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

 6 months to
21 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 376 253 246
Rank change year-on-year -123 -7 +186
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 311 347 376
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 1.06% 0.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.69% 1.17% 1.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 195 274
10th Percentile £300 £306 £400
25th Percentile £400 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -6.98% -1.38%
75th Percentile £556 £588 £650
90th Percentile £625 £673 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 9 3
10th Percentile £16.33 £18.35 -
25th Percentile £17.44 £26.25 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -64.08% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £25.45 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £65.35 £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 45,356 29,667 33,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 90.51% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,834 18,495 21,131
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 £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,855 1,741 1,763
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.33 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -1.22%
75th Percentile £67.94 £49.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +83.17% -42.17% +12.54%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -123 272 £478 -4.50% 91
UK excluding London -99 161 £500 +4.17% 79
London -102 118 £450 -10.00% 32
Work from Home -78 90 £475 -5.00% 32
North of England -55 66 £500 +4.71% 13
South East -39 48 £506 +2.79% 21
Yorkshire -20 41 £500 +4.17% 4
North West -43 22 £492 +3.58% 8
Midlands -63 17 £588 +14.08% 18
Scotland -34 14 £438 -7.89% 3
South West -46 11 £325 -37.50% 13
West Midlands -65 10 £600 +15.50% 17
East Midlands -18 7 £413 +7.14% 1
East of England -31 4 £550 +12.24% 7
North East -35 3 £275 -26.67% 1
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 4

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 40 (12.86%) SharePoint
2 22 (7.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.93%) Confluence
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%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.29%) Remedy AR System
3 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.32%) PeopleSoft HCM
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 122 (39.23%) Azure
2 74 (23.79%) AWS
3 58 (18.65%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (12.86%) Entra ID
5 37 (11.90%) GitHub
6 32 (10.29%) Azure DevOps
6 32 (10.29%) Power Platform
7 27 (8.68%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (8.36%) GCP
9 25 (8.04%) Azure Monitor
10 21 (6.75%) Microsoft Copilot
11 20 (6.43%) Power Automate
12 17 (5.47%) Amazon S3
12 17 (5.47%) Datadog
13 16 (5.14%) OpenShift
14 15 (4.82%) OneDrive
15 14 (4.50%) Azure Key Vault
16 13 (4.18%) SaaS
16 13 (4.18%) Serverless
17 12 (3.86%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 48 (15.43%) DNS
2 31 (9.97%) DHCP
3 29 (9.32%) VPN
4 25 (8.04%) Firewall
5 20 (6.43%) TCP/IP
6 16 (5.14%) 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%) PSTN
13 4 (1.29%) Skype
14 3 (0.96%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 3 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (9.65%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.82%) Power BI
3 13 (4.18%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (2.89%) Big Data
5 7 (2.25%) MySQL
5 7 (2.25%) Relational Database
6 6 (1.93%) Hadoop
6 6 (1.93%) Metadata
6 6 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (1.93%) Sybase ASE
7 5 (1.61%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (1.29%) EDRMS
8 4 (1.29%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (1.29%) Tableau
9 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.96%) BigQuery
9 3 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 34 (10.93%) Git
2 25 (8.04%) GitLab
3 23 (7.40%) Jenkins
4 13 (4.18%) JIRA
5 5 (1.61%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (1.29%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.96%) AdminStudio
7 3 (0.96%) Flyway
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%) Visual Studio
General
1 107 (34.41%) Social Skills
2 59 (18.97%) Analytical Skills
3 50 (16.08%) Finance
4 29 (9.32%) Banking
5 17 (5.47%) 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%) International Banking
13 1 (0.32%) Local Government
13 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 29 (9.32%) Senior
