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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 349 255 287
Rank change year-on-year -94 +32 +170
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 317 310 326
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.03% 0.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.73% 1.13% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 222 167 255
10th Percentile £301 £315 £393
25th Percentile £400 £408 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £600 £578 £675
90th Percentile £733 £675 £711
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £525
% change year-on-year - -9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 17 3
10th Percentile - £20.13 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £21.00 -
Median hourly rate £19.57 £29.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -32.52% +21.85% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £46.40 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.33 £22.88 -
% change year-on-year -28.61% - -

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 43,234 27,342 36,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 91.04% 85.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,976 17,315 23,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,595 1,301 2,587
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.79 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.47% -34.22% +17.29%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 -81 272 £475 -5.00% 70
UK excluding London -78 159 £475 - 61
London -60 131 £500 - 21
Work from Home -42 109 £537 +0.66% 31
North of England -38 66 £500 +2.56% 12
Yorkshire -8 50 £500 +8.11% 2
South East -32 40 £403 -19.50% 26
Scotland -37 20 £500 +11.11% 3
Midlands -55 16 £525 +7.69% 8
South West -36 13 £363 -30.29% 8
West Midlands -55 12 £600 +20.00% 3
North West -54 11 £459 -5.85% 9
North East -32 5 £275 -26.67% 1
East Midlands -20 4 £413 +7.14% 5
Wales -12 2 £543 +106.67% 1
East of England -48 1 £400 -5.88% 3
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 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 35 (11.04%) SharePoint
2 21 (6.62%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.15%) Confluence
4 7 (2.21%) Appian
5 4 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.95%) Apache
7 2 (0.63%) CMS
7 2 (0.63%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.58%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.63%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.63%) Maximo
2 2 (0.63%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 151 (47.63%) Azure
2 89 (28.08%) AWS
3 53 (16.72%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (15.14%) Entra ID
5 47 (14.83%) GCP
6 37 (11.67%) GitHub
7 25 (7.89%) Power Automate
8 24 (7.57%) Azure DevOps
8 24 (7.57%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (7.57%) Power Platform
9 21 (6.62%) OpenShift
10 17 (5.36%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.36%) Azure Monitor
11 15 (4.73%) Azure Key Vault
12 14 (4.42%) Microsoft Copilot
12 14 (4.42%) PaaS
13 13 (4.10%) PowerApps
13 13 (4.10%) Serverless
14 12 (3.79%) Anthropic Claude
14 12 (3.79%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 39 (12.30%) DNS
2 32 (10.09%) DHCP
3 20 (6.31%) Firewall
4 18 (5.68%) VPN
5 15 (4.73%) Kerberos
6 13 (4.10%) SAN
7 11 (3.47%) Network Security
8 9 (2.84%) WAN
9 8 (2.52%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.52%) TCP/IP
9 8 (2.52%) VLAN
10 5 (1.58%) LAN
10 5 (1.58%) SSH
11 4 (1.26%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.26%) Intranet
11 4 (1.26%) SSL
12 3 (0.95%) BGP
12 3 (0.95%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.95%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.95%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (11.67%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.15%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.15%) Power BI
4 8 (2.52%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.21%) Metadata
5 7 (2.21%) MySQL
5 7 (2.21%) Pinecone
6 6 (1.89%) Snowflake Schema
6 6 (1.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 5 (1.58%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.58%) Sybase ASE
8 4 (1.26%) Big Data
8 4 (1.26%) EDRMS
8 4 (1.26%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.26%) Tableau
9 3 (0.95%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.95%) DTS
9 3 (0.95%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.95%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 28 (8.83%) Jenkins
2 26 (8.20%) GitLab
3 21 (6.62%) Git
4 19 (5.99%) JIRA
5 10 (3.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (2.21%) MLflow
7 5 (1.58%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.26%) Flyway
9 3 (0.95%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.95%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.63%) Selenium
11 1 (0.32%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.32%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.32%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.32%) SoapUI
11 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.32%) TestNG
11 1 (0.32%) TestRail
11 1 (0.32%) WebDriver
11 1 (0.32%) WiX
General
1 129 (40.69%) Social Skills
2 58 (18.30%) Finance
3 43 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (7.57%) Banking
4 24 (7.57%) Public Sector
5 15 (4.73%) Legal
6 13 (4.10%) Organisational Skills
7 8 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.52%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.58%) Front Office
9 4 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.26%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.63%) Military
11 2 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.63%) Retail
12 1 (0.32%) International Banking
12 1 (0.32%) Local Government
12 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 32 (10.09%) Developer
2 24 (7.57%) Architect
3 22 (6.94%) DBA
4 18 (5.68%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 18 (5.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 16 (5.05%) Consultant
5 16 (5.05%) CyberArk Architect
