Task Automation Contract Job Trends

Task Automation
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Task Automation skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 378 262 242
Rank change year-on-year -116 -20 +144
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 325 336 361
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 1.02% 0.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.13% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 193 238
10th Percentile £324 £312 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £569 £575 £625
90th Percentile £673 £626 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £470
% change year-on-year +8.42% +1.06% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 7 3
10th Percentile £16.33 £17.89 -
25th Percentile £18.54 £40.28 -
Median hourly rate £25.00 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -60.63% +166.81% -
75th Percentile £62.45 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £65.00 £66.05 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -65.41% - -

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Task 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 46,512 29,792 32,258
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.69% 90.47% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,938 18,529 19,417
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,382 1,881 1,250
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.03
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.54 £65.14 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -7.83%

Task Automation
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Task Automation job vacancy trend in the UK

Task Automation
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Task Automation

Task Automation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Task Automation over the 6 months to 13 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Task Automation in the UK

Task Automation
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Task Automation

Task Automation
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Task Automation over the 6 months to 13 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Task Automation in the UK

Task Automation
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Task Automation within the UK over the 6 months to 13 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -117 276 £500 +2.56% 395
UK excluding London -87 170 £515 +8.42% 159
London -96 110 £460 -3.92% 233
Work from Home -73 96 £500 +0.76% 150
North of England -34 72 £500 +11.11% 52
South East -45 49 £538 +12.57% 41
Yorkshire -15 42 £515 +10.75% 12
North West -47 26 £492 +9.00% 34
Midlands -64 16 £600 +15.50% 16
Scotland -38 13 £438 -5.41% 8
West Midlands -70 12 £600 +14.83% 8
South West -30 11 £535 +2.88% 23
East of England -34 10 £440 -2.22% 13
East Midlands -11 4 - - 8
North East -38 4 £275 +37.50% 6
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 4

