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 2 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 283 248 282
Rank change year-on-year -35 +34 -15
Contract jobs citing vSphere 119 110 130
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.67% 0.69% 0.64%
As % of the System Software category 5.18% 5.15% 4.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 79 79
10th Percentile £305 £350 £299
25th Percentile £406 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - +8.34%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £609
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +10.53% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 11
10th Percentile - £24.12 £62.63
25th Percentile - £28.42 £66.65
Median hourly rate - £36.17 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year - -52.74% +69.13%
75th Percentile - £57.12 -
90th Percentile - £69.35 -
UK median hourly rate - £75.00 £76.53
% change year-on-year - -2.00% +141.04%

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 2,299 2,136 2,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.98% 13.43% 14.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,560 1,346 1,991
10th Percentile £190 £185 £170
25th Percentile £313 £325 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +4.29%
75th Percentile £575 £579 £588
90th Percentile £645 £659 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 70 210
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.40 £14.48
25th Percentile £18.13 £21.30 £17.75
Median hourly rate £63.00 £43.08 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.23% +28.60% +55.81%
75th Percentile £81.00 £65.75 £65.98
90th Percentile £91.50 £75.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £33.39 £31.75 £43.75
% change year-on-year +5.15% -27.43% +75.00%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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
South East -3 55 £550 +11.68% 15
Midlands -2 30 £309 -53.18% 6
West Midlands -2 29 £310 -53.03% 4
North of England -35 23 £465 +9.41% 11
North West -21 12 £654 +53.82% 5
Yorkshire - 11 £413 - 3
South West -27 7 £540 +0.47% 8
Scotland -3 3 £388 -45.33% 2
East Midlands -15 1 £105 - 2
East of England - 1 - - 7
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 9 (7.56%) Confluence
2 6 (5.04%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.84%) IIS
3 1 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.84%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (5.04%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 38 (31.93%) AWS
2 34 (28.57%) Azure
3 17 (14.29%) OpenShift
4 12 (10.08%) IaaS
5 10 (8.40%) Datadog
6 7 (5.88%) GCP
7 5 (4.20%) Microsoft 365
8 4 (3.36%) PaaS
9 2 (1.68%) Entra ID
9 2 (1.68%) GitHub
10 1 (0.84%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.84%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 1 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.84%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 32 (26.89%) VSAN
2 22 (18.49%) DNS
3 19 (15.97%) Firewall
4 14 (11.76%) Fibre Channel
5 12 (10.08%) iSCSI
6 7 (5.88%) SAN
7 6 (5.04%) DHCP
8 4 (3.36%) NAS
8 4 (3.36%) PCoIP
8 4 (3.36%) TCP/IP
9 3 (2.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 3 (2.52%) Network Security
10 2 (1.68%) Software-Defined Networking
11 1 (0.84%) BIG-IP
11 1 (0.84%) Cisco ASA
11 1 (0.84%) Cisco ISE
11 1 (0.84%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 1 (0.84%) Remote Desktop
11 1 (0.84%) VLAN
11 1 (0.84%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.36%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 12 (10.08%) Jenkins
2 4 (3.36%) Git
2 4 (3.36%) GitLab
3 2 (1.68%) Artifactory
3 2 (1.68%) JIRA
4 1 (0.84%) GoCD
4 1 (0.84%) SonarQube
4 1 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (0.84%) Subversion
General
1 30 (25.21%) Social Skills
2 12 (10.08%) Public Sector
3 10 (8.40%) Finance
4 6 (5.04%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (4.20%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (2.52%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.52%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.84%) Electronics
8 1 (0.84%) Local Government
8 1 (0.84%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.84%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 27 (22.69%) Architect
2 19 (15.97%) Analyst
3 18 (15.13%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 16 (13.45%) VMware Engineer
5 14 (11.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 14 (11.76%) VMware Architect
6 12 (10.08%) Infrastructure Architect
7 11 (9.24%) Storage Analyst