5 16 (5.05%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 14 (4.42%) Senior
7 13 (4.10%) Automation Engineer
7 13 (4.10%) Support Engineer
8 12 (3.79%) Analyst
8 12 (3.79%) Site Engineer
9 11 (3.47%) Azure Developer
9 11 (3.47%) Data Engineer
9 11 (3.47%) DevOps Engineer
9 11 (3.47%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.15%) Administrator
10 10 (3.15%) Technical Support
11 9 (2.84%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (15.77%) REST
2 29 (9.15%) LDAP
3 27 (8.52%) SOAP
4 23 (7.26%) .NET
5 22 (6.94%) OAuth
6 18 (5.68%) Web Services
7 15 (4.73%) SAML
8 14 (4.42%) Microsoft Graph
9 12 (3.79%) .NET Framework
9 12 (3.79%) Elastic Stack
9 12 (3.79%) JWT
10 11 (3.47%) CSS
10 11 (3.47%) JSON
10 11 (3.47%) React
10 11 (3.47%) RESTful
11 10 (3.15%) AWS CDK
11 10 (3.15%) Node.js
11 10 (3.15%) Pandas
11 10 (3.15%) PyTorch
11 10 (3.15%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 25 (7.89%) Replication
2 22 (6.94%) Enterprise Software
2 22 (6.94%) Onboarding
3 18 (5.68%) Legacy Systems
4 17 (5.36%) Security Posture
5 15 (4.73%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (4.10%) Hybrid Cloud
7 12 (3.79%) AI Agents
7 12 (3.79%) Cloud Native
8 11 (3.47%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (3.47%) Product Ownership
9 7 (2.21%) Data Centre
9 7 (2.21%) Low-Code
9 7 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.21%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.89%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.58%) Autonomous Agent
11 5 (1.58%) Clustering
11 5 (1.58%) FlexPod
12 4 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 73 (23.03%) Windows
2 58 (18.30%) Linux
3 30 (9.46%) Windows Server
4 19 (5.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (3.79%) Unix
6 9 (2.84%) Windows 10
7 8 (2.52%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.89%) VMS
9 5 (1.58%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.58%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.63%) AIX
10 2 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.63%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.32%) Android
11 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.32%) CentOS
11 1 (0.32%) Solaris
11 1 (0.32%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (29.34%) Problem-Solving
2 83 (26.18%) CI/CD
3 70 (22.08%) DevOps
4 65 (20.50%) AI
5 52 (16.40%) Agile
6 48 (15.14%) Disaster Recovery
6 48 (15.14%) High Availability
7 45 (14.20%) ITIL
7 45 (14.20%) Migration
8 40 (12.62%) Analytics
9 39 (12.30%) Continuous Improvement
10 38 (11.99%) Infrastructure as Code
10 38 (11.99%) Observability
11 36 (11.36%) Workflow
12 35 (11.04%) Containerisation
13 33 (10.41%) Change Management
13 33 (10.41%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 29 (9.15%) ETL
15 28 (8.83%) Data Protection
15 28 (8.83%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 144 (45.43%) Python
2 124 (39.12%) PowerShell
3 60 (18.93%) SQL
4 38 (11.99%) Bash
5 27 (8.52%) JavaScript
6 25 (7.89%) Java
7 19 (5.99%) C#
8 18 (5.68%) TypeScript
9 14 (4.42%) Go
10 12 (3.79%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (2.84%) Shell Script
11 9 (2.84%) T-SQL
12 8 (2.52%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.58%) Bicep
14 2 (0.63%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.63%) Scala
14 2 (0.63%) VBScript
15 1 (0.32%) ABAP
15 1 (0.32%) Perl
15 1 (0.32%) VB
Qualifications
1 103 (32.49%) Security Cleared
2 78 (24.61%) SC Cleared
3 29 (9.15%) Degree
4 22 (6.94%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (5.99%) DV Cleared
6 9 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (1.58%) OCP
8 5 (1.58%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.26%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.26%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.26%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.26%) CISSP
10 3 (0.95%) CCNP
11 2 (0.63%) CCNA
11 2 (0.63%) CISM
11 2 (0.63%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.63%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.63%) MCTS
11 2 (0.63%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (7.89%) Data Quality
2 15 (4.73%) GDPR
3 13 (4.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (3.47%) NIST
6 9 (2.84%) QA
7 7 (2.21%) SLA
8 3 (0.95%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.95%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.63%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.32%) GMP
10 1 (0.32%) GRC
System Software
1 73 (23.03%) Active Directory
2 26 (8.20%) Docker
3 18 (5.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (4.10%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.47%) NFS
6 7 (2.21%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (2.21%) vSphere
7 5 (1.58%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.63%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.63%) Firmware
8 2 (0.63%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.32%) KVM
9 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.32%) UAG
9 1 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.32%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 51 (16.09%) Ansible
2 50 (15.77%) Kubernetes
3 46 (14.51%) Terraform
4 25 (7.89%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (5.68%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.73%) SCCM
7 13 (4.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 13 (4.10%) Grafana
8 12 (3.79%) Prometheus
9 9 (2.84%) Progress Chef
10 6 (1.89%) Puppet
10 6 (1.89%) Red Hat Satellite
11 5 (1.58%) SnapMirror
12 4 (1.26%) Nessus
12 4 (1.26%) SCOM
13 3 (0.95%) Foglight
13 3 (0.95%) OpenVAS
13 3 (0.95%) PowerCLI
13 3 (0.95%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.95%) WSUS
Vendors
1 100 (31.55%) Microsoft
2 25 (7.89%) Google
2 25 (7.89%) VMware
3 23 (7.26%) ServiceNow
4 21 (6.62%) Red Hat
5 18 (5.68%) OpenAI
6 17 (5.36%) CyberArk
6 17 (5.36%) Okta
7 15 (4.73%) Oracle
7 15 (4.73%) Splunk
8 14 (4.42%) BeyondTrust
8 14 (4.42%) Centrify
9 12 (3.79%) Databricks
10 9 (2.84%) Cisco
11 7 (2.21%) Automation Anywhere
11 7 (2.21%) Palo Alto
11 7 (2.21%) UiPath
12 6 (1.89%) AppDynamics
12 6 (1.89%) Bloomberg
12 6 (1.89%) Citrix