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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 256 237 268
Rank change year-on-year -19 +31 +3
Contract jobs citing vSphere 185 98 143
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.82% 0.78% 0.68%
As % of the System Software category 7.15% 5.11% 5.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 133 67 98
10th Percentile £308 £365 £343
25th Percentile £402 £480 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £564 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.12% +12.80% +9.89%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £588
90th Percentile £625 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 3
10th Percentile £47.60 - -
25th Percentile £50.00 £72.50 -
Median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £70.66
Median % change year-on-year -32.00% +6.14% +83.53%
75th Percentile - £77.50 £73.60
90th Percentile - - £75.36
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £70.66
% change year-on-year -32.00% +6.14% +32.07%

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 2,588 1,918 2,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.48% 15.18% 12.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,805 1,300 1,704
10th Percentile £190 £192 £175
25th Percentile £340 £338 £274
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £475 £460
Median % change year-on-year +0.53% +3.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £586
90th Percentile £648 £661 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £485
% change year-on-year -4.76% +8.25% -7.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 68 181
10th Percentile £14.74 £15.20 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.89 £20.78 £14.48
Median hourly rate £50.00 £37.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% +66.67% -16.64%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £85.50 £83.63 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.75 £22.50
% change year-on-year +62.60% +36.67% -54.55%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 -31 69 £488 +2.63% 22
South East -49 47 £550 -4.35% 25
Midlands -21 44 £382 -29.52% 6
West Midlands -25 39 £325 -40.03% 4
North West -16 36 £460 -9.80% 13
Yorkshire -37 33 £500 +5.26% 7
Scotland +15 12 £466 -26.94% 2
South West -25 10 £450 -5.76% 7
East of England -33 7 £510 -7.27% 5
East Midlands - 5 £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 8 (4.32%) Confluence
2 4 (2.16%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.54%) IIS
Applications
1 7 (3.78%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 63 (34.05%) AWS
2 62 (33.51%) Azure
3 42 (22.70%) OpenShift
4 17 (9.19%) GitHub
5 13 (7.03%) Datadog
6 12 (6.49%) GCP
7 10 (5.41%) IaaS
8 9 (4.86%) Microsoft 365
9 7 (3.78%) Nutanix
10 4 (2.16%) Entra ID
11 3 (1.62%) Catchpoint
11 3 (1.62%) PaaS
12 2 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
13 1 (0.54%) Azure DevOps
13 1 (0.54%) Cloud Computing
13 1 (0.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 43 (23.24%) DNS
2 39 (21.08%) VSAN
3 33 (17.84%) Firewall
4 19 (10.27%) SAN
5 18 (9.73%) DHCP
6 13 (7.03%) VLAN
7 8 (4.32%) TCP/IP
8 7 (3.78%) LAN
8 7 (3.78%) WAN
9 6 (3.24%) NAS
10 5 (2.70%) Network Security
11 4 (2.16%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (2.16%) NetScaler
12 3 (1.62%) BGP
12 3 (1.62%) OSPF
12 3 (1.62%) Wi-Fi
13 2 (1.08%) Fibre Channel
13 2 (1.08%) Remote Desktop
13 2 (1.08%) SSL
14 1 (0.54%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (3.24%) NonStop SQL
2 1 (0.54%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 23 (12.43%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.62%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.54%) Git
3 1 (0.54%) GoCD
3 1 (0.54%) JIRA
3 1 (0.54%) Subversion
General
1 43 (23.24%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.81%) Finance
3 13 (7.03%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.41%) Legal
5 8 (4.32%) Banking
6 6 (3.24%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.70%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.08%) Advertising
8 2 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 37 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 33 (17.84%) Analyst
3 27 (14.59%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 25 (13.51%) Architect
4 25 (13.51%) VMware Engineer
5 22 (11.89%) Storage Analyst
6 14 (7.57%) Senior
7 12 (6.49%) Wintel Engineer
8 9 (4.86%) Platform Engineer
8 9 (4.86%) Virtualisation Engineer
9 8 (4.32%) Server Engineer
