Active Directory Contracts

Microsoft Active Directory
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Active Directory skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Active Directory over the 6 months to 28 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
28 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 33 31 48
Rank change year-on-year -2 +17 -2
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 2,228 3,249 4,371
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.20% 5.77% 4.95%
As % of the System Software category 47.72% 44.29% 37.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,568 2,358 3,138
10th Percentile £163 £163 £150
25th Percentile £220 £225 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £433 £400
Median % change year-on-year -1.73% +8.13% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £538
90th Percentile £675 £675 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £359 £282
% change year-on-year +11.50% +27.44% -13.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 126 235
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.60 £12.52
25th Percentile £14.16 £15.50 £14.00
Median hourly rate £17.50 £20.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +14.29% +7.83%
75th Percentile £23.75 £54.00 £22.25
90th Percentile £40.00 £66.00 £37.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.00 £18.06 £16.75
% change year-on-year -11.41% +7.82% +7.37%

All System Software Skills
UK

Active Directory 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 4,669 7,336 11,759
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.90% 13.04% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,254 5,180 8,443
10th Percentile £200 £201 £200
25th Percentile £350 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - +6.06%
75th Percentile £607 £638 £625
90th Percentile £688 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £450
% change year-on-year -0.84% +6.44% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 226 251 302
10th Percentile £14.06 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £14.74 £18.38 £14.81
Median hourly rate £23.80 £54.83 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.59% +188.58% -9.52%
75th Percentile £60.75 £67.50 £40.56
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.99 £57.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.25 £48.40 £17.50
% change year-on-year -54.03% +176.57% -4.21%

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Active Directory as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Active Directory.

Daily rate trend for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Active Directory over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Active Directory.

Hourly rate trend for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Active Directory over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Active Directory within the UK over the 6 months to 28 May 2024. 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 0 1,990 £425 -3.41% 1,036
UK excluding London -1 1,276 £400 +11.50% 839
London +5 832 £438 -11.52% 247
Work from Home 0 625 £475 - 371
South East +16 454 £513 +15.17% 211
North of England -9 249 £300 -4.00% 210
Midlands -1 166 £338 -10.00% 143
South West -13 165 £439 -12.15% 131
Scotland +19 136 £340 +21.43% 50
North West -10 135 £350 - 112
West Midlands -6 103 £350 -6.67% 85
Yorkshire -9 97 £286 +14.30% 82
East of England -16 96 £250 -28.57% 92
East Midlands +2 60 £300 +34.53% 58
Wales -12 16 £190 +2.01% 18
North East +12 15 £500 +78.57% 19
Northern Ireland -16 2 £363 +16.00% 3

