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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 40 30
Rank change year-on-year -11 -10 +3
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,141 1,821 3,874
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.95% 5.37% 5.74%
As % of the System Software category 52.93% 41.77% 52.18%
Number of salaries quoted 1,654 1,454 3,066
10th Percentile £26,500 £26,000 £24,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £28,313 £27,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £37,500 £35,000 £36,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -2.78% -1.37%
75th Percentile £49,938 £48,750 £48,750
90th Percentile £64,275 £62,500 £58,750
UK median annual salary £40,000 £38,000 £38,000
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -5.00%

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 4,045 4,360 7,424
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.58% 12.85% 10.99%
Number of salaries quoted 3,109 2,569 5,777
10th Percentile £28,000 £26,500 £26,000
25th Percentile £32,625 £31,250 £31,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £45,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% - -5.26%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £60,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £80,000 £73,250
UK median annual salary £52,500 £51,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.94% +2.00% -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 21 July 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 July 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
South East -3 516 £42,500 +6.25% 174
North of England -10 485 £33,000 +3.13% 136
Midlands -28 363 £37,500 +7.14% 53
South West -15 291 £37,500 +8.70% 67
North West +51 244 £35,000 - 69
East of England +7 235 £35,000 +7.58% 57
East Midlands -2 193 £35,000 +11.11% 25
Yorkshire -27 187 £31,000 +3.33% 48
West Midlands -41 169 £42,000 +7.01% 28
Scotland +84 115 £29,000 -17.14% 24
Wales -13 74 £45,000 +18.13% 9
Northern Ireland -14 61 £35,500 -30.73% 3
North East -54 54 £42,500 +32.81% 25
Isle of Man +4 6 £45,000 +30.43% 1
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
1 633 (29.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 446 (20.83%) SharePoint
3 41 (1.91%) IIS
4 15 (0.70%) Confluence
5 10 (0.47%) Exchange Server 2013
6 9 (0.42%) Skype for Business
7 8 (0.37%) Exchange Server 2007
7 8 (0.37%) Exchange Server 2010
8 7 (0.33%) Apache
9 4 (0.19%) CMS
10 3 (0.14%) SAS
11 1 (0.047%) Drupal
11 1 (0.047%) nginx
11 1 (0.047%) Site Server
11 1 (0.047%) WordPress
Applications
1 207 (9.67%) Microsoft Office
2 44 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 3 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.093%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.047%) Revit
Business Applications
1 17 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 13 (0.61%) Dynamics NAV
3 9 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 6 (0.28%) Raiser’s Edge
5 5 (0.23%) JDE EnterpriseOne
5 5 (0.23%) NetSuite
6 4 (0.19%) Dynamics GP
6 4 (0.19%) Exchequer
6 4 (0.19%) Primavera
7 3 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.14%) Shopify
8 2 (0.093%) Alphatax
8 2 (0.093%) Payment Gateway
8 2 (0.093%) Sage 200
8 2 (0.093%) SAP S/4HANA
9 1 (0.047%) Dynamics AX
9 1 (0.047%) Magento
9 1 (0.047%) Oracle Payables
9 1 (0.047%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,507 (70.39%) Microsoft 365
2 1,203 (56.19%) Azure
3 894 (41.76%) Entra ID
4 150 (7.01%) AWS
5 147 (6.87%) OneDrive
6 105 (4.90%) SaaS
7 85 (3.97%) Power Platform
8 64 (2.99%) IaaS
9 61 (2.85%) Mimecast
10 54 (2.52%) PaaS
11 47 (2.20%) Google Workspace
12 43 (2.01%) Azure DevOps
13 37 (1.73%) Microsoft Purview
14 33 (1.54%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.31%) Azure Monitor
16 26 (1.21%) Serverless
17 25 (1.17%) Nutanix
17 25 (1.17%) PowerApps
18 23 (1.07%) Power Automate
19 20 (0.93%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 712 (33.26%) DNS
2 598 (27.93%) DHCP
3 530 (24.75%) Firewall
4 354 (16.53%) VPN
5 246 (11.49%) TCP/IP
6 208 (9.72%) WAN
7 206 (9.62%) Wi-Fi
8 204 (9.53%) LAN
9 202 (9.43%) VLAN
10 131 (6.12%) VoIP
11 126 (5.89%) Wireless
12 82 (3.83%) Network Security
13 76 (3.55%) SAN
14 50 (2.34%) Remote Desktop
15 30 (1.40%) NAS
16 29 (1.35%) Internet
17 26 (1.21%) Broadband
18 19 (0.89%) SD-WAN
