Active Directory Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Microsoft Active Directory
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Active Directory skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 36 28
Rank change year-on-year -25 -8 +17
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 1,782 1,454 4,476
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.91% 5.58% 6.79%
As % of the System Software category 58.43% 44.89% 50.69%
Number of salaries quoted 1,354 1,233 3,841
10th Percentile £26,250 £25,500 £23,750
25th Percentile £28,750 £28,000 £26,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £35,000 £35,000 £35,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.78%
75th Percentile £47,500 £48,750 £48,500
90th Percentile £62,500 £58,750 £57,500
UK median annual salary £37,500 £40,000 £38,000
% change year-on-year -6.25% +5.26% -5.00%

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 permanent job vacancies requiring system software skills in the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for system software skills 3,050 3,239 8,830
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 4.98% 12.44% 13.39%
Number of salaries quoted 2,239 2,507 7,279
10th Percentile £27,250 £26,750 £25,750
25th Percentile £31,250 £32,500 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £49,104 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.36% +9.12% -5.26%
75th Percentile £63,400 £68,750 £60,000
90th Percentile £77,500 £85,000 £75,000
UK median annual salary £51,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.27% +10.00% -9.09%

Active Directory
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Active Directory job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Active Directory
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Active Directory.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Active Directory

Active Directory
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Active Directory in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 13 April 2026.

Salary histogram for Active Directory in the UK excluding London

Active Directory
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Active Directory within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 13 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
South East -1 475 £36,250 -9.38% 177
North of England -27 400 £33,500 +1.52% 135
Midlands -42 292 £32,500 -7.14% 70
South West -6 268 £32,500 -6.47% 73
North West -26 187 £37,250 -6.88% 81
Yorkshire -26 181 £32,500 +8.33% 38
East of England -32 178 £40,000 +23.08% 71
East Midlands -25 151 £31,500 +3.28% 38
West Midlands -44 140 £32,500 -13.15% 32
Scotland +40 98 £29,000 -21.62% 23
Wales +1 47 £38,500 -21.59% 6
North East -25 32 £32,000 -3.61% 21
Northern Ireland -38 18 £32,000 -39.05% 5
Isle of Man +2 6 £45,000 +55.17%
Active Directory
UK

