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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 389 261 248
Rank change year-on-year -128 -13 +142
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 317 343 369
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 1.04% 0.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.68% 1.14% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 194 248
10th Percentile £320 £313 £359
25th Percentile £405 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -3.66%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £625
90th Percentile £673 £646 £702
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £472
% change year-on-year +8.32% +0.74% -5.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 7 3
10th Percentile - £17.89 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £40.28 -
Median hourly rate £23.00 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -63.78% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £62.40 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £65.70 £66.05 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -67.67% - -

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 46,382 29,970 32,481
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.48% 90.66% 85.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,008 18,622 19,630
10th Percentile £325 £300 £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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,245 1,858 1,349
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.64 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.01% -48.10% +1.18%

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 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 1 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 1 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 -117 270 £498 +1.58% 571
UK excluding London -106 162 £515 +8.32% 264
London -98 112 £450 -6.74% 326
Work from Home -83 94 £500 - 210
North of England -58 65 £500 +6.16% 80
South East -38 49 £538 +12.57% 63
Yorkshire -26 36 £516 +7.48% 19
North West -50 25 £492 +4.49% 54
Midlands -70 16 £600 +15.61% 27
Scotland -34 13 £438 -4.89% 14
South West -32 11 £535 - 34
West Midlands -60 11 £600 +15.38% 18
East of England -38 9 £480 +6.67% 33
East Midlands -14 5 £500 +19.76% 9
North East -34 4 £275 +37.50% 8
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 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 31 (9.78%) SharePoint
2 16 (5.05%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.21%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.58%) Confluence
4 5 (1.58%) JBoss
5 4 (1.26%) Apache
5 4 (1.26%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.95%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.95%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.95%) WebLogic Portal
7 2 (0.63%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.32%) CMS
8 1 (0.32%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.32%) IIS
8 1 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.63%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.52%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.89%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.26%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.32%) PeopleSoft HCM
6 1 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 121 (38.17%) Azure
2 82 (25.87%) AWS
3 46 (14.51%) Microsoft 365
4 38 (11.99%) GitHub
5 33 (10.41%) Entra ID
5 33 (10.41%) GCP
6 30 (9.46%) Power Platform
7 29 (9.15%) Azure DevOps
8 26 (8.20%) GitHub Actions
9 25 (7.89%) Amazon S3
10 23 (7.26%) Microsoft Copilot
11 20 (6.31%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (6.31%) Power Automate
11 20 (6.31%) Serverless
12 19 (5.99%) Datadog
13 18 (5.68%) Azure Monitor
14 15 (4.73%) AWS CloudFormation
15 14 (4.42%) OneDrive
15 14 (4.42%) OpenShift
15 14 (4.42%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 48 (15.14%) DNS
2 27 (8.52%) DHCP
2 27 (8.52%) VPN
3 26 (8.20%) Firewall
4 21 (6.62%) TCP/IP
5 17 (5.36%) Network Security
6 8 (2.52%) VLAN
7 7 (2.21%) SAN
7 7 (2.21%) SSH
7 7 (2.21%) WAN
8 6 (1.89%) Kerberos
8 6 (1.89%) SD-WAN
8 6 (1.89%) Skype
8 6 (1.89%) Wireless
9 5 (1.58%) BIG-IP
10 4 (1.26%) Intranet
10 4 (1.26%) PSTN
10 4 (1.26%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (0.95%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (9.15%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.10%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (3.79%) Power BI
4 11 (3.47%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (3.15%) Metadata
5 10 (3.15%) MySQL
6 9 (2.84%) Hadoop
6 9 (2.84%) Relational Database
7 8 (2.52%) Big Data
8 7 (2.21%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (2.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.89%) Oracle Database
10 5 (1.58%) Sybase ASE
11 4 (1.26%) Data Lake
11 4 (1.26%) EDRMS
11 4 (1.26%) Parquet
12 3 (0.95%) BigQuery
12 3 (0.95%) MongoDB
12 3 (0.95%) Oracle Database 10g
12 3 (0.95%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 42 (13.25%) Git
2 26 (8.20%) GitLab
3 21 (6.62%) Jenkins
4 12 (3.79%) JIRA
5 4 (1.26%) Flyway
5 4 (1.26%) Oracle Forms
5 4 (1.26%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.95%) Oracle APEX
6 3 (0.95%) Subversion
6 3 (0.95%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.63%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.63%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.63%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.63%) JUnit
7 2 (0.63%) Maven
7 2 (0.63%) Postman
7 2 (0.63%) Selenium
7 2 (0.63%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.32%) Eclipse
General
1 99 (31.23%) Social Skills
2 59 (18.61%) Analytical Skills
3 55 (17.35%) Finance
4 33 (10.41%) Banking
5 17 (5.36%) Legal
6 16 (5.05%) Public Sector
7 9 (2.84%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.21%) Front Office
9 6 (1.89%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.95%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.95%) Military
11 2 (0.63%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.63%) Billing
11 2 (0.63%) Law
11 2 (0.63%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.63%) Marketing
11 2 (0.63%) Retail
12 1 (0.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.32%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 44 (13.88%) Senior
