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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 278 264 210
Rank change year-on-year -14 -54 +36
Contract jobs citing vSphere 190 109 166
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.69% 0.71% 0.91%
As % of the System Software category 6.41% 5.67% 7.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 124 63 123
10th Percentile £331 £406 £325
25th Percentile £413 £493 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £569 £508
Median % change year-on-year -12.33% +12.02% +11.43%
75th Percentile £564 £644 £619
90th Percentile £645 £650 £659
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £515
% change year-on-year -9.09% +6.80% +8.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 0 1
10th Percentile £50.20 - -
25th Percentile - - £35.58
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £36.17
75th Percentile £98.82 - £36.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £63.00 - £36.17
% change year-on-year - - -42.14%

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 2,966 1,924 2,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.82% 12.54% 12.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,924 1,269 1,574
10th Percentile £200 £200 £197
25th Percentile £358 £317 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £595
90th Percentile £650 £650 £657
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 60 123
10th Percentile £15.04 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.33 £17.65 £14.48
Median hourly rate £52.50 £62.50 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year -16.00% +158.26% -6.92%
75th Percentile £74.00 £88.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.30 £91.50 £72.85
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £33.64 £24.18
% change year-on-year +56.09% +39.10% -51.64%

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 9 August 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 9 August 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 9 August 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 -39 55 £483 +3.87% 9
South East -84 42 £514 -14.38% 21
Midlands -23 37 £450 -18.18% 3
South West -16 34 £670 +26.12% 14
Yorkshire -31 28 £500 +7.53% 4
North West -26 27 £476 - 3
West Midlands -30 27 £450 -18.18% 1
East of England -14 12 £510 -7.27% 6
Scotland - 11 £500 -
East Midlands -1 10 £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 6 (3.16%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.05%) Apache
2 2 (1.05%) CloudStack
2 2 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.53%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 3 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.05%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (1.05%) Houdini
2 2 (1.05%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.58%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 55 (28.95%) AWS
2 47 (24.74%) Azure
3 20 (10.53%) OpenShift
4 14 (7.37%) GitHub
5 10 (5.26%) GCP
6 8 (4.21%) Entra ID
6 8 (4.21%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (3.16%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (1.58%) IaaS
8 3 (1.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 2 (1.05%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.05%) Azure Storage
9 2 (1.05%) Datadog
9 2 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (1.05%) Nutanix
9 2 (1.05%) OCI
9 2 (1.05%) Rubrik
10 1 (0.53%) Azure AKS
10 1 (0.53%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 1 (0.53%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 54 (28.42%) DNS
2 48 (25.26%) VSAN
3 39 (20.53%) DHCP
4 34 (17.89%) Firewall
5 20 (10.53%) SAN
5 20 (10.53%) TCP/IP
6 15 (7.89%) VLAN
7 13 (6.84%) NAS
8 11 (5.79%) VPN
8 11 (5.79%) WAN
9 10 (5.26%) LAN
10 6 (3.16%) SSL
11 5 (2.63%) SD-WAN
12 4 (2.11%) Network Security
12 4 (2.11%) Wi-Fi
13 3 (1.58%) BGP
13 3 (1.58%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (1.58%) HTTP
13 3 (1.58%) NetScaler
13 3 (1.58%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.21%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.58%) Data Mining
3 2 (1.05%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (7.89%) Jenkins
2 1 (0.53%) Git
General
1 48 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 15 (7.89%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (7.37%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.74%) Finance
5 8 (4.21%) Banking
5 8 (4.21%) Legal
6 3 (1.58%) Advertising
7 2 (1.05%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.05%) Military
8 1 (0.53%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.53%) Marketing
8 1 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.53%) Retail
Job Titles
1 56 (29.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 35 (18.42%) VMware Engineer
3 22 (11.58%) Senior
4 17 (8.95%) Platform Engineer
5 14 (7.37%) Cloud Engineer
6 13 (6.84%) Architect
