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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 35 35
Rank change year-on-year -20 0 -11
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,271 1,884 2,464
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.60% 5.52% 4.95%
As % of the System Software category 48.85% 49.02% 47.95%
Number of salaries quoted 1,596 1,383 1,422
10th Percentile £27,000 £26,179 £26,000
25th Percentile £29,750 £28,500 £30,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £38,000 £35,000 £40,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.57% -12.50% +6.67%
75th Percentile £50,443 £48,750 £53,000
90th Percentile £65,000 £63,680 £62,500
UK median annual salary £40,000 £37,500 £42,500
% change year-on-year +6.67% -11.76% +5.46%

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 4,649 3,843 5,139
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.33% 11.27% 10.33%
Number of salaries quoted 3,304 2,243 2,888
10th Percentile £28,500 £26,500 £28,000
25th Percentile £35,000 £30,500 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £42,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -15.00% -
75th Percentile £68,750 £62,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £76,250 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £49,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +12.24% -10.91% -

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 16 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 16 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 -15 537 £35,000 +7.69% 89
South East -21 533 £42,500 +13.33% 99
Midlands -30 377 £42,000 +20.00% 50
North West +58 297 £35,000 - 49
South West -36 297 £39,000 +20.00% 61
East of England -5 256 £35,000 +4.48% 34
West Midlands -30 198 £42,500 -5.56% 32
East Midlands -10 179 £38,600 +28.67% 18
Yorkshire -27 169 £32,500 +6.56% 30
Scotland +35 113 £32,500 +8.33% 7
Northern Ireland -7 111 £38,500 -30.00% 3
North East -67 71 £37,500 +20.97% 14
Wales -54 56 £36,250 -4.84% 5
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
1 690 (30.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 511 (22.50%) SharePoint
3 50 (2.20%) IIS
4 15 (0.66%) Confluence
5 14 (0.62%) Skype for Business
6 9 (0.40%) Apache
7 3 (0.13%) nginx
7 3 (0.13%) SAS
8 1 (0.044%) HCL Domino
8 1 (0.044%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.044%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.044%) Site Server
8 1 (0.044%) Tomcat
Applications
1 141 (6.21%) Microsoft Office
2 40 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.22%) Notion
5 4 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.088%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.044%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.044%) Revit
Business Applications
1 7 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.26%) NetSuite
2 6 (0.26%) Raiser’s Edge
2 6 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 5 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
3 5 (0.22%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 4 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.18%) Shopify
5 3 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.088%) Sage 200
6 2 (0.088%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.044%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.044%) Sage 50
7 1 (0.044%) SAP EHS
7 1 (0.044%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 1,577 (69.44%) Microsoft 365
2 1,253 (55.17%) Azure
3 1,109 (48.83%) Entra ID
4 198 (8.72%) OneDrive
5 137 (6.03%) AWS
6 85 (3.74%) SaaS
7 62 (2.73%) IaaS
8 58 (2.55%) Power Platform
9 52 (2.29%) Mimecast
10 47 (2.07%) Google Workspace
10 47 (2.07%) Microsoft Purview
11 43 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
12 41 (1.81%) Azure Sentinel
13 36 (1.59%) Power Automate
14 34 (1.50%) PaaS
15 33 (1.45%) Serverless
16 27 (1.19%) Azure Monitor
17 26 (1.14%) Azure ExpressRoute
18 22 (0.97%) Dynamics 365
19 21 (0.92%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 770 (33.91%) DNS
2 665 (29.28%) DHCP
3 556 (24.48%) Firewall
4 422 (18.58%) VPN
5 323 (14.22%) TCP/IP
6 252 (11.10%) VLAN
7 232 (10.22%) Wi-Fi
8 202 (8.89%) WAN
9 200 (8.81%) LAN
10 164 (7.22%) Wireless
11 138 (6.08%) VoIP
12 91 (4.01%) Network Security
13 66 (2.91%) SAN
14 41 (1.81%) SSL
15 39 (1.72%) Remote Desktop
16 25 (1.10%) NAS
17 24 (1.06%) Internet
18 23 (1.01%) WLAN
19 20 (0.88%) Cisco IOS
