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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 390 262 264
Rank change year-on-year -128 +2 +167
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 294 332 366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 1.01% 0.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.65% 1.12% 1.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 187 274
10th Percentile £300 £315 £388
25th Percentile £400 £407 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £556 £594 £675
90th Percentile £626 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -6.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 10 3
10th Percentile - £18.59 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £26.56 -
Median hourly rate £21.50 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -66.14% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £41.97 £66.48 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.92 £65.00 -
% change year-on-year -70.90% - -

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 45,072 29,587 34,698
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.43% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,942 18,578 22,301
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,665 1,596 2,086
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.33 £17.31
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.80 £68.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +83.17% -40.00% -1.45%

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 25 July 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 25 July 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 25 July 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 -112 250 £469 -6.20% 112
UK excluding London -81 155 £500 +4.17% 77
London -94 107 £450 -10.47% 43
Work from Home -87 88 £465 -7.00% 45
North of England -49 63 £500 +2.04% 20
Yorkshire -18 47 £500 -6.98% 1
South East -40 44 £472 -5.60% 19
Scotland -34 17 £500 +6.67% 3
Midlands -59 15 £575 +15.00% 14
North West -55 13 £485 +2.00% 17
South West -33 11 £385 -25.96% 8
West Midlands -57 11 £600 +19.40% 6
East Midlands -17 4 £413 +7.14% 8
East of England -38 3 £550 +15.79% 10
North East -41 3 £275 -26.67% 2
Wales -18 2 £543 +106.67% 3

