Active Directory Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Microsoft Active Directory
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring Active Directory skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 50 31
Rank change year-on-year -36 -19 +3
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 53 72 129
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 2.19% 4.16% 5.89%
As % of the System Software category 33.54% 45.86% 49.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 36 48 99
10th Percentile £180 £212 £247
25th Percentile £206 £263 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £539 £450
Median % change year-on-year -21.19% +19.83% -9.09%
75th Percentile £578 £626 £639
90th Percentile £638 £696 £775
Central London median daily rate £425 £536 £450
% change year-on-year -20.71% +19.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 4
10th Percentile £19.41 £22.95 -
25th Percentile £19.64 £24.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £20.88 £28.50 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year -26.73% -8.80% -
75th Percentile £22.72 £108.88 £40.00
90th Percentile £23.31 £156.05 -
Central London median hourly rate £20.88 £26.45 £31.25
% change year-on-year -21.05% -15.36% +25.00%

All System Software Skills
City of London

Active Directory 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 City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 158 157 262
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 6.52% 9.07% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 109 112 190
10th Percentile £217 £227 £263
25th Percentile £410 £402 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £536 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.05% +2.10% -10.26%
75th Percentile £625 £641 £688
90th Percentile £670 £701 £775
Central London median daily rate £525 £525 £514
% change year-on-year - +2.19% -10.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 5
10th Percentile £19.72 £22.95 -
25th Percentile £20.43 £24.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £26.13 £28.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.31% -28.75% -20.00%
75th Percentile £38.18 £108.88 -
90th Percentile £51.11 £156.05 £46.15
Central London median hourly rate £26.13 £26.45 £40.00
% change year-on-year -1.20% -33.88% +6.67%

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Active Directory relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Active Directory job vacancy trend in the City of London

Active Directory
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Active Directory.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Active Directory in the City of London over the 6 months to 19 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Active Directory in the City of London

