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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 272 222 361
Rank change year-on-year -50 +139 +82
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 406 346 236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.95% 1.14% 0.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.10% 1.27% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 295 209 189
10th Percentile £346 £344 £369
25th Percentile £400 £402 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £493 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.37% -6.19% -4.55%
75th Percentile £599 £594 £650
90th Percentile £750 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £473 £513
% change year-on-year -2.17% -7.76% -6.82%
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 36,798 27,287 38,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.45% 90.16% 86.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,332 17,120 24,896
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -2.03% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,175 894 2,252
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £16.11
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.50 £32.85
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% -1.05% -6.16%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.63 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £33.28
% change year-on-year -20.81% -4.57% -4.91%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 -45 338 £487 -2.55% 128
UK excluding London -50 195 £463 -2.17% 96
London -38 165 £550 +4.76% 51
Work from Home +26 158 £525 +9.38% 66
North of England -31 66 £452 -3.94% 28
Yorkshire -34 45 £454 -8.74% 14
South East -29 43 £440 +9.94% 30
Midlands -48 32 £503 +5.12% 12
West Midlands -39 30 £527 +8.78% 8
Scotland +9 26 £415 -11.70% 6
South West -38 18 £506 +7.14% 11
North West -42 17 £448 -4.68% 10
East of England -35 6 £500 - 8
North East -10 4 £365 -22.34% 4
Wales - 4 £525 - 5
East Midlands -32 2 £450 +13.92% 4
Northern Ireland - 2 £683 - 1

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 35 (8.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 31 (7.64%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.22%) Confluence
4 8 (1.97%) Appian
4 8 (1.97%) IIS
5 6 (1.48%) Apache
6 5 (1.23%) iPlanet
6 5 (1.23%) JBoss
6 5 (1.23%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.23%) WebSphere Application Server
7 3 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.74%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.49%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.25%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.25%) CMS
9 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 18 (4.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.99%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.74%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.49%) Maximo
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
1 2 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 201 (49.51%) Azure
2 136 (33.50%) AWS
3 91 (22.41%) GCP
4 61 (15.02%) Entra ID
5 52 (12.81%) Microsoft 365
6 45 (11.08%) GitHub
7 40 (9.85%) OpenShift
8 33 (8.13%) GitHub Actions
9 32 (7.88%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (5.42%) AWS CloudFormation
10 22 (5.42%) Azure Monitor
10 22 (5.42%) Power Platform
10 22 (5.42%) Serverless
11 21 (5.17%) PaaS
11 21 (5.17%) Power Automate
12 17 (4.19%) Amazon S3
12 17 (4.19%) Azure Key Vault
13 16 (3.94%) Azure App Service
13 16 (3.94%) Azure Service Bus
13 16 (3.94%) Azure WebJobs
Communications & Networking
1 38 (9.36%) DNS
2 29 (7.14%) DHCP
3 26 (6.40%) Firewall
4 21 (5.17%) Kerberos
5 19 (4.68%) SSH
6 14 (3.45%) TCP/IP
7 12 (2.96%) VPN
8 10 (2.46%) Network Security
9 5 (1.23%) SAN
9 5 (1.23%) WAN
10 4 (0.99%) AMQP
10 4 (0.99%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (0.99%) HTTP
10 4 (0.99%) LAN
11 3 (0.74%) Cisco IOS
11 3 (0.74%) SSL
12 2 (0.49%) DWDM
12 2 (0.49%) Internet
12 2 (0.49%) SMTP
12 2 (0.49%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (7.64%) SQL Server
