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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 303 250 323
Rank change year-on-year -53 +73 +122
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 363 316 283
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 1.09% 0.66%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.91% 1.19% 0.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 276 180 224
10th Percentile £313 £345 £383
25th Percentile £400 £413 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £600 £675
90th Percentile £750 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £550
% change year-on-year -3.16% -13.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 13 2
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +21.85% -53.56%
75th Percentile £46.40 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £59.66 £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 40,077 26,470 37,223
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.45% 90.96% 86.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,204 17,026 23,967
10th Percentile £321 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +1.77% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,075 2,431
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +46.09% -21.23% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £27.35 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.88% -27.07% +7.14%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -64 305 £495 -3.65% 101
UK excluding London -76 173 £460 -3.16% 72
London -28 154 £575 +4.55% 40
Work from Home +12 139 £563 +4.75% 42
North of England -31 65 £454 -4.42% 19
Yorkshire -7 49 £460 -14.42% 6
South East -45 38 £415 +1.10% 25
Scotland -14 30 £500 +7.53% 3
Midlands -63 22 £527 +10.84% 7
West Midlands -48 18 £550 +10.00% 3
South West -53 13 £400 -15.34% 11
North West -53 10 £381 -19.74% 11
North East -12 6 £365 -2.67% 2
East Midlands -30 4 £413 +5.77% 4
East of England -47 2 £450 -20.35% 8
Wales - 2 £543 -
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 -

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 30 (8.26%) SharePoint
2 24 (6.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.75%) Confluence
4 8 (2.20%) Appian
5 4 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.83%) Apache
7 2 (0.55%) CMS
7 2 (0.55%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.55%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.28%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 12 (3.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.65%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.10%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.55%) Maximo
1 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.28%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 186 (51.24%) Azure
2 128 (35.26%) AWS
3 75 (20.66%) GCP
4 50 (13.77%) Entra ID
5 47 (12.95%) Microsoft 365
6 43 (11.85%) GitHub
7 34 (9.37%) OpenShift
8 29 (7.99%) GitHub Actions
9 27 (7.44%) Power Platform
10 24 (6.61%) Amazon S3
11 22 (6.06%) Azure DevOps
11 22 (6.06%) Power Automate
12 19 (5.23%) PaaS
13 17 (4.68%) Azure Monitor
13 17 (4.68%) Serverless
14 16 (4.41%) AWS CloudFormation
15 15 (4.13%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (4.13%) Azure Key Vault
16 13 (3.58%) Azure App Service
16 13 (3.58%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 38 (10.47%) DNS
2 31 (8.54%) DHCP
3 21 (5.79%) Firewall
4 18 (4.96%) Kerberos
5 15 (4.13%) VPN
6 13 (3.58%) SSH
7 11 (3.03%) Network Security
8 10 (2.75%) WAN
9 8 (2.20%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.20%) TCP/IP
10 7 (1.93%) SAN
11 6 (1.65%) LAN
12 5 (1.38%) SSL
13 4 (1.10%) Cisco Nexus
13 4 (1.10%) VLAN
14 3 (0.83%) BIG-IP
14 3 (0.83%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 3 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
14 3 (0.83%) WLAN
15 2 (0.55%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (9.37%) SQL Server
2 20 (5.51%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (4.41%) Power BI
4 11 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (2.75%) Amazon RDS
6 8 (2.20%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.20%) Pinecone
6 8 (2.20%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.65%) Metadata
7 6 (1.65%) Snowflake Schema
7 6 (1.65%) Tableau
8 5 (1.38%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.38%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.38%) MongoDB
8 5 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (1.10%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (1.10%) Big Data
9 4 (1.10%) InfluxDB
9 4 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
9 4 (1.10%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 36 (9.92%) Jenkins
2 30 (8.26%) GitLab
3 29 (7.99%) Git
4 18 (4.96%) JIRA
5 11 (3.03%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.20%) MLflow
7 5 (1.38%) CircleCI
8 4 (1.10%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.83%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.83%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.83%) Flyway
9 3 (0.83%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.83%) Selenium
10 2 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.55%) Maven
10 2 (0.55%) Postman
10 2 (0.55%) Snyk
11 1 (0.28%) Gradle
11 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.28%) webpack
General
1 144 (39.67%) Social Skills
2 61 (16.80%) Finance
3 46 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (9.92%) Public Sector
5 25 (6.89%) Banking
6 11 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.75%) Legal
8 7 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.38%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.10%) Law
10 4 (1.10%) Retail
11 3 (0.83%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.83%) Military
11 3 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.55%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.55%) Front Office
13 1 (0.28%) Marketing
13 1 (0.28%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (12.40%) Architect
2 39 (10.74%) Developer
3 37 (10.19%) CyberArk Architect
4 23 (6.34%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 22 (6.06%) Administrator
6 21 (5.79%) DBA
7 20 (5.51%) Automation Engineer
