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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 257 292
Rank change year-on-year -110 +35 +162
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 310 312 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 1.01% 0.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 1.12% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 213 168 259
10th Percentile £300 £306 £388
25th Percentile £400 £407 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £575 £582 £675
90th Percentile £625 £681 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £475 £525
% change year-on-year -1.68% -9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 16 3
10th Percentile - £19.91 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £21.00 -
Median hourly rate £19.57 £29.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -33.66% +23.95% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £46.40 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.33 £23.33 -
% change year-on-year -30.00% - -

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 43,674 27,949 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 90.88% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,163 17,650 23,450
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £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 2,623 1,373 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.86 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +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 1 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 1 July 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 1 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 -87 268 £460 -8.00% 120
UK excluding London -82 158 £467 -1.68% 76
London -70 124 £468 -6.99% 52
Work from Home -53 101 £500 -1.82% 54
North of England -35 67 £500 +5.26% 20
Yorkshire -10 50 £500 +25.00% 2
South East -34 42 £403 -19.50% 29
Scotland -28 18 £508 +10.93% 3
Midlands -61 15 £500 +2.56% 7
South West -35 13 £363 -30.29% 11
North West -42 12 £459 -3.37% 15
West Midlands -52 11 £575 +15.00% 3
North East -29 5 £275 -26.67% 3
East Midlands -15 4 £413 +7.14% 4
Wales -14 2 £543 +106.67% 3
East of England -42 1 £400 -11.11% 5

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 36 (11.61%) SharePoint
2 22 (7.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.23%) Confluence
4 6 (1.94%) Appian
5 5 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.97%) Apache
7 2 (0.65%) CMS
7 2 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.61%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.97%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.65%) Maximo
2 2 (0.65%) 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
1 141 (45.48%) Azure
2 80 (25.81%) AWS
3 55 (17.74%) Microsoft 365
4 49 (15.81%) Entra ID
5 37 (11.94%) GCP
5 37 (11.94%) GitHub
6 25 (8.06%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (7.74%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (7.74%) Power Automate
7 24 (7.74%) Power Platform
8 20 (6.45%) OpenShift
9 18 (5.81%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.48%) Azure Monitor
11 15 (4.84%) Azure Key Vault
11 15 (4.84%) Microsoft Copilot
12 14 (4.52%) PaaS
12 14 (4.52%) Serverless
13 13 (4.19%) OneDrive
13 13 (4.19%) PowerApps
14 12 (3.87%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 41 (13.23%) DNS
2 31 (10.00%) DHCP
3 21 (6.77%) Firewall
4 20 (6.45%) VPN
5 15 (4.84%) Kerberos
6 13 (4.19%) SAN
7 11 (3.55%) Network Security
8 9 (2.90%) TCP/IP
8 9 (2.90%) WAN
9 8 (2.58%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.58%) VLAN
10 5 (1.61%) LAN
10 5 (1.61%) SSH
11 4 (1.29%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.29%) Intranet
11 4 (1.29%) SSL
12 3 (0.97%) BGP
12 3 (0.97%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.97%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.97%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (11.61%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.55%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.23%) Power BI
4 8 (2.58%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.26%) Metadata
5 7 (2.26%) MySQL
6 6 (1.94%) Pinecone
6 6 (1.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.94%) Sybase ASE
7 5 (1.61%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (1.29%) Big Data
8 4 (1.29%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.29%) EDRMS
8 4 (1.29%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.29%) Tableau
9 3 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.97%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.97%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 27 (8.71%) Jenkins
2 25 (8.06%) GitLab
3 23 (7.42%) Git
4 19 (6.13%) JIRA
5 9 (2.90%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (1.94%) MLflow
7 5 (1.61%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.29%) Flyway
9 3 (0.97%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.97%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.65%) Selenium
11 1 (0.32%) Eclipse
11 1 (0.32%) HP UFT
11 1 (0.32%) IntelliJ
11 1 (0.32%) JMeter
11 1 (0.32%) JUnit
11 1 (0.32%) Maven
11 1 (0.32%) PeopleTools
11 1 (0.32%) TestNG
11 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 121 (39.03%) Social Skills
2 57 (18.39%) Finance
3 44 (14.19%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (8.39%) Banking
5 22 (7.10%) Public Sector
6 14 (4.52%) Legal
7 13 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.58%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.61%) Front Office
9 5 (1.61%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.65%) Law
11 2 (0.65%) Military
11 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.65%) Retail
12 1 (0.32%) Local Government
12 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 32 (10.32%) Developer
2 21 (6.77%) DBA
3 18 (5.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 16 (5.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 16 (5.16%) Consultant
4 16 (5.16%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 15 (4.84%) Architect
5 15 (4.84%) Senior
6 14 (4.52%) Support Engineer
7 12 (3.87%) Analyst
