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 29 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 38 35
Rank change year-on-year -17 -3 -11
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,237 1,843 2,646
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.60% 5.38% 4.98%
As % of the System Software category 49.36% 44.62% 48.58%
Number of salaries quoted 1,632 1,375 1,563
10th Percentile £26,763 £26,250 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,500 £28,500 £30,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £35,000 £39,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -11.39% +5.33%
75th Percentile £50,000 £48,750 £52,500
90th Percentile £65,000 £62,500 £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 4,532 4,130 5,447
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.26% 12.05% 10.25%
Number of salaries quoted 3,286 2,256 3,146
10th Percentile £28,500 £26,500 £27,750
25th Percentile £34,313 £30,750 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £42,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -15.00% +0.88%
75th Percentile £67,500 £62,500 £63,750
90th Percentile £81,250 £75,000 £76,250
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 29 September 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 29 September 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 -2 529 £33,500 +3.08% 155
South East -12 516 £42,500 +13.33% 184
Midlands -36 381 £41,000 +21.48% 126
North West +72 290 £35,000 - 94
South West -37 288 £38,500 +18.46% 74
East of England -2 262 £35,000 +1.45% 88
West Midlands -32 192 £42,500 +3.66% 76
East Midlands -18 189 £38,000 +20.63% 50
Yorkshire -27 171 £31,000 +1.64% 44
Scotland +52 117 £32,500 +6.56% 37
Northern Ireland -18 93 £39,000 -25.71% 24
North East -59 68 £37,500 +20.97% 20
Wales -48 60 £45,000 +18.13% 14
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
1 660 (29.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 515 (23.02%) SharePoint
3 54 (2.41%) IIS
4 17 (0.76%) Confluence
5 16 (0.72%) Skype for Business
6 6 (0.27%) Apache
7 3 (0.13%) SAS
8 2 (0.089%) nginx
9 1 (0.045%) Exchange Server 2013
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
1 145 (6.48%) Microsoft Office
2 37 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.089%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.089%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.045%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.045%) Notion
6 1 (0.045%) Revit
Business Applications
1 11 (0.49%) 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 (0.089%) Sage 200
7 2 (0.089%) 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 1,539 (68.80%) Microsoft 365
2 1,219 (54.49%) Azure
3 1,049 (46.89%) Entra ID
4 187 (8.36%) OneDrive
5 142 (6.35%) AWS
6 90 (4.02%) SaaS
7 63 (2.82%) Power Platform
8 58 (2.59%) IaaS
9 51 (2.28%) Mimecast
10 46 (2.06%) Azure DevOps
11 42 (1.88%) Microsoft Purview
12 41 (1.83%) PaaS
13 40 (1.79%) Azure Sentinel
14 38 (1.70%) Power Automate
15 37 (1.65%) Google Workspace
16 35 (1.56%) Serverless
17 27 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
18 26 (1.16%) Azure ExpressRoute
19 24 (1.07%) Dynamics 365
20 22 (0.98%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 743 (33.21%) DNS
2 632 (28.25%) DHCP
3 552 (24.68%) Firewall
4 410 (18.33%) VPN
5 298 (13.32%) TCP/IP
6 233 (10.42%) VLAN
7 228 (10.19%) Wi-Fi
8 212 (9.48%) WAN
9 207 (9.25%) LAN
10 161 (7.20%) Wireless
11 139 (6.21%) VoIP
12 94 (4.20%) Network Security
13 69 (3.08%) SAN
14 36 (1.61%) Remote Desktop
15 35 (1.56%) SSL
16 28 (1.25%) Internet
17 22 (0.98%) NAS
18 19 (0.85%) WLAN
19 18 (0.80%) Cisco IOS
20 17 (0.76%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (4.74%) SQL Server
2 90 (4.02%) Amazon RDS
3 31 (1.39%) Azure SQL Database
4 18 (0.80%) MySQL
5 17 (0.76%) Power BI
6 13 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
7 11 (0.49%) Relational Database
