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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 369 260 290
Rank change year-on-year -109 +30 +165
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 306 318 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.98% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.68% 1.09% 0.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 176 263
10th Percentile £300 £306 £381
25th Percentile £400 £408 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £556 £582 £675
90th Percentile £616 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £475 £520
% change year-on-year -1.68% -8.65% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 13 3
10th Percentile - £19.25 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £24.66 -
Median hourly rate £19.57 £30.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -34.77% +26.05% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £46.40 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.33 £24.66 -
% change year-on-year -33.78% - -

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 44,694 29,246 37,042
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.15% 90.54% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,812 18,436 23,663
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,657 1,477 2,496
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -3.62%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -103 265 £460 -8.00% 120
UK excluding London -93 158 £467 -1.68% 100
London -82 119 £458 -8.98% 37
Work from Home -59 96 £500 -3.57% 46
North of England -39 67 £500 +5.26% 24
Yorkshire -10 50 £500 +25.00% 2
South East -25 43 £403 -19.50% 28
Midlands -62 17 £500 - 11
Scotland -28 16 £515 +10.75% 3
West Midlands -63 13 £575 +14.71% 7
South West -40 12 £363 -30.29% 21
North West -44 12 £459 -3.37% 16
North East -29 5 £275 -26.67% 6
East Midlands -16 4 £413 +7.14% 4
Wales -16 2 £543 +106.67% 1
East of England -45 1 £400 -11.11% 9

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 36 (11.76%) SharePoint
2 22 (7.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.27%) Confluence
4 5 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.31%) Appian
6 3 (0.98%) Apache
6 3 (0.98%) CMS
7 2 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.63%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.65%) Maximo
2 2 (0.65%) Remedy AR System
3 1 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.33%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.33%) PeopleSoft HCM
3 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 136 (44.44%) Azure
2 76 (24.84%) AWS
3 56 (18.30%) Microsoft 365
4 50 (16.34%) Entra ID
5 39 (12.75%) GitHub
6 32 (10.46%) GCP
7 28 (9.15%) Azure DevOps
8 26 (8.50%) GitHub Actions
9 25 (8.17%) Power Platform
10 22 (7.19%) Power Automate
11 21 (6.86%) OpenShift
12 18 (5.88%) Amazon S3
12 18 (5.88%) Azure Monitor
13 16 (5.23%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (4.90%) Microsoft Copilot
15 14 (4.58%) PaaS
15 14 (4.58%) Serverless
16 13 (4.25%) Datadog
16 13 (4.25%) OneDrive
16 13 (4.25%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 41 (13.40%) DNS
2 30 (9.80%) DHCP
3 21 (6.86%) Firewall
4 20 (6.54%) VPN
5 14 (4.58%) Kerberos
6 13 (4.25%) SAN
7 11 (3.59%) Network Security
8 9 (2.94%) TCP/IP
8 9 (2.94%) WAN
9 8 (2.61%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.61%) VLAN
10 5 (1.63%) LAN
10 5 (1.63%) SSH
11 4 (1.31%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.31%) Intranet
11 4 (1.31%) SSL
12 3 (0.98%) BGP
12 3 (0.98%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.98%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.98%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (11.11%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.59%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (3.59%) Power BI
3 9 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (2.61%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.29%) Metadata
5 7 (2.29%) MySQL
6 6 (1.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.96%) Sybase ASE
7 5 (1.63%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.31%) Big Data
8 4 (1.31%) EDRMS
8 4 (1.31%) Pinecone
8 4 (1.31%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (1.31%) Tableau
9 3 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.98%) DTS
9 3 (0.98%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.98%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 28 (9.15%) Jenkins
2 26 (8.50%) GitLab
3 24 (7.84%) Git
4 19 (6.21%) JIRA
5 8 (2.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (1.63%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.31%) Flyway
7 4 (1.31%) MLflow
8 3 (0.98%) AdminStudio
8 3 (0.98%) InstallShield
9 2 (0.65%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.65%) Selenium
10 1 (0.33%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.33%) Cypress.io
10 1 (0.33%) SoapUI
10 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.33%) TestNG
10 1 (0.33%) VersionOne
10 1 (0.33%) WebDriver
10 1 (0.33%) WiX
General
1 116 (37.91%) Social Skills
2 54 (17.65%) Finance
3 46 (15.03%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (8.50%) Banking
5 21 (6.86%) Public Sector
6 17 (5.56%) Legal
7 13 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.61%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.63%) Front Office
9 5 (1.63%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.98%) Law
11 2 (0.65%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.65%) Military
11 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.65%) Retail
12 1 (0.33%) International Banking
12 1 (0.33%) Local Government
12 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 32 (10.46%) Developer
2 20 (6.54%) DBA
3 18 (5.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 18 (5.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 16 (5.23%) Consultant
4 16 (5.23%) Support Engineer
5 15 (4.90%) Senior
6 14 (4.58%) Site Engineer
7 13 (4.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 12 (3.92%) Analyst
