Active Directory Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Microsoft Active Directory
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring Active Directory skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 63 43 20
Rank change year-on-year -20 -23 +3
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 28 43 113
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 2.54% 3.60% 6.96%
As % of the System Software category 22.22% 33.59% 44.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 35 88
10th Percentile £200 £175 £175
25th Percentile £332 £213 £231
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £403 £450 £325
Median % change year-on-year -10.56% +38.46% +18.18%
75th Percentile £497 £500 £400
90th Percentile £586 £636 £506
North West median daily rate £342 £406 £288
% change year-on-year -15.88% +41.30% -11.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 13
10th Percentile - £29.05 £16.49
25th Percentile - £29.13 £17.75
Median hourly rate £20.00 £30.00 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +62.16% -7.80%
75th Percentile - £31.63 £19.75
90th Percentile - £32.15 £22.95
North West median hourly rate £18.87 £22.09 £18.50
% change year-on-year -14.58% +19.41% -5.13%

All System Software Skills
Manchester

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 Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 126 128 256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 11.44% 10.71% 15.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 90 81 204
10th Percentile £313 £213 £222
25th Percentile £363 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £579 £575 £538
90th Percentile £651 £663 £650
North West median daily rate £430 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -13.91% +11.00% +5.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 23
10th Percentile - £29.05 £15.75
25th Percentile - £29.13 £16.27
Median hourly rate £20.00 £30.00 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +62.16% -68.38%
75th Percentile - £31.63 £35.31
90th Percentile - £32.15 £63.75
North West median hourly rate £18.94 £22.09 £19.00
% change year-on-year -14.28% +16.26% -5.00%

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

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

Active Directory job vacancy trend in Manchester

Active Directory
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Active Directory.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Active Directory in Manchester over the 6 months to 14 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Active Directory in Manchester

Active Directory
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Active Directory.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

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 Manchester region over the 6 months to 14 November 2025. 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
Bolton - 3 - - 3
Ashton-under-Lyne - 1 - - 1
Active Directory
North West