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 (0.089%) BusinessObjects
11 2 (0.089%) KNIME
11 2 (0.089%) Neo4j
11 2 (0.089%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 1 (0.045%) Elasticsearch
12 1 (0.045%) Geospatial Data
12 1 (0.045%) NoSQL
12 1 (0.045%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.045%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 56 (2.50%) JIRA
2 33 (1.48%) Git
3 9 (0.40%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.27%) Bitbucket
5 5 (0.22%) GitLab
6 2 (0.089%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.089%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.089%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.089%) git-flow
6 2 (0.089%) Metasploit
6 2 (0.089%) NUnit
6 2 (0.089%) 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 1,097 (49.04%) Social Skills
2 281 (12.56%) Analytical Skills
3 135 (6.03%) Legal
4 127 (5.68%) Finance
5 86 (3.84%) Manufacturing
6 84 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
7 76 (3.40%) Law
8 73 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 71 (3.17%) Public Sector
10 56 (2.50%) Retail
11 45 (2.01%) Aerospace
12 43 (1.92%) Telecoms
13 34 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
14 22 (0.98%) Advertising
15 13 (0.58%) Automotive
16 12 (0.54%) Local Government
17 11 (0.49%) Games
17 11 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
18 7 (0.31%) Aviation
19 5 (0.22%) Dutch Language
Job Titles
1 836 (37.37%) IT Support
2 543 (24.27%) IT Engineer
3 541 (24.18%) Support Engineer
4 441 (19.71%) IT Support Engineer
5 390 (17.43%) Analyst
6 285 (12.74%) Senior
7 236 (10.55%) Support Analyst
8 231 (10.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 199 (8.90%) IT Technician
10 197 (8.81%) Support Technician
11 177 (7.91%) IT Support Technician
12 170 (7.60%) IT Analyst
13 152 (6.79%) IT Support Analyst
14 148 (6.62%) 2nd Line Support
15 146 (6.53%) Systems Engineer
16 107 (4.78%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 97 (4.34%) Architect
18 92 (4.11%) Administrator
19 89 (3.98%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
20 81 (3.62%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (3.40%) Terraform
2 63 (2.82%) LDAP
3 36 (1.61%) SAML
4 32 (1.43%) OpenID
5 30 (1.34%) OAuth
6 25 (1.12%) .NET
7 17 (0.76%) Microsoft Graph
7 17 (0.76%) Regular Expression
8 15 (0.67%) REST
9 14 (0.63%) ModSecurity
9 14 (0.63%) SailPoint
9 14 (0.63%) XMPP
10 12 (0.54%) ARM Templates
11 11 (0.49%) ASP.NET Web Forms
11 11 (0.49%) HTML
11 11 (0.49%) WinForms
12 8 (0.36%) OAuth2
12 8 (0.36%) Web Services
13 7 (0.31%) JSON
13 7 (0.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 313 (13.99%) Driving Licence
2 205 (9.16%) Onboarding
3 119 (5.32%) Self-Motivation
4 85 (3.80%) Legacy Systems
5 79 (3.53%) Hybrid Cloud
6 69 (3.08%) Management Information System
7 66 (2.95%) Data Centre
8 53 (2.37%) PKI
9 47 (2.10%) Security Posture
10 45 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 41 (1.83%) Cloud Native
12 40 (1.79%) Clustering
13 33 (1.48%) CCTV
13 33 (1.48%) Replication
14 28 (1.25%) iPhone
15 23 (1.03%) Public Cloud
16 20 (0.89%) iPad
17 19 (0.85%) Video Conferencing
18 16 (0.72%) Enterprise Storage
18 16 (0.72%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,587 (70.94%) Windows
2 917 (40.99%) Windows Server
3 261 (11.67%) Linux
4 257 (11.49%) Windows 10
5 150 (6.71%) Windows Server 2016
6 128 (5.72%) Mac OS
7 84 (3.76%) Windows Server 2019
8 76 (3.40%) Apple iOS
9 59 (2.64%) Android
10 32 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 26 (1.16%) Ubuntu
12 24 (1.07%) VMS
13 22 (0.98%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.36%) Debian
15 7 (0.31%) CentOS
15 7 (0.31%) Rocky
16 5 (0.22%) CoreOS
17 4 (0.18%) Unix
17 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
18 3 (0.13%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 857 (38.31%) Problem-Solving
2 578 (25.84%) Customer Service
