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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 223 349
Rank change year-on-year -21 +126 +113
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 413 342 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.09% 0.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.26% 1.23% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 291 208 185
10th Percentile £320 £338 £366
25th Percentile £400 £400 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -9.52% -8.70%
75th Percentile £596 £575 £625
90th Percentile £750 £660 £680
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +0.64% -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 32,673 27,807 37,942
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.64% 88.90% 87.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,708 16,856 25,065
10th Percentile £305 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £645
90th Percentile £720 £743 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,982 890 1,770
10th Percentile £14.55 £15.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £17.16
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -14.47% +16.92%
75th Percentile £57.25 £62.50 £63.29
90th Percentile £69.25 £75.00 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.41 £30.88 £40.13
% change year-on-year -20.96% -23.05% +54.33%

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 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 20 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 20 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 -13 348 £500 +5.26% 210
UK excluding London -7 203 £473 +0.64% 173
London -17 165 £550 +4.76% 67
Work from Home +38 149 £550 +15.79% 117
North of England -32 64 £450 -2.70% 23
South East -10 43 £445 +11.25% 67
Midlands -22 42 £550 +13.64% 21
West Midlands -11 41 £550 +11.79% 10
Yorkshire -28 35 £450 +9.09% 9
Scotland +15 26 £413 -17.50% 2
North West -28 25 £446 -4.34% 9
South West -15 18 £525 +11.70% 32
East of England -21 8 £500 -16.67% 28
North East -10 4 £365 -22.34% 6
Wales - 2 £506 - 5
Northern Ireland - 2 £683 - 2
East Midlands -29 1 £450 +13.92% 11

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 21 (5.08%) Microsoft Exchange
2 19 (4.60%) SharePoint
3 14 (3.39%) Confluence
4 8 (1.94%) Apache
4 8 (1.94%) IIS
5 5 (1.21%) Appian
5 5 (1.21%) iPlanet
5 5 (1.21%) JBoss
5 5 (1.21%) OpenStack
5 5 (1.21%) WebSphere
5 5 (1.21%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.48%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.24%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.24%) CMS
7 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 24 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.73%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
2 3 (0.73%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.73%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.48%) Maximo
2 2 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.24%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 195 (47.22%) Azure
2 138 (33.41%) AWS
3 97 (23.49%) GCP
4 44 (10.65%) Entra ID
5 39 (9.44%) GitHub
6 35 (8.47%) Microsoft 365
6 35 (8.47%) OpenShift
7 30 (7.26%) GitHub Actions
8 28 (6.78%) Azure DevOps
9 26 (6.30%) AWS CloudFormation
10 23 (5.57%) Power Platform
10 23 (5.57%) Serverless
11 18 (4.36%) Power Automate
12 15 (3.63%) Amazon EKS
13 14 (3.39%) Amazon S3
13 14 (3.39%) Datadog
14 13 (3.15%) Azure AKS
15 12 (2.91%) OneDrive
16 10 (2.42%) Amazon EC2
16 10 (2.42%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 36 (8.72%) Firewall
2 33 (7.99%) DNS
3 26 (6.30%) DHCP
4 19 (4.60%) SSH
5 18 (4.36%) Kerberos
6 17 (4.12%) TCP/IP
7 14 (3.39%) Network Security
8 10 (2.42%) VPN
8 10 (2.42%) WAN
9 7 (1.69%) LAN
10 6 (1.45%) Cisco IOS
11 5 (1.21%) BGP
11 5 (1.21%) NX-OS
11 5 (1.21%) WLAN
12 4 (0.97%) AMQP
12 4 (0.97%) HTTP
12 4 (0.97%) SD-WAN
13 3 (0.73%) SSL
14 2 (0.48%) Internet
14 2 (0.48%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (8.72%) SQL Server
