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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 39 34
Rank change year-on-year -15 -5 -10
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,235 1,859 2,608
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.58% 5.35% 4.97%
As % of the System Software category 49.20% 44.93% 48.28%
Number of salaries quoted 1,619 1,376 1,533
10th Percentile £27,000 £26,250 £25,750
25th Percentile £29,613 £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 £63,125 £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 4,543 4,138 5,402
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.25% 11.91% 10.30%
Number of salaries quoted 3,291 2,248 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 £67,500 £62,219 £63,938
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 4 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 4 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 +1 529 £34,000 +4.62% 185
South East -18 516 £42,500 +13.33% 294
Midlands -34 382 £41,000 +17.14% 154
North West +71 289 £35,000 - 107
South West -35 287 £38,500 +18.46% 106
East of England -1 254 £35,000 +4.48% 118
West Midlands -26 195 £42,500 +3.66% 85
East Midlands -17 187 £38,000 +26.67% 69
Yorkshire -29 171 £31,000 +1.64% 56
Scotland +37 119 £32,500 +8.33% 79
Northern Ireland -17 97 £39,000 -25.71% 25
North East -53 69 £36,250 +16.94% 26
Wales -47 60 £45,000 +18.13% 31
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
1 662 (29.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 509 (22.77%) SharePoint
3 53 (2.37%) 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%) 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 (6.49%) 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 (0.089%) 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 (0.089%) 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 1,540 (68.90%) Microsoft 365
2 1,223 (54.72%) Azure
3 1,058 (47.34%) Entra ID
4 189 (8.46%) OneDrive
5 143 (6.40%) AWS
6 89 (3.98%) SaaS
7 60 (2.68%) IaaS
7 60 (2.68%) Power Platform
8 51 (2.28%) Mimecast
9 45 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (1.88%) Microsoft Purview
11 41 (1.83%) Google Workspace
12 40 (1.79%) Azure Sentinel
12 40 (1.79%) PaaS
13 36 (1.61%) Power Automate
14 35 (1.57%) Serverless
15 27 (1.21%) Azure Monitor
16 26 (1.16%) Azure ExpressRoute
17 22 (0.98%) Azure AKS
17 22 (0.98%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 743 (33.24%) DNS
2 635 (28.41%) DHCP
3 549 (24.56%) Firewall
4 409 (18.30%) VPN
5 299 (13.38%) TCP/IP
6 238 (10.65%) VLAN
7 226 (10.11%) Wi-Fi
8 212 (9.49%) WAN
9 207 (9.26%) LAN
10 158 (7.07%) Wireless
11 139 (6.22%) VoIP
12 93 (4.16%) Network Security
13 68 (3.04%) SAN
14 36 (1.61%) Remote Desktop
14 36 (1.61%) SSL
15 28 (1.25%) Internet
16 23 (1.03%) NAS
17 22 (0.98%) WLAN
18 20 (0.89%) Cisco IOS
19 17 (0.76%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (4.83%) SQL Server
2 89 (3.98%) 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 11 (0.49%) 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 (0.089%) BusinessObjects
10 2 (0.089%) KNIME
10 2 (0.089%) SQL Server Integration Services
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 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 (0.089%) 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 1,104 (49.40%) Social Skills
2 285 (12.75%) Analytical Skills
3 136 (6.09%) Legal
4 127 (5.68%) Finance
5 86 (3.85%) Manufacturing
6 84 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
7 76 (3.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 75 (3.36%) Law
9 70 (3.13%) Public Sector
10 55 (2.46%) Retail
11 48 (2.15%) Aerospace
12 43 (1.92%) 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 (37.40%) IT Support
2 539 (24.12%) IT Engineer
3 534 (23.89%) Support Engineer
4 435 (19.46%) IT Support Engineer
5 398 (17.81%) Analyst
6 287 (12.84%) Senior
7 238 (10.65%) Support Analyst
8 230 (10.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 205 (9.17%) Support Technician
10 203 (9.08%) IT Technician
11 182 (8.14%) IT Support Technician
12 174 (7.79%) IT Analyst
13 154 (6.89%) IT Support Analyst
14 146 (6.53%) 2nd Line Support
14 146 (6.53%) Systems Engineer
15 107 (4.79%) 2nd Line Engineer
16 97 (4.34%) Architect
17 89 (3.98%) Administrator
18 87 (3.89%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
19 82 (3.67%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (3.40%) Terraform
2 62 (2.77%) LDAP
3 37 (1.66%) SAML
4 32 (1.43%) OpenID
5 30 (1.34%) OAuth
