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 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 38 35
Rank change year-on-year -17 -3 -2
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,172 1,895 3,084
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.77% 5.46% 5.17%
As % of the System Software category 50.20% 43.90% 51.40%
Number of salaries quoted 1,666 1,515 2,259
10th Percentile £26,750 £26,000 £24,750
25th Percentile £29,500 £28,250 £28,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £35,000 £37,500
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -6.67% +1.35%
75th Percentile £51,188 £47,500 £50,000
90th Percentile £67,500 £60,000 £60,000
UK median annual salary £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
% change year-on-year +6.67% -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 4,327 4,317 6,000
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.52% 12.44% 10.06%
Number of salaries quoted 3,255 2,523 4,319
10th Percentile £28,500 £26,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £33,750 £30,750 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £42,500 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -10.53% -4.17%
75th Percentile £67,500 £62,500 £61,250
90th Percentile £80,000 £77,368 £73,750
UK median annual salary £55,000 £49,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +12.24% -2.00% -10.71%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 -12 516 £33,475 +7.98% 106
South East -6 504 £42,500 +6.25% 201
Midlands -31 365 £39,000 +20.00% 85
South West -19 295 £38,000 +10.14% 64
North West +57 281 £35,000 - 59
East of England -1 252 £35,000 +1.45% 68
East Midlands -16 189 £37,500 +19.05% 29
Yorkshire -35 177 £31,000 +3.33% 33
West Midlands -41 176 £42,500 +11.84% 56
Scotland +73 114 £32,500 +4.84% 15
Northern Ireland -23 66 £40,000 -23.81%
Wales -23 66 £45,000 +18.13% 6
North East -60 58 £40,000 +29.03% 19
Isle of Man -1 2 £45,000 +30.43%
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
1 634 (29.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 471 (21.69%) SharePoint
3 50 (2.30%) IIS
4 18 (0.83%) Confluence
5 13 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 6 (0.28%) Apache
7 3 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
7 3 (0.14%) nginx
7 3 (0.14%) SAS
8 1 (0.046%) CMS
8 1 (0.046%) Drupal
8 1 (0.046%) Exchange Server 2007
8 1 (0.046%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.046%) HCL Domino
8 1 (0.046%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.046%) Site Server
8 1 (0.046%) WordPress
Applications
1 144 (6.63%) Microsoft Office
2 40 (1.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 3 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.092%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.046%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.046%) Revit
Business Applications
1 14 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (0.37%) Dynamics NAV
3 7 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.28%) Raiser’s Edge
5 5 (0.23%) JDE EnterpriseOne
5 5 (0.23%) NetSuite
6 4 (0.18%) Exchequer
6 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
6 4 (0.18%) Primavera
6 4 (0.18%) Shopify
7 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
8 2 (0.092%) Sage 200
8 2 (0.092%) Teamcenter
9 1 (0.046%) Dynamics AX
9 1 (0.046%) Dynamics GP
9 1 (0.046%) Magento
9 1 (0.046%) Oracle Payables
9 1 (0.046%) Sage 50
9 1 (0.046%) SAP EHS
9 1 (0.046%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,495 (68.83%) Microsoft 365
2 1,220 (56.17%) Azure
3 961 (44.24%) Entra ID
4 157 (7.23%) OneDrive
5 152 (7.00%) AWS
6 103 (4.74%) SaaS
7 72 (3.31%) Power Platform
8 67 (3.08%) IaaS
9 60 (2.76%) Mimecast
10 53 (2.44%) PaaS
11 47 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
12 40 (1.84%) Microsoft Purview
13 38 (1.75%) Azure Sentinel
14 33 (1.52%) Power Automate
15 32 (1.47%) Serverless
16 28 (1.29%) Azure Monitor
17 25 (1.15%) PowerApps
18 24 (1.10%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 24 (1.10%) GCP
18 24 (1.10%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 706 (32.50%) DNS
2 587 (27.03%) DHCP
3 524 (24.13%) Firewall
4 370 (17.03%) VPN
5 262 (12.06%) TCP/IP
6 209 (9.62%) Wi-Fi
7 202 (9.30%) WAN
8 201 (9.25%) VLAN
9 196 (9.02%) LAN
10 138 (6.35%) Wireless
11 132 (6.08%) VoIP
12 94 (4.33%) Network Security
13 80 (3.68%) SAN
