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 7 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 27 25 24
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 931 1,288 1,669
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 6.44% 6.12% 7.10%
As % of the System Software category 48.92% 50.29% 47.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 625 897 1,181
10th Percentile £178 £154 £154
25th Percentile £208 £208 £195
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £425 £350
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% +21.43% +19.66%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £525
90th Percentile £635 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £450 £450 £425
% change year-on-year - +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 86 98
10th Percentile - £13.94 £13.25
25th Percentile £14.99 £14.16 £14.77
Median hourly rate £15.44 £17.39 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.23% -5.99% +5.71%
75th Percentile £28.00 £22.00 £28.44
90th Percentile £57.59 £40.00 £60.07
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £17.69 £22.00
% change year-on-year +24.36% -19.59% +25.71%

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 1,903 2,561 3,502
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 13.17% 12.17% 14.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,269 1,733 2,427
10th Percentile £200 £190 £180
25th Percentile £313 £325 £305
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% +1.05% +5.56%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 180 177
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.06 £14.15
25th Percentile £15.44 £14.40 £16.25
Median hourly rate £54.88 £23.34 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +135.11% -15.13% +48.65%
75th Percentile £81.00 £60.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £91.50 £70.07 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £23.80 £53.35
% change year-on-year +17.65% -55.39% +166.75%

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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
South East -7 253 £525 +1.94% 371
North of England +6 247 £375 +1.69% 293
Midlands -7 135 £400 +14.29% 194
East of England +23 126 £467 +81.17% 141
North West -1 114 £350 -17.65% 131
Yorkshire +10 113 £400 +33.33% 131
South West +3 107 £275 -43.59% 136
West Midlands +3 103 £400 +25.49% 100
Scotland -36 56 £448 +37.85% 53
East Midlands -19 32 £375 +5.34% 93
North East +5 20 £325 +8.33% 37
Northern Ireland -1 14 £160 -55.86% 19
Wales -5 11 £200 +42.86% 40
Channel Islands - 1 - -
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
1 192 (20.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 97 (10.42%) SharePoint
3 24 (2.58%) IBM Domino
3 24 (2.58%) Skype for Business
4 20 (2.15%) IIS
5 15 (1.61%) Confluence
6 14 (1.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 13 (1.40%) JBoss
8 10 (1.07%) Apache
9 8 (0.86%) Mattermost
10 7 (0.75%) Exchange Server 2003
10 7 (0.75%) Exchange Server 2007
10 7 (0.75%) Exchange Server 2010
10 7 (0.75%) Exchange Server 2013
10 7 (0.75%) Office Communications Server
10 7 (0.75%) SharePoint Server
11 5 (0.54%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.43%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.21%) BizTalk Server
Applications
1 129 (13.86%) Microsoft Office
2 37 (3.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 36 (3.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (1.07%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.11%) CANalyzer
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Dynamics GP
2 3 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 372 (39.96%) Microsoft 365
2 281 (30.18%) Azure
3 234 (25.13%) Entra ID
4 89 (9.56%) AWS
5 46 (4.94%) IaaS
6 33 (3.54%) OneDrive
7 30 (3.22%) PaaS
8 29 (3.11%) SaaS
9 24 (2.58%) Cohesity
9 24 (2.58%) GCP
10 21 (2.26%) OpenShift
11 16 (1.72%) AWS KMS
11 16 (1.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 15 (1.61%) Amazon EC2
12 15 (1.61%) Azure Sentinel
12 15 (1.61%) Power Platform
13 13 (1.40%) Amazon S3
13 13 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (1.40%) Azure AKS
