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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 245 227 361
Rank change year-on-year -18 +134 +89
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 408 345 241
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.11% 0.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.23% 1.25% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 287 212 183
10th Percentile £320 £342 £364
25th Percentile £400 £400 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £591 £588 £625
90th Percentile £750 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 9 0
10th Percentile £47.98 - -
25th Percentile £50.94 £21.00 -
Median hourly rate £56.25 £24.66 -
Median % change year-on-year +128.10% - -
75th Percentile £61.94 £34.29 -
90th Percentile £65.13 £65.62 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £23.77 -
% change year-on-year +179.79% - -

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 33,264 27,700 38,783
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.38% 89.09% 87.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,060 16,780 25,534
10th Percentile £305 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £643
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,011 875 1,974
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -9.72% +12.50%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.71 £30.43 £37.50
% change year-on-year -18.80% -18.85% +44.23%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 -23 347 £500 +5.26% 169
UK excluding London -24 202 £463 -1.60% 154
London -11 163 £575 +8.24% 41
Work from Home +29 151 £550 +15.79% 67
North of England -34 61 £447 -4.24% 30
South East -16 46 £430 +7.44% 52
Midlands -34 42 £520 +7.44% 18
West Midlands -12 41 £535 +8.74% 8
Yorkshire -26 32 £449 +8.73% 11
Scotland +13 25 £365 -26.45% 8
North West -32 25 £446 -5.11% 12
South West -27 18 £525 +11.70% 26
East of England -19 8 £500 -2.44% 22
North East -13 4 £365 -22.34% 7
Wales - 2 £506 - 4
Northern Ireland - 2 £683 - 2
East Midlands -27 1 £450 +13.92% 9

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 (5.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 19 (4.66%) SharePoint
3 11 (2.70%) Confluence
4 8 (1.96%) IIS
5 6 (1.47%) Apache
5 6 (1.47%) Appian
6 5 (1.23%) iPlanet
6 5 (1.23%) JBoss
6 5 (1.23%) OpenStack
6 5 (1.23%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.23%) WebSphere Application Server
7 4 (0.98%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.49%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.25%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.25%) CMS
9 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 24 (5.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.98%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.74%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.49%) Maximo
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
1 2 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.25%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 197 (48.28%) Azure
2 141 (34.56%) AWS
3 102 (25.00%) GCP
4 48 (11.76%) Entra ID
5 38 (9.31%) GitHub
6 37 (9.07%) Microsoft 365
7 35 (8.58%) OpenShift
8 29 (7.11%) GitHub Actions
9 26 (6.37%) AWS CloudFormation
9 26 (6.37%) Azure DevOps
10 23 (5.64%) Serverless
11 22 (5.39%) Power Platform
12 19 (4.66%) Power Automate
13 16 (3.92%) Amazon S3
14 15 (3.68%) Amazon EKS
15 14 (3.43%) Datadog
16 12 (2.94%) AWS Lambda
16 12 (2.94%) OneDrive
17 11 (2.70%) Azure AKS
18 10 (2.45%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 37 (9.07%) DNS
2 35 (8.58%) Firewall
3 29 (7.11%) DHCP
4 21 (5.15%) Kerberos
5 18 (4.41%) SSH
5 18 (4.41%) TCP/IP
6 15 (3.68%) Network Security
7 11 (2.70%) VPN
8 9 (2.21%) WAN
9 8 (1.96%) LAN
10 5 (1.23%) WLAN
11 4 (0.98%) AMQP
11 4 (0.98%) Cisco IOS
11 4 (0.98%) HTTP
12 3 (0.74%) BGP
12 3 (0.74%) NX-OS
12 3 (0.74%) SSL
13 2 (0.49%) DWDM
13 2 (0.49%) Internet
13 2 (0.49%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (7.60%) SQL Server
