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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 258 274
Rank change year-on-year -109 +16 +178
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 305 316 361
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.97% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.68% 1.08% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 176 272
10th Percentile £300 £306 £383
25th Percentile £400 £407 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.60% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £560 £584 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -8.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 11 3
10th Percentile - £18.82 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £23.63 -
Median hourly rate £19.57 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -69.18% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £46.40 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.33 £43.50 -
% change year-on-year -62.46% - -

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 44,779 29,366 36,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.09% 90.39% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,449 23,259
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,648 1,547 2,431
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.22 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.21 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.65 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.88% -36.15% -3.74%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -88 261 £467 -6.60% 85
UK excluding London -92 157 £475 - 64
London -78 116 £460 -8.96% 28
Work from Home -74 97 £500 - 34
North of England -44 66 £500 +5.26% 15
Yorkshire -12 50 £500 +25.00% 1
South East -33 42 £433 -13.50% 25
Scotland -31 17 £508 +8.27% 2
Midlands -63 17 £500 - 11
West Midlands -56 13 £575 +14.71% 7
North West -55 12 £459 -3.37% 12
South West -31 11 £385 -25.96% 5
East Midlands -14 4 £413 +7.14% 4
North East -36 4 £320 -14.67% 2
Wales -11 2 £543 +106.67% 1
East of England -43 2 £550 +22.22% 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 38 (12.46%) SharePoint
2 23 (7.54%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.28%) Confluence
4 5 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.31%) Appian
6 3 (0.98%) Apache
6 3 (0.98%) CMS
7 2 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.31%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.98%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.66%) Maximo
2 2 (0.66%) Remedy AR System
3 1 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.33%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.33%) PeopleSoft HCM
3 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 137 (44.92%) Azure
2 76 (24.92%) AWS
3 57 (18.69%) Microsoft 365
4 49 (16.07%) Entra ID
5 41 (13.44%) GitHub
6 33 (10.82%) Azure DevOps
6 33 (10.82%) GCP
7 27 (8.85%) GitHub Actions
8 25 (8.20%) Power Platform
9 21 (6.89%) Power Automate
10 19 (6.23%) OpenShift
11 18 (5.90%) Azure Monitor
12 17 (5.57%) Amazon S3
13 16 (5.25%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (4.92%) Datadog
14 15 (4.92%) Microsoft Copilot
15 14 (4.59%) OneDrive
15 14 (4.59%) PaaS
15 14 (4.59%) Serverless
16 13 (4.26%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 42 (13.77%) DNS
2 29 (9.51%) DHCP
3 22 (7.21%) Firewall
4 21 (6.89%) VPN
5 13 (4.26%) SAN
6 11 (3.61%) Kerberos
6 11 (3.61%) Network Security
6 11 (3.61%) TCP/IP
7 9 (2.95%) VLAN
7 9 (2.95%) WAN
8 8 (2.62%) SD-WAN
9 5 (1.64%) LAN
9 5 (1.64%) SSH
10 4 (1.31%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (1.31%) Intranet
10 4 (1.31%) SSL
11 3 (0.98%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.98%) Cisco IOS
11 3 (0.98%) OSPF
11 3 (0.98%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (11.48%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.61%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (3.61%) Power BI
3 8 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
4 7 (2.30%) Metadata
4 7 (2.30%) MySQL
4 7 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.97%) Relational Database
5 6 (1.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (1.97%) Sybase ASE
6 4 (1.31%) Big Data
6 4 (1.31%) EDRMS
6 4 (1.31%) Pinecone
6 4 (1.31%) Snowflake Schema
6 4 (1.31%) Tableau
7 3 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (0.98%) DTS
7 3 (0.98%) MongoDB
7 3 (0.98%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 34 (11.15%) Git
2 27 (8.85%) Jenkins
3 24 (7.87%) GitLab
4 19 (6.23%) JIRA
5 6 (1.97%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (1.64%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.31%) Flyway
7 4 (1.31%) MLflow
8 3 (0.98%) AdminStudio
8 3 (0.98%) InstallShield
9 2 (0.66%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.66%) Selenium
9 2 (0.66%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.33%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.33%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.33%) Postman
10 1 (0.33%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.33%) Snyk
10 1 (0.33%) TestNG
10 1 (0.33%) TestRail
General
1 110 (36.07%) Social Skills
2 54 (17.70%) Finance
3 47 (15.41%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (8.85%) Banking
5 19 (6.23%) Public Sector
6 17 (5.57%) Legal
7 12 (3.93%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.62%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.64%) Front Office
9 5 (1.64%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.98%) Law
11 3 (0.98%) Military
12 2 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.66%) Retail
13 1 (0.33%) International Banking
13 1 (0.33%) Local Government
13 1 (0.33%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 30 (9.84%) Developer
2 21 (6.89%) DBA
3 20 (6.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (6.23%) Senior
5 18 (5.90%) Support Engineer
6 16 (5.25%) Consultant
6 16 (5.25%) DevOps Engineer
