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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 38 34
Rank change year-on-year -15 -4 -10
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,232 1,849 2,563
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.59% 5.32% 4.95%
As % of the System Software category 49.17% 44.94% 48.03%
Number of salaries quoted 1,604 1,362 1,502
10th Percentile £27,000 £26,250 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,750 £28,500 £30,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £35,000 £40,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -12.50% +6.67%
75th Percentile £50,000 £48,750 £52,500
90th Percentile £65,000 £63,715 £62,500
UK median annual salary £40,000 £37,500 £42,500
% change year-on-year +6.67% -11.76% +6.25%

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 4,539 4,114 5,336
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.27% 11.85% 10.30%
Number of salaries quoted 3,276 2,220 3,032
10th Percentile £28,500 £26,500 £27,750
25th Percentile £35,000 £30,750 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £42,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -15.00% -
75th Percentile £67,906 £62,219 £64,609
90th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +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 8 October 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 8 October 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
North of England -5 524 £34,000 +4.62% 165
South East -21 516 £42,500 +13.33% 207
Midlands -32 377 £41,000 +17.14% 129
North West +70 289 £35,000 - 90
South West -35 289 £39,000 +20.00% 106
East of England -6 249 £35,000 +4.48% 81
West Midlands -32 194 £42,500 -8.11% 79
East Midlands -11 183 £38,500 +25.20% 50
Yorkshire -28 167 £32,000 +4.92% 57
Scotland +35 117 £32,500 +8.33% 45
Northern Ireland -8 110 £39,000 -25.71% 21
North East -61 68 £37,500 +20.97% 23
Wales -48 59 £45,000 +18.13% 13
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
1 668 (29.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 509 (22.80%) SharePoint
3 52 (2.33%) IIS
4 17 (0.76%) Confluence
5 16 (0.72%) Skype for Business
6 7 (0.31%) Apache
7 3 (0.13%) SAS
8 2 (0.090%) nginx
9 1 (0.045%) HCL Domino
9 1 (0.045%) HCL Notes
9 1 (0.045%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.045%) Site Server
9 1 (0.045%) Tomcat
Applications
1 144 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 3 (0.13%) Notion
6 2 (0.090%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.045%) Revit
7 1 (0.045%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
2 6 (0.27%) NetSuite
2 6 (0.27%) Raiser’s Edge
2 6 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 5 (0.22%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.18%) Shopify
5 3 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.090%) Sage 200
6 2 (0.090%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.045%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.045%) Sage 50
7 1 (0.045%) SAP EHS
7 1 (0.045%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,532 (68.64%) Microsoft 365
2 1,217 (54.53%) Azure
3 1,074 (48.12%) Entra ID
4 189 (8.47%) OneDrive
5 139 (6.23%) AWS
6 88 (3.94%) SaaS
7 60 (2.69%) IaaS
8 57 (2.55%) Power Platform
9 53 (2.37%) Mimecast
10 44 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
11 42 (1.88%) Microsoft Purview
12 41 (1.84%) Google Workspace
13 39 (1.75%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.66%) PaaS
15 36 (1.61%) Power Automate
16 33 (1.48%) Serverless
17 26 (1.16%) Azure ExpressRoute
17 26 (1.16%) Azure Monitor
18 22 (0.99%) Dynamics 365
19 21 (0.94%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 745 (33.38%) DNS
2 638 (28.58%) DHCP
3 549 (24.60%) Firewall
4 408 (18.28%) VPN
5 301 (13.49%) TCP/IP
6 241 (10.80%) VLAN
7 224 (10.04%) Wi-Fi
8 205 (9.18%) WAN
9 201 (9.01%) LAN
10 160 (7.17%) Wireless
11 137 (6.14%) VoIP
12 92 (4.12%) Network Security
13 66 (2.96%) SAN
14 37 (1.66%) SSL
15 35 (1.57%) Remote Desktop
16 28 (1.25%) Internet
17 24 (1.08%) NAS
18 21 (0.94%) WLAN
19 19 (0.85%) Cisco IOS
20 17 (0.76%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (4.84%) SQL Server
2 88 (3.94%) Amazon RDS
3 30 (1.34%) Azure SQL Database
4 16 (0.72%) MySQL
5 14 (0.63%) Power BI
6 10 (0.45%) Relational Database
