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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 263 249 251
Rank change year-on-year -14 +2 +21
Contract jobs citing vSphere 168 89 147
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.78% 0.70% 0.70%
As % of the System Software category 6.64% 4.49% 5.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 66 95
10th Percentile £306 £365 £335
25th Percentile £402 £466 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £562 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.48% +12.40% +5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £620 £584
90th Percentile £600 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 6
10th Percentile £46.80 - £70.66
25th Percentile £48.00 £72.50 £72.13
Median hourly rate £50.00 £75.00 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% -2.00% +69.13%
75th Percentile £50.50 £77.50 -
90th Percentile £50.80 - -
UK median hourly rate £50.50 £112.00 £76.53
% change year-on-year -54.91% +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 2,531 1,981 2,577
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.71% 15.50% 12.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,759 1,345 1,700
10th Percentile £188 £188 £175
25th Percentile £325 £325 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -5.76%
75th Percentile £575 £589 £575
90th Percentile £648 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 69 195
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.21 £14.03
25th Percentile £19.13 £21.05 £15.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £37.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% +15.38% +22.73%
75th Percentile £73.40 £66.00 £63.13
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.46 £75.75
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £32.50 £30.45
% change year-on-year +31.34% +6.73% -24.84%

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 16 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 16 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 -25 59 £488 +2.63% 15
South East -45 44 £540 -6.09% 17
Midlands -16 43 £371 -31.61% 6
West Midlands -25 38 £325 -40.09% 4
Yorkshire -37 30 £500 +5.26% 7
North West -26 29 £456 -10.59% 7
Scotland +17 13 £463 -27.45% 4
South West -25 8 £450 -4.26% 3
East Midlands - 5 £450 - 2
East of England -33 4 £469 -14.77% 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 (4.76%) Confluence
2 4 (2.38%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.60%) IIS
3 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.60%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (4.17%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 58 (34.52%) Azure
2 57 (33.93%) AWS
3 38 (22.62%) OpenShift
4 13 (7.74%) Datadog
5 12 (7.14%) GCP
5 12 (7.14%) GitHub
6 11 (6.55%) IaaS
7 10 (5.95%) Microsoft 365
8 7 (4.17%) Nutanix
9 5 (2.98%) Entra ID
10 4 (2.38%) PaaS
11 3 (1.79%) Catchpoint
12 1 (0.60%) Azure DevOps
12 1 (0.60%) Cloud Computing
12 1 (0.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 40 (23.81%) DNS
2 36 (21.43%) VSAN
3 33 (19.64%) Firewall
4 18 (10.71%) DHCP
5 15 (8.93%) SAN
6 10 (5.95%) TCP/IP
7 9 (5.36%) VLAN
8 6 (3.57%) LAN
8 6 (3.57%) WAN
9 5 (2.98%) Network Security
10 4 (2.38%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (2.38%) NetScaler
11 3 (1.79%) BGP
11 3 (1.79%) OSPF
11 3 (1.79%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (1.19%) Fibre Channel
12 2 (1.19%) NAS
12 2 (1.19%) PCoIP
12 2 (1.19%) Remote Desktop
12 2 (1.19%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.38%) NonStop SQL
2 1 (0.60%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 18 (10.71%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.79%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.60%) Git
3 1 (0.60%) GoCD
3 1 (0.60%) JIRA
3 1 (0.60%) Subversion
General
1 36 (21.43%) Social Skills
2 20 (11.90%) Finance
3 12 (7.14%) Public Sector
4 8 (4.76%) Banking
5 7 (4.17%) Legal
6 6 (3.57%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.98%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.60%) Advertising
9 1 (0.60%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.60%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 35 (20.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 33 (19.64%) Analyst
3 27 (16.07%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 25 (14.88%) Architect
5 22 (13.10%) Storage Analyst
6 19 (11.31%) VMware Engineer
7 12 (7.14%) Senior
7 12 (7.14%) Wintel Engineer
8 9 (5.36%) Platform Engineer
8 9 (5.36%) Virtualisation Engineer
9 8 (4.76%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 6 (3.57%) Consultant
10 6 (3.57%) Server Engineer
11 5 (2.98%) Infrastructure Architect