2 28 (9.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 27 (8.68%) Support Engineer
4 25 (8.04%) Developer
5 20 (6.43%) DBA
6 18 (5.79%) DevOps Engineer
7 17 (5.47%) Consultant
7 17 (5.47%) Platform Engineer
8 16 (5.14%) Analyst
9 15 (4.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 13 (4.18%) Data Engineer
11 12 (3.86%) Architect
12 11 (3.54%) Site Engineer
13 10 (3.22%) Cloud Engineer
13 10 (3.22%) Lead
13 10 (3.22%) Systems Engineer
14 9 (2.89%) Administrator
14 9 (2.89%) Azure Developer
14 9 (2.89%) Linux Engineer
14 9 (2.89%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (17.68%) Terraform
2 36 (11.58%) REST
3 19 (6.11%) .NET
4 15 (4.82%) SOAP
5 13 (4.18%) Microsoft Graph
6 12 (3.86%) ARM Templates
6 12 (3.86%) JSON
6 12 (3.86%) React
7 11 (3.54%) CSS
7 11 (3.54%) Kafka
7 11 (3.54%) SPFx
8 10 (3.22%) .NET Framework
9 9 (2.89%) Elastic Stack
9 9 (2.89%) Web Services
10 8 (2.57%) HTML
10 8 (2.57%) YAML
11 7 (2.25%) AWS CDK
12 5 (1.61%) LangChain
12 5 (1.61%) Node.js
12 5 (1.61%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.40%) Onboarding
2 18 (5.79%) Hybrid Cloud
3 15 (4.82%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.50%) AI Agents
5 12 (3.86%) Clustering
5 12 (3.86%) Data Protection Act
5 12 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (3.86%) Product Ownership
5 12 (3.86%) Replication
6 11 (3.54%) Management Information System
7 10 (3.22%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.89%) Private Cloud
9 7 (2.25%) CMDB
9 7 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.93%) Data Centre
10 6 (1.93%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.61%) Autonomous Agent
11 5 (1.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (22.51%) Windows
2 59 (18.97%) Linux
3 27 (8.68%) Windows Server
4 23 (7.40%) 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 81 (26.05%) DevOps
3 77 (24.76%) Problem-Solving
4 67 (21.54%) ITIL
5 61 (19.61%) AI
6 54 (17.36%) Infrastructure as Code
7 53 (17.04%) Agile
8 46 (14.79%) Migration
8 46 (14.79%) Observability
9 45 (14.47%) Analytics
9 45 (14.47%) Continuous Improvement
10 42 (13.50%) Performance Tuning
11 41 (13.18%) Disaster Recovery
12 38 (12.22%) Workflow
13 36 (11.58%) Root Cause Analysis
14 35 (11.25%) Runbook
15 34 (10.93%) High Availability
16 33 (10.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 32 (10.29%) Data Protection
18 30 (9.65%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 127 (40.84%) Python
2 122 (39.23%) PowerShell
3 62 (19.94%) SQL
4 51 (16.40%) Bash
5 35 (11.25%) JavaScript
6 18 (5.79%) Java
7 16 (5.14%) Bicep
8 15 (4.82%) C#
8 15 (4.82%) TypeScript
9 11 (3.54%) T-SQL
10 10 (3.22%) Go
10 10 (3.22%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (2.89%) 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 98 (31.51%) Security Cleared
2 64 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.93%) Degree
4 33 (10.61%) DV Cleared
5 20 (6.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (2.89%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.61%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.96%) CCNA
10 3 (0.96%) CCNP
10 3 (0.96%) OCP
10 3 (0.96%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.64%) CIPD
11 2 (0.64%) CISM
11 2 (0.64%) CISSP
11 2 (0.64%) MCITP
11 2 (0.64%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.36%) 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 64 (20.58%) Active Directory
2 30 (9.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (7.72%) 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 49 (15.76%) Ansible
2 36 (11.58%) Kubernetes
3 30 (9.65%) Microsoft Intune
4 26 (8.36%) SCCM
5 16 (5.14%) Puppet
6 15 (4.82%) Grafana
7 13 (4.18%) Prometheus
8 12 (3.86%) Progress Chef
8 12 (3.86%) SCOM
9 11 (3.54%) Red Hat Satellite
10 10 (3.22%) vCenter Server
11 6 (1.93%) Failover Clustering
11 6 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.96%) Istio
12 3 (0.96%) SnapMirror
12 3 (0.96%) WSUS
13 2 (0.64%) Data Guard
13 2 (0.64%) Foglight
13 2 (0.64%) Nagios
13 2 (0.64%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 115 (36.98%) Microsoft
2 34 (10.93%) VMware
3 22 (7.07%) Google
3 22 (7.07%) ServiceNow
4 21 (6.75%) Red Hat
5 20 (6.43%) Oracle
6 16 (5.14%) Splunk
7 12 (3.86%) Cisco
8 10 (3.22%) SolarWinds
9 9 (2.89%) Databricks
10 8 (2.57%) OpenAI
11 7 (2.25%) AppDynamics
12 6 (1.93%) BMC
12 6 (1.93%) Broadcom
12 6 (1.93%) F5
12 6 (1.93%) Sybase
13 5 (1.61%) Citrix
13 5 (1.61%) Ivanti
13 5 (1.61%) Palo Alto
13 5 (1.61%) Remedy
103 Task Automation jobs Nationwide