Active Directory Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Microsoft Active Directory
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the Thames Valley requiring Active Directory skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 70 42 26
Rank change year-on-year -28 -16 +26
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 155 218 280
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 4.09% 4.86% 8.05%
As % of the System Software category 46.27% 37.46% 51.09%
Number of salaries quoted 131 151 261
10th Percentile £28,750 £26,250 £25,750
25th Percentile £33,125 £29,875 £30,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £38,000 £42,500
Median % change year-on-year -1.32% -10.59% +21.43%
75th Percentile £51,000 £49,750 £55,250
90th Percentile £70,000 £59,750 £65,000
South East median annual salary £37,500 £42,250 £40,500
% change year-on-year -11.24% +4.32% +9.46%

All System Software Skills
Thames Valley

Active Directory falls under the System Software category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring system software skills in the Thames Valley.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 335 582 548
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 8.85% 12.98% 15.75%
Number of salaries quoted 215 356 460
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £27,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £36,500 £34,200
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £68,750 £75,000 £70,313
90th Percentile £81,250 £86,750 £83,750
South East median annual salary £42,250 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -23.18% +10.00% -

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Active Directory relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley.

Active Directory job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Active Directory
Salary Trend in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Active Directory.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Salary Histogram in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution for jobs citing Active Directory in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 15 October 2025.

Salary histogram for Active Directory in the Thames Valley

Active Directory
Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Active Directory within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 15 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Buckinghamshire 0 61 £37,500 +2.04% 22
Berkshire -38 56 £42,750 -11.33% 60
Oxfordshire +16 38 £36,000 -10.00% 27
Active Directory
South East

