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

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 261 260 285
Rank change year-on-year -1 +25 -8
Contract jobs citing vSphere 149 79 126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.75% 0.59% 0.60%
As % of the System Software category 6.02% 4.01% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 61 75
10th Percentile £305 £350 £300
25th Percentile £402 £425 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £540 £475
Median % change year-on-year -9.26% +13.68% -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £613 £550
90th Percentile £588 £675 £670
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 11
10th Percentile - £26.38 £62.63
25th Percentile - £34.06 £70.66
Median hourly rate - £48.75 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year - -36.30% +69.13%
75th Percentile - £64.06 -
90th Percentile - £72.13 -
UK median hourly rate £97.50 £93.50 £76.53
% change year-on-year +4.28% +22.17% +45.08%

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 2,477 1,971 2,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 12.46% 14.69% 12.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,713 1,293 1,776
10th Percentile £185 £188 £170
25th Percentile £313 £313 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £467 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% +3.67% -5.26%
75th Percentile £568 £588 £575
90th Percentile £639 £651 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £480
% change year-on-year -2.91% +7.29% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 62 202
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.06
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.05 £17.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £37.50 £46.95
Median % change year-on-year +11.84% -20.12% +95.28%
75th Percentile £74.26 £64.88 £65.98
90th Percentile £82.60 £75.00 £77.85
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £29.00 £43.84
% change year-on-year +17.24% -33.85% +9.60%

