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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 272 247 263
Rank change year-on-year -25 +16 0
Contract jobs citing vSphere 168 92 131
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.70% 0.72% 0.63%
As % of the System Software category 6.42% 5.09% 5.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 129 62 98
10th Percentile £316 £460 £325
25th Percentile £410 £513 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £572 £475
Median % change year-on-year -15.17% +20.37% +4.40%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £566
90th Percentile £600 £661 £646
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile £48.00 - -
25th Percentile £50.25 - -
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
% change year-on-year - - +16.31%

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 2,617 1,807 2,463
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.87% 14.15% 11.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,791 1,245 1,652
10th Percentile £190 £191 £175
25th Percentile £350 £325 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £479 £461
Median % change year-on-year -0.84% +3.85% -3.91%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £584
90th Percentile £650 £663 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £488
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 58 192
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.99 £14.01
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.36 £14.16
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +84.21% +32.56% -46.25%
75th Percentile £74.07 £64.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £91.25 £86.78 £79.80
UK median hourly rate £52.75 £27.97 £22.50
% change year-on-year +88.59% +24.31% -57.88%

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 3 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 3 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 -20 68 £483 -1.03% 15
North West -12 37 £456 -10.59% 6
Midlands -39 35 £402 -25.90% 7
South East -66 33 £563 -2.17% 17
Yorkshire -34 31 £500 +5.26% 4
West Midlands -32 30 £394 -27.41% 4
Scotland +4 13 £463 -34.79%
East of England -33 12 £510 -7.27% 1
South West -23 11 £450 -5.76% 6
East Midlands -29 5 £450 - 3
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 4 (2.38%) Confluence
2 1 (0.60%) IIS
2 1 (0.60%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 4 (2.38%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 44 (26.19%) AWS
2 41 (24.40%) Azure
3 26 (15.48%) OpenShift
4 17 (10.12%) GitHub
5 9 (5.36%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (4.76%) Nutanix
7 7 (4.17%) Datadog
8 6 (3.57%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (3.57%) GCP
9 4 (2.38%) Entra ID
9 4 (2.38%) IaaS
10 3 (1.79%) Catchpoint
11 2 (1.19%) PaaS
12 1 (0.60%) Azure DevOps
12 1 (0.60%) Azure Storage
12 1 (0.60%) Cloud Computing
12 1 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (19.64%) DNS
2 30 (17.86%) VSAN
3 24 (14.29%) Firewall
4 21 (12.50%) SAN
5 17 (10.12%) DHCP
6 14 (8.33%) VLAN
7 8 (4.76%) LAN
7 8 (4.76%) NAS
7 8 (4.76%) WAN
8 7 (4.17%) TCP/IP
9 4 (2.38%) Cisco Nexus
9 4 (2.38%) NetScaler
9 4 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
10 3 (1.79%) BGP
10 3 (1.79%) Network Security
10 3 (1.79%) OSPF
11 2 (1.19%) Fibre Channel
11 2 (1.19%) SSL
12 1 (0.60%) NX-OS
12 1 (0.60%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (4.17%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.79%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 17 (10.12%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.79%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.60%) GoCD
3 1 (0.60%) JIRA
General
1 34 (20.24%) Social Skills
2 18 (10.71%) Finance
3 10 (5.95%) Banking
3 10 (5.95%) Legal
3 10 (5.95%) Public Sector
4 9 (5.36%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.19%) Advertising
7 1 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.60%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 39 (23.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 26 (15.48%) VMware Engineer
3 23 (13.69%) Analyst
4 18 (10.71%) Architect
4 18 (10.71%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 18 (10.71%) Storage Analyst
4 18 (10.71%) Wintel Engineer
5 11 (6.55%) Senior
6 10 (5.95%) Server Engineer
7 8 (4.76%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
8 7 (4.17%) Consultant
8 7 (4.17%) Senior VMware Engineer