9 8 (4.32%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (3.78%) Consultant
10 7 (3.78%) Lead
10 7 (3.78%) Senior VMware Engineer
11 5 (2.70%) Infrastructure Architect
11 5 (2.70%) Network Engineer
11 5 (2.70%) Site Engineer
11 5 (2.70%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 5 (2.70%) VMware Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (8.65%) Flash
2 12 (6.49%) OpenTelemetry
3 8 (4.32%) Loki
4 1 (0.54%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 32 (17.30%) Replication
2 29 (15.68%) Linux Command Line
3 25 (13.51%) Hybrid Cloud
4 23 (12.43%) Cloud Native
5 14 (7.57%) Data Centre
6 10 (5.41%) Clustering
7 8 (4.32%) Virtual Team
8 6 (3.24%) Private Cloud
9 5 (2.70%) FlexPod
10 4 (2.16%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
12 2 (1.08%) Enterprise Storage
12 2 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
12 2 (1.08%) PKI
13 1 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
13 1 (0.54%) Distributed Systems
13 1 (0.54%) Greenfield Project
13 1 (0.54%) Onboarding
13 1 (0.54%) Product Ownership
13 1 (0.54%) RSA SecurID
Operating Systems
1 81 (43.78%) Linux
2 64 (34.59%) Windows
3 49 (26.49%) Windows Server
4 19 (10.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (9.73%) Windows Server 2019
6 13 (7.03%) Windows Server 2016
7 10 (5.41%) VMS
8 6 (3.24%) Data ONTAP
8 6 (3.24%) Ubuntu
9 5 (2.70%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.70%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (1.08%) CentOS
10 2 (1.08%) Unix
11 1 (0.54%) Solaris
11 1 (0.54%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (24.32%) Agile
2 43 (23.24%) CI/CD
2 43 (23.24%) Disaster Recovery
2 43 (23.24%) Migration
3 42 (22.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 39 (21.08%) DevOps
5 34 (18.38%) High Availability
5 34 (18.38%) Problem-Solving
6 32 (17.30%) Containerisation
7 25 (13.51%) Load Balancing
8 23 (12.43%) Infrastructure as Code
9 21 (11.35%) Capacity Planning
10 19 (10.27%) RBAC
11 16 (8.65%) Performance Tuning
11 16 (8.65%) Ticket Management
12 15 (8.11%) Network Virtualisation
12 15 (8.11%) Observability
12 15 (8.11%) Platform Engineering
13 14 (7.57%) Performance Optimisation
13 14 (7.57%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 50 (27.03%) Python
2 42 (22.70%) Bash
3 38 (20.54%) PowerShell
4 2 (1.08%) SQL
5 1 (0.54%) Go
5 1 (0.54%) Perl
5 1 (0.54%) VBA
Qualifications
1 58 (31.35%) Security Cleared
2 41 (22.16%) SC Cleared
3 18 (9.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 15 (8.11%) VCAP
5 14 (7.57%) DV Cleared
6 10 (5.41%) OCP
6 10 (5.41%) Oracle Certification
7 9 (4.86%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (4.32%) MCSA
8 8 (4.32%) MCSE
8 8 (4.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (2.16%) CCNP
9 4 (2.16%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (2.16%) Degree
10 2 (1.08%) CCIE
11 1 (0.54%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.54%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.78%) SLA
2 2 (1.08%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.08%) NCSC
2 2 (1.08%) RMADS
3 1 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.54%) GDPR
3 1 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.54%) QA
System Software
1 138 (74.59%) VMware Infrastructure
2 72 (38.92%) VMware ESXi
3 56 (30.27%) VMware NSX
4 29 (15.68%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (14.05%) Active Directory
6 21 (11.35%) NFS
7 19 (10.27%) Docker
8 16 (8.65%) GPFS
9 6 (3.24%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.24%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.16%) KVM
11 3 (1.62%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 67 (36.22%) vCenter Server
2 53 (28.65%) Ansible
3 52 (28.11%) Kubernetes
4 44 (23.78%) vRealize
5 37 (20.00%) Terraform
6 32 (17.30%) Argo
7 25 (13.51%) VxRail
8 20 (10.81%) Grafana
9 12 (6.49%) PowerCLI
10 8 (4.32%) Kustomize
10 8 (4.32%) Prometheus
10 8 (4.32%) SCCM
11 7 (3.78%) NetBackup
12 5 (2.70%) Microsoft Intune
12 5 (2.70%) SnapMirror
12 5 (2.70%) WSUS
13 4 (2.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (1.62%) SCOM
14 3 (1.62%) vMotion
15 1 (0.54%) Nessus
Vendors
1 177 (95.68%) VMware
2 51 (27.57%) Cisco
3 36 (19.46%) Red Hat
4 30 (16.22%) Dell
5 29 (15.68%) IBM
6 23 (12.43%) Microsoft
6 23 (12.43%) Pure Storage
7 16 (8.65%) Oracle
7 16 (8.65%) ServiceNow
7 16 (8.65%) SolarWinds
7 16 (8.65%) Veeam
8 14 (7.57%) HP
9 13 (7.03%) AppDynamics
9 13 (7.03%) Commvault
10 12 (6.49%) Splunk
11 10 (5.41%) F5
11 10 (5.41%) Zerto
12 8 (4.32%) NetApp
12 8 (4.32%) Palo Alto
12 8 (4.32%) Veritas