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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 267 245 255
Rank change year-on-year -22 +10 +6
Contract jobs citing vSphere 171 91 136
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.71% 0.71% 0.66%
As % of the System Software category 6.53% 5.07% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 131 61 103
10th Percentile £316 £431 £317
25th Percentile £413 £510 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £569 £475
Median % change year-on-year -13.81% +19.68% +4.40%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £538
90th Percentile £600 £661 £644
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 2
10th Percentile £48.40 - -
25th Percentile £50.50 - -
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
% change year-on-year - - +7.06%

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 2,620 1,796 2,432
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.86% 14.11% 11.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,785 1,237 1,629
10th Percentile £190 £190 £178
25th Percentile £350 £320 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year - +2.70% -3.76%
75th Percentile £573 £588 £584
90th Percentile £645 £661 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £500
% change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 56 192
10th Percentile £15.54 £14.99 £14.01
25th Percentile £21.25 £15.30 £14.16
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.00 £20.98
Median % change year-on-year +87.50% +33.49% -54.51%
75th Percentile £74.00 £64.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £89.00 £87.13 £79.80
UK median hourly rate £53.00 £27.94 £22.50
% change year-on-year +89.69% +24.18% -58.33%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -20 69 £483 -0.92% 13
North West -14 37 £456 -10.59% 6
Midlands -37 36 £414 -23.78% 7
South East -72 34 £563 -2.17% 17
Yorkshire -31 32 £500 +5.26% 3
West Midlands -28 31 £402 -25.90% 5
Scotland +3 13 £463 -34.79%
East of England -26 12 £510 -7.27% 1
South West -35 11 £485 +1.57% 4
East Midlands -24 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 4 (2.34%) Confluence
2 1 (0.58%) IIS
2 1 (0.58%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 4 (2.34%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 45 (26.32%) AWS
2 41 (23.98%) Azure
3 27 (15.79%) OpenShift
4 17 (9.94%) GitHub
5 9 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (4.68%) Nutanix
7 7 (4.09%) Datadog
7 7 (4.09%) GCP
8 6 (3.51%) Amazon EC2
9 4 (2.34%) Entra ID
9 4 (2.34%) IaaS
10 3 (1.75%) Catchpoint
11 2 (1.17%) PaaS
12 1 (0.58%) Azure Storage
12 1 (0.58%) Cloud Computing
12 1 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 35 (20.47%) DNS
2 30 (17.54%) VSAN
3 25 (14.62%) Firewall
4 22 (12.87%) SAN
5 19 (11.11%) DHCP
6 15 (8.77%) VLAN
7 9 (5.26%) LAN
7 9 (5.26%) NAS
7 9 (5.26%) WAN
8 7 (4.09%) TCP/IP
9 5 (2.92%) Wi-Fi
10 4 (2.34%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (2.34%) NetScaler
11 3 (1.75%) BGP
11 3 (1.75%) Network Security
11 3 (1.75%) OSPF
12 2 (1.17%) Fibre Channel
12 2 (1.17%) SD-WAN
12 2 (1.17%) SSL
12 2 (1.17%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.68%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.75%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 17 (9.94%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.75%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.58%) GoCD
3 1 (0.58%) JIRA
General
1 35 (20.47%) Social Skills
2 17 (9.94%) Finance
3 10 (5.85%) Banking
3 10 (5.85%) Legal
3 10 (5.85%) Public Sector
4 9 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.17%) Advertising
7 1 (0.58%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.58%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.58%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 41 (23.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 26 (15.20%) VMware Engineer
3 22 (12.87%) Analyst
4 19 (11.11%) Architect
5 18 (10.53%) Wintel Engineer
6 17 (9.94%) Infrastructure Analyst
6 17 (9.94%) Storage Analyst
7 12 (7.02%) Senior
8 10 (5.85%) Server Engineer
9 8 (4.68%) Consultant
9 8 (4.68%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (4.09%) Cloud Engineer
10 7 (4.09%) Senior VMware Engineer
11 6 (3.51%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
11 6 (3.51%) Lead
11 6 (3.51%) VMware Consultant