2 31 (7.51%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (5.81%) Relational Database
4 21 (5.08%) Oracle Database
5 17 (4.12%) Power BI
6 10 (2.42%) Amazon RDS
6 10 (2.42%) MySQL
7 7 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.69%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.69%) RDBMS
8 6 (1.45%) MongoDB
8 6 (1.45%) Oracle Reports
8 6 (1.45%) Pinecone
9 5 (1.21%) Power Query
9 5 (1.21%) Tableau
10 4 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.97%) BigQuery
10 4 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.97%) InfluxDB
10 4 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 58 (14.04%) Git
2 52 (12.59%) Jenkins
3 39 (9.44%) GitLab
4 20 (4.84%) JIRA
5 18 (4.36%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (2.91%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.66%) CircleCI
8 10 (2.42%) Maven
9 8 (1.94%) JUnit
9 8 (1.94%) SonarQube
10 6 (1.45%) Artifactory
10 6 (1.45%) Postman
10 6 (1.45%) Selenium
11 5 (1.21%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.21%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.21%) Cypress.io
11 5 (1.21%) JMeter
11 5 (1.21%) LoadRunner
11 5 (1.21%) MLflow
11 5 (1.21%) Snyk
General
1 168 (40.68%) Social Skills
2 68 (16.46%) Finance
3 58 (14.04%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.44%) Public Sector
5 27 (6.54%) Banking
6 7 (1.69%) Investment Banking
6 7 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (1.45%) Legal
7 6 (1.45%) Retail
8 5 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (0.97%) Games
10 3 (0.73%) Front Office
10 3 (0.73%) Law
10 3 (0.73%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.48%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.48%) Military
11 2 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.48%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 46 (11.14%) Developer
2 41 (9.93%) Architect
3 37 (8.96%) CyberArk Architect
4 29 (7.02%) Administrator
4 29 (7.02%) DevOps Engineer
5 28 (6.78%) Senior
6 25 (6.05%) Automation Engineer
7 24 (5.81%) Analyst
8 21 (5.08%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 19 (4.60%) Java Developer
10 18 (4.36%) Platform Engineer
11 16 (3.87%) DBA
12 15 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 14 (3.39%) Site Engineer
14 13 (3.15%) Lead
15 12 (2.91%) Network Engineer
16 11 (2.66%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 11 (2.66%) Consultant
16 11 (2.66%) Support Engineer
17 9 (2.18%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (15.50%) REST
2 51 (12.35%) LDAP
3 40 (9.69%) SOAP
4 26 (6.30%) Elastic Stack
4 26 (6.30%) OAuth
5 24 (5.81%) Node.js
6 19 (4.60%) SAML
7 16 (3.87%) FastAPI
8 15 (3.63%) .NET
9 12 (2.91%) Web Services
10 11 (2.66%) Kafka
11 10 (2.42%) RESTful
12 9 (2.18%) JSON
12 9 (2.18%) Microsoft Graph
12 9 (2.18%) Pandas
12 9 (2.18%) YAML
13 8 (1.94%) OpenID
14 7 (1.69%) GraphQL
14 7 (1.69%) NumPy
15 6 (1.45%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 44 (10.65%) Security Posture
2 41 (9.93%) Enterprise Software
3 24 (5.81%) Onboarding
4 19 (4.60%) Cloud Native
5 18 (4.36%) Distributed Systems
5 18 (4.36%) Replication
6 9 (2.18%) Data Centre
7 8 (1.94%) Clustering
7 8 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (1.94%) Private Cloud
8 7 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (1.69%) Linux Command Line
8 7 (1.69%) Low-Code
8 7 (1.69%) PKI
9 6 (1.45%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.21%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.21%) Product Ownership
11 4 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (0.97%) Data Structures
11 4 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 116 (28.09%) Linux
2 80 (19.37%) Windows
3 30 (7.26%) Windows Server
4 29 (7.02%) Unix
5 13 (3.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (2.18%) VMS
7 8 (1.94%) CentOS
8 4 (0.97%) AIX
8 4 (0.97%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.73%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.48%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.24%) Android