Active Directory
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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
1 458 (20.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 190 (8.53%) SharePoint
3 55 (2.47%) IIS
4 46 (2.06%) Confluence
5 34 (1.53%) Skype for Business
6 29 (1.30%) Exchange Server 2010
7 28 (1.26%) Exchange Server 2013
8 18 (0.81%) CMS
9 15 (0.67%) Exchange Server 2007
10 11 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2003
11 8 (0.36%) Apache
11 8 (0.36%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 7 (0.31%) Tomcat
13 5 (0.22%) JBoss
13 5 (0.22%) nginx
14 4 (0.18%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 2 (0.090%) OpenStack
15 2 (0.090%) WordPress
16 1 (0.045%) SharePoint Server
16 1 (0.045%) WebSphere
Applications
1 235 (10.55%) Microsoft Office
2 71 (3.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 31 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.13%) Acrobat
5 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.090%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.090%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.045%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.045%) PTC Creo
7 1 (0.045%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.045%) Trello
7 1 (0.045%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 11 (0.49%) Teamcenter
2 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
4 4 (0.18%) Dynamics GP
5 2 (0.090%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.090%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.045%) assyst
6 1 (0.045%) BusinessWorks
6 1 (0.045%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.045%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.045%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 902 (40.48%) Azure
2 856 (38.42%) Microsoft 365
3 542 (24.33%) Entra ID
4 210 (9.43%) AWS
5 133 (5.97%) Azure DevOps
6 97 (4.35%) Azure Monitor
7 96 (4.31%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 91 (4.08%) OneDrive
9 69 (3.10%) PaaS
10 64 (2.87%) Power Platform
11 63 (2.83%) Azure Service Bus
12 53 (2.38%) IaaS
13 47 (2.11%) GCP
14 45 (2.02%) SaaS
15 43 (1.93%) Azure Storage
15 43 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
15 43 (1.93%) GitHub
16 37 (1.66%) Serverless
17 32 (1.44%) Azure Functions
17 32 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 363 (16.29%) DNS
2 243 (10.91%) Firewall
3 240 (10.77%) DHCP
4 130 (5.83%) VPN
5 105 (4.71%) SAN
6 94 (4.22%) LAN
7 91 (4.08%) WAN
8 78 (3.50%) TCP/IP
9 68 (3.05%) Wi-Fi
10 56 (2.51%) Wireless
11 55 (2.47%) SSL
12 43 (1.93%) Skype
13 37 (1.66%) VLAN
14 36 (1.62%) NAS
14 36 (1.62%) Network Security
14 36 (1.62%) Remote Desktop
15 28 (1.26%) VoIP
16 26 (1.17%) Kerberos
17 24 (1.08%) MPLS
18 20 (0.90%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (12.39%) SQL Server
2 46 (2.06%) MySQL
3 33 (1.48%) Power BI
4 29 (1.30%) Amazon RDS
4 29 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
5 27 (1.21%) NoSQL
6 26 (1.17%) Relational Database
7 25 (1.12%) Azure SQL Database
8 21 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
9 19 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
10 16 (0.72%) Hadoop
11 15 (0.67%) Oracle Database
11 15 (0.67%) RDBMS
11 15 (0.67%) Redis
12 7 (0.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 6 (0.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 5 (0.22%) Data Lake
15 4 (0.18%) Big Data
16 3 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
17 2 (0.090%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 99 (4.44%) Git
2 78 (3.50%) JIRA
3 33 (1.48%) Jenkins
4 27 (1.21%) Selenium
5 23 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
6 19 (0.85%) TeamCity
7 18 (0.81%) Robot Framework
8 16 (0.72%) Visual Studio
9 11 (0.49%) SpecFlow
9 11 (0.49%) WebDriver
10 10 (0.45%) GitLab
10 10 (0.45%) Postman
10 10 (0.45%) SonarQube
11 9 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 5 (0.22%) Bitbucket Server
12 5 (0.22%) CA Release Automation
12 5 (0.22%) Fiddler
12 5 (0.22%) Hudson
13 4 (0.18%) MSI
13 4 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 598 (26.84%) Social Skills
2 271 (12.16%) Finance
3 232 (10.41%) Public Sector
4 154 (6.91%) Analytical Skills
5 93 (4.17%) Banking
6 53 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.06%) Organisational Skills
8 45 (2.02%) Financial Institution
9 40 (1.80%) Manufacturing
10 37 (1.66%) Telecoms
11 31 (1.39%) Legal
12 30 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
13 29 (1.30%) Retail
14 26 (1.17%) Marketing
15 23 (1.03%) Back Office
16 21 (0.94%) Law
17 20 (0.90%) Military
18 17 (0.76%) French Language
19 15 (0.67%) Electronics
19 15 (0.67%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 277 (12.43%) Analyst
2 274 (12.30%) Support Engineer
3 240 (10.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 204 (9.16%) Senior
5 197 (8.84%) Architect
6 183 (8.21%) IT Support
7 143 (6.42%) Developer
8 123 (5.52%) IT Engineer
9 122 (5.48%) Service Analyst
10 119 (5.34%) Service Desk Analyst
11 103 (4.62%) 2nd Line Support
12 102 (4.58%) Desktop Support
13 88 (3.95%) Desktop Engineer
14 83 (3.73%) Support Analyst
15 81 (3.64%) Consultant
16 76 (3.41%) Senior Developer
17 73 (3.28%) IT Analyst
18 72 (3.23%) IT Support Engineer
19 70 (3.14%) Active Directory Engineer
20 69 (3.10%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (6.28%) .NET
2 120 (5.39%) XML
3 115 (5.16%) LDAP
4 97 (4.35%) SailPoint
4 97 (4.35%) Web Services
5 85 (3.82%) HTML
6 74 (3.32%) .NET Core
7 64 (2.87%) React