8 18 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
9 17 (4.68%) Site Engineer
10 16 (4.41%) Analyst
11 15 (4.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 15 (4.13%) Platform Engineer
12 13 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 12 (3.31%) Azure Developer
13 12 (3.31%) Consultant
13 12 (3.31%) Data Engineer
13 12 (3.31%) Senior
14 11 (3.03%) Java Developer
15 10 (2.75%) Network Engineer
15 10 (2.75%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (16.53%) REST
2 50 (13.77%) LDAP
3 47 (12.95%) SOAP
4 26 (7.16%) OAuth
5 22 (6.06%) Web Services
6 21 (5.79%) .NET
7 17 (4.68%) SAML
8 15 (4.13%) Elastic Stack
9 14 (3.86%) .NET Framework
10 13 (3.58%) JWT
10 13 (3.58%) Microsoft Graph
10 13 (3.58%) Node.js
11 12 (3.31%) RESTful
12 11 (3.03%) Kafka
12 11 (3.03%) Pandas
12 11 (3.03%) PyTorch
13 10 (2.75%) FastAPI
13 10 (2.75%) NumPy
14 9 (2.48%) scikit-learn
14 9 (2.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.85%) Enterprise Software
2 39 (10.74%) Security Posture
3 22 (6.06%) Replication
4 21 (5.79%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.86%) Cloud Native
5 14 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.86%) Legacy Systems
6 12 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (3.03%) Product Ownership
8 9 (2.48%) Clustering
9 8 (2.20%) Data Centre
9 8 (2.20%) Low-Code
10 5 (1.38%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.38%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.10%) Data Structures
11 4 (1.10%) NHS
11 4 (1.10%) PKI
12 3 (0.83%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 77 (21.21%) Linux
2 71 (19.56%) Windows
3 31 (8.54%) Windows Server
4 17 (4.68%) Unix
5 15 (4.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (2.48%) Mac OS
6 9 (2.48%) VMS
7 8 (2.20%) Windows 10
8 5 (1.38%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.38%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.55%) CentOS
10 1 (0.28%) AIX
10 1 (0.28%) Android
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.28%) Solaris
10 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.28%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.28%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (37.47%) Problem-Solving
2 114 (31.40%) CI/CD
3 85 (23.42%) DevOps
4 55 (15.15%) Infrastructure as Code
5 54 (14.88%) Agile
5 54 (14.88%) AI
5 54 (14.88%) Disaster Recovery
6 49 (13.50%) Migration
7 48 (13.22%) High Availability
8 46 (12.67%) Analytics
8 46 (12.67%) Containerisation
9 43 (11.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 43 (11.85%) Technical Leadership
10 42 (11.57%) Observability
11 41 (11.29%) SIEM
12 39 (10.74%) Continuous Improvement
12 39 (10.74%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 38 (10.47%) Privileged Access Management
14 37 (10.19%) ITSM
15 36 (9.92%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 178 (49.04%) Python
2 142 (39.12%) PowerShell
3 67 (18.46%) SQL
4 47 (12.95%) Bash
5 42 (11.57%) Java
6 27 (7.44%) Shell Script
7 24 (6.61%) JavaScript
8 23 (6.34%) Go
9 21 (5.79%) C#
10 17 (4.68%) TypeScript
11 13 (3.58%) Kusto Query Language
12 10 (2.75%) PL/SQL
13 9 (2.48%) T-SQL
14 4 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 4 (1.10%) Perl
15 3 (0.83%) PHP
15 3 (0.83%) VBA
16 2 (0.55%) ActionScript
16 2 (0.55%) Ruby
16 2 (0.55%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 133 (36.64%) Security Cleared
2 106 (29.20%) SC Cleared
3 28 (7.71%) Degree
4 23 (6.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (5.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.58%) DV Cleared
7 8 (2.20%) OCP
7 8 (2.20%) Oracle Certification
8 7 (1.93%) CISSP
9 6 (1.65%) AWS Certification
10 5 (1.38%) Azure Certification
10 5 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (1.10%) CISM
12 3 (0.83%) CCNA
12 3 (0.83%) CCNP
12 3 (0.83%) JNCIA
12 3 (0.83%) JNCIS
12 3 (0.83%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.55%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.34%) Data Quality
1 23 (6.34%) GDPR
2 16 (4.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (3.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.31%) NIST
5 9 (2.48%) QA
6 5 (1.38%) SLA
7 3 (0.83%) SOC 2
8 2 (0.55%) GRC
8 2 (0.55%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.55%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.28%) COBIT
9 1 (0.28%) GMP
9 1 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 91 (25.07%) Active Directory
2 37 (10.19%) Docker
3 19 (5.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (4.41%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.65%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.65%) vSphere
6 5 (1.38%) NFS
6 5 (1.38%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.83%) Xen
8 2 (0.55%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.55%) Firmware
8 2 (0.55%) KVM
8 2 (0.55%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.28%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.28%) HDFS
9 1 (0.28%) RHEV
9 1 (0.28%) UAG
9 1 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.28%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 72 (19.83%) Kubernetes
2 62 (17.08%) Terraform
3 59 (16.25%) Ansible
4 24 (6.61%) Grafana
4 24 (6.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 20 (5.51%) Prometheus
5 20 (5.51%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.13%) Progress Chef
7 14 (3.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 11 (3.03%) SCCM
9 9 (2.48%) Puppet
10 6 (1.65%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 5 (1.38%) Oracle RMAN
11 5 (1.38%) SnapMirror
12 4 (1.10%) Nessus
13 3 (0.83%) Data Guard
13 3 (0.83%) Foglight
13 3 (0.83%) Nagios
13 3 (0.83%) OpenVAS
13 3 (0.83%) SCOM
Vendors
1 97 (26.72%) Microsoft
2 39 (10.74%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.37%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.37%) Centrify
4 26 (7.16%) Oracle
5 25 (6.89%) VMware
6 23 (6.34%) Google
7 20 (5.51%) Red Hat
8 19 (5.23%) Okta
9 18 (4.96%) ServiceNow
10 15 (4.13%) OpenAI
10 15 (4.13%) Splunk
11 14 (3.86%) Databricks
12 9 (2.48%) Cisco
13 8 (2.20%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (2.20%) Palo Alto
13 8 (2.20%) UiPath
14 7 (1.93%) F5
15 5 (1.38%) Informatica
15 5 (1.38%) NetApp