2 31 (9.78%) Support Engineer
3 28 (8.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (7.26%) Developer
4 23 (7.26%) DevOps Engineer
5 21 (6.62%) Cloud Engineer
6 18 (5.68%) Analyst
7 17 (5.36%) DBA
8 16 (5.05%) Data Engineer
8 16 (5.05%) Platform Engineer
9 14 (4.42%) Consultant
10 13 (4.10%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (3.47%) Architect
11 11 (3.47%) Site Engineer
12 10 (3.15%) Lead
12 10 (3.15%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.84%) Azure Engineer
13 9 (2.84%) Security Engineer
14 8 (2.52%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 8 (2.52%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (23.03%) Terraform
2 35 (11.04%) REST
3 20 (6.31%) React
4 16 (5.05%) ARM Templates
5 15 (4.73%) JSON
6 14 (4.42%) .NET
7 13 (4.10%) CSS
7 13 (4.10%) SOAP
8 12 (3.79%) HTML
9 11 (3.47%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (3.47%) Kafka
10 10 (3.15%) Node.js
10 10 (3.15%) SPFx
11 9 (2.84%) RESTful
11 9 (2.84%) XML
11 9 (2.84%) YAML
12 7 (2.21%) ASP.NET
12 7 (2.21%) Middleware
13 6 (1.89%) AngularJS
13 6 (1.89%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 22 (6.94%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.62%) Onboarding
3 16 (5.05%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (4.73%) AI Agents
4 15 (4.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.10%) Clustering
5 13 (4.10%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (3.47%) Management Information System
7 10 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.15%) Private Cloud
7 10 (3.15%) Replication
7 10 (3.15%) Self-Motivation
8 9 (2.84%) CMDB
8 9 (2.84%) Product Ownership
9 8 (2.52%) Public Cloud
10 7 (2.21%) Virtual Team
11 6 (1.89%) Blackberry
12 5 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (1.58%) Autonomous Agent
12 5 (1.58%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 65 (20.50%) Windows
2 62 (19.56%) Linux
3 23 (7.26%) Windows Server
4 21 (6.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.42%) Windows 10
6 13 (4.10%) Unix
6 13 (4.10%) Windows Server 2019
7 8 (2.52%) Android
7 8 (2.52%) Mac OS
8 7 (2.21%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.89%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.95%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.63%) AIX
11 2 (0.63%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.63%) VMS
11 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.63%) zOS
12 1 (0.32%) MVS
12 1 (0.32%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (31.86%) CI/CD
2 87 (27.44%) DevOps
3 72 (22.71%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (21.77%) Problem-Solving
5 68 (21.45%) ITIL
6 67 (21.14%) Agile
7 58 (18.30%) AI
8 52 (16.40%) Continuous Improvement
9 50 (15.77%) Migration
10 48 (15.14%) Observability
11 46 (14.51%) Root Cause Analysis
11 46 (14.51%) Workflow
12 42 (13.25%) Performance Tuning
13 38 (11.99%) Containerisation
13 38 (11.99%) ITSM
14 37 (11.67%) Disaster Recovery
15 36 (11.36%) Runbook
16 33 (10.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 31 (9.78%) Analytics
17 31 (9.78%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 148 (46.69%) Python
2 110 (34.70%) PowerShell
3 70 (22.08%) SQL
4 60 (18.93%) Bash
5 38 (11.99%) JavaScript
6 19 (5.99%) Bicep
7 17 (5.36%) Go
8 16 (5.05%) Java
9 15 (4.73%) T-SQL
9 15 (4.73%) TypeScript
10 13 (4.10%) Shell Script
11 9 (2.84%) C#
12 8 (2.52%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.58%) Perl
13 5 (1.58%) VBScript
14 2 (0.63%) REXX
14 2 (0.63%) Scala
15 1 (0.32%) ABAP
15 1 (0.32%) JCL
15 1 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 110 (34.70%) Security Cleared
2 70 (22.08%) SC Cleared
3 41 (12.93%) DV Cleared
4 35 (11.04%) Degree
5 19 (5.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (4.73%) Azure Certification
7 14 (4.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.89%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.95%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.95%) CCNA
11 3 (0.95%) CCNP
12 2 (0.63%) CIPD
12 2 (0.63%) CISM
12 2 (0.63%) CISSP
12 2 (0.63%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.63%) GSEC
12 2 (0.63%) OSCP
13 1 (0.32%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 17 (5.36%) SLA
3 13 (4.10%) QA
4 8 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.58%) NIST
6 4 (1.26%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.26%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.63%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.63%) GDPR
8 1 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.32%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.32%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.32%) PMO
8 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 61 (19.24%) Active Directory
2 32 (10.09%) Docker
3 30 (9.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (4.73%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (4.42%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (3.15%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (1.89%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.89%) NFS
7 6 (1.89%) vSphere
8 2 (0.63%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.63%) Firmware
8 2 (0.63%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.32%) NDS
9 1 (0.32%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 47 (14.83%) Ansible
1 47 (14.83%) Kubernetes
2 25 (7.89%) Microsoft Intune
3 23 (7.26%) SCCM
4 20 (6.31%) Grafana
5 18 (5.68%) Prometheus
6 17 (5.36%) SCOM
7 16 (5.05%) Puppet
8 14 (4.42%) vCenter Server
9 11 (3.47%) Progress Chef
9 11 (3.47%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (2.21%) Failover Clustering
11 6 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (1.58%) Oracle RMAN
13 3 (0.95%) Istio
13 3 (0.95%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 2 (0.63%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.63%) linkerd
14 2 (0.63%) Nagios
14 2 (0.63%) Podman
Vendors
1 112 (35.33%) Microsoft
2 34 (10.73%) VMware
3 27 (8.52%) Google
4 22 (6.94%) ServiceNow
5 21 (6.62%) Oracle
6 20 (6.31%) Red Hat
7 18 (5.68%) Splunk
8 15 (4.73%) SolarWinds
9 12 (3.79%) Broadcom
10 11 (3.47%) Cisco
11 9 (2.84%) BMC
12 8 (2.52%) OpenAI
12 8 (2.52%) Remedy
13 7 (2.21%) AppDynamics
13 7 (2.21%) Citrix
14 6 (1.89%) Dynatrace
14 6 (1.89%) Ivanti
14 6 (1.89%) Okta
15 5 (1.58%) BeyondTrust
15 5 (1.58%) F5