6 13 (6.84%) Consultant
7 12 (6.32%) Senior VMware Engineer
7 12 (6.32%) Server Engineer
7 12 (6.32%) Wintel Engineer
8 11 (5.79%) Storage Engineer
8 11 (5.79%) VMware Consultant
9 10 (5.26%) Network Engineer
9 10 (5.26%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 9 (4.74%) Analyst
10 9 (4.74%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
11 8 (4.21%) Infrastructure Analyst
11 8 (4.21%) Principal Engineer
12 7 (3.68%) Lead
12 7 (3.68%) Storage Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (4.74%) Flash
2 8 (4.21%) OpenTelemetry
3 2 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (1.05%) Unreal Engine
4 1 (0.53%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 38 (20.00%) Data Centre
2 33 (17.37%) Replication
3 32 (16.84%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (7.37%) PKI
5 13 (6.84%) Cloud Native
6 10 (5.26%) Clustering
6 10 (5.26%) Enterprise Storage
6 10 (5.26%) Linux Command Line
6 10 (5.26%) Public Cloud
7 5 (2.63%) Private Cloud
8 4 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.58%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (1.58%) EMC VMAX
9 3 (1.58%) EMC VNX
9 3 (1.58%) FlexPod
10 2 (1.05%) Management Information System
10 2 (1.05%) Motion Graphics
10 2 (1.05%) Social Media
11 1 (0.53%) Life Science
11 1 (0.53%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 92 (48.42%) Windows
2 63 (33.16%) Windows Server
3 55 (28.95%) Linux
4 11 (5.79%) Windows Server 2019
5 10 (5.26%) VMS
6 8 (4.21%) Ubuntu
7 7 (3.68%) Data ONTAP
7 7 (3.68%) Windows Server 2016
8 6 (3.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (2.63%) Unix
10 3 (1.58%) CoreOS
11 2 (1.05%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.53%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (31.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 44 (23.16%) Disaster Recovery
2 44 (23.16%) Migration
3 41 (21.58%) Problem-Solving
4 36 (18.95%) High Availability
5 33 (17.37%) Network Virtualisation
6 30 (15.79%) Platform Engineering
7 28 (14.74%) Technical Leadership
8 27 (14.21%) CI/CD
9 24 (12.63%) Infrastructure as Code
10 23 (12.11%) Capacity Planning
11 21 (11.05%) Performance Tuning
12 20 (10.53%) Containerisation
13 19 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
13 19 (10.00%) Root Cause Analysis
14 18 (9.47%) DevOps
15 17 (8.95%) Mentoring
16 16 (8.42%) Systems Engineering
17 15 (7.89%) DevSecOps
17 15 (7.89%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 52 (27.37%) PowerShell
2 38 (20.00%) Python
3 33 (17.37%) Bash
4 2 (1.05%) Perl
5 1 (0.53%) Go
5 1 (0.53%) SQL
Qualifications
1 86 (45.26%) Security Cleared
2 48 (25.26%) SC Cleared
3 35 (18.42%) DV Cleared
4 32 (16.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
5 26 (13.68%) VCAP
6 11 (5.79%) MCSA
6 11 (5.79%) MCSE
6 11 (5.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (4.21%) AWS Certification
7 8 (4.21%) OCP
7 8 (4.21%) Oracle Certification
8 7 (3.68%) Azure Certification
9 6 (3.16%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (2.63%) CCNP
11 3 (1.58%) CCA
11 3 (1.58%) Citrix Certification
12 2 (1.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
12 2 (1.05%) NCDA
12 2 (1.05%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.16%) SLA
2 3 (1.58%) Government Security Classifications
2 3 (1.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.58%) NCSC
3 2 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (1.05%) RMADS
4 1 (0.53%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.53%) NIST
4 1 (0.53%) QA
System Software
1 154 (81.05%) VMware Infrastructure
2 90 (47.37%) VMware ESXi
3 70 (36.84%) VMware NSX
4 48 (25.26%) Active Directory
5 38 (20.00%) Virtual Machines
6 30 (15.79%) Hyper-V
7 14 (7.37%) NFS
8 12 (6.32%) Docker
9 10 (5.26%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (4.74%) GPFS
11 3 (1.58%) KVM
12 2 (1.05%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (1.05%) SRDF
13 1 (0.53%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 63 (33.16%) vCenter Server
2 57 (30.00%) Ansible
3 39 (20.53%) Terraform
4 38 (20.00%) Kubernetes
5 22 (11.58%) vRealize
6 21 (11.05%) VxRail
7 15 (7.89%) PowerCLI
8 13 (6.84%) Argo
9 12 (6.32%) Grafana
9 12 (6.32%) NetBackup
10 11 (5.79%) vMotion
11 10 (5.26%) SCCM
12 6 (3.16%) SCOM
12 6 (3.16%) SnapMirror
13 5 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
14 4 (2.11%) Prometheus
14 4 (2.11%) WSUS
15 3 (1.58%) EMC NetWorker
15 3 (1.58%) EMC VPLEX
15 3 (1.58%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 188 (98.95%) VMware
2 46 (24.21%) Microsoft
3 38 (20.00%) Cisco
4 21 (11.05%) Veeam
5 17 (8.95%) NetApp
6 15 (7.89%) Red Hat
7 14 (7.37%) Pure Storage
8 13 (6.84%) Dell
9 12 (6.32%) ServiceNow
10 11 (5.79%) Oracle
10 11 (5.79%) Zerto
11 10 (5.26%) IBM
11 10 (5.26%) SolarWinds
12 9 (4.74%) Splunk
12 9 (4.74%) Veritas
13 7 (3.68%) 3PAR
13 7 (3.68%) Citrix
14 6 (3.16%) Commvault
15 4 (2.11%) BT
15 4 (2.11%) HP