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

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 286 245 225
Rank change year-on-year -41 -20 +43
Contract jobs citing vSphere 186 106 179
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.70% 0.74% 0.85%
As % of the System Software category 6.62% 5.58% 6.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 62 136
10th Percentile £356 £463 £320
25th Percentile £424 £516 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £572 £500
Median % change year-on-year -15.70% +14.35% +9.78%
75th Percentile £533 £647 £590
90th Percentile £600 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £485 £550 £504
% change year-on-year -11.82% +9.18% +3.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile £48.40 - £39.09
25th Percentile £50.50 - £44.35
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £53.41
75th Percentile - - £62.18
90th Percentile - - £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 2,810 1,901 2,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.60% 13.25% 12.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,872 1,268 1,738
10th Percentile £200 £200 £190
25th Percentile £358 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% +0.10%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 169 46 182
10th Percentile £13.91 £14.99 £14.06
25th Percentile £21.00 £15.44 £14.48
Median hourly rate £51.00 £56.19 £24.34
Median % change year-on-year -9.23% +130.84% -11.49%
75th Percentile £73.75 £81.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £91.50 £70.59
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £28.00 £23.99
% change year-on-year +82.14% +16.72% -55.57%

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 5 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
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 5 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 -31 67 £485 +2.11% 13
Midlands -24 41 £450 -17.05% 5
South East -78 39 £510 -12.07% 12
North West -15 34 £458 -10.20% 7
West Midlands -35 33 £450 -17.05% 1
Yorkshire -39 33 £500 +5.26% 4
South West -12 17 £600 +4.35% 14
Scotland - 14 £456 - 1
East of England -25 12 £510 -7.27% 1
East Midlands -8 8 £450 - 4
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 (3.23%) SharePoint
2 2 (1.08%) Apache
2 2 (1.08%) CloudStack
2 2 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.54%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 3 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 1 (0.54%) Houdini
2 1 (0.54%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.61%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 47 (25.27%) Azure
2 43 (23.12%) AWS
3 29 (15.59%) OpenShift
4 18 (9.68%) GitHub
5 12 (6.45%) GCP
6 11 (5.91%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (3.76%) Entra ID
8 6 (3.23%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (3.23%) Nutanix
9 3 (1.61%) Catchpoint
9 3 (1.61%) IaaS
9 3 (1.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 2 (1.08%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (1.08%) Azure Storage
10 2 (1.08%) Datadog
10 2 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (1.08%) Rubrik
11 1 (0.54%) Azure AKS
11 1 (0.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 1 (0.54%) IBM Watson
Communications & Networking
1 46 (24.73%) DNS
2 27 (14.52%) DHCP
2 27 (14.52%) VSAN
3 25 (13.44%) SAN
4 24 (12.90%) Firewall
5 14 (7.53%) NAS
5 14 (7.53%) VLAN
5 14 (7.53%) WAN
6 13 (6.99%) LAN
7 7 (3.76%) Cisco Nexus
7 7 (3.76%) VPN
7 7 (3.76%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (2.69%) NetScaler
8 5 (2.69%) SD-WAN
8 5 (2.69%) SSL
8 5 (2.69%) TCP/IP
9 3 (1.61%) BGP
9 3 (1.61%) Network Security
9 3 (1.61%) OSPF
10 2 (1.08%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.30%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.61%) Data Mining
3 2 (1.08%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (9.68%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.54%) GoCD
General
1 48 (25.81%) Social Skills
2 15 (8.06%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (7.53%) Finance
4 11 (5.91%) Banking
4 11 (5.91%) Legal
5 10 (5.38%) Public Sector
6 2 (1.08%) Advertising
6 2 (1.08%) Military
7 1 (0.54%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 52 (27.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 26 (13.98%) VMware Engineer
3 18 (9.68%) Architect
4 17 (9.14%) Wintel Engineer
5 13 (6.99%) Analyst
5 13 (6.99%) Server Engineer
6 12 (6.45%) Cloud Engineer
6 12 (6.45%) Consultant
6 12 (6.45%) Senior
7 10 (5.38%) Infrastructure Analyst
7 10 (5.38%) Network Engineer
7 10 (5.38%) Storage Analyst
7 10 (5.38%) VMware Consultant
