Active Directory Contracts in the UK excluding London

Microsoft Active Directory
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Active Directory skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Active Directory over the 6 months leading up to 3 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 24 24 22
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 917 1,315 1,857
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 7.18% 6.35% 7.76%
As % of the System Software category 50.75% 53.39% 51.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 638 923 1,369
10th Percentile £170 £150 £156
25th Percentile £208 £200 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £400 £375
Median % change year-on-year - +6.67% +32.74%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £550
90th Percentile £656 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £450 £425 £425
% change year-on-year +5.88% - +3.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 93 108
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.00 £13.21
25th Percentile £15.04 £14.16 £15.25
Median hourly rate £18.25 £16.94 £18.03
Median % change year-on-year +7.76% -6.07% +4.52%
75th Percentile £28.88 £19.00 £35.21
90th Percentile £64.50 £40.00 £61.84
UK median hourly rate £21.46 £17.69 £20.00
% change year-on-year +21.31% -11.55% +14.29%

All System Software Skills
UK excluding 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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 1,807 2,463 3,622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 14.14% 11.90% 15.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,245 1,652 2,629
10th Percentile £191 £175 £180
25th Percentile £325 £275 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £479 £461 £480
Median % change year-on-year +3.85% -3.91% +6.67%
75th Percentile £588 £584 £588
90th Percentile £663 £650 £680
UK median daily rate £525 £488 £525
% change year-on-year +7.69% -7.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 192 188
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.01 £14.25
25th Percentile £15.36 £14.16 £16.53
Median hourly rate £28.50 £21.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.56% -46.25% +120.81%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.78 £79.80 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £27.97 £22.50 £53.43
% change year-on-year +24.31% -57.88% +167.13%

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Active Directory as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Active Directory in the UK excluding London

Active Directory
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Active Directory in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Active Directory in the UK excluding London

Active Directory
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Active Directory in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 3 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Active Directory in the UK excluding London

Active Directory
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Active Directory in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Active Directory in the UK excluding London

Active Directory
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Active Directory in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 3 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Active Directory in the UK excluding London

Active Directory
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 within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 3 May 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
North of England +6 278 £350 +7.69% 238
South East -11 230 £525 +9.38% 335
North West +12 151 £350 - 117
South West +6 126 £450 +38.46% 127
Midlands -2 123 £413 +17.86% 142
Yorkshire +9 110 £400 +33.33% 88
West Midlands +6 99 £400 +14.29% 69
East of England +12 97 £375 +41.51% 104
Scotland -38 53 £438 +18.24% 43
East Midlands -15 24 £463 +68.18% 65
Wales +10 21 £365 +65.91% 24
North East -8 16 £300 +36.36% 41
Northern Ireland -1 9 £160 -63.43% 9
Channel Islands - 2 £298 - 2
Active Directory
UK