20 17 (0.75%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (4.89%) SQL Server
2 89 (3.92%) Amazon RDS
3 27 (1.19%) Azure SQL Database
4 15 (0.66%) MySQL
4 15 (0.66%) Power BI
5 11 (0.48%) Relational Database
6 8 (0.35%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (0.26%) Crystal Reports
8 4 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.13%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.13%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.088%) BusinessObjects
10 2 (0.088%) KNIME
11 1 (0.044%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.044%) Geospatial Data
11 1 (0.044%) Metadata
11 1 (0.044%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.044%) NoSQL
11 1 (0.044%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.044%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 54 (2.38%) JIRA
2 33 (1.45%) Git
3 9 (0.40%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.26%) Bitbucket
5 5 (0.22%) GitLab
6 2 (0.088%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.088%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.088%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.088%) git-flow
6 2 (0.088%) Metasploit
6 2 (0.088%) NUnit
6 2 (0.088%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.044%) Carbide.c++
7 1 (0.044%) Flyway
7 1 (0.044%) Ranorex
7 1 (0.044%) Selenium
7 1 (0.044%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.044%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,133 (49.89%) Social Skills
2 310 (13.65%) Analytical Skills
3 138 (6.08%) Legal
4 131 (5.77%) Finance
5 88 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
6 86 (3.79%) Manufacturing
7 78 (3.43%) Law
8 76 (3.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 65 (2.86%) Public Sector
10 54 (2.38%) Retail
11 51 (2.25%) Aerospace
12 40 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
13 39 (1.72%) Telecoms
14 19 (0.84%) Advertising
15 11 (0.48%) Automotive
16 10 (0.44%) Games
16 10 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
17 9 (0.40%) Local Government
18 7 (0.31%) Aviation
19 5 (0.22%) Italian Language
Job Titles
1 838 (36.90%) IT Support
2 542 (23.87%) IT Engineer
3 525 (23.12%) Support Engineer
4 435 (19.15%) IT Support Engineer
5 412 (18.14%) Analyst
6 295 (12.99%) Senior
7 241 (10.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 234 (10.30%) Support Analyst
9 206 (9.07%) IT Technician
10 204 (8.98%) Support Technician
11 181 (7.97%) IT Analyst
12 179 (7.88%) IT Support Technician
13 158 (6.96%) IT Support Analyst
14 145 (6.38%) Systems Engineer
15 142 (6.25%) 2nd Line Support
16 108 (4.76%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 101 (4.45%) Architect
18 92 (4.05%) Administrator
19 88 (3.87%) 3rd Line Support
20 86 (3.79%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (3.30%) Terraform
2 64 (2.82%) LDAP
3 43 (1.89%) SAML
4 34 (1.50%) OpenID
5 32 (1.41%) OAuth
6 26 (1.14%) .NET
7 19 (0.84%) Microsoft Graph
8 17 (0.75%) REST
9 16 (0.70%) Regular Expression
10 15 (0.66%) ModSecurity
10 15 (0.66%) SailPoint
11 13 (0.57%) ARM Templates
11 13 (0.57%) XMPP
12 12 (0.53%) ASP.NET Web Forms
12 12 (0.53%) HTML
12 12 (0.53%) WinForms
13 10 (0.44%) OAuth2
14 8 (0.35%) Web Services
15 7 (0.31%) Middleware
15 7 (0.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 329 (14.49%) Driving Licence
2 205 (9.03%) Onboarding
3 118 (5.20%) Self-Motivation
4 84 (3.70%) Legacy Systems
5 74 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
6 63 (2.77%) Data Centre
6 63 (2.77%) Management Information System
7 55 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
7 55 (2.42%) PKI
8 53 (2.33%) Security Posture
9 43 (1.89%) Replication
10 39 (1.72%) Cloud Native
11 37 (1.63%) Clustering
12 30 (1.32%) iPhone
13 29 (1.28%) CCTV
14 21 (0.92%) iPad
14 21 (0.92%) Public Cloud
15 19 (0.84%) Video Conferencing
16 18 (0.79%) Enterprise Storage
17 16 (0.70%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 1,615 (71.11%) Windows
2 929 (40.91%) Windows Server
3 259 (11.40%) Linux
4 244 (10.74%) Windows 10
5 152 (6.69%) Windows Server 2016
6 126 (5.55%) macOS
7 83 (3.65%) Windows Server 2019
8 72 (3.17%) Apple iOS
9 61 (2.69%) Android
10 29 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 29 (1.28%) Ubuntu
11 23 (1.01%) VMS
12 18 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
13 10 (0.44%) Rocky
14 8 (0.35%) Debian
15 7 (0.31%) CentOS
16 5 (0.22%) CoreOS
17 4 (0.18%) Windows 7
18 1 (0.044%) Unix
18 1 (0.044%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 919 (40.47%) Problem-Solving
