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

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 286 261 219
Rank change year-on-year -25 -42 +36
Contract jobs citing vSphere 193 107 156
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.70% 0.69% 0.86%
As % of the System Software category 6.43% 5.54% 6.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 127 64 119
10th Percentile £325 £406 £325
25th Percentile £413 £496 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £555 £508
Median % change year-on-year -9.91% +9.36% +6.84%
75th Percentile £581 £641 £613
90th Percentile £662 £650 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £511
% change year-on-year -9.09% +7.58% +7.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 0 1
10th Percentile £50.20 - -
25th Percentile - - £35.58
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £36.17
75th Percentile £98.82 - £36.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £63.00 - £36.17
% change year-on-year - - -42.14%

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 3,003 1,930 2,278
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.83% 12.52% 12.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,949 1,270 1,549
10th Percentile £200 £200 £200
25th Percentile £356 £315 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £498
Median % change year-on-year - -4.62% +4.84%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £649 £654
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 65 119
10th Percentile £15.79 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £25.38 £17.75 £14.32
Median hourly rate £60.00 £63.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year -5.51% +162.40% -4.91%
75th Percentile £74.20 £88.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £89.83 £91.50 £73.60
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £31.39 £23.99
% change year-on-year +75.24% +30.83% -52.02%

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 23 August 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 23 August 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 23 August 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 -32 53 £482 +2.45% 4
South East -83 42 £513 -13.14% 16
South West -9 39 £654 +25.42% 11
Midlands -16 38 £450 -18.18% 6
North West -21 28 £472 -14.18% 1
West Midlands -30 28 £450 -18.18% 3
Yorkshire -33 25 £500 +7.53% 2
East of England -10 13 £510 -7.27% 4
East Midlands -6 10 £400 - 3
Scotland - 10 £400 - 1
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 (3.11%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (1.04%) Apache
3 2 (1.04%) CloudStack
4 1 (0.52%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 3 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.04%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.04%) Houdini
2 2 (1.04%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.55%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 57 (29.53%) AWS
2 47 (24.35%) Azure
3 15 (7.77%) OpenShift
4 10 (5.18%) GCP
4 10 (5.18%) Microsoft 365
5 9 (4.66%) GitHub
6 7 (3.63%) Entra ID
7 6 (3.11%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (1.55%) Rubrik
8 3 (1.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 2 (1.04%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.04%) Azure Storage
9 2 (1.04%) Datadog
9 2 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (1.04%) IaaS
9 2 (1.04%) OCI
10 1 (0.52%) Azure AKS
10 1 (0.52%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 1 (0.52%) IBM Watson
10 1 (0.52%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 58 (30.05%) DNS
2 53 (27.46%) VSAN
3 43 (22.28%) DHCP
4 38 (19.69%) Firewall
5 21 (10.88%) TCP/IP
6 20 (10.36%) SAN
7 17 (8.81%) VLAN
8 14 (7.25%) NAS
9 11 (5.70%) VPN
10 9 (4.66%) WAN
11 8 (4.15%) LAN
12 5 (2.59%) Network Security
12 5 (2.59%) SD-WAN
12 5 (2.59%) SSL
13 4 (2.07%) Wi-Fi
14 3 (1.55%) BGP
14 3 (1.55%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (1.55%) HTTP
14 3 (1.55%) NetScaler
14 3 (1.55%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.15%) NonStop SQL
2 4 (2.07%) SQL Server
3 3 (1.55%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 10 (5.18%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.52%) Git
General
1 46 (23.83%) Social Skills
2 16 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (6.74%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.66%) Finance
5 8 (4.15%) Banking
6 6 (3.11%) Legal
7 3 (1.55%) Advertising
8 2 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.04%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.04%) Military
9 1 (0.52%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.52%) Marketing
9 1 (0.52%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.52%) Retail
Job Titles
1 58 (30.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 37 (19.17%) VMware Engineer
3 23 (11.92%) Senior
4 18 (9.33%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (7.25%) Cloud Engineer
5 14 (7.25%) Server Engineer
5 14 (7.25%) Virtualisation Engineer
