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 7 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 255 237 259
Rank change year-on-year -18 +22 +9
Contract jobs citing vSphere 189 94 144
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.82% 0.74% 0.69%
As % of the System Software category 7.17% 4.92% 5.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 66 103
10th Percentile £306 £383 £350
25th Percentile £402 £491 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £566 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.47% +13.25% +9.89%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £588
90th Percentile £625 £675 £649
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 3
10th Percentile £47.60 - -
25th Percentile £50.00 £72.50 -
Median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £70.66
Median % change year-on-year -32.00% +6.14% +83.53%
75th Percentile - £77.50 £73.60
90th Percentile - - £75.36
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £70.66
% change year-on-year -32.00% +6.14% +32.07%

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 2,636 1,910 2,524
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.47% 15.05% 12.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,828 1,304 1,690
10th Percentile £190 £193 £175
25th Percentile £350 £333 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year +0.32% +2.70% -3.55%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £584
90th Percentile £650 £661 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £485
% change year-on-year -4.76% +8.25% -7.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 68 182
10th Percentile £13.78 £15.14 £14.01
25th Percentile £20.91 £19.99 £14.48
Median hourly rate £50.00 £37.50 £22.14
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% +69.40% -37.64%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £85.60 £83.63 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £29.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +72.41% +28.89% -55.00%

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 7 April 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 7 April 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 -29 70 £488 +2.63% 22
South East -49 49 £550 -4.35% 25
Midlands -26 45 £371 -31.61% 6
West Midlands -22 40 £325 -40.09% 4
North West -10 37 £458 -10.20% 13
Yorkshire -35 33 £500 +5.26% 7
Scotland +14 11 £469 -26.43% 2
South West -29 10 £450 -5.76% 7
East of England -35 8 £510 -7.27% 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 (4.23%) Confluence
2 4 (2.12%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.53%) IIS
Applications
1 7 (3.70%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 65 (34.39%) AWS
2 62 (32.80%) Azure
3 41 (21.69%) OpenShift
4 16 (8.47%) GitHub
5 13 (6.88%) Datadog
6 12 (6.35%) GCP
7 10 (5.29%) IaaS
8 9 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
9 7 (3.70%) Nutanix
10 4 (2.12%) Entra ID
11 3 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
11 3 (1.59%) Catchpoint
11 3 (1.59%) PaaS
12 1 (0.53%) Azure DevOps
12 1 (0.53%) Cloud Computing
12 1 (0.53%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 42 (22.22%) DNS
2 38 (20.11%) VSAN
3 33 (17.46%) Firewall
4 20 (10.58%) SAN
5 19 (10.05%) DHCP
6 14 (7.41%) VLAN
7 8 (4.23%) LAN
7 8 (4.23%) WAN
8 7 (3.70%) NAS
8 7 (3.70%) TCP/IP
9 5 (2.65%) Network Security
10 4 (2.12%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (2.12%) NetScaler
10 4 (2.12%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (1.59%) BGP
11 3 (1.59%) OSPF
12 2 (1.06%) Fibre Channel
12 2 (1.06%) Remote Desktop
12 2 (1.06%) SSL
13 1 (0.53%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (3.17%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.59%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 22 (11.64%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.53%) Git
3 1 (0.53%) GoCD
3 1 (0.53%) JIRA
3 1 (0.53%) Subversion
General
1 43 (22.75%) Social Skills
2 21 (11.11%) Finance
3 13 (6.88%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.29%) Legal
5 9 (4.76%) Banking
6 6 (3.17%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.65%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.06%) Advertising
8 2 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.53%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 40 (21.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (17.99%) Analyst
3 28 (14.81%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 25 (13.23%) Architect
4 25 (13.23%) VMware Engineer
5 23 (12.17%) Storage Analyst
6 13 (6.88%) Senior
7 12 (6.35%) Wintel Engineer
8 9 (4.76%) Platform Engineer
8 9 (4.76%) Server Engineer
