Active Directory Contracts

Microsoft Active Directory
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies 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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 36 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +16
Contract jobs citing Active Directory 1,562 2,303 3,506
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 5.34% 5.28% 5.87%
As % of the System Software category 42.63% 49.09% 44.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,058 1,598 2,556
10th Percentile £182 £160 £163
25th Percentile £243 £213 £225
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £419 £425
Median % change year-on-year +7.46% -1.47% +3.66%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £392 £375
% change year-on-year +2.04% +4.53% +33.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 115 151
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.00 £13.25
25th Percentile £15.04 £14.16 £15.50
Median hourly rate £21.46 £17.69 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.31% -11.55% +14.29%
75th Percentile £28.58 £23.75 £53.07
90th Percentile £64.50 £40.00 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.11 £17.14 £18.00
% change year-on-year +11.48% -4.76% +4.35%

All System Software Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 3,664 4,691 7,882
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.53% 10.76% 13.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,498 3,206 5,629
10th Percentile £214 £198 £205
25th Percentile £400 £331 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £488 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% -7.14% -
75th Percentile £623 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £460 £483
% change year-on-year +3.26% -4.69% +7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 233 280
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.06 £14.95
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £18.25
Median hourly rate £27.72 £22.50 £53.43
Median % change year-on-year +23.20% -57.88% +167.13%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.00 £66.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £77.90 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £22.00 £41.88
% change year-on-year +29.55% -47.46% +131.16%

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Active Directory as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Active Directory.

Daily rate trend for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Active Directory over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Active Directory.

Hourly rate trend for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Active Directory over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Active Directory in the UK

Active Directory
Top 18 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 30 April 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
England -1 1,379 £450 +9.49% 952
UK excluding London +2 928 £400 +2.04% 728
London -20 497 £500 +17.65% 283
Work from Home -14 385 £496 +4.32% 429
North of England +9 280 £350 +8.53% 179
South East -10 229 £525 +9.38% 209
North West +11 153 £350 - 91
South West +6 131 £450 +50.00% 106
Midlands -1 124 £413 +22.22% 114
Yorkshire +11 110 £400 +33.33% 66
West Midlands +10 100 £400 +14.29% 55
East of England +14 98 £375 +41.51% 79
Scotland -36 56 £434 +9.81% 31
East Midlands -12 24 £463 +115.12% 58
Wales +8 21 £365 +65.91% 20
North East -5 16 £300 +44.58% 28
Northern Ireland -3 9 £160 -63.43% 7
Channel Islands - 2 £298 -

