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 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 636 484 491
Rank change year-on-year -152 +7 +101
Contract jobs citing Remote Desktop 28 70 78
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.052% 0.21% 0.20%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.56% 1.77% 1.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 42 58
10th Percentile £156 £153 £172
25th Percentile £161 £182 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £230 £200 £343
Median % change year-on-year +15.00% -41.61% +39.09%
75th Percentile £478 £447 £534
90th Percentile £656 £488 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £213 £195 £340
% change year-on-year +8.97% -42.65% +55.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 13 5
10th Percentile - - £18.11
25th Percentile £21.33 £17.30 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £18.84 £18.27
Median % change year-on-year +21.10% +3.09% +4.40%
75th Percentile £25.75 £25.15 -
90th Percentile - £165.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £21.23 £18.27
% change year-on-year +7.47% +16.17% +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 5,004 3,950 4,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.37% 12.02% 12.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,970 2,419 2,866
10th Percentile £250 £240 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 195 324
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.27
Median hourly rate £26.44 £47.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -44.34% - -5.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.70 £83.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.00% -18.00% -4.42%

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 7 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 12 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 7 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 -136 23 £448 +123.75% 18
UK excluding London -124 16 £213 +8.97% 18
London -89 9 £193 -56.94% 3
Midlands -60 8 £250 +25.00% 4
East Midlands -17 6 - - 3
Work from Home -52 6 £186 -58.47% 6
Scotland -14 3 £163 -27.78%
West Midlands -62 2 £250 -64.29% 1
South East -75 2 £463 +198.39% 5
East of England -23 1 - - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 £175 -
South West - 1 £445 - 1

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 (17.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (3.57%) Apache
2 1 (3.57%) Confluence
2 1 (3.57%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (7.14%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 10 (35.71%) Microsoft 365
2 9 (32.14%) Azure
3 7 (25.00%) Entra ID
4 5 (17.86%) AWS
5 2 (7.14%) Amazon EKS
5 2 (7.14%) GitHub
5 2 (7.14%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (7.14%) OneDrive
6 1 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (3.57%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (17.86%) DNS
2 4 (14.29%) DHCP
2 4 (14.29%) VPN
3 3 (10.71%) Firewall
3 3 (10.71%) SAN
3 3 (10.71%) TCP/IP
4 2 (7.14%) iSCSI
4 2 (7.14%) PCoIP
4 2 (7.14%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (7.14%) Wireless
5 1 (3.57%) Cisco IOS
5 1 (3.57%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (10.71%) SQL Server
2 2 (7.14%) MySQL
2 2 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (3.57%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 3 (10.71%) JIRA
General
1 8 (28.57%) Social Skills
2 5 (17.86%) Public Sector
3 4 (14.29%) Finance
4 2 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (7.14%) Automotive
4 2 (7.14%) Organisational Skills
4 2 (7.14%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 6 (21.43%) Desktop Engineer
2 5 (17.86%) IT Support
3 4 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 4 (14.29%) IT Engineer
3 4 (14.29%) Remote Desktop Engineer
3 4 (14.29%) Senior
3 4 (14.29%) Support Engineer
3 4 (14.29%) Support Technician
4 3 (10.71%) 1st Line Support
4 3 (10.71%) 1st Line Support Analyst
4 3 (10.71%) Analyst
4 3 (10.71%) IT Support Technician
4 3 (10.71%) IT Technician
4 3 (10.71%) Support Analyst
4 3 (10.71%) Wintel Engineer
5 2 (7.14%) Desktop Support
5 2 (7.14%) IT Support Engineer
5 2 (7.14%) Linux Engineer
5 2 (7.14%) Senior Linux Engineer
6 1 (3.57%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (7.14%) OpenGL
1 2 (7.14%) Qt
1 2 (7.14%) X-Windows
2 1 (3.57%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 2 (7.14%) CUDA
1 2 (7.14%) Data Centre
1 2 (7.14%) Enterprise Software
1 2 (7.14%) Hybrid Cloud
1 2 (7.14%) Management Information System
1 2 (7.14%) Onboarding
2 1 (3.57%) Cloud Native
2 1 (3.57%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 14 (50.00%) Windows
2 7 (25.00%) Windows 10
3 5 (17.86%) Linux
4 3 (10.71%) Mac OS X
5 2 (7.14%) Android
5 2 (7.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (3.57%) Apple iOS
6 1 (3.57%) CentOS
6 1 (3.57%) Mac OS
6 1 (3.57%) Windows 7
6 1 (3.57%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (35.71%) Problem-Solving
2 5 (17.86%) Customer Service
3 4 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 4 (14.29%) Low Latency
4 3 (10.71%) CI/CD
4 3 (10.71%) Identity Access Management
4 3 (10.71%) Infrastructure as Code
4 3 (10.71%) ITIL
4 3 (10.71%) Kalman Filter
5 2 (7.14%) Agile
5 2 (7.14%) Configuration Management
5 2 (7.14%) Desktop Virtualisation
5 2 (7.14%) High Availability
5 2 (7.14%) ITSM
5 2 (7.14%) Project Delivery
5 2 (7.14%) Scaled Agile Framework
5 2 (7.14%) Task Automation
5 2 (7.14%) User Experience
5 2 (7.14%) Visualisation
5 2 (7.14%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 7 (25.00%) PowerShell
2 4 (14.29%) Bash
2 4 (14.29%) Python
3 1 (3.57%) Korn
3 1 (3.57%) SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (25.00%) SC Cleared
1 7 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 3 (10.71%) Microsoft Certification
3 2 (7.14%) A+ Certification
3 2 (7.14%) AWS Certification
3 2 (7.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 2 (7.14%) Azure Certification
3 2 (7.14%) Degree
3 2 (7.14%) Microsoft Certified Professional
3 2 (7.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 1 (3.57%) DV Cleared
4 1 (3.57%) RHCE
4 1 (3.57%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (10.71%) SLA
System Software
1 19 (67.86%) Active Directory
2 7 (25.00%) Virtual Desktop
3 5 (17.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (10.71%) Docker
4 3 (10.71%) Hyper-V
5 2 (7.14%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 2 (7.14%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (7.14%) VMware Workstation
5 2 (7.14%) vSphere
6 1 (3.57%) Samba
Systems Management
1 3 (10.71%) Microsoft Intune
1 3 (10.71%) Terraform
2 2 (7.14%) Ansible
2 2 (7.14%) Packer
2 2 (7.14%) SCCM
3 1 (3.57%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 15 (53.57%) Microsoft
2 6 (21.43%) Citrix
3 5 (17.86%) VMware
4 2 (7.14%) Dynatrace
4 2 (7.14%) HP
4 2 (7.14%) Leostream
4 2 (7.14%) NVIDIA
4 2 (7.14%) Ping Identity
4 2 (7.14%) Red Hat
4 2 (7.14%) ServiceNow
5 1 (3.57%) Apple
5 1 (3.57%) Cisco
5 1 (3.57%) Dell
5 1 (3.57%) D-Link
5 1 (3.57%) Veeam