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 20 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 393 263 248
Rank change year-on-year -130 -15 +154
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 305 341 366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 1.04% 0.95%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.66% 1.14% 1.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 194 252
10th Percentile £319 £302 £363
25th Percentile £405 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £556 £580 £625
90th Percentile £672 £670 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +8.42% - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 7 3
10th Percentile - £17.89 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £40.28 -
Median hourly rate £22.25 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -64.96% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £35.63 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £66.05 £66.05 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.92 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -71.56% - -

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 46,068 29,787 33,025
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.40% 90.53% 85.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,926 18,499 20,227
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
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 £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,164 1,816 1,455
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.90
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% -1.91%
75th Percentile £67.48 £44.05 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +1.18%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 -131 260 £500 - 470
UK excluding London -122 155 £515 +8.42% 216
London -95 111 £450 -10.00% 268
Work from Home -86 86 £500 - 179
North of England -52 62 £500 +5.26% 60
South East -39 48 £526 +15.72% 54
Yorkshire -33 34 £518 +7.84% 16
North West -48 24 £492 +3.61% 38
Midlands -74 16 £588 +15.48% 26
Scotland -35 12 £438 -4.89% 11
West Midlands -71 10 £600 +15.50% 17
South West -37 8 £535 +2.88% 27
East of England -40 8 £503 +11.67% 21
East Midlands -18 6 £456 +9.28% 9
North East -39 4 £275 +37.50% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 10

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 33 (10.82%) SharePoint
2 15 (4.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.64%) JBoss
5 4 (1.31%) Confluence
5 4 (1.31%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.98%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.98%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.98%) WebLogic Portal
7 2 (0.66%) CMS
7 2 (0.66%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.33%) Apache
8 1 (0.33%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.33%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.33%) IIS
8 1 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.30%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.98%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (2.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.97%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.31%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.98%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.33%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.33%) PeopleSoft HCM
5 1 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 114 (37.38%) Azure
2 75 (24.59%) AWS
3 49 (16.07%) Microsoft 365
4 31 (10.16%) Entra ID
4 31 (10.16%) GitHub
5 29 (9.51%) Power Platform
6 28 (9.18%) Azure DevOps
7 27 (8.85%) GCP
8 23 (7.54%) GitHub Actions
9 21 (6.89%) Amazon S3
9 21 (6.89%) Microsoft Copilot
10 19 (6.23%) Power Automate
11 18 (5.90%) AWS Lambda
11 18 (5.90%) Datadog
11 18 (5.90%) Serverless
12 17 (5.57%) Azure Monitor
13 15 (4.92%) AWS CloudFormation
13 15 (4.92%) OneDrive
14 14 (4.59%) SaaS
15 12 (3.93%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 51 (16.72%) DNS
2 29 (9.51%) DHCP
3 27 (8.85%) VPN
4 25 (8.20%) Firewall
5 21 (6.89%) TCP/IP
6 17 (5.57%) Network Security
7 9 (2.95%) VLAN
8 8 (2.62%) SSH
9 7 (2.30%) Kerberos
9 7 (2.30%) SAN
9 7 (2.30%) WAN
10 6 (1.97%) SD-WAN
10 6 (1.97%) Skype
11 5 (1.64%) BIG-IP