11 5 (2.98%) Site Engineer
11 5 (2.98%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 4 (2.38%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
12 4 (2.38%) Lead
12 4 (2.38%) NetApp Engineer
12 4 (2.38%) VMware Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (9.52%) Flash
2 8 (4.76%) Loki
2 8 (4.76%) OpenTelemetry
3 1 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 29 (17.26%) Linux Command Line
2 28 (16.67%) Replication
3 18 (10.71%) Cloud Native
3 18 (10.71%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (7.14%) Data Centre
5 10 (5.95%) Clustering
6 8 (4.76%) Virtual Team
7 6 (3.57%) Private Cloud
8 5 (2.98%) FlexPod
9 4 (2.38%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.79%) Greenfield Project
11 2 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
11 2 (1.19%) Enterprise Storage
11 2 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (1.19%) PKI
12 1 (0.60%) Distributed Computing
12 1 (0.60%) Fat Client
12 1 (0.60%) RSA SecurID
12 1 (0.60%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 76 (45.24%) Linux
2 54 (32.14%) Windows
3 42 (25.00%) Windows Server
4 17 (10.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (9.52%) Windows Server 2019
6 12 (7.14%) Windows Server 2016
7 8 (4.76%) VMS
8 6 (3.57%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (2.98%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.98%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (1.79%) Ubuntu
11 2 (1.19%) CentOS
11 2 (1.19%) Unix
12 1 (0.60%) Solaris
12 1 (0.60%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (26.79%) Agile
2 40 (23.81%) CI/CD
2 40 (23.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 34 (20.24%) DevOps
4 33 (19.64%) Migration
5 32 (19.05%) Disaster Recovery
6 28 (16.67%) High Availability
6 28 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
7 27 (16.07%) Containerisation
8 25 (14.88%) Infrastructure as Code
9 20 (11.90%) Load Balancing
10 17 (10.12%) Capacity Planning
11 16 (9.52%) Ticket Management
12 15 (8.93%) Observability
13 14 (8.33%) Mentoring
14 13 (7.74%) Network Virtualisation
14 13 (7.74%) Platform Engineering
14 13 (7.74%) Project Delivery
14 13 (7.74%) RBAC
14 13 (7.74%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 46 (27.38%) Python
2 38 (22.62%) Bash
3 36 (21.43%) PowerShell
4 3 (1.79%) Go
5 2 (1.19%) SQL
6 1 (0.60%) Perl
6 1 (0.60%) VB
6 1 (0.60%) VBA
Qualifications
1 54 (32.14%) Security Cleared
2 40 (23.81%) SC Cleared
3 17 (10.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 13 (7.74%) VCAP
5 12 (7.14%) DV Cleared
6 8 (4.76%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (4.76%) MCSA
6 8 (4.76%) MCSE
6 8 (4.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (3.57%) OCP
7 6 (3.57%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (2.38%) Degree
9 3 (1.79%) CCNP
10 2 (1.19%) CCIE
11 1 (0.60%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.60%) CCNA
11 1 (0.60%) VCDX
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.98%) SLA
2 2 (1.19%) GDPR
2 2 (1.19%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.19%) NCSC
2 2 (1.19%) RMADS
3 1 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.60%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.60%) QA
3 1 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 126 (75.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 61 (36.31%) VMware ESXi
3 42 (25.00%) VMware NSX
4 26 (15.48%) Active Directory
5 23 (13.69%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (12.50%) NFS
7 19 (11.31%) Docker
8 16 (9.52%) GPFS
9 6 (3.57%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.57%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.38%) KVM
11 3 (1.79%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 57 (33.93%) vCenter Server
2 48 (28.57%) Ansible
3 47 (27.98%) Kubernetes
4 40 (23.81%) vRealize
5 34 (20.24%) Terraform
6 27 (16.07%) Argo
7 26 (15.48%) VxRail
8 16 (9.52%) Grafana
9 9 (5.36%) SCCM
10 8 (4.76%) Kustomize
10 8 (4.76%) Prometheus
11 6 (3.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (3.57%) PowerCLI
12 5 (2.98%) NetBackup
12 5 (2.98%) SnapMirror
13 4 (2.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (2.38%) WSUS
14 3 (1.79%) SCOM
15 1 (0.60%) EMC NetWorker
15 1 (0.60%) Nessus
Vendors
1 160 (95.24%) VMware
2 52 (30.95%) Cisco
3 31 (18.45%) Red Hat
4 30 (17.86%) Dell
5 29 (17.26%) IBM
6 26 (15.48%) Microsoft
7 18 (10.71%) Pure Storage
8 16 (9.52%) Oracle
8 16 (9.52%) ServiceNow
8 16 (9.52%) SolarWinds
8 16 (9.52%) Veeam
9 14 (8.33%) HP
10 13 (7.74%) AppDynamics
10 13 (7.74%) Commvault
11 10 (5.95%) F5
12 9 (5.36%) Palo Alto
13 8 (4.76%) Splunk
14 7 (4.17%) NetApp
15 6 (3.57%) Veritas
16 5 (2.98%) Citrix