Active Directory
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
1 481 (26.99%) Microsoft Exchange
2 347 (19.47%) SharePoint
3 20 (1.12%) Exchange Server 2003
4 18 (1.01%) IIS
5 12 (0.67%) Exchange Server 2013
6 10 (0.56%) Confluence
6 10 (0.56%) Exchange Server 2007
6 10 (0.56%) Exchange Server 2010
7 6 (0.34%) CMS
8 4 (0.22%) Apache
8 4 (0.22%) Skype for Business
9 3 (0.17%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.17%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.17%) WebLogic Portal
9 3 (0.17%) WordPress
10 1 (0.056%) Drupal
10 1 (0.056%) nginx
10 1 (0.056%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 243 (13.64%) Microsoft Office
2 40 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.11%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.056%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 18 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (0.45%) Dynamics NAV
2 8 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
3 7 (0.39%) NetSuite
3 7 (0.39%) Primavera
4 5 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
5 4 (0.22%) Dynamics GP
5 4 (0.22%) Exchequer
5 4 (0.22%) Markit EDM
6 3 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.11%) Alphatax
7 2 (0.11%) Shopify
8 1 (0.056%) Cognos Business Intelligence
8 1 (0.056%) Magento
8 1 (0.056%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.056%) Sage 200
8 1 (0.056%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,254 (70.37%) Microsoft 365
2 949 (53.25%) Azure
3 638 (35.80%) Entra ID
4 136 (7.63%) AWS
5 134 (7.52%) OneDrive
6 99 (5.56%) Google Workspace
7 87 (4.88%) SaaS
8 83 (4.66%) Power Platform
9 42 (2.36%) IaaS
10 38 (2.13%) PaaS
11 35 (1.96%) Nutanix
12 33 (1.85%) Azure Monitor
13 31 (1.74%) PowerApps
14 30 (1.68%) Azure DevOps
14 30 (1.68%) Mimecast
15 27 (1.52%) GCP
16 22 (1.23%) Microsoft Purview
17 19 (1.07%) Dynamics 365
18 16 (0.90%) GitHub
18 16 (0.90%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 617 (34.62%) DNS
2 562 (31.54%) DHCP
3 406 (22.78%) Firewall
4 282 (15.82%) VPN
5 200 (11.22%) TCP/IP
6 197 (11.05%) WAN
7 192 (10.77%) LAN
8 168 (9.43%) VLAN
9 156 (8.75%) Wi-Fi
10 92 (5.16%) VoIP
11 83 (4.66%) Wireless
12 67 (3.76%) Network Security
13 62 (3.48%) Remote Desktop
14 47 (2.64%) Broadband
14 47 (2.64%) SAN
15 28 (1.57%) SD-WAN
16 21 (1.18%) NAS
17 16 (0.90%) SMTP
18 15 (0.84%) Ethernet
19 14 (0.79%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 91 (5.11%) Amazon RDS
2 84 (4.71%) SQL Server
3 50 (2.81%) Power BI
4 27 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
5 25 (1.40%) MySQL
6 23 (1.29%) Oracle Database
7 20 (1.12%) Oracle Database 10g
8 13 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
9 8 (0.45%) GIS
9 8 (0.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 6 (0.34%) Data Warehouse
10 6 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (0.28%) Relational Database
12 3 (0.17%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.17%) Neo4j
12 3 (0.17%) Oracle Discoverer
12 3 (0.17%) Oracle Reports
13 1 (0.056%) OLAP
13 1 (0.056%) RDBMS
13 1 (0.056%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 69 (3.87%) JIRA
2 12 (0.67%) Git
3 11 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
4 9 (0.51%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.39%) GitLab
6 5 (0.28%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 4 (0.22%) LabVIEW
7 4 (0.22%) Subversion
8 3 (0.17%) Oracle APEX
9 1 (0.056%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.056%) Gatling
9 1 (0.056%) JMeter
9 1 (0.056%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.056%) Vagrant
General
1 798 (44.78%) Social Skills
2 203 (11.39%) Analytical Skills
3 167 (9.37%) Organisational Skills
4 125 (7.01%) Finance
5 74 (4.15%) Manufacturing
6 61 (3.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 60 (3.37%) Legal
8 57 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
9 56 (3.14%) Retail
10 53 (2.97%) Public Sector
11 51 (2.86%) Law
12 37 (2.08%) Games
13 36 (2.02%) Advertising
14 30 (1.68%) Telecoms
15 19 (1.07%) Marketing
16 15 (0.84%) Local Government
17 9 (0.51%) Automotive
18 8 (0.45%) Aerospace
19 4 (0.22%) General Ledger
19 4 (0.22%) Military
Job Titles
1 714 (40.07%) IT Support
2 501 (28.11%) Support Engineer
3 430 (24.13%) IT Engineer
4 370 (20.76%) IT Support Engineer
5 238 (13.36%) Analyst
6 182 (10.21%) 2nd Line Support
7 176 (9.88%) Support Analyst
7 176 (9.88%) Support Technician
8 158 (8.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 147 (8.25%) IT Technician
10 142 (7.97%) Senior
11 136 (7.63%) IT Support Technician
12 120 (6.73%) IT Analyst
12 120 (6.73%) Systems Engineer
13 110 (6.17%) IT Support Analyst
14 103 (5.78%) 2nd Line Engineer
15 92 (5.16%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
16 89 (4.99%) 3rd Line Support
17 79 (4.43%) 1st Line Support
18 65 (3.65%) Infrastructure Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (2.75%) LDAP
2 46 (2.58%) SAML
2 46 (2.58%) SOAP
3 43 (2.41%) OAuth
3 43 (2.41%) OpenID
3 43 (2.41%) REST
4 38 (2.13%) GraphQL
5 19 (1.07%) JSON
5 19 (1.07%) XML
6 10 (0.56%) RESTful
7 9 (0.51%) Regular Expression
8 8 (0.45%) .NET
9 7 (0.39%) ARM Templates
9 7 (0.39%) Web Services
10 6 (0.34%) XMPP
11 5 (0.28%) FreeSWITCH
11 5 (0.28%) HTML
12 4 (0.22%) CSS
12 4 (0.22%) EDI
