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

 6 months to
13 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 337 242 293
Rank change year-on-year -95 +51 +167
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 340 326 320
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 1.10% 0.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.80% 1.21% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 180 249
10th Percentile £347 £325 £398
25th Percentile £403 £408 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £495 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.01% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £613 £575 £675
90th Percentile £750 £671 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £550
% change year-on-year -2.11% -13.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 17 3
10th Percentile £17.83 £21.00 -
25th Percentile £20.08 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £30.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -23.97% +26.05% -73.56%
75th Percentile £35.34 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £55.24 £65.62 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £24.66 -
% change year-on-year -7.50% - -

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 42,415 26,864 37,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 91.03% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,461 17,061 23,740
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £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 2,543 1,206 2,581
10th Percentile £14.71 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.13 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.06% -25.68% +1.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% +9.23%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 -86 294 £500 - 73
UK excluding London -99 161 £465 -2.11% 60
London -33 151 £575 +15.00% 22
Work from Home -48 123 £600 +17.82% 35
North of England -26 70 £475 - 18
Yorkshire -10 54 £500 +8.11% 5
South East -38 38 £403 -19.50% 20
Scotland -35 21 £500 +9.29% 3
Midlands -62 15 £500 +5.26% 7
South West -29 13 £363 -29.95% 7
West Midlands -54 11 £575 +15.00% 4
North West -50 10 £459 -3.37% 11
North East -30 6 £275 -26.67% 2
East Midlands -23 4 £413 +5.77% 3
Wales -12 2 £543 +106.67% 2
East of England -50 1 £400 -15.79% 3
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 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 32 (9.41%) SharePoint
2 20 (5.88%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.94%) Confluence
4 8 (2.35%) Appian
5 4 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.88%) Apache
7 2 (0.59%) CMS
7 2 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.29%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.29%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 8 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.47%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.59%) Maximo
2 2 (0.59%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.29%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.29%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.29%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 170 (50.00%) Azure
2 107 (31.47%) AWS
3 68 (20.00%) GCP
4 51 (15.00%) Microsoft 365
5 46 (13.53%) Entra ID
6 41 (12.06%) GitHub
7 28 (8.24%) GitHub Actions
8 26 (7.65%) Power Automate
8 26 (7.65%) Power Platform
9 22 (6.47%) Azure DevOps
10 20 (5.88%) OpenShift
11 17 (5.00%) Azure Monitor
12 16 (4.71%) Amazon S3
13 14 (4.12%) Azure Key Vault
13 14 (4.12%) PaaS
14 13 (3.82%) Microsoft Copilot
15 12 (3.53%) OneDrive
15 12 (3.53%) PowerApps
15 12 (3.53%) Serverless
16 11 (3.24%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 41 (12.06%) DNS
2 33 (9.71%) DHCP
3 22 (6.47%) Firewall
4 16 (4.71%) VPN
5 15 (4.41%) Kerberos
6 13 (3.82%) SAN
7 10 (2.94%) Network Security
7 10 (2.94%) TCP/IP
8 9 (2.65%) WAN
9 8 (2.35%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.35%) VLAN
10 7 (2.06%) SSH
11 5 (1.47%) LAN
12 4 (1.18%) Cisco Nexus
12 4 (1.18%) Intranet
13 3 (0.88%) BGP
13 3 (0.88%) BIG-IP
13 3 (0.88%) Cisco IOS
13 3 (0.88%) OSPF
13 3 (0.88%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (10.88%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.41%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (3.53%) Power BI
4 10 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.35%) Pinecone
6 7 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (2.06%) Metadata
7 6 (1.76%) MongoDB
7 6 (1.76%) MySQL
7 6 (1.76%) Snowflake Schema
7 6 (1.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (1.47%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.18%) Big Data
9 4 (1.18%) EDRMS
9 4 (1.18%) Oracle Database
9 4 (1.18%) Tableau
10 3 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.88%) DTS
