Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 21 September 2021

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Virtual Desktop skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Virtual Desktop over the 6 months to 21 September 2021 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Virtual Desktop
UK
6 months to
21 Sep 2021		 Same period 2020 Same period 2019
Rank 520 407 629
Rank change year-on-year -113 +222 +1
Contract jobs citing Virtual Desktop 275 96 203
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.34% 0.33% 0.23%
As % of the System Software category 2.46% 2.20% 1.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 48 126
10th Percentile £251 £155 £213
25th Percentile £403 £272 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £431 £425
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +1.47% +30.77%
75th Percentile £600 £505 £488
90th Percentile " £575 £541
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £425 £450
% change year-on-year - -5.56% +47.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 8
10th Percentile £26.36 £28.25 £14.09
25th Percentile £31.39 £33.13 £14.63
Median hourly rate £42.44 £42.50 £17.25
Median % change year-on-year -0.15% +146.38% -36.11%
75th Percentile £45.54 £44.75 £28.69
90th Percentile £45.82 £45.35 £66.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 - £16.07

Virtual Desktop is in the System Software category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for system software skills.

All System Software Skills
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 11,166 4,363 13,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.99% 14.83% 15.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,850 2,912 9,191
10th Percentile £213 £213 £173
25th Percentile £400 £366 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +2.70% +2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £425
% change year-on-year -5.56% +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 359 170 631
10th Percentile £11.96 £11.17 £11.17
25th Percentile £13.50 £12.76 £13.50
Median hourly rate £17.50 £17.63 £16.75
Median % change year-on-year -0.71% +5.22% +4.69%
75th Percentile £39.55 £40.56 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.50 £53.75 £47.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.50 £16.92 £16.00
% change year-on-year -2.50% +5.77% +1.91%

Virtual Desktop
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Virtual Desktop as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Virtual Desktop in the UK

Virtual Desktop
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Virtual Desktop.

Daily rate trend for Virtual Desktop in the UK

Virtual Desktop
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Virtual Desktop over the 6 months to 21 September 2021.

Daily rate histogram for Virtual Desktop in the UK

Virtual Desktop
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Virtual Desktop.

Hourly rate trend for Virtual Desktop in the UK

Virtual Desktop
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Virtual Desktop over the 6 months to 21 September 2021.

Hourly rate histogram for Virtual Desktop in the UK

Virtual Desktop
Top 16 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 21 September 2021. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -150 184 £475 +7.04% 64
Work from Home -171 104 £600 +39.13% 11
London -133 95 £519 +29.69% 14
UK excluding London -105 87 £425 - 51
South East -84 22 £525 +15.07% 6
South West -29 18 £450 -17.81% 9
North of England -72 18 £400 +50.94% 18
North West -44 15 £384 +119.29% 8
Midlands -69 14 £403 -10.56% 5
West Midlands -62 12 £403 -10.56% 4
East of England -41 6 £328 - 10
Wales -26 4 £263 +87.50%
Scotland -84 4 £475 +5.56% 3
Yorkshire -53 3 £400 +50.94% 8
East Midlands - 2 £513 - 1
Northern Ireland -10 1 - -

For the 6 months to 21 September 2021, IT contractor jobs citing Virtual Desktop also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Virtual Desktop.

1 206 (74.91%) Windows
2 181 (65.82%) Azure
3 148 (53.82%) Active Directory
4 135 (49.09%) Microsoft
5 108 (39.27%) Microsoft 365
6 90 (32.73%) Citrix
7 80 (29.09%) Migration
8 78 (28.36%) Windows 10
9 77 (28.00%) Azure Active Directory
10 69 (25.09%) Microsoft Intune
11 66 (24.00%) Windows Server
12 61 (22.18%) VMware Infrastructure
12 61 (22.18%) VMware
13 59 (21.45%) PowerShell
13 59 (21.45%) Social Skills
14 55 (20.00%) Firewall
15 52 (18.91%) SharePoint
16 46 (16.73%) SCCM
16 46 (16.73%) DevOps
17 44 (16.00%) Security Cleared
17 44 (16.00%) SQL
18 42 (15.27%) AWS
19 41 (14.91%) Windows Server 2012
19 41 (14.91%) ITIL
20 36 (13.09%) Windows Server 2016
21 35 (12.73%) DNS
22 32 (11.64%) Linux
22 32 (11.64%) Data Centre
22 32 (11.64%) Terraform
23 31 (11.27%) Windows 7

