Active Directory Contract Job Trends in the East of England

Microsoft Active Directory
England > East of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the East of England requiring Active Directory skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 16 28
Rank change year-on-year -16 +12 -11
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 111 105 79
As % of all contract jobs in the East of England 4.78% 8.12% 5.19%
As % of the System Software category 46.06% 59.32% 62.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 56 38
10th Percentile £163 £198 £177
25th Percentile £180 £225 £220
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £275 £463 £258
Median % change year-on-year -40.54% +79.61% -35.63%
75th Percentile £488 £575 £378
90th Percentile £575 - £506
England median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.65% -4.44% +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 11 14
10th Percentile £65.45 £12.97 -
25th Percentile £68.75 £14.99 -
Median hourly rate £70.95 £15.14 £14.16
Median % change year-on-year +368.59% +6.92% -7.15%
75th Percentile £88.62 £18.25 -
90th Percentile £92.11 £21.21 £15.28
England median hourly rate £52.54 £23.00 £19.18
% change year-on-year +128.41% +19.92% -1.64%

All System Software Skills
East of England

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 East of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 241 177 126
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East of England 10.37% 13.69% 8.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 133 87 56
10th Percentile £163 £198 £183
25th Percentile £240 £266 £224
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £483 £350
Median % change year-on-year -6.74% +37.86% -22.22%
75th Percentile £523 £575 £500
90th Percentile £600 £605 £588
England median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 33 21
10th Percentile £60.93 £14.99 -
25th Percentile £68.44 £17.33 -
Median hourly rate £70.72 £66.00 £14.16
Median % change year-on-year +7.16% +366.10% -79.77%
75th Percentile £76.00 £88.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £90.21 £91.50 £73.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £36.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +80.56% +48.88% -49.48%

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend in the East of England

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

Active Directory job vacancy trend in the East of England

Active Directory
Daily Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Active Directory.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Daily Rate Histogram in the East of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Active Directory in the East of England over the 6 months to 14 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Active Directory in the East of England

Active Directory
Hourly Rate Trend in the East of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Active Directory.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East of England citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Hourly Rate Histogram in the East of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Active Directory in the East of England over the 6 months to 14 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Active Directory in the East of England

Active Directory
Contract Job Locations in the East of England

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 East of England region over the 6 months to 14 September 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
Hertfordshire -1 55 £500 -9.09% 66
Norfolk +4 21 £175 - 7
Essex -3 17 £275 +20.88% 15
Cambridgeshire -4 10 £475 +6.74% 22
Bedfordshire -14 5 £380 +21.12% 4
Suffolk -19 3 £225 +2.27% 1
Active Directory
England

