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 24 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 63 51 20
Rank change year-on-year -12 -31 +5
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 24 34 119
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 2.26% 2.96% 7.11%
As % of the System Software category 22.22% 30.36% 42.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 31 90
10th Percentile £200 £191 £175
25th Percentile £206 £221 £211
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £405 £450 £338
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +33.33% +22.73%
75th Percentile £500 £500 £400
90th Percentile £590 £643 £478
North West median daily rate £360 £450 £288
% change year-on-year -20.00% +56.52% -5.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 14
10th Percentile - - £16.36
25th Percentile - £29.50 £17.53
Median hourly rate £20.00 £31.00 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year -35.48% +69.86% -9.34%
75th Percentile - £32.50 £19.69
90th Percentile - - £22.55
North West median hourly rate £18.31 £22.09 £18.25
% change year-on-year -17.11% +21.04% -6.41%

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 108 112 279
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 10.17% 9.74% 16.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 77 75 214
10th Percentile £312 £220 £206
25th Percentile £400 £369 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £500 £425
Median % change year-on-year -5.80% +17.65% -14.14%
75th Percentile £588 £586 £538
90th Percentile £671 £666 £670
North West median daily rate £435 £500 £438
% change year-on-year -13.00% +14.29% -0.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 25
10th Percentile - - £15.75
25th Percentile - £29.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £20.00 £31.00 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.48% +72.22% -62.11%
75th Percentile - £32.50 £23.75
90th Percentile - - £63.75
North West median hourly rate £18.87 £23.14 £18.50
% change year-on-year -18.44% +25.05% -8.10%

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 24 October 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 24 October 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 - 2 - - 8
Ashton-under-Lyne - 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 5 (20.83%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (20.83%) SharePoint
2 3 (12.50%) IIS
2 3 (12.50%) WebSphere
3 2 (8.33%) Apache
3 2 (8.33%) iPlanet
3 2 (8.33%) JBoss
3 2 (8.33%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 1 (4.17%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 13 (54.17%) Azure
1 13 (54.17%) Microsoft 365
2 8 (33.33%) Entra ID
3 6 (25.00%) AWS
4 3 (12.50%) SaaS
5 2 (8.33%) GCP
6 1 (4.17%) Azure Stack
6 1 (4.17%) IaaS
6 1 (4.17%) Nutanix
6 1 (4.17%) OneDrive
6 1 (4.17%) OpenShift
6 1 (4.17%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (16.67%) DNS
1 4 (16.67%) TCP/IP
1 4 (16.67%) VPN
2 3 (12.50%) SAN
2 3 (12.50%) VLAN
3 2 (8.33%) iSCSI
3 2 (8.33%) Kerberos
3 2 (8.33%) Remote Desktop
3 2 (8.33%) SSL
3 2 (8.33%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (4.17%) DHCP
4 1 (4.17%) Firewall
4 1 (4.17%) IP Telephony
4 1 (4.17%) LAN
4 1 (4.17%) Network Security
4 1 (4.17%) VoIP
4 1 (4.17%) WAN
4 1 (4.17%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (8.33%) Oracle Database
1 2 (8.33%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (8.33%) Bitbucket Server
1 2 (8.33%) CA Release Automation
1 2 (8.33%) Git
1 2 (8.33%) Jenkins
2 1 (4.17%) MSI
2 1 (4.17%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 7 (29.17%) Social Skills
2 5 (20.83%) Finance
3 3 (12.50%) Public Sector
4 2 (8.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (4.17%) Banking
5 1 (4.17%) Italian Language
5 1 (4.17%) Military
