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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 268 246 274
Rank change year-on-year -22 +28 +2
Contract jobs citing vSphere 100 135 153
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.65% 0.75% 0.71%
As % of the System Software category 5.05% 6.01% 4.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 63 101 116
10th Percentile £375 £325 £294
25th Percentile £493 £431 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £555 £508 £470
Median % change year-on-year +9.36% +7.98% +4.44%
75th Percentile £623 £599 £625
90th Percentile £650 £663 £750
UK median daily rate £550 £508 £490
% change year-on-year +8.37% +3.57% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 8
10th Percentile - £22.68 £19.33
25th Percentile - £24.83 £51.97
Median hourly rate - £29.33 £68.96
Median % change year-on-year - -57.47% +33.91%
75th Percentile - £33.50 £76.53
90th Percentile - £35.45 -
UK median hourly rate - £29.33 £66.63
% change year-on-year - -55.98% +45.25%

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 1,979 2,247 3,214
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.79% 12.53% 14.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,307 1,505 2,124
10th Percentile £200 £190 £171
25th Percentile £304 £340 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year - +2.15% +3.33%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £638 £656 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 92 206
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.16 £14.77
25th Percentile £18.31 £16.00 £17.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £28.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +126.09% -28.13% +100.00%
75th Percentile £82.00 £65.23 £69.62
90th Percentile £91.50 £79.50 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £25.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +36.00% -50.00% +127.27%

vSphere
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing vSphere as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for vSphere 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 19 September 2025.

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 19 September 2025. 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
South East +23 61 £578 +21.58% 16
North of England -14 16 £456 +7.29% 17
Midlands -18 13 £275 -56.69% 4
West Midlands -12 11 £275 -56.69%
Yorkshire - 11 £447 - 6
South West -35 10 £540 +0.47% 4
North West -7 5 £550 +29.41% 5
East Midlands -4 2 £105 - 4
vSphere
UK

