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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 389 259 249
Rank change year-on-year -130 -10 +138
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 325 342 365
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 1.03% 0.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.14% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 198 244
10th Percentile £325 £309 £352
25th Percentile £411 £400 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -3.10%
75th Percentile £564 £575 £625
90th Percentile £672 £641 £705
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £470
% change year-on-year +8.42% +1.06% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 7 3
10th Percentile £16.33 £17.89 -
25th Percentile £17.44 £40.28 -
Median hourly rate £24.42 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -61.54% +166.81% -
75th Percentile £62.48 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £65.35 £66.05 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.25 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -66.54% - -

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 46,126 29,916 32,545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.50% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,740 18,573 19,640
10th Percentile £325 £295 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,322 1,863 1,307
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.95 £65.23 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.05% -47.49% -

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 October 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 October 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 8 October 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 -99 276 £500 +3.63% 533
UK excluding London -101 170 £515 +8.42% 228
London -102 110 £450 -6.01% 308
Work from Home -86 97 £500 - 194
North of England -39 70 £500 +10.38% 77
South East -39 51 £538 +12.57% 60
Yorkshire -17 40 £516 +10.95% 17
North West -43 26 £492 +8.64% 52
Midlands -69 16 £600 +15.38% 23
Scotland -29 13 £438 -5.41% 11
West Midlands -64 12 £600 +14.29% 15
South West -35 11 £535 - 22
East of England -46 10 £440 -7.37% 25
East Midlands -12 4 - - 8
North East -36 4 £275 +37.50% 8
Northern Ireland +9 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 31 (9.54%) SharePoint
2 17 (5.23%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.15%) Confluence
4 5 (1.54%) Apache
4 5 (1.54%) JBoss
5 4 (1.23%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.92%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.92%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.92%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.92%) WebLogic Portal
7 2 (0.62%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.31%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.31%) CMS
8 1 (0.31%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.31%) IIS
8 1 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.31%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 6 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.62%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.46%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.85%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.23%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.92%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.31%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.31%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.31%) PeopleSoft HCM
6 1 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 125 (38.46%) Azure
2 82 (25.23%) AWS
3 44 (13.54%) Microsoft 365
4 38 (11.69%) GitHub
5 36 (11.08%) Entra ID
5 36 (11.08%) GCP
6 30 (9.23%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (8.92%) Power Platform
8 26 (8.00%) Amazon S3
8 26 (8.00%) GitHub Actions
9 23 (7.08%) Microsoft Copilot
10 22 (6.77%) Azure Monitor
11 20 (6.15%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (6.15%) Serverless
12 19 (5.85%) Datadog
12 19 (5.85%) Power Automate
13 16 (4.92%) OpenShift
14 15 (4.62%) AWS CloudFormation
15 14 (4.31%) OneDrive
15 14 (4.31%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 52 (16.00%) DNS
2 31 (9.54%) DHCP
3 30 (9.23%) VPN