8 8 (4.30%) Senior VMware Engineer
9 7 (3.76%) Storage Engineer
9 7 (3.76%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 6 (3.23%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
10 6 (3.23%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
10 6 (3.23%) Support Engineer
10 6 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (6.45%) Flash
2 11 (5.91%) OpenTelemetry
3 2 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (0.54%) REST
4 1 (0.54%) Unreal Engine
Miscellaneous
1 38 (20.43%) Replication
2 33 (17.74%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (15.05%) Data Centre
4 18 (9.68%) Cloud Native
5 15 (8.06%) Clustering
6 13 (6.99%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (2.69%) Enterprise Storage
7 5 (2.69%) FlexPod
7 5 (2.69%) Private Cloud
7 5 (2.69%) Public Cloud
8 4 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.61%) EMC VMAX
9 3 (1.61%) EMC VNX
10 1 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
10 1 (0.54%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (0.54%) Fat Client
10 1 (0.54%) Life Science
10 1 (0.54%) Onboarding
10 1 (0.54%) Operational Technology
10 1 (0.54%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 86 (46.24%) Windows
2 73 (39.25%) Windows Server
3 44 (23.66%) Linux
4 17 (9.14%) Windows Server 2019
5 11 (5.91%) Windows Server 2016
6 9 (4.84%) Data ONTAP
6 9 (4.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (4.84%) VMS
7 8 (4.30%) Ubuntu
8 5 (2.69%) CoreOS
8 5 (2.69%) Unix
8 5 (2.69%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.54%) CentOS
9 1 (0.54%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (31.72%) Disaster Recovery
2 53 (28.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 52 (27.96%) Migration
4 48 (25.81%) High Availability
5 36 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
6 28 (15.05%) Capacity Planning
7 24 (12.90%) Performance Tuning
8 23 (12.37%) DevOps
8 23 (12.37%) Network Virtualisation
9 22 (11.83%) CI/CD
10 20 (10.75%) Containerisation
11 19 (10.22%) Load Balancing
11 19 (10.22%) Project Delivery
11 19 (10.22%) Root Cause Analysis
12 16 (8.60%) Virtual Infrastructure
13 15 (8.06%) Agile
13 15 (8.06%) RBAC
14 14 (7.53%) Data Migration
14 14 (7.53%) Performance Optimisation
15 13 (6.99%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 48 (25.81%) PowerShell
2 29 (15.59%) Python
3 21 (11.29%) Bash
4 1 (0.54%) SQL
Qualifications
1 67 (36.02%) Security Cleared
2 45 (24.19%) SC Cleared
3 33 (17.74%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 18 (9.68%) DV Cleared
5 17 (9.14%) VCAP
6 15 (8.06%) MCSA
6 15 (8.06%) MCSE
6 15 (8.06%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (5.38%) OCP
7 10 (5.38%) Oracle Certification
8 9 (4.84%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (4.30%) CCNP
10 5 (2.69%) Azure Certification
11 4 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
12 3 (1.61%) CCA
12 3 (1.61%) 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 6 (3.23%) SLA
2 3 (1.61%) Government Security Classifications
2 3 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.61%) NCSC
3 2 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (1.08%) RMADS
4 1 (0.54%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.54%) NIST
4 1 (0.54%) QA
System Software
1 141 (75.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 98 (52.69%) VMware ESXi
3 56 (30.11%) VMware NSX
4 43 (23.12%) Virtual Machines
5 40 (21.51%) Active Directory
6 21 (11.29%) Hyper-V
7 19 (10.22%) NFS
8 12 (6.45%) GPFS
9 11 (5.91%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (2.69%) KVM
11 4 (2.15%) Docker
12 2 (1.08%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 2 (1.08%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 72 (38.71%) vCenter Server
2 53 (28.49%) Ansible
3 35 (18.82%) Kubernetes
4 26 (13.98%) vRealize
5 23 (12.37%) Terraform
6 18 (9.68%) Argo
7 16 (8.60%) PowerCLI
8 15 (8.06%) Grafana
9 12 (6.45%) NetBackup
9 12 (6.45%) SCCM
9 12 (6.45%) VxRail
10 9 (4.84%) vMotion
11 8 (4.30%) SCOM
11 8 (4.30%) SnapMirror
12 7 (3.76%) Microsoft Intune
13 4 (2.15%) Prometheus
13 4 (2.15%) WSUS
14 3 (1.61%) EMC NetWorker
14 3 (1.61%) EMC VPLEX
14 3 (1.61%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 181 (97.31%) VMware
2 50 (26.88%) Microsoft
3 49 (26.34%) Cisco
4 25 (13.44%) Veeam
5 19 (10.22%) Pure Storage
5 19 (10.22%) Red Hat
6 16 (8.60%) Dell
7 15 (8.06%) NetApp
7 15 (8.06%) ServiceNow
8 13 (6.99%) IBM
9 12 (6.45%) Oracle
9 12 (6.45%) Splunk
9 12 (6.45%) Zerto
10 11 (5.91%) SolarWinds
11 9 (4.84%) Veritas
12 8 (4.30%) Citrix
13 7 (3.76%) 3PAR
14 6 (3.23%) Commvault
15 5 (2.69%) Google
16 4 (2.15%) BT