11 5 (1.64%) Wireless
12 4 (1.31%) Intranet
12 4 (1.31%) PSTN
12 4 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
13 3 (0.98%) LAN
13 3 (0.98%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (8.20%) SQL Server
2 12 (3.93%) Data Warehouse
2 12 (3.93%) Power BI
3 11 (3.61%) Amazon RDS
4 7 (2.30%) Metadata
5 6 (1.97%) Hadoop
5 6 (1.97%) MySQL
5 6 (1.97%) Oracle Database
5 6 (1.97%) Sybase ASE
6 5 (1.64%) Big Data
6 5 (1.64%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.31%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.31%) EDRMS
7 4 (1.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.98%) BigQuery
8 3 (0.98%) Oracle Database 10g
8 3 (0.98%) Oracle Database 11g
8 3 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.98%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 37 (12.13%) Git
2 22 (7.21%) GitLab
3 20 (6.56%) Jenkins
4 11 (3.61%) JIRA
5 5 (1.64%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.31%) Flyway
6 4 (1.31%) Oracle Forms
6 4 (1.31%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.98%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.98%) Oracle APEX
8 2 (0.66%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.66%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.66%) JUnit
8 2 (0.66%) Maven
8 2 (0.66%) Postman
8 2 (0.66%) Selenium
8 2 (0.66%) Snyk
8 2 (0.66%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.33%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.33%) VersionOne
General
1 93 (30.49%) Social Skills
2 55 (18.03%) Analytical Skills
3 52 (17.05%) Finance
4 31 (10.16%) Banking
5 17 (5.57%) Legal
6 14 (4.59%) Public Sector
7 11 (3.61%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.97%) Front Office
10 5 (1.64%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.98%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.98%) Law
11 3 (0.98%) Military
12 2 (0.66%) Billing
12 2 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.66%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.66%) Marketing
12 2 (0.66%) Retail
13 1 (0.33%) International Banking
13 1 (0.33%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 39 (12.79%) Senior
2 32 (10.49%) Support Engineer
3 29 (9.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 22 (7.21%) DevOps Engineer
5 19 (6.23%) Cloud Engineer
6 17 (5.57%) Analyst
6 17 (5.57%) DBA
7 16 (5.25%) Platform Engineer
8 15 (4.92%) Developer
9 14 (4.59%) Consultant
10 12 (3.93%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.93%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (3.61%) Architect
12 10 (3.28%) Lead
12 10 (3.28%) Linux Engineer
12 10 (3.28%) Site Engineer
13 9 (2.95%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (2.62%) Security Engineer
14 8 (2.62%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 8 (2.62%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (20.98%) Terraform
2 29 (9.51%) REST
3 15 (4.92%) ARM Templates
3 15 (4.92%) React
4 12 (3.93%) JSON
5 11 (3.61%) .NET
5 11 (3.61%) CSS
5 11 (3.61%) SPFx
6 10 (3.28%) Elastic Stack
6 10 (3.28%) Kafka
7 9 (2.95%) YAML
8 8 (2.62%) HTML
8 8 (2.62%) Node.js
8 8 (2.62%) SOAP
9 5 (1.64%) ASP.NET
9 5 (1.64%) AWS CDK
9 5 (1.64%) LangChain
9 5 (1.64%) Middleware
9 5 (1.64%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (1.31%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.89%) Onboarding
2 18 (5.90%) Cloud Native
3 16 (5.25%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (4.59%) AI Agents
5 13 (4.26%) Data Protection Act
5 13 (4.26%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (3.93%) Clustering
7 11 (3.61%) Management Information System
7 11 (3.61%) Replication
8 10 (3.28%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (3.28%) Private Cloud
9 9 (2.95%) CMDB
9 9 (2.95%) Product Ownership
10 8 (2.62%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (2.30%) Public Cloud
11 7 (2.30%) Virtual Team
12 6 (1.97%) Blackberry
13 5 (1.64%) Data Centre
13 5 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (1.64%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 67 (21.97%) Windows
2 60 (19.67%) Linux
3 23 (7.54%) Windows Server
4 21 (6.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.59%) Unix
5 14 (4.59%) Windows 10
6 13 (4.26%) Windows Server 2019