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 40 (13.61%) SharePoint
2 24 (8.16%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (2.72%) Confluence
4 3 (1.02%) Apache
4 3 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (1.02%) Appian
4 3 (1.02%) CMS
5 2 (0.68%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.34%) JBoss
6 1 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
6 1 (0.34%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.36%) Chatbot
2 4 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.02%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.68%) Remedy AR System
3 1 (0.34%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.34%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.34%) PeopleSoft HCM
3 1 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 127 (43.20%) Azure
2 71 (24.15%) AWS
3 57 (19.39%) Microsoft 365
4 43 (14.63%) Entra ID
5 42 (14.29%) GitHub
6 33 (11.22%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (9.86%) GitHub Actions
8 28 (9.52%) GCP
9 26 (8.84%) Power Platform
10 22 (7.48%) Azure Monitor
11 21 (7.14%) Power Automate
12 20 (6.80%) OpenShift
13 16 (5.44%) Azure Key Vault
13 16 (5.44%) Datadog
13 16 (5.44%) Microsoft Copilot
14 15 (5.10%) Amazon S3
14 15 (5.10%) OneDrive
15 14 (4.76%) PaaS
15 14 (4.76%) PowerApps
16 11 (3.74%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 36 (12.24%) DNS
2 24 (8.16%) DHCP
3 23 (7.82%) Firewall
4 22 (7.48%) VPN
5 13 (4.42%) SAN
5 13 (4.42%) TCP/IP
6 11 (3.74%) Network Security
7 9 (3.06%) VLAN
8 8 (2.72%) SSH
9 7 (2.38%) SD-WAN
10 6 (2.04%) WAN
11 4 (1.36%) Intranet
12 3 (1.02%) BGP
12 3 (1.02%) BIG-IP
12 3 (1.02%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (1.02%) Kerberos
12 3 (1.02%) LAN
12 3 (1.02%) OSPF
12 3 (1.02%) SNMP
12 3 (1.02%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (11.90%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.74%) Power BI
3 9 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (2.72%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.38%) Metadata
5 7 (2.38%) MySQL
5 7 (2.38%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.38%) Relational Database
6 6 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (2.04%) Sybase ASE
7 5 (1.70%) Big Data
8 4 (1.36%) EDRMS
8 4 (1.36%) Oracle Database
8 4 (1.36%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (1.36%) Tableau
9 3 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (1.02%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.02%) DTS
9 3 (1.02%) MongoDB
9 3 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 32 (10.88%) Git
2 28 (9.52%) Jenkins
3 27 (9.18%) GitLab
4 17 (5.78%) JIRA
5 6 (2.04%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.70%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (1.36%) Flyway
8 3 (1.02%) AdminStudio
8 3 (1.02%) InstallShield
8 3 (1.02%) MLflow
8 3 (1.02%) Selenium
8 3 (1.02%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.68%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.68%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.68%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.68%) JUnit
9 2 (0.68%) Maven
9 2 (0.68%) Postman
9 2 (0.68%) Snyk
10 1 (0.34%) Visual Studio
General
1 102 (34.69%) Social Skills
2 51 (17.35%) Finance
3 48 (16.33%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (9.18%) Banking
5 18 (6.12%) Public Sector
6 16 (5.44%) Legal
7 11 (3.74%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.72%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.70%) Front Office
9 5 (1.70%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.36%) Military
11 3 (1.02%) Law
12 2 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.68%) Retail
13 1 (0.34%) International Banking
13 1 (0.34%) Local Government
13 1 (0.34%) Marketing
13 1 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 29 (9.86%) Developer
2 22 (7.48%) DBA
2 22 (7.48%) Senior
3 21 (7.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (6.46%) Support Engineer
5 18 (6.12%) Consultant
5 18 (6.12%) DevOps Engineer
6 16 (5.44%) Platform Engineer
7 15 (5.10%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 12 (4.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 12 (4.08%) Site Engineer
9 11 (3.74%) Azure Developer
9 11 (3.74%) SQL DBA
10 10 (3.40%) Analyst
10 10 (3.40%) Architect
10 10 (3.40%) Lead
11 9 (3.06%) Automation Engineer
11 9 (3.06%) Data Engineer
11 9 (3.06%) Microsoft 365 Developer
11 9 (3.06%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (12.93%) REST
2 23 (7.82%) .NET
3 15 (5.10%) Microsoft Graph
3 15 (5.10%) SOAP
4 14 (4.76%) Web Services
5 12 (4.08%) .NET Framework
5 12 (4.08%) ARM Templates
5 12 (4.08%) React
6 11 (3.74%) CSS
6 11 (3.74%) JSON
6 11 (3.74%) SPFx
7 9 (3.06%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (2.72%) AWS CDK
8 8 (2.72%) HTML
9 6 (2.04%) Kafka
9 6 (2.04%) Node.js
9 6 (2.04%) Pandas
9 6 (2.04%) PyTorch
9 6 (2.04%) RESTful
9 6 (2.04%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.16%) Onboarding
2 17 (5.78%) Hybrid Cloud
3 14 (4.76%) AI Agents
3 14 (4.76%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (4.08%) Distributed Systems
4 12 (4.08%) Replication
5 11 (3.74%) Cloud Native
5 11 (3.74%) Product Ownership
6 9 (3.06%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (3.06%) Management Information System
7 8 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.38%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.38%) Private Cloud
8 7 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (2.04%) Clustering
9 6 (2.04%) CMDB
9 6 (2.04%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.70%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.70%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.70%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 63 (21.43%) Windows
2 60 (20.41%) Linux
3 24 (8.16%) Windows Server
4 20 (6.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (3.74%) Unix
6 9 (3.06%) Windows 10
7 6 (2.04%) Mac OS
7 6 (2.04%) VMS
7 6 (2.04%) Windows Server 2019
8 5 (1.70%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.70%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.68%) AIX
9 2 (0.68%) Android
9 2 (0.68%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.68%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.34%) CentOS
10 1 (0.34%) Solaris
10 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (27.55%) DevOps
2 80 (27.21%) CI/CD
3 72 (24.49%) Problem-Solving
4 60 (20.41%) AI
5 58 (19.73%) ITIL
6 55 (18.71%) Agile
7 50 (17.01%) Infrastructure as Code
8 46 (15.65%) Migration
9 40 (13.61%) Analytics
9 40 (13.61%) Observability
10 39 (13.27%) Continuous Improvement
11 36 (12.24%) Disaster Recovery
12 34 (11.56%) Workflow
13 32 (10.88%) Performance Tuning
14 31 (10.54%) Change Management
14 31 (10.54%) Containerisation
14 31 (10.54%) High Availability
15 29 (9.86%) Data Protection
16 28 (9.52%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 27 (9.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 121 (41.16%) Python
2 108 (36.73%) PowerShell
3 57 (19.39%) SQL
4 48 (16.33%) Bash
5 29 (9.86%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.46%) C#
7 16 (5.44%) TypeScript
8 15 (5.10%) Java
9 12 (4.08%) Bicep
9 12 (4.08%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (4.08%) T-SQL
10 10 (3.40%) Go
11 8 (2.72%) Shell Script
12 7 (2.38%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.02%) VBScript
14 2 (0.68%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.68%) Scala
15 1 (0.34%) ABAP
15 1 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.34%) REXX
Qualifications
1 79 (26.87%) Security Cleared
2 49 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 30 (10.20%) Degree
4 28 (9.52%) DV Cleared
5 18 (6.12%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (3.74%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (2.72%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.70%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.70%) OCP
8 5 (1.70%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.02%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (1.02%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.02%) CISSP
11 2 (0.68%) CCNP
11 2 (0.68%) CISM
11 2 (0.68%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.68%) MCITP
11 2 (0.68%) MCTS
11 2 (0.68%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (6.80%) Data Quality
2 9 (3.06%) QA
2 9 (3.06%) SLA
3 7 (2.38%) NIST
4 6 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.02%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.68%) GDPR
7 1 (0.34%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.34%) GRC
7 1 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 56 (19.05%) Active Directory
2 27 (9.18%) Docker
3 24 (8.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.76%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.74%) NFS
6 8 (2.72%) vSphere
7 7 (2.38%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (2.04%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (1.70%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.68%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.68%) Firmware
10 2 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.34%) KVM
11 1 (0.34%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.34%) UAG
11 1 (0.34%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 54 (18.37%) Ansible
2 51 (17.35%) Terraform
3 42 (14.29%) Kubernetes
4 29 (9.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (6.12%) SCCM
6 15 (5.10%) Grafana
7 12 (4.08%) Prometheus
8 11 (3.74%) Progress Chef
8 11 (3.74%) Puppet
9 9 (3.06%) SCOM
9 9 (3.06%) vCenter Server
10 7 (2.38%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (1.70%) SnapMirror
13 3 (1.02%) Foglight
13 3 (1.02%) PowerCLI
13 3 (1.02%) WSUS
14 2 (0.68%) Data Guard
14 2 (0.68%) Nessus
14 2 (0.68%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 106 (36.05%) Microsoft
2 32 (10.88%) VMware
3 25 (8.50%) ServiceNow
4 23 (7.82%) Google
5 19 (6.46%) Red Hat
6 17 (5.78%) Oracle
6 17 (5.78%) Splunk
7 12 (4.08%) OpenAI
8 10 (3.40%) Databricks
9 9 (3.06%) Cisco
9 9 (3.06%) SolarWinds
10 7 (2.38%) AppDynamics
11 6 (2.04%) Bloomberg
11 6 (2.04%) Citrix
11 6 (2.04%) CrowdStrike
11 6 (2.04%) Palo Alto
11 6 (2.04%) Sybase
12 5 (1.70%) Broadcom
12 5 (1.70%) F5
12 5 (1.70%) NetApp