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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 38 34
Rank change year-on-year -16 -4 -10
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,230 1,856 2,602
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.58% 5.34% 4.96%
As % of the System Software category 49.22% 44.96% 48.10%
Number of salaries quoted 1,614 1,372 1,530
10th Percentile £27,000 £26,250 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,606 £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 £63,625 £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 4,531 4,128 5,410
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.24% 11.88% 10.30%
Number of salaries quoted 3,280 2,236 3,098
10th Percentile £28,500 £26,500 £27,750
25th Percentile £34,500 £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 £67,625 £62,031 £64,563
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 5 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 5 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 +1 527 £34,000 +4.62% 186
South East -18 516 £42,500 +13.33% 290
Midlands -36 380 £41,000 +17.14% 157
North West +64 289 £35,000 - 108
South West -36 285 £38,500 +18.46% 108
East of England -1 254 £35,000 +4.48% 114
West Midlands -30 195 £42,500 +0.59% 86
East Midlands -12 185 £38,550 +25.37% 71
Yorkshire -30 169 £31,000 +1.64% 55
Scotland +36 120 £32,500 +8.33% 68
Northern Ireland -17 97 £39,000 -25.71% 40
North East -53 69 £36,250 +16.94% 28
Wales -42 60 £45,000 +18.13% 27
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
1 661 (29.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 509 (22.83%) SharePoint
3 51 (2.29%) IIS
4 16 (0.72%) Confluence
4 16 (0.72%) Skype for Business
5 6 (0.27%) Apache
6 3 (0.13%) SAS
7 2 (0.090%) nginx
8 1 (0.045%) HCL Domino
8 1 (0.045%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.045%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.045%) Site Server
8 1 (0.045%) Tomcat
Applications
1 143 (6.41%) Microsoft Office
2 38 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 3 (0.13%) Notion
6 2 (0.090%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.045%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.045%) Revit
7 1 (0.045%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 8 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.31%) Dynamics NAV
3 6 (0.27%) Raiser’s Edge
4 5 (0.22%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 5 (0.22%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
5 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 4 (0.18%) Shopify
6 3 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
7 2 (0.090%) Sage 200
7 2 (0.090%) Teamcenter
8 1 (0.045%) Dynamics AX
8 1 (0.045%) Sage 50
8 1 (0.045%) SAP EHS
8 1 (0.045%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,537 (68.92%) Microsoft 365
2 1,221 (54.75%) Azure
3 1,058 (47.44%) Entra ID
4 189 (8.48%) OneDrive
5 143 (6.41%) AWS
6 88 (3.95%) SaaS
7 60 (2.69%) IaaS
7 60 (2.69%) Power Platform
8 52 (2.33%) Mimecast
9 46 (2.06%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (1.88%) Microsoft Purview
11 41 (1.84%) Google Workspace
12 40 (1.79%) Azure Sentinel
13 39 (1.75%) PaaS
14 36 (1.61%) Power Automate
15 35 (1.57%) Serverless
16 27 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
17 26 (1.17%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 22 (0.99%) Azure Functions
18 22 (0.99%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 740 (33.18%) DNS
2 633 (28.39%) DHCP
3 548 (24.57%) Firewall
4 408 (18.30%) VPN
5 300 (13.45%) TCP/IP
6 239 (10.72%) VLAN
7 225 (10.09%) Wi-Fi
8 209 (9.37%) WAN
9 204 (9.15%) LAN
10 160 (7.17%) Wireless
11 139 (6.23%) VoIP
12 93 (4.17%) Network Security
13 66 (2.96%) SAN
14 36 (1.61%) Remote Desktop
14 36 (1.61%) SSL
15 28 (1.26%) Internet
16 22 (0.99%) NAS
16 22 (0.99%) WLAN
17 20 (0.90%) Cisco IOS
18 17 (0.76%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (4.84%) SQL Server
