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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 254 243 253
Rank change year-on-year -11 +10 +20
Contract jobs citing vSphere 181 94 142
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.78% 0.74% 0.68%
As % of the System Software category 6.94% 5.03% 5.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 65 103
10th Percentile £305 £425 £350
25th Percentile £405 £510 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £569 £475
Median % change year-on-year -13.26% +19.68% +4.40%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £581
90th Percentile £625 £670 £646
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £500
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 2
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 -
90th Percentile - - -
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 2,607 1,868 2,502
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 11.23% 14.71% 12.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,808 1,277 1,678
10th Percentile £190 £192 £175
25th Percentile £350 £329 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £484 £460
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% +5.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £584
90th Percentile £650 £661 £672
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £485
% change year-on-year -4.76% +8.25% -7.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 148 69 185
10th Percentile £13.65 £15.07 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.19 £19.97 £14.16
Median hourly rate £51.75 £37.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.00% +78.57% -46.22%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £86.45 £83.25 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £29.00 £22.30
% change year-on-year +81.03% +30.04% -55.40%

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 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 16 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 -31 68 £496 +1.78% 15
Midlands -26 44 £348 -35.79% 1
South East -52 42 £550 -4.35% 18
West Midlands -21 39 £325 -40.09%
North West -13 35 £458 -10.20% 7
Yorkshire -37 33 £500 +5.26% 4
Scotland +13 11 £469 -33.87% 1
South West -28 10 £450 -5.76% 4
East of England -33 10 £510 -7.27% 3
East Midlands -29 5 £450 - 1
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 7 (3.87%) Confluence
2 4 (2.21%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.55%) IIS
Applications
1 7 (3.87%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 67 (37.02%) AWS
2 62 (34.25%) Azure
3 38 (20.99%) OpenShift
4 17 (9.39%) GitHub
5 14 (7.73%) Datadog
6 12 (6.63%) GCP
7 10 (5.52%) IaaS
8 9 (4.97%) Microsoft 365
9 7 (3.87%) Nutanix
10 5 (2.76%) Amazon EC2
11 4 (2.21%) Entra ID
12 3 (1.66%) Catchpoint
12 3 (1.66%) PaaS
13 1 (0.55%) Azure DevOps
13 1 (0.55%) Azure Storage
13 1 (0.55%) Cloud Computing
13 1 (0.55%) GitHub Actions
13 1 (0.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 42 (23.20%) DNS
2 37 (20.44%) VSAN
3 32 (17.68%) Firewall
4 21 (11.60%) SAN
5 19 (10.50%) DHCP
6 14 (7.73%) VLAN
7 8 (4.42%) LAN
7 8 (4.42%) NAS
7 8 (4.42%) WAN
8 7 (3.87%) TCP/IP
9 5 (2.76%) Network Security
10 4 (2.21%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (2.21%) NetScaler
10 4 (2.21%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (1.66%) BGP
11 3 (1.66%) OSPF
12 2 (1.10%) Fibre Channel
12 2 (1.10%) SSL
13 1 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
13 1 (0.55%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (3.31%) NonStop SQL
2 3 (1.66%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 23 (12.71%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.66%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.55%) Git
3 1 (0.55%) GoCD
3 1 (0.55%) JIRA
3 1 (0.55%) Subversion
General
1 36 (19.89%) Social Skills
2 21 (11.60%) Finance
3 10 (5.52%) Legal
3 10 (5.52%) Public Sector
4 9 (4.97%) Banking
5 6 (3.31%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (3.31%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.10%) Advertising
6 2 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.55%) Manufacturing
7 1 (0.55%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 38 (20.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (18.78%) Analyst
3 28 (15.47%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 26 (14.36%) Architect
5 24 (13.26%) VMware Engineer
6 23 (12.71%) Storage Analyst
7 11 (6.08%) Wintel Engineer
8 10 (5.52%) Senior
