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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 270 261 261
Rank change year-on-year -9 0 +13
Contract jobs citing vSphere 160 83 153
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.76% 0.64% 0.72%
As % of the System Software category 6.39% 4.18% 5.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 120 61 93
10th Percentile £305 £363 £325
25th Percentile £400 £463 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £564 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.79% +12.80% +5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £613 £580
90th Percentile £600 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £538 £500
% change year-on-year -7.06% +7.60% -
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% +47.17%

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 2,502 1,984 2,621
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.85% 15.41% 12.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,743 1,339 1,731
10th Percentile £185 £188 £173
25th Percentile £325 £323 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £575
90th Percentile £644 £662 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 68 199
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.05
25th Percentile £19.00 £20.78 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.31 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.83% -6.25% +62.47%
75th Percentile £72.97 £66.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.50 £79.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £31.38
% change year-on-year +29.05% +3.59% -21.56%

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 March 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 9 March 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 -29 55 £492 +3.55% 15
Midlands -15 45 £326 -39.13% 7
South East -40 44 £550 -4.35% 21
West Midlands -15 39 £325 -39.25% 5
Yorkshire -38 29 £500 +5.26% 6
North West -17 26 £458 -3.32% 8
Scotland +15 11 £463 -27.45% 4
East Midlands - 6 £450 - 2
East of England -31 4 £469 - 1
South West -31 4 £488 +3.72% 3
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 (5.00%) Confluence
2 4 (2.50%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.63%) IIS
3 1 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.63%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (4.38%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 58 (36.25%) Azure
2 57 (35.63%) AWS
3 37 (23.13%) OpenShift
4 13 (8.13%) Datadog
5 12 (7.50%) GCP
6 11 (6.88%) GitHub
6 11 (6.88%) IaaS
6 11 (6.88%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (4.38%) Nutanix
8 4 (2.50%) Entra ID
8 4 (2.50%) PaaS
9 3 (1.88%) Catchpoint
10 1 (0.63%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.63%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (0.63%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 39 (24.38%) DNS
2 35 (21.88%) VSAN
3 32 (20.00%) Firewall
4 18 (11.25%) DHCP
5 15 (9.38%) SAN
6 10 (6.25%) TCP/IP
7 9 (5.63%) VLAN
8 6 (3.75%) LAN
8 6 (3.75%) WAN
9 5 (3.13%) Network Security
10 4 (2.50%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (2.50%) NetScaler
11 3 (1.88%) BGP
11 3 (1.88%) OSPF
11 3 (1.88%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (1.25%) Fibre Channel
12 2 (1.25%) NAS
12 2 (1.25%) PCoIP
12 2 (1.25%) Remote Desktop
12 2 (1.25%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.63%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (10.63%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.88%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.63%) Artifactory
3 1 (0.63%) Git
3 1 (0.63%) GitLab
3 1 (0.63%) GoCD
3 1 (0.63%) JIRA
3 1 (0.63%) SonarQube
3 1 (0.63%) Subversion
General
1 33 (20.63%) Social Skills
2 20 (12.50%) Finance
3 12 (7.50%) Public Sector
4 8 (5.00%) Banking
5 7 (4.38%) Legal
6 6 (3.75%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.63%) Advertising
9 1 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 33 (20.63%) Analyst
2 30 (18.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 27 (16.88%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 23 (14.38%) Architect
5 22 (13.75%) Storage Analyst
6 14 (8.75%) VMware Engineer
7 12 (7.50%) Wintel Engineer
8 10 (6.25%) Senior
9 9 (5.63%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 8 (5.00%) Platform Engineer
11 6 (3.75%) Server Engineer
11 6 (3.75%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
12 5 (3.13%) Consultant
12 5 (3.13%) Infrastructure Architect
12 5 (3.13%) Site Engineer