4 29 (8.92%) Firewall
5 23 (7.08%) TCP/IP
6 19 (5.85%) Network Security
7 9 (2.77%) SSH
8 8 (2.46%) VLAN
9 7 (2.15%) SAN
9 7 (2.15%) WAN
10 6 (1.85%) Kerberos
10 6 (1.85%) SD-WAN
10 6 (1.85%) Skype
10 6 (1.85%) Wireless
11 5 (1.54%) BIG-IP
12 4 (1.23%) Intranet
12 4 (1.23%) PSTN
12 4 (1.23%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
13 3 (0.92%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.62%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (3.69%) Power BI
4 11 (3.38%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (3.38%) Metadata
5 9 (2.77%) Hadoop
5 9 (2.77%) MySQL
5 9 (2.77%) Relational Database
6 8 (2.46%) Big Data
7 7 (2.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.85%) Oracle Database
8 6 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (1.54%) Parquet
9 5 (1.54%) Sybase ASE
10 4 (1.23%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.23%) EDRMS
11 3 (0.92%) BigQuery
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 10g
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 11g
11 3 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 42 (12.92%) Git
2 27 (8.31%) GitLab
3 22 (6.77%) Jenkins
4 12 (3.69%) JIRA
5 4 (1.23%) Flyway
5 4 (1.23%) Oracle Forms
5 4 (1.23%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.92%) Oracle APEX
6 3 (0.92%) Subversion
6 3 (0.92%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.62%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.62%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.62%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.62%) JUnit
7 2 (0.62%) Maven
7 2 (0.62%) Postman
7 2 (0.62%) Selenium
7 2 (0.62%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.31%) Eclipse
General
1 104 (32.00%) Social Skills
2 61 (18.77%) Analytical Skills
3 59 (18.15%) Finance
4 34 (10.46%) Banking
5 17 (5.23%) Legal
6 16 (4.92%) Public Sector
7 7 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.15%) Front Office
7 7 (2.15%) Organisational Skills
8 6 (1.85%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.23%) Military
10 3 (0.92%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.62%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.62%) Automotive
11 2 (0.62%) Billing
11 2 (0.62%) Law
11 2 (0.62%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.62%) Marketing
11 2 (0.62%) Retail
12 1 (0.31%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 49 (15.08%) Senior
2 32 (9.85%) Support Engineer
3 31 (9.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (7.38%) Developer
4 24 (7.38%) DevOps Engineer
5 22 (6.77%) Cloud Engineer
6 18 (5.54%) Analyst
7 17 (5.23%) Data Engineer
7 17 (5.23%) DBA
8 16 (4.92%) Platform Engineer
9 14 (4.31%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 13 (4.00%) Consultant
11 11 (3.38%) Architect
11 11 (3.38%) Site Engineer
12 10 (3.08%) Azure Engineer
12 10 (3.08%) Lead
12 10 (3.08%) Linux Engineer
12 10 (3.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 9 (2.77%) Security Engineer
14 8 (2.46%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (23.69%) Terraform
2 35 (10.77%) REST
3 20 (6.15%) ARM Templates
4 19 (5.85%) React
5 15 (4.62%) JSON
6 14 (4.31%) .NET
7 13 (4.00%) SOAP
8 12 (3.69%) CSS
9 11 (3.38%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (3.38%) HTML
9 11 (3.38%) Kafka
9 11 (3.38%) YAML
10 10 (3.08%) Node.js
11 9 (2.77%) RESTful
11 9 (2.77%) SPFx
11 9 (2.77%) XML
12 7 (2.15%) ASP.NET
12 7 (2.15%) Middleware
13 6 (1.85%) AngularJS
13 6 (1.85%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.08%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.46%) Onboarding
3 19 (5.85%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (4.92%) AI Agents
4 16 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (4.00%) Clustering
5 13 (4.00%) Data Protection Act
6 12 (3.69%) Management Information System
7 10 (3.08%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.08%) Private Cloud
7 10 (3.08%) Replication
7 10 (3.08%) Self-Motivation
8 9 (2.77%) CMDB
8 9 (2.77%) Product Ownership
9 8 (2.46%) Public Cloud
10 7 (2.15%) Virtual Team
11 6 (1.85%) Blackberry
12 5 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (1.54%) ARM Cortex
12 5 (1.54%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 66 (20.31%) Linux