12 4 (0.22%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 267 (14.98%) Driving Licence
2 111 (6.23%) Onboarding
3 78 (4.38%) Self-Motivation
4 76 (4.26%) Legacy Systems
5 52 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 46 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
7 43 (2.41%) Cyberattack
8 39 (2.19%) Cyber Threat
9 37 (2.08%) Management Information System
10 35 (1.96%) Data Centre
11 34 (1.91%) Public Cloud
11 34 (1.91%) Replication
12 25 (1.40%) Cloud Native
13 21 (1.18%) Client/Server
14 20 (1.12%) PKI
15 17 (0.95%) CMDB
16 14 (0.79%) Clustering
16 14 (0.79%) iPad
17 12 (0.67%) FMCG
17 12 (0.67%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,276 (71.60%) Windows
2 748 (41.98%) Windows Server
3 308 (17.28%) Windows 10
4 224 (12.57%) Linux
5 142 (7.97%) Windows Server 2016
6 92 (5.16%) Mac OS
7 86 (4.83%) Apple iOS
8 75 (4.21%) Android
9 58 (3.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 36 (2.02%) Windows 7
11 34 (1.91%) Windows Server 2012
12 30 (1.68%) Windows Server 2008
13 29 (1.63%) Unix
14 23 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
15 20 (1.12%) HPUX
15 20 (1.12%) Solaris
15 20 (1.12%) Windows Server 2003
16 10 (0.56%) Windows 8
17 7 (0.39%) Ubuntu
17 7 (0.39%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 626 (35.13%) Problem-Solving
2 506 (28.40%) Customer Service
3 442 (24.80%) ITIL
4 271 (15.21%) Cybersecurity
5 211 (11.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 195 (10.94%) Mentoring
7 191 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 180 (10.10%) ITSM
9 164 (9.20%) Service Delivery
10 154 (8.64%) Disaster Recovery
11 122 (6.85%) Migration
12 121 (6.79%) Vulnerability Remediation
13 120 (6.73%) Incident Management
14 111 (6.23%) Change Management
15 101 (5.67%) Coaching
16 99 (5.56%) Customer Experience
17 97 (5.44%) Kalman Filter
18 96 (5.39%) Web Filtering
19 93 (5.22%) Identity Access Management
20 86 (4.83%) Time Management
Programming Languages
1 295 (16.55%) PowerShell
2 141 (7.91%) SQL
3 82 (4.60%) Bash
4 58 (3.25%) Python
5 49 (2.75%) T-SQL
6 19 (1.07%) Perl
7 16 (0.90%) R
8 12 (0.67%) PL/SQL
8 12 (0.67%) Shell Script
9 10 (0.56%) JavaScript
10 9 (0.51%) Bicep
11 8 (0.45%) Java
11 8 (0.45%) VB
12 5 (0.28%) C#
13 4 (0.22%) Korn
14 3 (0.17%) PHP
14 3 (0.17%) VBA
15 2 (0.11%) C
16 1 (0.056%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 245 (13.75%) Security Cleared
2 182 (10.21%) SC Cleared
3 172 (9.65%) Degree
4 157 (8.81%) Microsoft Certification
5 85 (4.77%) DV Cleared
6 48 (2.69%) DBS Check
7 45 (2.53%) A+ Certification
8 44 (2.47%) Azure Certification
9 36 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
10 30 (1.68%) CCNA
10 30 (1.68%) Network+ Certification
11 29 (1.63%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 25 (1.40%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 18 (1.01%) Computer Science Degree
13 18 (1.01%) MCSE
14 17 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
15 16 (0.90%) HNC
16 12 (0.67%) CCNP
16 12 (0.67%) MCSA
17 10 (0.56%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (9.82%) SLA
2 149 (8.36%) Cyber Essentials
3 107 (6.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 83 (4.66%) PCI DSS
5 50 (2.81%) NIST
6 41 (2.30%) GDPR
7 39 (2.19%) NCSC
8 27 (1.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 17 (0.95%) QA
10 13 (0.73%) Data Quality
11 9 (0.51%) Accessibility
12 5 (0.28%) GRC
12 5 (0.28%) PMO
13 4 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 4 (0.22%) GxP
13 4 (0.22%) ISO 22301
13 4 (0.22%) ITGC
14 3 (0.17%) SOC 2
15 2 (0.11%) ISO 9001
15 2 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 353 (19.81%) Hyper-V
2 264 (14.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 75 (4.21%) Terminal Server
4 51 (2.86%) vSphere
5 44 (2.47%) VMware ESXi
6 31 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
7 29 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (1.23%) Docker
9 17 (0.95%) BitLocker
10 12 (0.67%) VMware NSX
11 11 (0.62%) VMware Workstation
12 9 (0.51%) Firmware
12 9 (0.51%) XenApp
13 6 (0.34%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 6 (0.34%) DFS Replication
14 4 (0.22%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.17%) Lustre
15 3 (0.17%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 3 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 345 (19.36%) Microsoft Intune
2 128 (7.18%) SCCM
3 42 (2.36%) Single Sign-On
4 41 (2.30%) vCenter Server
5 34 (1.91%) Terraform
6 33 (1.85%) Jamf Pro
7 25 (1.40%) Ansible
8 23 (1.29%) WSUS
9 21 (1.18%) FortiGate
10 19 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 16 (0.90%) SCOM
12 15 (0.84%) Kubernetes
13 14 (0.79%) Autotask
14 9 (0.51%) Backup Exec
14 9 (0.51%) Proxmox
15 7 (0.39%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
16 6 (0.34%) ZABBIX
17 5 (0.28%) SCVMM
17 5 (0.28%) SmoothWall
17 5 (0.28%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,278 (71.72%) Microsoft
2 463 (25.98%) VMware
3 152 (8.53%) Veeam
4 110 (6.17%) SolarWinds
5 100 (5.61%) Nimble Storage
6 96 (5.39%) Cisco
7 92 (5.16%) Apple
7 92 (5.16%) Citrix
8 91 (5.11%) Splunk
9 83 (4.66%) ServiceNow
10 76 (4.26%) Google
11 72 (4.04%) Brocade
11 72 (4.04%) HP
11 72 (4.04%) Tanium
12 65 (3.65%) Dell
13 40 (2.24%) Meraki
14 38 (2.13%) Oracle
15 31 (1.74%) McAfee
16 28 (1.57%) Dell Compellent
17 27 (1.52%) CrowdStrike