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 19 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
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 529 406 421
Rank change year-on-year -123 +15 +56
Contract jobs citing SolarWinds 146 150 157
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.27% 0.46% 0.40%
As % of the Vendors category 0.65% 0.97% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 103 101 98
10th Percentile £306 £300 £360
25th Percentile £416 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £502
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.38% +11.56%
75th Percentile £588 £525 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £634
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +9.26% -5.00% +11.11%
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 22,385 15,513 17,023
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.79% 47.27% 43.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,864 9,479 10,592
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
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 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,146 809 818
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.97 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £31.96 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.09% -10.18% -31.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.43 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.70 £27.50
% change year-on-year +38.28% -21.11% -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 19 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 19 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 -122 123 £500 +5.26% 41
UK excluding London -57 120 £519 +9.26% 29
South East -43 51 £538 +7.50% 8
Work from Home -65 26 £582 +29.28% 14
South West -30 21 £426 -41.24% 2
Midlands -32 21 £533 +6.50% 5
West Midlands -49 18 £565 +18.95% 4
London -101 18 £450 -5.26% 19
Scotland +2 17 £475 +5.56% 5
North of England -102 9 £425 -10.53% 8
Yorkshire -56 4 £519 +7.29% 1
North West -62 4 £425 -5.56% 5
East Midlands -13 3 £475 -26.92% 1
East of England -30 1 - - 3
North East -39 1 £225 -53.85% 2

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 34 (23.29%) Azure
2 18 (12.33%) AWS
3 7 (4.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 6 (4.11%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (4.11%) Rubrik
5 4 (2.74%) GCP
6 3 (2.05%) Azure Data Factory
6 3 (2.05%) Datadog
6 3 (2.05%) OpenShift
6 3 (2.05%) SaaS
7 2 (1.37%) AWS Direct Connect
7 2 (1.37%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 2 (1.37%) Azure Storage
7 2 (1.37%) Entra ID
7 2 (1.37%) GitHub
7 2 (1.37%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (1.37%) Power Platform
8 1 (0.68%) Azure AKS
8 1 (0.68%) Azure Monitor
8 1 (0.68%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 57 (39.04%) DNS
1 57 (39.04%) Firewall
2 56 (38.36%) WAN
3 53 (36.30%) LAN
4 40 (27.40%) DHCP
5 35 (23.97%) BGP
6 34 (23.29%) Network Security
7 32 (21.92%) SNMP
8 31 (21.23%) OSPF
9 29 (19.86%) VPN
10 23 (15.75%) BIG-IP
10 23 (15.75%) Cisco Nexus
11 19 (13.01%) MPLS
12 17 (11.64%) SD-WAN
12 17 (11.64%) VLAN
13 16 (10.96%) Cisco ASA
13 16 (10.96%) Cisco ISE
14 15 (10.27%) IPsec
14 15 (10.27%) VXLAN
15 14 (9.59%) Ethernet VPN
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 36 (24.66%) Social Skills
2 13 (8.90%) Organisational Skills
3 9 (6.16%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (3.42%) Finance
5 5 (3.42%) Legal
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 36 (24.66%) Network Engineer
2 17 (11.64%) Senior
3 16 (10.96%) Consultant
4 14 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 14 (9.59%) Management Consultant
5 11 (7.53%) Architect
5 11 (7.53%) Senior Network Engineer
6 9 (6.16%) Firewall Specialist
6 9 (6.16%) Network Specialist
7 8 (5.48%) Cloud Engineer
8 7 (4.79%) Lead
8 7 (4.79%) Network Architect
9 6 (4.11%) Administrator
9 6 (4.11%) Analyst
9 6 (4.11%) DBA
9 6 (4.11%) Network Manager
9 6 (4.11%) SQL DBA
9 6 (4.11%) Support Engineer
10 5 (3.42%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
10 5 (3.42%) SQL Server DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (14.38%) REST
2 20 (13.70%) 802.1X
3 4 (2.74%) SAML
4 3 (2.05%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (2.05%) LDAP
5 1 (0.68%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.68%) Loki
5 1 (0.68%) OpenTelemetry
5 1 (0.68%) SOAP
5 1 (0.68%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 29 (19.86%) Data Centre
2 19 (13.01%) PKI
3 14 (9.59%) Clustering
4 8 (5.48%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (4.79%) Cloud Native
5 7 (4.79%) CMDB
6 4 (2.74%) Cyber Threat
6 4 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (2.74%) Fibre Optics
6 4 (2.74%) Onboarding
6 4 (2.74%) Private Cloud
6 4 (2.74%) Replication
7 3 (2.05%) CSOC
7 3 (2.05%) Cyber Defence
7 3 (2.05%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 3 (2.05%) Security Operations Centre
7 3 (2.05%) Security Posture
8 2 (1.37%) EMC VMAX
8 2 (1.37%) EMC VNX
8 2 (1.37%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 80 (54.79%) 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 41 (28.08%) ITIL
2 32 (21.92%) High Availability
3 30 (20.55%) ITSM
4 28 (19.18%) Project Delivery
5 22 (15.07%) Network Monitoring
5 22 (15.07%) Observability
5 22 (15.07%) Technical Leadership
6 21 (14.38%) Problem-Solving
7 20 (13.70%) Load Balancing
8 19 (13.01%) Network Virtualisation
9 18 (12.33%) Stakeholder Management
10 17 (11.64%) Continuous Improvement
10 17 (11.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 17 (11.64%) Service Delivery
10 17 (11.64%) Service Management
11 14 (9.59%) Agile
11 14 (9.59%) Change Management
11 14 (9.59%) Dashboard Development
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%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.68%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 81 (55.48%) Security Cleared
2 37 (25.34%) DV Cleared
3 34 (23.29%) SC Cleared
4 29 (19.86%) 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%) JNCIA
11 3 (2.05%) JNCIP
11 3 (2.05%) JNCIS
11 3 (2.05%) PMI Certification
11 3 (2.05%) PMP
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 19 (13.01%) FortiGate
4 18 (12.33%) Netcool
5 17 (11.64%) SCOM
5 17 (11.64%) Tivoli
6 15 (10.27%) OpenView
6 15 (10.27%) Tivoli Monitoring
7 13 (8.90%) vCenter Server
8 12 (8.22%) Terraform
9 11 (7.53%) Ansible
10 10 (6.85%) SCCM
11 8 (5.48%) NetBackup
11 8 (5.48%) WMI
12 5 (3.42%) Kubernetes
13 4 (2.74%) Cisco CUCM
13 4 (2.74%) Grafana
14 3 (2.05%) Microsoft Intune
14 3 (2.05%) Prometheus
14 3 (2.05%) SolarWinds Orion
Vendors
1 83 (56.85%) Cisco
2 54 (36.99%) Splunk
3 45 (30.82%) VMware
4 40 (27.40%) Palo Alto
5 37 (25.34%) F5
6 33 (22.60%) Microsoft
7 24 (16.44%) ServiceNow
8 21 (14.38%) Juniper
9 20 (13.70%) BMC
9 20 (13.70%) Fortinet
10 16 (10.96%) Aruba
10 16 (10.96%) IBM
11 15 (10.27%) HP
12 12 (8.22%) Extreme Networks
13 9 (6.16%) CheckPoint
13 9 (6.16%) Citrix
13 9 (6.16%) Meraki
14 8 (5.48%) Veeam
15 7 (4.79%) NetApp
16 6 (4.11%) CyberArk