Active Directory
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 (28.57%) SharePoint
2 6 (21.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (10.71%) IIS
3 3 (10.71%) WebSphere
4 2 (7.14%) Apache
4 2 (7.14%) iPlanet
4 2 (7.14%) JBoss
4 2 (7.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 17 (60.71%) Azure
1 17 (60.71%) Microsoft 365
2 13 (46.43%) Entra ID
3 6 (21.43%) AWS
4 3 (10.71%) OneDrive
4 3 (10.71%) SaaS
5 2 (7.14%) Cloud Computing
5 2 (7.14%) GCP
6 1 (3.57%) Azure Sentinel
6 1 (3.57%) Azure Stack
6 1 (3.57%) IaaS
6 1 (3.57%) Nutanix
6 1 (3.57%) OpenShift
6 1 (3.57%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (14.29%) DNS
1 4 (14.29%) TCP/IP
1 4 (14.29%) VPN
2 3 (10.71%) SAN
2 3 (10.71%) VLAN
3 2 (7.14%) iSCSI
3 2 (7.14%) Kerberos
3 2 (7.14%) Remote Desktop
3 2 (7.14%) SSL
3 2 (7.14%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (3.57%) DHCP
4 1 (3.57%) Firewall
4 1 (3.57%) IP Telephony
4 1 (3.57%) LAN
4 1 (3.57%) Network Security
4 1 (3.57%) VoIP
4 1 (3.57%) WAN
4 1 (3.57%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (7.14%) Oracle Database
1 2 (7.14%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (7.14%) Bitbucket Server
1 2 (7.14%) CA Release Automation
1 2 (7.14%) Git
1 2 (7.14%) Jenkins
2 1 (3.57%) JIRA
2 1 (3.57%) MSI
2 1 (3.57%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 7 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 5 (17.86%) Finance
3 4 (14.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (10.71%) Public Sector
5 2 (7.14%) Retail
6 1 (3.57%) Banking
6 1 (3.57%) Italian Language
6 1 (3.57%) Military
6 1 (3.57%) Polish Language
6 1 (3.57%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 9 (32.14%) Support Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) 2nd Line Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) 2nd Line Support
2 4 (14.29%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) IT Support
2 4 (14.29%) Senior
3 3 (10.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 3 (10.71%) IT Engineer
3 3 (10.71%) IT Support Engineer
3 3 (10.71%) Security Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Administrator
4 2 (7.14%) Lead
4 2 (7.14%) Microsoft 365 Administrator
4 2 (7.14%) Platform Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Server Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Storage Engineer
5 1 (3.57%) Cybersecurity Specialist
5 1 (3.57%) DevOps Engineer
5 1 (3.57%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (10.71%) LDAP
1 3 (10.71%) OAuth
1 3 (10.71%) OpenID
1 3 (10.71%) SAML
2 2 (7.14%) Middleware
3 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Graph
3 1 (3.57%) OAuth2
3 1 (3.57%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 3 (10.71%) Clustering
1 3 (10.71%) Onboarding
1 3 (10.71%) Replication
2 2 (7.14%) Data Centre
2 2 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
2 2 (7.14%) Driving Licence
2 2 (7.14%) Legacy Applications
3 1 (3.57%) Cloud Security Posture
3 1 (3.57%) Enterprise Storage
3 1 (3.57%) IBM XIV
3 1 (3.57%) Private Cloud
3 1 (3.57%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 15 (53.57%) Windows
2 7 (25.00%) Windows Server
3 5 (17.86%) Linux
4 3 (10.71%) Unix
5 2 (7.14%) Windows 10
6 1 (3.57%) Apple iOS
6 1 (3.57%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (3.57%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (14.29%) Kalman Filter
1 4 (14.29%) Migration
1 4 (14.29%) Project Delivery
1 4 (14.29%) Web Filtering
2 3 (10.71%) Cybersecurity
2 3 (10.71%) DevOps
2 3 (10.71%) Identity Access Management
2 3 (10.71%) Identity Management
2 3 (10.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 3 (10.71%) Stakeholder Management
2 3 (10.71%) Task Automation
3 2 (7.14%) Data Protection
3 2 (7.14%) Disaster Recovery
3 2 (7.14%) Infrastructure Transformation
3 2 (7.14%) ITIL
3 2 (7.14%) ITSM
3 2 (7.14%) Mentoring
3 2 (7.14%) Problem-Solving
3 2 (7.14%) Re-Platforming
3 2 (7.14%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 5 (17.86%) PowerShell
2 2 (7.14%) Groovy
2 2 (7.14%) SQL
3 1 (3.57%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 3 (10.71%) Microsoft Certification
2 2 (7.14%) Security Cleared
3 1 (3.57%) AWS Certification
3 1 (3.57%) Azure Certification
3 1 (3.57%) CISSP
3 1 (3.57%) CompTIA Security+
3 1 (3.57%) Degree
3 1 (3.57%) MCSA
3 1 (3.57%) MCSE
3 1 (3.57%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (7.14%) GDPR
1 2 (7.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (3.57%) NCSC
2 1 (3.57%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (10.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (7.14%) Virtual Servers
3 1 (3.57%) Docker
3 1 (3.57%) Hyper-V
3 1 (3.57%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 1 (3.57%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 12 (42.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 5 (17.86%) SCCM
3 3 (10.71%) Jamf Pro
3 3 (10.71%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (7.14%) CA Single Sign-On
4 2 (7.14%) CA Wily
5 1 (3.57%) Ansible
5 1 (3.57%) CASB
5 1 (3.57%) Kubernetes
5 1 (3.57%) Nessus
5 1 (3.57%) Progress Chef
5 1 (3.57%) Terraform
5 1 (3.57%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 17 (60.71%) Microsoft
2 6 (21.43%) Cisco
3 5 (17.86%) Citrix
3 5 (17.86%) VMware
4 4 (14.29%) IBM
5 3 (10.71%) Meraki
5 3 (10.71%) Oracle
5 3 (10.71%) Splunk
6 2 (7.14%) AppDynamics
6 2 (7.14%) Blue Prism
6 2 (7.14%) Broadcom
6 2 (7.14%) Dell
6 2 (7.14%) NetApp
6 2 (7.14%) SolarWinds
6 2 (7.14%) Veeam
7 1 (3.57%) Apple
7 1 (3.57%) F5
7 1 (3.57%) HP
7 1 (3.57%) Ivanti
7 1 (3.57%) Remedy