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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 378 253 264
Rank change year-on-year -125 +11 +165
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 300 340 362
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 1.04% 0.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 1.15% 1.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 202 192 269
10th Percentile £300 £308 £388
25th Percentile £400 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -6.98% -1.83%
75th Percentile £556 £591 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £486 £500
% change year-on-year +2.83% -2.75% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 9 3
10th Percentile - £18.35 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £26.25 -
Median hourly rate £22.16 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -65.11% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.68 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £38.64 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £65.00 -
% change year-on-year -66.92% - -

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 45,002 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,714 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.89 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 30 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 30 July 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 30 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 -112 257 £475 -5.00% 132
UK excluding London -80 160 £500 +2.83% 93
London -101 108 £450 -10.47% 53
Work from Home -76 91 £465 -7.00% 50
North of England -39 66 £500 +2.04% 24
Yorkshire -17 47 £500 -6.98% 3
South East -41 46 £475 -3.55% 26
Scotland -29 16 £469 -1.06% 3
North West -52 16 £510 +7.37% 19
Midlands -65 16 £575 +15.00% 16
South West -37 11 £385 -28.04% 10
West Midlands -69 11 £600 +19.40% 9
East Midlands -13 5 £413 +7.14% 7
East of England -35 3 £550 +15.79% 12
North East -44 3 £275 -26.67% 2
Wales -19 1 £543 +106.67% 3
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 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 43 (14.33%) SharePoint
2 24 (8.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (2.67%) Confluence
4 4 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (1.00%) Apache
5 3 (1.00%) CMS
6 2 (0.67%) Appian
6 2 (0.67%) JBoss
6 2 (0.67%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
7 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.33%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.33%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.00%) 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
1 127 (42.33%) Azure
2 72 (24.00%) AWS
3 60 (20.00%) Microsoft 365
4 44 (14.67%) Entra ID
5 42 (14.00%) GitHub
6 33 (11.00%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (9.67%) GitHub Actions
8 28 (9.33%) GCP
9 27 (9.00%) Power Platform
10 22 (7.33%) Azure Monitor
11 21 (7.00%) Power Automate
12 19 (6.33%) OpenShift
13 17 (5.67%) Microsoft Copilot
14 16 (5.33%) Azure Key Vault
14 16 (5.33%) Datadog
15 15 (5.00%) Amazon S3
15 15 (5.00%) OneDrive
16 14 (4.67%) PaaS
16 14 (4.67%) PowerApps
17 11 (3.67%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 39 (13.00%) DNS
2 25 (8.33%) DHCP
3 24 (8.00%) Firewall
3 24 (8.00%) VPN
4 16 (5.33%) TCP/IP
5 13 (4.33%) Network Security
5 13 (4.33%) SAN
6 9 (3.00%) VLAN
7 8 (2.67%) SSH
8 7 (2.33%) SD-WAN
8 7 (2.33%) WAN
9 4 (1.33%) Intranet
9 4 (1.33%) Kerberos
9 4 (1.33%) LAN
9 4 (1.33%) Skype
9 4 (1.33%) SNMP
10 3 (1.00%) BIG-IP
10 3 (1.00%) OSPF
10 3 (1.00%) PSTN
10 3 (1.00%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.00%) SQL Server
2 12 (4.00%) Power BI
3 10 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (2.67%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.33%) MySQL
5 7 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (2.33%) Relational Database
6 6 (2.00%) Big Data
6 6 (2.00%) Metadata
6 6 (2.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (2.00%) Sybase ASE
7 4 (1.33%) EDRMS
7 4 (1.33%) Snowflake Schema
7 4 (1.33%) Tableau
8 3 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (1.00%) DTS
8 3 (1.00%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.00%) MongoDB
8 3 (1.00%) Oracle Database
8 3 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 33 (11.00%) Git
2 28 (9.33%) Jenkins
3 27 (9.00%) GitLab
4 17 (5.67%) JIRA
5 6 (2.00%) SonarQube
5 6 (2.00%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (1.33%) Flyway
7 3 (1.00%) AdminStudio
7 3 (1.00%) InstallShield
7 3 (1.00%) Selenium
8 2 (0.67%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.67%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.67%) JUnit
8 2 (0.67%) Maven
8 2 (0.67%) MLflow
8 2 (0.67%) Postman
8 2 (0.67%) Snyk
8 2 (0.67%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.33%) REST Assured
General
1 104 (34.67%) Social Skills
2 51 (17.00%) Analytical Skills
3 50 (16.67%) Finance
4 29 (9.67%) Banking
5 17 (5.67%) Public Sector
6 16 (5.33%) Legal
7 12 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.33%) Financial Institution
10 6 (2.00%) Front Office
11 5 (1.67%) Investment Banking
12 4 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (1.00%) Law
13 3 (1.00%) Military
14 2 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.67%) Retail
15 1 (0.33%) Billing
15 1 (0.33%) Local Government
15 1 (0.33%) Manufacturing
15 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 28 (9.33%) Developer
2 24 (8.00%) Senior
3 22 (7.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 21 (7.00%) DBA
4 21 (7.00%) Support Engineer
5 18 (6.00%) Consultant
5 18 (6.00%) DevOps Engineer
6 17 (5.67%) Platform Engineer
7 15 (5.00%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 12 (4.00%) Analyst
8 12 (4.00%) Site Engineer