2 26 (6.40%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (4.19%) Power BI
3 17 (4.19%) Relational Database
4 13 (3.20%) Oracle Database
5 11 (2.71%) Amazon RDS
6 9 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (2.22%) MySQL
7 8 (1.97%) Pinecone
8 6 (1.48%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (1.48%) MongoDB
8 6 (1.48%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.23%) Metadata
9 5 (1.23%) Tableau
10 4 (0.99%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.99%) InfluxDB
10 4 (0.99%) NoSQL
10 4 (0.99%) Oracle Reports
10 4 (0.99%) Power Query
10 4 (0.99%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 51 (12.56%) Jenkins
2 43 (10.59%) Git
3 36 (8.87%) GitLab
4 19 (4.68%) JIRA
5 18 (4.43%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (2.22%) CircleCI
7 8 (1.97%) MLflow
8 7 (1.72%) Maven
9 6 (1.48%) Bitbucket
10 5 (1.23%) Bitbucket Server
10 5 (1.23%) CA Release Automation
10 5 (1.23%) Gatling
10 5 (1.23%) JMeter
10 5 (1.23%) LoadRunner
10 5 (1.23%) SonarQube
11 4 (0.99%) JUnit
11 4 (0.99%) Postman
11 4 (0.99%) Selenium
12 3 (0.74%) Artifactory
12 3 (0.74%) Gradle
General
1 163 (40.15%) Social Skills
2 74 (18.23%) Finance
3 49 (12.07%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (9.36%) Public Sector
5 24 (5.91%) Banking
6 8 (1.97%) Legal
7 7 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
7 7 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
8 6 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (1.48%) Investment Banking
8 6 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.23%) Retail
10 4 (0.99%) Financial Institution
10 4 (0.99%) Military
11 3 (0.74%) Law
12 2 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.49%) Front Office
12 2 (0.49%) Games
12 2 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 55 (13.55%) Developer
2 40 (9.85%) Architect
3 37 (9.11%) CyberArk Architect
4 28 (6.90%) DevOps Engineer
5 24 (5.91%) Administrator
6 23 (5.67%) Analyst
6 23 (5.67%) Automation Engineer
7 20 (4.93%) Platform Engineer
8 19 (4.68%) Senior
9 18 (4.43%) DBA
9 18 (4.43%) Java Developer
10 17 (4.19%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 15 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 14 (3.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 14 (3.45%) Azure Developer
13 13 (3.20%) Lead
14 11 (2.71%) Consultant
14 11 (2.71%) Site Engineer
14 11 (2.71%) Support Engineer
15 10 (2.46%) Microsoft 365 Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (17.73%) REST
2 54 (13.30%) LDAP
3 50 (12.32%) SOAP
4 32 (7.88%) OAuth
5 26 (6.40%) Web Services
6 25 (6.16%) .NET
7 24 (5.91%) Node.js
8 23 (5.67%) SAML
9 22 (5.42%) Elastic Stack
10 19 (4.68%) Microsoft Graph
11 17 (4.19%) .NET Framework
12 13 (3.20%) RESTful
13 12 (2.96%) Kafka
14 11 (2.71%) JWT
15 10 (2.46%) Pandas
16 9 (2.22%) FastAPI
16 9 (2.22%) JSON
16 9 (2.22%) NumPy
16 9 (2.22%) OpenID
16 9 (2.22%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 44 (10.84%) Security Posture
2 43 (10.59%) Enterprise Software
3 22 (5.42%) Onboarding
4 20 (4.93%) Replication
5 17 (4.19%) Cloud Native
6 13 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (2.96%) Distributed Systems
8 11 (2.71%) Clustering
8 11 (2.71%) Hybrid Cloud
9 9 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (2.22%) Low-Code
10 7 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 7 (1.72%) PKI
11 6 (1.48%) Management Information System
12 5 (1.23%) FlexPod
12 5 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.23%) Product Ownership
13 4 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (0.99%) Data Structures
13 4 (0.99%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 101 (24.88%) Linux
2 85 (20.94%) Windows
3 39 (9.61%) Windows Server
4 21 (5.17%) Unix
5 19 (4.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (2.96%) VMS
7 8 (1.97%) CentOS
8 5 (1.23%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.23%) Data ONTAP
8 5 (1.23%) Mac OS
8 5 (1.23%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.99%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.49%) AIX
