Remote Desktop Contract Job Trends

Remote Desktop
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Remote Desktop skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 646 491 489
Rank change year-on-year -155 -2 +108
Contract jobs citing Remote Desktop 29 64 88
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.054% 0.20% 0.23%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.57% 1.65% 1.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 37 63
10th Percentile £156 £153 £170
25th Percentile £161 £171 £224
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £230 £200 £343
Median % change year-on-year +15.00% -41.61% +41.24%
75th Percentile £478 £447 £484
90th Percentile £656 £493 £628
UK excluding London median daily rate £213 £179 £343
% change year-on-year +18.55% -47.66% +71.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 12 5
10th Percentile - - £18.11
25th Percentile £21.33 £17.30 -
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.07 £18.27
Median % change year-on-year +42.52% -1.11% +4.40%
75th Percentile - £25.15 -
90th Percentile - £27.72 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £17.30 £18.27
% change year-on-year +48.84% -5.31% +4.40%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

Remote Desktop falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 5,069 3,868 4,764
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.46% 11.79% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,999 2,346 2,887
10th Percentile £250 £243 £221
25th Percentile £400 £374 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.84% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 203 315
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £47.50 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.26% -3.06% -10.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.95 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.07 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -42.07% -18.00% -2.86%

Remote Desktop
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Remote Desktop job vacancy trend in the UK

Remote Desktop
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Remote Desktop

Remote Desktop
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Remote Desktop over the 6 months to 19 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Remote Desktop in the UK

Remote Desktop
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Remote Desktop

Remote Desktop
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Remote Desktop within the UK over the 6 months to 19 August 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 -148 22 £450 +125.00% 32
UK excluding London -96 20 £213 +18.55% 30
Midlands -41 9 £250 +25.00% 9
Work from Home -64 8 £186 -58.47% 12
East Midlands -16 7 - - 5
London -93 6 £193 -56.94% 6
Scotland -15 5 £163 -27.78% 2
North West -51 2 £450 +210.34% 4
West Midlands -55 2 £250 -64.29% 4
South East -77 2 £463 +198.39% 6
North of England -81 2 £450 +170.68% 9
East of England -28 1 - - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 £175 -

Remote Desktop
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:

Application Platforms
1 5 (17.24%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (10.34%) SharePoint
3 1 (3.45%) Apache
3 1 (3.45%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (6.90%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 13 (44.83%) Microsoft 365
2 11 (37.93%) Azure
3 8 (27.59%) Entra ID
4 4 (13.79%) AWS
5 2 (6.90%) Amazon EKS
5 2 (6.90%) GitHub
5 2 (6.90%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (6.90%) OneDrive
6 1 (3.45%) IaaS
6 1 (3.45%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (17.24%) DHCP
1 5 (17.24%) DNS
1 5 (17.24%) VPN
2 3 (10.34%) Firewall
2 3 (10.34%) SAN
2 3 (10.34%) TCP/IP
3 2 (6.90%) iSCSI
3 2 (6.90%) PCoIP
4 1 (3.45%) Cisco IOS
4 1 (3.45%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (10.34%) SQL Server
2 2 (6.90%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (6.90%) MySQL
2 2 (6.90%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (10.34%) JIRA
General
1 11 (37.93%) Social Skills
2 7 (24.14%) Finance
3 4 (13.79%) Organisational Skills
3 4 (13.79%) Public Sector
4 2 (6.90%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (6.90%) Automotive
4 2 (6.90%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 6 (20.69%) Analyst
1 6 (20.69%) Desktop Engineer
1 6 (20.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 4 (13.79%) IT Engineer
2 4 (13.79%) IT Support
2 4 (13.79%) Remote Desktop Engineer
2 4 (13.79%) Senior
2 4 (13.79%) Support Engineer
3 3 (10.34%) 1st Line Support
3 3 (10.34%) 1st Line Support Analyst
3 3 (10.34%) Service Analyst
3 3 (10.34%) Service Desk Analyst
3 3 (10.34%) Support Analyst
3 3 (10.34%) Support Technician
4 2 (6.90%) Desktop Support
4 2 (6.90%) IT Support Technician
4 2 (6.90%) IT Technician
4 2 (6.90%) Linux Engineer
4 2 (6.90%) Senior Linux Engineer
4 2 (6.90%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (6.90%) OpenGL
1 2 (6.90%) Qt
2 1 (3.45%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 4 (13.79%) Onboarding
2 3 (10.34%) Management Information System
3 2 (6.90%) CUDA
3 2 (6.90%) Data Centre
3 2 (6.90%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (3.45%) Chip and PIN
4 1 (3.45%) Cloud Native
4 1 (3.45%) Driving Licence
4 1 (3.45%) Enterprise Cloud
4 1 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (3.45%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 13 (44.83%) Windows
2 6 (20.69%) Linux
3 5 (17.24%) Windows 10
4 3 (10.34%) Android
5 2 (6.90%) Apple iOS
5 2 (6.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (6.90%) Windows Server
6 1 (3.45%) CentOS
6 1 (3.45%) Mac OS
6 1 (3.45%) Mac OS X
6 1 (3.45%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (41.38%) Problem-Solving
2 7 (24.14%) Customer Service
3 6 (20.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 6 (20.69%) ITIL
4 4 (13.79%) ITSM
4 4 (13.79%) Low Latency
5 3 (10.34%) Data Protection
5 3 (10.34%) Identity Access Management
5 3 (10.34%) Kalman Filter
5 3 (10.34%) User Experience
6 2 (6.90%) Agile
6 2 (6.90%) Configuration Management
6 2 (6.90%) Continuous Improvement
6 2 (6.90%) CRM
6 2 (6.90%) High Availability
6 2 (6.90%) Machine Learning
6 2 (6.90%) Service Delivery
6 2 (6.90%) Service Management
6 2 (6.90%) Time Management
6 2 (6.90%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 5 (17.24%) PowerShell
2 4 (13.79%) Bash
3 3 (10.34%) Python
4 1 (3.45%) Korn
4 1 (3.45%) SQL
Qualifications
1 5 (17.24%) SC Cleared
1 5 (17.24%) Security Cleared
2 4 (13.79%) Microsoft Certification
3 2 (6.90%) A+ Certification
3 2 (6.90%) AWS Certification
3 2 (6.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 2 (6.90%) Azure Certification
3 2 (6.90%) Degree
3 2 (6.90%) Microsoft Certified Professional
3 2 (6.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 1 (3.45%) DV Cleared
4 1 (3.45%) RHCE
4 1 (3.45%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (10.34%) SLA
System Software
1 17 (58.62%) Active Directory
2 8 (27.59%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (20.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (10.34%) Docker
5 2 (6.90%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 2 (6.90%) Hyper-V
5 2 (6.90%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (6.90%) VMware Workstation
6 1 (3.45%) Samba
6 1 (3.45%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 3 (10.34%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (6.90%) Ansible
2 2 (6.90%) Packer
2 2 (6.90%) SCCM
2 2 (6.90%) Terraform
3 1 (3.45%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 17 (58.62%) Microsoft
2 6 (20.69%) Citrix
2 6 (20.69%) VMware
3 3 (10.34%) ServiceNow
4 2 (6.90%) Dell
4 2 (6.90%) Dynatrace
4 2 (6.90%) HP
4 2 (6.90%) Leostream
4 2 (6.90%) NVIDIA
4 2 (6.90%) Ping Identity
4 2 (6.90%) Red Hat
5 1 (3.45%) Apple
5 1 (3.45%) Cisco
5 1 (3.45%) D-Link
5 1 (3.45%) Veeam