9 9 (4.97%) Platform Engineer
9 9 (4.97%) Server Engineer
10 7 (3.87%) Lead
10 7 (3.87%) Virtualisation Engineer
10 7 (3.87%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
11 6 (3.31%) Consultant
11 6 (3.31%) Network Engineer
11 6 (3.31%) Senior VMware Engineer
12 5 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
12 5 (2.76%) Infrastructure Architect
12 5 (2.76%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
13 4 (2.21%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (9.39%) Flash
2 11 (6.08%) OpenTelemetry
3 4 (2.21%) Loki
Miscellaneous
1 35 (19.34%) Replication
2 31 (17.13%) Linux Command Line
3 24 (13.26%) Hybrid Cloud
4 20 (11.05%) Cloud Native
5 17 (9.39%) Data Centre
6 10 (5.52%) Clustering
7 6 (3.31%) Private Cloud
8 5 (2.76%) FlexPod
9 4 (2.21%) Public Cloud
9 4 (2.21%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.66%) Enterprise Storage
11 2 (1.10%) EMC VMAX
11 2 (1.10%) EMC VNX
11 2 (1.10%) PKI
12 1 (0.55%) Fat Client
12 1 (0.55%) Legacy Systems
12 1 (0.55%) Life Science
12 1 (0.55%) RSA SecurID
12 1 (0.55%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 79 (43.65%) Linux
2 66 (36.46%) Windows
3 51 (28.18%) Windows Server
4 18 (9.94%) Windows Server 2019
5 16 (8.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (7.18%) Windows Server 2016
7 10 (5.52%) VMS
8 8 (4.42%) Data ONTAP
9 7 (3.87%) Ubuntu
10 5 (2.76%) CoreOS
10 5 (2.76%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (1.66%) Unix
12 2 (1.10%) CentOS
13 1 (0.55%) Solaris
13 1 (0.55%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (24.86%) Migration
2 44 (24.31%) Disaster Recovery
3 42 (23.20%) Agile
4 41 (22.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 38 (20.99%) DevOps
6 36 (19.89%) CI/CD
7 34 (18.78%) Problem-Solving
8 33 (18.23%) High Availability
9 30 (16.57%) Containerisation
10 24 (13.26%) Load Balancing
11 23 (12.71%) Capacity Planning
12 20 (11.05%) RBAC
13 19 (10.50%) Performance Tuning
14 17 (9.39%) Infrastructure as Code
14 17 (9.39%) Ticket Management
15 16 (8.84%) Network Virtualisation
15 16 (8.84%) Platform Engineering
16 14 (7.73%) Root Cause Analysis
17 13 (7.18%) Data Migration
17 13 (7.18%) Virtual Infrastructure
Programming Languages
1 43 (23.76%) Python
2 40 (22.10%) PowerShell
3 36 (19.89%) Bash
4 2 (1.10%) SQL
5 1 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 55 (30.39%) Security Cleared
2 38 (20.99%) SC Cleared
3 17 (9.39%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 13 (7.18%) DV Cleared
4 13 (7.18%) VCAP
5 10 (5.52%) OCP
5 10 (5.52%) Oracle Certification
6 9 (4.97%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (4.42%) MCSA
7 8 (4.42%) MCSE
7 8 (4.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (2.21%) CCNP
8 4 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (2.21%) Degree
9 2 (1.10%) CCIE
10 1 (0.55%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.55%) JNCIS
10 1 (0.55%) NCDA
10 1 (0.55%) NCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.42%) SLA
2 2 (1.10%) Government Security Classifications
2 2 (1.10%) NCSC
2 2 (1.10%) RMADS
3 1 (0.55%) GDPR
3 1 (0.55%) QA
System Software
1 136 (75.14%) VMware Infrastructure
2 72 (39.78%) VMware ESXi
3 56 (30.94%) VMware NSX
4 30 (16.57%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (15.47%) Active Directory
6 23 (12.71%) NFS
7 17 (9.39%) Docker
7 17 (9.39%) GPFS
8 7 (3.87%) Hyper-V
9 5 (2.76%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (2.21%) KVM
11 3 (1.66%) DFS Replication
12 1 (0.55%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 1 (0.55%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 69 (38.12%) vCenter Server
2 52 (28.73%) Ansible
3 46 (25.41%) Kubernetes
4 45 (24.86%) vRealize
5 35 (19.34%) Terraform
6 28 (15.47%) Argo
7 26 (14.36%) VxRail
8 16 (8.84%) Grafana
9 12 (6.63%) PowerCLI
10 9 (4.97%) NetBackup
10 9 (4.97%) SCCM
11 7 (3.87%) SnapMirror
12 5 (2.76%) Microsoft Intune
12 5 (2.76%) Prometheus
12 5 (2.76%) SCOM
13 4 (2.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (2.21%) Kustomize
13 4 (2.21%) WSUS
14 3 (1.66%) SCSM
14 3 (1.66%) vMotion
Vendors
1 173 (95.58%) VMware
2 55 (30.39%) Cisco
3 32 (17.68%) Red Hat
4 31 (17.13%) Dell
5 30 (16.57%) IBM
6 26 (14.36%) Microsoft
7 23 (12.71%) Pure Storage
8 21 (11.60%) Veeam
9 18 (9.94%) SolarWinds
10 17 (9.39%) Oracle
10 17 (9.39%) ServiceNow
11 14 (7.73%) Commvault
11 14 (7.73%) HP
12 13 (7.18%) AppDynamics
13 11 (6.08%) NetApp
13 11 (6.08%) Splunk
14 10 (5.52%) F5
14 10 (5.52%) Zerto
15 8 (4.42%) Palo Alto
15 8 (4.42%) Veritas