8 8 (6.72%) Senior
9 7 (5.88%) Storage Engineer
10 6 (5.04%) Consultant
10 6 (5.04%) Platform Engineer
10 6 (5.04%) Support Engineer
10 6 (5.04%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 6 (5.04%) VMware Consultant
11 5 (4.20%) Site Engineer
11 5 (4.20%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 4 (3.36%) Server Engineer
13 3 (2.52%) 3rd Line Support
13 3 (2.52%) Server Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (9.24%) Flash
2 8 (6.72%) Loki
3 5 (4.20%) Middleware
4 2 (1.68%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.84%) .NET
5 1 (0.84%) OpenTelemetry
5 1 (0.84%) React
Miscellaneous
1 21 (17.65%) Linux Command Line
2 12 (10.08%) Replication
3 10 (8.40%) Cloud Native
4 8 (6.72%) Virtual Team
5 7 (5.88%) Data Centre
6 6 (5.04%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (4.20%) Management Information System
8 3 (2.52%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.68%) Enterprise Storage
9 2 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (1.68%) PKI
10 1 (0.84%) Clustering
10 1 (0.84%) CMDB
10 1 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (0.84%) IBM XIV
10 1 (0.84%) Onboarding
10 1 (0.84%) Private Cloud
10 1 (0.84%) RSA SecurID
Operating Systems
1 58 (48.74%) Linux
2 34 (28.57%) Windows
3 24 (20.17%) Windows Server
4 13 (10.92%) Windows Server 2019
5 11 (9.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (3.36%) VMS
6 4 (3.36%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.84%) CentOS
7 1 (0.84%) Solaris
7 1 (0.84%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.84%) Unix
7 1 (0.84%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (31.09%) Agile
2 31 (26.05%) CI/CD
3 27 (22.69%) Infrastructure as Code
4 25 (21.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 22 (18.49%) DevOps
6 18 (15.13%) Problem-Solving
7 17 (14.29%) Migration
8 16 (13.45%) Containerisation
8 16 (13.45%) Infrastructure Automation
9 15 (12.61%) Mentoring
10 13 (10.92%) Observability
11 12 (10.08%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 10 (8.40%) Continuous Improvement
12 10 (8.40%) Validation
13 8 (6.72%) Infrastructure Management
14 7 (5.88%) Customer Requirements
14 7 (5.88%) Load Balancing
14 7 (5.88%) Ticket Management
15 6 (5.04%) RBAC
16 5 (4.20%) Edge Virtualization
Programming Languages
1 35 (29.41%) Python
2 31 (26.05%) Bash
3 14 (11.76%) PowerShell
4 12 (10.08%) SQL
5 3 (2.52%) Go
6 2 (1.68%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.84%) C#
7 1 (0.84%) Java
7 1 (0.84%) Perl
7 1 (0.84%) TypeScript
7 1 (0.84%) VB
7 1 (0.84%) VBA
Qualifications
1 51 (42.86%) Security Cleared
2 25 (21.01%) DV Cleared
3 22 (18.49%) SC Cleared
4 18 (15.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 13 (10.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (10.08%) MCSE
7 7 (5.88%) VCAP
8 6 (5.04%) Degree
8 6 (5.04%) VCP5
8 6 (5.04%) VCP6
9 3 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (1.68%) Azure Certification
10 2 (1.68%) VCDX
11 1 (0.84%) CCA
11 1 (0.84%) CCNA
11 1 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.52%) SLA
2 2 (1.68%) GDPR
2 2 (1.68%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.84%) QA
3 1 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 89 (74.79%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (39.50%) VMware ESXi
3 31 (26.05%) VMware NSX
4 23 (19.33%) NFS
5 15 (12.61%) Active Directory
5 15 (12.61%) Docker
6 11 (9.24%) GPFS
7 5 (4.20%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (2.52%) DFS Replication
8 3 (2.52%) Hyper-V
8 3 (2.52%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.84%) Firmware
9 1 (0.84%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 30 (25.21%) vRealize
2 28 (23.53%) Ansible
3 27 (22.69%) Kubernetes
3 27 (22.69%) Terraform
4 24 (20.17%) vCenter Server
5 16 (13.45%) Argo
6 15 (12.61%) VxRail
7 10 (8.40%) Grafana
8 9 (7.56%) Prometheus
9 8 (6.72%) Kustomize
10 5 (4.20%) SCCM
11 4 (3.36%) PowerCLI
12 3 (2.52%) Microsoft Intune
12 3 (2.52%) SCOM
13 2 (1.68%) Single Sign-On
13 2 (1.68%) vRealize Orchestrator
14 1 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 1 (0.84%) Avamar
14 1 (0.84%) Podman
14 1 (0.84%) Rancher
Vendors
1 116 (97.48%) VMware
2 28 (23.53%) Microsoft
3 27 (22.69%) Cisco
4 22 (18.49%) IBM
5 19 (15.97%) Red Hat
6 14 (11.76%) Dell
6 14 (11.76%) NetApp
6 14 (11.76%) Veeam
7 13 (10.92%) Splunk
8 11 (9.24%) F5
8 11 (9.24%) Oracle
8 11 (9.24%) ServiceNow
8 11 (9.24%) SolarWinds
9 10 (8.40%) AppDynamics
9 10 (8.40%) Commvault
10 9 (7.56%) HP
11 7 (5.88%) Pure Storage
12 6 (5.04%) Palo Alto
13 3 (2.52%) Citrix
13 3 (2.52%) EMC