14 45 (2.07%) Remote Desktop
15 28 (1.29%) Internet
15 28 (1.29%) SSL
16 27 (1.24%) NAS
17 18 (0.83%) Structured Cabling
18 17 (0.78%) WLAN
19 16 (0.74%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 101 (4.65%) SQL Server
2 99 (4.56%) Amazon RDS
3 33 (1.52%) Azure SQL Database
4 28 (1.29%) Power BI
5 19 (0.87%) MySQL
5 19 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
6 9 (0.41%) Relational Database
7 6 (0.28%) Crystal Reports
8 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.18%) Neo4j
10 3 (0.14%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.092%) BusinessObjects
11 2 (0.092%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.092%) KNIME
12 1 (0.046%) InterSystems Cache
12 1 (0.046%) NoSQL
12 1 (0.046%) RDBMS
12 1 (0.046%) Redis
12 1 (0.046%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 71 (3.27%) JIRA
2 29 (1.34%) Git
3 9 (0.41%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.28%) Bitbucket
5 5 (0.23%) GitLab
6 2 (0.092%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.092%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.092%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.092%) git-flow
6 2 (0.092%) Metasploit
6 2 (0.092%) NUnit
6 2 (0.092%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.046%) Carbide.c++
7 1 (0.046%) JMeter
7 1 (0.046%) Ranorex
7 1 (0.046%) Selenium
7 1 (0.046%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.046%) Subversion
7 1 (0.046%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.046%) Vagrant
General
1 999 (45.99%) Social Skills
2 259 (11.92%) Analytical Skills
3 146 (6.72%) Legal
4 130 (5.99%) Finance
5 84 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
6 83 (3.82%) Manufacturing
7 82 (3.78%) Law
8 74 (3.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 63 (2.90%) Public Sector
10 56 (2.58%) Retail
11 45 (2.07%) Telecoms
12 40 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
13 34 (1.57%) Aerospace
14 30 (1.38%) Advertising
15 14 (0.64%) Automotive
16 13 (0.60%) Local Government
17 11 (0.51%) Influencing Skills
18 8 (0.37%) Games
19 7 (0.32%) Aviation
20 5 (0.23%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 775 (35.68%) IT Support
2 525 (24.17%) Support Engineer
3 512 (23.57%) IT Engineer
4 415 (19.11%) IT Support Engineer
5 348 (16.02%) Analyst
6 267 (12.29%) Senior
7 223 (10.27%) Support Analyst
8 213 (9.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 202 (9.30%) IT Technician
10 197 (9.07%) Support Technician
11 178 (8.20%) IT Support Technician
12 162 (7.46%) Systems Engineer
13 147 (6.77%) 2nd Line Support
14 142 (6.54%) IT Analyst
15 125 (5.76%) IT Support Analyst
16 96 (4.42%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 94 (4.33%) Architect
18 85 (3.91%) Administrator
19 84 (3.87%) 3rd Line Support
20 80 (3.68%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (3.55%) Terraform
2 53 (2.44%) LDAP
3 31 (1.43%) SAML
4 29 (1.34%) OpenID
5 27 (1.24%) OAuth
6 23 (1.06%) Regular Expression
7 19 (0.87%) XMPP
8 13 (0.60%) .NET
8 13 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
9 12 (0.55%) HTML
9 12 (0.55%) ModSecurity
10 11 (0.51%) ARM Templates
11 10 (0.46%) REST
12 9 (0.41%) Web Services
13 7 (0.32%) JSON
13 7 (0.32%) JSON Schema
13 7 (0.32%) OAuth2
13 7 (0.32%) XML
14 6 (0.28%) SOAP
15 5 (0.23%) ODBC
Miscellaneous
1 302 (13.90%) Driving Licence
2 193 (8.89%) Onboarding
3 120 (5.52%) Self-Motivation
4 95 (4.37%) Legacy Systems
5 84 (3.87%) Hybrid Cloud
6 69 (3.18%) Data Centre
7 65 (2.99%) Management Information System
8 50 (2.30%) PKI
9 44 (2.03%) Clustering
10 42 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
10 42 (1.93%) Security Posture
11 41 (1.89%) Cloud Native
12 36 (1.66%) CCTV
13 35 (1.61%) Replication
14 34 (1.57%) Public Cloud
15 19 (0.87%) Social Media
16 17 (0.78%) CMDB
16 17 (0.78%) iPhone
16 17 (0.78%) Video Conferencing
17 16 (0.74%) Client/Server
Operating Systems
1 1,539 (70.86%) Windows
2 899 (41.39%) Windows Server
3 280 (12.89%) Windows 10
4 275 (12.66%) Linux
5 161 (7.41%) Windows Server 2016
6 137 (6.31%) Mac OS
7 85 (3.91%) Windows Server 2019
8 79 (3.64%) Apple iOS
9 59 (2.72%) Android
10 43 (1.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 24 (1.10%) VMS
12 21 (0.97%) Ubuntu
13 20 (0.92%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.37%) CentOS
15 6 (0.28%) Debian
15 6 (0.28%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