8 12 (3.92%) Data Engineer
8 12 (3.92%) DevOps Engineer
9 11 (3.59%) Azure Developer
10 10 (3.27%) Automation Engineer
10 10 (3.27%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.27%) Technical Support
11 9 (2.94%) Administrator
11 9 (2.94%) Lead
11 9 (2.94%) Microsoft 365 Developer
11 9 (2.94%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (11.76%) REST
2 23 (7.52%) .NET
3 18 (5.88%) OAuth
4 15 (4.90%) Microsoft Graph
4 15 (4.90%) SOAP
4 15 (4.90%) Web Services
5 14 (4.58%) LDAP
5 14 (4.58%) SAML
6 12 (3.92%) .NET Framework
6 12 (3.92%) Elastic Stack
7 11 (3.59%) CSS
7 11 (3.59%) React
8 10 (3.27%) AWS CDK
8 10 (3.27%) Node.js
8 10 (3.27%) SPFx
9 9 (2.94%) JSON
9 9 (2.94%) JWT
10 8 (2.61%) HTML
10 8 (2.61%) Kafka
10 8 (2.61%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.52%) Replication
2 22 (7.19%) Onboarding
3 19 (6.21%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (4.90%) Legacy Systems
5 13 (4.25%) AI Agents
5 13 (4.25%) Cloud Native
5 13 (4.25%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.59%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (3.59%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.61%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.29%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (2.29%) Virtual Team
9 6 (1.96%) Management Information System
9 6 (1.96%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.63%) Autonomous Agent
10 5 (1.63%) Clustering
10 5 (1.63%) CMDB
10 5 (1.63%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.63%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 71 (23.20%) Windows
2 60 (19.61%) Linux
3 29 (9.48%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (4.25%) Unix
6 9 (2.94%) Windows 10
7 8 (2.61%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.96%) VMS
9 5 (1.63%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.63%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.65%) AIX
11 2 (0.65%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.65%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.33%) Android
12 1 (0.33%) CentOS
12 1 (0.33%) Solaris
12 1 (0.33%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.33%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (26.14%) CI/CD
1 80 (26.14%) Problem-Solving
2 71 (23.20%) DevOps
3 62 (20.26%) AI
4 53 (17.32%) Agile
5 49 (16.01%) Disaster Recovery
5 49 (16.01%) ITIL
6 48 (15.69%) High Availability
7 46 (15.03%) Migration
8 42 (13.73%) Analytics
8 42 (13.73%) Continuous Improvement
9 41 (13.40%) Infrastructure as Code
10 39 (12.75%) Observability
11 35 (11.44%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 35 (11.44%) Workflow
12 34 (11.11%) Containerisation
13 32 (10.46%) Change Management
14 31 (10.13%) Performance Tuning
15 30 (9.80%) Data Protection
16 28 (9.15%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 131 (42.81%) Python
2 115 (37.58%) PowerShell
3 59 (19.28%) SQL
4 42 (13.73%) Bash
5 28 (9.15%) JavaScript
6 26 (8.50%) Java
7 20 (6.54%) C#
8 18 (5.88%) TypeScript
9 16 (5.23%) Go
10 12 (3.92%) Kusto Query Language
11 10 (3.27%) T-SQL
12 9 (2.94%) Shell Script
13 7 (2.29%) PL/SQL
14 6 (1.96%) Bicep
15 3 (0.98%) VBScript
16 2 (0.65%) ActionScript
16 2 (0.65%) Scala
17 1 (0.33%) ABAP
17 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 1 (0.33%) REXX
Qualifications
1 89 (29.08%) Security Cleared
2 62 (20.26%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.80%) Degree
4 22 (7.19%) Computer Science Degree
4 22 (7.19%) DV Cleared
5 9 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
6 7 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.63%) OCP
7 5 (1.63%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (1.31%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
8 4 (1.31%) CISSP
9 3 (0.98%) CCNP
10 2 (0.65%) CCNA
10 2 (0.65%) CISM
10 2 (0.65%) JNCIA
10 2 (0.65%) JNCIS
10 2 (0.65%) MCTS
10 2 (0.65%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.52%) Data Quality
2 14 (4.58%) GDPR
3 12 (3.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 10 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (2.94%) NIST
5 9 (2.94%) QA
6 7 (2.29%) SLA
7 3 (0.98%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.98%) SOC 2
8 2 (0.65%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.33%) GMP
9 1 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.33%) GRC
System Software
1 61 (19.93%) Active Directory
2 26 (8.50%) Docker
3 20 (6.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.58%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.59%) NFS
6 7 (2.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (2.29%) vSphere
7 5 (1.63%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.65%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.65%) Firmware
9 2 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.33%) KVM
10 1 (0.33%) OpenSSH
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.33%) UAG
10 1 (0.33%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 52 (16.99%) Ansible
2 50 (16.34%) Terraform
3 48 (15.69%) Kubernetes
4 26 (8.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (5.56%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.90%) SCCM
7 13 (4.25%) Grafana
8 12 (3.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 12 (3.92%) Prometheus
9 11 (3.59%) Progress Chef
10 8 (2.61%) Puppet
11 6 (1.96%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (1.96%) SCOM
12 5 (1.63%) SnapMirror
12 5 (1.63%) vCenter Server
13 4 (1.31%) Nessus
14 3 (0.98%) Foglight
14 3 (0.98%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.98%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.98%) WSUS
Vendors
1 103 (33.66%) Microsoft
2 27 (8.82%) VMware
3 24 (7.84%) ServiceNow
4 23 (7.52%) Google
5 20 (6.54%) Red Hat
6 17 (5.56%) Okta
6 17 (5.56%) Splunk
7 15 (4.90%) Oracle
8 13 (4.25%) OpenAI
9 12 (3.92%) Databricks
10 9 (2.94%) Cisco
11 7 (2.29%) Palo Alto
12 6 (1.96%) AppDynamics
12 6 (1.96%) Bloomberg
12 6 (1.96%) Citrix
12 6 (1.96%) Sybase
13 5 (1.63%) F5
13 5 (1.63%) NetApp
14 4 (1.31%) Automation Anywhere
14 4 (1.31%) SolarWinds