Active Directory
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Active Directory.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 8 (15.09%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (11.32%) SharePoint
3 2 (3.77%) IIS
4 1 (1.89%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.89%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 27 (50.94%) Azure
2 26 (49.06%) Entra ID
3 23 (43.40%) Microsoft 365
4 8 (15.09%) AWS
5 6 (11.32%) Power Platform
6 5 (9.43%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (7.55%) GitHub
8 3 (5.66%) GCP
8 3 (5.66%) IaaS
8 3 (5.66%) OpenShift
8 3 (5.66%) PaaS
8 3 (5.66%) PowerApps
9 2 (3.77%) Azure Monitor
9 2 (3.77%) Azure Stack
9 2 (3.77%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (3.77%) OneDrive
9 2 (3.77%) Power Automate
9 2 (3.77%) Serverless
10 1 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (1.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 18 (33.96%) DNS
2 15 (28.30%) DHCP
3 11 (20.75%) VPN
4 6 (11.32%) Firewall
5 4 (7.55%) TCP/IP
6 3 (5.66%) SMTP
7 1 (1.89%) Cisco ISE
7 1 (1.89%) DMZ
7 1 (1.89%) Internet
7 1 (1.89%) IPv4
7 1 (1.89%) IPv6
7 1 (1.89%) Network Security
7 1 (1.89%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (1.89%) TACACS
7 1 (1.89%) Unified Communications
7 1 (1.89%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (7.55%) Big Data
1 4 (7.55%) Power BI
1 4 (7.55%) SQL Server
2 3 (5.66%) Amazon RDS
2 3 (5.66%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (1.89%) Amazon Athena
3 1 (1.89%) Amazon QuickSight
3 1 (1.89%) Amazon Redshift
3 1 (1.89%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.89%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.89%) Oracle BI EE
3 1 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 5 (9.43%) JIRA
2 1 (1.89%) Artifactory
2 1 (1.89%) Cypress.io
2 1 (1.89%) Git
2 1 (1.89%) GitLab
2 1 (1.89%) Selenium
2 1 (1.89%) SpecFlow
General
1 21 (39.62%) Social Skills
2 8 (15.09%) Finance
3 6 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (5.66%) Public Sector
5 2 (3.77%) Banking
5 2 (3.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (3.77%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.89%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.89%) Front Office
6 1 (1.89%) International Banking
6 1 (1.89%) Law
6 1 (1.89%) Mandarin Language
6 1 (1.89%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.89%) Military
6 1 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.89%) Police
Job Titles
1 15 (28.30%) Support Engineer
2 8 (15.09%) Analyst
3 7 (13.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 7 (13.21%) IT Support
4 6 (11.32%) Active Directory Engineer
4 6 (11.32%) IT Engineer
4 6 (11.32%) IT Support Engineer
5 5 (9.43%) Infrastructure Support
5 5 (9.43%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 5 (9.43%) Senior
6 4 (7.55%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 4 (7.55%) Architect
6 4 (7.55%) Desktop Support
6 4 (7.55%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
7 3 (5.66%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
7 3 (5.66%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Support
7 3 (5.66%) Active Directory Support
7 3 (5.66%) Active Directory Support Engineer
7 3 (5.66%) IT Analyst
7 3 (5.66%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (7.55%) OpenID
1 4 (7.55%) REST
1 4 (7.55%) SAML
2 2 (3.77%) 802.1X
2 2 (3.77%) SailPoint
3 1 (1.89%) .NET
3 1 (1.89%) .NET Core
3 1 (1.89%) ASP.NET
3 1 (1.89%) Blazor
3 1 (1.89%) J2EE
3 1 (1.89%) JDBC
3 1 (1.89%) JSON
3 1 (1.89%) LDAP
3 1 (1.89%) Microsoft Graph
3 1 (1.89%) OAuth
3 1 (1.89%) Playwright
3 1 (1.89%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 9 (16.98%) PKI
2 8 (15.09%) Onboarding
3 5 (9.43%) Video Conferencing
4 3 (5.66%) Clustering
4 3 (5.66%) Data Centre
5 2 (3.77%) BYOD
5 2 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (3.77%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.89%) CMDB
6 1 (1.89%) Fat Client
6 1 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.89%) IoT
6 1 (1.89%) Life Science
6 1 (1.89%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 36 (67.92%) Windows
2 16 (30.19%) Windows Server
3 10 (18.87%) Mac OS
4 5 (9.43%) Windows 10
5 4 (7.55%) Linux
6 2 (3.77%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (1.89%) Android
7 1 (1.89%) Mac OS X
7 1 (1.89%) VMS
7 1 (1.89%) Windows 7
7 1 (1.89%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (22.64%) Problem-Solving
2 10 (18.87%) DevOps
3 9 (16.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 9 (16.98%) ITIL
4 7 (13.21%) AI
4 7 (13.21%) CI/CD
4 7 (13.21%) Identity Access Management
5 6 (11.32%) High Availability
6 5 (9.43%) Agile
6 5 (9.43%) Customer Service
6 5 (9.43%) Identity Management
6 5 (9.43%) Migration
6 5 (9.43%) Project Delivery
6 5 (9.43%) Service Delivery
7 4 (7.55%) Continuous Improvement
7 4 (7.55%) Infrastructure as Code
7 4 (7.55%) Machine Learning
7 4 (7.55%) Mentoring
7 4 (7.55%) Software Deployment
7 4 (7.55%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 15 (28.30%) PowerShell
2 6 (11.32%) Python
3 4 (7.55%) Bash
4 3 (5.66%) SQL
5 2 (3.77%) Java
6 1 (1.89%) C#
6 1 (1.89%) VB
Qualifications
1 7 (13.21%) Security Cleared
2 6 (11.32%) Microsoft Certification
3 5 (9.43%) Degree
4 4 (7.55%) DV Cleared
5 3 (5.66%) Azure Certification
6 2 (3.77%) Cisco Certification
6 2 (3.77%) CISM
6 2 (3.77%) CISSP
6 2 (3.77%) MCSE
6 2 (3.77%) SC Cleared
7 1 (1.89%) CCIE
7 1 (1.89%) CCNA
7 1 (1.89%) CCNP
7 1 (1.89%) ISTQB
7 1 (1.89%) MCSA
7 1 (1.89%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.66%) QA
2 2 (3.77%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (3.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.89%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.89%) GDPR
3 1 (1.89%) Government Security Classifications
3 1 (1.89%) HIPAA
3 1 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 8 (15.09%) VMware Infrastructure
2 6 (11.32%) Virtual Desktop
3 5 (9.43%) Docker
3 5 (9.43%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (7.55%) Hyper-V
5 3 (5.66%) BitLocker
5 3 (5.66%) Microsoft App-V
5 3 (5.66%) Terminal Services
6 1 (1.89%) Firmware
6 1 (1.89%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 14 (26.42%) Microsoft Intune
2 6 (11.32%) Ansible
3 5 (9.43%) Kubernetes
3 5 (9.43%) SCCM
3 5 (9.43%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (7.55%) Puppet
4 4 (7.55%) Terraform
4 4 (7.55%) vCenter Server
5 3 (5.66%) Nagios
5 3 (5.66%) vMotion
6 2 (3.77%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (1.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 1 (1.89%) FortiGate
7 1 (1.89%) Grafana
7 1 (1.89%) Nessus
7 1 (1.89%) Prometheus
7 1 (1.89%) Salt
7 1 (1.89%) TrustSec
Vendors
1 41 (77.36%) Microsoft
2 11 (20.75%) Citrix
3 8 (15.09%) VMware
4 6 (11.32%) ServiceNow
5 4 (7.55%) Cisco
5 4 (7.55%) Google
6 3 (5.66%) Apple
6 3 (5.66%) Bloomberg
6 3 (5.66%) HP
6 3 (5.66%) Symantec
7 2 (3.77%) Oracle
7 2 (3.77%) SAP
8 1 (1.89%) Databricks
8 1 (1.89%) EMC
8 1 (1.89%) Fortinet
8 1 (1.89%) ION Trading
8 1 (1.89%) Reuters
8 1 (1.89%) Tenable
8 1 (1.89%) Workday
8 1 (1.89%) Zscaler