Intelligent Automation Contract Job Trends in the North West

Intelligent Automation (Intelligent Process Automation)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Intelligent Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 121 -
Rank change year-on-year -19 - -
Contract jobs citing Intelligent Automation 6 4 0
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.23% 0.19% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.26% 0.22% -
Number of daily rates quoted 3 2 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £356 -
Median % change year-on-year +54.49% - -
75th Percentile £575 - -
90th Percentile £590 - -
England median daily rate £550 £356 £425
% change year-on-year +54.49% -16.24% -37.34%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Intelligent Automation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,311 1,847 2,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 87.34% 88.29% 87.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,520 1,073 1,660
10th Percentile £213 £278 £306
25th Percentile £358 £385 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £551 £565 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £683
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 99 200
10th Percentile £16.37 £16.05 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.58 £21.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.50 £33.16
Median % change year-on-year +33.14% -5.01% -11.57%
75th Percentile £57.50 £51.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £73.63 £75.30 £55.02
England median hourly rate £25.15 £34.31 £36.34
% change year-on-year -26.69% -5.59% +3.81%

Intelligent Automation
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Intelligent Automation relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Intelligent Automation job vacancy trend in the North West

Intelligent Automation
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Intelligent Automation.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Intelligent Automation

Intelligent Automation
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Intelligent Automation within the North West region over the 6 months to 30 January 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
Manchester -7 4 £550 - 3
Cheshire -19 1 £600 +68.54% 1
Lancashire - 1 - -
Intelligent Automation
England

Intelligent Automation
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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:

Applications
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (16.67%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 2 (33.33%) AtomSphere
1 2 (33.33%) Azure
1 2 (33.33%) Azure AI
1 2 (33.33%) Azure Cognitive Search
1 2 (33.33%) Azure Functions
1 2 (33.33%) Azure Logic Apps
1 2 (33.33%) Boomi
1 2 (33.33%) Power Platform
1 2 (33.33%) SaaS
1 2 (33.33%) Serverless
2 1 (16.67%) LangSmith
Development Applications
1 1 (16.67%) Git
1 1 (16.67%) MLflow
General
1 2 (33.33%) Social Skills
2 1 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 3 (50.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
1 3 (50.00%) Developer
2 2 (33.33%) Azure Engineer
2 2 (33.33%) Integration Developer
3 1 (16.67%) Automation Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (66.67%) JSON
1 4 (66.67%) REST
2 2 (33.33%) Node.js
2 2 (33.33%) SOAP
2 2 (33.33%) XML
3 1 (16.67%) LangChain
3 1 (16.67%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 1 (16.67%) AI Agents
1 1 (16.67%) Cloud Native
1 1 (16.67%) Distributed Computing
1 1 (16.67%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 1 (16.67%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (66.67%) Agile
2 3 (50.00%) AI
2 3 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 3 (50.00%) LLM
2 3 (50.00%) Machine Learning
2 3 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (50.00%) Workflow
3 2 (33.33%) CRM
3 2 (33.33%) Customer Engagement
3 2 (33.33%) DevOps
3 2 (33.33%) ERP
3 2 (33.33%) Generative AI
3 2 (33.33%) Integration Patterns
3 2 (33.33%) Kalman Filter
3 2 (33.33%) OCR
3 2 (33.33%) Prompt Engineering
3 2 (33.33%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
3 2 (33.33%) Software Engineering
3 2 (33.33%) Translating Business Requirements
3 2 (33.33%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 4 (66.67%) C#
2 3 (50.00%) Python
3 2 (33.33%) Groovy
3 2 (33.33%) Java
3 2 (33.33%) JavaScript
3 2 (33.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 1 (16.67%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (16.67%) Degree
1 1 (16.67%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (16.67%) QA
System Software
1 1 (16.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (16.67%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (33.33%) Foundry
1 2 (33.33%) OpenAI
2 1 (16.67%) Automation Anywhere
2 1 (16.67%) Databricks
2 1 (16.67%) Microsoft