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 16 February 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 16 February 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
Midlands -6 46 £325 -39.25% 7
South East -30 45 £540 -6.09% 10
North of England -32 44 £489 +11.79% 11
West Midlands -6 41 £316 -40.93% 3
North West -20 24 £460 +5.14% 4
Yorkshire -38 20 £500 - 6
Scotland +13 9 £450 -22.58% 7
South West -25 6 £555 +18.09% 8
East Midlands - 5 £450 - 4
East of England -22 2 £563 - 8
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 (5.37%) Confluence
2 4 (2.68%) OpenStack
3 2 (1.34%) IIS
4 1 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.67%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (4.70%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 52 (34.90%) AWS
2 51 (34.23%) Azure
3 31 (20.81%) OpenShift
4 13 (8.72%) Datadog
4 13 (8.72%) Microsoft 365
5 11 (7.38%) IaaS
6 10 (6.71%) GitHub
7 9 (6.04%) GCP
8 6 (4.03%) Nutanix
9 4 (2.68%) PaaS
10 3 (2.01%) Catchpoint
10 3 (2.01%) Entra ID
11 1 (0.67%) Azure DevOps
11 1 (0.67%) Cloud Computing
11 1 (0.67%) GitHub Actions
11 1 (0.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 33 (22.15%) DNS
1 33 (22.15%) VSAN
2 31 (20.81%) Firewall
3 14 (9.40%) DHCP
4 10 (6.71%) SAN
4 10 (6.71%) TCP/IP
5 9 (6.04%) VLAN
6 5 (3.36%) Network Security
7 4 (2.68%) Cisco Nexus
7 4 (2.68%) Fibre Channel
7 4 (2.68%) NetScaler
7 4 (2.68%) PCoIP
7 4 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
8 3 (2.01%) BGP
8 3 (2.01%) LAN
8 3 (2.01%) OSPF
8 3 (2.01%) WAN
9 2 (1.34%) iSCSI
10 1 (0.67%) Cisco ASA
10 1 (0.67%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (2.01%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 15 (10.07%) Jenkins
2 3 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.34%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.67%) Git
4 1 (0.67%) GitLab
4 1 (0.67%) GoCD
4 1 (0.67%) JIRA
4 1 (0.67%) SonarQube
4 1 (0.67%) Subversion
General
1 28 (18.79%) Social Skills
2 17 (11.41%) Finance
3 10 (6.71%) Public Sector
4 6 (4.03%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (4.03%) Presentation Skills
5 5 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (2.68%) Banking
7 3 (2.01%) Legal
8 2 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.67%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 30 (20.13%) Analyst
2 26 (17.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 25 (16.78%) Architect
3 25 (16.78%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 19 (12.75%) Storage Analyst
5 11 (7.38%) VMware Engineer
6 10 (6.71%) Senior
6 10 (6.71%) Wintel Engineer
7 9 (6.04%) Platform Engineer
8 7 (4.70%) Virtualisation Engineer
9 6 (4.03%) Infrastructure Architect
9 6 (4.03%) VMware Architect
10 5 (3.36%) Site Engineer
10 5 (3.36%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 5 (3.36%) Storage Engineer
11 4 (2.68%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
11 4 (2.68%) Network Engineer
11 4 (2.68%) Server Engineer
11 4 (2.68%) Support Engineer
11 4 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (10.74%) Flash
2 8 (5.37%) Loki
3 6 (4.03%) OpenTelemetry
4 2 (1.34%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (1.34%) Middleware
5 1 (0.67%) .NET
5 1 (0.67%) React
Miscellaneous
1 29 (19.46%) Linux Command Line
2 27 (18.12%) Replication
3 15 (10.07%) Cloud Native
4 10 (6.71%) Clustering
4 10 (6.71%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (6.04%) Data Centre
6 8 (5.37%) Virtual Team
7 5 (3.36%) Private Cloud
8 4 (2.68%) Public Cloud
9 3 (2.01%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (2.01%) PKI
10 2 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (1.34%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (1.34%) FlexPod
10 2 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (1.34%) Management Information System
11 1 (0.67%) CMDB
11 1 (0.67%) Distributed Systems
11 1 (0.67%) IBM XIV
11 1 (0.67%) RSA SecurID
Operating Systems
1 67 (44.97%) Linux
2 45 (30.20%) Windows
3 36 (24.16%) Windows Server
4 14 (9.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (7.38%) Windows Server 2019
6 9 (6.04%) Windows Server 2016
7 5 (3.36%) Windows Server 2012
8 4 (2.68%) VMS
8 4 (2.68%) Windows 10
9 2 (1.34%) CentOS
9 2 (1.34%) CoreOS
9 2 (1.34%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.67%) Solaris
10 1 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.67%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (30.87%) Agile
2 39 (26.17%) CI/CD
3 32 (21.48%) DevOps
3 32 (21.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 27 (18.12%) Infrastructure as Code
4 27 (18.12%) Migration
4 27 (18.12%) Problem-Solving
5 24 (16.11%) Containerisation
6 22 (14.77%) Disaster Recovery
6 22 (14.77%) High Availability
7 17 (11.41%) Load Balancing
8 15 (10.07%) Observability
9 14 (9.40%) Mentoring
10 13 (8.72%) Capacity Planning
10 13 (8.72%) Project Delivery
10 13 (8.72%) Ticket Management
11 12 (8.05%) Network Virtualisation
11 12 (8.05%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 11 (7.38%) Infrastructure Automation
12 11 (7.38%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 41 (27.52%) Python
2 35 (23.49%) Bash
3 28 (18.79%) PowerShell
4 3 (2.01%) Go
4 3 (2.01%) SQL
5 1 (0.67%) C#
5 1 (0.67%) Java
5 1 (0.67%) Perl
5 1 (0.67%) TypeScript
5 1 (0.67%) VB
5 1 (0.67%) VBA
Qualifications
1 53 (35.57%) Security Cleared
2 35 (23.49%) SC Cleared
3 18 (12.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 15 (10.07%) DV Cleared
5 13 (8.72%) VCAP
6 10 (6.71%) MCSE
6 10 (6.71%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (5.37%) MCSA
8 7 (4.70%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (2.01%) CCNP
10 3 (2.01%) Degree
11 2 (1.34%) CCIE
11 2 (1.34%) OCP
11 2 (1.34%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (1.34%) VCDX
12 1 (0.67%) Azure Certification
12 1 (0.67%) CCA
12 1 (0.67%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.01%) SLA
2 2 (1.34%) GDPR
2 2 (1.34%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.67%) QA
3 1 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 110 (73.83%) VMware Infrastructure
2 55 (36.91%) VMware ESXi
3 33 (22.15%) VMware NSX
4 20 (13.42%) Active Directory
4 20 (13.42%) NFS
5 19 (12.75%) Docker
6 18 (12.08%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (10.74%) GPFS
8 7 (4.70%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (2.68%) Hyper-V
10 3 (2.01%) DFS Replication
11 2 (1.34%) KVM
Systems Management
1 47 (31.54%) vCenter Server
2 42 (28.19%) Kubernetes
3 41 (27.52%) Ansible
4 35 (23.49%) vRealize
5 31 (20.81%) Terraform
6 24 (16.11%) Argo
6 24 (16.11%) VxRail
7 15 (10.07%) Grafana
8 10 (6.71%) SCCM
9 9 (6.04%) Prometheus
10 8 (5.37%) Kustomize
10 8 (5.37%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (2.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (2.68%) SCOM
12 2 (1.34%) PowerCLI
12 2 (1.34%) SnapMirror
13 1 (0.67%) FortiGate
13 1 (0.67%) FreeIPA
13 1 (0.67%) Red Hat Satellite
13 1 (0.67%) SELinux
Vendors
1 141 (94.63%) VMware
2 51 (34.23%) Cisco
3 30 (20.13%) IBM
4 29 (19.46%) Microsoft
5 28 (18.79%) Dell
6 26 (17.45%) Red Hat
7 16 (10.74%) Oracle
7 16 (10.74%) ServiceNow
7 16 (10.74%) SolarWinds
7 16 (10.74%) Veeam
8 15 (10.07%) Pure Storage
9 13 (8.72%) AppDynamics
9 13 (8.72%) Commvault
10 12 (8.05%) HP
11 10 (6.71%) F5
12 9 (6.04%) Palo Alto
13 8 (5.37%) Splunk
14 5 (3.36%) NetApp
15 3 (2.01%) Citrix
15 3 (2.01%) Juniper