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 31 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 250 235 351
Rank change year-on-year -15 +116 +113
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 408 358 254
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 1.07% 0.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.25% 1.21% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 278 228 189
10th Percentile £320 £350 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% -8.70%
75th Percentile £592 £576 £625
90th Percentile £750 £656 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.13% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 0
10th Percentile £47.98 £30.15 -
25th Percentile £50.94 £42.05 -
Median hourly rate £56.25 £63.75 -
Median % change year-on-year -11.76% - -
75th Percentile £61.94 £65.62 -
90th Percentile £65.13 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £63.75 -
% change year-on-year +4.32% - -

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 32,632 29,487 37,783
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.11% 88.32% 87.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,578 17,975 25,172
10th Percentile £304 £308 £306
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,027 953 1,511
10th Percentile £14.61 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.03
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -26.14% +25.71%
75th Percentile £53.44 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.25 £74.69 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £30.45 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.58% -32.33% +40.63%

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025. 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 -30 339 £500 +5.26% 170
UK excluding London -6 198 £480 +2.13% 77
London -16 162 £550 - 101
Work from Home +27 139 £510 +8.40% 63
North of England -35 61 £450 +5.88% 24
Midlands -15 42 £550 +13.64% 16
West Midlands -9 41 £550 +11.79% 14
South East -10 41 £455 +7.00% 16
Yorkshire -26 33 £450 +9.09% 8
North West -27 26 £443 +0.11% 12
Scotland +22 25 £365 -33.64% 4
South West -14 15 £525 +11.70% 11
East of England -20 10 £500 -16.67% 6
Wales - 4 £375 - 1
Northern Ireland -6 2 £683 - 1
North East -9 2 £475 +1.06% 6
East Midlands -17 1 £450 +13.92% 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 23 (5.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 19 (4.66%) Confluence
2 19 (4.66%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.96%) Apache
3 8 (1.96%) IIS
4 5 (1.23%) iPlanet
4 5 (1.23%) JBoss
4 5 (1.23%) OpenStack
4 5 (1.23%) WebSphere
4 5 (1.23%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.49%) Appian
5 2 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
5 2 (0.49%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.25%) CICS
6 1 (0.25%) CMS
6 1 (0.25%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.25%) Tomcat
Applications
1 26 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.49%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.49%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.25%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 4 (0.98%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.25%) Eikon
3 1 (0.25%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.25%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.25%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 179 (43.87%) Azure
2 134 (32.84%) AWS
3 88 (21.57%) GCP
4 48 (11.76%) GitHub
5 39 (9.56%) GitHub Actions
5 39 (9.56%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (8.82%) Entra ID
7 33 (8.09%) OpenShift
8 28 (6.86%) Serverless
9 27 (6.62%) Azure DevOps
10 23 (5.64%) Power Platform
11 22 (5.39%) AWS CloudFormation
12 18 (4.41%) Amazon S3
13 16 (3.92%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (3.68%) Amazon EC2
15 14 (3.43%) Power Automate
16 13 (3.19%) Amazon EKS
16 13 (3.19%) Azure AKS
16 13 (3.19%) OneDrive
17 12 (2.94%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 39 (9.56%) Firewall
2 28 (6.86%) DNS
3 20 (4.90%) DHCP
4 19 (4.66%) TCP/IP
5 18 (4.41%) SSH
