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

6 months to
5 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 251 241 256
Rank change year-on-year -10 +15 +8
Contract jobs citing vSphere 186 94 144
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.82% 0.74% 0.69%
As % of the System Software category 7.11% 4.92% 5.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 133 66 102
10th Percentile £308 £383 £350
25th Percentile £402 £491 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £566 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.47% +13.25% +9.89%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £588
90th Percentile £625 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 3
10th Percentile £47.60 - -
25th Percentile £50.00 £72.50 -
Median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £70.66
Median % change year-on-year -32.00% +6.14% +83.53%
75th Percentile - £77.50 £73.60
90th Percentile - - £75.36
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £70.66
% change year-on-year -32.00% +6.14% +32.07%

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 2,617 1,910 2,530
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.47% 15.08% 12.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,823 1,304 1,694
10th Percentile £190 £193 £175
25th Percentile £347 £333 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year +0.32% +2.70% -3.44%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £584
90th Percentile £650 £661 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £486
% change year-on-year -4.76% +8.14% -7.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 68 180
10th Percentile £15.04 £15.14 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.93 £19.99 £14.48
Median hourly rate £50.50 £37.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +34.67% +66.67% -30.77%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £85.30 £83.63 £70.07
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £29.00 £23.75
% change year-on-year +72.41% +22.11% -52.50%

