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 14 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 255 252 387
Rank change year-on-year -3 +135 +64
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 360 360 258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 0.98% 0.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.13% 1.14% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 231 192
10th Percentile £308 £356 £353
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £493 £506
Median % change year-on-year -3.55% -2.72% -11.96%
75th Percentile £575 £608 £625
90th Percentile £626 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +0.21% -6.00% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 0
10th Percentile £18.12 - -
25th Percentile £39.20 - -
Median hourly rate £63.50 £23.80 -
Median % change year-on-year +166.81% - -
75th Percentile £65.25 - -
90th Percentile £65.85 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 - -

All Process and 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 31,960 31,635 41,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.93% 86.21% 88.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,027 19,055 27,781
10th Percentile £295 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,098 1,126 1,593
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.12 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -19.54% +24.29%
75th Percentile £44.40 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £73.53 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -31.42% -24.83% +48.81%

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 14 November 2025.

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 14 November 2025.

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 14 November 2025. 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 -38 298 £488 +1.14% 253
UK excluding London -10 176 £471 +0.21% 124
London -8 141 £494 -10.23% 149
Work from Home +16 110 £455 -7.81% 130
North of England -37 48 £450 -2.17% 35
Midlands -18 38 £520 +9.94% 14
West Midlands -15 35 £535 +10.54% 8
South East -7 34 £445 -4.91% 33
Yorkshire -26 25 £450 +9.09% 9
North West -24 23 £446 -3.31% 23
Scotland +4 20 £460 -12.38% 16
East of England -8 17 £475 +11.76% 8
South West -16 13 £525 +10.53% 17
Wales +7 7 £263 -46.15% 1
East Midlands -18 3 £450 +0.22% 6
Northern Ireland -6 1 £690 - 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 21 (5.83%) Confluence
1 21 (5.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 15 (4.17%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.50%) Apache
4 8 (2.22%) IIS
5 5 (1.39%) iPlanet
5 5 (1.39%) JBoss
5 5 (1.39%) WebSphere
5 5 (1.39%) WebSphere Application Server
6 4 (1.11%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.28%) CICS
8 1 (0.28%) CMS
8 1 (0.28%) MQSeries
8 1 (0.28%) OpenEdge
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 23 (6.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.56%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.28%) AutoCAD
4 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.11%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.56%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.28%) Eikon
3 1 (0.28%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.28%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 132 (36.67%) Azure
2 93 (25.83%) AWS
3 60 (16.67%) GCP
4 38 (10.56%) GitHub
5 37 (10.28%) Microsoft 365
6 32 (8.89%) GitHub Actions
7 30 (8.33%) Entra ID
8 26 (7.22%) Azure DevOps
9 22 (6.11%) Serverless
10 21 (5.83%) OpenShift
11 17 (4.72%) Azure Logic Apps
11 17 (4.72%) Power Platform
12 13 (3.61%) AWS CloudFormation
13 12 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
13 12 (3.33%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (3.06%) Azure AKS
14 11 (3.06%) Datadog
14 11 (3.06%) Power Automate
15 10 (2.78%) Amazon EC2
15 10 (2.78%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 46 (12.78%) Firewall
2 17 (4.72%) DNS
3 15 (4.17%) Network Security
4 14 (3.89%) TCP/IP
5 12 (3.33%) DHCP
6 9 (2.50%) SSH