16 5 (0.23%) CoreOS
17 4 (0.18%) Mac OS X
17 4 (0.18%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 748 (34.44%) Problem-Solving
2 528 (24.31%) Customer Service
3 483 (22.24%) ITIL
4 441 (20.30%) Continuous Improvement
5 411 (18.92%) Cybersecurity
6 351 (16.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 268 (12.34%) Mentoring
8 261 (12.02%) Disaster Recovery
9 206 (9.48%) ITSM
10 190 (8.75%) Project Delivery
11 187 (8.61%) Identity Access Management
11 187 (8.61%) Service Delivery
12 168 (7.73%) Migration
13 138 (6.35%) Service Management
14 137 (6.31%) Customer Experience
15 133 (6.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 132 (6.08%) Collaborative Working
17 129 (5.94%) Vulnerability Remediation
18 125 (5.76%) AI
19 117 (5.39%) Kalman Filter
Programming Languages
1 344 (15.84%) PowerShell
2 198 (9.12%) SQL
3 67 (3.08%) Python
4 58 (2.67%) Bash
5 51 (2.35%) Bicep
6 27 (1.24%) R
7 13 (0.60%) Ruby
8 12 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (0.55%) VBA
9 9 (0.41%) C#
10 7 (0.32%) Java
10 7 (0.32%) Shell Script
10 7 (0.32%) T-SQL
11 5 (0.23%) Korn
11 5 (0.23%) PHP
12 3 (0.14%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.14%) VB.NET
13 2 (0.092%) C
13 2 (0.092%) VB
13 2 (0.092%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 314 (14.46%) Security Cleared
2 215 (9.90%) SC Cleared
3 206 (9.48%) Degree
4 189 (8.70%) Microsoft Certification
5 120 (5.52%) Azure Certification
6 103 (4.74%) DV Cleared
7 96 (4.42%) A+ Certification
8 95 (4.37%) Network+ Certification
9 75 (3.45%) CISM
9 75 (3.45%) CISSP
10 61 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
11 59 (2.72%) DBS Check
12 53 (2.44%) CCNA
13 35 (1.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 24 (1.10%) Computer Science Degree
15 22 (1.01%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 20 (0.92%) CompTIA Security+
17 19 (0.87%) AWS Certification
17 19 (0.87%) MCSA
18 15 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (10.27%) Cyber Essentials
2 163 (7.50%) SLA
3 126 (5.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 96 (4.42%) PCI DSS
5 54 (2.49%) GDPR
6 47 (2.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 28 (1.29%) NIST
8 19 (0.87%) QA
9 13 (0.60%) Accessibility
9 13 (0.60%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.55%) NCSC
11 6 (0.28%) SOC 2
12 4 (0.18%) GRC
13 3 (0.14%) ISAE 3402
13 3 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.046%) ISO 9001
14 1 (0.046%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 1 (0.046%) ITGC
14 1 (0.046%) PMO
System Software
1 504 (23.20%) Hyper-V
2 380 (17.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 89 (4.10%) vSphere
4 81 (3.73%) Terminal Server
5 71 (3.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 54 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
7 38 (1.75%) Docker
7 38 (1.75%) VMware ESXi
8 20 (0.92%) Firmware
9 19 (0.87%) Virtual Servers
10 14 (0.64%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 12 (0.55%) VMware NSX
12 10 (0.46%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.46%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 5 (0.23%) DFS Replication
13 5 (0.23%) NDS
14 4 (0.18%) Squid
14 4 (0.18%) XenApp
15 3 (0.14%) VMware Server
16 2 (0.092%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 581 (26.75%) Microsoft Intune
2 112 (5.16%) SCCM
3 57 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
4 37 (1.70%) Ansible
5 33 (1.52%) Kubernetes
6 32 (1.47%) FortiGate
7 27 (1.24%) Jamf Pro
8 26 (1.20%) WSUS
9 22 (1.01%) vCenter Server
10 18 (0.83%) Proxmox
11 17 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 16 (0.74%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 15 (0.69%) Failover Clustering
14 12 (0.55%) ZABBIX
15 11 (0.51%) Microsoft Clustering
16 10 (0.46%) SCOM
17 6 (0.28%) Grafana
17 6 (0.28%) Graylog
17 6 (0.28%) Prometheus
18 5 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,783 (82.09%) Microsoft
2 559 (25.74%) VMware
3 200 (9.21%) Veeam
4 159 (7.32%) Cisco
5 101 (4.65%) SolarWinds
6 97 (4.47%) Splunk
7 88 (4.05%) Nimble Storage
8 80 (3.68%) Brocade
8 80 (3.68%) Tanium
9 79 (3.64%) Meraki
10 74 (3.41%) CyberArk
11 73 (3.36%) Apple
12 71 (3.27%) ServiceNow
13 66 (3.04%) Citrix
14 52 (2.39%) SonicWALL
15 51 (2.35%) Fortinet
16 46 (2.12%) Dell
16 46 (2.12%) HP
17 43 (1.98%) Red Hat
18 37 (1.70%) Palo Alto