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 16 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 233 354
Rank change year-on-year -17 +121 +97
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 411 352 246
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.10% 0.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.26% 1.24% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 287 214 185
10th Percentile £320 £344 £376
25th Percentile £400 £400 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -9.52% -8.70%
75th Percentile £596 £579 £626
90th Percentile £750 £666 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.13% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 8 0
10th Percentile £47.98 £21.00 -
25th Percentile £50.94 £21.92 -
Median hourly rate £56.25 £26.83 -
Median % change year-on-year +109.65% - -
75th Percentile £61.94 £42.12 -
90th Percentile £65.13 £65.62 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £24.66 -
% change year-on-year +169.67% - -

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 32,654 28,287 37,362
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.81% 88.79% 87.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,662 17,217 24,715
10th Percentile £304 £306 £304
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,980 898 1,602
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.75 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%
75th Percentile £56.06 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.80 £74.91 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.83
% change year-on-year -21.76% -30.52% +51.12%

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 16 January 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 16 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Task Automation in the UK

Task Automation
Top 17 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 16 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
England -24 346 £500 +5.26% 113
UK excluding London -4 199 £480 +2.13% 89
London -3 167 £550 +2.33% 33
Work from Home +23 147 £523 +10.00% 63
North of England -29 62 £450 -2.17% 15
South East -10 43 £445 +11.25% 33
Midlands -27 40 £550 +13.64% 13
West Midlands -18 39 £550 +11.79% 9
Yorkshire -30 34 £450 +9.09% 5
Scotland +11 26 £413 -17.50% 1
North West -23 25 £446 -3.31% 6
South West -24 18 £525 +11.70% 16
East of England -21 8 £500 -16.67% 12
North East -13 3 £363 -22.87% 5
Northern Ireland - 2 £683 - 1
Wales - 2 £506 - 3
East Midlands -28 1 £450 +13.92% 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 22 (5.35%) Microsoft Exchange
2 19 (4.62%) SharePoint
3 18 (4.38%) Confluence
4 8 (1.95%) Apache
4 8 (1.95%) IIS
5 5 (1.22%) iPlanet
5 5 (1.22%) JBoss
5 5 (1.22%) OpenStack
5 5 (1.22%) WebSphere
5 5 (1.22%) WebSphere Application Server
6 4 (0.97%) Appian
7 2 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.49%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.24%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.24%) CMS
8 1 (0.24%) MQSeries
8 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.24%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (5.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.73%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.97%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.24%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 188 (45.74%) Azure
2 146 (35.52%) AWS
3 96 (23.36%) GCP
4 44 (10.71%) GitHub
5 39 (9.49%) Entra ID
6 36 (8.76%) GitHub Actions
6 36 (8.76%) Microsoft 365
7 35 (8.52%) OpenShift
8 28 (6.81%) Serverless
9 27 (6.57%) Azure DevOps
10 26 (6.33%) AWS CloudFormation
11 23 (5.60%) Power Platform
12 19 (4.62%) Amazon S3
13 17 (4.14%) Power Automate
14 16 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (3.65%) Amazon EC2
15 15 (3.65%) Amazon EKS
16 14 (3.41%) Datadog
17 13 (3.16%) Azure AKS
17 13 (3.16%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 34 (8.27%) Firewall
2 26 (6.33%) DNS
3 20 (4.87%) DHCP
4 19 (4.62%) SSH
5 16 (3.89%) TCP/IP
6 12 (2.92%) Kerberos
6 12 (2.92%) Network Security
7 8 (1.95%) VPN
7 8 (1.95%) WAN
8 6 (1.46%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.46%) LAN
9 5 (1.22%) BGP