vSphere
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (7.00%) Confluence
2 5 (5.00%) OpenStack
3 3 (3.00%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (1.00%) Anypoint
4 1 (1.00%) IIS
4 1 (1.00%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 17 (17.00%) Azure
2 12 (12.00%) AWS
3 10 (10.00%) IaaS
4 7 (7.00%) Microsoft 365
5 5 (5.00%) PaaS
6 3 (3.00%) Entra ID
7 1 (1.00%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 1 (1.00%) GCP
7 1 (1.00%) GitHub
7 1 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 20 (20.00%) DNS
1 20 (20.00%) Fibre Channel
1 20 (20.00%) VSAN
2 17 (17.00%) iSCSI
3 16 (16.00%) Firewall
4 14 (14.00%) SAN
5 11 (11.00%) DHCP
6 9 (9.00%) NAS
7 7 (7.00%) TCP/IP
8 6 (6.00%) VLAN
9 5 (5.00%) SSL
9 5 (5.00%) VPN
10 3 (3.00%) Intrusion Detection
10 3 (3.00%) Software-Defined Networking
11 2 (2.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 2 (2.00%) Network Security
11 2 (2.00%) PCoIP
12 1 (1.00%) Unified Communications
12 1 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
12 1 (1.00%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (6.00%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.00%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 9 (9.00%) Jenkins
2 8 (8.00%) GitLab
3 7 (7.00%) Git
3 7 (7.00%) JIRA
4 2 (2.00%) Artifactory
5 1 (1.00%) GoCD
5 1 (1.00%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.00%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 27 (27.00%) Social Skills
2 9 (9.00%) Telecoms
3 8 (8.00%) Public Sector
4 5 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (4.00%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (3.00%) Billing
6 3 (3.00%) Finance
7 1 (1.00%) Electronics
7 1 (1.00%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.00%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 24 (24.00%) VMware Engineer
2 23 (23.00%) Architect
2 23 (23.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 20 (20.00%) VMware Architect
4 18 (18.00%) Infrastructure Architect
5 10 (10.00%) Azure Engineer
5 10 (10.00%) Support Engineer
6 8 (8.00%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
6 8 (8.00%) Windows Engineer
7 7 (7.00%) Consultant
8 6 (6.00%) Storage Engineer
8 6 (6.00%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
8 6 (6.00%) Windows Infrastructure Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
9 5 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
10 4 (4.00%) 3rd Line Engineer
10 4 (4.00%) 3rd Line Support
10 4 (4.00%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
10 4 (4.00%) Server Engineer
11 3 (3.00%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (11.00%) Middleware
2 4 (4.00%) Flash
3 1 (1.00%) .NET
3 1 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (1.00%) React
Miscellaneous
1 9 (9.00%) Data Centre
1 9 (9.00%) Hybrid Cloud
2 8 (8.00%) Management Information System
3 6 (6.00%) Replication
4 4 (4.00%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (2.00%) Cloud Native
5 2 (2.00%) PKI
6 1 (1.00%) Clustering
6 1 (1.00%) CMDB
6 1 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.00%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (1.00%) IBM XIV
6 1 (1.00%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 51 (51.00%) Windows
2 35 (35.00%) Windows Server
3 26 (26.00%) Linux
4 20 (20.00%) Windows Server 2019
5 6 (6.00%) Ubuntu
6 5 (5.00%) CentOS
6 5 (5.00%) Windows Server 2003
7 4 (4.00%) VMS
8 3 (3.00%) Windows 10
8 3 (3.00%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (1.00%) Mac OS
10 1 (1.00%) Unix
10 1 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (42.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 18 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
3 16 (16.00%) Agile
4 15 (15.00%) Validation
5 13 (13.00%) Migration
6 12 (12.00%) DevOps
7 10 (10.00%) Edge Virtualization
7 10 (10.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 10 (10.00%) Infrastructure Automation
7 10 (10.00%) Performance Analysis
8 9 (9.00%) CI/CD
9 8 (8.00%) Cybersecurity
9 8 (8.00%) Mentoring
10 7 (7.00%) Customer Requirements
10 7 (7.00%) Kanban
10 7 (7.00%) Scrum
11 6 (6.00%) Computer Science
11 6 (6.00%) Disaster Recovery
12 5 (5.00%) Open Source
12 5 (5.00%) Security Hardening
Programming Languages
1 18 (18.00%) SQL
2 17 (17.00%) PowerShell
2 17 (17.00%) Python
3 7 (7.00%) Bash
3 7 (7.00%) Shell Script
4 1 (1.00%) C#
4 1 (1.00%) Java
4 1 (1.00%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 53 (53.00%) Security Cleared
2 40 (40.00%) DV Cleared
3 21 (21.00%) Microsoft Certification
3 21 (21.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 17 (17.00%) MCSE
5 12 (12.00%) SC Cleared
6 11 (11.00%) VCP5
6 11 (11.00%) VCP6
7 6 (6.00%) Degree
7 6 (6.00%) VCAP
8 5 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (3.00%) Azure Certification
10 2 (2.00%) VCDX
11 1 (1.00%) A+ Certification
11 1 (1.00%) CCA
11 1 (1.00%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.00%) SLA
2 2 (2.00%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 65 (65.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (48.00%) VMware ESXi
3 29 (29.00%) VMware NSX
4 26 (26.00%) Active Directory
5 21 (21.00%) NFS
6 10 (10.00%) Hyper-V
7 9 (9.00%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (5.00%) DFS Replication
9 4 (4.00%) GPFS
10 2 (2.00%) Docker
10 2 (2.00%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (1.00%) Firmware
11 1 (1.00%) VMware Server
11 1 (1.00%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 21 (21.00%) Ansible
2 20 (20.00%) vCenter Server
3 19 (19.00%) vRealize
4 10 (10.00%) Terraform
5 9 (9.00%) Kubernetes
6 8 (8.00%) VxRail
7 6 (6.00%) SCCM
8 5 (5.00%) PowerCLI
8 5 (5.00%) Tivoli
9 4 (4.00%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (4.00%) vRealize Orchestrator
10 3 (3.00%) SCOM
11 2 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (1.00%) FreeIPA
12 1 (1.00%) Nessus
12 1 (1.00%) Packer
12 1 (1.00%) Prometheus
12 1 (1.00%) Rancher
12 1 (1.00%) WSUS
Vendors
1 94 (94.00%) VMware
2 32 (32.00%) Microsoft
3 23 (23.00%) Veeam
4 18 (18.00%) NetApp
5 17 (17.00%) Splunk
6 9 (9.00%) Citrix
7 6 (6.00%) Cisco
7 6 (6.00%) F5
7 6 (6.00%) IBM
8 5 (5.00%) Oracle
8 5 (5.00%) SolarWinds
9 4 (4.00%) Dell
9 4 (4.00%) Red Hat
9 4 (4.00%) ServiceNow
10 3 (3.00%) EMC
10 3 (3.00%) Infoblox
11 2 (2.00%) Broadcom
11 2 (2.00%) CheckPoint
12 1 (1.00%) CyberArk
12 1 (1.00%) MuleSoft