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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 279 251 374
Rank change year-on-year -28 +123 +88
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 357 358 254
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.99% 0.98% 0.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.11% 1.12% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 225 188
10th Percentile £300 £350 £363
25th Percentile £380 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £484 £516
Median % change year-on-year -3.93% -6.20% -13.86%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £616
90th Percentile £625 £695 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +1.17% -6.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 0
10th Percentile £32.41 - -
25th Percentile £49.94 - -
Median hourly rate £63.50 £23.80 -
Median % change year-on-year +166.81% - -
75th Percentile £65.25 - -
90th Percentile £66.25 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 - -

All Process and 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 32,259 31,857 40,400
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.36% 87.03% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,239 19,190 27,102
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,092 1,151 1,562
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.22 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.88
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.24% +25.37%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.74 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -30.05% -26.97% +39.06%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025. 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 -28 296 £484 -0.05% 126
UK excluding London -6 177 £476 +1.17% 112
London -22 138 £475 -13.64% 61
Work from Home +12 108 £450 -6.25% 59
North of England -29 51 £450 +3.15% 26
Midlands -8 41 £535 +10.54% 10
West Midlands -16 40 £550 +11.79% 10
South East 0 35 £446 -3.59% 38
Yorkshire -27 26 £465 +12.73% 13
North West -20 25 £440 -4.61% 10
Scotland +1 17 £348 -33.76% 16
South West -10 14 £525 +11.70% 13
East of England -12 13 £500 +17.65% 5
Wales +5 7 £263 -46.15% 1
Northern Ireland -3 1 £690 - 3
East Midlands -16 1 £450 +2.86%

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 23 (6.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (5.04%) Confluence
2 18 (5.04%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.52%) Apache
4 8 (2.24%) IIS
5 5 (1.40%) iPlanet
5 5 (1.40%) JBoss
5 5 (1.40%) WebSphere
5 5 (1.40%) WebSphere Application Server
6 4 (1.12%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.28%) CICS
8 1 (0.28%) CMS
8 1 (0.28%) MQSeries
8 1 (0.28%) OpenEdge
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 22 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.56%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.12%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.56%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.28%) Eikon
3 1 (0.28%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.28%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 133 (37.25%) Azure
2 94 (26.33%) AWS
3 57 (15.97%) GCP
4 41 (11.48%) GitHub
5 40 (11.20%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (10.08%) GitHub Actions
7 31 (8.68%) Entra ID
8 27 (7.56%) Azure DevOps
9 25 (7.00%) Serverless
10 24 (6.72%) OpenShift
11 18 (5.04%) Power Platform
12 14 (3.92%) Azure Logic Apps
13 13 (3.64%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
14 12 (3.36%) Amazon EC2
15 11 (3.08%) Amazon EKS
15 11 (3.08%) Azure AKS
15 11 (3.08%) Azure Sentinel
15 11 (3.08%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 42 (11.76%) Firewall
2 20 (5.60%) DNS
3 15 (4.20%) DHCP
3 15 (4.20%) Network Security
3 15 (4.20%) TCP/IP
4 12 (3.36%) SSH
5 9 (2.52%) VPN
6 8 (2.24%) WAN
7 6 (1.68%) BGP
7 6 (1.68%) Cisco IOS
8 5 (1.40%) Kerberos
8 5 (1.40%) LAN
8 5 (1.40%) NX-OS
8 5 (1.40%) OpenLDAP
8 5 (1.40%) WLAN
9 4 (1.12%) HTTP
