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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 323 241 301
Rank change year-on-year -82 +60 +146
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 343 324 317
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 1.10% 0.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.82% 1.21% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 178 247
10th Percentile £358 £338 £388
25th Percentile £404 £408 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £575 £675
90th Percentile £750 £672 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £550
% change year-on-year -1.26% -13.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 17 3
10th Percentile £17.83 £21.00 -
25th Percentile £20.08 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £30.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -23.97% +26.05% -73.56%
75th Percentile £35.34 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £55.24 £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 41,920 26,731 37,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.71% 91.01% 85.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,154 16,984 23,772
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,513 1,182 2,587
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.28 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +61.14% -25.26% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.00 £61.16
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% +8.91%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -80 296 £500 - 87
UK excluding London -84 163 £469 -1.26% 67
London -44 152 £575 +15.00% 30
Work from Home -21 125 £600 +17.82% 44
North of England -38 71 £488 +2.63% 18
Yorkshire -10 54 £500 +8.11% 4
South East -47 38 £403 -19.50% 22
Scotland -32 22 £508 +10.93% 4
Midlands -68 15 £500 +5.26% 9
South West -31 13 £363 -29.95% 9
North West -50 11 £487 +2.53% 11
West Midlands -53 11 £575 +15.00% 5
North East -19 6 £275 -26.67% 3
East Midlands -31 4 £413 +5.77% 4
Wales - 2 £543 - 2
East of England -47 1 £400 -15.79% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 2

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 32 (9.33%) SharePoint
2 20 (5.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.92%) Confluence
4 8 (2.33%) Appian
5 4 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.87%) Apache
7 2 (0.58%) CMS
7 2 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.29%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.29%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 8 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.46%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.58%) Maximo
2 2 (0.58%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.29%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.29%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.29%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 173 (50.44%) Azure
2 109 (31.78%) AWS
3 69 (20.12%) GCP
4 50 (14.58%) Microsoft 365
5 47 (13.70%) Entra ID
6 41 (11.95%) GitHub
7 28 (8.16%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (7.58%) Power Automate
8 26 (7.58%) Power Platform
9 22 (6.41%) Azure DevOps
10 20 (5.83%) OpenShift
11 17 (4.96%) Azure Monitor
12 15 (4.37%) Amazon S3
13 14 (4.08%) Azure Key Vault
13 14 (4.08%) PaaS
14 13 (3.79%) Microsoft Copilot
15 12 (3.50%) OneDrive
15 12 (3.50%) PowerApps
16 11 (3.21%) Anthropic Claude
16 11 (3.21%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 43 (12.54%) DNS
2 34 (9.91%) DHCP
3 22 (6.41%) Firewall
4 16 (4.66%) Kerberos
4 16 (4.66%) VPN
5 13 (3.79%) SAN
6 10 (2.92%) Network Security
6 10 (2.92%) TCP/IP
7 9 (2.62%) WAN
8 8 (2.33%) SD-WAN
8 8 (2.33%) VLAN
9 7 (2.04%) SSH
10 5 (1.46%) LAN
11 4 (1.17%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.17%) Intranet
12 3 (0.87%) BGP
12 3 (0.87%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.87%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 3 (0.87%) OSPF
12 3 (0.87%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (10.79%) SQL Server
2 14 (4.08%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (3.50%) Power BI
4 10 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.33%) Pinecone
6 7 (2.04%) Metadata
7 6 (1.75%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (1.75%) MongoDB
7 6 (1.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (1.46%) MySQL
8 5 (1.46%) Snowflake Schema
9 4 (1.17%) Big Data
9 4 (1.17%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.17%) EDRMS
9 4 (1.17%) Oracle Database
9 4 (1.17%) Tableau
10 3 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.87%) Power Query
10 3 (0.87%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 3 (0.87%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 31 (9.04%) Jenkins
2 28 (8.16%) GitLab
3 24 (7.00%) Git
4 21 (6.12%) JIRA
5 10 (2.92%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.33%) MLflow
7 5 (1.46%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.17%) Flyway
9 3 (0.87%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.87%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.87%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.58%) Selenium
11 1 (0.29%) Chocolatey
11 1 (0.29%) IBM UrbanCode
11 1 (0.29%) Postman
11 1 (0.29%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.29%) Snyk
11 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.29%) TestNG
11 1 (0.29%) TestRail
General
1 151 (44.02%) Social Skills
2 61 (17.78%) Finance
3 46 (13.41%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (8.45%) Banking
5 26 (7.58%) Public Sector
6 12 (3.50%) Legal
7 11 (3.21%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.75%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.46%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.17%) Front Office
11 4 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.17%) Law
12 2 (0.58%) Military
12 2 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.58%) Retail
13 1 (0.29%) International Banking
13 1 (0.29%) Local Government
13 1 (0.29%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (12.54%) Architect
2 36 (10.50%) Developer
3 35 (10.20%) CyberArk Architect
4 19 (5.54%) DBA
