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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 287 229 352
Rank change year-on-year -58 +123 +91
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 376 342 248
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 1.16% 0.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.96% 1.28% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 284 204 196
10th Percentile £313 £327 £400
25th Percentile £400 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £594 £675
90th Percentile £750 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £553
% change year-on-year -5.26% -14.03% +0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 13 0
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% - -
75th Percentile £35.15 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £41.66 £65.62 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £24.66 -
% change year-on-year -7.50% - -

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 39,180 26,703 37,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.74% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,749 17,293 24,471
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,327 1,032 2,410
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.85 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%
75th Percentile £65.25 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £34.21
% change year-on-year +39.13% -15.96% -2.26%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 -65 320 £475 -5.00% 85
UK excluding London -76 173 £450 -5.26% 71
London -22 163 £575 +6.98% 35
Work from Home -7 141 £550 +6.08% 32
North of England -47 62 £452 -4.84% 15
Yorkshire -19 48 £454 -8.74% 5
South East -20 42 £401 +2.88% 25
Scotland -11 24 £415 -11.94% 11
Midlands -66 20 £502 +6.14% 9
South West -41 17 £413 -13.16% 8
West Midlands -63 16 £550 +15.79% 6
North West -65 10 £450 -5.26% 7
East of England -40 5 £450 -20.35% 8
North East -13 4 £365 -22.34% 3
East Midlands -35 4 £413 +4.43% 3
Wales - 2 £543 -
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 -

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 30 (7.98%) Microsoft Exchange
2 29 (7.71%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.66%) Confluence
4 8 (2.13%) Appian
5 4 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.80%) Apache
7 2 (0.53%) CMS
7 2 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.53%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.27%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 12 (3.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.06%) Chatbot
2 4 (1.06%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.53%) Maximo
1 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.27%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 191 (50.80%) Azure
2 126 (33.51%) AWS
3 77 (20.48%) GCP
4 58 (15.43%) Entra ID
5 50 (13.30%) Microsoft 365
6 42 (11.17%) GitHub
7 33 (8.78%) OpenShift
8 28 (7.45%) GitHub Actions
9 25 (6.65%) Azure DevOps
9 25 (6.65%) Power Platform
10 22 (5.85%) Amazon S3
11 21 (5.59%) PaaS
12 20 (5.32%) Azure Monitor
12 20 (5.32%) Power Automate
13 17 (4.52%) Azure Key Vault
13 17 (4.52%) Serverless
14 16 (4.26%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (4.26%) Azure App Service
14 16 (4.26%) Azure Service Bus
14 16 (4.26%) Azure WebJobs
Communications & Networking
1 38 (10.11%) DNS
2 31 (8.24%) DHCP
3 20 (5.32%) Firewall
4 17 (4.52%) Kerberos
4 17 (4.52%) SSH
5 13 (3.46%) VPN
6 10 (2.66%) TCP/IP
7 8 (2.13%) Network Security
8 7 (1.86%) SAN
8 7 (1.86%) WAN
9 6 (1.60%) LAN
10 4 (1.06%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (1.06%) SD-WAN
10 4 (1.06%) VLAN
11 3 (0.80%) SSL
12 2 (0.53%) AMQP
12 2 (0.53%) Cisco IOS
12 2 (0.53%) NAS
12 2 (0.53%) Reverse Proxy
12 2 (0.53%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (9.57%) SQL Server
2 20 (5.32%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (4.79%) Power BI
4 10 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (2.66%) Relational Database
5 8 (2.13%) Oracle Database
5 8 (2.13%) Pinecone
6 7 (1.86%) Tableau
7 6 (1.60%) Snowflake Schema
8 5 (1.33%) Big Data
8 5 (1.33%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.33%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.33%) Metadata
8 5 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (1.06%) InfluxDB
9 4 (1.06%) MongoDB
9 4 (1.06%) Oracle Reports
9 4 (1.06%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 38 (10.11%) Jenkins
2 33 (8.78%) GitLab
3 31 (8.24%) Git
4 19 (5.05%) JIRA
5 11 (2.93%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.13%) MLflow
7 5 (1.33%) CircleCI
7 5 (1.33%) Gatling
7 5 (1.33%) JMeter
7 5 (1.33%) LoadRunner
8 4 (1.06%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.80%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.80%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.80%) Flyway
9 3 (0.80%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.80%) Maven
9 3 (0.80%) Selenium
10 2 (0.53%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.53%) Postman
10 2 (0.53%) Snyk
General
1 157 (41.76%) Social Skills
2 66 (17.55%) Finance
3 48 (12.77%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (9.31%) Public Sector
5 26 (6.91%) Banking
6 11 (2.93%) Organisational Skills
7 9 (2.39%) Legal
8 7 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.86%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.33%) Retail
10 4 (1.06%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.06%) Law
11 3 (0.80%) Military
11 3 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.53%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.53%) Front Office
12 2 (0.53%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.27%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.27%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 46 (12.23%) Developer
2 43 (11.44%) Architect
3 37 (9.84%) CyberArk Architect
4 23 (6.12%) Administrator
5 22 (5.85%) Automation Engineer
6 21 (5.59%) DBA
6 21 (5.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 20 (5.32%) Analyst
8 19 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
9 18 (4.79%) Platform Engineer
10 15 (3.99%) Java Developer
10 15 (3.99%) Site Engineer