6 14 (3.43%) Network Security
7 10 (2.45%) VPN
8 8 (1.96%) Kerberos
8 8 (1.96%) WAN
9 6 (1.47%) Cisco IOS
9 6 (1.47%) LAN
10 5 (1.23%) BGP
10 5 (1.23%) NX-OS
10 5 (1.23%) OpenLDAP
10 5 (1.23%) WLAN
11 4 (0.98%) AMQP
11 4 (0.98%) HTTP
12 3 (0.74%) SD-WAN
12 3 (0.74%) VLAN
13 2 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (8.09%) SQL Server
2 30 (7.35%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (5.88%) Relational Database
4 22 (5.39%) Oracle Database
5 16 (3.92%) Power BI
6 10 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
6 10 (2.45%) MySQL
7 9 (2.21%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.72%) RDBMS
9 6 (1.47%) MongoDB
9 6 (1.47%) Oracle Reports
10 5 (1.23%) Metadata
10 5 (1.23%) Power Query
10 5 (1.23%) Tableau
11 4 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
11 4 (0.98%) BigQuery
11 4 (0.98%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (0.98%) InfluxDB
12 3 (0.74%) Redis
Development Applications
1 68 (16.67%) Git
2 52 (12.75%) Jenkins
3 39 (9.56%) GitLab
4 27 (6.62%) JIRA
5 16 (3.92%) Sonatype Nexus
6 13 (3.19%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.70%) CircleCI
7 11 (2.70%) Maven
8 9 (2.21%) JUnit
8 9 (2.21%) SonarQube
9 7 (1.72%) Artifactory
9 7 (1.72%) Postman
10 6 (1.47%) Selenium
11 5 (1.23%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.23%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.23%) Cypress.io
11 5 (1.23%) Gradle
11 5 (1.23%) JMeter
11 5 (1.23%) LoadRunner
11 5 (1.23%) Snyk
General
1 156 (38.24%) Social Skills
2 66 (16.18%) Finance
3 58 (14.22%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (8.82%) Public Sector
5 32 (7.84%) Banking
6 9 (2.21%) Investment Banking
7 8 (1.96%) Legal
8 7 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.47%) Front Office
9 6 (1.47%) Retail
10 5 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.98%) Games
11 4 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (0.98%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.74%) Law
13 2 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
13 2 (0.49%) Military
13 2 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (10.54%) Developer
2 36 (8.82%) Architect
3 32 (7.84%) DevOps Engineer
4 31 (7.60%) CyberArk Architect
5 29 (7.11%) Senior
6 27 (6.62%) Administrator
6 27 (6.62%) Analyst
7 26 (6.37%) Automation Engineer
8 20 (4.90%) Platform Engineer
8 20 (4.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 18 (4.41%) Java Developer
10 15 (3.68%) DBA
10 15 (3.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 15 (3.68%) Support Engineer
11 14 (3.43%) Lead
12 13 (3.19%) Consultant
13 12 (2.94%) Network Engineer
13 12 (2.94%) Site Engineer
14 11 (2.70%) Data Engineer
14 11 (2.70%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (16.18%) REST
2 41 (10.05%) LDAP
3 36 (8.82%) SOAP
4 23 (5.64%) Elastic Stack
5 22 (5.39%) Node.js
6 17 (4.17%) .NET
7 15 (3.68%) Kafka
8 14 (3.43%) FastAPI
9 13 (3.19%) OAuth
10 10 (2.45%) GraphQL
10 10 (2.45%) Web Services
10 10 (2.45%) YAML
11 9 (2.21%) Microsoft Graph
12 8 (1.96%) JSON
12 8 (1.96%) SAML
13 7 (1.72%) AngularJS
13 7 (1.72%) boto
13 7 (1.72%) OpenID
13 7 (1.72%) pytest
13 7 (1.72%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 41 (10.05%) Security Posture
2 35 (8.58%) Enterprise Software
3 24 (5.88%) Onboarding
4 18 (4.41%) Cloud Native
5 17 (4.17%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (2.45%) Private Cloud
7 9 (2.21%) Data Centre
8 8 (1.96%) Clustering
8 8 (1.96%) Cyber Threat
8 8 (1.96%) Linux Command Line
8 8 (1.96%) Management Information System
9 7 (1.72%) AI Agents
9 7 (1.72%) PKI
9 7 (1.72%) Replication
10 6 (1.47%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.47%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.23%) Hybrid Cloud
11 5 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (1.23%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 114 (27.94%) Linux
2 73 (17.89%) Windows
3 28 (6.86%) Unix
4 23 (5.64%) Windows Server
5 13 (3.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (2.21%) VMS
7 8 (1.96%) CentOS
8 4 (0.98%) AIX
