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 8 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 272 246 272
Rank change year-on-year -26 +26 -11
Contract jobs citing vSphere 130 124 148
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.76% 0.74% 0.71%
As % of the System Software category 5.82% 5.50% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 88 95
10th Percentile £313 £329 £294
25th Percentile £406 £413 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.18% +6.25% +10.01%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £625
90th Percentile £650 £675 £715
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% +7.14%
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% +325.17%
75th Percentile - £57.12 -
90th Percentile - £69.35 -
UK median hourly rate - £75.00 £73.60
% change year-on-year - +1.91% +194.38%

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 2,233 2,256 3,152
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 13.09% 13.49% 15.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,503 1,438 2,106
10th Percentile £190 £190 £173
25th Percentile £306 £340 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £638 £660 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 74 209
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £14.86
25th Percentile £17.33 £21.46 £17.75
Median hourly rate £54.00 £50.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% +33.33% +87.50%
75th Percentile £80.00 £69.92 £67.25
90th Percentile £91.20 £75.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £44.00 £44.86
% change year-on-year -40.91% -1.92% +92.95%

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 8 November 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 8 November 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 +5 71 £550 +15.79% 62
Midlands -16 26 £306 -53.24% 13
West Midlands -17 25 £310 -52.67% 9
North of England -18 23 £465 +9.41% 17
North West -15 12 £654 +53.82% 8
Yorkshire - 11 £413 - 1
South West -37 7 £540 +0.47% 6
Scotland +5 3 £388 -40.61% 11
East Midlands -15 1 £105 - 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 10 (7.69%) Confluence
2 9 (6.92%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.77%) Anypoint
3 1 (0.77%) IIS
3 1 (0.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.77%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (2.31%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 36 (27.69%) AWS
2 35 (26.92%) Azure
3 17 (13.08%) OpenShift
4 12 (9.23%) IaaS
5 7 (5.38%) Datadog
5 7 (5.38%) GCP
6 5 (3.85%) Microsoft 365
7 4 (3.08%) PaaS
8 2 (1.54%) Entra ID
8 2 (1.54%) GitHub
9 1 (0.77%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (0.77%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 1 (0.77%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (0.77%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 30 (23.08%) VSAN
2 26 (20.00%) DNS
3 19 (14.62%) Firewall
4 17 (13.08%) Fibre Channel
5 15 (11.54%) iSCSI
6 10 (7.69%) DHCP
7 8 (6.15%) TCP/IP
8 7 (5.38%) SAN
9 5 (3.85%) VLAN
10 4 (3.08%) NAS
10 4 (3.08%) PCoIP
10 4 (3.08%) SSL
10 4 (3.08%) VPN
11 3 (2.31%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 3 (2.31%) Network Security
12 2 (1.54%) Software-Defined Networking
13 1 (0.77%) Cisco ASA
13 1 (0.77%) Cisco ISE
13 1 (0.77%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 1 (0.77%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.08%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 12 (9.23%) Jenkins
2 6 (4.62%) JIRA
3 4 (3.08%) Git
3 4 (3.08%) GitLab
4 2 (1.54%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.77%) GoCD
5 1 (0.77%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.77%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.77%) Subversion
General
1 38 (29.23%) Social Skills
2 11 (8.46%) Public Sector
3 8 (6.15%) Finance
4 6 (4.62%) Documentation Skills
4 6 (4.62%) Telecoms
5 3 (2.31%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (2.31%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.77%) Electronics
7 1 (0.77%) Local Government
7 1 (0.77%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.77%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 30 (23.08%) Architect
2 22 (16.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 21 (16.15%) VMware Engineer
4 17 (13.08%) VMware Architect
5 15 (11.54%) Infrastructure Architect
6 13 (10.00%) Analyst
7 12 (9.23%) Infrastructure Analyst
8 9 (6.92%) Support Engineer
9 8 (6.15%) Senior
10 7 (5.38%) Azure Engineer
10 7 (5.38%) Storage Analyst
10 7 (5.38%) Storage Engineer
