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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 327 234 313
Rank change year-on-year -93 +79 +140
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 352 328 312
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 1.12% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.84% 1.23% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 254 180 244
10th Percentile £365 £345 £388
25th Percentile £404 £412 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £582 £675
90th Percentile £750 £675 £707
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £550
% change year-on-year - -13.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 17 3
10th Percentile £17.83 £21.00 -
25th Percentile £20.08 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £30.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -23.97% +26.05% -53.56%
75th Percentile £35.34 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £55.24 £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 42,104 26,621 36,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.75% 90.94% 85.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,283 16,896 23,594
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,537 1,167 2,565
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 June 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 -80 304 £500 - 87
UK excluding London -83 170 £475 - 69
London -48 154 £575 +12.99% 29
Work from Home -31 128 £600 +17.82% 57
North of England -34 73 £475 - 17
Yorkshire -13 55 £500 +8.11% 4
South East -34 39 £403 -19.50% 22
Scotland -29 22 £508 +10.93% 5
Midlands -62 17 £550 +15.79% 7
South West -34 15 £400 -22.71% 12
West Midlands -56 13 £563 +12.50% 4
North West -48 11 £487 +2.53% 10
North East -20 7 £320 -14.67% 3
East Midlands -32 4 £413 +5.77% 3
Wales - 2 £543 - 2
East of England -54 1 £400 -20.00% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 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 32 (9.09%) SharePoint
2 21 (5.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.84%) Confluence
4 8 (2.27%) Appian
5 4 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.85%) Apache
7 2 (0.57%) CMS
7 2 (0.57%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.28%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 8 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.42%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.57%) Maximo
2 2 (0.57%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.28%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 178 (50.57%) Azure
2 113 (32.10%) AWS
3 71 (20.17%) GCP
4 51 (14.49%) Microsoft 365
5 49 (13.92%) Entra ID
6 42 (11.93%) GitHub
7 29 (8.24%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (7.39%) Power Automate
8 26 (7.39%) Power Platform
9 23 (6.53%) Azure DevOps
9 23 (6.53%) OpenShift
10 17 (4.83%) Amazon S3
10 17 (4.83%) Azure Monitor
11 15 (4.26%) PaaS
12 14 (3.98%) Azure Key Vault
13 13 (3.69%) Microsoft Copilot
13 13 (3.69%) OneDrive
14 12 (3.41%) PowerApps
14 12 (3.41%) Serverless
15 11 (3.13%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 43 (12.22%) DNS
2 34 (9.66%) DHCP
3 22 (6.25%) Firewall
4 18 (5.11%) Kerberos
5 16 (4.55%) VPN
6 13 (3.69%) SAN
7 11 (3.13%) Network Security
8 9 (2.56%) TCP/IP
8 9 (2.56%) WAN
9 8 (2.27%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.27%) SSH
9 8 (2.27%) VLAN
10 5 (1.42%) LAN
11 4 (1.14%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.14%) Intranet
12 3 (0.85%) BGP
12 3 (0.85%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.85%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.85%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 3 (0.85%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (10.51%) SQL Server
2 14 (3.98%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (3.41%) Power BI
4 10 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.27%) Pinecone
6 7 (1.99%) Metadata
7 6 (1.70%) MongoDB
7 6 (1.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (1.42%) MySQL
8 5 (1.42%) Oracle Database
8 5 (1.42%) Snowflake Schema
9 4 (1.14%) Big Data
9 4 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.14%) EDRMS
9 4 (1.14%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.14%) Tableau
10 3 (0.85%) DTS
10 3 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 3 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 33 (9.38%) Jenkins
2 30 (8.52%) GitLab
3 26 (7.39%) Git
4 21 (5.97%) JIRA
5 11 (3.13%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.27%) MLflow
7 6 (1.70%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.14%) CircleCI
8 4 (1.14%) Flyway
9 3 (0.85%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.85%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.85%) Maven
9 3 (0.85%) Selenium
10 2 (0.57%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.57%) JUnit
10 2 (0.57%) Postman
10 2 (0.57%) Snyk
11 1 (0.28%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.28%) TestRail
General
1 155 (44.03%) Social Skills
2 60 (17.05%) Finance
3 47 (13.35%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (8.24%) Banking
5 27 (7.67%) Public Sector
6 12 (3.41%) Legal
7 11 (3.13%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.70%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.42%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.14%) Front Office
11 4 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.14%) Law
12 3 (0.85%) Military
13 2 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.57%) Retail
14 1 (0.28%) International Banking
14 1 (0.28%) Local Government
14 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (12.50%) Architect
2 36 (10.23%) CyberArk Architect
2 36 (10.23%) Developer
3 20 (5.68%) DBA
4 19 (5.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 18 (5.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 17 (4.83%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 16 (4.55%) Automation Engineer
7 16 (4.55%) Consultant
8 14 (3.98%) Administrator
9 13 (3.69%) Analyst
9 13 (3.69%) DevOps Engineer