6 9 (2.50%) VPN
7 8 (2.22%) BGP
8 7 (1.94%) WAN
9 6 (1.67%) Cisco IOS
10 5 (1.39%) Kerberos
10 5 (1.39%) NX-OS
10 5 (1.39%) OpenLDAP
10 5 (1.39%) PSTN
11 4 (1.11%) HTTP
11 4 (1.11%) LAN
11 4 (1.11%) OSPF
11 4 (1.11%) VoIP
11 4 (1.11%) WLAN
12 3 (0.83%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (9.72%) SQL Server
2 21 (5.83%) Relational Database
3 20 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (5.28%) Oracle Database
5 14 (3.89%) NoSQL
6 10 (2.78%) MySQL
7 9 (2.50%) Big Data
7 9 (2.50%) BigQuery
7 9 (2.50%) Power BI
8 8 (2.22%) RDBMS
9 7 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
10 6 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
10 6 (1.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (1.39%) Azure SQL Database
11 5 (1.39%) Metadata
11 5 (1.39%) Redis
12 4 (1.11%) MongoDB
12 4 (1.11%) Tableau
13 3 (0.83%) Apache Cassandra
13 3 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 68 (18.89%) Git
2 48 (13.33%) Jenkins
3 31 (8.61%) GitLab
4 28 (7.78%) JIRA
5 16 (4.44%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (3.06%) Bitbucket
7 9 (2.50%) JUnit
7 9 (2.50%) Maven
8 8 (2.22%) Artifactory
9 7 (1.94%) Postman
9 7 (1.94%) Selenium
9 7 (1.94%) SonarQube
10 6 (1.67%) CircleCI
10 6 (1.67%) Gatling
10 6 (1.67%) JMeter
10 6 (1.67%) LoadRunner
11 5 (1.39%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.39%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.39%) Cypress.io
12 4 (1.11%) Snyk
General
1 127 (35.28%) Social Skills
2 64 (17.78%) Finance
3 55 (15.28%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (9.17%) Banking
5 31 (8.61%) Public Sector
6 11 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
6 11 (3.06%) Manufacturing
7 9 (2.50%) Investment Banking
7 9 (2.50%) Legal
8 8 (2.22%) Marketing
9 7 (1.94%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.67%) Electronics
10 6 (1.67%) Front Office
10 6 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.67%) Retail
11 5 (1.39%) Games
12 4 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.83%) Law
13 3 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 38 (10.56%) Developer
2 34 (9.44%) Senior
3 32 (8.89%) DevOps Engineer
4 27 (7.50%) Analyst
5 20 (5.56%) Administrator
5 20 (5.56%) Automation Engineer
6 18 (5.00%) Support Engineer
7 15 (4.17%) Consultant
7 15 (4.17%) Network Engineer
8 14 (3.89%) DBA
8 14 (3.89%) Platform Engineer
9 13 (3.61%) Python Engineer
10 12 (3.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.33%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (3.06%) Data Engineer
11 11 (3.06%) Java Developer
11 11 (3.06%) Lead
12 10 (2.78%) NetBackup Engineer
13 9 (2.50%) Applications Engineer
14 8 (2.22%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (8.89%) REST
2 15 (4.17%) Elastic Stack
2 15 (4.17%) Node.js
3 14 (3.89%) .NET
3 14 (3.89%) FastAPI
3 14 (3.89%) Kafka
4 12 (3.33%) LDAP
5 11 (3.06%) OAuth
6 9 (2.50%) GraphQL
6 9 (2.50%) YAML
7 8 (2.22%) ARM Templates
7 8 (2.22%) OpenID
7 8 (2.22%) RESTful
7 8 (2.22%) SAML
8 7 (1.94%) Microsoft Graph
8 7 (1.94%) Web Services
9 6 (1.67%) AngularJS
9 6 (1.67%) Flask
9 6 (1.67%) OAuth2
9 6 (1.67%) React
Miscellaneous
1 21 (5.83%) Onboarding
2 17 (4.72%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (3.89%) Cloud Native
3 14 (3.89%) Security Posture
4 11 (3.06%) Private Cloud
5 10 (2.78%) AI Agents
5 10 (2.78%) Cyber Threat
6 9 (2.50%) Data Centre
7 8 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (2.22%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.94%) Clustering
8 7 (1.94%) Replication
9 6 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.67%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (1.67%) Linux Command Line
9 6 (1.67%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.67%) Security Operations Centre
10 4 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.83%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 91 (25.28%) Linux
2 60 (16.67%) Windows
3 26 (7.22%) Unix
4 17 (4.72%) Windows Server
5 10 (2.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (2.22%) CentOS