6 25 (1.12%) .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
13 11 (0.49%) ASP.NET Web Forms
13 11 (0.49%) HTML
13 11 (0.49%) WinForms
14 8 (0.36%) OAuth2
14 8 (0.36%) Web Services
15 7 (0.31%) JSON
15 7 (0.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 313 (14.00%) Driving Licence
2 203 (9.08%) Onboarding
3 117 (5.23%) Self-Motivation
4 84 (3.76%) Legacy Systems
5 79 (3.53%) Hybrid Cloud
6 68 (3.04%) Management Information System
7 66 (2.95%) Data Centre
8 54 (2.42%) PKI
9 49 (2.19%) Security Posture
10 48 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
11 41 (1.83%) Cloud Native
12 40 (1.79%) Clustering
13 35 (1.57%) Replication
14 30 (1.34%) CCTV
14 30 (1.34%) 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 1,589 (71.10%) Windows
2 914 (40.89%) Windows Server
3 259 (11.59%) Linux
4 255 (11.41%) Windows 10
5 148 (6.62%) Windows Server 2016
6 128 (5.73%) Mac OS
7 81 (3.62%) Windows Server 2019
8 75 (3.36%) Apple iOS
9 61 (2.73%) Android
10 31 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 26 (1.16%) 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 3 (0.13%) Unix
17 3 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 2 (0.089%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 879 (39.33%) Problem-Solving
2 580 (25.95%) Customer Service
3 486 (21.74%) Cybersecurity
4 467 (20.89%) ITIL
5 465 (20.81%) Continuous Improvement
6 387 (17.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 283 (12.66%) Disaster Recovery
8 268 (11.99%) Mentoring
9 236 (10.56%) Identity Access Management
10 231 (10.34%) ITSM
11 207 (9.26%) Project Delivery
12 199 (8.90%) Migration
13 184 (8.23%) Service Delivery
14 162 (7.25%) Service Management
15 145 (6.49%) Customer Experience
16 144 (6.44%) Collaborative Working
17 132 (5.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 130 (5.82%) AI
19 127 (5.68%) Vulnerability Remediation
20 126 (5.64%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 354 (15.84%) PowerShell
2 194 (8.68%) SQL
3 72 (3.22%) Python
4 55 (2.46%) Bash
5 52 (2.33%) Bicep
6 28 (1.25%) Ruby
7 20 (0.89%) 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 (13.51%) Security Cleared
2 202 (9.04%) SC Cleared
3 200 (8.95%) Degree
4 191 (8.55%) Microsoft Certification
5 128 (5.73%) Azure Certification
6 122 (5.46%) A+ Certification
7 107 (4.79%) Network+ Certification
8 88 (3.94%) DV Cleared
9 77 (3.45%) CISM
9 77 (3.45%) CISSP
10 67 (3.00%) DBS Check
11 63 (2.82%) Cisco Certification
12 47 (2.10%) CCNA
13 28 (1.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 27 (1.21%) CompTIA Security+
15 23 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
16 20 (0.89%) Computer Science Degree
17 18 (0.81%) AWS Certification
17 18 (0.81%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 14 (0.63%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 218 (9.75%) Cyber Essentials
2 125 (5.59%) SLA
3 115 (5.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 84 (3.76%) PCI DSS
5 59 (2.64%) GDPR
6 43 (1.92%) 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
1 501 (22.42%) Hyper-V
2 409 (18.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 88 (3.94%) vSphere
4 82 (3.67%) Virtual Desktop
5 72 (3.22%) Terminal Server
6 67 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
7 34 (1.52%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (1.21%) Docker
9 25 (1.12%) Virtual Servers
10 22 (0.98%) 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
1 621 (27.79%) Microsoft Intune
2 93 (4.16%) SCCM
3 58 (2.60%) Single Sign-On
4 36 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
5 35 (1.57%) FortiGate
6 33 (1.48%) Ansible
6 33 (1.48%) Kubernetes
7 24 (1.07%) WSUS
8 23 (1.03%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
9 18 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 16 (0.72%) Failover Clustering
10 16 (0.72%) Proxmox
11 15 (0.67%) vCenter Server
12 12 (0.54%) ZABBIX
13 11 (0.49%) Microsoft Clustering
14 6 (0.27%) Autotask
14 6 (0.27%) Backup Exec
14 6 (0.27%) Graylog
14 6 (0.27%) SCOM
15 5 (0.22%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,878 (84.03%) Microsoft
2 598 (26.76%) VMware
3 214 (9.57%) Veeam
4 205 (9.17%) Cisco
5 109 (4.88%) Meraki
6 94 (4.21%) SolarWinds
7 87 (3.89%) Splunk
8 81 (3.62%) CyberArk
9 76 (3.40%) Apple
10 75 (3.36%) Nimble Storage
11 72 (3.22%) Brocade
11 72 (3.22%) Tanium
12 69 (3.09%) Fortinet
13 62 (2.77%) SonicWALL
14 58 (2.60%) ServiceNow
15 53 (2.37%) Citrix
16 48 (2.15%) Google
17 45 (2.01%) HP
18 43 (1.92%) Palo Alto
19 39 (1.74%) Okta