2 585 (25.76%) Customer Service
3 513 (22.59%) Cybersecurity
4 471 (20.74%) Continuous Improvement
5 470 (20.70%) ITIL
6 408 (17.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 289 (12.73%) Disaster Recovery
8 276 (12.15%) Mentoring
9 253 (11.14%) Identity Access Management
10 230 (10.13%) ITSM
11 210 (9.25%) Project Delivery
12 207 (9.11%) Migration
13 179 (7.88%) Service Delivery
14 170 (7.49%) Service Management
15 152 (6.69%) Collaborative Working
16 150 (6.61%) Information Security
17 147 (6.47%) Customer Experience
18 137 (6.03%) AI
19 136 (5.99%) Vulnerability Remediation
20 134 (5.90%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 362 (15.94%) PowerShell
2 181 (7.97%) SQL
3 62 (2.73%) Python
4 53 (2.33%) Bash
5 50 (2.20%) Bicep
6 30 (1.32%) Ruby
7 21 (0.92%) C#
8 18 (0.79%) R
9 16 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
10 12 (0.53%) VBA
11 7 (0.31%) Java
11 7 (0.31%) T-SQL
12 5 (0.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 5 (0.22%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.18%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.18%) PHP
13 4 (0.18%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.18%) VB
13 4 (0.18%) VB.NET
14 3 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 305 (13.43%) Security Cleared
2 201 (8.85%) Microsoft Certification
2 201 (8.85%) SC Cleared
3 195 (8.59%) Degree
4 134 (5.90%) Azure Certification
5 120 (5.28%) A+ Certification
6 101 (4.45%) Network+ Certification
7 88 (3.87%) DV Cleared
8 78 (3.43%) CISM
8 78 (3.43%) CISSP
9 73 (3.21%) Cisco Certification
10 70 (3.08%) DBS Check
11 56 (2.47%) CCNA
12 32 (1.41%) BPSS Clearance
13 30 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
14 24 (1.06%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 21 (0.92%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 18 (0.79%) AWS Certification
16 18 (0.79%) MCSA
17 16 (0.70%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 214 (9.42%) Cyber Essentials
2 124 (5.46%) SLA
3 119 (5.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 83 (3.65%) PCI DSS
5 56 (2.47%) GDPR
6 40 (1.76%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 36 (1.59%) NIST
8 22 (0.97%) QA
9 20 (0.88%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.57%) NCSC
11 12 (0.53%) Data Quality
12 4 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.18%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.13%) ISAE 3402
14 1 (0.044%) GRC
14 1 (0.044%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 1 (0.044%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 1 (0.044%) PMO
14 1 (0.044%) SOC 1
System Software
1 509 (22.41%) Hyper-V
2 410 (18.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 86 (3.79%) vSphere
4 83 (3.65%) Virtual Desktop
5 72 (3.17%) Terminal Server
6 65 (2.86%) Virtual Machines
7 33 (1.45%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (1.14%) Virtual Servers
9 24 (1.06%) Firmware
10 20 (0.88%) Docker
11 14 (0.62%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 10 (0.44%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.44%) NDS
13 8 (0.35%) VMware NSX
14 6 (0.26%) DFS Replication
15 5 (0.22%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 4 (0.18%) Squid
17 3 (0.13%) NFS
17 3 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 3 (0.13%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 650 (28.62%) Microsoft Intune
2 102 (4.49%) SCCM
3 69 (3.04%) Single Sign-On
4 41 (1.81%) Jamf Pro
5 40 (1.76%) FortiGate
6 31 (1.37%) Ansible
7 28 (1.23%) Kubernetes
8 25 (1.10%) WSUS
9 24 (1.06%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 20 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 17 (0.75%) Failover Clustering
12 15 (0.66%) Proxmox
13 14 (0.62%) ZABBIX
14 13 (0.57%) vCenter Server
15 11 (0.48%) Autotask
15 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Clustering
16 8 (0.35%) SCVMM
17 6 (0.26%) Backup Exec
17 6 (0.26%) Graylog
17 6 (0.26%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,931 (85.03%) Microsoft
2 604 (26.60%) VMware
3 219 (9.64%) Cisco
4 218 (9.60%) Veeam
5 113 (4.98%) Meraki
6 98 (4.32%) SolarWinds
7 85 (3.74%) Splunk
8 82 (3.61%) CyberArk
9 81 (3.57%) Apple
10 75 (3.30%) Nimble Storage
11 72 (3.17%) Brocade
11 72 (3.17%) Tanium
12 68 (2.99%) Fortinet
13 62 (2.73%) SonicWALL
14 59 (2.60%) ServiceNow
15 57 (2.51%) Citrix
16 54 (2.38%) Google
17 53 (2.33%) Palo Alto
18 45 (1.98%) HP
18 45 (1.98%) Okta