VCAP Contract Job Trends

VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP, VCAP4)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for VCAP qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 23 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 601 505 565
Rank change year-on-year -96 +60 +82
Contract jobs citing VCAP 34 15 13
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.070% 0.052% 0.031%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.22% 0.17% 0.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 29 8 7
10th Percentile £454 £525 £416
25th Percentile £463 £529 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £563 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.78% +12.50% +9.89%
75th Percentile £610 £650 £516
90th Percentile £650 £658 £531
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £575 £500
% change year-on-year -15.83% +15.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £96.25 - -
Median hourly rate £97.50 - -
75th Percentile £98.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

VCAP falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 15,370 8,878 12,711
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.64% 31.03% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,197 5,609 7,914
10th Percentile £350 £275 £307
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -1.42% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £615 £645
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.90% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,105 502 1,060
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.04 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.34 £17.80
Median hourly rate £48.05 £33.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.37% -15.63% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +46.15% -20.62% -18.12%

VCAP
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing VCAP relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

VCAP job vacancy trend in the UK

VCAP
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing VCAP.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing VCAP

VCAP
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing VCAP over the 6 months to 23 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for VCAP in the UK

VCAP
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing VCAP.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing VCAP

VCAP
Top 10 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing VCAP within the UK over the 6 months to 23 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
England -92 33 £491 -12.78% 6
UK excluding London -81 27 £484 -15.83% 5
North of England - 18 £472 -
North West - 18 £472 -
Work from Home -36 9 £610 +15.09% 3
South East -64 7 £610 +1.67% 4
London -71 4 £650 +18.18% 1
East Midlands - 1 £550 -
Midlands - 1 £550 -
Scotland - 1 £475 -

VCAP
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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:

Cloud Services
1 5 (14.71%) AWS
2 4 (11.76%) Azure
3 1 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (2.94%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 13 (38.24%) VSAN
2 3 (8.82%) SAN
2 3 (8.82%) VXLAN
3 2 (5.88%) BGP
3 2 (5.88%) Firewall
3 2 (5.88%) IPFIX
3 2 (5.88%) NAS
3 2 (5.88%) Network Security
3 2 (5.88%) OSPF
3 2 (5.88%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (2.94%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (2.94%) VLAN
General
1 4 (11.76%) Documentation Skills
1 4 (11.76%) Public Sector
2 1 (2.94%) Banking
2 1 (2.94%) Finance
2 1 (2.94%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 16 (47.06%) Wintel Engineer
2 8 (23.53%) VMware Engineer
3 4 (11.76%) Architect
3 4 (11.76%) Senior
3 4 (11.76%) Senior VMware Engineer
4 3 (8.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 3 (8.82%) Virtualisation Engineer
4 3 (8.82%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
5 2 (5.88%) Data Architect
5 2 (5.88%) Data Centre Architect
5 2 (5.88%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 2 (5.88%) VMware Architect
6 1 (2.94%) Consultant
6 1 (2.94%) Platform Engineer
6 1 (2.94%) Principal Consultant
6 1 (2.94%) Security Engineer
6 1 (2.94%) VMware Consultant
6 1 (2.94%) VMware Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (5.88%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 20 (58.82%) Replication
2 16 (47.06%) Clustering
3 4 (11.76%) Data Centre
4 2 (5.88%) Cyber Kill Chain
4 2 (5.88%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (5.88%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (5.88%) Private Cloud
4 2 (5.88%) Security Posture
4 2 (5.88%) Taxonomies
4 2 (5.88%) VxBlock/Vblock
5 1 (2.94%) NVMe
5 1 (2.94%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 19 (55.88%) Windows
2 18 (52.94%) Windows Server
3 3 (8.82%) Linux
3 3 (8.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (5.88%) Ubuntu
4 2 (5.88%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (58.82%) Capacity Planning
1 20 (58.82%) Disaster Recovery
2 18 (52.94%) High Availability
2 18 (52.94%) Network Virtualisation
3 13 (38.24%) Project Delivery
4 7 (20.59%) Migration
5 4 (11.76%) Infrastructure as Code
5 4 (11.76%) ITIL
5 4 (11.76%) Performance Tuning
6 3 (8.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 3 (8.82%) Runbook
6 3 (8.82%) Stakeholder Management
6 3 (8.82%) Virtual Infrastructure
7 2 (5.88%) Agile
7 2 (5.88%) Computer Science
7 2 (5.88%) Network Design
7 2 (5.88%) Performance Monitoring
7 2 (5.88%) Root Cause Analysis
7 2 (5.88%) TOGAF
7 2 (5.88%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 21 (61.76%) PowerShell
2 5 (14.71%) Python
3 3 (8.82%) Bash
4 1 (2.94%) Perl
Qualifications
1 32 (94.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
2 26 (76.47%) Security Cleared
3 19 (55.88%) SC Cleared
4 16 (47.06%) MCSA
4 16 (47.06%) MCSE
4 16 (47.06%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (17.65%) DV Cleared
6 4 (11.76%) VCDX
7 2 (5.88%) Azure Certification
7 2 (5.88%) CISSP
7 2 (5.88%) GSEC
8 1 (2.94%) NCDA
8 1 (2.94%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.94%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 32 (94.12%) VMware Infrastructure
2 28 (82.35%) VMware ESXi
3 24 (70.59%) vSphere
4 19 (55.88%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (47.06%) VMware NSX
6 1 (2.94%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 25 (73.53%) vCenter Server
2 22 (64.71%) Ansible
3 4 (11.76%) PowerCLI
4 3 (8.82%) Terraform
4 3 (8.82%) vMotion
4 3 (8.82%) vRealize
5 2 (5.88%) Kubernetes
6 1 (2.94%) Grafana
Vendors
1 34 (100.00%) VMware
2 17 (50.00%) Cisco
2 17 (50.00%) Microsoft
3 5 (14.71%) Broadcom
4 2 (5.88%) Dell
5 1 (2.94%) Brocade
5 1 (2.94%) Commvault
5 1 (2.94%) EMC
5 1 (2.94%) NetApp
5 1 (2.94%) Remedy