9 5 (1.22%) NX-OS
9 5 (1.22%) OpenLDAP
9 5 (1.22%) WLAN
10 4 (0.97%) AMQP
10 4 (0.97%) HTTP
11 3 (0.73%) SD-WAN
12 2 (0.49%) DKIM
12 2 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (8.76%) SQL Server
2 32 (7.79%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (5.84%) Relational Database
4 21 (5.11%) Oracle Database
5 16 (3.89%) Power BI
6 10 (2.43%) Amazon RDS
6 10 (2.43%) MySQL
7 7 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.70%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.70%) RDBMS
8 6 (1.46%) MongoDB
8 6 (1.46%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (1.22%) Pinecone
9 5 (1.22%) Power Query
9 5 (1.22%) Tableau
10 4 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.97%) BigQuery
10 4 (0.97%) Data Lake
10 4 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.97%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 63 (15.33%) Git
2 53 (12.90%) Jenkins
3 45 (10.95%) GitLab
4 24 (5.84%) JIRA
5 17 (4.14%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (2.92%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.68%) CircleCI
8 10 (2.43%) Maven
9 8 (1.95%) JUnit
9 8 (1.95%) SonarQube
10 6 (1.46%) Artifactory
10 6 (1.46%) Postman
10 6 (1.46%) Selenium
11 5 (1.22%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.22%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.22%) Cypress.io
11 5 (1.22%) Gatling
11 5 (1.22%) Gradle
11 5 (1.22%) Snyk
11 5 (1.22%) webpack
General
1 169 (41.12%) Social Skills
2 66 (16.06%) Finance
3 58 (14.11%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (9.00%) Public Sector
5 28 (6.81%) Banking
6 8 (1.95%) Investment Banking
7 7 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.46%) Legal
8 6 (1.46%) Retail
9 5 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (0.97%) Front Office
10 4 (0.97%) Games
10 4 (0.97%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.73%) Law
12 2 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.49%) Military
12 2 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (10.95%) Developer
2 41 (9.98%) Architect
3 37 (9.00%) CyberArk Architect
4 32 (7.79%) DevOps Engineer
5 29 (7.06%) Administrator
6 28 (6.81%) Senior
7 24 (5.84%) Automation Engineer
8 23 (5.60%) Analyst
9 22 (5.35%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 18 (4.38%) Java Developer
10 18 (4.38%) Platform Engineer
11 16 (3.89%) DBA
12 14 (3.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 14 (3.41%) Lead
12 14 (3.41%) Site Engineer
13 12 (2.92%) Consultant
13 12 (2.92%) Support Engineer
14 11 (2.68%) Network Engineer
15 10 (2.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 9 (2.19%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (16.79%) REST
2 50 (12.17%) LDAP
3 40 (9.73%) SOAP
4 26 (6.33%) Elastic Stack
5 23 (5.60%) Node.js
6 19 (4.62%) OAuth
7 15 (3.65%) .NET
7 15 (3.65%) FastAPI
8 13 (3.16%) SAML
9 12 (2.92%) Kafka
10 11 (2.68%) Web Services
11 9 (2.19%) JSON
11 9 (2.19%) Microsoft Graph
11 9 (2.19%) pytest
11 9 (2.19%) RESTful
11 9 (2.19%) YAML
12 8 (1.95%) GraphQL
12 8 (1.95%) OpenID
12 8 (1.95%) Pandas
13 7 (1.70%) boto
Miscellaneous
1 44 (10.71%) Security Posture
2 41 (9.98%) Enterprise Software
3 25 (6.08%) Onboarding
4 19 (4.62%) Cloud Native
5 18 (4.38%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (2.92%) Replication
7 9 (2.19%) Data Centre
7 9 (2.19%) Private Cloud
8 8 (1.95%) Clustering
8 8 (1.95%) Linux Command Line
9 7 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.70%) Low-Code
9 7 (1.70%) PKI
10 6 (1.46%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.22%) Management Information System
12 4 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.97%) NHS
12 4 (0.97%) Product Ownership
12 4 (0.97%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 117 (28.47%) Linux
2 75 (18.25%) Windows
3 29 (7.06%) Unix
4 25 (6.08%) Windows Server
5 13 (3.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (2.19%) VMS
7 8 (1.95%) CentOS
8 4 (0.97%) AIX
8 4 (0.97%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.73%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.49%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.24%) Android