12 5 (3.13%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 4 (2.50%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
13 4 (2.50%) NetApp Engineer
13 4 (2.50%) Network Engineer
13 4 (2.50%) VMware Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (10.00%) Flash
2 8 (5.00%) Loki
3 7 (4.38%) OpenTelemetry
4 2 (1.25%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.63%) .NET
5 1 (0.63%) React
Miscellaneous
1 29 (18.13%) Linux Command Line
2 27 (16.88%) Replication
3 17 (10.63%) Cloud Native
3 17 (10.63%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (6.25%) Clustering
4 10 (6.25%) Data Centre
5 8 (5.00%) Virtual Team
6 6 (3.75%) Private Cloud
7 5 (3.13%) FlexPod
8 4 (2.50%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.88%) PKI
10 2 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
10 2 (1.25%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
11 1 (0.63%) Fat Client
11 1 (0.63%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.63%) RSA SecurID
11 1 (0.63%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 73 (45.63%) Linux
2 51 (31.88%) Windows
3 40 (25.00%) Windows Server
4 17 (10.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (10.00%) Windows Server 2019
6 12 (7.50%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (4.38%) VMS
8 6 (3.75%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (3.13%) CoreOS
9 5 (3.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (1.88%) Ubuntu
10 3 (1.88%) Windows 10
11 2 (1.25%) CentOS
11 2 (1.25%) Unix
12 1 (0.63%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (28.13%) Agile
2 40 (25.00%) CI/CD
3 35 (21.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 34 (21.25%) DevOps
5 32 (20.00%) Migration
6 30 (18.75%) Disaster Recovery
7 28 (17.50%) Problem-Solving
8 27 (16.88%) Containerisation
8 27 (16.88%) High Availability
9 25 (15.63%) Infrastructure as Code
10 19 (11.88%) Load Balancing
11 16 (10.00%) Observability
11 16 (10.00%) Ticket Management
12 15 (9.38%) Capacity Planning
13 14 (8.75%) Mentoring
14 13 (8.13%) Network Virtualisation
14 13 (8.13%) Project Delivery
14 13 (8.13%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 12 (7.50%) RBAC
16 10 (6.25%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 45 (28.13%) Python
2 37 (23.13%) Bash
3 33 (20.63%) PowerShell
4 3 (1.88%) Go
5 2 (1.25%) SQL
6 1 (0.63%) C#
6 1 (0.63%) Perl
6 1 (0.63%) TypeScript
6 1 (0.63%) VB
6 1 (0.63%) VBA
Qualifications
1 52 (32.50%) Security Cleared
2 38 (23.75%) SC Cleared
3 17 (10.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 13 (8.13%) VCAP
5 10 (6.25%) DV Cleared
6 8 (5.00%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (5.00%) MCSA
6 8 (5.00%) MCSE
6 8 (5.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (3.75%) OCP
7 6 (3.75%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (2.50%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (2.50%) Degree
9 3 (1.88%) CCNP
10 2 (1.25%) CCIE
10 2 (1.25%) VCDX
11 1 (0.63%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.63%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.13%) SLA
2 2 (1.25%) GDPR
3 1 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.63%) PCI DSS
3 1 (0.63%) QA
3 1 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 119 (74.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 54 (33.75%) VMware ESXi
3 35 (21.88%) VMware NSX
4 24 (15.00%) Active Directory
5 22 (13.75%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (13.13%) NFS
7 20 (12.50%) Docker
8 16 (10.00%) GPFS
9 7 (4.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (3.75%) Hyper-V
11 4 (2.50%) KVM
12 3 (1.88%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 51 (31.88%) vCenter Server
2 47 (29.38%) Kubernetes
3 45 (28.13%) Ansible
4 35 (21.88%) vRealize
5 33 (20.63%) Terraform
6 26 (16.25%) Argo
6 26 (16.25%) VxRail
7 16 (10.00%) Grafana
8 9 (5.63%) Prometheus
8 9 (5.63%) SCCM
9 8 (5.00%) Kustomize
10 7 (4.38%) Microsoft Intune
11 5 (3.13%) SnapMirror
12 4 (2.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (2.50%) PowerCLI
12 4 (2.50%) WSUS
13 3 (1.88%) SCOM
14 1 (0.63%) EMC NetWorker
14 1 (0.63%) FreeIPA
14 1 (0.63%) Nessus
Vendors
1 152 (95.00%) VMware
2 52 (32.50%) Cisco
3 30 (18.75%) Dell
3 30 (18.75%) Red Hat
4 29 (18.13%) IBM
5 26 (16.25%) Microsoft
6 17 (10.63%) Pure Storage
7 16 (10.00%) Oracle
7 16 (10.00%) ServiceNow
7 16 (10.00%) SolarWinds
8 15 (9.38%) Veeam
9 14 (8.75%) HP
10 13 (8.13%) AppDynamics
10 13 (8.13%) Commvault
11 10 (6.25%) F5
12 9 (5.63%) Palo Alto
13 7 (4.38%) NetApp
13 7 (4.38%) Splunk
14 5 (3.13%) Google
15 3 (1.88%) Citrix