Active Directory
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the East of England 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 17 (15.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (6.31%) IIS
3 4 (3.60%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.80%) Confluence
Applications
1 5 (4.50%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (4.50%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 52 (46.85%) Microsoft 365
2 28 (25.23%) Azure
3 21 (18.92%) Entra ID
4 6 (5.41%) AWS
5 5 (4.50%) Cohesity
5 5 (4.50%) Mimecast
6 4 (3.60%) SaaS
7 2 (1.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (1.80%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (1.80%) Amazon S3
7 2 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (1.80%) AWS CloudTrail
7 2 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
7 2 (1.80%) AWS Step Functions
7 2 (1.80%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (1.80%) Azure Monitor
7 2 (1.80%) Azure Sentinel
7 2 (1.80%) Datadog
7 2 (1.80%) Serverless
7 2 (1.80%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 20 (18.02%) Firewall
2 18 (16.22%) DNS
3 10 (9.01%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (8.11%) DHCP
5 8 (7.21%) WAN
6 7 (6.31%) HTTP
6 7 (6.31%) NAS
7 6 (5.41%) LAN
7 6 (5.41%) VPN
8 5 (4.50%) Skype
8 5 (4.50%) TCP/IP
9 4 (3.60%) Network Security
10 3 (2.70%) Wireless
11 2 (1.80%) Cisco ISE
11 2 (1.80%) iSCSI
11 2 (1.80%) SAN
11 2 (1.80%) SSL
12 1 (0.90%) Remote Desktop
12 1 (0.90%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.90%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 6 (5.41%) Git
2 5 (4.50%) GitLab
2 5 (4.50%) Jenkins
3 4 (3.60%) JIRA
General
1 50 (45.05%) Social Skills
2 11 (9.91%) Documentation Skills
3 7 (6.31%) Aerospace
4 6 (5.41%) Back Office
5 5 (4.50%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.70%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.80%) Law
7 2 (1.80%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.90%) Advertising
8 1 (0.90%) Finance
8 1 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.90%) Retail
8 1 (0.90%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 33 (29.73%) IT Support
1 33 (29.73%) Support Engineer
2 29 (26.13%) IT Engineer
3 28 (25.23%) IT Support Engineer
4 12 (10.81%) Windows Engineer
5 11 (9.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 9 (8.11%) Security Engineer
7 7 (6.31%) 2nd Line Engineer
7 7 (6.31%) 2nd Line Support
7 7 (6.31%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
7 7 (6.31%) Consultant
7 7 (6.31%) Cybersecurity Engineer
8 6 (5.41%) 1st/2nd Line Support
8 6 (5.41%) 1st/2nd Line Support Engineer
8 6 (5.41%) Administrator
9 5 (4.50%) Lead
10 4 (3.60%) Analyst
10 4 (3.60%) Applications Support
10 4 (3.60%) Architect
10 4 (3.60%) Linux Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (14.41%) LDAP
2 7 (6.31%) JSON
2 7 (6.31%) Regular Expression
3 5 (4.50%) Terraform
4 4 (3.60%) Middleware
4 4 (3.60%) SailPoint
5 2 (1.80%) 802.1X
6 1 (0.90%) OAuth
6 1 (0.90%) OAuth2
6 1 (0.90%) OpenID
6 1 (0.90%) REST
6 1 (0.90%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (9.01%) Security Posture
2 8 (7.21%) Onboarding
3 7 (6.31%) Cyber Threat
4 6 (5.41%) Driving Licence
4 6 (5.41%) PKI
5 5 (4.50%) Smartcard
5 5 (4.50%) YubiKey
6 4 (3.60%) Data Centre
6 4 (3.60%) Virtual Team
7 3 (2.70%) CMDB
7 3 (2.70%) Management Information System
7 3 (2.70%) NHS
8 2 (1.80%) CSOC
8 2 (1.80%) Security Operations Centre
9 1 (0.90%) Cyber Defence
9 1 (0.90%) Cyber Kill Chain
9 1 (0.90%) Insider Threat
9 1 (0.90%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.90%) Renewable Energy
9 1 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 89 (80.18%) Windows
2 39 (35.14%) Windows Server
3 29 (26.13%) Windows 10
4 12 (10.81%) Linux
5 6 (5.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (4.50%) Mac OS
7 4 (3.60%) CentOS
7 4 (3.60%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (2.70%) Android
9 1 (0.90%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.90%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.90%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 27 (24.32%) ITIL
2 19 (17.12%) Root Cause Analysis
3 18 (16.22%) Cybersecurity
4 15 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
5 13 (11.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 13 (11.71%) SIEM
6 12 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 12 (10.81%) Incident Response
7 11 (9.91%) Configuration Management
7 11 (9.91%) Migration
8 10 (9.01%) Incident Management
9 9 (8.11%) Customer Service
9 9 (8.11%) Network Management
9 9 (8.11%) Roadmaps
10 8 (7.21%) AI
10 8 (7.21%) Data Modelling
10 8 (7.21%) Identity Access Management
11 7 (6.31%) Machine Learning
11 7 (6.31%) Network Packet Capture
11 7 (6.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 14 (12.61%) PowerShell
2 9 (8.11%) Python
3 4 (3.60%) MATLAB
3 4 (3.60%) Shell Script
4 3 (2.70%) Bash
5 2 (1.80%) Groovy
6 1 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 46 (41.44%) Security Cleared
2 26 (23.42%) DV Cleared
3 22 (19.82%) SC Cleared
4 6 (5.41%) Degree
5 2 (1.80%) CCNA
5 2 (1.80%) CCNP
5 2 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
5 2 (1.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 2 (1.80%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 1 (0.90%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.90%) CISM
6 1 (0.90%) CISSP
6 1 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (13.51%) SLA
2 4 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (2.70%) GDPR
3 3 (2.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 2 (1.80%) NIST
4 2 (1.80%) QA
System Software
1 15 (13.51%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (11.71%) Hyper-V
3 7 (6.31%) NFS
3 7 (6.31%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (1.80%) Squid
4 2 (1.80%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.90%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 24 (21.62%) Microsoft Intune
2 10 (9.01%) SCCM
3 9 (8.11%) Ansible
4 5 (4.50%) Nessus
4 5 (4.50%) WSUS
5 4 (3.60%) Check_MK
5 4 (3.60%) Podman
5 4 (3.60%) Red Hat Satellite
6 3 (2.70%) vCenter Server
7 2 (1.80%) SCOM
8 1 (0.90%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.90%) Packer
8 1 (0.90%) Puppet
8 1 (0.90%) QRadar
Vendors
1 60 (54.05%) Microsoft
2 20 (18.02%) VMware
3 6 (5.41%) Citrix
3 6 (5.41%) Meraki
3 6 (5.41%) Red Hat
3 6 (5.41%) Sophos
4 5 (4.50%) Adobe
4 5 (4.50%) Synology
4 5 (4.50%) Tenable
4 5 (4.50%) Ubiquiti
5 3 (2.70%) Cisco
6 2 (1.80%) Infoblox
6 2 (1.80%) PagerDuty
6 2 (1.80%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.80%) Trend Micro
7 1 (0.90%) Apple
7 1 (0.90%) CyberArk
7 1 (0.90%) IBM
7 1 (0.90%) McAfee
7 1 (0.90%) SOTI