azure Storage
13 1 (0.56%) Cloud Computing
13 1 (0.56%) GitHub Actions
13 1 (0.56%) Rubrik
13 1 (0.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 37 (20.67%) DNS
2 30 (16.76%) VSAN
3 29 (16.20%) Firewall
4 24 (13.41%) SAN
5 21 (11.73%) DHCP
6 17 (9.50%) VLAN
7 11 (6.15%) LAN
7 11 (6.15%) NAS
7 11 (6.15%) WAN
8 7 (3.91%) TCP/IP
8 7 (3.91%) Wi-Fi
9 4 (2.23%) Cisco Nexus
9 4 (2.23%) NetScaler
9 4 (2.23%) SD-WAN
9 4 (2.23%) VPN
10 3 (1.68%) BGP
10 3 (1.68%) Network Security
10 3 (1.68%) OSPF
11 2 (1.12%) SSL
11 2 (1.12%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.47%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.68%) Data Mining
3 1 (0.56%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (9.50%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.68%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.56%) GoCD
3 1 (0.56%) JIRA
General
1 35 (19.55%) Social Skills
2 18 (10.06%) Finance
3 11 (6.15%) Banking
4 10 (5.59%) Legal
5 9 (5.03%) Analytical Skills
6 8 (4.47%) Public Sector
7 2 (1.12%) Advertising
8 1 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.56%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.56%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 46 (25.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 26 (14.53%) VMware Engineer
3 22 (12.29%) Analyst
4 20 (11.17%) Wintel Engineer
5 19 (10.61%) Architect
6 17 (9.50%) Infrastructure Analyst
6 17 (9.50%) Storage Analyst
7 12 (6.70%) Senior
8 10 (5.59%) Server Engineer
9 9 (5.03%) Consultant
10 8 (4.47%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
10 8 (4.47%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
11 7 (3.91%) Cloud Engineer
11 7 (3.91%) Senior VMware Engineer
11 7 (3.91%) VMware Consultant
12 6 (3.35%) Lead
12 6 (3.35%) Network Engineer
12 6 (3.35%) Storage Engineer
13 5 (2.79%) Data Centre Infrastructure Engineer
13 5 (2.79%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (9.50%) Flash
2 11 (6.15%) OpenTelemetry
3 2 (1.12%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (0.56%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 45 (25.14%) Replication
2 28 (15.64%) Hybrid Cloud
3 26 (14.53%) Data Centre
4 22 (12.29%) Linux Command Line
5 18 (10.06%) Clustering
6 16 (8.94%) Cloud Native
7 6 (3.35%) Private Cloud
7 6 (3.35%) Public Cloud
8 5 (2.79%) FlexPod
9 4 (2.23%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (2.23%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (1.12%) EMC VMAX
10 2 (1.12%) EMC VNX
10 2 (1.12%) PKI
11 1 (0.56%) Distributed Computing
11 1 (0.56%) Distributed Systems
11 1 (0.56%) Fat Client
11 1 (0.56%) Life Science
11 1 (0.56%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.56%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 77 (43.02%) Windows
2 63 (35.20%) Windows Server
3 56 (31.28%) Linux
4 18 (10.06%) Windows Server 2019
5 13 (7.26%) Windows Server 2016
6 10 (5.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (5.03%) Ubuntu
7 9 (5.03%) VMS
8 8 (4.47%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (2.79%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.79%) Unix
9 5 (2.79%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (1.12%) CentOS
11 1 (0.56%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (31.28%) Disaster Recovery
2 49 (27.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 46 (25.70%) High Availability
3 46 (25.70%) Migration
4 33 (18.44%) Problem-Solving
5 30 (16.76%) Capacity Planning
6 27 (15.08%) Agile
6 27 (15.08%) DevOps
7 24 (13.41%) Network Virtualisation
7 24 (13.41%) Performance Tuning
8 20 (11.17%) CI/CD
8 20 (11.17%) Project Delivery
9 19 (10.61%) Load Balancing
10 18 (10.06%) Containerisation
11 15 (8.38%) Root Cause Analysis
11 15 (8.38%) Ticket Management
12 14 (7.82%) ITIL
12 14 (7.82%) RBAC
13 13 (7.26%) Performance Optimisation
13 13 (7.26%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 48 (26.82%) PowerShell
2 28 (15.64%) Python
3 20 (11.17%) Bash
4 2 (1.12%) SQL
Qualifications
1 58 (32.40%) Security Cleared
2 42 (23.46%) SC Cleared
3 32 (17.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 20 (11.17%) VCAP
5 15 (8.38%) MCSA
5 15 (8.38%) MCSE
5 15 (8.38%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (7.26%) DV Cleared
7 10 (5.59%) OCP
7 10 (5.59%) Oracle Certification
8 7 (3.91%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (3.35%) CCNP
9 6 (3.35%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.68%) Azure Certification
11 2 (1.12%) AWS Certification
11 2 (1.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (1.12%) CCIE
11 2 (1.12%) Degree
12 1 (0.56%) NCDA
12 1 (0.56%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.47%) SLA
2 2 (1.12%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.12%) NCSC
2 2 (1.12%) RMADS
3 1 (0.56%) QA
System Software
1 129 (72.07%) VMware Infrastructure
2 89 (49.72%) VMware ESXi
3 52 (29.05%) VMware NSX
4 42 (23.46%) Virtual Machines
5 31 (17.32%) Active Directory
6 23 (12.85%) NFS
7 17 (9.50%) GPFS
8 10 (5.59%) Hyper-V
9 7 (3.91%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (2.79%) Docker
11 4 (2.23%) KVM
12 3 (1.68%) DFS Replication
13 1 (0.56%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 1 (0.56%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 73 (40.78%) vCenter Server
2 54 (30.17%) Ansible
3 37 (20.67%) vRealize
4 34 (18.99%) Kubernetes
5 22 (12.29%) Terraform
6 19 (10.61%) VxRail
7 17 (9.50%) Argo
8 16 (8.94%) PowerCLI
9 14 (7.82%) Grafana
10 11 (6.15%) NetBackup
11 10 (5.59%) SCCM
12 7 (3.91%) SnapMirror
12 7 (3.91%) vMotion
13 5 (2.79%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (2.79%) SCOM
14 4 (2.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (2.23%) WSUS
15 3 (1.68%) Prometheus
15 3 (1.68%) SCSM
16 2 (1.12%) Check_MK
Vendors
1 171 (95.53%) VMware
2 55 (30.73%) Cisco
3 42 (23.46%) Microsoft
4 27 (15.08%) Veeam
5 22 (12.29%) Dell
6 21 (11.73%) IBM
7 20 (11.17%) Red Hat
8 18 (10.06%) Pure Storage
9 17 (9.50%) Oracle
9 17 (9.50%) ServiceNow
10 14 (7.82%) NetApp
11 12 (6.70%) Zerto
12 11 (6.15%) SolarWinds
12 11 (6.15%) Splunk
13 10 (5.59%) Commvault
14 9 (5.03%) Veritas
15 7 (3.91%) HP
16 6 (3.35%) 3PAR
16 6 (3.35%) Citrix
17 5 (2.79%) F5