9 8 (4.23%) Virtualisation Engineer
9 8 (4.23%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (3.70%) Consultant
10 7 (3.70%) Lead
11 6 (3.17%) Network Engineer
11 6 (3.17%) Senior VMware Engineer
12 5 (2.65%) Infrastructure Architect
12 5 (2.65%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
12 5 (2.65%) Site Engineer
12 5 (2.65%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (8.99%) Flash
2 11 (5.82%) OpenTelemetry
3 8 (4.23%) Loki
Miscellaneous
1 34 (17.99%) Replication
2 31 (16.40%) Linux Command Line
3 24 (12.70%) Hybrid Cloud
4 23 (12.17%) Cloud Native
5 16 (8.47%) Data Centre
6 10 (5.29%) Clustering
7 8 (4.23%) Virtual Team
8 6 (3.17%) Private Cloud
9 5 (2.65%) FlexPod
10 4 (2.12%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
12 2 (1.06%) Enterprise Storage
12 2 (1.06%) Legacy Systems
12 2 (1.06%) PKI
13 1 (0.53%) Distributed Computing
13 1 (0.53%) Distributed Systems
13 1 (0.53%) EMC VMAX
13 1 (0.53%) EMC VNX
13 1 (0.53%) Onboarding
13 1 (0.53%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 83 (43.92%) Linux
2 68 (35.98%) Windows
3 52 (27.51%) Windows Server
4 20 (10.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (9.52%) Windows Server 2019
6 13 (6.88%) Windows Server 2016
7 10 (5.29%) VMS
8 7 (3.70%) Data ONTAP
8 7 (3.70%) Ubuntu
9 5 (2.65%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.65%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (1.59%) Unix
11 2 (1.06%) CentOS
12 1 (0.53%) Solaris
12 1 (0.53%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.53%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (24.34%) Agile
2 44 (23.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 44 (23.28%) Migration
3 43 (22.75%) Disaster Recovery
4 40 (21.16%) CI/CD
5 38 (20.11%) DevOps
6 35 (18.52%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (17.99%) High Availability
8 30 (15.87%) Containerisation
9 24 (12.70%) Load Balancing
10 22 (11.64%) Capacity Planning
11 21 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
12 19 (10.05%) RBAC
13 18 (9.52%) Performance Tuning
14 17 (8.99%) Ticket Management
15 15 (7.94%) Network Virtualisation
15 15 (7.94%) Observability
15 15 (7.94%) Platform Engineering
16 14 (7.41%) Root Cause Analysis
17 13 (6.88%) Virtual Infrastructure
Programming Languages
1 48 (25.40%) Python
2 41 (21.69%) Bash
3 40 (21.16%) PowerShell
4 2 (1.06%) SQL
5 1 (0.53%) Perl
5 1 (0.53%) VBA
Qualifications
1 59 (31.22%) Security Cleared
2 42 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 18 (9.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 15 (7.94%) VCAP
5 14 (7.41%) DV Cleared
6 10 (5.29%) OCP
6 10 (5.29%) Oracle Certification
7 9 (4.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (4.23%) MCSA
8 8 (4.23%) MCSE
8 8 (4.23%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (2.12%) CCNP
9 4 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (2.12%) Degree
10 2 (1.06%) CCIE
11 1 (0.53%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.53%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.23%) SLA
2 2 (1.06%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.06%) NCSC
2 2 (1.06%) RMADS
3 1 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.53%) GDPR
3 1 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.53%) QA
System Software
1 142 (75.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 74 (39.15%) VMware ESXi
3 57 (30.16%) VMware NSX
4 31 (16.40%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (15.34%) Active Directory
6 22 (11.64%) NFS
7 18 (9.52%) Docker
8 17 (8.99%) GPFS
9 6 (3.17%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.17%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.12%) KVM
11 3 (1.59%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 68 (35.98%) vCenter Server
2 52 (27.51%) Ansible
3 50 (26.46%) Kubernetes
4 45 (23.81%) vRealize
5 35 (18.52%) Terraform
6 31 (16.40%) Argo
7 26 (13.76%) VxRail
8 19 (10.05%) Grafana
9 12 (6.35%) PowerCLI
10 10 (5.29%) SCCM
11 8 (4.23%) Kustomize
11 8 (4.23%) NetBackup
11 8 (4.23%) Prometheus
12 6 (3.17%) SnapMirror
13 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (2.65%) SCOM
13 5 (2.65%) WSUS
14 4 (2.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 3 (1.59%) SCSM
15 3 (1.59%) vMotion
Vendors
1 181 (95.77%) VMware
2 54 (28.57%) Cisco
3 35 (18.52%) Red Hat
4 30 (15.87%) Dell
4 30 (15.87%) IBM
5 26 (13.76%) Microsoft
6 22 (11.64%) Pure Storage
7 20 (10.58%) Veeam
8 17 (8.99%) Oracle
8 17 (8.99%) ServiceNow
8 17 (8.99%) SolarWinds
9 14 (7.41%) Commvault
9 14 (7.41%) HP
10 13 (6.88%) AppDynamics
11 11 (5.82%) Splunk
12 10 (5.29%) F5
12 10 (5.29%) NetApp
12 10 (5.29%) Zerto
13 8 (4.23%) Palo Alto
13 8 (4.23%) Veritas