11 14 (3.72%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 13 (3.46%) Azure Developer
12 13 (3.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 13 (3.46%) Senior
13 12 (3.19%) Consultant
14 11 (2.93%) Data Engineer
14 11 (2.93%) Lead
15 10 (2.66%) Microsoft 365 Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (17.55%) REST
2 50 (13.30%) SOAP
3 49 (13.03%) LDAP
4 26 (6.91%) OAuth
5 24 (6.38%) Web Services
6 23 (6.12%) .NET
7 17 (4.52%) .NET Framework
7 17 (4.52%) Node.js
7 17 (4.52%) SAML
8 16 (4.26%) Microsoft Graph
9 14 (3.72%) Kafka
10 13 (3.46%) Elastic Stack
11 12 (3.19%) RESTful
12 11 (2.93%) JWT
13 10 (2.66%) Pandas
13 10 (2.66%) PyTorch
14 9 (2.39%) FastAPI
14 9 (2.39%) NumPy
14 9 (2.39%) scikit-learn
14 9 (2.39%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.44%) Enterprise Software
1 43 (11.44%) Security Posture
2 22 (5.85%) Onboarding
3 21 (5.59%) Replication
4 13 (3.46%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.19%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (3.19%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
7 9 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (2.39%) Low-Code
7 9 (2.39%) Product Ownership
8 8 (2.13%) Clustering
8 8 (2.13%) Data Centre
9 6 (1.60%) PKI
10 5 (1.33%) FlexPod
11 4 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.06%) Data Structures
11 4 (1.06%) NHS
11 4 (1.06%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.80%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 83 (22.07%) Linux
2 77 (20.48%) Windows
3 34 (9.04%) Windows Server
4 17 (4.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (4.26%) Unix
6 10 (2.66%) VMS
7 9 (2.39%) Mac OS
8 7 (1.86%) Windows 10
9 5 (1.33%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.33%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.80%) CentOS
11 2 (0.53%) AIX
11 2 (0.53%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.27%) Android
12 1 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.27%) Rocky
12 1 (0.27%) Solaris
12 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (38.56%) Problem-Solving
2 121 (32.18%) CI/CD
3 88 (23.40%) DevOps
4 57 (15.16%) Agile
5 56 (14.89%) Infrastructure as Code
6 50 (13.30%) Disaster Recovery
7 49 (13.03%) Analytics
8 48 (12.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 47 (12.50%) AI
9 47 (12.50%) Migration
10 45 (11.97%) Containerisation
10 45 (11.97%) High Availability
10 45 (11.97%) Observability
10 45 (11.97%) SIEM
11 44 (11.70%) Continuous Improvement
11 44 (11.70%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 43 (11.44%) Technical Leadership
13 39 (10.37%) Privileged Access Management
14 37 (9.84%) Integration Patterns
15 35 (9.31%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 179 (47.61%) Python
2 151 (40.16%) PowerShell
3 69 (18.35%) SQL
4 47 (12.50%) Bash
4 47 (12.50%) Java
5 31 (8.24%) Shell Script
6 24 (6.38%) JavaScript
7 23 (6.12%) C#
8 21 (5.59%) Go
8 21 (5.59%) Kusto Query Language
9 19 (5.05%) TypeScript
10 9 (2.39%) PL/SQL
10 9 (2.39%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 4 (1.06%) Perl
11 4 (1.06%) VBA
12 3 (0.80%) Bicep
12 3 (0.80%) PHP
13 2 (0.53%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 133 (35.37%) Security Cleared
2 105 (27.93%) SC Cleared
3 31 (8.24%) Degree
4 23 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (5.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (2.93%) DV Cleared
7 8 (2.13%) CISSP
7 8 (2.13%) OCP
7 8 (2.13%) Oracle Certification
8 6 (1.60%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.60%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.33%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.06%) CISM
10 4 (1.06%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.80%) CCNA
11 3 (0.80%) CCNP
11 3 (0.80%) JNCIA
11 3 (0.80%) JNCIS
12 2 (0.53%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (7.71%) GDPR
2 23 (6.12%) Data Quality
3 21 (5.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (4.26%) NIST
5 14 (3.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (2.66%) QA
7 6 (1.60%) SLA
8 5 (1.33%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.80%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.80%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.53%) GRC
11 1 (0.27%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.27%) COBIT
11 1 (0.27%) GMP
11 1 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 97 (25.80%) Active Directory
2 38 (10.11%) Docker
3 22 (5.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (3.99%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.60%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.60%) vSphere
6 5 (1.33%) NFS
6 5 (1.33%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.80%) Xen
8 2 (0.53%) KVM
8 2 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.27%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.27%) Firmware
9 1 (0.27%) HDFS
9 1 (0.27%) RHEV
9 1 (0.27%) UAG
9 1 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.27%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.27%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 71 (18.88%) Kubernetes
2 68 (18.09%) Terraform
3 64 (17.02%) Ansible
4 30 (7.98%) Grafana
5 26 (6.91%) Microsoft Intune
6 25 (6.65%) Prometheus
7 20 (5.32%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (3.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 13 (3.46%) Progress Chef
10 11 (2.93%) SCCM
11 7 (1.86%) Puppet
12 6 (1.60%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 5 (1.33%) Oracle RMAN
13 5 (1.33%) SnapMirror
14 4 (1.06%) Nessus
14 4 (1.06%) vCenter Server
15 3 (0.80%) Argo
15 3 (0.80%) Docker Swarm
15 3 (0.80%) PowerCLI
15 3 (0.80%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 104 (27.66%) Microsoft
2 40 (10.64%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.04%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.04%) Centrify
4 28 (7.45%) VMware
5 27 (7.18%) Oracle
6 26 (6.91%) Google
7 21 (5.59%) Red Hat
8 20 (5.32%) Okta
9 19 (5.05%) ServiceNow
10 16 (4.26%) Splunk
11 13 (3.46%) Databricks
11 13 (3.46%) OpenAI
12 9 (2.39%) Cisco
13 8 (2.13%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (2.13%) UiPath
14 5 (1.33%) Citrix
14 5 (1.33%) Informatica
14 5 (1.33%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.33%) SAP