2 28 (6.86%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (5.39%) Relational Database
4 16 (3.92%) Oracle Database
4 16 (3.92%) Power BI
5 10 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (2.45%) MySQL
6 8 (1.96%) Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.72%) Pinecone
8 6 (1.47%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.23%) MongoDB
9 5 (1.23%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.23%) Oracle Reports
9 5 (1.23%) Power Query
9 5 (1.23%) Tableau
10 4 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.98%) BigQuery
10 4 (0.98%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.98%) InfluxDB
10 4 (0.98%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 52 (12.75%) Jenkins
2 50 (12.25%) Git
3 39 (9.56%) GitLab
4 19 (4.66%) Sonatype Nexus
5 17 (4.17%) JIRA
6 11 (2.70%) Bitbucket
6 11 (2.70%) CircleCI
7 10 (2.45%) Maven
8 8 (1.96%) SonarQube
9 6 (1.47%) Artifactory
9 6 (1.47%) JUnit
9 6 (1.47%) MLflow
9 6 (1.47%) Postman
9 6 (1.47%) Selenium
10 5 (1.23%) Bitbucket Server
10 5 (1.23%) CA Release Automation
10 5 (1.23%) Cypress.io
10 5 (1.23%) JMeter
10 5 (1.23%) LoadRunner
10 5 (1.23%) Snyk
General
1 167 (40.93%) Social Skills
2 66 (16.18%) Finance
3 59 (14.46%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.56%) Public Sector
5 27 (6.62%) Banking
6 7 (1.72%) Investment Banking
6 7 (1.72%) Legal
6 7 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.47%) Retail
8 5 (1.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (0.98%) Games
10 3 (0.74%) Front Office
10 3 (0.74%) Law
10 3 (0.74%) Military
10 3 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.49%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.25%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (11.03%) Developer
2 41 (10.05%) Architect
3 37 (9.07%) CyberArk Architect
4 29 (7.11%) Administrator
4 29 (7.11%) DevOps Engineer
5 24 (5.88%) Analyst
5 24 (5.88%) Senior
6 21 (5.15%) Automation Engineer
7 20 (4.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 18 (4.41%) Platform Engineer
9 17 (4.17%) Java Developer
10 15 (3.68%) DBA
10 15 (3.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 14 (3.43%) Site Engineer
12 13 (3.19%) Lead
13 12 (2.94%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 11 (2.70%) Network Engineer
14 11 (2.70%) Support Engineer
15 10 (2.45%) Consultant
15 10 (2.45%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (14.95%) REST
2 54 (13.24%) LDAP
3 39 (9.56%) SOAP
4 31 (7.60%) OAuth
5 26 (6.37%) Elastic Stack
6 25 (6.13%) Node.js
7 23 (5.64%) SAML
8 15 (3.68%) .NET
9 13 (3.19%) Kafka
9 13 (3.19%) Web Services
10 12 (2.94%) FastAPI
11 11 (2.70%) RESTful
12 10 (2.45%) Pandas
13 9 (2.21%) JSON
13 9 (2.21%) Microsoft Graph
13 9 (2.21%) OpenID
13 9 (2.21%) YAML
14 8 (1.96%) JWT
14 8 (1.96%) NumPy
15 7 (1.72%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 43 (10.54%) Security Posture
2 41 (10.05%) Enterprise Software
3 23 (5.64%) Onboarding
4 21 (5.15%) Replication
5 20 (4.90%) Cloud Native
6 19 (4.66%) Distributed Systems
7 9 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (1.96%) Low-Code
8 8 (1.96%) Private Cloud
9 7 (1.72%) Clustering
9 7 (1.72%) Data Centre
9 7 (1.72%) PKI
10 6 (1.47%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.23%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.23%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.23%) Product Ownership
12 4 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.98%) Data Structures
12 4 (0.98%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 110 (26.96%) Linux
2 83 (20.34%) Windows
3 33 (8.09%) Windows Server
4 29 (7.11%) Unix
5 13 (3.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (2.21%) VMS
7 8 (1.96%) CentOS
8 4 (0.98%) AIX
8 4 (0.98%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.74%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.74%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.25%) Android
10 1 (0.25%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (40.69%) Problem-Solving
2 143 (35.05%) CI/CD
3 103 (25.25%) DevOps
