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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 253 250
Rank change year-on-year +3 -3 +33
Contract jobs citing vSphere 176 89 147
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.81% 0.70% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 6.90% 4.55% 5.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 126 66 96
10th Percentile £309 £365 £338
25th Percentile £396 £466 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £562 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.48% +12.40% +7.48%
75th Percentile £550 £620 £582
90th Percentile £606 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 6
10th Percentile £47.20 - £70.66
25th Percentile £49.00 £72.50 £72.13
Median hourly rate £50.50 £75.00 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year -32.67% -2.00% +69.13%
75th Percentile £51.00 £77.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £112.00 £76.53
% change year-on-year -54.46% +46.35% +47.17%

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 2,551 1,958 2,561
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.68% 15.43% 12.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,782 1,329 1,690
10th Percentile £190 £188 £173
25th Percentile £335 £329 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £575
90th Percentile £644 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £480
% change year-on-year -4.76% +9.38% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 67 195
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.79 £21.05 £15.50
Median hourly rate £47.00 £37.50 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +25.33% +20.00% +18.01%
75th Percentile £71.27 £66.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £79.80 £80.22 £75.75
UK median hourly rate £46.00 £32.50 £27.33
% change year-on-year +41.54% +18.94% -33.40%

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 20 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 20 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 -34 64 £482 +1.47% 24
South East -54 45 £545 -5.22% 24
Midlands -21 44 £382 -29.52% 8
West Midlands -26 39 £325 -40.03% 6
Yorkshire -36 33 £500 +5.26% 7
North West -18 31 £456 -10.59% 15
Scotland +17 14 £464 -27.25% 3
South West -24 9 £450 -4.26% 6
East Midlands - 5 £450 - 2
East of England -24 4 £469 -14.77% 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 8 (4.55%) Confluence
2 4 (2.27%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.57%) IIS
3 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.57%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (3.98%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 60 (34.09%) Azure
2 58 (32.95%) AWS
3 41 (23.30%) OpenShift
4 16 (9.09%) GitHub
5 13 (7.39%) Datadog
6 12 (6.82%) GCP
7 11 (6.25%) IaaS
8 10 (5.68%) Microsoft 365
9 7 (3.98%) Nutanix
10 5 (2.84%) Entra ID
11 4 (2.27%) PaaS
12 3 (1.70%) Catchpoint
13 1 (0.57%) Azure DevOps
13 1 (0.57%) Cloud Computing
13 1 (0.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 45 (25.57%) DNS
2 36 (20.45%) VSAN
3 33 (18.75%) Firewall
4 19 (10.80%) DHCP
5 16 (9.09%) SAN
6 10 (5.68%) TCP/IP
6 10 (5.68%) VLAN
7 7 (3.98%) LAN
7 7 (3.98%) WAN
8 5 (2.84%) Network Security
9 4 (2.27%) Cisco Nexus
9 4 (2.27%) NetScaler
10 3 (1.70%) BGP
10 3 (1.70%) NAS
10 3 (1.70%) OSPF
10 3 (1.70%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (1.14%) Fibre Channel
11 2 (1.14%) PCoIP
11 2 (1.14%) Remote Desktop
11 2 (1.14%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.84%) NonStop SQL
2 1 (0.57%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 22 (12.50%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.70%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.57%) Git
3 1 (0.57%) GoCD
3 1 (0.57%) JIRA
3 1 (0.57%) Subversion
General
1 42 (23.86%) Social Skills
2 20 (11.36%) Finance
3 13 (7.39%) Public Sector
4 9 (5.11%) Legal
5 8 (4.55%) Banking
6 6 (3.41%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.84%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.57%) Advertising
9 1 (0.57%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.57%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 36 (20.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 33 (18.75%) Analyst
3 27 (15.34%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 25 (14.20%) Architect
5 22 (12.50%) Storage Analyst
6 20 (11.36%) VMware Engineer
7 12 (6.82%) Senior
7 12 (6.82%) Wintel Engineer
8 9 (5.11%) Platform Engineer
8 9 (5.11%) Virtualisation Engineer
9 8 (4.55%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (3.98%) Lead
10 7 (3.98%) Server Engineer
