SolarWinds Contract Job Trends

SolarWinds
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of SolarWinds products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SolarWinds over the 6 months leading up to 20 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within SolarWinds.

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 522 404 413
Rank change year-on-year -118 +9 +72
Contract jobs citing SolarWinds 146 149 153
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.27% 0.45% 0.39%
As % of the Vendors category 0.65% 0.96% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 104 100 94
10th Percentile £306 £300 £360
25th Percentile £411 £388 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -7.32% +13.89%
75th Percentile £588 £525 £588
90th Percentile £650 £651 £634
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £475 £504
% change year-on-year +7.26% -5.75% +12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 3
10th Percentile - £58.15 -
25th Percentile £44.86 £61.00 -
Median hourly rate £50.11 £66.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -24.65% +179.41% -63.93%
75th Percentile £55.66 £67.25 -
90th Percentile £57.29 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.11 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -24.65% - -

All Vendors
UK

SolarWinds falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 22,380 15,535 16,974
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.82% 47.31% 43.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,856 9,504 10,556
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £610 £612 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,139 809 815
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.74 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £31.93 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.94% -10.18% -32.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.12 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.05 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.28 £27.50
% change year-on-year +40.98% -22.62% -21.43%

SolarWinds
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SolarWinds relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SolarWinds job vacancy trend in the UK

SolarWinds
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SolarWinds.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SolarWinds

SolarWinds
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SolarWinds over the 6 months to 20 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SolarWinds in the UK

SolarWinds
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SolarWinds.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SolarWinds

SolarWinds
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SolarWinds within the UK over the 6 months to 20 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -132 122 £500 +5.26% 25
UK excluding London -88 120 £510 +7.26% 16
South East -31 50 £538 +7.50% 6
Work from Home -59 27 £582 +29.28% 9
South West -25 21 £426 -41.24% 1
Midlands -46 21 £533 +12.11% 4
West Midlands -47 18 £565 +29.14% 3
Scotland +1 17 £475 +5.56% 1
London -100 17 £450 -5.26% 11
North of England -79 10 £400 -15.79% 4
North West -45 5 £400 -11.11% 4
Yorkshire -53 4 £519 +7.29%
East Midlands -15 3 £475 -26.92% 1
East of England -22 1 - - 2
North East -39 1 £225 -53.85%