14 12 (1.29%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 188 (20.19%) DNS
2 116 (12.46%) Firewall
3 96 (10.31%) DHCP
4 80 (8.59%) VPN
5 59 (6.34%) SAN
6 41 (4.40%) LAN
7 35 (3.76%) Wi-Fi
8 34 (3.65%) WAN
9 32 (3.44%) SMTP
10 31 (3.33%) Skype
11 27 (2.90%) TCP/IP
12 26 (2.79%) WebEx
13 24 (2.58%) Cisco IOS
14 19 (2.04%) VLAN
15 18 (1.93%) VoIP
16 17 (1.83%) Network Security
16 17 (1.83%) Unified Communications
17 12 (1.29%) NetScaler
18 11 (1.18%) Remote Desktop
18 11 (1.18%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.01%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.36%) Elasticsearch
3 19 (2.04%) Oracle Database
4 17 (1.83%) Amazon RDS
5 13 (1.40%) Relational Database
6 12 (1.29%) RDBMS
7 8 (0.86%) Big Data
8 6 (0.64%) Power BI
9 5 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (0.32%) DB2
10 3 (0.32%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.32%) Tableau
11 1 (0.11%) Data Lake
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.11%) Parquet
11 1 (0.11%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 42 (4.51%) JIRA
2 29 (3.11%) Git
3 23 (2.47%) Jenkins
4 18 (1.93%) TeamCity
5 17 (1.83%) Sonatype Nexus
6 16 (1.72%) GitLab
7 13 (1.40%) SonarQube
8 12 (1.29%) Bitbucket Server
8 12 (1.29%) CA Release Automation
9 6 (0.64%) Vagrant
10 5 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 5 (0.54%) MSI
11 4 (0.43%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
12 1 (0.11%) CANoe
12 1 (0.11%) Fiddler
12 1 (0.11%) Metasploit
12 1 (0.11%) Oracle Forms
General
1 328 (35.23%) Social Skills
2 104 (11.17%) Public Sector
3 80 (8.59%) Finance
4 68 (7.30%) Analytical Skills
5 45 (4.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 34 (3.65%) Manufacturing
6 34 (3.65%) Telecoms
7 30 (3.22%) Legal
8 24 (2.58%) Games
9 23 (2.47%) Electronics
9 23 (2.47%) Marketing
10 22 (2.36%) Retail
11 12 (1.29%) Documentation Skills
11 12 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
12 11 (1.18%) Banking
12 11 (1.18%) Law
13 7 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.54%) Billing
14 5 (0.54%) Local Government
14 5 (0.54%) Military
Job Titles
1 157 (16.86%) Analyst
2 145 (15.57%) Support Engineer
3 106 (11.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 84 (9.02%) Architect
5 74 (7.95%) IT Support
5 74 (7.95%) Service Analyst
5 74 (7.95%) Service Desk Analyst
6 65 (6.98%) Desktop Engineer
7 55 (5.91%) 2nd Line Support
8 53 (5.69%) Support Analyst
9 52 (5.59%) Desktop Support
10 48 (5.16%) Desktop Support Engineer
10 48 (5.16%) IT Engineer
11 42 (4.51%) 3rd Line Engineer
12 31 (3.33%) Deployment Engineer
13 30 (3.22%) 2nd Line Engineer
13 30 (3.22%) Support Manager
14 29 (3.11%) 1st Line Support
14 29 (3.11%) Active Directory Architect
14 29 (3.11%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (2.15%) LDAP
1 20 (2.15%) OAuth
2 17 (1.83%) SailPoint
2 17 (1.83%) SAML
3 16 (1.72%) OpenID
4 15 (1.61%) REST
5 13 (1.40%) .NET
5 13 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
5 13 (1.40%) Spring Boot
6 12 (1.29%) Middleware
7 9 (0.97%) JSON
8 8 (0.86%) XMPP
9 6 (0.64%) OAuth2
9 6 (0.64%) Web Services
10 5 (0.54%) HTML
10 5 (0.54%) React
10 5 (0.54%) Software Packaging
11 4 (0.43%) .NET Framework
11 4 (0.43%) ASP.NET
11 4 (0.43%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 57 (6.12%) PKI
2 41 (4.40%) Onboarding
3 32 (3.44%) Data Centre
4 31 (3.33%) iPhone
5 27 (2.90%) Self-Motivation
6 26 (2.79%) Management Information System
7 25 (2.69%) Smartphone
8 24 (2.58%) Clustering
9 23 (2.47%) Replication
10 22 (2.36%) Linux Command Line
11 21 (2.26%) Driving Licence
11 21 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
12 14 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
13 12 (1.29%) iPad
14 11 (1.18%) Cloud Native
14 11 (1.18%) Operational Technology
15 10 (1.07%) Security Posture
16 7 (0.75%) Cyber Threat
17 6 (0.64%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 611 (65.63%) Windows
2 228 (24.49%) Windows Server
3 174 (18.69%) Windows 10
4 134 (14.39%) Linux
5 70 (7.52%) Mac OS
6 60 (6.44%) Windows Server 2016
7 49 (5.26%) Android
8 47 (5.05%) Windows Server 2019
9 36 (3.87%) Windows Server 2012
10 25 (2.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 25 (2.69%) Windows Server 2003