Active Directory
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 191 (20.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 121 (13.20%) SharePoint
3 24 (2.62%) IIS
4 22 (2.40%) Skype for Business
5 18 (1.96%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 10 (1.09%) Confluence
7 9 (0.98%) JBoss
8 8 (0.87%) WebSphere
9 7 (0.76%) Exchange Server 2013
10 5 (0.55%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
10 5 (0.55%) Mattermost
10 5 (0.55%) SharePoint Server
11 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2003
11 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2007
11 4 (0.44%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.33%) Apache
12 3 (0.33%) BizTalk Server
12 3 (0.33%) Office Communications Server
13 2 (0.22%) Apache Solr
13 2 (0.22%) WebLogic
Applications
1 132 (14.39%) Microsoft Office
2 47 (5.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (4.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.53%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.11%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.11%) CANalyzer
6 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
6 1 (0.11%) QuarkXPress
Business Applications
1 5 (0.55%) Dynamics GP
2 4 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 375 (40.89%) Microsoft 365
2 306 (33.37%) Azure
3 246 (26.83%) Entra ID
4 49 (5.34%) AWS
5 46 (5.02%) OneDrive
6 44 (4.80%) IaaS
7 28 (3.05%) PaaS
7 28 (3.05%) SaaS
8 22 (2.40%) Power Platform
9 17 (1.85%) OpenShift
10 12 (1.31%) GCP
10 12 (1.31%) Google Workspace
11 11 (1.20%) Serverless
12 10 (1.09%) Azure Monitor
12 10 (1.09%) GitHub
13 9 (0.98%) Nutanix
14 8 (0.87%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 8 (0.87%) Cohesity
14 8 (0.87%) Dynamics 365
15 7 (0.76%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 160 (17.45%) DNS
2 98 (10.69%) DHCP
3 95 (10.36%) VPN
4 91 (9.92%) Firewall
5 46 (5.02%) Wi-Fi
6 38 (4.14%) LAN
7 36 (3.93%) Skype
8 32 (3.49%) SMTP
9 31 (3.38%) SAN
9 31 (3.38%) WAN
10 27 (2.94%) TCP/IP
11 25 (2.73%) Network Security
12 24 (2.62%) VLAN
13 23 (2.51%) Remote Desktop
14 16 (1.74%) WebEx
15 14 (1.53%) SSL
16 13 (1.42%) Intrusion Detection
16 13 (1.42%) Unified Communications
16 13 (1.42%) VoIP
17 12 (1.31%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (5.02%) SQL Server
2 23 (2.51%) Oracle Database
3 19 (2.07%) Elasticsearch
4 10 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (0.87%) Big Data
5 8 (0.87%) DB2
5 8 (0.87%) NoSQL
5 8 (0.87%) RDBMS
5 8 (0.87%) Relational Database
6 7 (0.76%) Power BI
6 7 (0.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 5 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.22%) Tableau
10 1 (0.11%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.11%) DTS
10 1 (0.11%) GIS
10 1 (0.11%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.11%) MSDE
10 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 28 (3.05%) JIRA
2 23 (2.51%) Git
3 13 (1.42%) Jenkins
4 12 (1.31%) GitLab
5 11 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (0.98%) Bitbucket Server
6 9 (0.98%) CA Release Automation
6 9 (0.98%) SonarQube
6 9 (0.98%) TeamCity
7 5 (0.55%) Selenium
8 4 (0.44%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.33%) Hudson
9 3 (0.33%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.22%) Maven
11 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.11%) CANoe
11 1 (0.11%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.11%) MSI
General
1 301 (32.82%) Social Skills
2 130 (14.18%) Public Sector
3 80 (8.72%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (8.40%) Finance
5 42 (4.58%) Telecoms
6 36 (3.93%) Legal
7 33 (3.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 33 (3.60%) Manufacturing
8 26 (2.84%) Electronics
8 26 (2.84%) Marketing
9 14 (1.53%) Retail
10 11 (1.20%) Banking
11 10 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.09%) Law
12 9 (0.98%) Military
13 8 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (0.65%) Local Government
14 6 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.44%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 153 (16.68%) Analyst
2 141 (15.38%) Support Engineer
3 113 (12.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 103 (11.23%) Architect
5 82 (8.94%) Service Analyst
6 81 (8.83%) Service Desk Analyst
7 65 (7.09%) IT Support
8 64 (6.98%) Desktop Engineer
9 60 (6.54%) 2nd Line Support
10 57 (6.22%) Desktop Support
11 52 (5.67%) IT Engineer
12 49 (5.34%) Desktop Support Engineer
13 47 (5.13%) Support Analyst
14 39 (4.25%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
15 35 (3.82%) Senior
16 32 (3.49%) 1st Line Support
17 31 (3.38%) Active Directory Architect
18 30 (3.27%) 3rd Line Engineer
18 30 (3.27%) IT Analyst
19 29 (3.16%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (2.18%) LDAP
2 16 (1.74%) .NET
2 16 (1.74%) REST
3 14 (1.53%) React
4 13 (1.42%) Middleware
4 13 (1.42%) SailPoint
5 12 (1.31%) SAML
6 9 (0.98%) Elastic Stack
6 9 (0.98%) OAuth
6 9 (0.98%) Spring Boot
6 9 (0.98%) Web Services
7 7 (0.76%) HTML
7 7 (0.76%) Microsoft Graph
8 6 (0.65%) OpenID
9 5 (0.55%) ASP.NET
9 5 (0.55%) XMPP
10 4 (0.44%) .NET Framework
10 4 (0.44%) JSON
10 4 (0.44%) Software Packaging
10 4 (0.44%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 54 (5.89%) PKI
