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 26 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 264 253 256
Rank change year-on-year -11 +3 +13
Contract jobs citing vSphere 182 91 139
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.82% 0.72% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 7.13% 4.67% 5.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 66 92
10th Percentile £313 £365 £328
25th Percentile £402 £484 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £566 £475
Median % change year-on-year -13.47% +19.21% +4.35%
75th Percentile £550 £643 £588
90th Percentile £624 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 5
10th Percentile £47.20 - -
25th Percentile £49.00 £72.50 £70.66
Median hourly rate £50.50 £75.00 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year -32.67% -2.00% +98.78%
75th Percentile £51.00 £77.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £76.53
% change year-on-year -32.00% -2.00% +69.13%

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 2,554 1,948 2,538
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.56% 15.47% 12.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,778 1,329 1,685
10th Percentile £190 £190 £175
25th Percentile £346 £340 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £475 £459
Median % change year-on-year +0.53% +3.49% -4.03%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £643 £663 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £485
% change year-on-year -4.76% +8.25% -7.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 68 187
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.74 £20.78 £15.50
Median hourly rate £49.36 £37.50 £29.65
Median % change year-on-year +31.63% +26.48% +7.82%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £84.50 £79.84 £70.90
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £29.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +68.00% +16.00% -44.35%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 -24 67 £492 +3.55% 22
South East -48 46 £550 -4.35% 25
Midlands -20 44 £382 -29.52% 6
West Midlands -25 39 £325 -40.03% 4
North West -20 35 £460 -9.80% 13
Yorkshire -31 32 £500 +5.26% 7
Scotland +19 14 £464 -27.25% 2
South West -24 9 £450 -4.26% 7
East of England -30 6 £468 -15.00% 5
East Midlands - 5 £450 - 2
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 8 (4.40%) Confluence
2 4 (2.20%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.55%) IIS
Applications
1 7 (3.85%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 61 (33.52%) AWS
1 61 (33.52%) Azure
2 41 (22.53%) OpenShift
3 16 (8.79%) GitHub
4 13 (7.14%) Datadog
5 12 (6.59%) GCP
6 10 (5.49%) IaaS
7 9 (4.95%) Microsoft 365
8 7 (3.85%) Nutanix
9 4 (2.20%) Entra ID
10 3 (1.65%) Catchpoint
10 3 (1.65%) PaaS
11 1 (0.55%) Amazon EC2
11 1 (0.55%) Azure DevOps
11 1 (0.55%) Cloud Computing
11 1 (0.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 44 (24.18%) DNS
2 40 (21.98%) VSAN
3 32 (17.58%) Firewall
4 18 (9.89%) DHCP
4 18 (9.89%) SAN
5 11 (6.04%) VLAN
6 10 (5.49%) TCP/IP
7 7 (3.85%) LAN
7 7 (3.85%) WAN
8 5 (2.75%) NAS
8 5 (2.75%) Network Security
9 4 (2.20%) Cisco Nexus
9 4 (2.20%) NetScaler
10 3 (1.65%) BGP
10 3 (1.65%) OSPF
10 3 (1.65%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (1.10%) Fibre Channel
11 2 (1.10%) PCoIP
11 2 (1.10%) Remote Desktop
11 2 (1.10%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.75%) NonStop SQL
2 1 (0.55%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 22 (12.09%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.65%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.55%) Git
3 1 (0.55%) GoCD
3 1 (0.55%) JIRA
3 1 (0.55%) Subversion
General
1 43 (23.63%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.99%) Finance
3 13 (7.14%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.95%) Legal
5 8 (4.40%) Banking
6 6 (3.30%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.75%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.10%) Advertising
8 2 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.55%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.55%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.55%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 37 (20.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 33 (18.13%) Analyst
3 27 (14.84%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 25 (13.74%) Architect
5 24 (13.19%) VMware Engineer
6 22 (12.09%) Storage Analyst
7 14 (7.69%) Senior
8 12 (6.59%) Wintel Engineer
9 9 (4.95%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (4.95%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 8 (4.40%) Server Engineer