Virtual Desktop
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 52 (18.91%) SharePoint
2 16 (5.82%) MS Exchange
3 6 (2.18%) Skype for Business
4 4 (1.45%) BizTalk Server
5 3 (1.09%) Confluence
5 3 (1.09%) Elasticsearch
5 3 (1.09%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (1.09%) IIS
5 3 (1.09%) nginx
6 1 (0.36%) Apache
6 1 (0.36%) Exchange Server 2007
Applications
1 17 (6.18%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.45%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 14 (5.09%) Dynamics AX
1 14 (5.09%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 181 (65.82%) Azure
2 108 (39.27%) Microsoft 365
3 77 (28.00%) Azure Active Directory
4 42 (15.27%) AWS
5 26 (9.45%) IaaS
6 20 (7.27%) Dynamics 365
7 19 (6.91%) Power Platform
8 18 (6.55%) PowerApps
9 17 (6.18%) PaaS
10 13 (4.73%) OneDrive
11 7 (2.55%) Azure Key Vault
11 7 (2.55%) SaaS
12 6 (2.18%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 4 (1.45%) Power Automate
14 3 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
14 3 (1.09%) Amazon S3
14 3 (1.09%) GitHub
15 2 (0.73%) Google Workspace
15 2 (0.73%) Mimecast
16 1 (0.36%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 55 (20.00%) Firewall
2 35 (12.73%) DNS
3 16 (5.82%) TCP/IP
4 14 (5.09%) DHCP
4 14 (5.09%) LAN
5 13 (4.73%) VPN
5 13 (4.73%) WAN
6 10 (3.64%) NetScaler
7 9 (3.27%) Network Security
7 9 (3.27%) Skype
8 8 (2.91%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (2.18%) SD-WAN
10 5 (1.82%) Internet
11 4 (1.45%) IP Telephony
11 4 (1.45%) Remote Desktop
11 4 (1.45%) Wireless
12 3 (1.09%) Intranet
12 3 (1.09%) SMTP
12 3 (1.09%) Unified Communications
13 2 (0.73%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (5.45%) Amazon RDS
2 8 (2.91%) Power BI
3 7 (2.55%) SQL Server
4 4 (1.45%) BusinessObjects
4 4 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.09%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.36%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 23 (8.36%) Git (software)
1 23 (8.36%) Jenkins
2 7 (2.55%) JIRA
3 4 (1.45%) Cypress.io
3 4 (1.45%) Selenium
3 4 (1.45%) Visual Studio
4 3 (1.09%) GitLab
4 3 (1.09%) Serenity BDD
4 3 (1.09%) Zephyr
5 1 (0.36%) MSI
5 1 (0.36%) Octopus Deploy
5 1 (0.36%) SpecFlow
General
1 59 (21.45%) Social Skills
2 23 (8.36%) Finance
3 22 (8.00%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (5.45%) Public Sector
5 14 (5.09%) Documentation Skills
6 13 (4.73%) Banking
7 6 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
8 4 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.09%) Billing
9 3 (1.09%) Investment Banking
9 3 (1.09%) Legal
9 3 (1.09%) Retail
10 2 (0.73%) Law
11 1 (0.36%) Back Office
11 1 (0.36%) Front Office
11 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 54 (19.64%) Azure Engineer
2 39 (14.18%) Architect
3 34 (12.36%) Consultant
4 29 (10.55%) Desktop Engineer
5 25 (9.09%) DevOps Engineer
6 24 (8.73%) Azure DevOps Engineer
7 23 (8.36%) Azure DevOps
8 21 (7.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 20 (7.27%) Azure Architect
9 20 (7.27%) Cloud Engineer
9 20 (7.27%) Rollout Engineer
10 19 (6.91%) 3rd Line Engineer
10 19 (6.91%) Migration Manager
11 18 (6.55%) Microsoft 365 Consultant
12 17 (6.18%) Project Manager
13 16 (5.82%) Azure Consultant
14 15 (5.45%) Support Engineer
15 14 (5.09%) Delivery Manager
15 14 (5.09%) Windows Engineer
16 13 (4.73%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (6.91%) .NET
2 14 (5.09%) J2EE
3 5 (1.82%) ARM Templates
3 5 (1.82%) JSON
3 5 (1.82%) XML
4 3 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.09%) JWT
4 3 (1.09%) Software Packaging
4 3 (1.09%) Web Services
4 3 (1.09%) XMPP
5 2 (0.73%) .NET Framework
6 1 (0.36%) ASP.NET
6 1 (0.36%) Flutter
6 1 (0.36%) LAMP
6 1 (0.36%) LDAP
6 1 (0.36%) REST
6 1 (0.36%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 32 (11.64%) Data Centre
2 16 (5.82%) User Experience
3 12 (4.36%) BYOD
4 11 (4.00%) Mobile App
5 10 (3.64%) Clustering
5 10 (3.64%) Management Information System
5 10 (3.64%) Video Conferencing
6 9 (3.27%) Greenfield Project
6 9 (3.27%) Virtual Team
7 8 (2.91%) Replication