Active Directory
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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
1 297 (19.01%) Microsoft Exchange
2 225 (14.40%) SharePoint
3 34 (2.18%) IIS
4 28 (1.79%) Confluence
5 25 (1.60%) Skype for Business
6 18 (1.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 14 (0.90%) JBoss
8 11 (0.70%) WebSphere
9 8 (0.51%) Apache
10 7 (0.45%) Exchange Server 2013
11 6 (0.38%) Mattermost
12 5 (0.32%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
12 5 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2010
12 5 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
12 5 (0.32%) Tomcat
13 4 (0.26%) BizTalk Server
13 4 (0.26%) Exchange Server 2003
13 4 (0.26%) Exchange Server 2007
13 4 (0.26%) nginx
14 3 (0.19%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 192 (12.29%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (4.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 46 (2.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (2.30%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.064%) Acrobat
6 1 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.064%) CANalyzer
6 1 (0.064%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.064%) Final Cut Pro
6 1 (0.064%) QuarkXPress
Business Applications
1 8 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
3 5 (0.32%) Dynamics GP
4 3 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.13%) Alphatax
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.13%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.064%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 636 (40.72%) Azure
2 621 (39.76%) Microsoft 365
3 494 (31.63%) Entra ID
4 131 (8.39%) AWS
5 108 (6.91%) OneDrive
6 80 (5.12%) IaaS
7 57 (3.65%) SaaS
8 46 (2.94%) PaaS
9 44 (2.82%) GCP
9 44 (2.82%) Power Platform
10 31 (1.98%) Azure DevOps
11 29 (1.86%) GitHub
11 29 (1.86%) Serverless
12 22 (1.41%) Google Workspace
13 20 (1.28%) Azure Monitor
13 20 (1.28%) Nutanix
13 20 (1.28%) Power Automate
14 19 (1.22%) OpenShift
15 18 (1.15%) Amazon EC2
16 17 (1.09%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 273 (17.48%) DNS
2 178 (11.40%) DHCP
3 177 (11.33%) Firewall
4 160 (10.24%) VPN
5 94 (6.02%) Wi-Fi
6 65 (4.16%) LAN
6 65 (4.16%) WAN
7 59 (3.78%) Network Security
8 58 (3.71%) TCP/IP
9 48 (3.07%) SMTP
10 41 (2.62%) Remote Desktop
11 39 (2.50%) SAN
11 39 (2.50%) Skype
12 36 (2.30%) VLAN
13 23 (1.47%) SSL
14 21 (1.34%) WebEx
15 19 (1.22%) VoIP
16 18 (1.15%) NAS
17 17 (1.09%) Wireless
18 16 (1.02%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 90 (5.76%) SQL Server
2 27 (1.73%) Elasticsearch
3 26 (1.66%) Oracle Database
3 26 (1.66%) Relational Database
4 20 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
5 15 (0.96%) NoSQL
6 12 (0.77%) Big Data
6 12 (0.77%) RDBMS
7 11 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
8 10 (0.64%) DB2
9 9 (0.58%) Power BI
10 7 (0.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 6 (0.38%) MongoDB
12 5 (0.32%) MySQL
13 4 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
13 4 (0.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 3 (0.19%) BigQuery
14 3 (0.19%) Neo4j
15 2 (0.13%) Hadoop
15 2 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 59 (3.78%) JIRA
2 37 (2.37%) Git
3 26 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 16 (1.02%) SonarQube
5 15 (0.96%) GitLab
5 15 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
6 14 (0.90%) TeamCity
7 10 (0.64%) Bitbucket Server
7 10 (0.64%) CA Release Automation
8 9 (0.58%) Selenium
9 8 (0.51%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.51%) MSI
10 3 (0.19%) Hudson
10 3 (0.19%) JUnit
10 3 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
10 3 (0.19%) Subversion
11 2 (0.13%) Maven
12 1 (0.064%) Moq
12 1 (0.064%) Serena SBM
12 1 (0.064%) Visual Studio
General
1 478 (30.60%) Social Skills
2 221 (14.15%) Finance
3 167 (10.69%) Public Sector
4 124 (7.94%) Analytical Skills
5 59 (3.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 52 (3.33%) Legal
7 50 (3.20%) Telecoms
8 45 (2.88%) Banking
9 38 (2.43%) Manufacturing
10 34 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
10 34 (2.18%) Marketing
11 30 (1.92%) Electronics
12 26 (1.66%) Retail
13 19 (1.22%) Law
14 17 (1.09%) Local Government
15 12 (0.77%) Military
16 9 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
16 9 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 8 (0.51%) Investment Banking
18 7 (0.45%) Billing
Job Titles
1 224 (14.34%) Analyst
2 220 (14.08%) Support Engineer
3 187 (11.97%) Architect
4 179 (11.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 106 (6.79%) IT Support
6 100 (6.40%) Service Analyst
7 98 (6.27%) Service Desk Analyst
8 93 (5.95%) Desktop Support
9 91 (5.83%) 2nd Line Support
9 91 (5.83%) Desktop Engineer
10 88 (5.63%) Senior
11 83 (5.31%) IT Engineer
12 75 (4.80%) Support Analyst
13 71 (4.55%) Desktop Support Engineer
14 63 (4.03%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
15 52 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
16 51 (3.27%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 50 (3.20%) Developer
17 50 (3.20%) IT Support Engineer
18 47 (3.01%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (4.35%) LDAP
2 51 (3.27%) SailPoint
3 44 (2.82%) SAML
4 43 (2.75%) REST
5 42 (2.69%) .NET
6 41 (2.62%) OAuth
7 24 (1.54%) OpenID
8 22 (1.41%) React
8 22 (1.41%) Web Services
9 21 (1.34%) AngularJS
9 21 (1.34%) HTML
9 21 (1.34%) Middleware
10 17 (1.09%) CSS
