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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 406 256 249
Rank change year-on-year -150 -7 +184
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 299 331 369
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 1.02% 0.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.66% 1.13% 1.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 198 188 259
10th Percentile £300 £304 £363
25th Percentile £400 £405 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £520
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -5.77% -0.95%
75th Percentile £556 £588 £638
90th Percentile £674 £670 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.01% -4.25%
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 45,398 29,222 32,553
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.44% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,158 20,413
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,911 1,744 1,558
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.01 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.18 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +12.13%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -112 259 £492 -1.60% 393
UK excluding London -101 152 £500 +5.26% 162
London -106 113 £450 -10.00% 269
Work from Home -73 87 £500 - 152
North of England -59 60 £500 +5.26% 32
South East -44 47 £514 +4.37% 37
Yorkshire -28 33 £515 +7.29% 9
North West -46 23 £492 +3.61% 20
Midlands -63 16 £588 +14.08% 28
Scotland -38 12 £469 - 7
South West -42 11 £325 -37.50% 24
West Midlands -64 9 £600 +15.50% 23
East Midlands -19 7 £413 +7.14% 5
East of England -34 5 £480 -2.04% 20
North East -34 4 £275 +37.50% 3
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 14

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 32 (10.70%) SharePoint
2 13 (4.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (2.01%) Confluence
4 5 (1.67%) JBoss
5 4 (1.34%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (1.00%) CMS
7 2 (0.67%) Apache
7 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.33%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.33%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.33%) IIS
8 1 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.33%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.33%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 7 (2.34%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (2.34%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.34%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (2.01%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (1.67%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.67%) 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 EBS R12
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
1 108 (36.12%) Azure
2 72 (24.08%) AWS
3 49 (16.39%) Microsoft 365
4 30 (10.03%) Entra ID
4 30 (10.03%) Power Platform
5 28 (9.36%) GitHub
6 24 (8.03%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (7.02%) Amazon S3
7 21 (7.02%) GCP
7 21 (7.02%) GitHub Actions
7 21 (7.02%) Microsoft Copilot
8 20 (6.69%) Power Automate
9 16 (5.35%) AWS Lambda
9 16 (5.35%) Azure Monitor
9 16 (5.35%) Serverless
10 15 (5.02%) Datadog
10 15 (5.02%) OneDrive
11 14 (4.68%) SaaS
12 13 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
12 13 (4.35%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 49 (16.39%) DNS
2 31 (10.37%) DHCP
3 27 (9.03%) VPN
4 24 (8.03%) Firewall
5 20 (6.69%) TCP/IP
6 16 (5.35%) Network Security
7 10 (3.34%) VLAN
8 9 (3.01%) SAN
8 9 (3.01%) WAN
9 8 (2.68%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.68%) SSH
10 7 (2.34%) Kerberos
11 5 (1.67%) BIG-IP
11 5 (1.67%) LAN
11 5 (1.67%) Skype
11 5 (1.67%) Wireless
12 4 (1.34%) Intranet
12 4 (1.34%) PSTN
13 3 (1.00%) BGP
13 3 (1.00%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (9.03%) SQL Server
2 12 (4.01%) Power BI
3 11 (3.68%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (3.34%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.34%) Sybase ASE
6 6 (2.01%) Big Data
6 6 (2.01%) Hadoop
6 6 (2.01%) Metadata
6 6 (2.01%) MySQL
6 6 (2.01%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.34%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.34%) EDRMS
7 4 (1.34%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (1.00%) BigQuery
8 3 (1.00%) Snowflake Schema
8 3 (1.00%) Tableau
9 2 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.67%) Tableau Server
Development Applications
1 34 (11.37%) Git
2 24 (8.03%) GitLab
3 20 (6.69%) Jenkins
4 13 (4.35%) JIRA
5 5 (1.67%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.34%) Oracle Forms
6 4 (1.34%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.00%) AdminStudio
7 3 (1.00%) Flyway
7 3 (1.00%) InstallShield
7 3 (1.00%) Selenium
8 2 (0.67%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.67%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.67%) JUnit
8 2 (0.67%) Maven
8 2 (0.67%) Postman
8 2 (0.67%) Snyk
8 2 (0.67%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.33%) JMeter
General
1 98 (32.78%) Social Skills
2 54 (18.06%) Analytical Skills
3 47 (15.72%) Finance
4 29 (9.70%) Banking
5 17 (5.69%) Legal
5 17 (5.69%) Public Sector
6 11 (3.68%) Organisational Skills
7 9 (3.01%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.01%) Front Office
9 5 (1.67%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.34%) Investment Banking
11 3 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.00%) Law
11 3 (1.00%) Military
11 3 (1.00%) Retail
12 2 (0.67%) Billing
12 2 (0.67%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.67%) Marketing
13 1 (0.33%) International Banking
13 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 33 (11.04%) Senior
2 29 (9.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 28 (9.36%) Support Engineer
4 20 (6.69%) DevOps Engineer
5 17 (5.69%) DBA
5 17 (5.69%) Platform Engineer
6 16 (5.35%) Analyst