9 11 (3.67%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 11 (3.67%) Azure Developer
9 11 (3.67%) SQL DBA
10 10 (3.33%) Architect
10 10 (3.33%) Cloud Engineer
10 10 (3.33%) Data Engineer
10 10 (3.33%) Lead
11 9 (3.00%) Microsoft 365 Developer
11 9 (3.00%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (12.67%) REST
2 22 (7.33%) .NET
3 16 (5.33%) SOAP
4 15 (5.00%) Microsoft Graph
5 13 (4.33%) Web Services
6 12 (4.00%) .NET Framework
6 12 (4.00%) ARM Templates
6 12 (4.00%) React
7 11 (3.67%) CSS
7 11 (3.67%) JSON
7 11 (3.67%) SPFx
8 9 (3.00%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (2.67%) AWS CDK
9 8 (2.67%) HTML
10 7 (2.33%) Kafka
11 6 (2.00%) Node.js
11 6 (2.00%) YAML
12 5 (1.67%) ASP.NET
12 5 (1.67%) LangChain
12 5 (1.67%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.00%) Onboarding
2 17 (5.67%) Hybrid Cloud
3 14 (4.67%) AI Agents
4 13 (4.33%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (4.00%) Cloud Native
5 12 (4.00%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (4.00%) Replication
6 11 (3.67%) Product Ownership
7 10 (3.33%) Management Information System
8 9 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
10 7 (2.33%) Clustering
10 7 (2.33%) CMDB
10 7 (2.33%) Private Cloud
10 7 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (2.00%) Data Centre
12 5 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (1.67%) Autonomous Agent
12 5 (1.67%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 63 (21.00%) Windows
2 61 (20.33%) Linux
3 23 (7.67%) Windows Server
4 21 (7.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (3.67%) Unix
6 10 (3.33%) Windows 10
7 7 (2.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (2.00%) Mac OS
8 6 (2.00%) VMS
9 5 (1.67%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.67%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.33%) Android
11 2 (0.67%) AIX
11 2 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.33%) Solaris
12 1 (0.33%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.33%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (27.33%) DevOps
2 80 (26.67%) CI/CD
3 74 (24.67%) Problem-Solving
4 62 (20.67%) ITIL
5 60 (20.00%) AI
6 55 (18.33%) Agile
7 51 (17.00%) Infrastructure as Code
8 47 (15.67%) Migration
9 42 (14.00%) Analytics
9 42 (14.00%) Continuous Improvement
10 41 (13.67%) Observability
11 38 (12.67%) Disaster Recovery
12 36 (12.00%) Performance Tuning
12 36 (12.00%) Workflow
13 33 (11.00%) High Availability
14 32 (10.67%) Change Management
15 30 (10.00%) Data Protection
16 29 (9.67%) Containerisation
17 28 (9.33%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 27 (9.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 122 (40.67%) Python
2 109 (36.33%) PowerShell
3 56 (18.67%) SQL
4 49 (16.33%) Bash
5 30 (10.00%) JavaScript
6 18 (6.00%) C#
7 16 (5.33%) Java
7 16 (5.33%) TypeScript
8 12 (4.00%) Bicep
8 12 (4.00%) Kusto Query Language
8 12 (4.00%) T-SQL
9 10 (3.33%) Go
10 8 (2.67%) Shell Script
11 6 (2.00%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.33%) VBScript
13 2 (0.67%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.67%) Scala
14 1 (0.33%) ABAP
14 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.33%) REXX
Qualifications
1 84 (28.00%) Security Cleared
2 53 (17.67%) SC Cleared
3 33 (11.00%) Degree
4 29 (9.67%) DV Cleared
5 20 (6.67%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (2.67%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.67%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (1.67%) OCP
8 5 (1.67%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.00%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (1.00%) CCNA
10 3 (1.00%) CCNP
11 2 (0.67%) CISSP
11 2 (0.67%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.67%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.67%) MCITP
11 2 (0.67%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.33%) Data Quality
2 11 (3.67%) SLA
3 9 (3.00%) QA
4 7 (2.33%) NIST
5 6 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (1.00%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.67%) GDPR
8 1 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.33%) GRC
8 1 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
System Software
1 59 (19.67%) Active Directory
2 26 (8.67%) Docker
2 26 (8.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (4.33%) Virtual Machines
4 11 (3.67%) NFS
5 8 (2.67%) Virtual Desktop
5 8 (2.67%) vSphere
6 7 (2.33%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (2.00%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.67%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.67%) Firmware
8 2 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.33%) NDS
9 1 (0.33%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 1 (0.33%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.33%) UAG
9 1 (0.33%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 53 (17.67%) Ansible
2 52 (17.33%) Terraform
3 41 (13.67%) Kubernetes
4 32 (10.67%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (6.00%) SCCM
6 15 (5.00%) Grafana
7 12 (4.00%) Prometheus
7 12 (4.00%) Puppet
8 11 (3.67%) Progress Chef
9 10 (3.33%) vCenter Server
10 9 (3.00%) SCOM
11 8 (2.67%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (1.67%) SnapMirror
14 3 (1.00%) Foglight
14 3 (1.00%) PowerCLI
14 3 (1.00%) WSUS
15 2 (0.67%) Failover Clustering
15 2 (0.67%) Nessus
15 2 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 110 (36.67%) Microsoft
2 34 (11.33%) VMware
3 24 (8.00%) ServiceNow
4 23 (7.67%) Google
5 19 (6.33%) Red Hat
6 16 (5.33%) Oracle
6 16 (5.33%) Splunk
7 11 (3.67%) Cisco
7 11 (3.67%) OpenAI
8 10 (3.33%) Databricks
8 10 (3.33%) SolarWinds
9 7 (2.33%) AppDynamics
10 6 (2.00%) Bloomberg
10 6 (2.00%) Broadcom
10 6 (2.00%) Citrix
10 6 (2.00%) Palo Alto
10 6 (2.00%) Sybase
11 5 (1.67%) BMC
11 5 (1.67%) F5
11 5 (1.67%) NetApp