8 7 (2.55%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (2.18%) Tandem
10 5 (1.82%) Fat Client
10 5 (1.82%) NHS
10 5 (1.82%) PKI
10 5 (1.82%) Thin Client
11 4 (1.45%) Private Cloud
12 3 (1.09%) Blackberry
12 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Licensing
12 3 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 206 (74.91%) Windows
2 78 (28.36%) Windows 10
3 66 (24.00%) Windows Server
4 41 (14.91%) Windows Server 2012
5 36 (13.09%) Windows Server 2016
6 32 (11.64%) Linux
7 31 (11.27%) Windows 7
8 28 (10.18%) Android
9 21 (7.64%) Apple iOS
10 15 (5.45%) Windows Server 2008
11 14 (5.09%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (2.91%) Mac OS
13 5 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 4 (1.45%) Windows Server 2003
15 3 (1.09%) Unix
16 2 (0.73%) Ubuntu
17 1 (0.36%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (29.09%) Migration
2 46 (16.73%) DevOps
3 41 (14.91%) ITIL
4 30 (10.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 26 (9.45%) Agile Software Development
6 25 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 23 (8.36%) Business Intelligence
7 23 (8.36%) Release Management
8 22 (8.00%) Project Delivery
9 21 (7.64%) Microservices
10 19 (6.91%) Service Delivery
11 18 (6.55%) CRM
11 18 (6.55%) Problem-Solving
12 17 (6.18%) Data Protection
12 17 (6.18%) Identity Management
12 17 (6.18%) Project Management
13 16 (5.82%) Application Packaging
14 14 (5.09%) Analytics
14 14 (5.09%) Application Virtualisation
14 14 (5.09%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 59 (21.45%) PowerShell
2 44 (16.00%) SQL
3 30 (10.91%) Python
4 17 (6.18%) Java
5 16 (5.82%) C
6 5 (1.82%) R
7 4 (1.45%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.45%) VBScript
8 3 (1.09%) C#
8 3 (1.09%) Ruby
8 3 (1.09%) VB
9 1 (0.36%) PHP
9 1 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 44 (16.00%) Security Cleared
2 29 (10.55%) SC Cleared
3 16 (5.82%) Microsoft Certification
4 13 (4.73%) DV Cleared
4 13 (4.73%) MCSE
5 8 (2.91%) MCSA
6 7 (2.55%) Degree
6 7 (2.55%) PMP
6 7 (2.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 6 (2.18%) PMI Certification
8 5 (1.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 4 (1.45%) ITIL Certification
9 4 (1.45%) MCP
9 4 (1.45%) PRINCE2 Certification
9 4 (1.45%) VCAP
9 4 (1.45%) VCDX
9 4 (1.45%) VCP6
10 3 (1.09%) MOS
11 2 (0.73%) Citrix Certification
11 2 (0.73%) MCT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.73%) SLA
2 6 (2.18%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (0.73%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.36%) Government Security Classifications
4 1 (0.36%) GxP
4 1 (0.36%) QA
System Software
1 148 (53.82%) Active Directory
2 61 (22.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (10.91%) Microsoft App-V
3 30 (10.91%) Virtual Machines
4 29 (10.55%) XenDesktop
5 19 (6.91%) Hyper-V
5 19 (6.91%) VMware ESXi
5 19 (6.91%) XenApp
6 11 (4.00%) BitLocker
7 10 (3.64%) DFS Replication
8 8 (2.91%) Citrix Hypervisor
9 5 (1.82%) Terminal Services
9 5 (1.82%) vSphere
10 3 (1.09%) Docker
11 1 (0.36%) UAG
Systems Management
1 69 (25.09%) Microsoft Intune
2 46 (16.73%) SCCM
3 32 (11.64%) Terraform
4 22 (8.00%) SCVMM
5 17 (6.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 14 (5.09%) SCOM
7 12 (4.36%) WSUS
8 11 (4.00%) Failover Clustering
9 10 (3.64%) Microsoft Clustering
9 10 (3.64%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
9 10 (3.64%) SCDPM
9 10 (3.64%) SCSM
10 8 (2.91%) Ansible
10 8 (2.91%) vCenter Server
11 3 (1.09%) Kubernetes
11 3 (1.09%) logstash
12 2 (0.73%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.73%) HAProxy
12 2 (0.73%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.73%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 135 (49.09%) Microsoft
2 90 (32.73%) Citrix
3 61 (22.18%) VMware
4 18 (6.55%) Dell
5 15 (5.45%) Apple
5 15 (5.45%) SAP
6 14 (5.09%) Oracle
7 11 (4.00%) ServiceNow
8 10 (3.64%) ArcSight
9 9 (3.27%) Cisco
9 9 (3.27%) Wyse
10 6 (2.18%) Ping Identity
11 5 (1.82%) F5
11 5 (1.82%) Polycom
12 4 (1.45%) Aruba
12 4 (1.45%) Google
12 4 (1.45%) HP
12 4 (1.45%) MobileIron
13 3 (1.09%) Bomgar
13 3 (1.09%) Palo Alto