7 12 (3.87%) Automation Engineer
7 12 (3.87%) Data Engineer
7 12 (3.87%) Site Engineer
8 11 (3.55%) Azure Developer
8 11 (3.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 10 (3.23%) Administrator
9 10 (3.23%) Platform Engineer
9 10 (3.23%) Technical Support
10 9 (2.90%) Network Engineer
10 9 (2.90%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (13.55%) REST
2 23 (7.42%) .NET
3 21 (6.77%) OAuth
4 20 (6.45%) LDAP
4 20 (6.45%) SOAP
5 17 (5.48%) Web Services
6 15 (4.84%) Microsoft Graph
6 15 (4.84%) SAML
7 12 (3.87%) .NET Framework
8 11 (3.55%) CSS
8 11 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
8 11 (3.55%) JWT
8 11 (3.55%) React
9 10 (3.23%) AWS CDK
9 10 (3.23%) JSON
9 10 (3.23%) Node.js
9 10 (3.23%) RESTful
9 10 (3.23%) SPFx
10 9 (2.90%) Pandas
10 9 (2.90%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 25 (8.06%) Replication
2 22 (7.10%) Onboarding
3 16 (5.16%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (5.16%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (4.52%) Enterprise Software
5 13 (4.19%) Cloud Native
5 13 (4.19%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (3.87%) AI Agents
7 11 (3.55%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (3.55%) Product Ownership
8 9 (2.90%) Security Posture
9 7 (2.26%) Data Centre
9 7 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.26%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.94%) Low-Code
10 6 (1.94%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.61%) Autonomous Agent
11 5 (1.61%) Clustering
11 5 (1.61%) CMDB
11 5 (1.61%) FlexPod
Operating Systems
1 72 (23.23%) Windows
2 58 (18.71%) Linux
3 30 (9.68%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (4.19%) Unix
6 9 (2.90%) Windows 10
7 8 (2.58%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.94%) VMS
9 5 (1.61%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.61%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.65%) AIX
10 2 (0.65%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.65%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.32%) Rocky
11 1 (0.32%) Solaris
11 1 (0.32%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (27.42%) Problem-Solving
2 81 (26.13%) CI/CD
3 69 (22.26%) DevOps
4 64 (20.65%) AI
5 53 (17.10%) Agile
6 49 (15.81%) High Availability
7 48 (15.48%) Disaster Recovery
7 48 (15.48%) ITIL
8 45 (14.52%) Migration
9 41 (13.23%) Continuous Improvement
10 40 (12.90%) Analytics
11 38 (12.26%) Infrastructure as Code
11 38 (12.26%) Workflow
12 37 (11.94%) Observability
13 34 (10.97%) Containerisation
14 33 (10.65%) Change Management
14 33 (10.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 30 (9.68%) Performance Tuning
16 28 (9.03%) Data Protection
16 28 (9.03%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 137 (44.19%) Python
2 117 (37.74%) PowerShell
3 60 (19.35%) SQL
4 40 (12.90%) Bash
5 27 (8.71%) JavaScript
6 25 (8.06%) Java
7 19 (6.13%) C#
8 18 (5.81%) TypeScript
9 14 (4.52%) Go
10 12 (3.87%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (2.90%) Shell Script
11 9 (2.90%) T-SQL
12 7 (2.26%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.61%) Bicep
14 2 (0.65%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.65%) Scala
14 2 (0.65%) VBScript
15 1 (0.32%) ABAP
15 1 (0.32%) Perl
15 1 (0.32%) REXX
Qualifications
1 94 (30.32%) Security Cleared
2 70 (22.58%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.68%) Degree
4 22 (7.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (6.13%) DV Cleared
6 9 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.61%) OCP
8 5 (1.61%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.29%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.29%) CISSP
10 3 (0.97%) CCNP
11 2 (0.65%) CCNA
11 2 (0.65%) CISM
11 2 (0.65%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.65%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.65%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.65%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (8.06%) Data Quality
2 15 (4.84%) GDPR
3 13 (4.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 11 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (3.23%) NIST
6 9 (2.90%) QA
7 7 (2.26%) SLA
8 3 (0.97%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.97%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.65%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.32%) GMP
10 1 (0.32%) GRC
System Software
1 65 (20.97%) Active Directory
2 25 (8.06%) Docker
3 19 (6.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.52%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.55%) NFS
6 7 (2.26%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (2.26%) vSphere
7 5 (1.61%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.65%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.65%) Firmware
8 2 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.32%) KVM
9 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.32%) UAG
9 1 (0.32%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 51 (16.45%) Ansible
2 48 (15.48%) Kubernetes
3 47 (15.16%) Terraform
4 26 (8.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (5.81%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.84%) SCCM
7 13 (4.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 12 (3.87%) Grafana
9 11 (3.55%) Prometheus
10 9 (2.90%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.94%) Puppet
11 6 (1.94%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.61%) SCOM
12 5 (1.61%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.29%) Nessus
13 4 (1.29%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.97%) Foglight
14 3 (0.97%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.97%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.97%) WSUS
Vendors
1 102 (32.90%) Microsoft
2 26 (8.39%) VMware
3 23 (7.42%) Google
3 23 (7.42%) ServiceNow
4 21 (6.77%) Red Hat
5 18 (5.81%) Okta
6 16 (5.16%) OpenAI
7 15 (4.84%) Oracle
7 15 (4.84%) Splunk
8 12 (3.87%) Databricks
9 9 (2.90%) Cisco
10 7 (2.26%) CyberArk
10 7 (2.26%) Palo Alto
11 6 (1.94%) AppDynamics
11 6 (1.94%) Automation Anywhere
11 6 (1.94%) Bloomberg
11 6 (1.94%) Citrix
11 6 (1.94%) Sybase
11 6 (1.94%) UiPath
12 5 (1.61%) NetApp