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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 42 29
Rank change year-on-year -9 -13 +4
Permanent jobs citing Active Directory 2,143 1,815 3,871
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.95% 5.35% 5.74%
As % of the System Software category 52.91% 41.74% 52.20%
Number of salaries quoted 1,655 1,449 3,064
10th Percentile £26,600 £26,000 £24,250
25th Percentile £29,000 £28,250 £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 £49,875 £48,750 £48,750
90th Percentile £64,800 £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 4,050 4,348 7,416
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 5.58% 12.82% 10.99%
Number of salaries quoted 3,113 2,557 5,775
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 22 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 22 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 0 512 £42,500 +6.25% 171
North of England -8 492 £33,000 +3.13% 133
Midlands -29 363 £37,500 +7.14% 54
South West -18 293 £37,500 +8.70% 65
North West +53 249 £35,000 - 69
East of England +8 233 £35,000 +7.58% 57
East Midlands -5 194 £35,000 +11.11% 25
Yorkshire -26 187 £31,000 +3.33% 46
West Midlands -39 168 £42,250 +8.33% 29
Scotland +81 111 £29,000 -17.14% 24
Wales -14 74 £45,000 +18.13% 9
Northern Ireland -14 65 £35,500 -30.73% 3
North East -56 56 £41,250 +28.91% 24
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
1 630 (29.40%) Microsoft Exchange
2 444 (20.72%) SharePoint
3 41 (1.91%) IIS
4 15 (0.70%) Confluence
5 10 (0.47%) Skype for Business
6 9 (0.42%) Exchange Server 2013
7 7 (0.33%) Apache
7 7 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2007
7 7 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2010
8 4 (0.19%) CMS
9 3 (0.14%) SAS
10 1 (0.047%) Drupal
10 1 (0.047%) nginx
10 1 (0.047%) Site Server
10 1 (0.047%) WordPress
Applications
1 201 (9.38%) Microsoft Office
2 44 (2.05%) 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 1,504 (70.18%) Microsoft 365
2 1,204 (56.18%) Azure
3 899 (41.95%) Entra ID
4 152 (7.09%) AWS
5 147 (6.86%) OneDrive
6 104 (4.85%) SaaS
7 84 (3.92%) Power Platform
8 63 (2.94%) IaaS
9 60 (2.80%) Mimecast
10 53 (2.47%) PaaS
11 44 (2.05%) 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
18 24 (1.12%) PowerApps
19 23 (1.07%) Power Automate
20 20 (0.93%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 709 (33.08%) DNS
2 595 (27.76%) DHCP
3 525 (24.50%) Firewall
4 355 (16.57%) VPN
5 244 (11.39%) TCP/IP
6 209 (9.75%) WAN
7 206 (9.61%) LAN
8 205 (9.57%) Wi-Fi
9 200 (9.33%) VLAN
10 131 (6.11%) VoIP
11 123 (5.74%) Wireless
12 84 (3.92%) Network Security
13 76 (3.55%) SAN
14 50 (2.33%) Remote Desktop
15 30 (1.40%) NAS
16 29 (1.35%) Internet
17 23 (1.07%) Broadband
18 19 (0.89%) SD-WAN
19 17 (0.79%) SSL
20 16 (0.75%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (5.41%) Amazon RDS
2 112 (5.23%) SQL Server
3 46 (2.15%) 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%) RDBMS
13 1 (0.047%) Redis
Development Applications
1 74 (3.45%) 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
1 960 (44.80%) Social Skills
2 252 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
3 134 (6.25%) Legal
4 122 (5.69%) Finance
5 114 (5.32%) Organisational Skills
6 93 (4.34%) Law
7 68 (3.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 68 (3.17%) Manufacturing
8 65 (3.03%) Public Sector
9 57 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
10 50 (2.33%) Retail
11 46 (2.15%) Telecoms
12 27 (1.26%) Advertising
13 20 (0.93%) Local Government
14 18 (0.84%) Games
15 14 (0.65%) Aerospace
16 13 (0.61%) Automotive
17 9 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
18 7 (0.33%) Banking
18 7 (0.33%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 811 (37.84%) IT Support
2 566 (26.41%) Support Engineer
3 530 (24.73%) IT Engineer
4 442 (20.63%) IT Support Engineer
5 351 (16.38%) Analyst
6 246 (11.48%) Senior
7 229 (10.69%) Support Analyst
8 200 (9.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 199 (9.29%) Support Technician
10 191 (8.91%) IT Technician
11 177 (8.26%) Systems Engineer
12 170 (7.93%) IT Support Technician
13 160 (7.47%) 2nd Line Support
14 155 (7.23%) IT Analyst
15 140 (6.53%) IT Support Analyst
16 96 (4.48%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 89 (4.15%) 3rd Line Support
18 81 (3.78%) Architect
19 80 (3.73%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
20 73 (3.41%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (2.10%) LDAP
2 31 (1.45%) SAML
3 25 (1.17%) OpenID
4 23 (1.07%) Regular Expression
5 21 (0.98%) OAuth
6 19 (0.89%) REST
6 19 (0.89%) XMPP
7 15 (0.70%) JSON
7 15 (0.70%) XML
8 13 (0.61%) GraphQL
8 13 (0.61%) SOAP
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%) FreeSWITCH
13 5 (0.23%) ODBC
Miscellaneous
1 298 (13.91%) Driving Licence
2 170 (7.93%) Onboarding
3 123 (5.74%) Self-Motivation
4 110 (5.13%) Legacy Systems