7 15 (5.02%) Consultant
8 13 (4.35%) Architect
8 13 (4.35%) Cloud Engineer
8 13 (4.35%) Developer
8 13 (4.35%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 12 (4.01%) Data Engineer
10 11 (3.68%) Lead
11 10 (3.34%) Linux Engineer
11 10 (3.34%) Site Engineer
11 10 (3.34%) Systems Engineer
12 9 (3.01%) Administrator
13 8 (2.68%) AWS Engineer
13 8 (2.68%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (17.73%) Terraform
2 29 (9.70%) REST
3 13 (4.35%) React
4 12 (4.01%) ARM Templates
4 12 (4.01%) JSON
5 11 (3.68%) .NET
5 11 (3.68%) CSS
5 11 (3.68%) SPFx
6 10 (3.34%) Kafka
7 9 (3.01%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (3.01%) YAML
8 8 (2.68%) HTML
9 7 (2.34%) SOAP
10 6 (2.01%) AWS CDK
10 6 (2.01%) Node.js
11 5 (1.67%) ASP.NET
11 5 (1.67%) LangChain
11 5 (1.67%) Oracle Fusion
12 4 (1.34%) Software Packaging
12 4 (1.34%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.69%) Onboarding
2 15 (5.02%) Hybrid Cloud
3 14 (4.68%) AI Agents
3 14 (4.68%) Cloud Native
4 13 (4.35%) Product Ownership
5 12 (4.01%) Replication
6 11 (3.68%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (3.68%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (3.68%) Management Information System
7 10 (3.34%) Clustering
7 10 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (3.01%) Private Cloud
9 8 (2.68%) CMDB
9 8 (2.68%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (2.34%) Data Centre
10 7 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
11 6 (2.01%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (1.67%) Autonomous Agent
12 5 (1.67%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 68 (22.74%) Windows
2 58 (19.40%) Linux
3 25 (8.36%) Windows Server
4 21 (7.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (5.35%) Windows 10
6 13 (4.35%) Unix
7 10 (3.34%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (2.01%) Android
8 6 (2.01%) Mac OS
8 6 (2.01%) Windows 7
9 5 (1.67%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.67%) AIX
11 2 (0.67%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.67%) Rocky
11 2 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.67%) VMS
11 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.67%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (28.09%) CI/CD
2 74 (24.75%) DevOps
3 70 (23.41%) Problem-Solving
4 67 (22.41%) ITIL
5 59 (19.73%) Agile
6 56 (18.73%) AI
6 56 (18.73%) Infrastructure as Code
7 46 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
8 43 (14.38%) Migration
9 38 (12.71%) Observability
9 38 (12.71%) Performance Tuning
9 38 (12.71%) Root Cause Analysis
9 38 (12.71%) Workflow
10 36 (12.04%) Disaster Recovery
11 35 (11.71%) Runbook
12 33 (11.04%) Analytics
12 33 (11.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 33 (11.04%) ITSM
13 31 (10.37%) High Availability
14 28 (9.36%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 128 (42.81%) Python
2 111 (37.12%) PowerShell
3 59 (19.73%) SQL
4 53 (17.73%) Bash
5 36 (12.04%) JavaScript
6 17 (5.69%) Java
7 16 (5.35%) Bicep
8 14 (4.68%) TypeScript
9 12 (4.01%) Shell Script
10 11 (3.68%) Go
10 11 (3.68%) T-SQL
11 7 (2.34%) C#
11 7 (2.34%) PL/SQL
12 6 (2.01%) VBScript
13 4 (1.34%) Perl
14 3 (1.00%) Scala
15 2 (0.67%) REXX
16 1 (0.33%) ABAP
16 1 (0.33%) JCL
16 1 (0.33%) Korn
Qualifications
1 98 (32.78%) Security Cleared
2 61 (20.40%) SC Cleared
3 36 (12.04%) DV Cleared
4 31 (10.37%) Degree
5 17 (5.69%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.34%) Azure Certification
6 10 (3.34%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (1.67%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (1.00%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 3 (1.00%) CCNA
8 3 (1.00%) CCNP
9 2 (0.67%) CIPD
9 2 (0.67%) CISM
9 2 (0.67%) CISSP
9 2 (0.67%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.67%) GSEC
9 2 (0.67%) OSCP
10 1 (0.33%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.36%) Data Quality
2 17 (5.69%) SLA
3 11 (3.68%) QA
4 8 (2.68%) NIST
5 5 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.67%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.33%) GDPR
7 1 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.33%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.33%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 63 (21.07%) Active Directory
2 29 (9.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (8.70%) Docker
4 11 (3.68%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (3.34%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (3.01%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (2.34%) Hyper-V
8 6 (2.01%) NFS
9 4 (1.34%) vSphere
10 2 (0.67%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.67%) Firmware
10 2 (0.67%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.33%) NDS
11 1 (0.33%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 1 (0.33%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.33%) UAG
Systems Management
1 47 (15.72%) Ansible
2 33 (11.04%) Kubernetes
3 30 (10.03%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (8.70%) SCCM
5 17 (5.69%) Grafana
6 16 (5.35%) Puppet
7 15 (5.02%) Prometheus
8 14 (4.68%) SCOM
9 12 (4.01%) Progress Chef
10 11 (3.68%) Red Hat Satellite
10 11 (3.68%) vCenter Server
11 7 (2.34%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (2.01%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (1.00%) Istio
13 3 (1.00%) Oracle RMAN
13 3 (1.00%) WSUS
14 2 (0.67%) Data Guard
14 2 (0.67%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.67%) linkerd
14 2 (0.67%) Nagios
Vendors
1 102 (34.11%) Microsoft
2 33 (11.04%) VMware
3 22 (7.36%) Oracle
4 20 (6.69%) ServiceNow
5 18 (6.02%) Red Hat
6 17 (5.69%) Google
6 17 (5.69%) Splunk
7 12 (4.01%) SolarWinds
8 11 (3.68%) Cisco
9 9 (3.01%) Broadcom
10 7 (2.34%) AppDynamics
10 7 (2.34%) BMC
10 7 (2.34%) OpenAI
10 7 (2.34%) Sybase
11 6 (2.01%) Remedy
12 5 (1.67%) Citrix
12 5 (1.67%) Databricks
12 5 (1.67%) F5
12 5 (1.67%) Ivanti
13 4 (1.34%) BeyondTrust