9 6 (3.57%) Cloud Engineer
9 6 (3.57%) Lead
9 6 (3.57%) Network Engineer
10 5 (2.98%) AWS Engineer
10 5 (2.98%) Infrastructure Architect
10 5 (2.98%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
10 5 (2.98%) Platform Engineer
10 5 (2.98%) VMware Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (8.33%) Flash
2 11 (6.55%) OpenTelemetry
3 1 (0.60%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 40 (23.81%) Replication
2 23 (13.69%) Hybrid Cloud
3 22 (13.10%) Data Centre
4 21 (12.50%) Linux Command Line
5 17 (10.12%) Clustering
6 16 (9.52%) Cloud Native
7 7 (4.17%) Private Cloud
8 5 (2.98%) FlexPod
9 4 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (2.38%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.79%) Enterprise Storage
11 2 (1.19%) EMC VMAX
11 2 (1.19%) EMC VNX
11 2 (1.19%) PKI
12 1 (0.60%) Fat Client
12 1 (0.60%) Life Science
12 1 (0.60%) Onboarding
12 1 (0.60%) Operational Technology
12 1 (0.60%) Product Ownership
12 1 (0.60%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 71 (42.26%) Windows
2 58 (34.52%) Windows Server
3 53 (31.55%) Linux
4 18 (10.71%) Windows Server 2019
5 13 (7.74%) Windows Server 2016
6 10 (5.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (5.36%) VMS
8 8 (4.76%) Data ONTAP
9 7 (4.17%) Ubuntu
10 5 (2.98%) CoreOS
10 5 (2.98%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.79%) Unix
12 2 (1.19%) CentOS
13 1 (0.60%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (30.36%) Disaster Recovery
2 42 (25.00%) High Availability
2 42 (25.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 40 (23.81%) Migration
4 35 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
5 29 (17.26%) Capacity Planning
6 27 (16.07%) Agile
7 26 (15.48%) DevOps
8 24 (14.29%) Performance Tuning
9 23 (13.69%) Network Virtualisation
10 20 (11.90%) CI/CD
11 19 (11.31%) Load Balancing
12 18 (10.71%) Containerisation
13 17 (10.12%) Project Delivery
14 14 (8.33%) ITIL
14 14 (8.33%) RBAC
14 14 (8.33%) Root Cause Analysis
14 14 (8.33%) Ticket Management
15 13 (7.74%) Data Migration
15 13 (7.74%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 46 (27.38%) PowerShell
2 27 (16.07%) Python
3 20 (11.90%) Bash
4 2 (1.19%) SQL
Qualifications
1 58 (34.52%) Security Cleared
2 40 (23.81%) SC Cleared
3 29 (17.26%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (11.31%) VCAP
5 14 (8.33%) MCSA
5 14 (8.33%) MCSE
5 14 (8.33%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (7.74%) DV Cleared
7 10 (5.95%) OCP
7 10 (5.95%) Oracle Certification
8 9 (5.36%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (2.38%) CCNP
9 4 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.19%) CCIE
10 2 (1.19%) Degree
11 1 (0.60%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.60%) JNCIS
11 1 (0.60%) NCDA
11 1 (0.60%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.76%) SLA
2 2 (1.19%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.19%) NCSC
2 2 (1.19%) RMADS
3 1 (0.60%) QA
System Software
1 120 (71.43%) VMware Infrastructure
2 81 (48.21%) VMware ESXi
3 51 (30.36%) VMware NSX
4 37 (22.02%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (16.67%) Active Directory
6 20 (11.90%) NFS
7 14 (8.33%) GPFS
8 8 (4.76%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.57%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (2.98%) Docker
11 4 (2.38%) KVM
12 3 (1.79%) DFS Replication
13 1 (0.60%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 1 (0.60%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 70 (41.67%) vCenter Server
2 53 (31.55%) Ansible
3 36 (21.43%) vRealize
4 30 (17.86%) Kubernetes
5 22 (13.10%) Terraform
6 20 (11.90%) VxRail
7 17 (10.12%) Argo
8 16 (9.52%) PowerCLI
9 12 (7.14%) Grafana
10 10 (5.95%) NetBackup
11 9 (5.36%) SCCM
12 7 (4.17%) SnapMirror
12 7 (4.17%) vMotion
13 5 (2.98%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (2.98%) SCOM
14 4 (2.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (2.38%) WSUS
15 3 (1.79%) SCSM
16 2 (1.19%) EMC VPLEX
16 2 (1.19%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 160 (95.24%) VMware
2 49 (29.17%) Cisco
3 32 (19.05%) Microsoft
4 23 (13.69%) Dell
5 21 (12.50%) Veeam
6 20 (11.90%) IBM
6 20 (11.90%) Red Hat
7 17 (10.12%) Pure Storage
8 14 (8.33%) Oracle
8 14 (8.33%) ServiceNow
9 11 (6.55%) Splunk
9 11 (6.55%) Zerto
10 10 (5.95%) NetApp
10 10 (5.95%) SolarWinds
11 9 (5.36%) HP
12 8 (4.76%) Veritas
13 7 (4.17%) Commvault
14 6 (3.57%) 3PAR
14 6 (3.57%) AppDynamics
15 5 (2.98%) F5