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

 6 months to
18 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 387 255 239
Rank change year-on-year -132 -16 +193
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 311 340 379
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 1.03% 0.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.69% 1.14% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 192 279
10th Percentile £300 £306 £400
25th Percentile £400 £407 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% +0.46%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.76% -0.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 9 3
10th Percentile - £18.35 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £26.25 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -64.08% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £34.37 £65.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.16 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -66.68% - -

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 45,374 29,740 33,103
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.47% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,514 21,188
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,851 1,725 1,782
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £18.17
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -38.57% +0.86%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +19.72%

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 August 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 August 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 18 August 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 -128 273 £475 -5.00% 259
UK excluding London -99 163 £500 +0.76% 122
London -86 117 £450 -10.00% 169
Work from Home -61 90 £475 -5.00% 94
North of England -56 66 £500 +4.17% 24
South East -47 49 £475 -3.55% 35
Yorkshire -21 41 £500 -6.98% 4
North West -48 22 £492 +3.58% 18
Midlands -65 18 £575 +11.65% 18
Scotland -28 14 £438 -7.89% 7
South West -39 11 £325 -37.50% 22
West Midlands -59 11 £600 +15.50% 15
East Midlands -18 7 £413 +7.14% 3
East of England -40 4 £550 +12.24% 5
North East -38 3 £275 -26.67% 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 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 39 (12.54%) SharePoint
2 21 (6.75%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.25%) Confluence
4 5 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.61%) JBoss
5 4 (1.29%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.96%) CMS
7 2 (0.64%) Apache
7 2 (0.64%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.32%) IIS
8 1 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.29%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (1.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (1.29%) Remedy AR System
3 3 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.32%) PeopleSoft HCM
4 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 120 (38.59%) Azure
2 75 (24.12%) AWS
3 57 (18.33%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (12.86%) Entra ID
5 37 (11.90%) GitHub
6 30 (9.65%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (9.65%) Power Platform
7 27 (8.68%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (8.36%) GCP
9 22 (7.07%) Azure Monitor
10 21 (6.75%) Microsoft Copilot
11 20 (6.43%) Power Automate
12 17 (5.47%) Datadog
12 17 (5.47%) OpenShift
13 16 (5.14%) Amazon S3
14 14 (4.50%) Azure Key Vault
14 14 (4.50%) OneDrive
15 13 (4.18%) SaaS
16 12 (3.86%) AWS CloudFormation
16 12 (3.86%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 47 (15.11%) DNS
2 30 (9.65%) DHCP
3 28 (9.00%) VPN
4 24 (7.72%) Firewall
5 19 (6.11%) TCP/IP
6 15 (4.82%) Network Security
7 12 (3.86%) SAN
8 10 (3.22%) VLAN
9 9 (2.89%) WAN
10 8 (2.57%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.57%) SSH
11 7 (2.25%) Kerberos
12 5 (1.61%) BIG-IP
12 5 (1.61%) LAN
12 5 (1.61%) Wireless
13 4 (1.29%) Intranet
13 4 (1.29%) Skype
14 3 (0.96%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 3 (0.96%) SNMP
14 3 (0.96%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.29%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.82%) Power BI
3 12 (3.86%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (2.89%) Big Data
5 8 (2.57%) MySQL
6 7 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (2.25%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.93%) Hadoop
7 6 (1.93%) Metadata
7 6 (1.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 6 (1.93%) Sybase ASE
8 5 (1.61%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.29%) EDRMS
9 4 (1.29%) Snowflake Schema
9 4 (1.29%) Tableau
10 3 (0.96%) DTS
10 3 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 32 (10.29%) Git
2 28 (9.00%) GitLab
3 25 (8.04%) Jenkins
4 13 (4.18%) JIRA
5 5 (1.61%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (1.29%) Flyway
6 4 (1.29%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.96%) AdminStudio
7 3 (0.96%) InstallShield
7 3 (0.96%) Selenium
8 2 (0.64%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.64%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.64%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.64%) JUnit
8 2 (0.64%) Maven
8 2 (0.64%) Postman
8 2 (0.64%) Snyk
8 2 (0.64%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.32%) REST Assured
General
1 108 (34.73%) Social Skills
2 61 (19.61%) Analytical Skills
3 51 (16.40%) Finance
4 28 (9.00%) Banking
5 18 (5.79%) Legal
6 16 (5.14%) Public Sector
7 13 (4.18%) Organisational Skills
8 9 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.93%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.93%) Front Office
10 4 (1.29%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.96%) Law
11 3 (0.96%) Military
11 3 (0.96%) Retail
12 2 (0.64%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.64%) Marketing
13 1 (0.32%) Billing
13 1 (0.32%) Local Government
13 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 28 (9.00%) Senior