12 5 (2.92%) AWS Engineer
12 5 (2.92%) Network Engineer
12 5 (2.92%) Platform Engineer
12 5 (2.92%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (8.19%) Flash
2 11 (6.43%) OpenTelemetry
3 1 (0.58%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 41 (23.98%) Replication
2 24 (14.04%) Hybrid Cloud
3 22 (12.87%) Data Centre
4 21 (12.28%) Linux Command Line
5 17 (9.94%) Clustering
6 16 (9.36%) Cloud Native
7 6 (3.51%) Private Cloud
8 5 (2.92%) FlexPod
9 4 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (2.34%) Enterprise Storage
9 4 (2.34%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.17%) EMC VMAX
10 2 (1.17%) EMC VNX
10 2 (1.17%) PKI
11 1 (0.58%) Distributed Computing
11 1 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
11 1 (0.58%) Fat Client
11 1 (0.58%) Life Science
11 1 (0.58%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.58%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 72 (42.11%) Windows
2 59 (34.50%) Windows Server
3 53 (30.99%) Linux
4 18 (10.53%) Windows Server 2019
5 13 (7.60%) Windows Server 2016
6 10 (5.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (5.26%) VMS
8 8 (4.68%) Data ONTAP
9 7 (4.09%) Ubuntu
10 5 (2.92%) CoreOS
10 5 (2.92%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.75%) Unix
12 2 (1.17%) CentOS
13 1 (0.58%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (30.99%) Disaster Recovery
2 44 (25.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 43 (25.15%) High Availability
4 42 (24.56%) Migration
5 36 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
6 29 (16.96%) Capacity Planning
7 27 (15.79%) Agile
8 25 (14.62%) DevOps
9 24 (14.04%) Performance Tuning
10 23 (13.45%) Network Virtualisation
11 20 (11.70%) CI/CD
12 19 (11.11%) Load Balancing
13 18 (10.53%) Containerisation
14 17 (9.94%) Project Delivery
15 15 (8.77%) Root Cause Analysis
16 14 (8.19%) ITIL
16 14 (8.19%) RBAC
17 13 (7.60%) Performance Optimisation
17 13 (7.60%) Platform Engineering
17 13 (7.60%) Virtual Infrastructure
Programming Languages
1 46 (26.90%) PowerShell
2 27 (15.79%) Python
3 20 (11.70%) Bash
4 2 (1.17%) SQL
Qualifications
1 57 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 39 (22.81%) SC Cleared
3 29 (16.96%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (11.11%) VCAP
5 14 (8.19%) MCSA
5 14 (8.19%) MCSE
5 14 (8.19%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (7.02%) DV Cleared
7 10 (5.85%) OCP
7 10 (5.85%) Oracle Certification
8 9 (5.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (2.34%) CCNP
9 4 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.17%) CCIE
10 2 (1.17%) Degree
11 1 (0.58%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.58%) JNCIS
11 1 (0.58%) NCDA
11 1 (0.58%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.68%) SLA
2 2 (1.17%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.17%) NCSC
2 2 (1.17%) RMADS
3 1 (0.58%) QA
System Software
1 122 (71.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 83 (48.54%) VMware ESXi
3 51 (29.82%) VMware NSX
4 38 (22.22%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (16.96%) Active Directory
6 20 (11.70%) NFS
7 14 (8.19%) GPFS
8 9 (5.26%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.51%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (2.92%) Docker
11 4 (2.34%) KVM
12 3 (1.75%) DFS Replication
13 1 (0.58%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 1 (0.58%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 71 (41.52%) vCenter Server
2 53 (30.99%) Ansible
3 37 (21.64%) vRealize
4 31 (18.13%) Kubernetes
5 22 (12.87%) Terraform
6 20 (11.70%) VxRail
7 17 (9.94%) Argo
8 16 (9.36%) PowerCLI
9 12 (7.02%) Grafana
10 11 (6.43%) NetBackup
11 9 (5.26%) SCCM
12 7 (4.09%) SnapMirror
12 7 (4.09%) vMotion
13 5 (2.92%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (2.92%) SCOM
14 4 (2.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (2.34%) WSUS
15 3 (1.75%) SCSM
16 2 (1.17%) EMC VPLEX
16 2 (1.17%) SnapVault
Vendors
1 163 (95.32%) VMware
2 49 (28.65%) Cisco
3 34 (19.88%) Microsoft
4 24 (14.04%) Dell
5 22 (12.87%) Veeam
6 20 (11.70%) IBM
6 20 (11.70%) Red Hat
7 18 (10.53%) Pure Storage
8 14 (8.19%) Oracle
8 14 (8.19%) ServiceNow
9 12 (7.02%) NetApp
9 12 (7.02%) Zerto
10 11 (6.43%) SolarWinds
10 11 (6.43%) Splunk
11 9 (5.26%) HP
11 9 (5.26%) Veritas
12 8 (4.68%) Commvault
13 6 (3.51%) 3PAR
13 6 (3.51%) AppDynamics
14 5 (2.92%) F5