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 5 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 5 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 £485 +2.05% 22
South East -43 48 £550 -4.35% 25
Midlands -24 44 £382 -29.52% 6
West Midlands -19 39 £325 -40.03% 4
North West -20 37 £458 -10.20% 13
Yorkshire -38 33 £500 +5.26% 7
Scotland +15 11 £469 -26.43% 2
South West -26 10 £450 -5.76% 7
East of England -31 7 £510 -7.27% 5
East Midlands - 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 8 (4.30%) Confluence
2 4 (2.15%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.54%) IIS
Applications
1 7 (3.76%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 63 (33.87%) AWS
2 62 (33.33%) Azure
3 42 (22.58%) OpenShift
4 17 (9.14%) GitHub
5 13 (6.99%) Datadog
6 12 (6.45%) GCP
7 10 (5.38%) IaaS
8 9 (4.84%) Microsoft 365
9 7 (3.76%) Nutanix
10 4 (2.15%) Entra ID
11 3 (1.61%) Catchpoint
11 3 (1.61%) PaaS
12 2 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
13 1 (0.54%) Azure DevOps
13 1 (0.54%) Cloud Computing
13 1 (0.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 42 (22.58%) DNS
2 37 (19.89%) VSAN
3 33 (17.74%) Firewall
4 19 (10.22%) SAN
5 18 (9.68%) DHCP
6 13 (6.99%) VLAN
7 7 (3.76%) LAN
7 7 (3.76%) TCP/IP
7 7 (3.76%) WAN
8 6 (3.23%) NAS
9 5 (2.69%) Network Security
10 4 (2.15%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (2.15%) NetScaler
11 3 (1.61%) BGP
11 3 (1.61%) OSPF
11 3 (1.61%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (1.08%) Fibre Channel
12 2 (1.08%) Remote Desktop
12 2 (1.08%) SSL
13 1 (0.54%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (3.23%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.61%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 23 (12.37%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.54%) Git
3 1 (0.54%) GoCD
3 1 (0.54%) JIRA
3 1 (0.54%) Subversion
General
1 42 (22.58%) Social Skills
2 20 (10.75%) Finance
3 13 (6.99%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.38%) Legal
5 8 (4.30%) Banking
6 6 (3.23%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.69%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (1.08%) Advertising
8 2 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 39 (20.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 33 (17.74%) Analyst
3 27 (14.52%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 26 (13.98%) VMware Engineer
5 24 (12.90%) Architect
6 22 (11.83%) Storage Analyst
7 13 (6.99%) Senior
8 12 (6.45%) Wintel Engineer
9 9 (4.84%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (4.84%) Server Engineer
9 9 (4.84%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 8 (4.30%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
11 7 (3.76%) Consultant
11 7 (3.76%) Lead
11 7 (3.76%) Senior VMware Engineer
12 5 (2.69%) Infrastructure Architect
12 5 (2.69%) Network Engineer
12 5 (2.69%) Site Engineer
12 5 (2.69%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 5 (2.69%) VMware Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (8.60%) Flash
2 12 (6.45%) OpenTelemetry
3 8 (4.30%) Loki
4 1 (0.54%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 32 (17.20%) Replication
2 30 (16.13%) Linux Command Line
3 25 (13.44%) Hybrid Cloud
4 23 (12.37%) Cloud Native
5 14 (7.53%) Data Centre
6 10 (5.38%) Clustering
7 8 (4.30%) Virtual Team
8 6 (3.23%) Private Cloud
9 5 (2.69%) FlexPod
10 4 (2.15%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
12 2 (1.08%) Enterprise Storage
12 2 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
12 2 (1.08%) PKI
13 1 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
13 1 (0.54%) Distributed Systems
13 1 (0.54%) Fat Client
13 1 (0.54%) Life Science
13 1 (0.54%) Onboarding
13 1 (0.54%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 81 (43.55%) Linux
2 68 (36.56%) Windows
3 51 (27.42%) Windows Server
4 19 (10.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (9.68%) Windows Server 2019
6 13 (6.99%) Windows Server 2016
7 10 (5.38%) VMS
8 6 (3.23%) Data ONTAP
8 6 (3.23%) Ubuntu
9 5 (2.69%) CoreOS
9 5 (2.69%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (1.08%) CentOS
10 2 (1.08%) Unix
11 1 (0.54%) Solaris
11 1 (0.54%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (24.19%) Agile
2 43 (23.12%) Disaster Recovery
2 43 (23.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 43 (23.12%) Migration
3 42 (22.58%) CI/CD
4 39 (20.97%) DevOps
5 35 (18.82%) Problem-Solving
6 34 (18.28%) High Availability
7 32 (17.20%) Containerisation
8 25 (13.44%) Load Balancing
9 22 (11.83%) Infrastructure as Code
10 21 (11.29%) Capacity Planning
11 19 (10.22%) RBAC
12 16 (8.60%) Performance Tuning
12 16 (8.60%) Ticket Management
13 15 (8.06%) Network Virtualisation
13 15 (8.06%) Observability
13 15 (8.06%) Platform Engineering
14 14 (7.53%) Root Cause Analysis
15 13 (6.99%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 49 (26.34%) Python
2 42 (22.58%) Bash
3 40 (21.51%) PowerShell
4 2 (1.08%) SQL
5 1 (0.54%) Perl
5 1 (0.54%) VBA
Qualifications
1 59 (31.72%) Security Cleared
2 42 (22.58%) SC Cleared
3 18 (9.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 15 (8.06%) VCAP
5 14 (7.53%) DV Cleared
6 10 (5.38%) OCP
6 10 (5.38%) Oracle Certification
7 9 (4.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (4.30%) MCSA
8 8 (4.30%) MCSE
8 8 (4.30%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (2.15%) CCNP
9 4 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (2.15%) Degree
10 2 (1.08%) CCIE
11 1 (0.54%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.54%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.30%) SLA
2 2 (1.08%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.08%) NCSC
2 2 (1.08%) RMADS
3 1 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (0.54%) GDPR
3 1 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.54%) QA
System Software
1 140 (75.27%) VMware Infrastructure
2 71 (38.17%) VMware ESXi
3 57 (30.65%) VMware NSX
4 30 (16.13%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (15.59%) Active Directory
6 21 (11.29%) NFS
7 19 (10.22%) Docker
8 16 (8.60%) GPFS
9 6 (3.23%) Hyper-V
9 6 (3.23%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.15%) KVM
11 3 (1.61%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 68 (36.56%) vCenter Server
2 52 (27.96%) Ansible
2 52 (27.96%) Kubernetes
3 44 (23.66%) vRealize
4 37 (19.89%) Terraform
5 32 (17.20%) Argo
6 25 (13.44%) VxRail
7 20 (10.75%) Grafana
8 12 (6.45%) PowerCLI
9 10 (5.38%) SCCM
10 8 (4.30%) Kustomize
10 8 (4.30%) Prometheus
11 7 (3.76%) NetBackup
12 5 (2.69%) Microsoft Intune
12 5 (2.69%) SCOM
12 5 (2.69%) SnapMirror
12 5 (2.69%) WSUS
13 4 (2.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (1.61%) SCSM
14 3 (1.61%) vMotion
Vendors
1 178 (95.70%) VMware
2 51 (27.42%) Cisco
3 36 (19.35%) Red Hat
4 30 (16.13%) Dell
5 29 (15.59%) IBM
6 24 (12.90%) Microsoft
7 23 (12.37%) Pure Storage
8 18 (9.68%) Veeam
9 16 (8.60%) Oracle
9 16 (8.60%) ServiceNow
9 16 (8.60%) SolarWinds
10 14 (7.53%) HP
11 13 (6.99%) AppDynamics
11 13 (6.99%) Commvault
12 12 (6.45%) Splunk
13 10 (5.38%) F5
13 10 (5.38%) Zerto
14 8 (4.30%) NetApp
14 8 (4.30%) Palo Alto
14 8 (4.30%) Veritas