10 8 (4.40%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
11 7 (3.85%) Lead
12 6 (3.30%) Consultant
12 6 (3.30%) Senior VMware Engineer
13 5 (2.75%) Infrastructure Architect
13 5 (2.75%) Network Engineer
13 5 (2.75%) Site Engineer
13 5 (2.75%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 4 (2.20%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (8.79%) Flash
2 12 (6.59%) OpenTelemetry
3 8 (4.40%) Loki
4 1 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 31 (17.03%) Replication
2 29 (15.93%) Linux Command Line
3 24 (13.19%) Hybrid Cloud
4 22 (12.09%) Cloud Native
5 13 (7.14%) Data Centre
6 10 (5.49%) Clustering
7 8 (4.40%) Virtual Team
8 6 (3.30%) Private Cloud
9 5 (2.75%) FlexPod
10 4 (2.20%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
12 2 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 2 (1.10%) Enterprise Storage
12 2 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
12 2 (1.10%) PKI
13 1 (0.55%) Fat Client
13 1 (0.55%) Life Science
13 1 (0.55%) RSA SecurID
13 1 (0.55%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 81 (44.51%) Linux
2 62 (34.07%) Windows
3 48 (26.37%) Windows Server
4 19 (10.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (9.89%) Windows Server 2019
6 13 (7.14%) Windows Server 2016
7 10 (5.49%) VMS
8 6 (3.30%) Data ONTAP
8 6 (3.30%) Ubuntu
9 5 (2.75%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.75%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (1.10%) CentOS
10 2 (1.10%) Unix
11 1 (0.55%) Solaris
11 1 (0.55%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (24.73%) Agile
2 44 (24.18%) CI/CD
3 41 (22.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 41 (22.53%) Migration
4 40 (21.98%) Disaster Recovery
5 38 (20.88%) DevOps
6 34 (18.68%) Problem-Solving
7 32 (17.58%) High Availability
8 31 (17.03%) Containerisation
9 25 (13.74%) Infrastructure as Code
10 24 (13.19%) Load Balancing
11 20 (10.99%) Capacity Planning
12 17 (9.34%) RBAC
13 16 (8.79%) Ticket Management
14 15 (8.24%) Network Virtualisation
14 15 (8.24%) Observability
15 14 (7.69%) Performance Optimisation
15 14 (7.69%) Platform Engineering
16 13 (7.14%) Mentoring
16 13 (7.14%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 52 (28.57%) Python
2 44 (24.18%) Bash
3 39 (21.43%) PowerShell
4 3 (1.65%) Go
5 2 (1.10%) SQL
6 1 (0.55%) Perl
6 1 (0.55%) VBA
Qualifications
1 58 (31.87%) Security Cleared
2 42 (23.08%) SC Cleared
3 19 (10.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 15 (8.24%) VCAP
5 13 (7.14%) DV Cleared
6 9 (4.95%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (4.95%) OCP
6 9 (4.95%) Oracle Certification
7 8 (4.40%) MCSA
7 8 (4.40%) MCSE
7 8 (4.40%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (2.20%) CCNP
8 4 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (2.20%) Degree
9 2 (1.10%) CCIE
10 1 (0.55%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.55%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.85%) SLA
2 2 (1.10%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.10%) NCSC
2 2 (1.10%) RMADS
3 1 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.55%) GDPR
3 1 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.55%) QA
System Software
1 138 (75.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 69 (37.91%) VMware ESXi
3 52 (28.57%) VMware NSX
4 27 (14.84%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (14.29%) Active Directory
6 21 (11.54%) NFS
7 19 (10.44%) Docker
8 16 (8.79%) GPFS
9 6 (3.30%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.30%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.20%) KVM
11 3 (1.65%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 66 (36.26%) vCenter Server
2 54 (29.67%) Ansible
3 51 (28.02%) Kubernetes
4 43 (23.63%) vRealize
5 37 (20.33%) Terraform
6 31 (17.03%) Argo
7 25 (13.74%) VxRail
8 20 (10.99%) Grafana
9 10 (5.49%) PowerCLI
10 8 (4.40%) Kustomize
10 8 (4.40%) Prometheus
10 8 (4.40%) SCCM
11 6 (3.30%) NetBackup
12 5 (2.75%) Microsoft Intune
12 5 (2.75%) SnapMirror
12 5 (2.75%) WSUS
13 4 (2.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (1.65%) SCOM
14 3 (1.65%) vMotion
15 1 (0.55%) Nessus
Vendors
1 174 (95.60%) VMware
2 51 (28.02%) Cisco
3 35 (19.23%) Red Hat
4 30 (16.48%) Dell
5 29 (15.93%) IBM
6 24 (13.19%) Microsoft
7 22 (12.09%) Pure Storage
8 16 (8.79%) Oracle
8 16 (8.79%) ServiceNow
8 16 (8.79%) SolarWinds
9 15 (8.24%) Veeam
10 14 (7.69%) HP
11 13 (7.14%) AppDynamics
11 13 (7.14%) Commvault
12 12 (6.59%) Splunk
13 10 (5.49%) F5
14 8 (4.40%) NetApp
14 8 (4.40%) Palo Alto
15 7 (3.85%) Veritas
15 7 (3.85%) Zerto