2 88 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
3 31 (1.39%) Azure SQL Database
4 17 (0.76%) MySQL
4 17 (0.76%) Power BI
5 12 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
6 10 (0.45%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.27%) Crystal Reports
8 4 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.13%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.090%) BusinessObjects
10 2 (0.090%) KNIME
11 1 (0.045%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.045%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.045%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.045%) NoSQL
11 1 (0.045%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.045%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.045%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 54 (2.42%) JIRA
2 33 (1.48%) 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 1,102 (49.42%) Social Skills
2 283 (12.69%) Analytical Skills
3 135 (6.05%) Legal
4 127 (5.70%) Finance
5 86 (3.86%) Manufacturing
6 85 (3.81%) Organisational Skills
7 75 (3.36%) Law
8 74 (3.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 69 (3.09%) Public Sector
10 55 (2.47%) Retail
11 48 (2.15%) Aerospace
12 43 (1.93%) Telecoms
13 35 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
14 21 (0.94%) Advertising
15 13 (0.58%) Automotive
16 12 (0.54%) Local Government
17 11 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
18 10 (0.45%) Games
19 7 (0.31%) Aviation
20 5 (0.22%) Italian Language
Job Titles
1 836 (37.49%) IT Support
2 536 (24.04%) IT Engineer
3 532 (23.86%) Support Engineer
4 434 (19.46%) IT Support Engineer
5 399 (17.89%) Analyst
6 284 (12.74%) Senior
7 239 (10.72%) Support Analyst
8 227 (10.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 204 (9.15%) Support Technician
10 202 (9.06%) IT Technician
11 181 (8.12%) IT Support Technician
12 175 (7.85%) IT Analyst
13 155 (6.95%) IT Support Analyst
14 146 (6.55%) Systems Engineer
15 145 (6.50%) 2nd Line Support
16 106 (4.75%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 97 (4.35%) Architect
18 88 (3.95%) Administrator
19 86 (3.86%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
20 82 (3.68%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (3.41%) Terraform
2 62 (2.78%) LDAP
3 37 (1.66%) SAML
4 32 (1.43%) OpenID
5 30 (1.35%) OAuth
6 26 (1.17%) .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%) ARM Templates
12 12 (0.54%) ASP.NET Web Forms
12 12 (0.54%) WinForms
13 11 (0.49%) HTML
14 8 (0.36%) OAuth2
14 8 (0.36%) Web Services
15 7 (0.31%) JSON
15 7 (0.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 313 (14.04%) Driving Licence
2 203 (9.10%) Onboarding
3 117 (5.25%) Self-Motivation
4 84 (3.77%) Legacy Systems
5 78 (3.50%) Hybrid Cloud
6 68 (3.05%) Management Information System
7 65 (2.91%) Data Centre
8 55 (2.47%) PKI
9 50 (2.24%) Security Posture
10 48 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
11 41 (1.84%) Cloud Native
12 40 (1.79%) Clustering
13 34 (1.52%) Replication
14 30 (1.35%) CCTV
14 30 (1.35%) iPhone
15 23 (1.03%) Public Cloud
16 21 (0.94%) iPad
17 19 (0.85%) Video Conferencing
18 16 (0.72%) Enterprise Storage
18 16 (0.72%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,582 (70.94%) Windows
2 909 (40.76%) Windows Server
3 258 (11.57%) Linux
4 254 (11.39%) Windows 10
5 148 (6.64%) Windows Server 2016
6 128 (5.74%) Mac OS
7 81 (3.63%) Windows Server 2019
8 75 (3.36%) Apple iOS
9 61 (2.74%) Android
10 31 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 26 (1.17%) Ubuntu
12 23 (1.03%) VMS
13 18 (0.81%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.36%) Debian
14 8 (0.36%) Rocky
15 7 (0.31%) CentOS
16 5 (0.22%) CoreOS
17 3 (0.13%) Unix
17 3 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 2 (0.090%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 876 (39.28%) Problem-Solving
2 576 (25.83%) Customer Service
3 486 (21.79%) Cybersecurity
4 464 (20.81%) ITIL