11 1 (0.24%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (41.36%) Problem-Solving
2 145 (35.28%) CI/CD
3 116 (28.22%) DevOps
4 74 (18.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 68 (16.55%) Agile
6 66 (16.06%) Containerisation
7 56 (13.63%) SIEM
8 50 (12.17%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 47 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 42 (10.22%) Observability
11 41 (9.98%) Migration
11 41 (9.98%) Technical Leadership
12 40 (9.73%) High Availability
12 40 (9.73%) Privileged Access Management
13 39 (9.49%) Configuration Management
13 39 (9.49%) Continuous Improvement
13 39 (9.49%) Disaster Recovery
13 39 (9.49%) Root Cause Analysis
14 38 (9.25%) ITSM
15 36 (8.76%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 228 (55.47%) Python
2 147 (35.77%) PowerShell
3 72 (17.52%) Bash
4 69 (16.79%) SQL
5 60 (14.60%) Java
6 48 (11.68%) Shell Script
7 39 (9.49%) Go
8 25 (6.08%) JavaScript
9 21 (5.11%) TypeScript
10 15 (3.65%) C#
11 12 (2.92%) Kusto Query Language
11 12 (2.92%) VBA
12 11 (2.68%) Perl
13 10 (2.43%) Bicep
14 7 (1.70%) Groovy
15 6 (1.46%) PL/SQL
16 5 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 3 (0.73%) PHP
17 3 (0.73%) Ruby
17 3 (0.73%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 140 (34.06%) Security Cleared
2 107 (26.03%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.06%) Degree
4 28 (6.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (3.89%) DV Cleared
6 14 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (2.92%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.19%) AWS Certification
8 9 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (1.95%) CISSP
10 6 (1.46%) Master's Degree
11 5 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.22%) OCP
11 5 (1.22%) Oracle Certification
12 4 (0.97%) CCNP
12 4 (0.97%) CFCE
12 4 (0.97%) GCFA
12 4 (0.97%) GCIA
12 4 (0.97%) GCIH
12 4 (0.97%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (7.30%) GDPR
2 21 (5.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (4.14%) NIST
4 14 (3.41%) Data Quality
4 14 (3.41%) QA
5 7 (1.70%) SLA
6 5 (1.22%) PCI DSS
6 5 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.97%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.49%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.49%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.24%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.24%) COBIT
9 1 (0.24%) GRC
9 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 1 (0.24%) PMO
System Software
1 86 (20.92%) Active Directory
2 67 (16.30%) Docker
3 24 (5.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.68%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (1.22%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 5 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.97%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.73%) Firmware
7 3 (0.73%) KVM
7 3 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.73%) Xen
8 2 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.24%) HDFS
9 1 (0.24%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.24%) RHEV
9 1 (0.24%) vSphere
9 1 (0.24%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 92 (22.38%) Kubernetes
2 83 (20.19%) Terraform
3 78 (18.98%) Ansible
4 48 (11.68%) Grafana
5 40 (9.73%) Prometheus
6 24 (5.84%) Progress Chef
7 16 (3.89%) Puppet
7 16 (3.89%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (3.41%) SCCM
9 13 (3.16%) Microsoft Intune
10 12 (2.92%) Data Guard
11 11 (2.68%) Oracle RMAN
12 9 (2.19%) yum
13 8 (1.95%) Podman
14 7 (1.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 6 (1.46%) CA Single Sign-On
15 6 (1.46%) Kibana
15 6 (1.46%) NetBackup
16 5 (1.22%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 5 (1.22%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 99 (24.09%) Microsoft
2 54 (13.14%) CyberArk
3 47 (11.44%) Oracle
4 42 (10.22%) BeyondTrust
5 34 (8.27%) Centrify
6 33 (8.03%) Splunk
7 32 (7.79%) Google
8 25 (6.08%) VMware
9 17 (4.14%) Red Hat
10 16 (3.89%) ServiceNow
11 12 (2.92%) Atlassian
11 12 (2.92%) Cisco
12 11 (2.68%) OpenAI
13 9 (2.19%) SAP
14 8 (1.95%) Okta
15 7 (1.70%) Databricks
15 7 (1.70%) F5
15 7 (1.70%) IBM
15 7 (1.70%) Palo Alto
16 6 (1.46%) AppDynamics