Task Automation
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 30 (9.23%) SharePoint
2 17 (5.23%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.15%) Confluence
4 5 (1.54%) Apache
4 5 (1.54%) JBoss
5 4 (1.23%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.92%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.92%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.92%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.92%) WebLogic Portal
7 2 (0.62%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.31%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.31%) CMS
8 1 (0.31%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.31%) IIS
8 1 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.31%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 6 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.62%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.46%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.85%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.23%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.92%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.31%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.31%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.31%) PeopleSoft HCM
6 1 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 124 (38.15%) Azure
2 81 (24.92%) AWS
3 43 (13.23%) Microsoft 365
4 39 (12.00%) GitHub
5 36 (11.08%) Entra ID
6 34 (10.46%) GCP
7 31 (9.54%) Azure DevOps
8 28 (8.62%) Power Platform
9 27 (8.31%) GitHub Actions
10 26 (8.00%) Amazon S3
11 23 (7.08%) Microsoft Copilot
12 22 (6.77%) Azure Monitor
13 20 (6.15%) AWS Lambda
13 20 (6.15%) Serverless
14 19 (5.85%) Datadog
15 18 (5.54%) Power Automate
16 16 (4.92%) OpenShift
17 15 (4.62%) AWS CloudFormation
18 14 (4.31%) OneDrive
18 14 (4.31%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 52 (16.00%) DNS
2 31 (9.54%) DHCP
3 30 (9.23%) VPN
4 29 (8.92%) Firewall
5 24 (7.38%) TCP/IP
6 19 (5.85%) Network Security
7 9 (2.77%) SSH
8 8 (2.46%) VLAN
9 7 (2.15%) SAN
9 7 (2.15%) WAN
10 6 (1.85%) Kerberos
10 6 (1.85%) SD-WAN
10 6 (1.85%) Skype
10 6 (1.85%) Wireless
11 5 (1.54%) BIG-IP
12 4 (1.23%) Intranet
12 4 (1.23%) PSTN
12 4 (1.23%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
13 3 (0.92%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.31%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (3.69%) Power BI
4 11 (3.38%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (3.38%) Metadata
5 9 (2.77%) Hadoop
5 9 (2.77%) MySQL
5 9 (2.77%) Relational Database
6 8 (2.46%) Big Data
7 7 (2.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.85%) Oracle Database
8 6 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (1.54%) Parquet
9 5 (1.54%) Sybase ASE
10 4 (1.23%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.23%) EDRMS
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 10g
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 11g
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 12c
11 3 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 42 (12.92%) Git
2 27 (8.31%) GitLab
3 23 (7.08%) Jenkins
4 12 (3.69%) JIRA
5 4 (1.23%) Flyway
5 4 (1.23%) Oracle Forms
5 4 (1.23%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.92%) Oracle APEX
6 3 (0.92%) Subversion
6 3 (0.92%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.62%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.62%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.62%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.62%) JUnit
7 2 (0.62%) Maven
7 2 (0.62%) Postman
7 2 (0.62%) Selenium
7 2 (0.62%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.31%) REST Assured
General
1 103 (31.69%) Social Skills
2 62 (19.08%) Analytical Skills
3 59 (18.15%) Finance
4 33 (10.15%) Banking
5 17 (5.23%) Legal
5 17 (5.23%) Public Sector
6 7 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
6 7 (2.15%) Front Office
6 7 (2.15%) Organisational Skills
7 6 (1.85%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.23%) Military
9 3 (0.92%) Investment Banking
10 2 (0.62%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.62%) Automotive
10 2 (0.62%) Billing
10 2 (0.62%) Law
10 2 (0.62%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.62%) Marketing
10 2 (0.62%) Retail
10 2 (0.62%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 49 (15.08%) Senior
2 32 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 32 (9.85%) Support Engineer
3 25 (7.69%) DevOps Engineer
4 24 (7.38%) Developer
5 23 (7.08%) Cloud Engineer
6 18 (5.54%) Analyst
7 17 (5.23%) Data Engineer
7 17 (5.23%) DBA
8 16 (4.92%) Platform Engineer
9 12 (3.69%) Consultant
9 12 (3.69%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 11 (3.38%) Architect
11 10 (3.08%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (3.08%) Lead
11 10 (3.08%) Linux Engineer
11 10 (3.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 9 (2.77%) Security Engineer
12 9 (2.77%) Site Engineer
13 8 (2.46%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (24.00%) Terraform
2 35 (10.77%) REST
3 20 (6.15%) ARM Templates
4 18 (5.54%) React
5 15 (4.62%) JSON
6 14 (4.31%) .NET
7 13 (4.00%) SOAP
8 12 (3.69%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (3.38%) CSS
9 11 (3.38%) Kafka
9 11 (3.38%) YAML
10 10 (3.08%) HTML
10 10 (3.08%) Node.js