7 8 (2.62%) Android
7 8 (2.62%) Mac OS
8 7 (2.30%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.97%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.98%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.66%) AIX
11 2 (0.66%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.66%) VMS
11 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.66%) zOS
12 1 (0.33%) MVS
12 1 (0.33%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (29.51%) CI/CD
2 78 (25.57%) DevOps
3 68 (22.30%) ITIL
4 67 (21.97%) Problem-Solving
5 65 (21.31%) Infrastructure as Code
6 63 (20.66%) Agile
7 56 (18.36%) AI
8 50 (16.39%) Continuous Improvement
9 49 (16.07%) Migration
10 43 (14.10%) Observability
10 43 (14.10%) Root Cause Analysis
11 41 (13.44%) Workflow
12 40 (13.11%) Performance Tuning
13 37 (12.13%) ITSM
14 35 (11.48%) Runbook
15 34 (11.15%) Analytics
15 34 (11.15%) Disaster Recovery
16 33 (10.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 31 (10.16%) Containerisation
18 30 (9.84%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 134 (43.93%) Python
2 109 (35.74%) PowerShell
3 63 (20.66%) SQL
4 53 (17.38%) Bash
5 35 (11.48%) JavaScript
6 17 (5.57%) Bicep
7 16 (5.25%) Java
8 13 (4.26%) Go
8 13 (4.26%) TypeScript
9 12 (3.93%) Shell Script
9 12 (3.93%) T-SQL
10 9 (2.95%) PL/SQL
11 7 (2.30%) C#
12 5 (1.64%) Perl
12 5 (1.64%) VBScript
13 2 (0.66%) REXX
13 2 (0.66%) Scala
14 1 (0.33%) JCL
14 1 (0.33%) Korn
14 1 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 104 (34.10%) Security Cleared
2 67 (21.97%) SC Cleared
3 38 (12.46%) DV Cleared
4 32 (10.49%) Degree
5 19 (6.23%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (4.59%) Azure Certification
6 14 (4.59%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.97%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.98%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.98%) CCNA
10 3 (0.98%) CCNP
11 2 (0.66%) CIPD
11 2 (0.66%) CISM
11 2 (0.66%) CISSP
11 2 (0.66%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.66%) GSEC
11 2 (0.66%) OSCP
12 1 (0.33%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (6.89%) Data Quality
2 18 (5.90%) SLA
3 12 (3.93%) QA
4 6 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (1.97%) NIST
5 2 (0.66%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.66%) HIPAA
5 2 (0.66%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.33%) GDPR
6 1 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
6 1 (0.33%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.33%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 64 (20.98%) Active Directory
2 30 (9.84%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (8.85%) Docker
4 14 (4.59%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (4.59%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (3.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (1.97%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.97%) NFS
7 5 (1.64%) vSphere
8 2 (0.66%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.66%) Firmware
8 2 (0.66%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.33%) NDS
9 1 (0.33%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 1 (0.33%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 45 (14.75%) Ansible
2 38 (12.46%) Kubernetes
3 27 (8.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 23 (7.54%) SCCM
5 18 (5.90%) Grafana
6 17 (5.57%) SCOM
7 16 (5.25%) Prometheus
7 16 (5.25%) Puppet
8 14 (4.59%) vCenter Server
9 11 (3.61%) Progress Chef
9 11 (3.61%) Red Hat Satellite
10 8 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (2.30%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (1.64%) Oracle RMAN
13 3 (0.98%) Istio
13 3 (0.98%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 2 (0.66%) Data Guard
14 2 (0.66%) linkerd
14 2 (0.66%) Podman
14 2 (0.66%) WSUS
Vendors
1 105 (34.43%) Microsoft
2 34 (11.15%) VMware
3 23 (7.54%) Oracle
4 21 (6.89%) Google
5 20 (6.56%) Red Hat
5 20 (6.56%) ServiceNow
6 17 (5.57%) Splunk
7 15 (4.92%) SolarWinds
8 12 (3.93%) Broadcom
9 11 (3.61%) Cisco
10 8 (2.62%) BMC
11 7 (2.30%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.30%) OpenAI
11 7 (2.30%) Remedy
12 6 (1.97%) Citrix
12 6 (1.97%) Ivanti
12 6 (1.97%) Sybase
13 5 (1.64%) BeyondTrust
13 5 (1.64%) Dynatrace
13 5 (1.64%) F5