2 27 (8.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 27 (8.68%) Support Engineer
3 25 (8.04%) Developer
4 22 (7.07%) DBA
5 18 (5.79%) Platform Engineer
6 17 (5.47%) Consultant
7 16 (5.14%) Analyst
7 16 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
8 15 (4.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 12 (3.86%) Data Engineer
10 11 (3.54%) Architect
10 11 (3.54%) Site Engineer
10 11 (3.54%) SQL DBA
11 10 (3.22%) Cloud Engineer
11 10 (3.22%) Lead
11 10 (3.22%) Systems Engineer
12 9 (2.89%) Administrator
12 9 (2.89%) Azure Developer
12 9 (2.89%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (11.58%) REST
2 19 (6.11%) .NET
3 15 (4.82%) SOAP
4 13 (4.18%) Microsoft Graph
5 12 (3.86%) JSON
5 12 (3.86%) React
6 11 (3.54%) ARM Templates
6 11 (3.54%) CSS
6 11 (3.54%) SPFx
7 10 (3.22%) .NET Framework
7 10 (3.22%) Kafka
8 9 (2.89%) Elastic Stack
8 9 (2.89%) Web Services
8 9 (2.89%) YAML
9 8 (2.57%) AWS CDK
9 8 (2.57%) HTML
10 6 (1.93%) Node.js
11 5 (1.61%) ASP.NET
11 5 (1.61%) LangChain
11 5 (1.61%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.07%) Onboarding
2 17 (5.47%) Hybrid Cloud
3 14 (4.50%) AI Agents
3 14 (4.50%) Cloud Native
4 12 (3.86%) Clustering
4 12 (3.86%) Data Protection Act
4 12 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
4 12 (3.86%) Replication
5 11 (3.54%) Management Information System
5 11 (3.54%) Product Ownership
6 10 (3.22%) Legacy Systems
7 9 (2.89%) Private Cloud
8 7 (2.25%) CMDB
8 7 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (1.93%) Data Centre
9 6 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.61%) Autonomous Agent
10 5 (1.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 69 (22.19%) Windows
2 60 (19.29%) Linux
3 26 (8.36%) Windows Server
4 24 (7.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (5.79%) Windows 10
6 11 (3.54%) Unix
7 8 (2.57%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (1.93%) Windows 7
9 5 (1.61%) Android
9 5 (1.61%) Mac OS
9 5 (1.61%) VMS
9 5 (1.61%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.96%) CoreOS
10 3 (0.96%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.64%) AIX
11 2 (0.64%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.64%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (27.01%) CI/CD
2 80 (25.72%) DevOps
3 79 (25.40%) Problem-Solving
4 68 (21.86%) ITIL
5 61 (19.61%) AI
6 54 (17.36%) Agile
7 53 (17.04%) Infrastructure as Code
8 47 (15.11%) Migration
9 46 (14.79%) Observability
10 45 (14.47%) Continuous Improvement
11 44 (14.15%) Analytics
12 41 (13.18%) Disaster Recovery
12 41 (13.18%) Performance Tuning
13 37 (11.90%) Workflow
14 36 (11.58%) High Availability
14 36 (11.58%) Runbook
15 34 (10.93%) Root Cause Analysis
16 33 (10.61%) Data Protection
17 32 (10.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 30 (9.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 125 (40.19%) Python
2 119 (38.26%) PowerShell
3 63 (20.26%) SQL
4 50 (16.08%) Bash
5 36 (11.58%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.11%) Java
7 16 (5.14%) TypeScript
8 15 (4.82%) C#
9 13 (4.18%) Bicep
10 12 (3.86%) T-SQL
11 10 (3.22%) Go
11 10 (3.22%) Kusto Query Language
11 10 (3.22%) Shell Script
12 6 (1.93%) PL/SQL
12 6 (1.93%) VBScript
13 4 (1.29%) Scala
14 3 (0.96%) Perl
15 1 (0.32%) ABAP
15 1 (0.32%) ActionScript
15 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 97 (31.19%) Security Cleared
2 64 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.93%) Degree
4 32 (10.29%) DV Cleared
5 21 (6.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.25%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.61%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 3 (0.96%) CCNA
9 3 (0.96%) CCNP
9 3 (0.96%) OCP
9 3 (0.96%) Oracle Certification
10 2 (0.64%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.64%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.64%) MCITP
10 2 (0.64%) MCTS
10 2 (0.64%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (8.04%) Data Quality
2 16 (5.14%) SLA
3 8 (2.57%) NIST
3 8 (2.57%) QA
4 5 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.64%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.32%) GDPR
6 1 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
6 1 (0.32%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.32%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 63 (20.26%) Active Directory
2 30 (9.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (7.07%) Docker
4 14 (4.50%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (2.89%) NFS
5 9 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (2.57%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (2.25%) Hyper-V
8 6 (1.93%) vSphere
9 2 (0.64%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.64%) Firmware
9 2 (0.64%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.32%) NDS
10 1 (0.32%) NetIQ eDirectory
10 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.32%) UAG
10 1 (0.32%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 53 (17.04%) Terraform
2 49 (15.76%) Ansible
3 35 (11.25%) Kubernetes
4 30 (9.65%) Microsoft Intune
5 26 (8.36%) SCCM
6 16 (5.14%) Puppet
7 15 (4.82%) Grafana
8 13 (4.18%) Prometheus
9 12 (3.86%) Progress Chef
9 12 (3.86%) SCOM
10 11 (3.54%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (3.22%) vCenter Server
12 6 (1.93%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (0.96%) Foglight
13 3 (0.96%) Istio
13 3 (0.96%) SnapMirror
13 3 (0.96%) WSUS
14 2 (0.64%) Nagios
14 2 (0.64%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 112 (36.01%) Microsoft
2 35 (11.25%) VMware
3 23 (7.40%) ServiceNow
4 22 (7.07%) Google
4 22 (7.07%) Red Hat
5 20 (6.43%) Oracle
6 16 (5.14%) Splunk
7 12 (3.86%) Cisco
8 10 (3.22%) Databricks
8 10 (3.22%) SolarWinds
9 8 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 7 (2.25%) AppDynamics
11 6 (1.93%) BMC
11 6 (1.93%) Broadcom
11 6 (1.93%) F5
11 6 (1.93%) Sybase
12 5 (1.61%) Citrix
12 5 (1.61%) Ivanti
12 5 (1.61%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.61%) Remedy
295 Task Automation jobs Nationwide