11 6 (3.41%) Consultant
12 5 (2.84%) Infrastructure Architect
12 5 (2.84%) Site Engineer
12 5 (2.84%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 4 (2.27%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
13 4 (2.27%) NetApp Engineer
13 4 (2.27%) VMware Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (9.09%) Flash
2 12 (6.82%) OpenTelemetry
3 8 (4.55%) Loki
4 1 (0.57%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 29 (16.48%) Linux Command Line
1 29 (16.48%) Replication
2 22 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 22 (12.50%) Hybrid Cloud
3 13 (7.39%) Data Centre
4 10 (5.68%) Clustering
5 8 (4.55%) Virtual Team
6 6 (3.41%) Private Cloud
7 5 (2.84%) FlexPod
8 4 (2.27%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.70%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
10 2 (1.14%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (1.14%) PKI
11 1 (0.57%) Fat Client
11 1 (0.57%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.57%) RSA SecurID
11 1 (0.57%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 77 (43.75%) Linux
2 56 (31.82%) Windows
3 44 (25.00%) Windows Server
4 18 (10.23%) Windows Server 2019
5 17 (9.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (7.39%) Windows Server 2016
7 8 (4.55%) VMS
8 6 (3.41%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (2.84%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.84%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (2.27%) Ubuntu
11 2 (1.14%) CentOS
11 2 (1.14%) Unix
12 1 (0.57%) Solaris
12 1 (0.57%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (25.57%) Agile
2 44 (25.00%) CI/CD
3 41 (23.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 38 (21.59%) DevOps
4 38 (21.59%) Migration
5 37 (21.02%) Disaster Recovery
6 33 (18.75%) Problem-Solving
7 32 (18.18%) High Availability
8 31 (17.61%) Containerisation
9 25 (14.20%) Infrastructure as Code
10 24 (13.64%) Load Balancing
11 17 (9.66%) Capacity Planning
11 17 (9.66%) RBAC
12 16 (9.09%) Ticket Management
13 15 (8.52%) Mentoring
13 15 (8.52%) Observability
14 13 (7.39%) Network Virtualisation
14 13 (7.39%) Platform Engineering
14 13 (7.39%) Project Delivery
14 13 (7.39%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 50 (28.41%) Python
2 42 (23.86%) Bash
3 37 (21.02%) PowerShell
4 3 (1.70%) Go
5 2 (1.14%) SQL
6 1 (0.57%) Perl
6 1 (0.57%) VB
6 1 (0.57%) VBA
Qualifications
1 56 (31.82%) Security Cleared
2 41 (23.30%) SC Cleared
3 17 (9.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 13 (7.39%) VCAP
5 12 (6.82%) DV Cleared
6 9 (5.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (5.11%) OCP
6 9 (5.11%) Oracle Certification
7 8 (4.55%) MCSA
7 8 (4.55%) MCSE
7 8 (4.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (2.27%) Degree
9 3 (1.70%) CCNP
10 2 (1.14%) CCIE
11 1 (0.57%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.57%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.41%) SLA
2 2 (1.14%) GDPR
2 2 (1.14%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.14%) NCSC
2 2 (1.14%) RMADS
3 1 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.57%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.57%) QA
3 1 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 133 (75.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 64 (36.36%) VMware ESXi
3 47 (26.70%) VMware NSX
4 27 (15.34%) Active Directory
5 23 (13.07%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (11.93%) NFS
7 19 (10.80%) Docker
8 16 (9.09%) GPFS
9 6 (3.41%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.41%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.27%) KVM
11 3 (1.70%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 62 (35.23%) vCenter Server
2 52 (29.55%) Ansible
3 51 (28.98%) Kubernetes
4 41 (23.30%) vRealize
5 38 (21.59%) Terraform
6 31 (17.61%) Argo
7 26 (14.77%) VxRail
8 20 (11.36%) Grafana
9 9 (5.11%) SCCM
10 8 (4.55%) Kustomize
10 8 (4.55%) Prometheus
11 6 (3.41%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (3.41%) NetBackup
11 6 (3.41%) PowerCLI
12 5 (2.84%) SnapMirror
12 5 (2.84%) WSUS
13 4 (2.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (1.70%) SCOM
15 1 (0.57%) EMC NetWorker
15 1 (0.57%) Nessus
Vendors
1 168 (95.45%) VMware
2 52 (29.55%) Cisco
3 35 (19.89%) Red Hat
4 31 (17.61%) Dell
5 29 (16.48%) IBM
6 26 (14.77%) Microsoft
7 22 (12.50%) Pure Storage
8 16 (9.09%) Oracle
8 16 (9.09%) ServiceNow
8 16 (9.09%) SolarWinds
8 16 (9.09%) Veeam
9 14 (7.95%) HP
10 13 (7.39%) AppDynamics
10 13 (7.39%) Commvault
11 12 (6.82%) Splunk
12 10 (5.68%) F5
13 9 (5.11%) Palo Alto
14 7 (3.98%) NetApp
14 7 (3.98%) Veritas
15 6 (3.41%) Zerto