7 9 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (0.27%) Crystal Reports
9 4 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (0.13%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.13%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.090%) BusinessObjects
11 2 (0.090%) KNIME
12 1 (0.045%) Elasticsearch
12 1 (0.045%) Geospatial Data
12 1 (0.045%) Neo4j
12 1 (0.045%) NoSQL
12 1 (0.045%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 1 (0.045%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.045%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 54 (2.42%) JIRA
2 32 (1.43%) Git
3 9 (0.40%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.27%) Bitbucket
5 5 (0.22%) GitLab
6 2 (0.090%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.090%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.090%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.090%) git-flow
6 2 (0.090%) Metasploit
6 2 (0.090%) NUnit
6 2 (0.090%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.045%) Carbide.c++
7 1 (0.045%) Flyway
7 1 (0.045%) Ranorex
7 1 (0.045%) Selenium
7 1 (0.045%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.045%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,111 (49.78%) Social Skills
2 300 (13.44%) Analytical Skills
3 136 (6.09%) Legal
4 126 (5.65%) Finance
5 86 (3.85%) Manufacturing
6 83 (3.72%) Organisational Skills
7 77 (3.45%) Law
8 73 (3.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 64 (2.87%) Public Sector
10 55 (2.46%) Retail
11 49 (2.20%) Aerospace
12 41 (1.84%) Telecoms
13 36 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
14 19 (0.85%) Advertising
15 12 (0.54%) Automotive
16 11 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
17 10 (0.45%) Games
17 10 (0.45%) Local Government
18 7 (0.31%) Aviation
19 5 (0.22%) Italian Language
Job Titles
1 833 (37.32%) IT Support
2 534 (23.92%) IT Engineer
3 528 (23.66%) Support Engineer
4 432 (19.35%) IT Support Engineer
5 407 (18.23%) Analyst
6 283 (12.68%) Senior
7 235 (10.53%) Support Analyst
8 228 (10.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 202 (9.05%) IT Technician
10 201 (9.01%) Support Technician
11 179 (8.02%) IT Support Technician
12 175 (7.84%) IT Analyst
13 155 (6.94%) IT Support Analyst
14 145 (6.50%) Systems Engineer
15 142 (6.36%) 2nd Line Support
16 106 (4.75%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 97 (4.35%) Architect
18 87 (3.90%) Administrator
19 86 (3.85%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
20 85 (3.81%) 3rd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (3.32%) Terraform
2 63 (2.82%) LDAP
3 40 (1.79%) SAML
4 33 (1.48%) OpenID
5 31 (1.39%) OAuth
6 26 (1.16%) .NET
7 17 (0.76%) Microsoft Graph
8 16 (0.72%) Regular Expression
9 15 (0.67%) REST
10 14 (0.63%) ModSecurity
10 14 (0.63%) SailPoint
11 13 (0.58%) XMPP
12 12 (0.54%) ASP.NET Web Forms
12 12 (0.54%) WinForms
13 11 (0.49%) ARM Templates
13 11 (0.49%) HTML
14 9 (0.40%) OAuth2
15 8 (0.36%) Web Services
16 7 (0.31%) JSON
16 7 (0.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 315 (14.11%) Driving Licence
2 200 (8.96%) Onboarding
3 115 (5.15%) Self-Motivation
4 84 (3.76%) Legacy Systems
5 76 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
6 66 (2.96%) Data Centre
6 66 (2.96%) Management Information System
7 54 (2.42%) PKI
8 51 (2.28%) Security Posture
9 50 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
10 40 (1.79%) Cloud Native
11 39 (1.75%) Clustering
12 37 (1.66%) Replication
13 29 (1.30%) CCTV
13 29 (1.30%) iPhone
14 22 (0.99%) Public Cloud
15 20 (0.90%) iPad
16 19 (0.85%) Video Conferencing
17 17 (0.76%) Enterprise Storage
18 16 (0.72%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,578 (70.70%) Windows
2 909 (40.73%) Windows Server
3 254 (11.38%) Linux
4 247 (11.07%) Windows 10
5 153 (6.85%) Windows Server 2016
6 125 (5.60%) Mac OS
7 83 (3.72%) Windows Server 2019
8 72 (3.23%) Apple iOS
9 59 (2.64%) Android
10 29 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 27 (1.21%) Ubuntu
12 23 (1.03%) VMS
13 19 (0.85%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.36%) Debian
14 8 (0.36%) Rocky
15 7 (0.31%) CentOS
16 5 (0.22%) CoreOS
17 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
18 2 (0.090%) Unix
18 2 (0.090%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 892 (39.96%) Problem-Solving
2 573 (25.67%) Customer Service