4 70 (17.16%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (15.93%) Containerisation
6 59 (14.46%) Agile
7 57 (13.97%) SIEM
8 51 (12.50%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 50 (12.25%) Disaster Recovery
9 50 (12.25%) High Availability
10 45 (11.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 42 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
11 42 (10.29%) Identity Access Management
12 41 (10.05%) Migration
12 41 (10.05%) Observability
12 41 (10.05%) Technical Leadership
13 40 (9.80%) Privileged Access Management
14 39 (9.56%) Configuration Management
14 39 (9.56%) Root Cause Analysis
14 39 (9.56%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 220 (53.92%) Python
2 155 (37.99%) PowerShell
3 70 (17.16%) Bash
4 68 (16.67%) SQL
5 60 (14.71%) Java
6 44 (10.78%) Shell Script
7 35 (8.58%) Go
8 26 (6.37%) JavaScript
9 22 (5.39%) TypeScript
10 15 (3.68%) C#
11 12 (2.94%) Kusto Query Language
11 12 (2.94%) VBA
12 11 (2.70%) Perl
13 10 (2.45%) Bicep
14 6 (1.47%) Groovy
14 6 (1.47%) PL/SQL
15 4 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 3 (0.74%) PHP
16 3 (0.74%) Ruby
17 2 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 145 (35.54%) Security Cleared
2 112 (27.45%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.11%) Degree
4 25 (6.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 14 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (2.94%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (1.96%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.96%) CISSP
10 7 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.47%) CCNP
12 5 (1.23%) Master's Degree
12 5 (1.23%) OCP
12 5 (1.23%) Oracle Certification
13 4 (0.98%) CFCE
13 4 (0.98%) GCFA
13 4 (0.98%) GCIA
13 4 (0.98%) GCIH
13 4 (0.98%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (9.31%) GDPR
2 23 (5.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (4.41%) NIST
4 16 (3.92%) Data Quality
5 14 (3.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (2.45%) QA
7 6 (1.47%) SLA
8 5 (1.23%) HIPAA
8 5 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.74%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.49%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.25%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.25%) COBIT
11 1 (0.25%) GMP
11 1 (0.25%) GRC
11 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.25%) PMO
System Software
1 90 (22.06%) Active Directory
2 64 (15.69%) Docker
3 23 (5.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.47%) Oracle RAC
4 6 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.23%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 4 (0.98%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.74%) KVM
7 3 (0.74%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.74%) Xen
8 2 (0.49%) Firmware
9 1 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.25%) HDFS
9 1 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.25%) RHEV
9 1 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.25%) vSphere
9 1 (0.25%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 88 (21.57%) Kubernetes
2 84 (20.59%) Terraform
3 70 (17.16%) Ansible
4 47 (11.52%) Grafana
5 40 (9.80%) Prometheus
6 25 (6.13%) Single Sign-On
7 24 (5.88%) Progress Chef
8 16 (3.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 16 (3.92%) Puppet
9 13 (3.19%) Microsoft Intune
9 13 (3.19%) SCCM
10 11 (2.70%) Oracle RMAN
11 8 (1.96%) Podman
12 7 (1.72%) Data Guard
13 6 (1.47%) CA Single Sign-On
13 6 (1.47%) NetBackup
14 5 (1.23%) CA Wily
14 5 (1.23%) Kibana
14 5 (1.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 5 (1.23%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 102 (25.00%) Microsoft
2 52 (12.75%) CyberArk
3 42 (10.29%) BeyondTrust
4 40 (9.80%) Oracle
5 34 (8.33%) Centrify
5 34 (8.33%) Google
6 32 (7.84%) Splunk
7 24 (5.88%) VMware
8 18 (4.41%) Okta
9 17 (4.17%) Red Hat
10 15 (3.68%) ServiceNow
11 13 (3.19%) OpenAI
12 11 (2.70%) Cisco
13 8 (1.96%) Databricks
13 8 (1.96%) Palo Alto
14 7 (1.72%) F5
14 7 (1.72%) IBM
15 6 (1.47%) Atlassian
15 6 (1.47%) SAP
15 6 (1.47%) Veritas