5 463 (20.76%) Continuous Improvement
6 386 (17.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 281 (12.60%) Disaster Recovery
8 268 (12.02%) Mentoring
9 236 (10.58%) Identity Access Management
10 228 (10.22%) ITSM
11 207 (9.28%) Project Delivery
12 199 (8.92%) Migration
13 182 (8.16%) Service Delivery
14 161 (7.22%) Service Management
15 145 (6.50%) Customer Experience
16 144 (6.46%) Collaborative Working
17 132 (5.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 130 (5.83%) AI
19 127 (5.70%) Vulnerability Remediation
20 126 (5.65%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 352 (15.78%) PowerShell
2 192 (8.61%) SQL
3 70 (3.14%) Python
4 55 (2.47%) Bash
5 51 (2.29%) Bicep
6 28 (1.26%) 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%) Korn
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%) PHP
14 3 (0.13%) VB
14 3 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 302 (13.54%) Security Cleared
2 202 (9.06%) SC Cleared
3 198 (8.88%) Degree
4 191 (8.57%) Microsoft Certification
5 128 (5.74%) Azure Certification
6 121 (5.43%) A+ Certification
7 106 (4.75%) Network+ Certification
8 88 (3.95%) DV Cleared
9 77 (3.45%) CISM
9 77 (3.45%) CISSP
10 67 (3.00%) DBS Check
11 64 (2.87%) Cisco Certification
12 48 (2.15%) CCNA
13 27 (1.21%) CompTIA Security+
13 27 (1.21%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 24 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
15 20 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
16 19 (0.85%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 18 (0.81%) AWS Certification
18 14 (0.63%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 217 (9.73%) Cyber Essentials
2 126 (5.65%) SLA
3 114 (5.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 84 (3.77%) PCI DSS
5 58 (2.60%) GDPR
6 43 (1.93%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 33 (1.48%) NIST
8 19 (0.85%) QA
9 18 (0.81%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.58%) NCSC
11 12 (0.54%) Data Quality
12 5 (0.22%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.13%) ISAE 3402
15 1 (0.045%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 1 (0.045%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 1 (0.045%) PMO
System Software
1 499 (22.38%) Hyper-V
2 407 (18.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 88 (3.95%) vSphere
4 82 (3.68%) Virtual Desktop
5 72 (3.23%) Terminal Server
6 67 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
7 33 (1.48%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (1.21%) Docker
9 25 (1.12%) Virtual Servers
10 22 (0.99%) Firmware
11 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 10 (0.45%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.45%) NDS
12 10 (0.45%) VMware NSX
13 8 (0.36%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 4 (0.18%) DFS Replication
14 4 (0.18%) Squid
15 3 (0.13%) NFS
15 3 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 3 (0.13%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 620 (27.80%) Microsoft Intune
2 93 (4.17%) SCCM
3 59 (2.65%) Single Sign-On
4 36 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
5 34 (1.52%) FortiGate
6 33 (1.48%) Ansible
6 33 (1.48%) Kubernetes
7 23 (1.03%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
7 23 (1.03%) WSUS
8 18 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 16 (0.72%) Failover Clustering
9 16 (0.72%) Proxmox
10 15 (0.67%) vCenter Server
11 12 (0.54%) ZABBIX
12 11 (0.49%) Microsoft Clustering
13 6 (0.27%) Autotask
13 6 (0.27%) Backup Exec
13 6 (0.27%) Graylog
13 6 (0.27%) SCOM
14 5 (0.22%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 1,874 (84.04%) Microsoft
2 596 (26.73%) VMware
3 212 (9.51%) Veeam
4 205 (9.19%) Cisco
5 108 (4.84%) Meraki
6 93 (4.17%) SolarWinds
7 87 (3.90%) Splunk
8 81 (3.63%) CyberArk
9 76 (3.41%) 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 58 (2.60%) ServiceNow
15 52 (2.33%) Citrix
16 48 (2.15%) Google
17 44 (1.97%) HP
18 43 (1.93%) Palo Alto
19 40 (1.79%) Okta