Active Directory
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 47 (30.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (11.61%) SharePoint
3 4 (2.58%) IIS
4 2 (1.29%) Confluence
Applications
1 20 (12.90%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.65%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 109 (70.32%) Microsoft 365
2 108 (69.68%) Azure
3 41 (26.45%) Entra ID
4 25 (16.13%) AWS
5 7 (4.52%) Azure Key Vault
5 7 (4.52%) GCP
6 6 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 6 (3.87%) GitHub
6 6 (3.87%) GitHub Actions
6 6 (3.87%) IaaS
7 5 (3.23%) Mimecast
8 4 (2.58%) Google Workspace
9 2 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 2 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
9 2 (1.29%) Amazon ELB
9 2 (1.29%) Amazon Glacier
9 2 (1.29%) Amazon S3
9 2 (1.29%) AWS KMS
9 2 (1.29%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 46 (29.68%) Firewall
2 39 (25.16%) DNS
3 33 (21.29%) DHCP
4 21 (13.55%) SAN
5 13 (8.39%) WAN
6 11 (7.10%) VPN
7 10 (6.45%) IP Telephony
8 9 (5.81%) iSCSI
8 9 (5.81%) LAN
8 9 (5.81%) Remote Desktop
9 8 (5.16%) SMTP
10 7 (4.52%) TCP/IP
10 7 (4.52%) Wireless
11 5 (3.23%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (2.58%) SD-WAN
12 4 (2.58%) VLAN
13 3 (1.94%) Cisco IOS
14 2 (1.29%) FTP
14 2 (1.29%) HTTP
14 2 (1.29%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (16.13%) SQL Server
2 12 (7.74%) Amazon RDS
3 9 (5.81%) MySQL
3 9 (5.81%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (1.29%) Data Mining
5 1 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.65%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 8 (5.16%) Git
1 8 (5.16%) Jenkins
2 2 (1.29%) JIRA
2 2 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
2 2 (1.29%) Vagrant
General
1 71 (45.81%) Social Skills
2 11 (7.10%) Organisational Skills
3 4 (2.58%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (1.29%) Finance
5 2 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (0.65%) Retail
6 1 (0.65%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 44 (28.39%) IT Support
2 29 (18.71%) 3rd Line Support
3 24 (15.48%) Support Engineer
3 24 (15.48%) Technical Support
4 20 (12.90%) IT Engineer
5 17 (10.97%) Analyst
5 17 (10.97%) Support Technician
6 16 (10.32%) IT Support Engineer
7 14 (9.03%) 3rd Line Technical Support
7 14 (9.03%) Senior
8 13 (8.39%) 2nd Line Support
8 13 (8.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 13 (8.39%) Support Analyst
9 12 (7.74%) IT Analyst
9 12 (7.74%) Platform Engineer
10 11 (7.10%) Infrastructure Manager
11 10 (6.45%) Infrastructure Support
11 10 (6.45%) IT Manager
11 10 (6.45%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (5.81%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (3.87%) ARM Templates
2 5 (3.23%) SAML
3 1 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
Miscellaneous
1 20 (12.90%) Onboarding
2 17 (10.97%) Self-Motivation
3 15 (9.68%) Driving Licence
4 10 (6.45%) Cloud Native
4 10 (6.45%) PKI
5 9 (5.81%) Management Information System
6 8 (5.16%) Data Centre
7 6 (3.87%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (3.23%) NHS
9 4 (2.58%) Replication
9 4 (2.58%) Video Conferencing
10 3 (1.94%) Virtual Team
11 2 (1.29%) Clustering
11 2 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (1.29%) Security Posture
12 1 (0.65%) CMDB
12 1 (0.65%) Legacy Systems
12 1 (0.65%) Social Media
12 1 (0.65%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 127 (81.94%) Windows
2 84 (54.19%) Windows Server
3 26 (16.77%) Linux
4 23 (14.84%) Mac OS
5 16 (10.32%) Windows Server 2019
6 10 (6.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (5.81%) Android
7 9 (5.81%) Apple iOS
8 8 (5.16%) VMS
8 8 (5.16%) Windows 10
9 6 (3.87%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (2.58%) Unix
11 2 (1.29%) Amazon Linux
11 2 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (34.19%) Customer Service
2 44 (28.39%) Problem-Solving
3 36 (23.23%) ITIL
4 33 (21.29%) Mentoring
5 30 (19.35%) Cybersecurity
6 18 (11.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 14 (9.03%) Coaching
7 14 (9.03%) Disaster Recovery
8 11 (7.10%) Customer-Centric Approach
8 11 (7.10%) Customer-Centricity
9 10 (6.45%) Server Management
10 9 (5.81%) Cloud Security
10 9 (5.81%) DevOps
10 9 (5.81%) Platform Engineering
10 9 (5.81%) Project Delivery
10 9 (5.81%) Time Management
11 8 (5.16%) Agile
11 8 (5.16%) Business Continuity
11 8 (5.16%) Servant Leadership
12 7 (4.52%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 33 (21.29%) PowerShell
2 15 (9.68%) Bash
3 9 (5.81%) Korn
4 8 (5.16%) SQL
5 3 (1.94%) Python
6 2 (1.29%) Groovy
6 2 (1.29%) Java
6 2 (1.29%) Perl
Qualifications
1 30 (19.35%) Degree
2 14 (9.03%) Microsoft Certification
3 13 (8.39%) Security Cleared
4 12 (7.74%) SC Cleared
5 11 (7.10%) DBS Check
6 10 (6.45%) Azure Certification
7 9 (5.81%) MCP
8 8 (5.16%) A+ Certification
9 6 (3.87%) CCNA
9 6 (3.87%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (3.23%) CCNP
10 5 (3.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 4 (2.58%) MCSA
12 2 (1.29%) AWS Certification
12 2 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
12 2 (1.29%) MCSE
13 1 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
13 1 (0.65%) HND
13 1 (0.65%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 1 (0.65%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.87%) SLA
2 5 (3.23%) Cyber Essentials
2 5 (3.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 5 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.65%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.65%) GDPR
3 1 (0.65%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 52 (33.55%) Hyper-V
2 29 (18.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (12.90%) Docker
4 15 (9.68%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (6.45%) Terminal Services
6 9 (5.81%) Citrix Hypervisor
6 9 (5.81%) Virtual Servers
7 3 (1.94%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 2 (1.29%) DFS Replication
8 2 (1.29%) VMware Workstation
8 2 (1.29%) vSphere
9 1 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 42 (27.10%) Microsoft Intune
2 15 (9.68%) Kubernetes
2 15 (9.68%) SCCM
3 10 (6.45%) Terraform
4 7 (4.52%) WSUS
5 5 (3.23%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (1.29%) Failover Clustering
6 2 (1.29%) Grafana
6 2 (1.29%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.29%) SCOM
6 2 (1.29%) ZENworks
7 1 (0.65%) Ansible
7 1 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.65%) Red Hat Satellite
7 1 (0.65%) SCSM
7 1 (0.65%) SmoothWall
Vendors
1 144 (92.90%) Microsoft
2 49 (31.61%) VMware
3 17 (10.97%) Apple
4 14 (9.03%) Dell
5 10 (6.45%) Google
5 10 (6.45%) Red Hat
6 9 (5.81%) Cisco
6 9 (5.81%) Sophos
6 9 (5.81%) Splunk
7 8 (5.16%) Veeam
8 7 (4.52%) Citrix
9 5 (3.23%) Barracuda Networks
9 5 (3.23%) HP
9 5 (3.23%) Ubiquiti
10 4 (2.58%) Meraki
10 4 (2.58%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.94%) Juniper
11 3 (1.94%) Palo Alto
12 2 (1.29%) SolarWinds
12 2 (1.29%) Trend Micro