SolarWinds
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 3 (2.05%) Confluence
2 1 (0.68%) OpenStack
Applications
1 3 (2.05%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (2.05%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 33 (22.60%) Azure
2 17 (11.64%) AWS
3 7 (4.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 6 (4.11%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (4.11%) Rubrik
5 3 (2.05%) Azure Data Factory
5 3 (2.05%) Datadog
5 3 (2.05%) GCP
5 3 (2.05%) OpenShift
6 2 (1.37%) AWS Direct Connect
6 2 (1.37%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 2 (1.37%) Azure Storage
6 2 (1.37%) Entra ID
6 2 (1.37%) GitHub
6 2 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (1.37%) Power Platform
6 2 (1.37%) SaaS
7 1 (0.68%) Azure AKS
7 1 (0.68%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (0.68%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 58 (39.73%) Firewall
2 57 (39.04%) WAN
3 56 (38.36%) DNS
4 54 (36.99%) LAN
5 39 (26.71%) DHCP
6 36 (24.66%) Network Security
7 34 (23.29%) BGP
8 31 (21.23%) SNMP
8 31 (21.23%) VPN
9 30 (20.55%) OSPF
10 23 (15.75%) Cisco Nexus
11 22 (15.07%) BIG-IP
12 19 (13.01%) MPLS
13 18 (12.33%) Cisco ASA
14 17 (11.64%) Cisco ISE
14 17 (11.64%) SD-WAN
14 17 (11.64%) VLAN
15 16 (10.96%) Wireless
16 15 (10.27%) IPsec
17 14 (9.59%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.48%) SQL Server
2 2 (1.37%) Power BI
3 1 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (0.68%) Oracle Database
3 1 (0.68%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 5 (3.42%) JIRA
2 3 (2.05%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (1.37%) Git
3 2 (1.37%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.37%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.68%) Subversion
General
1 37 (25.34%) Social Skills
2 13 (8.90%) Organisational Skills
3 9 (6.16%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (4.79%) Documentation Skills
4 7 (4.79%) Legal
5 5 (3.42%) Finance
6 4 (2.74%) Public Sector
7 3 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.05%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.68%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.68%) Law
8 1 (0.68%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.68%) Retail
Job Titles
1 37 (25.34%) Network Engineer
2 16 (10.96%) Consultant
2 16 (10.96%) Senior
3 14 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 14 (9.59%) Management Consultant
4 10 (6.85%) Architect
4 10 (6.85%) Senior Network Engineer
5 9 (6.16%) Firewall Specialist
5 9 (6.16%) Network Specialist
6 8 (5.48%) Cloud Engineer
7 7 (4.79%) Lead
7 7 (4.79%) Network Architect
8 6 (4.11%) Administrator
8 6 (4.11%) Analyst
8 6 (4.11%) DBA
8 6 (4.11%) Network Manager
8 6 (4.11%) SQL DBA
8 6 (4.11%) Support Engineer
9 5 (3.42%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
9 5 (3.42%) SQL Server DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (13.70%) REST
2 19 (13.01%) 802.1X
3 12 (8.22%) Terraform
4 4 (2.74%) SAML
5 3 (2.05%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (2.05%) LDAP
6 1 (0.68%) ARM Templates
6 1 (0.68%) Loki
6 1 (0.68%) OpenTelemetry
6 1 (0.68%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 28 (19.18%) Data Centre
2 18 (12.33%) PKI
3 13 (8.90%) Clustering
4 8 (5.48%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (4.79%) Cloud Native
6 6 (4.11%) CMDB
7 4 (2.74%) Cyber Threat
7 4 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (2.74%) Fibre Optics
7 4 (2.74%) Onboarding
7 4 (2.74%) Private Cloud
7 4 (2.74%) Replication
8 3 (2.05%) CSOC
8 3 (2.05%) Cyber Defence
8 3 (2.05%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 3 (2.05%) Security Operations Centre
8 3 (2.05%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.37%) Driving Licence
9 2 (1.37%) EMC VMAX
9 2 (1.37%) EMC VNX
Operating Systems
1 79 (54.11%) Windows
2 50 (34.25%) Linux
3 19 (13.01%) AIX
4 13 (8.90%) Windows Server
5 6 (4.11%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (1.37%) Data ONTAP
6 2 (1.37%) Unix
6 2 (1.37%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.68%) Check Point GAiA
7 1 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (26.71%) ITIL
2 30 (20.55%) High Availability
3 29 (19.86%) Project Delivery
4 28 (19.18%) ITSM
5 24 (16.44%) Network Monitoring
6 21 (14.38%) Load Balancing
6 21 (14.38%) Observability
6 21 (14.38%) Problem-Solving
6 21 (14.38%) Technical Leadership
7 19 (13.01%) Network Virtualisation
8 18 (12.33%) Stakeholder Management
9 17 (11.64%) Continuous Improvement
9 17 (11.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 17 (11.64%) Service Delivery
10 16 (10.96%) Service Management
11 14 (9.59%) Agile
11 14 (9.59%) Dashboard Development
12 13 (8.90%) Change Management
12 13 (8.90%) Disaster Recovery
13 12 (8.22%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 44 (30.14%) PowerShell
2 38 (26.03%) Python
3 29 (19.86%) SQL
4 17 (11.64%) Search Processing Language
5 16 (10.96%) Bash
6 5 (3.42%) T-SQL
7 4 (2.74%) Perl
8 1 (0.68%) Java
8 1 (0.68%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 83 (56.85%) Security Cleared
2 37 (25.34%) DV Cleared
3 36 (24.66%) SC Cleared
4 28 (19.18%) Cisco Certification
5 11 (7.53%) CCNA
6 10 (6.85%) CCNP
7 8 (5.48%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (5.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 7 (4.79%) MCSE
9 5 (3.42%) Azure Certification
9 5 (3.42%) Degree
10 4 (2.74%) CCIE
10 4 (2.74%) MCSA
11 3 (2.05%) CCA
11 3 (2.05%) Citrix Certification
11 3 (2.05%) PMI Certification
11 3 (2.05%) PMP
12 2 (1.37%) CompTIA CySA+
12 2 (1.37%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (1.37%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (4.79%) NIST
2 6 (4.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.74%) NCSC
4 2 (1.37%) JSP 440
5 1 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.68%) GDPR
5 1 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 1 (0.68%) PMO
5 1 (0.68%) QA
5 1 (0.68%) SLA
System Software
1 37 (25.34%) VMware Infrastructure
2 35 (23.97%) Active Directory
3 16 (10.96%) VMware NSX
4 12 (8.22%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (6.85%) vSphere
6 9 (6.16%) Hyper-V
7 7 (4.79%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (2.05%) Firmware
8 3 (2.05%) NFS
9 2 (1.37%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 2 (1.37%) SRDF
10 1 (0.68%) Docker
10 1 (0.68%) Samba
10 1 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 26 (17.81%) Nagios
2 20 (13.70%) ZABBIX
3 18 (12.33%) FortiGate
3 18 (12.33%) Netcool
4 17 (11.64%) SCOM
4 17 (11.64%) Tivoli
5 15 (10.27%) OpenView
5 15 (10.27%) Tivoli Monitoring
6 13 (8.90%) vCenter Server
7 11 (7.53%) Ansible
8 10 (6.85%) SCCM
9 8 (5.48%) NetBackup
9 8 (5.48%) WMI
10 5 (3.42%) Kubernetes
11 4 (2.74%) Cisco CUCM
11 4 (2.74%) Grafana
12 3 (2.05%) Microsoft Intune
12 3 (2.05%) Prometheus
12 3 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (2.05%) WSUS
Vendors
1 84 (57.53%) Cisco
2 52 (35.62%) Splunk
3 45 (30.82%) VMware
4 42 (28.77%) Palo Alto
5 37 (25.34%) F5
6 33 (22.60%) Microsoft
7 23 (15.75%) ServiceNow
8 20 (13.70%) BMC
8 20 (13.70%) Fortinet
8 20 (13.70%) Juniper
9 16 (10.96%) Aruba
9 16 (10.96%) IBM
10 15 (10.27%) HP
11 11 (7.53%) Extreme Networks
11 11 (7.53%) Meraki
12 9 (6.16%) CheckPoint
12 9 (6.16%) Citrix
13 8 (5.48%) Veeam
14 7 (4.79%) NetApp
15 6 (4.11%) CyberArk