4 19 (5.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 18 (5.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 16 (4.66%) Consultant
6 16 (4.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 15 (4.37%) Automation Engineer
8 13 (3.79%) Analyst
9 12 (3.50%) DevOps Engineer
9 12 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
9 12 (3.50%) Support Engineer
10 11 (3.21%) Administrator
10 11 (3.21%) Azure Developer
10 11 (3.21%) Lead
10 11 (3.21%) Senior
10 11 (3.21%) Site Engineer
11 10 (2.92%) Data Engineer
11 10 (2.92%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (20.12%) REST
2 48 (13.99%) LDAP
3 46 (13.41%) SOAP
4 24 (7.00%) OAuth
5 23 (6.71%) .NET
6 20 (5.83%) Web Services
7 16 (4.66%) SAML
8 13 (3.79%) JWT
8 13 (3.79%) Node.js
9 12 (3.50%) .NET Framework
9 12 (3.50%) Microsoft Graph
9 12 (3.50%) RESTful
10 11 (3.21%) CSS
10 11 (3.21%) Elastic Stack
10 11 (3.21%) Pandas
10 11 (3.21%) PyTorch
11 10 (2.92%) FastAPI
11 10 (2.92%) NumPy
12 9 (2.62%) SPFx
12 9 (2.62%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 40 (11.66%) Enterprise Software
2 37 (10.79%) Security Posture
3 23 (6.71%) Onboarding
4 21 (6.12%) Replication
5 19 (5.54%) Legacy Systems
6 14 (4.08%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (3.79%) Hybrid Cloud
8 12 (3.50%) Cloud Native
8 12 (3.50%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (3.21%) Product Ownership
10 10 (2.92%) AI Agents
11 8 (2.33%) Low-Code
12 7 (2.04%) Data Centre
12 7 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (2.04%) Virtual Team
13 6 (1.75%) Clustering
14 5 (1.46%) FlexPod
15 4 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
15 4 (1.17%) Management Information System
16 3 (0.87%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 75 (21.87%) Windows
2 61 (17.78%) Linux
3 29 (8.45%) Windows Server
4 18 (5.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.08%) Unix
6 8 (2.33%) Mac OS
6 8 (2.33%) Windows 10
7 6 (1.75%) VMS
8 5 (1.46%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.46%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.58%) AIX
9 2 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.29%) Android
10 1 (0.29%) Rocky
10 1 (0.29%) Solaris
10 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (34.69%) Problem-Solving
2 90 (26.24%) CI/CD
3 70 (20.41%) DevOps
4 65 (18.95%) AI
5 55 (16.03%) Agile
6 51 (14.87%) Disaster Recovery
7 47 (13.70%) Migration
8 46 (13.41%) High Availability
8 46 (13.41%) Technical Leadership
9 44 (12.83%) ITSM
9 44 (12.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 43 (12.54%) Infrastructure as Code
10 43 (12.54%) ITIL
11 41 (11.95%) SIEM
12 40 (11.66%) Analytics
12 40 (11.66%) Observability
13 39 (11.37%) Continuous Improvement
14 38 (11.08%) Integration Patterns
15 37 (10.79%) Containerisation
15 37 (10.79%) Privileged Access Management
Programming Languages
1 162 (47.23%) Python
2 145 (42.27%) PowerShell
3 61 (17.78%) SQL
4 41 (11.95%) Bash
5 33 (9.62%) Java
6 28 (8.16%) JavaScript
7 21 (6.12%) C#
8 18 (5.25%) Go
8 18 (5.25%) TypeScript
9 16 (4.66%) Shell Script
10 11 (3.21%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (2.62%) PL/SQL
11 9 (2.62%) T-SQL
12 4 (1.17%) Bicep
13 2 (0.58%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.58%) Scala
13 2 (0.58%) VBScript
14 1 (0.29%) ABAP
14 1 (0.29%) Perl
14 1 (0.29%) VB
Qualifications
1 124 (36.15%) Security Cleared
2 99 (28.86%) SC Cleared
3 25 (7.29%) Degree
4 21 (6.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (5.25%) DV Cleared
6 12 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (1.46%) OCP
8 5 (1.46%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.17%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.17%) CISSP
10 3 (0.87%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.87%) CCNP
11 2 (0.58%) CCNA
11 2 (0.58%) CISM
11 2 (0.58%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.58%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.58%) MCTS
11 2 (0.58%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 15 (4.37%) GDPR
3 13 (3.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (3.21%) NIST
6 10 (2.92%) QA
7 8 (2.33%) SLA
8 3 (0.87%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.58%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.58%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.29%) GMP
10 1 (0.29%) GRC
10 1 (0.29%) PMO
System Software
1 91 (26.53%) Active Directory
2 29 (8.45%) Docker
3 17 (4.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (3.79%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.21%) NFS
6 7 (2.04%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (2.04%) vSphere
7 5 (1.46%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.58%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.58%) Firmware
8 2 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.29%) KVM
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.29%) UAG
9 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.29%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 55 (16.03%) Kubernetes
2 50 (14.58%) Ansible
3 49 (14.29%) Terraform
4 25 (7.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (5.25%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.37%) Grafana
7 14 (4.08%) SCCM
8 13 (3.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 11 (3.21%) Prometheus
10 8 (2.33%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.75%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.46%) Puppet
12 5 (1.46%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.17%) Nessus
13 4 (1.17%) SCOM
14 3 (0.87%) Foglight
14 3 (0.87%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.87%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.87%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.87%) WSUS
Vendors
1 97 (28.28%) Microsoft
2 36 (10.50%) CyberArk
3 33 (9.62%) BeyondTrust
3 33 (9.62%) Centrify
4 25 (7.29%) Google
4 25 (7.29%) ServiceNow
5 24 (7.00%) VMware
6 21 (6.12%) Red Hat
7 19 (5.54%) Oracle
8 18 (5.25%) OpenAI
9 17 (4.96%) Okta
9 17 (4.96%) Splunk
10 12 (3.50%) Databricks
11 8 (2.33%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (2.33%) Cisco
11 8 (2.33%) UiPath
12 7 (2.04%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.04%) Palo Alto
13 6 (1.75%) F5
14 5 (1.46%) Citrix