2 38 (4.14%) Management Information System
2 38 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 34 (3.71%) Self-Motivation
4 30 (3.27%) Data Centre
5 26 (2.84%) iPhone
6 25 (2.73%) Clustering
6 25 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
7 19 (2.07%) Driving Licence
7 19 (2.07%) Linux Command Line
8 16 (1.74%) Smartphone
9 15 (1.64%) Security Posture
10 14 (1.53%) iPad
11 12 (1.31%) NHS
11 12 (1.31%) Operational Technology
12 11 (1.20%) Blackberry
12 11 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.20%) Replication
12 11 (1.20%) Video Conferencing
13 10 (1.09%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 588 (64.12%) Windows
2 227 (24.75%) Windows Server
3 189 (20.61%) Windows 10
4 122 (13.30%) Linux
5 54 (5.89%) Windows Server 2016
6 49 (5.34%) Windows Server 2012
7 41 (4.47%) Windows Server 2019
8 34 (3.71%) Mac OS
9 24 (2.62%) Android
10 23 (2.51%) Windows Server 2003
11 20 (2.18%) Apple iOS
12 19 (2.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 19 (2.07%) Unix
13 14 (1.53%) VMS
14 11 (1.20%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.87%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.76%) Windows XP
17 5 (0.55%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.33%) CentOS
18 3 (0.33%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 240 (26.17%) Problem-Solving
2 230 (25.08%) ITIL
3 180 (19.63%) Customer Service
4 152 (16.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 111 (12.10%) Agile
6 93 (10.14%) ITSM
7 92 (10.03%) Migration
8 90 (9.81%) Incident Management
9 72 (7.85%) Identity Access Management
10 64 (6.98%) DevOps
10 64 (6.98%) Service Delivery
11 58 (6.32%) Cybersecurity
12 52 (5.67%) Service Management
13 43 (4.69%) Privileged Access Management
14 41 (4.47%) Root Cause Analysis
15 39 (4.25%) Collaborative Working
16 38 (4.14%) Change Management
17 37 (4.03%) Microservices
18 36 (3.93%) Business Intelligence
18 36 (3.93%) Multi-Factor Authentication
Programming Languages
1 201 (21.92%) PowerShell
2 94 (10.25%) SQL
3 43 (4.69%) Python
4 32 (3.49%) Bash
5 25 (2.73%) Perl
6 18 (1.96%) PL/SQL
7 17 (1.85%) Shell Script
8 16 (1.74%) C#
9 15 (1.64%) Java
9 15 (1.64%) JavaScript
10 5 (0.55%) Bicep
10 5 (0.55%) Ruby
11 3 (0.33%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.33%) VB
11 3 (0.33%) VBA
11 3 (0.33%) VBScript
12 2 (0.22%) XPath
13 1 (0.11%) Go
13 1 (0.11%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 277 (30.21%) Security Cleared
2 169 (18.43%) SC Cleared
3 113 (12.32%) DV Cleared
4 99 (10.80%) Degree
5 79 (8.62%) Microsoft Certification
6 43 (4.69%) A+ Certification
7 29 (3.16%) MCSA
8 28 (3.05%) Cisco Certification
9 23 (2.51%) ITIL Certification
10 19 (2.07%) MCSE
11 18 (1.96%) Azure Certification
12 16 (1.74%) DBS Check
13 14 (1.53%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 9 (0.98%) CISSP
14 9 (0.98%) Network+ Certification
15 8 (0.87%) CCNA
15 8 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
15 8 (0.87%) MCP
16 6 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 5 (0.55%) ACTC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (4.58%) SLA
2 19 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.09%) NIST
4 9 (0.98%) GDPR
5 7 (0.76%) GxP
6 6 (0.65%) PMO
6 6 (0.65%) SOC 2
7 5 (0.55%) Accessibility
7 5 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (0.55%) PCI DSS
7 5 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 4 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.44%) QA
9 3 (0.33%) NCSC
10 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.22%) FIPS 140-2
10 2 (0.22%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.11%) GRC
11 1 (0.11%) HIPAA
System Software
1 117 (12.76%) VMware Infrastructure
2 61 (6.65%) Hyper-V
3 45 (4.91%) vSphere
4 44 (4.80%) VMware ESXi
5 35 (3.82%) Virtual Machines
6 26 (2.84%) Docker
7 23 (2.51%) BitLocker
8 18 (1.96%) VMware NSX
9 14 (1.53%) Virtual Servers
10 13 (1.42%) Microsoft App-V
11 12 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
12 11 (1.20%) Terminal Services
13 10 (1.09%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 8 (0.87%) XenApp
15 6 (0.65%) DFS Replication
15 6 (0.65%) XenDesktop
16 4 (0.44%) NFS
17 3 (0.33%) Brightmail
17 3 (0.33%) ISA Server
18 1 (0.11%) Samba
Systems Management
1 150 (16.36%) Microsoft Intune
2 126 (13.74%) SCCM
3 50 (5.45%) WSUS
4 42 (4.58%) Single Sign-On
5 41 (4.47%) Ansible
6 35 (3.82%) vCenter Server
7 29 (3.16%) Kubernetes
8 27 (2.94%) Jamf Pro
9 14 (1.53%) Microsoft Clustering
9 14 (1.53%) SCOM
10 12 (1.31%) Puppet
10 12 (1.31%) vMotion
11 11 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 11 (1.20%) Progress Chef
12 10 (1.09%) AppManager
12 10 (1.09%) Nagios
13 9 (0.98%) Kibana
13 9 (0.98%) Terraform
13 9 (0.98%) vRealize
14 7 (0.76%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 534 (58.23%) Microsoft
2 195 (21.26%) VMware
3 129 (14.07%) ServiceNow
4 87 (9.49%) Citrix
5 75 (8.18%) Cisco
6 38 (4.14%) Apple
7 35 (3.82%) Oracle
8 34 (3.71%) Dell
9 31 (3.38%) HP
10 30 (3.27%) SAP
11 28 (3.05%) CyberArk
12 23 (2.51%) Red Hat
13 22 (2.40%) Google
14 18 (1.96%) SolarWinds
14 18 (1.96%) Splunk
15 16 (1.74%) McAfee
15 16 (1.74%) Symantec
16 15 (1.64%) Veeam
17 12 (1.31%) Nexthink
18 11 (1.20%) Ivanti