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 12 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 586 519 588
Rank change year-on-year -67 +69 +142
Contract jobs citing VCAP 24 9 12
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.056% 0.031% 0.027%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.17% 0.10% 0.088%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 5 11
10th Percentile £456 £510 £416
25th Percentile £460 £525 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +10.00% +9.89%
75th Percentile £541 £575 £521
90th Percentile £720 £635 £531
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -12.38% +5.00% +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 14,452 8,928 13,610
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.85% 30.34% 30.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,498 5,622 8,401
10th Percentile £331 £285 £290
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.73% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £615 £626 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £512 £525
% change year-on-year -2.39% -2.43% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,081 465 1,034
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.66 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.72 £24.18 £18.15
Median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £39.44
Median % change year-on-year -32.94% +7.77% -21.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £62.47
90th Percentile £83.75 £81.80 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -48.46% +25.00% -16.67%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 -76 23 £475 -13.64% 7
UK excluding London -76 14 £460 -12.38% 4
North of England -54 10 £460 -8.00%
North West - 10 £460 -
Work from Home -17 7 £750 - 5
London -46 5 £510 -7.27% 4
South East - 2 - - 2
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 3 (12.50%) AWS
1 3 (12.50%) Azure
2 1 (4.17%) Microsoft 365
2 1 (4.17%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 7 (29.17%) VSAN
2 4 (16.67%) Firewall
3 2 (8.33%) IPFIX
3 2 (8.33%) Network Security
3 2 (8.33%) SAN
3 2 (8.33%) VPN
3 2 (8.33%) VXLAN
3 2 (8.33%) WAN
4 1 (4.17%) BGP
4 1 (4.17%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (4.17%) NAS
4 1 (4.17%) OSPF
4 1 (4.17%) Remote Desktop
4 1 (4.17%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (4.17%) VLAN
General
1 8 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 6 (25.00%) Documentation Skills
3 4 (16.67%) Public Sector
4 1 (4.17%) Banking
4 1 (4.17%) Finance
Job Titles
1 8 (33.33%) Wintel Engineer
2 5 (20.83%) Consultant
2 5 (20.83%) VMware Consultant
2 5 (20.83%) VMware Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) Architect
4 2 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Senior
4 2 (8.33%) Senior VMware Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) VMware Architect
4 2 (8.33%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Data Architect
5 1 (4.17%) Data Centre Architect
5 1 (4.17%) Deployment Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Platform Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Principal Consultant
5 1 (4.17%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) VMware Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (8.33%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 12 (50.00%) Replication
2 8 (33.33%) Clustering
3 6 (25.00%) Data Centre
4 2 (8.33%) Cyber Kill Chain
4 2 (8.33%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (8.33%) Public Cloud
4 2 (8.33%) Security Posture
4 2 (8.33%) Taxonomies
4 2 (8.33%) VxBlock/Vblock
5 1 (4.17%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (4.17%) NVMe
5 1 (4.17%) Onboarding
5 1 (4.17%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 10 (41.67%) Windows
2 9 (37.50%) Windows Server
3 1 (4.17%) Linux
3 1 (4.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (4.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (45.83%) Disaster Recovery
2 10 (41.67%) Capacity Planning
2 10 (41.67%) High Availability
3 9 (37.50%) Network Virtualisation
4 7 (29.17%) Migration
5 6 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
6 5 (20.83%) Project Delivery
7 4 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
8 3 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
8 3 (12.50%) Knowledge Transfer
8 3 (12.50%) Performance Tuning
8 3 (12.50%) Runbook
9 2 (8.33%) Cloud Security
9 2 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 2 (8.33%) MITRE ATT&CK
9 2 (8.33%) Observability
9 2 (8.33%) Platform Engineering
9 2 (8.33%) SOAR
9 2 (8.33%) Storage Management
9 2 (8.33%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 11 (45.83%) PowerShell
2 3 (12.50%) Python
3 1 (4.17%) Bash
3 1 (4.17%) Perl
Qualifications
1 23 (95.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
2 16 (66.67%) Security Cleared
3 13 (54.17%) SC Cleared
4 8 (33.33%) MCSA
4 8 (33.33%) MCSE
4 8 (33.33%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (12.50%) VCDX
6 2 (8.33%) Azure Certification
6 2 (8.33%) CISSP
6 2 (8.33%) GSEC
7 1 (4.17%) DV Cleared
7 1 (4.17%) NCDA
7 1 (4.17%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.17%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 20 (83.33%) vSphere
2 18 (75.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (58.33%) VMware ESXi
4 13 (54.17%) VMware NSX
5 12 (50.00%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (4.17%) Active Directory
6 1 (4.17%) Docker
6 1 (4.17%) SRDF
6 1 (4.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 13 (54.17%) Ansible
1 13 (54.17%) vCenter Server
2 4 (16.67%) PowerCLI
3 3 (12.50%) Terraform
3 3 (12.50%) vMotion
4 2 (8.33%) Kubernetes
5 1 (4.17%) Grafana
5 1 (4.17%) vRealize
Vendors
1 24 (100.00%) VMware
2 10 (41.67%) Cisco
3 9 (37.50%) Microsoft
4 2 (8.33%) Dell
5 1 (4.17%) Brocade
5 1 (4.17%) Commvault
5 1 (4.17%) EMC
5 1 (4.17%) NetApp
5 1 (4.17%) Pure Storage
5 1 (4.17%) Remedy