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

6 months to
7 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 271 246 237
Rank change year-on-year -25 -9 +15
Contract jobs citing vSphere 185 105 157
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.73% 0.80% 0.75%
As % of the System Software category 6.96% 5.72% 6.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 144 65 118
10th Percentile £352 £375 £300
25th Percentile £424 £510 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £550 £475
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +15.79% +4.40%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £588
90th Percentile £598 £650 £652
UK median daily rate £490 £550 £508
% change year-on-year -10.91% +8.37% +4.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile £48.40 - -
25th Percentile £50.50 - -
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
% change year-on-year - - +7.06%

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 2,659 1,835 2,526
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.53% 13.99% 12.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,786 1,242 1,723
10th Percentile £198 £200 £183
25th Percentile £358 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -0.84%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £643 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 52 182
10th Percentile £15.79 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.30 £14.16
Median hourly rate £51.00 £37.07 £25.84
Median % change year-on-year +37.57% +43.47% -46.30%
75th Percentile £73.50 £74.05 £60.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £88.00 £79.80
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £28.46 £24.18
% change year-on-year +84.50% +17.68% -55.90%

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 June 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 June 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 -30 72 £483 -0.92% 12
South East -70 43 £550 -4.35% 22
North West -17 39 £460 -9.80% 7
Midlands -19 36 £450 -17.05% 6
Yorkshire -37 33 £500 +5.26% 3
West Midlands -30 32 £450 -17.05% 4
Scotland - 14 £456 - 1
South West -19 13 £525 -8.70% 8
East of England -19 11 £510 -7.27% 3
East Midlands -23 4 £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 3 (1.62%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.08%) Apache
2 2 (1.08%) CloudStack
3 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.54%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 3 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.62%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 49 (26.49%) Azure
2 45 (24.32%) AWS
3 29 (15.68%) OpenShift
4 18 (9.73%) GitHub
5 13 (7.03%) Microsoft 365
6 11 (5.95%) GCP
7 8 (4.32%) Nutanix
8 6 (3.24%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (3.24%) IaaS
9 3 (1.62%) Catchpoint
9 3 (1.62%) Entra ID
9 3 (1.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 2 (1.08%) Azure Storage
10 2 (1.08%) Datadog
10 2 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (1.08%) PaaS
10 2 (1.08%) Rubrik
11 1 (0.54%) Amazon EKS
11 1 (0.54%) Azure AKS
11 1 (0.54%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 43 (23.24%) DNS
2 30 (16.22%) Firewall
3 28 (15.14%) DHCP
4 26 (14.05%) VSAN
5 25 (13.51%) SAN
6 17 (9.19%) VLAN
7 12 (6.49%) NAS
8 11 (5.95%) LAN
8 11 (5.95%) WAN
9 7 (3.78%) NetScaler
9 7 (3.78%) Wi-Fi
10 6 (3.24%) TCP/IP
11 5 (2.70%) Cisco Nexus
12 4 (2.16%) SD-WAN
12 4 (2.16%) VPN
13 3 (1.62%) BGP
13 3 (1.62%) Network Security
13 3 (1.62%) OSPF
14 2 (1.08%) Fibre Channel
14 2 (1.08%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.32%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.62%) Data Mining
3 2 (1.08%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (9.73%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.62%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.54%) GoCD
General
1 39 (21.08%) Social Skills
2 15 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
2 15 (8.11%) Finance
3 11 (5.95%) Banking
3 11 (5.95%) Legal
4 9 (4.86%) Public Sector
5 2 (1.08%) Advertising
6 1 (0.54%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.54%) Military
6 1 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 51 (27.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 25 (13.51%) VMware Engineer
3 21 (11.35%) Architect
3 21 (11.35%) Wintel Engineer
4 15 (8.11%) Analyst
5 13 (7.03%) Senior
6 12 (6.49%) Storage Analyst
7 11 (5.95%) Server Engineer
8 10 (5.41%) Cloud Engineer
8 10 (5.41%) Consultant
8 10 (5.41%) Infrastructure Analyst
