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 26 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 275 250 225
Rank change year-on-year -25 -25 +35
Contract jobs citing vSphere 195 110 163
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.72% 0.73% 0.84%
As % of the System Software category 6.66% 5.77% 6.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 64 119
10th Percentile £342 £406 £323
25th Percentile £425 £500 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £569 £508
Median % change year-on-year -12.05% +12.02% +11.54%
75th Percentile £550 £641 £619
90th Percentile £625 £650 £658
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £515
% change year-on-year -9.09% +6.80% +8.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 0 2
10th Percentile £50.00 - £39.09
25th Percentile - - £44.35
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £53.41
75th Percentile £95.68 - £62.18
90th Percentile £98.82 - £67.27
UK median hourly rate £51.00 - £53.41
% change year-on-year - - -14.54%

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 2,929 1,907 2,401
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.79% 12.64% 12.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,916 1,261 1,644
10th Percentile £200 £200 £193
25th Percentile £362 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £591
90th Percentile £650 £650 £651
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 61 146
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.33 £14.16
Median hourly rate £51.00 £57.50 £19.18
Median % change year-on-year -11.30% +199.87% -28.98%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £84.25 £91.50 £70.33
UK median hourly rate £51.75 £30.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +72.50% +36.36% -56.00%

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 26 July 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing vSphere in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 26 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for vSphere in the UK excluding London

