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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 270 254 265
Rank change year-on-year -16 +11 +3
Contract jobs citing vSphere 174 89 133
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.73% 0.70% 0.64%
As % of the System Software category 6.67% 4.87% 5.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 61 100
10th Percentile £315 £431 £325
25th Percentile £408 £513 £447
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £569 £475
Median % change year-on-year -15.04% +19.68% +4.40%
75th Percentile £539 £623 £547
90th Percentile £600 £661 £646
UK median daily rate £497 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.67% +10.00% +4.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile £48.00 - -
25th Percentile £50.25 - -
Median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £51.00 - £70.66
% change year-on-year - - +29.65%

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 2,610 1,829 2,455
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.94% 14.35% 11.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,790 1,258 1,646
10th Percentile £190 £190 £175
25th Percentile £350 £325 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £482 £460
Median % change year-on-year -1.40% +4.73% -5.13%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £581
90th Percentile £645 £661 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £488
% change year-on-year -4.76% +7.69% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 62 190
10th Percentile £13.97 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.11 £14.16
Median hourly rate £52.50 £37.07 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.61% +72.43% -52.15%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £92.00 £85.50 £78.20
UK median hourly rate £52.75 £28.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +88.39% +24.44% -58.14%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -32 70 £483 -1.03% 12
Midlands -31 38 £402 -25.90% 6
North West -8 37 £456 -10.59% 4
South East -64 35 £563 -2.60% 17
West Midlands -29 33 £394 -27.42% 4
Yorkshire -43 33 £500 +5.26% 4
Scotland +8 13 £463 -34.79%
East of England -28 11 £510 -7.27% 4
South West -36 11 £450 -5.76% 6
East Midlands -32 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 (2.30%) Confluence
2 1 (0.57%) IIS
2 1 (0.57%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 4 (2.30%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 49 (28.16%) AWS
2 46 (26.44%) Azure
3 29 (16.67%) OpenShift
4 17 (9.77%) GitHub
5 9 (5.17%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (4.60%) Datadog
6 8 (4.60%) GCP
6 8 (4.60%) Nutanix
7 6 (3.45%) Amazon EC2
8 4 (2.30%) Entra ID
8 4 (2.30%) IaaS
9 3 (1.72%) Catchpoint
9 3 (1.72%) PaaS
10 1 (0.57%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.57%) Azure Storage
10 1 (0.57%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 36 (20.69%) DNS
2 33 (18.97%) VSAN
3 27 (15.52%) Firewall
4 21 (12.07%) SAN
5 19 (10.92%) DHCP
6 14 (8.05%) VLAN
7 8 (4.60%) LAN
7 8 (4.60%) NAS
7 8 (4.60%) WAN
8 7 (4.02%) TCP/IP
9 5 (2.87%) Network Security
10 4 (2.30%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (2.30%) NetScaler
10 4 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (1.72%) BGP
11 3 (1.72%) OSPF
12 2 (1.15%) Fibre Channel
12 2 (1.15%) SSL
13 1 (0.57%) Cisco ASA
13 1 (0.57%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (4.02%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.72%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 17 (9.77%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.72%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.57%) Git
3 1 (0.57%) GoCD
3 1 (0.57%) JIRA
3 1 (0.57%) Subversion
General
1 38 (21.84%) Social Skills
2 18 (10.34%) Finance
3 10 (5.75%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (5.75%) Banking
3 10 (5.75%) Legal
3 10 (5.75%) Public Sector
4 5 (2.87%) Presentation Skills
5 2 (1.15%) Advertising
5 2 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.57%) Manufacturing
6 1 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 40 (22.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 26 (14.94%) VMware Engineer
3 25 (14.37%) Analyst
4 20 (11.49%) Architect
5 19 (10.92%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 19 (10.92%) Storage Analyst
6 18 (10.34%) Wintel Engineer
7 11 (6.32%) Senior
8 10 (5.75%) Server Engineer
9 8 (4.60%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (4.02%) Lead
10 7 (4.02%) Senior VMware Engineer