5 86 (4.01%) Hybrid Cloud
6 71 (3.31%) Data Centre
7 65 (3.03%) Management Information System
8 52 (2.43%) PKI
9 46 (2.15%) Clustering
10 37 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
10 37 (1.73%) Public Cloud
11 35 (1.63%) Replication
12 32 (1.49%) Security Posture
13 30 (1.40%) CCTV
13 30 (1.40%) Cloud Native
14 21 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
15 17 (0.79%) Cyberattack
16 16 (0.75%) Client/Server
17 15 (0.70%) Data Structures
17 15 (0.70%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,533 (71.54%) Windows
2 903 (42.14%) Windows Server
3 306 (14.28%) Windows 10
4 286 (13.35%) Linux
5 176 (8.21%) Windows Server 2016
6 147 (6.86%) Mac OS
7 83 (3.87%) Windows Server 2019
8 77 (3.59%) Apple iOS
9 69 (3.22%) Android
10 40 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 25 (1.17%) Windows Server 2012
12 24 (1.12%) VMS
13 14 (0.65%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.61%) Windows 7
15 9 (0.42%) 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 (33.78%) Problem-Solving
2 551 (25.71%) Customer Service
3 492 (22.96%) ITIL
4 399 (18.62%) Cybersecurity
5 393 (18.34%) Continuous Improvement
6 307 (14.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 268 (12.51%) Mentoring
8 225 (10.50%) Disaster Recovery
9 189 (8.82%) ITSM
9 189 (8.82%) Service Delivery
10 166 (7.75%) Migration
11 158 (7.37%) Project Delivery
12 145 (6.77%) Customer Experience
13 144 (6.72%) Identity Access Management
14 142 (6.63%) Vulnerability Remediation
15 136 (6.35%) Kalman Filter
16 128 (5.97%) Web Filtering
17 122 (5.69%) Change Management
18 120 (5.60%) Collaborative Working
19 115 (5.37%) AI
Programming Languages
1 337 (15.73%) PowerShell
2 202 (9.43%) SQL
3 72 (3.36%) Bash
4 66 (3.08%) Python
5 39 (1.82%) Bicep
6 29 (1.35%) R
7 25 (1.17%) T-SQL
8 12 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (0.56%) VBA
9 7 (0.33%) C#
9 7 (0.33%) Ruby
9 7 (0.33%) Shell Script
10 6 (0.28%) Korn
10 6 (0.28%) PHP
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
1 303 (14.14%) Security Cleared
2 217 (10.13%) SC Cleared
3 200 (9.33%) Degree
4 174 (8.12%) Microsoft Certification
5 97 (4.53%) Azure Certification
6 91 (4.25%) A+ Certification
7 88 (4.11%) Network+ Certification
8 87 (4.06%) DV Cleared
9 58 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
9 58 (2.71%) CISM
9 58 (2.71%) CISSP
10 54 (2.52%) DBS Check
11 53 (2.47%) CCNA
12 24 (1.12%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 22 (1.03%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 21 (0.98%) MCSA
15 19 (0.89%) Computer Science Degree
16 14 (0.65%) CompTIA Security+
17 13 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
18 12 (0.56%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 227 (10.59%) Cyber Essentials
2 168 (7.84%) SLA
3 128 (5.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 112 (5.23%) PCI DSS
5 46 (2.15%) GDPR
6 44 (2.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 36 (1.68%) NIST
8 24 (1.12%) QA
9 21 (0.98%) Data Quality
10 19 (0.89%) NCSC
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
1 502 (23.43%) Hyper-V
2 361 (16.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 98 (4.57%) vSphere
4 97 (4.53%) Terminal Server
5 62 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
6 47 (2.19%) Virtual Machines
6 47 (2.19%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (1.59%) Docker
8 16 (0.75%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 13 (0.61%) Firmware
11 10 (0.47%) BitLocker
11 10 (0.47%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 9 (0.42%) DFS Replication
13 8 (0.37%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 6 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.28%) XenApp
15 4 (0.19%) NDS
15 4 (0.19%) Squid
16 3 (0.14%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 533 (24.87%) Microsoft Intune
2 103 (4.81%) SCCM
3 57 (2.66%) Terraform
4 38 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
5 32 (1.49%) vCenter Server
6 30 (1.40%) Ansible
6 30 (1.40%) Kubernetes
7 29 (1.35%) Jamf Pro
8 28 (1.31%) FortiGate
8 28 (1.31%) WSUS
9 21 (0.98%) Proxmox
10 19 (0.89%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 17 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 15 (0.70%) Failover Clustering
13 14 (0.65%) ZABBIX
14 11 (0.51%) Microsoft Clustering
15 8 (0.37%) Autotask
15 8 (0.37%) SCOM
16 7 (0.33%) Backup Exec
17 6 (0.28%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 1,706 (79.61%) Microsoft
2 573 (26.74%) VMware
3 209 (9.75%) Veeam
4 148 (6.91%) Cisco
5 121 (5.65%) SolarWinds
6 111 (5.18%) Splunk
7 109 (5.09%) Nimble Storage
8 96 (4.48%) Brocade
8 96 (4.48%) Tanium
9 82 (3.83%) Citrix
10 77 (3.59%) Meraki
11 73 (3.41%) Apple
12 71 (3.31%) CyberArk
13 67 (3.13%) ServiceNow
14 61 (2.85%) HP
15 60 (2.80%) Dell
16 45 (2.10%) Google
17 44 (2.05%) CrowdStrike
18 39 (1.82%) Ubiquiti
19 38 (1.77%) SonicWALL