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 26 July 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 -42 64 £492 +5.84% 9
South East -94 42 £515 -14.17% 20
Midlands -17 41 £450 -17.05% 8
Yorkshire -31 36 £500 +7.53% 5
West Midlands -30 30 £450 -17.05% 3
South West -14 28 £600 +4.35% 11
North West -26 28 £476 - 4
East of England -20 12 £510 -7.27% 5
Scotland - 12 £500 -
East Midlands -3 11 £450 - 5
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 6 (3.08%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.03%) Apache
2 2 (1.03%) CloudStack
2 2 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.51%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 3 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.03%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.03%) Houdini
2 2 (1.03%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.54%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 53 (27.18%) AWS
2 50 (25.64%) Azure
3 30 (15.38%) OpenShift
4 19 (9.74%) GitHub
5 12 (6.15%) GCP
6 9 (4.62%) Microsoft 365
7 8 (4.10%) Entra ID
8 6 (3.08%) Amazon EC2
9 5 (2.56%) Nutanix
10 3 (1.54%) IaaS
10 3 (1.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 2 (1.03%) Azure Sentinel
11 2 (1.03%) Azure Storage
11 2 (1.03%) Datadog
11 2 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
11 2 (1.03%) Rubrik
12 1 (0.51%) Amazon EKS
12 1 (0.51%) Azure AKS
12 1 (0.51%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 1 (0.51%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 53 (27.18%) DNS
2 40 (20.51%) VSAN
3 34 (17.44%) DHCP
4 31 (15.90%) Firewall
5 24 (12.31%) SAN
6 17 (8.72%) VLAN
7 16 (8.21%) TCP/IP
8 14 (7.18%) NAS
9 12 (6.15%) WAN
10 11 (5.64%) LAN
10 11 (5.64%) VPN
11 6 (3.08%) SSL
12 5 (2.56%) SD-WAN
13 4 (2.05%) Cisco Nexus
13 4 (2.05%) NetScaler
13 4 (2.05%) Wi-Fi
14 3 (1.54%) BGP
14 3 (1.54%) HTTP
14 3 (1.54%) Network Security
14 3 (1.54%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.10%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.54%) Data Mining
3 2 (1.03%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (10.26%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.51%) Git
General
1 51 (26.15%) Social Skills
2 14 (7.18%) Analytical Skills
3 13 (6.67%) Finance
4 12 (6.15%) Banking
4 12 (6.15%) Public Sector
5 9 (4.62%) Legal
6 3 (1.54%) Advertising
7 2 (1.03%) Military
8 1 (0.51%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.51%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 57 (29.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 31 (15.90%) VMware Engineer
3 18 (9.23%) Senior
4 17 (8.72%) Architect
5 13 (6.67%) Cloud Engineer
5 13 (6.67%) Consultant
6 12 (6.15%) Wintel Engineer
7 11 (5.64%) Server Engineer
7 11 (5.64%) Storage Engineer
7 11 (5.64%) VMware Consultant
8 10 (5.13%) Analyst
8 10 (5.13%) Network Engineer
8 10 (5.13%) Platform Engineer
8 10 (5.13%) Senior VMware Engineer
8 10 (5.13%) Virtualisation Engineer
9 9 (4.62%) Infrastructure Analyst
10 7 (3.59%) Lead
10 7 (3.59%) Storage Analyst
10 7 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
11 6 (3.08%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.64%) OpenTelemetry
2 9 (4.62%) Flash
3 2 (1.03%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (1.03%) Unreal Engine
4 1 (0.51%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 36 (18.46%) Data Centre
2 34 (17.44%) Hybrid Cloud
2 34 (17.44%) Replication
3 18 (9.23%) Cloud Native
4 10 (5.13%) Clustering
4 10 (5.13%) Linux Command Line
5 9 (4.62%) Enterprise Storage
5 9 (4.62%) PKI
6 7 (3.59%) Public Cloud
7 6 (3.08%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (2.56%) FlexPod
8 5 (2.56%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (1.54%) EMC VMAX
9 3 (1.54%) EMC VNX
10 2 (1.03%) Management Information System
10 2 (1.03%) Motion Graphics
10 2 (1.03%) Social Media
11 1 (0.51%) Life Science
11 1 (0.51%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 86 (44.10%) Windows
2 63 (32.31%) Windows Server
3 51 (26.15%) Linux
4 13 (6.67%) VMS
4 13 (6.67%) Windows Server 2019
5 9 (4.62%) Data ONTAP
5 9 (4.62%) Windows Server 2016
6 8 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (4.10%) Ubuntu
7 5 (2.56%) CoreOS
7 5 (2.56%) Unix
8 3 (1.54%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.51%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (31.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 53 (27.18%) Disaster Recovery
3 52 (26.67%) Migration
4 43 (22.05%) High Availability
5 42 (21.54%) Problem-Solving
6 30 (15.38%) Network Virtualisation
7 29 (14.87%) CI/CD
8 24 (12.31%) Containerisation
8 24 (12.31%) DevOps
8 24 (12.31%) Platform Engineering
9 23 (11.79%) Capacity Planning
9 23 (11.79%) Performance Tuning
10 21 (10.77%) Technical Leadership
11 18 (9.23%) Infrastructure as Code
11 18 (9.23%) Load Balancing
11 18 (9.23%) Root Cause Analysis
12 16 (8.21%) Continuous Improvement
12 16 (8.21%) Project Delivery
12 16 (8.21%) RBAC
12 16 (8.21%) Virtual Infrastructure
Programming Languages
1 48 (24.62%) PowerShell
2 39 (20.00%) Python
3 31 (15.90%) Bash
4 2 (1.03%) Perl
5 1 (0.51%) Go
5 1 (0.51%) SQL
Qualifications
1 79 (40.51%) Security Cleared
2 47 (24.10%) SC Cleared
3 31 (15.90%) DV Cleared
3 31 (15.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 21 (10.77%) VCAP
5 11 (5.64%) MCSA
5 11 (5.64%) MCSE
5 11 (5.64%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (5.13%) OCP
6 10 (5.13%) Oracle Certification
7 6 (3.08%) Azure Certification
7 6 (3.08%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (2.56%) AWS Certification
8 5 (2.56%) CCNP
9 3 (1.54%) CCA
9 3 (1.54%) Citrix Certification
10 2 (1.03%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (1.03%) NCDA
10 2 (1.03%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.08%) SLA
2 3 (1.54%) Government Security Classifications
2 3 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.54%) NCSC
3 2 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (1.03%) RMADS
4 1 (0.51%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.51%) NIST
4 1 (0.51%) QA
System Software
1 154 (78.97%) VMware Infrastructure
2 93 (47.69%) VMware ESXi
3 66 (33.85%) VMware NSX
4 44 (22.56%) Active Directory
5 42 (21.54%) Virtual Machines
6 28 (14.36%) Hyper-V
7 16 (8.21%) NFS
8 11 (5.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (5.13%) Docker
10 9 (4.62%) GPFS
11 5 (2.56%) KVM
12 2 (1.03%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (1.03%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 68 (34.87%) vCenter Server
2 59 (30.26%) Ansible
3 43 (22.05%) Kubernetes
4 37 (18.97%) Terraform
5 23 (11.79%) vRealize
6 19 (9.74%) VxRail
7 18 (9.23%) Argo
8 17 (8.72%) PowerCLI
9 15 (7.69%) Grafana
10 12 (6.15%) NetBackup
11 11 (5.64%) SCCM
12 9 (4.62%) vMotion
13 8 (4.10%) SnapMirror
14 6 (3.08%) Microsoft Intune
14 6 (3.08%) SCOM
15 4 (2.05%) Prometheus
15 4 (2.05%) WSUS
16 3 (1.54%) EMC NetWorker
16 3 (1.54%) EMC VPLEX
16 3 (1.54%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 190 (97.44%) VMware
2 46 (23.59%) Microsoft
3 40 (20.51%) Cisco
4 24 (12.31%) Veeam
5 20 (10.26%) Red Hat
6 19 (9.74%) NetApp
6 19 (9.74%) Pure Storage
7 18 (9.23%) Dell
8 13 (6.67%) Zerto
9 12 (6.15%) ServiceNow
9 12 (6.15%) Splunk
10 11 (5.64%) SolarWinds
11 10 (5.13%) IBM
12 9 (4.62%) Oracle
12 9 (4.62%) Veritas
13 7 (3.59%) 3PAR
13 7 (3.59%) Citrix
14 6 (3.08%) Commvault
15 5 (2.56%) Google
16 4 (2.05%) Meraki