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 22 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 564 527 579
Rank change year-on-year -37 +52 +181
Contract jobs citing VCAP 23 10 11
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.061% 0.032% 0.026%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.18% 0.11% 0.084%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 2 10
10th Percentile £457 £518 £416
25th Percentile £460 £544 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £600 £500
Median % change year-on-year -17.30% +20.00% +14.42%
75th Percentile £588 £669 £508
90th Percentile £718 £703 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £600 £473
% change year-on-year -21.32% +26.98% +12.50%
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 12,849 9,461 13,079
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.99% 29.84% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,494 5,719 8,162
10th Percentile £315 £300 £300
25th Percentile £416 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.24% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £636 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £501 £538
% change year-on-year -0.24% -6.76% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 959 469 834
10th Percentile £15.97 £19.72 £14.19
25th Percentile £19.10 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.04 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year -35.58% -19.34% +7.56%
75th Percentile £61.18 £66.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £76.58 £77.42 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £49.00
% change year-on-year -40.82% -13.27% +8.89%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 -35 22 £503 -16.15% 1
UK excluding London -62 15 £472 -21.32%
North of England -52 9 £460 -8.00%
North West - 9 £460 -
Work from Home +1 6 £750 - 1
South East -29 4 £575 -17.86%
London -20 3 £510 - 1
Midlands -52 1 £550 -
Scotland - 1 £475 -
East Midlands - 1 £550 -

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 2 (8.70%) AWS
1 2 (8.70%) Azure
1 2 (8.70%) IaaS
2 1 (4.35%) Microsoft 365
2 1 (4.35%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 5 (21.74%) VSAN
2 4 (17.39%) Firewall
3 2 (8.70%) IPFIX
3 2 (8.70%) Network Security
3 2 (8.70%) SAN
3 2 (8.70%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (8.70%) VLAN
3 2 (8.70%) VPN
3 2 (8.70%) VXLAN
3 2 (8.70%) WAN
4 1 (4.35%) BGP
4 1 (4.35%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (4.35%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (4.35%) NAS
4 1 (4.35%) Remote Desktop
General
1 8 (34.78%) Social Skills
2 5 (21.74%) Documentation Skills
2 5 (21.74%) Public Sector
3 2 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (4.35%) Banking
4 1 (4.35%) Finance
Job Titles
1 7 (30.43%) Wintel Engineer
2 5 (21.74%) Consultant
2 5 (21.74%) VMware Consultant
3 3 (13.04%) Architect
3 3 (13.04%) VMware Architect
3 3 (13.04%) VMware Engineer
4 2 (8.70%) VMware Specialist
5 1 (4.35%) Deployment Engineer
5 1 (4.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
5 1 (4.35%) Principal Consultant
5 1 (4.35%) Virtualisation Specialist
5 1 (4.35%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (8.70%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 11 (47.83%) Replication
2 7 (30.43%) Clustering
2 7 (30.43%) Data Centre
3 2 (8.70%) Cyber Kill Chain
3 2 (8.70%) Hybrid Cloud
3 2 (8.70%) Public Cloud
3 2 (8.70%) Security Posture
3 2 (8.70%) Taxonomies
3 2 (8.70%) VxBlock/Vblock
4 1 (4.35%) NVMe
4 1 (4.35%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 9 (39.13%) Windows
2 8 (34.78%) Windows Server
3 1 (4.35%) Linux
3 1 (4.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (4.35%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (39.13%) Capacity Planning
1 9 (39.13%) Disaster Recovery
2 8 (34.78%) High Availability
2 8 (34.78%) Network Virtualisation
2 8 (34.78%) Problem-Solving
3 7 (30.43%) Migration
4 4 (17.39%) Agile
4 4 (17.39%) Project Delivery
5 3 (13.04%) Computer Science
5 3 (13.04%) Continuous Improvement
5 3 (13.04%) Knowledge Transfer
5 3 (13.04%) Performance Tuning
5 3 (13.04%) Runbook
5 3 (13.04%) Stakeholder Management
5 3 (13.04%) Use Case
6 2 (8.70%) Dashboard Development
6 2 (8.70%) Security Architecture
6 2 (8.70%) SIEM
6 2 (8.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 2 (8.70%) WAN Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 12 (52.17%) PowerShell
2 5 (21.74%) Python
3 1 (4.35%) Bash
3 1 (4.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 22 (95.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
2 15 (65.22%) Security Cleared
3 11 (47.83%) SC Cleared
4 7 (30.43%) MCSA
4 7 (30.43%) MCSE
4 7 (30.43%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (13.04%) VCDX
6 2 (8.70%) CISSP
6 2 (8.70%) DV Cleared
6 2 (8.70%) GSEC
7 1 (4.35%) Azure Certification
7 1 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (4.35%) Degree
7 1 (4.35%) NCDA
7 1 (4.35%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.35%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 19 (82.61%) vSphere
2 16 (69.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (60.87%) VMware NSX
4 11 (47.83%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (43.48%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (4.35%) Active Directory
6 1 (4.35%) Docker
6 1 (4.35%) SRDF
6 1 (4.35%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 10 (43.48%) Ansible
1 10 (43.48%) vCenter Server
2 3 (13.04%) PowerCLI
2 3 (13.04%) vMotion
2 3 (13.04%) vRealize
3 2 (8.70%) vRealize Orchestrator
4 1 (4.35%) Grafana
4 1 (4.35%) Kubernetes
4 1 (4.35%) Terraform
Vendors
1 23 (100.00%) VMware
2 9 (39.13%) Cisco
3 8 (34.78%) Microsoft
4 2 (8.70%) Dell
5 1 (4.35%) Brocade
5 1 (4.35%) Commvault
5 1 (4.35%) EMC
5 1 (4.35%) NetApp
5 1 (4.35%) Pure Storage
5 1 (4.35%) Remedy