3 478 (21.37%) Cybersecurity
4 470 (21.01%) ITIL
5 461 (20.61%) Continuous Improvement
6 388 (17.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 280 (12.52%) Disaster Recovery
8 263 (11.76%) Mentoring
9 231 (10.33%) Identity Access Management
10 225 (10.06%) ITSM
11 205 (9.16%) Project Delivery
12 196 (8.76%) Migration
13 186 (8.31%) Service Delivery
14 159 (7.11%) Service Management
15 141 (6.30%) Customer Experience
16 139 (6.21%) Collaborative Working
17 132 (5.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 131 (5.86%) AI
19 127 (5.68%) Vulnerability Remediation
20 122 (5.45%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 352 (15.74%) PowerShell
2 193 (8.63%) SQL
3 73 (3.26%) Python
4 55 (2.46%) Bash
5 53 (2.37%) Bicep
6 27 (1.21%) Ruby
7 20 (0.89%) C#
8 19 (0.85%) 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%) PHP
14 3 (0.13%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.13%) VB
14 3 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 308 (13.77%) Security Cleared
2 205 (9.16%) Degree
3 204 (9.12%) SC Cleared
4 191 (8.54%) Microsoft Certification
5 129 (5.77%) Azure Certification
6 122 (5.45%) A+ Certification
7 107 (4.78%) Network+ Certification
8 92 (4.11%) DV Cleared
9 77 (3.44%) CISM
9 77 (3.44%) CISSP
10 67 (3.00%) DBS Check
11 64 (2.86%) Cisco Certification
12 48 (2.15%) CCNA
13 28 (1.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 27 (1.21%) CompTIA Security+
15 21 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
15 21 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
16 18 (0.80%) AWS Certification
17 17 (0.76%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 14 (0.63%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 218 (9.75%) Cyber Essentials
2 130 (5.81%) SLA
3 118 (5.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 85 (3.80%) PCI DSS
5 58 (2.59%) GDPR
6 43 (1.92%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 33 (1.48%) NIST
8 19 (0.85%) QA
9 16 (0.72%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.58%) NCSC
11 12 (0.54%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.27%) 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
1 504 (22.53%) Hyper-V
2 413 (18.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (4.02%) vSphere
4 79 (3.53%) Virtual Desktop
5 72 (3.22%) Terminal Server
6 66 (2.95%) Virtual Machines
7 37 (1.65%) VMware ESXi
8 28 (1.25%) Docker
9 24 (1.07%) Virtual Servers
10 22 (0.98%) Firmware
11 12 (0.54%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 11 (0.49%) VMware NSX
13 10 (0.45%) NDS
14 9 (0.40%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.36%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 4 (0.18%) Squid
17 3 (0.13%) DFS Replication
17 3 (0.13%) NFS
17 3 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.13%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 616 (27.54%) Microsoft Intune
2 96 (4.29%) SCCM
3 55 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
4 34 (1.52%) Ansible
4 34 (1.52%) FortiGate
5 33 (1.48%) Jamf Pro
5 33 (1.48%) Kubernetes
6 26 (1.16%) WSUS
7 22 (0.98%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
8 18 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 17 (0.76%) Proxmox
9 17 (0.76%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.67%) Failover Clustering
11 12 (0.54%) ZABBIX
12 11 (0.49%) Microsoft Clustering
13 7 (0.31%) SCOM
14 6 (0.27%) Graylog
15 5 (0.22%) McAfee ePO
15 5 (0.22%) Puppet
15 5 (0.22%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 1,874 (83.77%) Microsoft
2 600 (26.82%) VMware
3 210 (9.39%) Veeam
4 200 (8.94%) Cisco
5 104 (4.65%) Meraki
6 93 (4.16%) SolarWinds
7 88 (3.93%) Splunk
8 81 (3.62%) CyberArk
9 76 (3.40%) Apple
10 75 (3.35%) Nimble Storage
11 72 (3.22%) Brocade
11 72 (3.22%) Tanium
12 68 (3.04%) Fortinet
13 61 (2.73%) SonicWALL
14 60 (2.68%) ServiceNow
15 54 (2.41%) Citrix
16 46 (2.06%) HP
17 45 (2.01%) Palo Alto
18 44 (1.97%) Google
19 39 (1.74%) Dell