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

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 560 525 595
Rank change year-on-year -35 +70 +156
Contract jobs citing VCAP 19 9 7
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.052% 0.028% 0.016%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.15% 0.094% 0.055%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 2 6
10th Percentile £460 £518 £458
25th Percentile £476 £544 £471
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £600 £505
Median % change year-on-year -11.67% +18.81% +15.56%
75th Percentile £588 £669 £596
90th Percentile £750 £703 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £496 £600 £473
% change year-on-year -17.30% +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 12,446 9,543 12,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.91% 29.87% 30.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,167 5,796 8,031
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £633 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 952 464 731
10th Percentile £16.01 £18.55 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.04 £23.90 £25.44
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -36.33% -24.76% +16.67%
75th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £68.32
90th Percentile £76.58 £77.47 £79.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £51.89
% change year-on-year -39.40% -20.02% +15.31%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -39 19 £530 -11.67% 3
UK excluding London -52 11 £496 -17.30% 3
North of England -42 6 £465 -7.08% 2
North West - 6 £465 - 2
South East -15 4 £575 -17.86% 1
Work from Home - 4 £750 - 1
London -7 3 £510 - 1
Midlands -43 1 £550 -
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 (10.53%) Azure
1 2 (10.53%) IaaS
2 1 (5.26%) AWS
2 1 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 5 (26.32%) VSAN
2 4 (21.05%) Firewall
3 2 (10.53%) IPFIX
3 2 (10.53%) Network Security
3 2 (10.53%) Software-Defined Networking
3 2 (10.53%) VLAN
3 2 (10.53%) VPN
3 2 (10.53%) VXLAN
3 2 (10.53%) WAN
4 1 (5.26%) BGP
4 1 (5.26%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (5.26%) NAS
4 1 (5.26%) Remote Desktop
4 1 (5.26%) SAN
General
1 8 (42.11%) Social Skills
2 5 (26.32%) Documentation Skills
3 4 (21.05%) Public Sector
4 2 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (5.26%) Banking
5 1 (5.26%) Finance
Job Titles
1 5 (26.32%) Consultant
1 5 (26.32%) VMware Consultant
2 4 (21.05%) Wintel Engineer
3 3 (15.79%) Architect
3 3 (15.79%) VMware Architect
3 3 (15.79%) VMware Engineer
4 2 (10.53%) VMware Specialist
5 1 (5.26%) Deployment Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Principal Consultant
5 1 (5.26%) Virtualisation Specialist
5 1 (5.26%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (10.53%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 8 (42.11%) Replication
2 6 (31.58%) Data Centre
3 4 (21.05%) Clustering
4 2 (10.53%) Cyber Kill Chain
4 2 (10.53%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (10.53%) Public Cloud
4 2 (10.53%) Security Posture
4 2 (10.53%) Taxonomies
4 2 (10.53%) VxBlock/Vblock
Operating Systems
1 5 (26.32%) Windows
1 5 (26.32%) Windows Server
2 1 (5.26%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (42.11%) Problem-Solving
2 6 (31.58%) Capacity Planning
2 6 (31.58%) Migration
3 5 (26.32%) Disaster Recovery
3 5 (26.32%) High Availability
3 5 (26.32%) Network Virtualisation
4 3 (15.79%) Agile
4 3 (15.79%) Computer Science
4 3 (15.79%) Continuous Improvement
4 3 (15.79%) Knowledge Transfer
4 3 (15.79%) Performance Tuning
4 3 (15.79%) Runbook
4 3 (15.79%) Stakeholder Management
4 3 (15.79%) Use Case
5 2 (10.53%) ITIL
5 2 (10.53%) Security Architecture
5 2 (10.53%) SIEM
5 2 (10.53%) SOAR
5 2 (10.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 2 (10.53%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 8 (42.11%) PowerShell
2 4 (21.05%) Python
Qualifications
1 18 (94.74%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
2 12 (63.16%) Security Cleared
3 8 (42.11%) SC Cleared
4 4 (21.05%) MCSA
4 4 (21.05%) MCSE
4 4 (21.05%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (15.79%) VCDX
6 2 (10.53%) CISSP
6 2 (10.53%) DV Cleared
6 2 (10.53%) GSEC
7 1 (5.26%) Azure Certification
7 1 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (5.26%) Degree
System Software
1 16 (84.21%) vSphere
2 13 (68.42%) VMware NSX
3 12 (63.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (42.11%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (36.84%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (5.26%) Active Directory
6 1 (5.26%) Docker
6 1 (5.26%) SRDF
6 1 (5.26%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 7 (36.84%) vCenter Server
2 6 (31.58%) Ansible
3 2 (10.53%) PowerCLI
3 2 (10.53%) vMotion
3 2 (10.53%) vRealize
3 2 (10.53%) vRealize Orchestrator
4 1 (5.26%) Kubernetes
4 1 (5.26%) Terraform
Vendors
1 19 (100.00%) VMware
2 5 (26.32%) Cisco
2 5 (26.32%) Microsoft
3 2 (10.53%) Dell
4 1 (5.26%) EMC
4 1 (5.26%) Pure Storage
4 1 (5.26%) Remedy