11 18 (1.93%) Apple iOS
12 17 (1.83%) VMS
13 16 (1.72%) Unix
14 10 (1.07%) CentOS
14 10 (1.07%) Windows 7
15 8 (0.86%) Amazon Linux
15 8 (0.86%) Ubuntu
16 6 (0.64%) Windows 8
16 6 (0.64%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (23.52%) ITIL
2 211 (22.66%) Problem-Solving
3 160 (17.19%) Customer Service
4 142 (15.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 109 (11.71%) Agile
6 94 (10.10%) ITSM
7 82 (8.81%) Migration
8 78 (8.38%) DevOps
9 75 (8.06%) Identity Access Management
10 72 (7.73%) Incident Management
11 69 (7.41%) Service Delivery
12 67 (7.20%) Cybersecurity
13 65 (6.98%) Service Management
14 52 (5.59%) Mobile Device Management
15 41 (4.40%) Deployment Automation
16 38 (4.08%) Collaborative Working
16 38 (4.08%) Patch Management
17 36 (3.87%) Change Management
17 36 (3.87%) RBAC
18 35 (3.76%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 252 (27.07%) PowerShell
2 78 (8.38%) SQL
3 48 (5.16%) Python
4 33 (3.54%) Perl
5 29 (3.11%) Bash
6 21 (2.26%) Java
7 20 (2.15%) Shell Script
8 17 (1.83%) C#
9 16 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 10 (1.07%) JavaScript
11 8 (0.86%) Bicep
12 6 (0.64%) Groovy
13 5 (0.54%) Ruby
14 4 (0.43%) PHP
15 3 (0.32%) VBA
16 1 (0.11%) C
16 1 (0.11%) C++
16 1 (0.11%) MATLAB
16 1 (0.11%) VB
16 1 (0.11%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 262 (28.14%) Security Cleared
2 140 (15.04%) SC Cleared
3 124 (13.32%) DV Cleared
4 105 (11.28%) Degree
5 74 (7.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 34 (3.65%) A+ Certification
7 25 (2.69%) Cisco Certification
7 25 (2.69%) ITIL Certification
8 21 (2.26%) MCSA
9 18 (1.93%) DBS Check
9 18 (1.93%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 15 (1.61%) Azure Certification
11 13 (1.40%) MCSE
12 11 (1.18%) ACSP
12 11 (1.18%) ACTC
13 9 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
14 8 (0.86%) CCNA
14 8 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 6 (0.64%) AWS Certification
16 5 (0.54%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (4.73%) SLA
2 33 (3.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (2.26%) GDPR
4 16 (1.72%) NIST
5 10 (1.07%) PCI DSS
6 9 (0.97%) GxP
6 9 (0.97%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (0.64%) SOC 2
8 5 (0.54%) Accessibility
8 5 (0.54%) QA
9 4 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.32%) PMO
11 2 (0.21%) FIPS 140-2
11 2 (0.21%) NCSC
11 2 (0.21%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.11%) GRC
System Software
1 138 (14.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 64 (6.87%) Hyper-V
3 46 (4.94%) VMware ESXi
4 40 (4.30%) vSphere
5 36 (3.87%) Docker
6 32 (3.44%) Virtual Servers
7 27 (2.90%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 26 (2.79%) Virtual Machines
9 21 (2.26%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (2.04%) VMware NSX
11 15 (1.61%) DFS Replication
12 14 (1.50%) BitLocker
13 12 (1.29%) Terminal Services
14 10 (1.07%) XenApp
15 9 (0.97%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.97%) XenDesktop
16 7 (0.75%) Brightmail
16 7 (0.75%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.32%) NFS
18 1 (0.11%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 171 (18.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 160 (17.19%) SCCM
3 69 (7.41%) Ansible
4 61 (6.55%) WSUS
5 45 (4.83%) Single Sign-On
6 44 (4.73%) Terraform
7 39 (4.19%) Kubernetes
8 38 (4.08%) Jamf Pro
9 32 (3.44%) vCenter Server
10 17 (1.83%) SCOM
11 16 (1.72%) Progress Chef
12 15 (1.61%) Microsoft Clustering
13 13 (1.40%) Kibana
13 13 (1.40%) Puppet
14 11 (1.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 10 (1.07%) Grafana
15 10 (1.07%) Nagios
15 10 (1.07%) vMotion
16 9 (0.97%) AirWatch
16 9 (0.97%) vRealize
Vendors
1 576 (61.87%) Microsoft
2 197 (21.16%) VMware
3 141 (15.15%) ServiceNow
4 97 (10.42%) Citrix
5 96 (10.31%) Cisco
6 67 (7.20%) Splunk
7 43 (4.62%) Apple
8 33 (3.54%) Meraki
9 32 (3.44%) Dell
9 32 (3.44%) Oracle
10 30 (3.22%) CyberArk
11 28 (3.01%) Red Hat
11 28 (3.01%) SAP
12 23 (2.47%) HP
13 22 (2.36%) NetApp
14 19 (2.04%) SolarWinds
14 19 (2.04%) Veeam
15 16 (1.72%) AppDynamics
15 16 (1.72%) Google
15 16 (1.72%) Sage