9 8 (4.32%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
9 8 (4.32%) Senior VMware Engineer
9 8 (4.32%) VMware Consultant
9 8 (4.32%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (3.78%) Network Engineer
10 7 (3.78%) Storage Engineer
11 6 (3.24%) Lead
12 5 (2.70%) Data Centre Engineer
12 5 (2.70%) Data Centre Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.57%) Flash
2 11 (5.95%) OpenTelemetry
3 2 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (0.54%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 44 (23.78%) Replication
2 32 (17.30%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (14.59%) Data Centre
4 19 (10.27%) Clustering
5 18 (9.73%) Cloud Native
6 15 (8.11%) Linux Command Line
7 7 (3.78%) Private Cloud
8 6 (3.24%) Public Cloud
9 5 (2.70%) Enterprise Storage
9 5 (2.70%) FlexPod
10 4 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.62%) EMC VMAX
11 3 (1.62%) EMC VNX
12 1 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
12 1 (0.54%) Distributed Systems
12 1 (0.54%) Fat Client
12 1 (0.54%) Life Science
12 1 (0.54%) Onboarding
12 1 (0.54%) PKI
12 1 (0.54%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 87 (47.03%) Windows
2 73 (39.46%) Windows Server
3 48 (25.95%) Linux
4 17 (9.19%) Windows Server 2019
5 13 (7.03%) Windows Server 2016
6 9 (4.86%) Data ONTAP
6 9 (4.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (4.86%) Ubuntu
6 9 (4.86%) VMS
7 5 (2.70%) CoreOS
7 5 (2.70%) Unix
7 5 (2.70%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (1.08%) CentOS
9 1 (0.54%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (32.43%) Disaster Recovery
2 53 (28.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 51 (27.57%) Migration
4 48 (25.95%) High Availability
5 36 (19.46%) Problem-Solving
6 32 (17.30%) Capacity Planning
7 28 (15.14%) DevOps
8 26 (14.05%) Network Virtualisation
9 24 (12.97%) Performance Tuning
10 22 (11.89%) CI/CD
10 22 (11.89%) Project Delivery
11 21 (11.35%) Load Balancing
12 20 (10.81%) Containerisation
12 20 (10.81%) Root Cause Analysis
13 17 (9.19%) Agile
14 15 (8.11%) RBAC
15 14 (7.57%) Data Migration
15 14 (7.57%) Performance Optimisation
16 13 (7.03%) Platform Engineering
16 13 (7.03%) Virtual Infrastructure
Programming Languages
1 54 (29.19%) PowerShell
2 29 (15.68%) Python
3 21 (11.35%) Bash
4 1 (0.54%) SQL
Qualifications
1 66 (35.68%) Security Cleared
2 47 (25.41%) SC Cleared
3 37 (20.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 21 (11.35%) VCAP
5 19 (10.27%) MCSA
5 19 (10.27%) MCSE
5 19 (10.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (7.57%) DV Cleared
7 10 (5.41%) OCP
7 10 (5.41%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (4.32%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (3.78%) CCNP
10 5 (2.70%) Azure Certification
11 4 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
12 3 (1.62%) CCA
12 3 (1.62%) Citrix Certification
13 2 (1.08%) AWS Certification
13 2 (1.08%) CCIE
13 2 (1.08%) NCDA
13 2 (1.08%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.86%) SLA
2 3 (1.62%) Government Security Classifications
2 3 (1.62%) NCSC
3 2 (1.08%) RMADS
4 1 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.54%) NIST
4 1 (0.54%) QA
System Software
1 136 (73.51%) VMware Infrastructure
2 102 (55.14%) VMware ESXi
3 53 (28.65%) VMware NSX
4 46 (24.86%) Virtual Machines
5 39 (21.08%) Active Directory
6 21 (11.35%) NFS
7 18 (9.73%) Hyper-V
8 14 (7.57%) GPFS
9 8 (4.32%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (3.24%) Docker
11 5 (2.70%) KVM
12 3 (1.62%) DFS Replication
13 2 (1.08%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 2 (1.08%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 81 (43.78%) vCenter Server
2 57 (30.81%) Ansible
3 38 (20.54%) Kubernetes
4 28 (15.14%) vRealize
5 24 (12.97%) Terraform
6 18 (9.73%) Argo
7 16 (8.65%) PowerCLI
8 15 (8.11%) Grafana
8 15 (8.11%) VxRail
9 13 (7.03%) SCCM
10 12 (6.49%) NetBackup
11 9 (4.86%) vMotion
12 8 (4.32%) SCOM
12 8 (4.32%) SnapMirror
13 7 (3.78%) Microsoft Intune
14 4 (2.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (2.16%) Prometheus
14 4 (2.16%) WSUS
15 3 (1.62%) EMC NetWorker
15 3 (1.62%) SCSM
Vendors
1 176 (95.14%) VMware
2 51 (27.57%) Cisco
2 51 (27.57%) Microsoft
3 30 (16.22%) Veeam
4 20 (10.81%) Dell
4 20 (10.81%) Red Hat
5 19 (10.27%) Pure Storage
6 17 (9.19%) ServiceNow
7 15 (8.11%) NetApp
8 14 (7.57%) IBM
8 14 (7.57%) Oracle
9 12 (6.49%) Zerto
10 11 (5.95%) Splunk
11 10 (5.41%) SolarWinds
12 9 (4.86%) Veritas
13 8 (4.32%) Citrix
14 7 (3.78%) 3PAR
15 6 (3.24%) Commvault
16 5 (2.70%) F5
16 5 (2.70%) Google