10 17 (1.09%) Microsoft Graph
11 16 (1.02%) SOAP
12 15 (0.96%) JSON
13 14 (0.90%) ASP.NET
14 13 (0.83%) Spring Boot
15 10 (0.64%) Bootstrap
15 10 (0.64%) CSS3
Miscellaneous
1 84 (5.38%) PKI
2 80 (5.12%) Onboarding
3 65 (4.16%) Data Centre
4 53 (3.39%) Management Information System
5 44 (2.82%) Self-Motivation
6 39 (2.50%) Hybrid Cloud
7 37 (2.37%) Video Conferencing
8 36 (2.30%) Clustering
9 31 (1.98%) iPhone
10 28 (1.79%) Smartphone
11 26 (1.66%) Product Ownership
11 26 (1.66%) Security Posture
12 24 (1.54%) Driving Licence
13 23 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
14 21 (1.34%) Replication
15 19 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
16 17 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
17 16 (1.02%) iPad
18 13 (0.83%) Blackberry
18 13 (0.83%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 924 (59.15%) Windows
2 363 (23.24%) Windows Server
3 291 (18.63%) Windows 10
4 185 (11.84%) Linux
5 68 (4.35%) Windows Server 2016
6 62 (3.97%) Windows Server 2012
7 56 (3.59%) Apple iOS
8 54 (3.46%) Windows Server 2019
9 48 (3.07%) Mac OS
10 47 (3.01%) Android
11 38 (2.43%) Unix
12 32 (2.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 28 (1.79%) Windows Server 2003
14 22 (1.41%) Windows 7
15 20 (1.28%) VMS
16 13 (0.83%) Windows Server 2008
17 9 (0.58%) CentOS
18 7 (0.45%) Windows XP
19 6 (0.38%) Windows 8
20 5 (0.32%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 370 (23.69%) Problem-Solving
2 312 (19.97%) ITIL
3 243 (15.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 233 (14.92%) Customer Service
5 199 (12.74%) Migration
6 172 (11.01%) Agile
7 161 (10.31%) Identity Access Management
8 143 (9.15%) ITSM
9 133 (8.51%) DevOps
10 109 (6.98%) Incident Management
11 100 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
11 100 (6.40%) RBAC
12 92 (5.89%) Service Delivery
13 78 (4.99%) Identity Management
13 78 (4.99%) Service Management
14 77 (4.93%) Roadmaps
15 71 (4.55%) Multi-Factor Authentication
16 69 (4.42%) Privileged Access Management
16 69 (4.42%) Stakeholder Management
17 62 (3.97%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 366 (23.43%) PowerShell
2 128 (8.19%) SQL
3 94 (6.02%) Python
4 46 (2.94%) JavaScript
5 41 (2.62%) Bash
6 39 (2.50%) C#
7 34 (2.18%) Java
8 31 (1.98%) Perl
9 22 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 20 (1.28%) Shell Script
11 13 (0.83%) Bicep
12 10 (0.64%) Ruby
13 7 (0.45%) BeanShell
13 7 (0.45%) VBScript
14 6 (0.38%) T-SQL
15 5 (0.32%) VB
16 3 (0.19%) C
16 3 (0.19%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.19%) VBA
17 2 (0.13%) Go
Qualifications
1 367 (23.50%) Security Cleared
2 227 (14.53%) SC Cleared
3 152 (9.73%) Degree
4 138 (8.83%) DV Cleared
5 122 (7.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 54 (3.46%) Azure Certification
7 49 (3.14%) A+ Certification
8 33 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
9 31 (1.98%) ITIL Certification
9 31 (1.98%) MCSA
10 28 (1.79%) CISSP
11 21 (1.34%) MCSE
12 20 (1.28%) AWS Certification
12 20 (1.28%) CISM
13 18 (1.15%) DBS Check
14 16 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
15 14 (0.90%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 13 (0.83%) CCNA
17 12 (0.77%) PMP
18 11 (0.70%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (3.59%) SLA
2 42 (2.69%) GDPR
3 34 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 24 (1.54%) NIST
5 23 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 18 (1.15%) HIPAA
7 14 (0.90%) QA
8 13 (0.83%) PCI DSS
9 9 (0.58%) SOC 2
10 8 (0.51%) NCSC
10 8 (0.51%) PMO
11 7 (0.45%) GxP
12 6 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.38%) Data Quality
13 5 (0.32%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 5 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
14 4 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.26%) GRC
15 2 (0.13%) FIPS 140-2
System Software
1 199 (12.74%) VMware Infrastructure
2 90 (5.76%) Hyper-V
3 72 (4.61%) VMware ESXi
4 61 (3.91%) vSphere
5 56 (3.59%) Virtual Machines
6 43 (2.75%) Docker
7 35 (2.24%) BitLocker
8 28 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
9 26 (1.66%) Microsoft App-V
10 19 (1.22%) VMware NSX
11 16 (1.02%) Virtual Servers
12 13 (0.83%) Terminal Services
13 10 (0.64%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 10 (0.64%) XenApp
14 9 (0.58%) XenDesktop
15 8 (0.51%) NFS
16 6 (0.38%) DFS Replication
16 6 (0.38%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.26%) OpenAM
18 3 (0.19%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 287 (18.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 206 (13.19%) SCCM
3 90 (5.76%) Single Sign-On
4 70 (4.48%) Ansible
5 61 (3.91%) WSUS
6 58 (3.71%) Kubernetes
7 53 (3.39%) Terraform
8 51 (3.27%) vCenter Server
9 33 (2.11%) Jamf Pro
10 26 (1.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 17 (1.09%) Microsoft Clustering
12 16 (1.02%) Puppet
13 15 (0.96%) Progress Chef
13 15 (0.96%) SCOM
13 15 (0.96%) vMotion
14 13 (0.83%) AppManager
14 13 (0.83%) Kibana
15 11 (0.70%) Nagios
16 10 (0.64%) vRealize
16 10 (0.64%) VxRail
Vendors
1 930 (59.54%) Microsoft
2 305 (19.53%) VMware
3 193 (12.36%) ServiceNow
4 127 (8.13%) Cisco
5 123 (7.87%) Citrix
6 58 (3.71%) CyberArk
7 57 (3.65%) Oracle
8 52 (3.33%) Apple
9 50 (3.20%) Google
10 46 (2.94%) SAP
11 43 (2.75%) Dell
12 41 (2.62%) HP
13 33 (2.11%) Red Hat
14 28 (1.79%) Splunk
15 25 (1.60%) SolarWinds
15 25 (1.60%) Zscaler
16 22 (1.41%) Meraki
16 22 (1.41%) Okta
16 22 (1.41%) Symantec
17 21 (1.34%) Palo Alto