6 13 (6.74%) Consultant
7 12 (6.22%) Senior VMware Engineer
7 12 (6.22%) Storage Engineer
8 11 (5.70%) VMware Consultant
8 11 (5.70%) Wintel Engineer
9 10 (5.18%) Architect
9 10 (5.18%) Network Engineer
10 9 (4.66%) Analyst
10 9 (4.66%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
11 8 (4.15%) Infrastructure Analyst
11 8 (4.15%) Principal Engineer
12 7 (3.63%) Storage Analyst
13 6 (3.11%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (20.73%) Terraform
2 9 (4.66%) Flash
3 5 (2.59%) OpenTelemetry
4 2 (1.04%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (1.04%) Unreal Engine
5 1 (0.52%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 40 (20.73%) Data Centre
2 33 (17.10%) Replication
3 31 (16.06%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (8.29%) PKI
5 11 (5.70%) Enterprise Storage
5 11 (5.70%) Public Cloud
6 10 (5.18%) Linux Command Line
7 9 (4.66%) Cloud Native
7 9 (4.66%) Clustering
8 5 (2.59%) Private Cloud
9 4 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
10 3 (1.55%) EMC VMAX
10 3 (1.55%) EMC VNX
10 3 (1.55%) FlexPod
11 2 (1.04%) Management Information System
11 2 (1.04%) Motion Graphics
11 2 (1.04%) Social Media
12 1 (0.52%) Life Science
12 1 (0.52%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 98 (50.78%) Windows
2 69 (35.75%) Windows Server
3 61 (31.61%) Linux
4 11 (5.70%) VMS
5 9 (4.66%) Ubuntu
5 9 (4.66%) Windows Server 2019
6 7 (3.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (3.11%) Data ONTAP
7 6 (3.11%) Windows Server 2016
8 5 (2.59%) Unix
9 4 (2.07%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (1.55%) CoreOS
11 1 (0.52%) CentOS
11 1 (0.52%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.52%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (32.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 46 (23.83%) Disaster Recovery
3 40 (20.73%) Problem-Solving
4 37 (19.17%) Migration
5 33 (17.10%) Network Virtualisation
6 32 (16.58%) Platform Engineering
7 31 (16.06%) High Availability
8 30 (15.54%) Infrastructure as Code
8 30 (15.54%) Technical Leadership
9 25 (12.95%) Capacity Planning
9 25 (12.95%) CI/CD
10 23 (11.92%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (10.36%) Agile
11 20 (10.36%) Performance Tuning
11 20 (10.36%) Root Cause Analysis
12 18 (9.33%) DevOps
12 18 (9.33%) Mentoring
13 17 (8.81%) Infrastructure Automation
13 17 (8.81%) Runbook
13 17 (8.81%) Systems Engineering
Programming Languages
1 54 (27.98%) PowerShell
2 34 (17.62%) Python
3 31 (16.06%) Bash
4 2 (1.04%) Perl
5 1 (0.52%) Go
Qualifications
1 92 (47.67%) Security Cleared
2 51 (26.42%) SC Cleared
3 39 (20.21%) DV Cleared
4 34 (17.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 30 (15.54%) VCAP
6 11 (5.70%) MCSA
6 11 (5.70%) MCSE
6 11 (5.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (4.66%) AWS Certification
8 8 (4.15%) Azure Certification
9 7 (3.63%) OCP
9 7 (3.63%) Oracle Certification
10 6 (3.11%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (2.59%) CCNP
12 3 (1.55%) CCA
12 3 (1.55%) Citrix Certification
13 2 (1.04%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (1.04%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (1.04%) NCDA
13 2 (1.04%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.63%) SLA
2 3 (1.55%) Government Security Classifications
2 3 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.55%) NCSC
3 2 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (1.04%) RMADS
4 1 (0.52%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.52%) NIST
4 1 (0.52%) QA
System Software
1 160 (82.90%) VMware Infrastructure
2 95 (49.22%) VMware ESXi
3 70 (36.27%) VMware NSX
4 50 (25.91%) Active Directory
5 38 (19.69%) Virtual Machines
6 30 (15.54%) Hyper-V
7 14 (7.25%) NFS
8 12 (6.22%) Docker
9 9 (4.66%) GPFS
9 9 (4.66%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (1.04%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 2 (1.04%) Firmware
10 2 (1.04%) KVM
10 2 (1.04%) SRDF
10 2 (1.04%) VMware Server
11 1 (0.52%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 1 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 62 (32.12%) vCenter Server
2 57 (29.53%) Ansible
3 38 (19.69%) Kubernetes
4 22 (11.40%) vRealize
4 22 (11.40%) VxRail
5 18 (9.33%) PowerCLI
6 13 (6.74%) vMotion
7 12 (6.22%) NetBackup
8 11 (5.70%) SCCM
9 9 (4.66%) Grafana
10 8 (4.15%) Argo
11 6 (3.11%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (3.11%) SCOM
11 6 (3.11%) SnapMirror
12 4 (2.07%) Prometheus
12 4 (2.07%) WSUS
13 3 (1.55%) EMC NetWorker
13 3 (1.55%) EMC VPLEX
13 3 (1.55%) SCSM
13 3 (1.55%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 191 (98.96%) VMware
2 47 (24.35%) Microsoft
3 41 (21.24%) Cisco
4 21 (10.88%) Veeam
5 18 (9.33%) NetApp
6 14 (7.25%) Dell
7 12 (6.22%) Red Hat
7 12 (6.22%) ServiceNow
8 11 (5.70%) Oracle
9 10 (5.18%) IBM
9 10 (5.18%) SolarWinds
9 10 (5.18%) Zerto
10 9 (4.66%) Pure Storage
10 9 (4.66%) Veritas
11 7 (3.63%) 3PAR
12 6 (3.11%) Citrix
12 6 (3.11%) Commvault
12 6 (3.11%) Splunk
13 5 (2.59%) CheckPoint
14 4 (2.07%) EMC