10 2 (0.49%) Android
10 2 (0.49%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (36.70%) Problem-Solving
2 134 (33.00%) CI/CD
3 105 (25.86%) DevOps
4 69 (17.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 57 (14.04%) Containerisation
6 56 (13.79%) Agile
7 52 (12.81%) Migration
7 52 (12.81%) SIEM
8 50 (12.32%) Observability
9 48 (11.82%) Continuous Improvement
9 48 (11.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 45 (11.08%) High Availability
11 44 (10.84%) Disaster Recovery
11 44 (10.84%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 43 (10.59%) Analytics
13 41 (10.10%) Technical Leadership
14 40 (9.85%) AI
14 40 (9.85%) Root Cause Analysis
15 39 (9.61%) Privileged Access Management
16 38 (9.36%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 194 (47.78%) Python
2 165 (40.64%) PowerShell
3 67 (16.50%) SQL
4 63 (15.52%) Bash
5 50 (12.32%) Java
6 36 (8.87%) Shell Script
7 26 (6.40%) JavaScript
8 25 (6.16%) C#
9 23 (5.67%) Go
9 23 (5.67%) Kusto Query Language
10 22 (5.42%) TypeScript
11 9 (2.22%) VBA
12 7 (1.72%) Bicep
13 6 (1.48%) Groovy
13 6 (1.48%) Perl
13 6 (1.48%) PL/SQL
14 5 (1.23%) T-SQL
15 3 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.74%) PHP
15 3 (0.74%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 142 (34.98%) Security Cleared
2 110 (27.09%) SC Cleared
3 28 (6.90%) Degree
4 24 (5.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (3.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (3.45%) DV Cleared
7 13 (3.20%) Azure Certification
8 11 (2.71%) CISSP
8 11 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (2.46%) OCP
9 10 (2.46%) Oracle Certification
10 9 (2.22%) AWS Certification
11 4 (0.99%) CFCE
11 4 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (0.99%) CISM
11 4 (0.99%) GCFA
11 4 (0.99%) GCIA
11 4 (0.99%) GCIH
11 4 (0.99%) GIAC
11 4 (0.99%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (8.87%) GDPR
2 24 (5.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (4.68%) Data Quality
4 17 (4.19%) NIST
5 14 (3.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 11 (2.71%) QA
7 6 (1.48%) SLA
8 5 (1.23%) HIPAA
8 5 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.74%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.49%) GRC
11 1 (0.25%) COBIT
11 1 (0.25%) GMP
11 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.25%) PMO
System Software
1 98 (24.14%) Active Directory
2 58 (14.29%) Docker
3 25 (6.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.72%) vSphere
6 5 (1.23%) NFS
6 5 (1.23%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 4 (0.99%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.99%) KVM
7 4 (0.99%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.74%) Xen
9 2 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.25%) HDFS
10 1 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.25%) RHEV
10 1 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.25%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 84 (20.69%) Terraform
2 83 (20.44%) Kubernetes
3 75 (18.47%) Ansible
4 40 (9.85%) Grafana
5 32 (7.88%) Prometheus
6 25 (6.16%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (5.42%) Progress Chef
8 20 (4.93%) Microsoft Intune
9 16 (3.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 12 (2.96%) Puppet
11 10 (2.46%) SCCM
12 7 (1.72%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (1.48%) CA Single Sign-On
13 6 (1.48%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 6 (1.48%) Podman
14 5 (1.23%) CA Wily
14 5 (1.23%) Kibana
14 5 (1.23%) logstash
14 5 (1.23%) SnapMirror
14 5 (1.23%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 116 (28.57%) Microsoft
2 41 (10.10%) CyberArk
3 35 (8.62%) BeyondTrust
4 34 (8.37%) Centrify
4 34 (8.37%) Google
5 33 (8.13%) Oracle
6 32 (7.88%) Splunk
7 30 (7.39%) VMware
8 24 (5.91%) Red Hat
9 19 (4.68%) Okta
9 19 (4.68%) ServiceNow
10 13 (3.20%) OpenAI
11 9 (2.22%) Cisco
12 8 (1.97%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (1.97%) Databricks
12 8 (1.97%) UiPath
13 7 (1.72%) IBM
14 6 (1.48%) AppDynamics
14 6 (1.48%) Palo Alto
14 6 (1.48%) SAP