8 4 (0.98%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.98%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.25%) Android
9 1 (0.25%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.25%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (40.44%) Problem-Solving
2 138 (33.82%) CI/CD
3 118 (28.92%) DevOps
4 75 (18.38%) Infrastructure as Code
5 70 (17.16%) Agile
6 59 (14.46%) Containerisation
7 56 (13.73%) SIEM
8 48 (11.76%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 43 (10.54%) Migration
10 40 (9.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 39 (9.56%) Continuous Improvement
11 39 (9.56%) Technical Leadership
12 37 (9.07%) AI
12 37 (9.07%) Configuration Management
12 37 (9.07%) Observability
13 36 (8.82%) Root Cause Analysis
14 35 (8.58%) Incident Response
14 35 (8.58%) Workflow
15 34 (8.33%) ITSM
15 34 (8.33%) Privileged Access Management
Programming Languages
1 226 (55.39%) Python
2 146 (35.78%) PowerShell
3 75 (18.38%) Bash
4 70 (17.16%) SQL
5 57 (13.97%) Java
6 48 (11.76%) Shell Script
7 37 (9.07%) Go
8 26 (6.37%) JavaScript
9 21 (5.15%) TypeScript
10 16 (3.92%) C#
11 12 (2.94%) Bicep
11 12 (2.94%) Kusto Query Language
11 12 (2.94%) VBA
12 11 (2.70%) Perl
13 8 (1.96%) Groovy
14 6 (1.47%) PL/SQL
15 5 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 4 (0.98%) T-SQL
17 3 (0.74%) PHP
17 3 (0.74%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 124 (30.39%) Security Cleared
2 91 (22.30%) SC Cleared
3 30 (7.35%) Degree
4 27 (6.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 13 (3.19%) Azure Certification
6 13 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (2.45%) CISSP
7 10 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.72%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.72%) Master's Degree
9 6 (1.47%) CFCE
9 6 (1.47%) GCFA
9 6 (1.47%) GCIA
9 6 (1.47%) GCIH
9 6 (1.47%) GIAC
10 5 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.23%) OCP
10 5 (1.23%) Oracle Certification
11 4 (0.98%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (7.11%) GDPR
2 21 (5.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (4.41%) NIST
4 13 (3.19%) QA
5 12 (2.94%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.72%) SLA
7 6 (1.47%) HIPAA
8 5 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.49%) EU AI Act
10 1 (0.25%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.25%) COBIT
10 1 (0.25%) GRC
10 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.25%) PMO
10 1 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 81 (19.85%) Active Directory
2 65 (15.93%) Docker
3 25 (6.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.70%) Oracle RAC
5 6 (1.47%) Firmware
6 5 (1.23%) Hyper-V
6 5 (1.23%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 5 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.74%) KVM
7 3 (0.74%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.74%) Xen
8 2 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.25%) HDFS
9 1 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.25%) RHEV
9 1 (0.25%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.25%) vSphere
9 1 (0.25%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 86 (21.08%) Terraform
2 84 (20.59%) Kubernetes
3 74 (18.14%) Ansible
4 48 (11.76%) Grafana
5 38 (9.31%) Prometheus
6 20 (4.90%) Progress Chef
7 18 (4.41%) SCCM
8 14 (3.43%) Puppet
9 13 (3.19%) Microsoft Intune
10 12 (2.94%) Data Guard
10 12 (2.94%) Single Sign-On
11 11 (2.70%) Oracle RMAN
12 9 (2.21%) yum
13 8 (1.96%) Podman
14 6 (1.47%) CA Single Sign-On
14 6 (1.47%) Kibana
14 6 (1.47%) NetBackup
15 5 (1.23%) CA Wily
15 5 (1.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 5 (1.23%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 110 (26.96%) Microsoft
2 48 (11.76%) CyberArk
2 48 (11.76%) Oracle
3 37 (9.07%) BeyondTrust
3 37 (9.07%) Splunk
4 30 (7.35%) Google
5 29 (7.11%) Centrify
6 27 (6.62%) VMware
7 16 (3.92%) ServiceNow
8 14 (3.43%) Atlassian
8 14 (3.43%) Red Hat
9 13 (3.19%) Cisco
10 10 (2.45%) Palo Alto
11 9 (2.21%) OpenAI
11 9 (2.21%) SAP
12 7 (1.72%) F5
12 7 (1.72%) IBM
13 6 (1.47%) AppDynamics
13 6 (1.47%) ArcSight
13 6 (1.47%) LogRhythm