19 17 (0.79%) SSL
20 16 (0.75%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.46%) Amazon RDS
2 112 (5.23%) SQL Server
3 47 (2.20%) Power BI
4 32 (1.49%) Azure SQL Database
5 27 (1.26%) PostgreSQL
6 26 (1.21%) MySQL
7 9 (0.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 6 (0.28%) Crystal Reports
9 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.19%) GIS
10 4 (0.19%) Neo4j
11 3 (0.14%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.14%) Relational Database
12 2 (0.093%) BusinessObjects
12 2 (0.093%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.093%) Data Warehouse
12 2 (0.093%) KNIME
13 1 (0.047%) InterSystems Cache
13 1 (0.047%) Metadata
13 1 (0.047%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 74 (3.46%) JIRA
2 22 (1.03%) Git
3 9 (0.42%) GitLab
4 7 (0.33%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 4 (0.19%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.093%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.093%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.093%) Metasploit
7 2 (0.093%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.047%) Carbide.c++
8 1 (0.047%) Gatling
8 1 (0.047%) JMeter
8 1 (0.047%) Ranorex
8 1 (0.047%) Selenium
8 1 (0.047%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.047%) Subversion
8 1 (0.047%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.047%) Vagrant
General
1 954 (44.56%) Social Skills
2 251 (11.72%) Analytical Skills
3 130 (6.07%) Legal
4 122 (5.70%) Finance
5 119 (5.56%) Organisational Skills
6 94 (4.39%) Law
7 69 (3.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 68 (3.18%) Manufacturing
9 66 (3.08%) Public Sector
10 58 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
11 50 (2.34%) Retail
12 46 (2.15%) Telecoms
13 27 (1.26%) Advertising
14 21 (0.98%) Games
15 20 (0.93%) Local Government
16 13 (0.61%) Aerospace
16 13 (0.61%) Automotive
17 9 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
18 7 (0.33%) Banking
18 7 (0.33%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 815 (38.07%) IT Support
2 568 (26.53%) Support Engineer
3 532 (24.85%) IT Engineer
4 446 (20.83%) IT Support Engineer
5 350 (16.35%) Analyst
6 244 (11.40%) Senior
7 230 (10.74%) Support Analyst
8 199 (9.29%) Support Technician
9 197 (9.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 189 (8.83%) IT Technician
11 180 (8.41%) Systems Engineer
12 169 (7.89%) IT Support Technician
13 162 (7.57%) 2nd Line Support
14 156 (7.29%) IT Analyst
15 141 (6.59%) IT Support Analyst
16 97 (4.53%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 89 (4.16%) 3rd Line Support
18 81 (3.78%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
19 80 (3.74%) Architect
20 74 (3.46%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (2.20%) LDAP
2 32 (1.49%) SAML
3 26 (1.21%) OpenID
4 23 (1.07%) OAuth
4 23 (1.07%) Regular Expression
5 22 (1.03%) REST
6 19 (0.89%) XMPP
7 16 (0.75%) GraphQL
7 16 (0.75%) SOAP
8 15 (0.70%) JSON
8 15 (0.70%) XML
9 11 (0.51%) ARM Templates
10 9 (0.42%) .NET
10 9 (0.42%) HTML
10 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Graph
10 9 (0.42%) Web Services
11 7 (0.33%) JSON Schema
12 6 (0.28%) Middleware
13 5 (0.23%) OAuth2
13 5 (0.23%) ODBC
Miscellaneous
1 299 (13.97%) Driving Licence
2 168 (7.85%) Onboarding
3 125 (5.84%) Self-Motivation
4 110 (5.14%) Legacy Systems
5 85 (3.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 71 (3.32%) Data Centre
7 64 (2.99%) Management Information System
8 52 (2.43%) PKI
9 46 (2.15%) Clustering
10 37 (1.73%) Public Cloud
11 36 (1.68%) Replication
12 35 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
13 32 (1.49%) Security Posture
14 30 (1.40%) CCTV
15 29 (1.35%) Cloud Native
16 24 (1.12%) Cyber Threat
17 20 (0.93%) Cyberattack
18 16 (0.75%) Client/Server
19 15 (0.70%) Data Structures
19 15 (0.70%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,534 (71.65%) Windows
2 906 (42.32%) Windows Server
3 307 (14.34%) Windows 10
4 287 (13.40%) Linux
5 178 (8.31%) Windows Server 2016
6 147 (6.87%) Mac OS
7 83 (3.88%) Windows Server 2019
8 79 (3.69%) Apple iOS
9 71 (3.32%) Android
10 40 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 26 (1.21%) Windows Server 2012
12 25 (1.17%) VMS
13 14 (0.65%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.61%) Windows 7
15 10 (0.47%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.33%) Debian
