Virtual Desktop Contracts in the UK excluding London

Virtual Desktop
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Virtual Desktop skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Virtual Desktop over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 308 338 345
Rank change year-on-year +30 +7 +41
Contract jobs citing Virtual Desktop 28 61 118
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.22% 0.29% 0.49%
As % of the System Software category 1.54% 2.48% 3.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 33 87
10th Percentile £405 £280 £400
25th Percentile £460 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £605 £550
Median % change year-on-year -17.36% +10.00% +10.00%
75th Percentile £608 £608 £675
90th Percentile £680 £633 £715
UK median daily rate £525 £600 £550
% change year-on-year -12.50% +9.09% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 1
Median hourly rate - £18.59 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year - -28.52% +20.93%
UK median hourly rate - £18.59 £26.00
% change year-on-year - -28.52% +19.54%

All System Software Skills
UK excluding London

Virtual Desktop 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 1,814 2,460 3,640
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 14.21% 11.84% 15.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,249 1,649 2,640
10th Percentile £190 £175 £181
25th Percentile £325 £275 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £479 £460 £483
Median % change year-on-year +4.13% -4.69% +7.26%
75th Percentile £588 £584 £588
90th Percentile £662 £650 £676
UK median daily rate £525 £488 £525
% change year-on-year +7.69% -7.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 191 192
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £15.39 £14.16 £16.77
Median hourly rate £28.00 £22.00 £41.88
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -47.46% +131.16%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.60 £78.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £22.50 £53.43
% change year-on-year +22.22% -57.88% +167.13%

Virtual Desktop
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Virtual Desktop as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Virtual Desktop in the UK excluding London

Virtual Desktop
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Virtual Desktop in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Virtual Desktop in the UK excluding London

Virtual Desktop
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Desktop in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Desktop in the UK excluding London

Virtual Desktop
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Virtual Desktop in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Virtual Desktop in the UK excluding London

Virtual Desktop
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 Virtual Desktop within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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 +21 10 £513 +28.13% 7
South West +43 8 £470 -24.80% 5
North West +17 6 £513 +50.74% 3
South East +33 4 £550 -9.09% 11
North East - 3 £600 - 2
Wales +2 2 £426 - 3
Scotland +10 1 £550 -4.35% 2
Yorkshire +8 1 £400 +6.67% 2
Midlands +3 1 - - 4
West Midlands -4 1 - - 3
East of England - 1 - - 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - -
Virtual Desktop
UK