1 66 (20.31%) Windows
2 27 (8.31%) Windows Server
3 21 (6.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (4.31%) Unix
4 14 (4.31%) Windows 10
5 13 (4.00%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (2.46%) Android
7 7 (2.15%) Mac OS
7 7 (2.15%) Windows 7
8 6 (1.85%) Windows Server 2003
9 3 (0.92%) AIX
9 3 (0.92%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.62%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.62%) VMS
10 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.62%) zOS
11 1 (0.31%) MVS
11 1 (0.31%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (32.31%) CI/CD
2 93 (28.62%) DevOps
3 77 (23.69%) Infrastructure as Code
4 70 (21.54%) ITIL
5 69 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
6 66 (20.31%) Agile
7 56 (17.23%) AI
8 53 (16.31%) Continuous Improvement
9 51 (15.69%) Migration
9 51 (15.69%) Observability
10 47 (14.46%) Root Cause Analysis
10 47 (14.46%) Workflow
11 43 (13.23%) Performance Tuning
12 40 (12.31%) Containerisation
13 38 (11.69%) Disaster Recovery
13 38 (11.69%) ITSM
14 37 (11.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 37 (11.38%) Runbook
15 34 (10.46%) Analytics
16 33 (10.15%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 149 (45.85%) Python
2 114 (35.08%) PowerShell
3 71 (21.85%) SQL
4 63 (19.38%) Bash
5 38 (11.69%) JavaScript
6 23 (7.08%) Bicep
7 17 (5.23%) Go
7 17 (5.23%) Java
8 15 (4.62%) TypeScript
9 14 (4.31%) T-SQL
10 13 (4.00%) Shell Script
11 9 (2.77%) C#
12 7 (2.15%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.54%) Perl
13 5 (1.54%) VBScript
14 2 (0.62%) C++
14 2 (0.62%) REXX
14 2 (0.62%) Scala
15 1 (0.31%) C
15 1 (0.31%) JCL
Qualifications
1 113 (34.77%) Security Cleared
2 69 (21.23%) SC Cleared
3 46 (14.15%) DV Cleared
4 35 (10.77%) Degree
5 18 (5.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (4.92%) Azure Certification
7 14 (4.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.85%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.92%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.92%) CCNA
10 3 (0.92%) CCNP
11 2 (0.62%) CIPD
11 2 (0.62%) CISM
11 2 (0.62%) CISSP
11 2 (0.62%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.62%) GSEC
11 2 (0.62%) OSCP
12 1 (0.31%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 17 (5.23%) SLA
3 12 (3.69%) QA
4 9 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.54%) NIST
6 4 (1.23%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.23%) SOC 2
7 3 (0.92%) GDPR
8 2 (0.62%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.31%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
9 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 64 (19.69%) Active Directory
2 32 (9.85%) Docker
3 30 (9.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (4.62%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (4.31%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (2.77%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (2.15%) Hyper-V
7 7 (2.15%) vSphere
8 6 (1.85%) NFS
9 1 (0.31%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.31%) Firmware
9 1 (0.31%) NDS
9 1 (0.31%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 1 (0.31%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.31%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 52 (16.00%) Ansible
2 49 (15.08%) Kubernetes
3 26 (8.00%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (7.69%) SCCM
5 20 (6.15%) Grafana
6 18 (5.54%) Prometheus
7 17 (5.23%) SCOM
8 16 (4.92%) Puppet
9 14 (4.31%) vCenter Server
10 11 (3.38%) Progress Chef
10 11 (3.38%) Red Hat Satellite
11 7 (2.15%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (1.54%) Oracle RMAN
14 3 (0.92%) Istio
14 3 (0.92%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 2 (0.62%) linkerd
15 2 (0.62%) Nagios
15 2 (0.62%) Podman
15 2 (0.62%) WSUS
Vendors
1 116 (35.69%) Microsoft
2 34 (10.46%) VMware
3 28 (8.62%) Google
4 23 (7.08%) ServiceNow
5 20 (6.15%) Oracle
5 20 (6.15%) Red Hat
6 19 (5.85%) Splunk
7 15 (4.62%) SolarWinds
8 12 (3.69%) Broadcom
9 10 (3.08%) Cisco
10 9 (2.77%) BMC
10 9 (2.77%) Remedy
11 8 (2.46%) Dynatrace
11 8 (2.46%) OpenAI
12 7 (2.15%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.15%) Citrix
13 6 (1.85%) Ivanti
13 6 (1.85%) Okta
14 5 (1.54%) BeyondTrust
14 5 (1.54%) CrowdStrike