17 6 (0.28%) Windows 8
18 4 (0.19%) CentOS
18 4 (0.19%) Mac OS X
18 4 (0.19%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 724 (33.82%) Problem-Solving
2 549 (25.64%) Customer Service
3 488 (22.79%) ITIL
4 398 (18.59%) Cybersecurity
5 388 (18.12%) Continuous Improvement
6 304 (14.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 266 (12.42%) Mentoring
8 224 (10.46%) Disaster Recovery
9 189 (8.83%) ITSM
10 188 (8.78%) Service Delivery
11 166 (7.75%) Migration
12 157 (7.33%) Project Delivery
13 145 (6.77%) Customer Experience
14 141 (6.59%) Vulnerability Remediation
15 140 (6.54%) Identity Access Management
16 136 (6.35%) Kalman Filter
17 128 (5.98%) Web Filtering
18 124 (5.79%) Change Management
19 115 (5.37%) Collaborative Working
20 114 (5.32%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 342 (15.97%) PowerShell
2 201 (9.39%) SQL
3 75 (3.50%) Bash
4 66 (3.08%) Python
5 39 (1.82%) Bicep
6 29 (1.35%) R
7 28 (1.31%) T-SQL
8 12 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (0.56%) VBA
9 7 (0.33%) C#
9 7 (0.33%) Shell Script
10 6 (0.28%) Korn
10 6 (0.28%) PHP
10 6 (0.28%) Ruby
11 5 (0.23%) Java
12 4 (0.19%) VB
13 3 (0.14%) JavaScript
14 2 (0.093%) C
14 2 (0.093%) VB.NET
14 2 (0.093%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 302 (14.11%) Security Cleared
2 216 (10.09%) SC Cleared
3 200 (9.34%) Degree
4 176 (8.22%) Microsoft Certification
5 98 (4.58%) Azure Certification
6 87 (4.06%) A+ Certification
7 85 (3.97%) DV Cleared
7 85 (3.97%) Network+ Certification
8 58 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
9 54 (2.52%) CCNA
9 54 (2.52%) DBS Check
10 53 (2.48%) CISM
10 53 (2.48%) CISSP
11 24 (1.12%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 22 (1.03%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 21 (0.98%) MCSA
14 19 (0.89%) Computer Science Degree
15 14 (0.65%) CompTIA Security+
16 13 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 12 (0.56%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 227 (10.60%) Cyber Essentials
2 168 (7.85%) SLA
3 129 (6.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 112 (5.23%) PCI DSS
5 46 (2.15%) GDPR
6 44 (2.06%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 39 (1.82%) NIST
8 23 (1.07%) QA
9 22 (1.03%) NCSC
10 21 (0.98%) Data Quality
11 8 (0.37%) Accessibility
12 6 (0.28%) SOC 2
13 5 (0.23%) PMO
14 4 (0.19%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 4 (0.19%) GRC
14 4 (0.19%) GxP
14 4 (0.19%) ITGC
15 2 (0.093%) ISAE 3402
15 2 (0.093%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 1 (0.047%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 505 (23.59%) Hyper-V
2 360 (16.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 99 (4.62%) vSphere
4 97 (4.53%) Terminal Server
5 62 (2.90%) Virtual Desktop
6 48 (2.24%) Virtual Machines
7 47 (2.20%) VMware ESXi
8 34 (1.59%) Docker
9 16 (0.75%) VMware NSX
10 14 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
11 12 (0.56%) Firmware
12 10 (0.47%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.47%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 9 (0.42%) DFS Replication
14 8 (0.37%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 6 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
15 6 (0.28%) XenApp
16 4 (0.19%) NDS
16 4 (0.19%) Squid
17 3 (0.14%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 526 (24.57%) Microsoft Intune
2 105 (4.90%) SCCM
3 57 (2.66%) Terraform
4 35 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
5 33 (1.54%) vCenter Server
6 30 (1.40%) Ansible
7 29 (1.35%) Jamf Pro
7 29 (1.35%) Kubernetes
8 28 (1.31%) WSUS
9 27 (1.26%) FortiGate
10 21 (0.98%) Proxmox
11 19 (0.89%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 18 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 15 (0.70%) Failover Clustering
14 14 (0.65%) ZABBIX
15 11 (0.51%) Microsoft Clustering
16 8 (0.37%) Autotask
16 8 (0.37%) SCOM
17 7 (0.33%) Backup Exec
18 6 (0.28%) Grafana
Vendors
1 1,701 (79.45%) Microsoft
2 571 (26.67%) VMware
3 210 (9.81%) Veeam
4 143 (6.68%) Cisco
5 123 (5.74%) SolarWinds
6 111 (5.18%) Splunk
7 109 (5.09%) Nimble Storage
8 96 (4.48%) Brocade
8 96 (4.48%) Tanium
9 81 (3.78%) Citrix
10 77 (3.60%) Meraki
11 73 (3.41%) Apple
12 68 (3.18%) ServiceNow
13 67 (3.13%) CyberArk
14 62 (2.90%) HP
15 61 (2.85%) Dell
16 45 (2.10%) Google
17 43 (2.01%) CrowdStrike
18 39 (1.82%) Ubiquiti
19 38 (1.77%) SonicWALL