9 4 (1.12%) PSTN
9 4 (1.12%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.84%) OSPF
10 3 (0.84%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (9.52%) SQL Server
2 23 (6.44%) Relational Database
3 22 (6.16%) PostgreSQL
4 18 (5.04%) Oracle Database
5 14 (3.92%) NoSQL
6 10 (2.80%) MySQL
6 10 (2.80%) Power BI
7 8 (2.24%) Amazon RDS
7 8 (2.24%) Big Data
7 8 (2.24%) RDBMS
8 7 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
9 6 (1.68%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (1.68%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.40%) Redis
11 4 (1.12%) Metadata
11 4 (1.12%) MongoDB
11 4 (1.12%) Tableau
12 3 (0.84%) Apache Cassandra
12 3 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
12 3 (0.84%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 67 (18.77%) Git
2 50 (14.01%) Jenkins
3 32 (8.96%) GitLab
4 27 (7.56%) JIRA
5 17 (4.76%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (2.80%) Bitbucket
7 9 (2.52%) Maven
8 8 (2.24%) Artifactory
8 8 (2.24%) JUnit
9 7 (1.96%) Postman
9 7 (1.96%) Selenium
9 7 (1.96%) SonarQube
10 6 (1.68%) CircleCI
11 5 (1.40%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.40%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.40%) Gatling
11 5 (1.40%) JMeter
11 5 (1.40%) LoadRunner
12 4 (1.12%) Cypress.io
12 4 (1.12%) Gradle
General
1 121 (33.89%) Social Skills
2 61 (17.09%) Finance
3 51 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (9.24%) Public Sector
5 30 (8.40%) Banking
6 9 (2.52%) Legal
6 9 (2.52%) Manufacturing
7 8 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.24%) Investment Banking
8 7 (1.96%) Marketing
9 6 (1.68%) Front Office
9 6 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.68%) Retail
9 6 (1.68%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.40%) Electronics
10 5 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.12%) Games
11 4 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.84%) Law
12 3 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 39 (10.92%) Developer
2 36 (10.08%) Senior
3 32 (8.96%) DevOps Engineer
4 24 (6.72%) Analyst
5 20 (5.60%) Administrator
6 19 (5.32%) Automation Engineer
7 17 (4.76%) Platform Engineer
7 17 (4.76%) Support Engineer
8 16 (4.48%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 15 (4.20%) Consultant
10 14 (3.92%) DBA
10 14 (3.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 13 (3.64%) Network Engineer
12 12 (3.36%) Data Engineer
12 12 (3.36%) Java Developer
12 12 (3.36%) Python Engineer
13 11 (3.08%) Site Engineer
14 10 (2.80%) NetBackup Engineer
15 9 (2.52%) Applications Engineer
16 8 (2.24%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (9.52%) REST
2 16 (4.48%) .NET
2 16 (4.48%) Elastic Stack
2 16 (4.48%) Node.js
3 14 (3.92%) FastAPI
4 12 (3.36%) YAML
5 11 (3.08%) Kafka
5 11 (3.08%) LDAP
5 11 (3.08%) OAuth
6 9 (2.52%) GraphQL
6 9 (2.52%) Microsoft Graph
6 9 (2.52%) Web Services
7 8 (2.24%) ARM Templates
8 7 (1.96%) SOAP
9 6 (1.68%) AngularJS
9 6 (1.68%) Flask
9 6 (1.68%) OAuth2
9 6 (1.68%) OpenID
9 6 (1.68%) React
9 6 (1.68%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 22 (6.16%) Onboarding
2 16 (4.48%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (3.92%) Cloud Native
4 12 (3.36%) Security Posture
5 11 (3.08%) Private Cloud
6 9 (2.52%) AI Agents
6 9 (2.52%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (2.24%) Linux Command Line
8 7 (1.96%) Clustering
8 7 (1.96%) Data Centre
8 7 (1.96%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.96%) Replication
9 6 (1.68%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.68%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.40%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (1.12%) NHS
11 4 (1.12%) PKI
12 3 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 97 (27.17%) Linux
2 63 (17.65%) Windows
3 24 (6.72%) Unix
4 19 (5.32%) Windows Server
5 10 (2.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (2.24%) CentOS
7 7 (1.96%) VMS
8 5 (1.40%) AIX