5 1 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (4.17%) Polish Language
5 1 (4.17%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 7 (29.17%) Support Engineer
2 4 (16.67%) IT Engineer
2 4 (16.67%) IT Support
2 4 (16.67%) Senior
3 3 (12.50%) 2nd Line Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) 2nd Line Support
3 3 (12.50%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) IT Support Engineer
3 3 (12.50%) Security Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Deployment Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Lead
4 2 (8.33%) Platform Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Server Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Storage Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Windows Deployment Engineer
4 2 (8.33%) Windows Engineer
5 1 (4.17%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (12.50%) LDAP
2 2 (8.33%) Middleware
2 2 (8.33%) OAuth
2 2 (8.33%) OpenID
2 2 (8.33%) SAML
3 1 (4.17%) Microsoft Graph
3 1 (4.17%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 3 (12.50%) Clustering
1 3 (12.50%) Onboarding
1 3 (12.50%) Replication
2 2 (8.33%) Data Centre
3 1 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 1 (4.17%) Cloud Security Posture
3 1 (4.17%) Data Protection Act
3 1 (4.17%) Enterprise Storage
3 1 (4.17%) IBM XIV
3 1 (4.17%) Legacy Applications
3 1 (4.17%) Private Cloud
3 1 (4.17%) Security Posture
3 1 (4.17%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 16 (66.67%) Windows
2 8 (33.33%) Windows Server
3 5 (20.83%) Linux
4 3 (12.50%) Unix
4 3 (12.50%) Windows 10
5 1 (4.17%) Apple iOS
5 1 (4.17%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (4.17%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (16.67%) Project Delivery
2 3 (12.50%) DevOps
2 3 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 3 (12.50%) ITIL
2 3 (12.50%) Kalman Filter
2 3 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
2 3 (12.50%) Web Filtering
3 2 (8.33%) CI/CD
3 2 (8.33%) Customer Service
3 2 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
3 2 (8.33%) Identity Access Management
3 2 (8.33%) Infrastructure Transformation
3 2 (8.33%) Mentoring
3 2 (8.33%) Migration
3 2 (8.33%) Re-Platforming
3 2 (8.33%) Risk Management
4 1 (4.17%) Containerisation
4 1 (4.17%) Deployment Automation
4 1 (4.17%) Platform Engineering
4 1 (4.17%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 3 (12.50%) PowerShell
2 2 (8.33%) Groovy
2 2 (8.33%) SQL
3 1 (4.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 2 (8.33%) Degree
1 2 (8.33%) Microsoft Certification
1 2 (8.33%) Security Cleared
2 1 (4.17%) AWS Certification
2 1 (4.17%) Azure Certification
2 1 (4.17%) CISSP
2 1 (4.17%) CompTIA Security+
2 1 (4.17%) DBS Check
2 1 (4.17%) MCSA
2 1 (4.17%) MCSE
2 1 (4.17%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.17%) NCSC
1 1 (4.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (8.33%) Virtual Servers
3 1 (4.17%) Docker
3 1 (4.17%) Hyper-V
3 1 (4.17%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 1 (4.17%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 10 (41.67%) Microsoft Intune
2 6 (25.00%) SCCM
3 3 (12.50%) Jamf Pro
4 2 (8.33%) CA Single Sign-On
4 2 (8.33%) CA Wily
4 2 (8.33%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (4.17%) Ansible
5 1 (4.17%) CASB
5 1 (4.17%) Kubernetes
5 1 (4.17%) Nessus
5 1 (4.17%) Progress Chef
5 1 (4.17%) Terraform
5 1 (4.17%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 15 (62.50%) Microsoft
2 5 (20.83%) Cisco
2 5 (20.83%) Citrix
2 5 (20.83%) VMware
3 4 (16.67%) IBM
4 3 (12.50%) Oracle
4 3 (12.50%) Splunk
5 2 (8.33%) AppDynamics
5 2 (8.33%) Blue Prism
5 2 (8.33%) Broadcom
5 2 (8.33%) Dell
5 2 (8.33%) Meraki
5 2 (8.33%) NetApp
5 2 (8.33%) SolarWinds
5 2 (8.33%) Veeam
6 1 (4.17%) Apple
6 1 (4.17%) CyberArk
6 1 (4.17%) QNAP
6 1 (4.17%) Tenable
6 1 (4.17%) Zscaler