11 1 (0.24%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (41.16%) Problem-Solving
2 141 (34.14%) CI/CD
3 111 (26.88%) DevOps
4 72 (17.43%) Infrastructure as Code
5 66 (15.98%) Containerisation
6 65 (15.74%) Agile
7 57 (13.80%) SIEM
8 50 (12.11%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 46 (11.14%) High Availability
10 45 (10.90%) Disaster Recovery
10 45 (10.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 42 (10.17%) Observability
12 41 (9.93%) Technical Leadership
13 40 (9.69%) Continuous Improvement
13 40 (9.69%) Migration
13 40 (9.69%) Privileged Access Management
14 39 (9.44%) Configuration Management
14 39 (9.44%) Identity Access Management
15 38 (9.20%) ITSM
15 38 (9.20%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 223 (54.00%) Python
2 152 (36.80%) PowerShell
3 72 (17.43%) Bash
4 70 (16.95%) SQL
5 60 (14.53%) Java
6 49 (11.86%) Shell Script
7 33 (7.99%) Go
8 26 (6.30%) JavaScript
9 22 (5.33%) TypeScript
10 15 (3.63%) C#
11 12 (2.91%) Kusto Query Language
11 12 (2.91%) VBA
12 11 (2.66%) Perl
13 10 (2.42%) Bicep
14 7 (1.69%) Groovy
15 6 (1.45%) PL/SQL
16 5 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 3 (0.73%) PHP
17 3 (0.73%) Ruby
17 3 (0.73%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 143 (34.62%) Security Cleared
2 108 (26.15%) SC Cleared
3 28 (6.78%) Degree
4 27 (6.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (3.87%) DV Cleared
6 13 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (2.91%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (1.94%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.94%) CISSP
10 6 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.21%) CCNP
11 5 (1.21%) Master's Degree
11 5 (1.21%) OCP
11 5 (1.21%) Oracle Certification
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 36 (8.72%) GDPR
2 21 (5.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (4.12%) NIST
4 15 (3.63%) Data Quality
5 11 (2.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (2.42%) QA
7 6 (1.45%) SLA
8 5 (1.21%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.97%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.48%) EU AI Act
10 2 (0.48%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.24%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.24%) COBIT
11 1 (0.24%) GRC
11 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.24%) PMO
System Software
1 86 (20.82%) Active Directory
2 66 (15.98%) Docker
3 23 (5.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.66%) Oracle RAC
5 6 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (1.21%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 4 (0.97%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.73%) Firmware
8 3 (0.73%) KVM
8 3 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.73%) Xen
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%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.24%) vSphere
9 1 (0.24%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 87 (21.07%) Kubernetes
2 83 (20.10%) Terraform
3 77 (18.64%) Ansible
4 47 (11.38%) Grafana
5 40 (9.69%) Prometheus
6 24 (5.81%) Progress Chef
7 22 (5.33%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (3.87%) Puppet
9 14 (3.39%) SCCM
10 13 (3.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 12 (2.91%) Data Guard
11 12 (2.91%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (2.66%) Oracle RMAN
13 9 (2.18%) yum
14 8 (1.94%) Podman
15 6 (1.45%) CA Single Sign-On
15 6 (1.45%) NetBackup
16 5 (1.21%) CA Wily
16 5 (1.21%) Kibana
16 5 (1.21%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 104 (25.18%) Microsoft
2 53 (12.83%) CyberArk
3 46 (11.14%) Oracle
4 42 (10.17%) BeyondTrust
5 34 (8.23%) Centrify
6 32 (7.75%) Google
6 32 (7.75%) Splunk
7 24 (5.81%) VMware
8 17 (4.12%) Red Hat
9 14 (3.39%) Okta
9 14 (3.39%) ServiceNow
10 12 (2.91%) Cisco
10 12 (2.91%) OpenAI
11 8 (1.94%) Databricks
11 8 (1.94%) Palo Alto
11 8 (1.94%) SAP
12 7 (1.69%) Atlassian
12 7 (1.69%) F5
12 7 (1.69%) IBM
13 6 (1.45%) Veritas