Virtual Desktop
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (25.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (17.86%) SharePoint
3 2 (7.14%) SharePoint Server
4 1 (3.57%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (10.71%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (3.57%) Trello
Business Applications
1 1 (3.57%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 18 (64.29%) Azure
2 9 (32.14%) Microsoft 365
3 3 (10.71%) IaaS
3 3 (10.71%) PaaS
4 2 (7.14%) AWS
4 2 (7.14%) Azure Storage
4 2 (7.14%) Cloud Computing
4 2 (7.14%) Entra ID
4 2 (7.14%) OneDrive
5 1 (3.57%) Azure Monitor
5 1 (3.57%) GitHub
5 1 (3.57%) Power Platform
5 1 (3.57%) PowerApps
5 1 (3.57%) SaaS
5 1 (3.57%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 7 (25.00%) DNS
2 3 (10.71%) Firewall
2 3 (10.71%) Remote Desktop
3 2 (7.14%) DHCP
4 1 (3.57%) LAN
4 1 (3.57%) NetScaler
4 1 (3.57%) Skype
4 1 (3.57%) SMTP
4 1 (3.57%) TCP/IP
4 1 (3.57%) WAN
Development Applications
1 5 (17.86%) JIRA
2 1 (3.57%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 7 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 3 (10.71%) Finance
2 3 (10.71%) Public Sector
3 2 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (7.14%) Banking
3 2 (7.14%) Legal
3 2 (7.14%) Publishing
4 1 (3.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 5 (17.86%) Azure Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) Architect
3 3 (10.71%) Cloud Engineer
3 3 (10.71%) Infrastructure Manager
3 3 (10.71%) Infrastructure Project Manager
3 3 (10.71%) Microsoft 365 Architect
3 3 (10.71%) Project Manager
3 3 (10.71%) Wintel Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Active Directory Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Analyst
4 2 (7.14%) Azure Architect
4 2 (7.14%) Business Analyst
4 2 (7.14%) Lead
4 2 (7.14%) Support Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Technical Architect
4 2 (7.14%) Windows Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Wintel Architect
4 2 (7.14%) Wintel Technical Architect
5 1 (3.57%) 3rd Line Support
5 1 (3.57%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (3.57%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 4 (14.29%) Hybrid Cloud
2 2 (7.14%) Management Information System
2 2 (7.14%) PKI
3 1 (3.57%) Blockchain
3 1 (3.57%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (3.57%) Onboarding
3 1 (3.57%) Product Ownership
3 1 (3.57%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 20 (71.43%) Windows
2 9 (32.14%) Windows Server
3 5 (17.86%) Windows 10
4 4 (14.29%) Windows Server 2019
5 3 (10.71%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (7.14%) Android
6 2 (7.14%) Apple iOS
6 2 (7.14%) Linux
6 2 (7.14%) Mac OS
7 1 (3.57%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (32.14%) Migration
2 7 (25.00%) Agile
3 6 (21.43%) Project Management
4 4 (14.29%) Analytics
4 4 (14.29%) DevOps
4 4 (14.29%) Project Delivery
4 4 (14.29%) Task Automation
5 3 (10.71%) CI/CD
5 3 (10.71%) ITIL
5 3 (10.71%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (10.71%) Root Cause Analysis
5 3 (10.71%) Scaled Agile Framework
5 3 (10.71%) Scrum
5 3 (10.71%) Service Management
5 3 (10.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 3 (10.71%) Use Case
5 3 (10.71%) Validation
6 2 (7.14%) Change Management
6 2 (7.14%) Disaster Recovery
6 2 (7.14%) GAP Analysis
Programming Languages
1 9 (32.14%) PowerShell
2 3 (10.71%) SQL
2 3 (10.71%) VB
2 3 (10.71%) VBScript
3 2 (7.14%) Python
4 1 (3.57%) Bicep
4 1 (3.57%) C#
Qualifications
1 10 (35.71%) SC Cleared
1 10 (35.71%) Security Cleared
2 5 (17.86%) Degree
3 3 (10.71%) DV Cleared
3 3 (10.71%) MCSA
3 3 (10.71%) Microsoft Certification
4 2 (7.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (7.14%) DBS Check
4 2 (7.14%) MCP
4 2 (7.14%) MCSE
5 1 (3.57%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 1 (3.57%) Master's Degree
5 1 (3.57%) PMI Certification
5 1 (3.57%) PMP
5 1 (3.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (7.14%) NCSC
1 2 (7.14%) SLA
System Software
1 12 (42.86%) Active Directory
2 9 (32.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (7.14%) BitLocker
3 2 (7.14%) Hyper-V
3 2 (7.14%) Microsoft App-V
3 2 (7.14%) vSphere
4 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Virtual Server
4 1 (3.57%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (3.57%) Virtual Servers
4 1 (3.57%) XenApp
4 1 (3.57%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 6 (21.43%) Microsoft Intune
1 6 (21.43%) SCCM
2 4 (14.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 3 (10.71%) Terraform
4 2 (7.14%) SCOM
5 1 (3.57%) Kubernetes
5 1 (3.57%) WSUS
Vendors
1 12 (42.86%) Microsoft
2 10 (35.71%) Citrix
3 9 (32.14%) VMware
4 4 (14.29%) SolarWinds
5 2 (7.14%) McAfee
5 2 (7.14%) Remedy
5 2 (7.14%) Symantec
6 1 (3.57%) Atlassian
6 1 (3.57%) Cisco
6 1 (3.57%) Genesys
6 1 (3.57%) ServiceNow
6 1 (3.57%) Zscaler