7 7 (1.94%) VMS
8 5 (1.39%) AIX
8 5 (1.39%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.83%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.56%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.28%) Android
11 1 (0.28%) Debian
11 1 (0.28%) Solaris
11 1 (0.28%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (34.44%) Problem-Solving
2 117 (32.50%) CI/CD
3 110 (30.56%) DevOps
4 81 (22.50%) Agile
5 64 (17.78%) Infrastructure as Code
6 58 (16.11%) Containerisation
7 39 (10.83%) Disaster Recovery
8 38 (10.56%) Incident Response
8 38 (10.56%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 37 (10.28%) Migration
10 35 (9.72%) AI
10 35 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
11 34 (9.44%) Identity Access Management
12 32 (8.89%) High Availability
13 30 (8.33%) Analytics
13 30 (8.33%) SIEM
14 29 (8.06%) Workflow
15 28 (7.78%) Root Cause Analysis
16 26 (7.22%) ITIL
16 26 (7.22%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 191 (53.06%) Python
2 121 (33.61%) PowerShell
3 71 (19.72%) Bash
4 67 (18.61%) SQL
5 42 (11.67%) Java
6 34 (9.44%) Shell Script
7 29 (8.06%) Go
8 19 (5.28%) JavaScript
9 15 (4.17%) Bicep
10 14 (3.89%) C#
10 14 (3.89%) Kusto Query Language
10 14 (3.89%) TypeScript
11 10 (2.78%) VBA
12 9 (2.50%) Groovy
12 9 (2.50%) Perl
13 6 (1.67%) T-SQL
14 5 (1.39%) PL/SQL
15 2 (0.56%) VB
15 2 (0.56%) VB.NET
15 2 (0.56%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 80 (22.22%) Security Cleared
2 61 (16.94%) SC Cleared
3 31 (8.61%) Degree
4 16 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (3.33%) DV Cleared
5 12 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
6 11 (3.06%) Azure Certification
7 8 (2.22%) CISSP
7 8 (2.22%) Master's Degree
8 6 (1.67%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.67%) CFCE
8 6 (1.67%) GCFA
8 6 (1.67%) GCIA
8 6 (1.67%) GCIH
8 6 (1.67%) GIAC
9 5 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.11%) CCNP
10 4 (1.11%) OCP
10 4 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (7.22%) GDPR
2 19 (5.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (4.44%) NIST
3 16 (4.44%) QA
4 12 (3.33%) Data Quality
5 8 (2.22%) HIPAA
6 6 (1.67%) SLA
7 3 (0.83%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.56%) EU AI Act
8 2 (0.56%) PMO
9 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.28%) COBIT
9 1 (0.28%) GRC
9 1 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 59 (16.39%) Docker
2 44 (12.22%) Active Directory
3 29 (8.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (3.33%) Oracle RAC
5 10 (2.78%) Firmware
6 5 (1.39%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 4 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.83%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.83%) KVM
8 3 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.56%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.56%) vSphere
10 1 (0.28%) iptables
10 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.28%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 78 (21.67%) Terraform
2 66 (18.33%) Kubernetes
3 64 (17.78%) Ansible
4 34 (9.44%) Grafana
5 29 (8.06%) Prometheus
6 17 (4.72%) SCCM
7 15 (4.17%) Progress Chef
8 12 (3.33%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (3.33%) Oracle RMAN
8 12 (3.33%) Puppet
9 11 (3.06%) Data Guard
9 11 (3.06%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (2.78%) NetBackup
11 9 (2.50%) yum
12 7 (1.94%) Podman
13 6 (1.67%) CA Single Sign-On
14 5 (1.39%) CA Wily
14 5 (1.39%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
14 5 (1.39%) Kibana
14 5 (1.39%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 108 (30.00%) Microsoft
2 41 (11.39%) Oracle
3 37 (10.28%) Google
4 31 (8.61%) Splunk
4 31 (8.61%) VMware
5 19 (5.28%) CyberArk
6 16 (4.44%) Atlassian
7 14 (3.89%) Cisco
7 14 (3.89%) SAP
8 13 (3.61%) ServiceNow
9 11 (3.06%) Palo Alto
10 10 (2.78%) Veritas
11 9 (2.50%) Red Hat
12 8 (2.22%) BeyondTrust
13 7 (1.94%) F5
14 6 (1.67%) ArcSight
14 6 (1.67%) Databricks
14 6 (1.67%) IBM
14 6 (1.67%) LogRhythm
15 5 (1.39%) AppDynamics