8 50 (2.24%) SAML
9 42 (1.89%) SOAP
10 41 (1.84%) CSS
11 40 (1.80%) JSP
12 39 (1.75%) Servlets
12 39 (1.75%) SPML
13 35 (1.57%) ASP.NET
14 34 (1.53%) OpenID
15 33 (1.48%) .NET Framework
16 32 (1.44%) AngularJS
17 28 (1.26%) JDBC
18 26 (1.17%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 187 (8.39%) PKI
2 92 (4.13%) Data Centre
3 75 (3.37%) Onboarding
3 75 (3.37%) Replication
4 73 (3.28%) Product Ownership
5 57 (2.56%) Clustering
6 55 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
7 51 (2.29%) Management Information System
8 45 (2.02%) Video Conferencing
9 34 (1.53%) iPhone
10 25 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (1.12%) Driving Licence
11 24 (1.08%) iPad
11 24 (1.08%) Smartphone
12 20 (0.90%) CMDB
13 19 (0.85%) Mobile App
14 18 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 17 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
16 16 (0.72%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
16 16 (0.72%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,371 (61.54%) Windows
2 575 (25.81%) Windows Server
3 491 (22.04%) Windows 10
4 256 (11.49%) Linux
5 182 (8.17%) Windows Server 2012
6 174 (7.81%) Windows Server 2016
7 159 (7.14%) Windows Server 2019
8 93 (4.17%) Windows 7
9 91 (4.08%) Apple iOS
10 63 (2.83%) Unix
11 57 (2.56%) Mac OS
12 53 (2.38%) Windows Server 2008
13 52 (2.33%) Android
14 40 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 40 (1.80%) Ubuntu
15 33 (1.48%) VMS
16 24 (1.08%) Windows Server 2003
17 18 (0.81%) Windows XP
18 17 (0.76%) Windows NT
19 15 (0.67%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 347 (15.57%) Customer Service
2 346 (15.53%) ITIL
3 291 (13.06%) Problem-Solving
4 285 (12.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 268 (12.03%) Migration
6 267 (11.98%) Agile
7 260 (11.67%) DevOps
8 186 (8.35%) CI/CD
9 131 (5.88%) Identity Access Management
10 111 (4.98%) RBAC
11 110 (4.94%) Disaster Recovery
12 108 (4.85%) Cybersecurity
13 103 (4.62%) Service Management
14 94 (4.22%) Scrum
15 93 (4.17%) Mobile Device Management
16 89 (3.99%) Change Management
17 86 (3.86%) Identity Management
18 85 (3.82%) Service Delivery
19 76 (3.41%) Infrastructure as Code
20 72 (3.23%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 468 (21.01%) PowerShell
2 223 (10.01%) SQL
3 136 (6.10%) C#
4 129 (5.79%) Python
5 93 (4.17%) JavaScript
6 92 (4.13%) Bicep
7 79 (3.55%) Java
8 38 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 27 (1.21%) VB
10 26 (1.17%) VBScript
11 23 (1.03%) Bash
12 12 (0.54%) PL/SQL
13 11 (0.49%) C
14 10 (0.45%) C++
14 10 (0.45%) Perl
15 9 (0.40%) R
16 8 (0.36%) Go
16 8 (0.36%) PHP
17 7 (0.31%) Shell Script
18 6 (0.27%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 534 (23.97%) Security Cleared
2 337 (15.13%) SC Cleared
3 276 (12.39%) Degree
4 215 (9.65%) DV Cleared
5 146 (6.55%) Microsoft Certification
6 57 (2.56%) MCSE
7 51 (2.29%) MCSA
8 48 (2.15%) Azure Certification
9 37 (1.66%) A+ Certification
9 37 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
10 34 (1.53%) CCNA
10 34 (1.53%) ITIL Certification
11 28 (1.26%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 27 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
13 26 (1.17%) DBS Check
13 26 (1.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 25 (1.12%) AWS Certification
14 25 (1.12%) BPSS Clearance
15 20 (0.90%) CISSP
16 19 (0.85%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 105 (4.71%) SLA
2 56 (2.51%) QA
3 21 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (0.85%) NIST
5 17 (0.76%) PCI DSS
6 16 (0.72%) GDPR
6 16 (0.72%) WCAG
7 14 (0.63%) Accessibility
8 12 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 7 (0.31%) RMADS
11 6 (0.27%) ISO 9001
12 5 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
12 5 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 4 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 3 (0.13%) COBIT
15 2 (0.090%) Data Quality
15 2 (0.090%) GRC
15 2 (0.090%) NCSC
15 2 (0.090%) PMO
System Software
1 313 (14.05%) VMware Infrastructure
2 137 (6.15%) Hyper-V
3 87 (3.90%) Virtual Machines
4 66 (2.96%) VMware ESXi
5 64 (2.87%) vSphere
6 63 (2.83%) Virtual Desktop
7 44 (1.97%) Docker
8 39 (1.75%) IAG
8 39 (1.75%) XenApp
9 38 (1.71%) ACF2
9 38 (1.71%) RACF
10 24 (1.08%) Firmware
11 22 (0.99%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.99%) XenDesktop
12 19 (0.85%) BitLocker
12 19 (0.85%) NFS
13 17 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
13 17 (0.76%) VMware Workstation
14 16 (0.72%) HDFS
15 11 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 385 (17.28%) SCCM
2 246 (11.04%) Microsoft Intune
3 117 (5.25%) WSUS
4 89 (3.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 84 (3.77%) Single Sign-On
6 80 (3.59%) Terraform
7 79 (3.55%) Kubernetes
8 66 (2.96%) SCOM
9 60 (2.69%) Ansible
10 50 (2.24%) vCenter Server
11 42 (1.89%) Jamf Pro
12 25 (1.12%) NetBackup
13 20 (0.90%) EMC NetWorker
14 19 (0.85%) Kibana
15 18 (0.81%) Nessus
16 17 (0.76%) Failover Clustering
16 17 (0.76%) Sysprep
17 16 (0.72%) Microsoft Clustering
18 12 (0.54%) FortiGate
18 12 (0.54%) logstash
Vendors
1 1,173 (52.65%) Microsoft
2 427 (19.17%) VMware
3 201 (9.02%) ServiceNow
4 200 (8.98%) Citrix
5 123 (5.52%) Oracle
6 116 (5.21%) Cisco
7 107 (4.80%) Apple
8 85 (3.82%) CyberArk
9 62 (2.78%) HP
10 61 (2.74%) Veeam
11 58 (2.60%) Dell
12 48 (2.15%) Okta
13 41 (1.84%) SAP
14 38 (1.71%) EMC
15 37 (1.66%) Red Hat
16 32 (1.44%) CA
17 28 (1.26%) Palo Alto
18 26 (1.17%) Ivanti
18 26 (1.17%) Sybase
19 25 (1.12%) Qualys