9 13 (3.69%) Support Engineer
10 12 (3.41%) Platform Engineer
10 12 (3.41%) Site Engineer
11 11 (3.13%) Azure Developer
11 11 (3.13%) Lead
11 11 (3.13%) Senior
12 10 (2.84%) Data Engineer
12 10 (2.84%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (20.17%) REST
2 50 (14.20%) LDAP
3 47 (13.35%) SOAP
4 25 (7.10%) OAuth
5 23 (6.53%) .NET
6 20 (5.68%) Web Services
7 17 (4.83%) SAML
8 14 (3.98%) Node.js
9 13 (3.69%) JWT
10 12 (3.41%) .NET Framework
10 12 (3.41%) Elastic Stack
10 12 (3.41%) Microsoft Graph
10 12 (3.41%) RESTful
11 11 (3.13%) Pandas
11 11 (3.13%) PyTorch
12 10 (2.84%) CSS
12 10 (2.84%) FastAPI
12 10 (2.84%) JSON
12 10 (2.84%) NumPy
13 9 (2.56%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.65%) Enterprise Software
2 38 (10.80%) Security Posture
3 24 (6.82%) Onboarding
4 22 (6.25%) Replication
5 19 (5.40%) Legacy Systems
6 15 (4.26%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (3.69%) Cloud Native
7 13 (3.69%) Hybrid Cloud
8 12 (3.41%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (3.13%) Product Ownership
10 9 (2.56%) AI Agents
11 8 (2.27%) Data Centre
11 8 (2.27%) Low-Code
12 7 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (1.99%) Virtual Team
13 6 (1.70%) Clustering
14 5 (1.42%) FlexPod
15 4 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
15 4 (1.14%) Management Information System
15 4 (1.14%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 76 (21.59%) Windows
2 68 (19.32%) Linux
3 29 (8.24%) Windows Server
4 20 (5.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (3.98%) Unix
6 8 (2.27%) Mac OS
6 8 (2.27%) Windows 10
7 6 (1.70%) VMS
8 5 (1.42%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.42%) Data ONTAP
9 3 (0.85%) CentOS
10 2 (0.57%) AIX
10 2 (0.57%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.57%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.28%) Android
11 1 (0.28%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.28%) Solaris
11 1 (0.28%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.28%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (34.38%) Problem-Solving
2 96 (27.27%) CI/CD
3 72 (20.45%) DevOps
4 64 (18.18%) AI
5 56 (15.91%) Agile
6 52 (14.77%) Disaster Recovery
7 49 (13.92%) High Availability
8 47 (13.35%) Infrastructure as Code
8 47 (13.35%) Migration
8 47 (13.35%) Technical Leadership
9 45 (12.78%) ITIL
9 45 (12.78%) ITSM
9 45 (12.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 42 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
10 42 (11.93%) SIEM
11 41 (11.65%) Observability
12 40 (11.36%) Analytics
12 40 (11.36%) Containerisation
13 39 (11.08%) Integration Patterns
14 38 (10.80%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 166 (47.16%) Python
2 148 (42.05%) PowerShell
3 63 (17.90%) SQL
4 43 (12.22%) Bash
5 36 (10.23%) Java
6 30 (8.52%) JavaScript
7 21 (5.97%) C#
8 20 (5.68%) Shell Script
9 19 (5.40%) Go
9 19 (5.40%) TypeScript
10 11 (3.13%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (2.56%) PL/SQL
11 9 (2.56%) T-SQL
12 4 (1.14%) Bicep
13 2 (0.57%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.57%) Scala
13 2 (0.57%) VBScript
14 1 (0.28%) Korn
14 1 (0.28%) REXX
14 1 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 130 (36.93%) Security Cleared
2 103 (29.26%) SC Cleared
3 25 (7.10%) Degree
4 21 (5.97%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (5.68%) DV Cleared
6 13 (3.69%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.70%) OCP
8 6 (1.70%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.14%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.14%) CISSP
10 3 (0.85%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.85%) CCNP
11 2 (0.57%) CCNA
11 2 (0.57%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.57%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.57%) MCITP
11 2 (0.57%) MCTS
11 2 (0.57%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (6.82%) Data Quality
2 17 (4.83%) GDPR
3 14 (3.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (3.13%) NIST
6 9 (2.56%) QA
7 8 (2.27%) SLA
8 3 (0.85%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.57%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.57%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.28%) GMP
10 1 (0.28%) GRC
10 1 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 93 (26.42%) Active Directory
2 33 (9.38%) Docker
3 18 (5.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (3.98%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.13%) NFS
6 7 (1.99%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (1.99%) vSphere
7 5 (1.42%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.57%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.57%) Firmware
8 2 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.28%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.28%) HDFS
9 1 (0.28%) KVM
9 1 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.28%) UAG
9 1 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 58 (16.48%) Kubernetes
2 55 (15.63%) Ansible
3 53 (15.06%) Terraform
4 25 (7.10%) Microsoft Intune
5 20 (5.68%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (5.40%) Grafana
7 15 (4.26%) SCCM
8 14 (3.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (3.98%) Prometheus
9 10 (2.84%) Progress Chef
10 7 (1.99%) Puppet
11 6 (1.70%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.42%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.14%) Nessus
13 4 (1.14%) SCOM
14 3 (0.85%) Data Guard
14 3 (0.85%) Foglight
14 3 (0.85%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.85%) Oracle RMAN
14 3 (0.85%) WSUS
Vendors
1 99 (28.13%) Microsoft
2 37 (10.51%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.66%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.66%) Centrify
4 25 (7.10%) Google
4 25 (7.10%) ServiceNow
4 25 (7.10%) VMware
5 23 (6.53%) Red Hat
6 21 (5.97%) Oracle
7 19 (5.40%) Okta
8 18 (5.11%) OpenAI
8 18 (5.11%) Splunk
9 12 (3.41%) Databricks
10 8 (2.27%) Automation Anywhere
10 8 (2.27%) Cisco
10 8 (2.27%) UiPath
11 7 (1.99%) AppDynamics
11 7 (1.99%) Palo Alto
12 6 (1.70%) Citrix
12 6 (1.70%) F5