10 7 (5.38%) Windows Engineer
11 6 (4.62%) Platform Engineer
11 6 (4.62%) Virtualisation Engineer
12 5 (3.85%) Cloud Engineer
12 5 (3.85%) Consultant
12 5 (3.85%) Site Engineer
12 5 (3.85%) VMware Consultant
12 5 (3.85%) Windows Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (6.92%) Flash
2 8 (6.15%) Loki
3 7 (5.38%) Middleware
4 2 (1.54%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.77%) .NET
5 1 (0.77%) OpenTelemetry
5 1 (0.77%) React
Miscellaneous
1 16 (12.31%) Linux Command Line
2 10 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 10 (7.69%) Replication
3 8 (6.15%) Data Centre
3 8 (6.15%) Virtual Team
4 6 (4.62%) Hybrid Cloud
5 5 (3.85%) Management Information System
6 3 (2.31%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (1.54%) Enterprise Storage
7 2 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.54%) PKI
8 1 (0.77%) Clustering
8 1 (0.77%) CMDB
8 1 (0.77%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.77%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.77%) IBM XIV
8 1 (0.77%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.77%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.77%) RSA SecurID
Operating Systems
1 58 (44.62%) Linux
2 44 (33.85%) Windows
3 28 (21.54%) Windows Server
4 17 (13.08%) Windows Server 2019
5 11 (8.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (3.85%) VMS
7 4 (3.08%) CentOS
7 4 (3.08%) Ubuntu
7 4 (3.08%) Windows 10
7 4 (3.08%) Windows Server 2003
8 2 (1.54%) Unix
8 2 (1.54%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.77%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (29.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 34 (26.15%) CI/CD
3 32 (24.62%) Agile
4 27 (20.77%) Infrastructure as Code
5 25 (19.23%) DevOps
6 17 (13.08%) Migration
7 16 (12.31%) Containerisation
7 16 (12.31%) Infrastructure Automation
8 15 (11.54%) Validation
9 14 (10.77%) Problem-Solving
10 13 (10.00%) Mentoring
10 13 (10.00%) Observability
11 12 (9.23%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 10 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
13 8 (6.15%) Edge Virtualization
13 8 (6.15%) Infrastructure Management
13 8 (6.15%) Performance Analysis
14 7 (5.38%) Customer Requirements
14 7 (5.38%) Load Balancing
15 6 (4.62%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 38 (29.23%) Python
2 34 (26.15%) Bash
3 15 (11.54%) SQL
4 14 (10.77%) PowerShell
5 3 (2.31%) Go
6 2 (1.54%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.77%) C#
7 1 (0.77%) Java
7 1 (0.77%) Perl
7 1 (0.77%) TypeScript
7 1 (0.77%) VB
7 1 (0.77%) VBA
Qualifications
1 60 (46.15%) Security Cleared
2 33 (25.38%) DV Cleared
3 25 (19.23%) SC Cleared
4 21 (16.15%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 16 (12.31%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (11.54%) MCSE
7 9 (6.92%) VCP5
7 9 (6.92%) VCP6
8 7 (5.38%) VCAP
9 5 (3.85%) Degree
10 3 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (1.54%) Azure Certification
11 2 (1.54%) VCDX
12 1 (0.77%) CCA
12 1 (0.77%) CCNA
12 1 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.31%) SLA
2 2 (1.54%) GDPR
2 2 (1.54%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.77%) QA
3 1 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 87 (66.92%) VMware Infrastructure
2 53 (40.77%) VMware ESXi
3 30 (23.08%) VMware NSX
4 24 (18.46%) NFS
5 15 (11.54%) Active Directory
5 15 (11.54%) Docker
6 9 (6.92%) GPFS
7 7 (5.38%) Hyper-V
7 7 (5.38%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (2.31%) DFS Replication
8 3 (2.31%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.77%) Firmware
9 1 (0.77%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 31 (23.85%) Ansible
2 30 (23.08%) Kubernetes
3 27 (20.77%) Terraform
4 24 (18.46%) vCenter Server
5 23 (17.69%) vRealize
6 16 (12.31%) Argo
7 12 (9.23%) VxRail
8 10 (7.69%) Grafana
9 9 (6.92%) Prometheus
10 8 (6.15%) Kustomize
11 5 (3.85%) SCCM
12 4 (3.08%) PowerCLI
12 4 (3.08%) Tivoli
13 3 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
13 3 (2.31%) SCOM
14 2 (1.54%) Single Sign-On
14 2 (1.54%) vRealize Orchestrator
15 1 (0.77%) Avamar
15 1 (0.77%) Podman
15 1 (0.77%) Rancher
Vendors
1 124 (95.38%) VMware
2 31 (23.85%) Microsoft
3 21 (16.15%) Cisco
3 21 (16.15%) Veeam
4 19 (14.62%) Red Hat
5 18 (13.85%) IBM
6 17 (13.08%) NetApp
7 16 (12.31%) Splunk
8 12 (9.23%) Dell
8 12 (9.23%) SolarWinds
9 11 (8.46%) F5
10 9 (6.92%) Oracle
10 9 (6.92%) ServiceNow
11 7 (5.38%) AppDynamics
11 7 (5.38%) Citrix
11 7 (5.38%) Commvault
11 7 (5.38%) Pure Storage
12 6 (4.62%) HP
12 6 (4.62%) Palo Alto
13 3 (2.31%) EMC