11 6 (3.45%) Cloud Engineer
11 6 (3.45%) Consultant
11 6 (3.45%) Network Engineer
12 5 (2.87%) AWS Engineer
12 5 (2.87%) Infrastructure Architect
12 5 (2.87%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
12 5 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
13 4 (2.30%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (8.62%) Flash
2 11 (6.32%) OpenTelemetry
3 1 (0.57%) Loki
Miscellaneous
1 41 (23.56%) Replication
2 24 (13.79%) Hybrid Cloud
3 23 (13.22%) Linux Command Line
4 21 (12.07%) Data Centre
5 17 (9.77%) Cloud Native
5 17 (9.77%) Clustering
6 7 (4.02%) Private Cloud
7 5 (2.87%) FlexPod
8 4 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.30%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.72%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (1.15%) EMC VMAX
10 2 (1.15%) EMC VNX
10 2 (1.15%) PKI
11 1 (0.57%) Fat Client
11 1 (0.57%) Legacy Systems
11 1 (0.57%) Life Science
11 1 (0.57%) RSA SecurID
11 1 (0.57%) Thin Client
11 1 (0.57%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 72 (41.38%) Windows
2 59 (33.91%) Windows Server
3 58 (33.33%) Linux
4 18 (10.34%) Windows Server 2019
5 13 (7.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (7.47%) Windows Server 2016
6 10 (5.75%) VMS
7 8 (4.60%) Data ONTAP
8 7 (4.02%) Ubuntu
9 5 (2.87%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.87%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (2.30%) Unix
11 2 (1.15%) CentOS
12 1 (0.57%) Solaris
12 1 (0.57%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 51 (29.31%) Disaster Recovery
2 43 (24.71%) High Availability
2 43 (24.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 42 (24.14%) Migration
4 35 (20.11%) Problem-Solving
5 30 (17.24%) Agile
6 29 (16.67%) Capacity Planning
7 27 (15.52%) DevOps
8 24 (13.79%) Network Virtualisation
8 24 (13.79%) Performance Tuning
9 22 (12.64%) CI/CD
10 19 (10.92%) Containerisation
11 18 (10.34%) Load Balancing
11 18 (10.34%) Project Delivery
12 15 (8.62%) Ticket Management
13 14 (8.05%) ITIL
13 14 (8.05%) RBAC
13 14 (8.05%) Root Cause Analysis
14 13 (7.47%) Data Migration
14 13 (7.47%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 46 (26.44%) PowerShell
2 29 (16.67%) Python
3 22 (12.64%) Bash
4 2 (1.15%) SQL
5 1 (0.57%) Perl
Qualifications
1 59 (33.91%) Security Cleared
2 41 (23.56%) SC Cleared
3 29 (16.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 19 (10.92%) VCAP
5 14 (8.05%) MCSA
5 14 (8.05%) MCSE
5 14 (8.05%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (7.47%) DV Cleared
7 10 (5.75%) OCP
7 10 (5.75%) Oracle Certification
8 9 (5.17%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (2.30%) CCNP
9 4 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.15%) CCIE
10 2 (1.15%) Degree
11 1 (0.57%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.57%) JNCIS
11 1 (0.57%) NCDA
11 1 (0.57%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.60%) SLA
2 2 (1.15%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.15%) NCSC
2 2 (1.15%) QA
2 2 (1.15%) RMADS
3 1 (0.57%) GDPR
System Software
1 126 (72.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 84 (48.28%) VMware ESXi
3 52 (29.89%) VMware NSX
4 37 (21.26%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (16.09%) Active Directory
6 21 (12.07%) NFS
7 15 (8.62%) GPFS
8 8 (4.60%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.45%) Docker
9 6 (3.45%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.30%) KVM
11 3 (1.72%) DFS Replication
12 1 (0.57%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 1 (0.57%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 71 (40.80%) vCenter Server
2 56 (32.18%) Ansible
3 37 (21.26%) vRealize
4 32 (18.39%) Kubernetes
5 24 (13.79%) Terraform
6 21 (12.07%) VxRail
7 19 (10.92%) Argo
8 16 (9.20%) PowerCLI
9 13 (7.47%) Grafana
10 10 (5.75%) NetBackup
11 9 (5.17%) SCCM
12 7 (4.02%) SnapMirror
12 7 (4.02%) vMotion
13 5 (2.87%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (2.87%) SCOM
14 4 (2.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (2.30%) WSUS
15 3 (1.72%) SCSM
16 2 (1.15%) EMC NetWorker
16 2 (1.15%) EMC VPLEX
Vendors
1 166 (95.40%) VMware
2 53 (30.46%) Cisco
3 32 (18.39%) Microsoft
4 25 (14.37%) Dell
5 24 (13.79%) Red Hat
6 22 (12.64%) IBM
7 21 (12.07%) Veeam
8 17 (9.77%) Pure Storage
9 15 (8.62%) Oracle
9 15 (8.62%) ServiceNow
10 12 (6.90%) SolarWinds
11 11 (6.32%) NetApp
11 11 (6.32%) Splunk
11 11 (6.32%) Zerto
12 10 (5.75%) HP
13 9 (5.17%) Veritas
14 8 (4.60%) Commvault
15 7 (4.02%) AppDynamics
16 6 (3.45%) 3PAR
16 6 (3.45%) F5