Active Directory Engineer Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Microsoft Active Directory Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Microsoft Active Directory Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 April 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 428 299 363
Rank change year-on-year -129 +64 +64
Contract jobs requiring an Active Directory Engineer 10 32 42
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.043% 0.25% 0.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.047% 0.27% 0.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 29 31
10th Percentile £406 £245 £134
25th Percentile £430 £340 £181
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £435 £225
Median % change year-on-year +14.94% +93.33% -51.35%
75th Percentile £545 £553 £424
90th Percentile £605 £609 £588
UK median daily rate £500 £430 £400
% change year-on-year +16.28% +7.50% -10.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 1
Median hourly rate - £27.94 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year - -44.12% -
UK median hourly rate - £27.94 £31.58
% change year-on-year - -11.53% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 21,472 11,783 19,294
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.91% 92.34% 92.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,685 7,616 11,880
10th Percentile £273 £213 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £588 £576 £598
90th Percentile £675 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,363 794 2,186
10th Percentile £14.38 £14.20 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.68 £18.21 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.00 £29.53 £36.27
Median % change year-on-year +45.64% -18.60% -14.17%
75th Percentile £65.60 £65.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £76.03 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £30.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.73% -13.00% -22.22%

Active Directory Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Active Directory Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Active Directory Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Active Directory Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Active Directory Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Active Directory Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Active Directory Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Active Directory Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 19 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Active Directory Engineer in the UK excluding London

Active Directory Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Active Directory Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Active Directory Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Active Directory Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Active Directory Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 19 April 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
South East -49 8 £500 -9.09% 3
South West -28 1 - - 1
West Midlands -65 1 - -
Midlands -72 1 - -
Active Directory Engineer
UK

Active Directory Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 19 April 2026, Active Directory Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Active Directory Engineer in the job title.

1 8 (80.00%) Active Directory
1 8 (80.00%) Entra ID
2 7 (70.00%) Azure
3 5 (50.00%) RBAC
4 4 (40.00%) B2C
4 4 (40.00%) DevOps
4 4 (40.00%) Identity Management
4 4 (40.00%) Microsoft
4 4 (40.00%) Problem-Solving
4 4 (40.00%) Windows
4 4 (40.00%) Windows Server
5 3 (30.00%) .NET
5 3 (30.00%) .NET Core
5 3 (30.00%) AI
5 3 (30.00%) Analytics
5 3 (30.00%) API Management
5 3 (30.00%) ARM Templates
5 3 (30.00%) Azure API Management
5 3 (30.00%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (30.00%) Azure Functions
5 3 (30.00%) Azure Monitor
5 3 (30.00%) Bash
5 3 (30.00%) C#
5 3 (30.00%) CI/CD
5 3 (30.00%) CRM
5 3 (30.00%) Data Governance
5 3 (30.00%) Data Quality
5 3 (30.00%) DevSecOps
5 3 (30.00%) DNS
5 3 (30.00%) GitHub

Active Directory Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 1 (10.00%) Microsoft Exchange
Cloud Services
1 8 (80.00%) Entra ID
2 7 (70.00%) Azure
3 3 (30.00%) Azure API Management
3 3 (30.00%) Azure DevOps
3 3 (30.00%) Azure Functions
3 3 (30.00%) Azure Monitor
3 3 (30.00%) GitHub
3 3 (30.00%) GitHub Actions
3 3 (30.00%) Serverless
4 2 (20.00%) AWS
5 1 (10.00%) Azure Sentinel
5 1 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
5 1 (10.00%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (30.00%) DNS
1 3 (30.00%) SSL
2 2 (20.00%) DHCP
3 1 (10.00%) FTP
3 1 (10.00%) Kerberos
3 1 (10.00%) SAN
3 1 (10.00%) TCP/IP
Development Applications
1 3 (30.00%) Jenkins
General
1 4 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 3 (30.00%) Analytical Skills
2 3 (30.00%) Billing
3 2 (20.00%) Retail
4 1 (10.00%) Documentation Skills
4 1 (10.00%) Finance
4 1 (10.00%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (30.00%) .NET
1 3 (30.00%) .NET Core
1 3 (30.00%) ARM Templates
1 3 (30.00%) GraphQL
1 3 (30.00%) OAuth
1 3 (30.00%) OAuth2
1 3 (30.00%) OpenID
1 3 (30.00%) REST
1 3 (30.00%) SAML
2 2 (20.00%) .NET Framework
2 2 (20.00%) ASP.NET
2 2 (20.00%) Microsoft Graph
3 1 (10.00%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 3 (30.00%) Linux Command Line
2 2 (20.00%) Replication
3 1 (10.00%) Hybrid Cloud
3 1 (10.00%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 4 (40.00%) Windows
1 4 (40.00%) Windows Server
2 1 (10.00%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (50.00%) RBAC
2 4 (40.00%) B2C
2 4 (40.00%) DevOps
2 4 (40.00%) Identity Management
2 4 (40.00%) Problem-Solving
3 3 (30.00%) AI
3 3 (30.00%) Analytics
3 3 (30.00%) API Management
3 3 (30.00%) CI/CD
3 3 (30.00%) CRM
3 3 (30.00%) Data Governance
3 3 (30.00%) DevSecOps
3 3 (30.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 3 (30.00%) Log Analytics
3 3 (30.00%) MLOps
3 3 (30.00%) User Experience
3 3 (30.00%) Validation
4 2 (20.00%) Analytical Thinking
4 2 (20.00%) Critical Thinking
4 2 (20.00%) Knowledge Transfer
Programming Languages
1 3 (30.00%) Bash
1 3 (30.00%) C#
1 3 (30.00%) JavaScript
1 3 (30.00%) PHP
1 3 (30.00%) PowerShell
1 3 (30.00%) Python
2 2 (20.00%) Java
Qualifications
1 3 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 2 (20.00%) DV Cleared
2 2 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 1 (10.00%) Degree
3 1 (10.00%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (30.00%) Data Quality
2 1 (10.00%) GDPR
2 1 (10.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (10.00%) NIST
System Software
1 8 (80.00%) Active Directory
2 1 (10.00%) Hyper-V
2 1 (10.00%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 3 (30.00%) Terraform
2 1 (10.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
2 1 (10.00%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 4 (40.00%) Microsoft
2 1 (10.00%) VMware