3 499 (22.36%) Cybersecurity
4 464 (20.79%) Continuous Improvement
5 461 (20.65%) ITIL
6 387 (17.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 285 (12.77%) Disaster Recovery
8 267 (11.96%) Mentoring
9 250 (11.20%) Identity Access Management
10 230 (10.30%) ITSM
11 207 (9.27%) Project Delivery
12 204 (9.14%) Migration
13 179 (8.02%) Service Delivery
14 164 (7.35%) Service Management
15 145 (6.50%) Collaborative Working
16 144 (6.45%) Customer Experience
17 143 (6.41%) Information Security
18 132 (5.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 131 (5.87%) AI
19 131 (5.87%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 353 (15.82%) PowerShell
2 186 (8.33%) SQL
3 67 (3.00%) Python
4 53 (2.37%) Bash
5 49 (2.20%) Bicep
6 29 (1.30%) Ruby
7 21 (0.94%) C#
8 18 (0.81%) R
9 16 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
10 12 (0.54%) VBA
11 7 (0.31%) Java
11 7 (0.31%) T-SQL
12 5 (0.22%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.18%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.18%) VB.NET
14 3 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 3 (0.13%) Korn
14 3 (0.13%) PHP
14 3 (0.13%) VB
14 3 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 301 (13.49%) Security Cleared
2 201 (9.01%) SC Cleared
3 195 (8.74%) Degree
4 193 (8.65%) Microsoft Certification
5 131 (5.87%) Azure Certification
6 122 (5.47%) A+ Certification
7 105 (4.70%) Network+ Certification
8 87 (3.90%) DV Cleared
9 78 (3.49%) CISM
9 78 (3.49%) CISSP
10 67 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
10 67 (3.00%) DBS Check
11 50 (2.24%) CCNA
12 29 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
13 26 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
13 26 (1.16%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 19 (0.85%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 18 (0.81%) AWS Certification
15 18 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
16 16 (0.72%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 216 (9.68%) Cyber Essentials
2 124 (5.56%) SLA
3 116 (5.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 83 (3.72%) PCI DSS
5 57 (2.55%) GDPR
6 41 (1.84%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 34 (1.52%) NIST
8 19 (0.85%) Accessibility
8 19 (0.85%) QA
9 13 (0.58%) NCSC
10 11 (0.49%) Data Quality
11 5 (0.22%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 3 (0.13%) ISAE 3402
14 1 (0.045%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 1 (0.045%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 1 (0.045%) PMO
System Software
1 502 (22.49%) Hyper-V
2 412 (18.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 88 (3.94%) vSphere
4 83 (3.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 72 (3.23%) Terminal Server
6 66 (2.96%) Virtual Machines
7 34 (1.52%) VMware ESXi
8 25 (1.12%) Virtual Servers
9 23 (1.03%) Docker
10 22 (0.99%) Firmware
11 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 10 (0.45%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.45%) NDS
13 9 (0.40%) VMware NSX
14 6 (0.27%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 5 (0.22%) DFS Replication
16 4 (0.18%) Squid
17 3 (0.13%) NFS
17 3 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.13%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 624 (27.96%) Microsoft Intune
2 95 (4.26%) SCCM
3 63 (2.82%) Single Sign-On
4 39 (1.75%) FortiGate
5 36 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
6 31 (1.39%) Ansible
7 30 (1.34%) Kubernetes
8 24 (1.08%) WSUS
9 23 (1.03%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 20 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 16 (0.72%) Failover Clustering
11 16 (0.72%) Proxmox
12 14 (0.63%) vCenter Server
13 12 (0.54%) ZABBIX
14 11 (0.49%) Microsoft Clustering
15 7 (0.31%) Autotask
16 6 (0.27%) Backup Exec
16 6 (0.27%) Graylog
16 6 (0.27%) SCOM
16 6 (0.27%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 1,884 (84.41%) Microsoft
2 602 (26.97%) VMware
3 216 (9.68%) Veeam
4 207 (9.27%) Cisco
5 109 (4.88%) Meraki
6 96 (4.30%) SolarWinds
7 86 (3.85%) Splunk
8 81 (3.63%) CyberArk
9 79 (3.54%) Apple
10 75 (3.36%) Nimble Storage
11 72 (3.23%) Brocade
11 72 (3.23%) Tanium
12 68 (3.05%) Fortinet
13 62 (2.78%) SonicWALL
14 56 (2.51%) ServiceNow
15 55 (2.46%) Citrix
16 48 (2.15%) Google
17 47 (2.11%) Palo Alto
18 45 (2.02%) HP
19 43 (1.93%) Okta