8 5 (1.40%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.84%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.56%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.28%) Android
11 1 (0.28%) Debian
11 1 (0.28%) Solaris
11 1 (0.28%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (34.45%) Problem-Solving
2 121 (33.89%) CI/CD
3 108 (30.25%) DevOps
4 73 (20.45%) Agile
5 64 (17.93%) Infrastructure as Code
6 61 (17.09%) Containerisation
7 42 (11.76%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 37 (10.36%) Disaster Recovery
9 36 (10.08%) Incident Response
9 36 (10.08%) Migration
10 34 (9.52%) AI
10 34 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
11 32 (8.96%) High Availability
11 32 (8.96%) Identity Access Management
12 30 (8.40%) ITIL
13 29 (8.12%) Configuration Management
13 29 (8.12%) Observability
13 29 (8.12%) Root Cause Analysis
13 29 (8.12%) Workflow
14 28 (7.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 191 (53.50%) Python
2 121 (33.89%) PowerShell
3 72 (20.17%) Bash
4 64 (17.93%) SQL
5 47 (13.17%) Java
6 33 (9.24%) Go
6 33 (9.24%) Shell Script
7 17 (4.76%) JavaScript
8 15 (4.20%) C#
8 15 (4.20%) TypeScript
9 14 (3.92%) Bicep
10 13 (3.64%) Kusto Query Language
11 11 (3.08%) VBA
12 10 (2.80%) Perl
13 8 (2.24%) Groovy
14 7 (1.96%) T-SQL
15 5 (1.40%) PL/SQL
16 3 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 2 (0.56%) PHP
17 2 (0.56%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 84 (23.53%) Security Cleared
2 61 (17.09%) SC Cleared
3 31 (8.68%) Degree
4 19 (5.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.20%) DV Cleared
6 13 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (3.36%) Azure Certification
7 12 (3.36%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.24%) CISSP
8 8 (2.24%) Master's Degree
9 6 (1.68%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.68%) CFCE
9 6 (1.68%) GCFA
9 6 (1.68%) GCIA
9 6 (1.68%) GCIH
9 6 (1.68%) GIAC
10 5 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (1.12%) CCNP
11 4 (1.12%) OCP
11 4 (1.12%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (6.72%) GDPR
2 20 (5.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (4.76%) NIST
4 16 (4.48%) QA
5 11 (3.08%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.68%) HIPAA
7 4 (1.12%) SLA
8 3 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.56%) EU AI Act
9 2 (0.56%) PMO
10 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.28%) COBIT
10 1 (0.28%) GRC
10 1 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 59 (16.53%) Docker
2 46 (12.89%) Active Directory
3 31 (8.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (3.36%) Oracle RAC
5 9 (2.52%) Firmware
6 6 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 5 (1.40%) Tivoli Directory Server
8 3 (0.84%) KVM
8 3 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.56%) vSphere
9 2 (0.56%) Xen
10 1 (0.28%) iptables
10 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.28%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.28%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 78 (21.85%) Terraform
2 70 (19.61%) Kubernetes
3 63 (17.65%) Ansible
4 38 (10.64%) Grafana
5 32 (8.96%) Prometheus
6 18 (5.04%) SCCM
7 17 (4.76%) Progress Chef
8 13 (3.64%) Puppet
9 12 (3.36%) Microsoft Intune
9 12 (3.36%) Oracle RMAN
10 11 (3.08%) Data Guard
11 10 (2.80%) NetBackup
12 9 (2.52%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (2.52%) yum
13 7 (1.96%) Podman
14 6 (1.68%) CA Single Sign-On
15 5 (1.40%) CA Wily
15 5 (1.40%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
15 5 (1.40%) Kibana
15 5 (1.40%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 109 (30.53%) Microsoft
2 41 (11.48%) Oracle
3 33 (9.24%) Google
3 33 (9.24%) VMware
4 31 (8.68%) Splunk
5 21 (5.88%) CyberArk
6 16 (4.48%) Atlassian
7 13 (3.64%) Cisco
7 13 (3.64%) SAP
7 13 (3.64%) ServiceNow
8 11 (3.08%) Palo Alto
9 10 (2.80%) Red Hat
9 10 (2.80%) Veritas
10 8 (2.24%) BeyondTrust
11 6 (1.68%) ArcSight
11 6 (1.68%) Databricks
11 6 (1.68%) F5
11 6 (1.68%) IBM
11 6 (1.68%) LogRhythm
12 5 (1.40%) Broadcom