11 9 (2.77%) RESTful
11 9 (2.77%) XML
12 8 (2.46%) SPFx
13 7 (2.15%) ASP.NET
13 7 (2.15%) Middleware
14 6 (1.85%) AngularJS
14 6 (1.85%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.08%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.46%) Onboarding
3 19 (5.85%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (4.92%) AI Agents
5 14 (4.31%) Data Protection Act
5 14 (4.31%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (4.00%) Clustering
7 12 (3.69%) Management Information System
8 11 (3.38%) Replication
9 10 (3.08%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (3.08%) Private Cloud
9 10 (3.08%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (2.77%) CMDB
10 9 (2.77%) Product Ownership
11 8 (2.46%) Public Cloud
11 8 (2.46%) Virtual Team
12 6 (1.85%) Blackberry
13 5 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
13 5 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (1.54%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 68 (20.92%) Linux
2 66 (20.31%) Windows
3 27 (8.31%) Windows Server
4 21 (6.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.31%) Unix
5 14 (4.31%) Windows 10
6 13 (4.00%) Windows Server 2019
7 8 (2.46%) Android
8 7 (2.15%) macOS
8 7 (2.15%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.85%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.92%) AIX
10 3 (0.92%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.92%) zOS
11 2 (0.62%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.62%) VMS
11 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.31%) Rocky
12 1 (0.31%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (32.00%) CI/CD
2 94 (28.92%) DevOps
3 78 (24.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 71 (21.85%) ITIL
5 68 (20.92%) Problem-Solving
6 66 (20.31%) Agile
7 56 (17.23%) AI
8 52 (16.00%) Continuous Improvement
8 52 (16.00%) Migration
8 52 (16.00%) Observability
9 47 (14.46%) Root Cause Analysis
9 47 (14.46%) Workflow
10 43 (13.23%) Performance Tuning
11 41 (12.62%) Containerisation
12 38 (11.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 38 (11.69%) ITSM
13 37 (11.38%) Disaster Recovery
13 37 (11.38%) Runbook
14 34 (10.46%) Analytics
15 32 (9.85%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 148 (45.54%) Python
2 114 (35.08%) PowerShell
3 70 (21.54%) SQL
4 64 (19.69%) Bash
5 37 (11.38%) JavaScript
6 23 (7.08%) Bicep
7 15 (4.62%) Go
7 15 (4.62%) Java
7 15 (4.62%) TypeScript
8 13 (4.00%) Shell Script
8 13 (4.00%) T-SQL
9 9 (2.77%) C#
10 6 (1.85%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.54%) Perl
11 5 (1.54%) VBScript
12 2 (0.62%) C++
12 2 (0.62%) JCL
12 2 (0.62%) REXX
12 2 (0.62%) Scala
13 1 (0.31%) Korn
Qualifications
1 114 (35.08%) Security Cleared
2 70 (21.54%) SC Cleared
3 46 (14.15%) DV Cleared
4 36 (11.08%) Degree
5 18 (5.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (4.92%) Azure Certification
7 15 (4.62%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.85%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.23%) CCNA
11 3 (0.92%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.92%) CCNP
12 2 (0.62%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.62%) CISM
12 2 (0.62%) CISSP
12 2 (0.62%) ECDL
12 2 (0.62%) GSEC
12 2 (0.62%) MCSE
12 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 17 (5.23%) SLA
3 12 (3.69%) QA
4 9 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.54%) NIST
6 4 (1.23%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.23%) SOC 2
7 3 (0.92%) GDPR
8 2 (0.62%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.31%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
9 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 65 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 33 (10.15%) Docker
3 31 (9.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (4.62%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (4.31%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (2.77%) Virtual Desktop
7 8 (2.46%) Hyper-V
8 7 (2.15%) vSphere
9 6 (1.85%) NFS
10 2 (0.62%) NDS
10 2 (0.62%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 1 (0.31%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.31%) Firmware
11 1 (0.31%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.31%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 52 (16.00%) Ansible
2 48 (14.77%) Kubernetes
3 26 (8.00%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (7.69%) SCCM
5 21 (6.46%) Grafana
6 19 (5.85%) Prometheus
7 17 (5.23%) SCOM
8 16 (4.92%) Puppet
9 14 (4.31%) vCenter Server
10 11 (3.38%) Progress Chef
10 11 (3.38%) Red Hat Satellite
11 7 (2.15%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (1.54%) Oracle RMAN
14 3 (0.92%) Istio
14 3 (0.92%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 2 (0.62%) Data Guard
15 2 (0.62%) linkerd
15 2 (0.62%) Nagios
15 2 (0.62%) Podman
Vendors
1 117 (36.00%) Microsoft
2 35 (10.77%) VMware
3 28 (8.62%) Google
4 23 (7.08%) ServiceNow
5 20 (6.15%) Red Hat
6 19 (5.85%) Oracle
6 19 (5.85%) Splunk
7 15 (4.62%) SolarWinds
8 12 (3.69%) Broadcom
9 10 (3.08%) Cisco
10 9 (2.77%) BMC
10 9 (2.77%) Remedy
11 8 (2.46%) Dynatrace
11 8 (2.46%) OpenAI
12 7 (2.15%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.15%) Citrix
13 6 (1.85%) Ivanti
13 6 (1.85%) Okta
14 5 (1.54%) CrowdStrike
14 5 (1.54%) Databricks