7 15 (4.92%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 13 (4.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 12 (3.93%) Site Engineer
10 11 (3.61%) Analyst
10 11 (3.61%) Azure Developer
10 11 (3.61%) Data Engineer
11 10 (3.28%) Automation Engineer
11 10 (3.28%) Lead
11 10 (3.28%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.28%) SQL DBA
12 9 (2.95%) Architect
12 9 (2.95%) Network Engineer
12 9 (2.95%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (12.46%) REST
2 23 (7.54%) .NET
3 15 (4.92%) Microsoft Graph
3 15 (4.92%) SOAP
3 15 (4.92%) Web Services
4 14 (4.59%) OAuth
5 12 (3.93%) .NET Framework
5 12 (3.93%) React
6 11 (3.61%) CSS
6 11 (3.61%) LDAP
6 11 (3.61%) SPFx
7 10 (3.28%) JSON
7 10 (3.28%) SAML
8 8 (2.62%) AWS CDK
8 8 (2.62%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (2.62%) HTML
8 8 (2.62%) JWT
8 8 (2.62%) Kafka
8 8 (2.62%) Node.js
8 8 (2.62%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.89%) Replication
2 20 (6.56%) Onboarding
3 15 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (4.92%) Legacy Systems
4 13 (4.26%) AI Agents
4 13 (4.26%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (3.93%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.93%) Product Ownership
6 11 (3.61%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.30%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (2.30%) Virtual Team
9 6 (1.97%) CMDB
9 6 (1.97%) Management Information System
9 6 (1.97%) Private Cloud
9 6 (1.97%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.64%) Clustering
10 5 (1.64%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.64%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 69 (22.62%) Windows
2 55 (18.03%) Linux
3 29 (9.51%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (3.61%) Unix
6 9 (2.95%) Windows 10
7 7 (2.30%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.97%) VMS
9 5 (1.64%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.64%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (1.64%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.66%) AIX
10 2 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.33%) Android
11 1 (0.33%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.33%) CentOS
11 1 (0.33%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (26.56%) CI/CD
2 79 (25.90%) Problem-Solving
3 76 (24.92%) DevOps
4 60 (19.67%) AI
5 56 (18.36%) Agile
6 52 (17.05%) ITIL
7 47 (15.41%) Migration
8 45 (14.75%) Disaster Recovery
9 44 (14.43%) Infrastructure as Code
10 41 (13.44%) Continuous Improvement
10 41 (13.44%) High Availability
11 37 (12.13%) Analytics
12 36 (11.80%) Observability
12 36 (11.80%) Workflow
13 32 (10.49%) Change Management
13 32 (10.49%) Containerisation
14 31 (10.16%) Performance Tuning
14 31 (10.16%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 30 (9.84%) Data Protection
16 25 (8.20%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 131 (42.95%) Python
2 116 (38.03%) PowerShell
3 59 (19.34%) SQL
4 43 (14.10%) Bash
5 30 (9.84%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.23%) C#
6 19 (6.23%) Java
7 17 (5.57%) TypeScript
8 13 (4.26%) Go
9 12 (3.93%) Kusto Query Language
10 11 (3.61%) T-SQL
11 9 (2.95%) Shell Script
12 7 (2.30%) Bicep
12 7 (2.30%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.98%) VBScript
14 2 (0.66%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.66%) Scala
15 1 (0.33%) ABAP
15 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.33%) REXX
Qualifications
1 85 (27.87%) Security Cleared
2 59 (19.34%) SC Cleared
3 28 (9.18%) Degree
4 23 (7.54%) DV Cleared
5 20 (6.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.30%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.64%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.64%) OCP
9 5 (1.64%) Oracle Certification
10 4 (1.31%) CCNP
11 3 (0.98%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.98%) CCNA
11 3 (0.98%) CISSP
12 2 (0.66%) CISM
12 2 (0.66%) JNCIA
12 2 (0.66%) JNCIS
12 2 (0.66%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.54%) Data Quality
2 11 (3.61%) GDPR
2 11 (3.61%) QA
3 10 (3.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 8 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (2.62%) NIST
4 8 (2.62%) SLA
5 3 (0.98%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.66%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.33%) GMP
7 1 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.33%) GRC
7 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
System Software
1 60 (19.67%) Active Directory
2 27 (8.85%) Docker
3 22 (7.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (4.92%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.61%) NFS
6 8 (2.62%) vSphere
7 7 (2.30%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (1.64%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.66%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.66%) Firmware
9 2 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.33%) KVM
10 1 (0.33%) OpenSSH
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.33%) UAG
10 1 (0.33%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 52 (17.05%) Ansible
2 50 (16.39%) Terraform
3 43 (14.10%) Kubernetes
4 26 (8.52%) Microsoft Intune
5 15 (4.92%) SCCM
5 15 (4.92%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (4.59%) Grafana
7 11 (3.61%) Prometheus
8 10 (3.28%) Progress Chef
9 9 (2.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 9 (2.95%) Puppet
10 8 (2.62%) SCOM
10 8 (2.62%) vCenter Server
11 6 (1.97%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.64%) SnapMirror
13 3 (0.98%) Foglight
13 3 (0.98%) Nessus
13 3 (0.98%) PowerCLI
13 3 (0.98%) WSUS
14 2 (0.66%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 109 (35.74%) Microsoft
2 30 (9.84%) VMware
3 25 (8.20%) Google
3 25 (8.20%) ServiceNow
4 18 (5.90%) Red Hat
5 16 (5.25%) Oracle
5 16 (5.25%) Splunk
6 13 (4.26%) Okta
6 13 (4.26%) OpenAI
7 11 (3.61%) Databricks
8 10 (3.28%) Cisco
9 7 (2.30%) AppDynamics
9 7 (2.30%) Palo Alto
9 7 (2.30%) SolarWinds
10 6 (1.97%) Bloomberg
10 6 (1.97%) Citrix
10 6 (1.97%) Sybase
11 5 (1.64%) F5
11 5 (1.64%) NetApp
12 4 (1.31%) Broadcom