10 3 (0.88%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 3 (0.88%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 31 (9.12%) Jenkins
2 28 (8.24%) GitLab
3 24 (7.06%) Git
4 21 (6.18%) JIRA
5 10 (2.94%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.35%) MLflow
7 5 (1.47%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.18%) Flyway
9 3 (0.88%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.88%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.88%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.59%) Selenium
11 1 (0.29%) Eclipse
11 1 (0.29%) HP UFT
11 1 (0.29%) IntelliJ
11 1 (0.29%) JMeter
11 1 (0.29%) JUnit
11 1 (0.29%) Maven
11 1 (0.29%) TestNG
11 1 (0.29%) Visual Studio
General
1 149 (43.82%) Social Skills
2 60 (17.65%) Finance
3 46 (13.53%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (8.24%) Banking
5 26 (7.65%) Public Sector
6 12 (3.53%) Legal
7 11 (3.24%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.06%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.47%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.18%) Front Office
11 4 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.18%) Law
12 2 (0.59%) Military
12 2 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.59%) Retail
13 1 (0.29%) International Banking
13 1 (0.29%) Local Government
13 1 (0.29%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 41 (12.06%) Architect
2 36 (10.59%) Developer
3 33 (9.71%) CyberArk Architect
4 20 (5.88%) DBA
5 19 (5.59%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 18 (5.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 16 (4.71%) Consultant
7 16 (4.71%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 15 (4.41%) Automation Engineer
9 14 (4.12%) Analyst
10 12 (3.53%) DevOps Engineer
10 12 (3.53%) Platform Engineer
10 12 (3.53%) Senior
10 12 (3.53%) Support Engineer
11 11 (3.24%) Azure Developer
11 11 (3.24%) Lead
11 11 (3.24%) Site Engineer
12 10 (2.94%) Administrator
12 10 (2.94%) Data Engineer
12 10 (2.94%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (19.71%) REST
2 46 (13.53%) LDAP
3 44 (12.94%) SOAP
4 24 (7.06%) .NET
5 23 (6.76%) OAuth
6 20 (5.88%) Web Services
7 15 (4.41%) SAML
8 13 (3.82%) JWT
8 13 (3.82%) Node.js
9 12 (3.53%) .NET Framework
9 12 (3.53%) Microsoft Graph
9 12 (3.53%) RESTful
10 11 (3.24%) CSS
10 11 (3.24%) Elastic Stack
10 11 (3.24%) Pandas
10 11 (3.24%) PyTorch
11 10 (2.94%) FastAPI
11 10 (2.94%) JSON
11 10 (2.94%) NumPy
11 10 (2.94%) React
Miscellaneous
1 38 (11.18%) Enterprise Software
2 34 (10.00%) Security Posture
3 23 (6.76%) Onboarding
4 22 (6.47%) Replication
5 19 (5.59%) Legacy Systems
6 14 (4.12%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (3.82%) Hybrid Cloud
8 12 (3.53%) Cloud Native
8 12 (3.53%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (3.24%) AI Agents
9 11 (3.24%) Product Ownership
10 8 (2.35%) Low-Code
11 7 (2.06%) Data Centre
11 7 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (2.06%) Virtual Team
12 5 (1.47%) Clustering
12 5 (1.47%) FlexPod
13 4 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (1.18%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.18%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 74 (21.76%) Windows
2 60 (17.65%) Linux
3 29 (8.53%) Windows Server
4 17 (5.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (3.82%) Unix
6 9 (2.65%) Windows 10
7 8 (2.35%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.76%) VMS
9 5 (1.47%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.47%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.59%) AIX
10 2 (0.59%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.29%) Android
11 1 (0.29%) Rocky
11 1 (0.29%) Solaris
11 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (34.12%) Problem-Solving
2 90 (26.47%) CI/CD
3 70 (20.59%) DevOps
4 65 (19.12%) AI
5 54 (15.88%) Agile
6 50 (14.71%) Disaster Recovery
7 47 (13.82%) Migration
8 45 (13.24%) High Availability
9 44 (12.94%) Technical Leadership
10 42 (12.35%) Infrastructure as Code
10 42 (12.35%) ITIL
10 42 (12.35%) ITSM
10 42 (12.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 40 (11.76%) Analytics
11 40 (11.76%) Observability
12 39 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 39 (11.47%) SIEM
13 37 (10.88%) Containerisation
14 36 (10.59%) Integration Patterns
14 36 (10.59%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 162 (47.65%) Python
2 142 (41.76%) PowerShell
3 62 (18.24%) SQL
4 40 (11.76%) Bash
5 33 (9.71%) Java
6 29 (8.53%) JavaScript
7 21 (6.18%) C#
8 19 (5.59%) TypeScript
9 18 (5.29%) Go
10 15 (4.41%) Shell Script
11 11 (3.24%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (2.65%) PL/SQL
12 9 (2.65%) T-SQL
13 4 (1.18%) Bicep
14 2 (0.59%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.59%) Scala
14 2 (0.59%) VBScript
15 1 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.29%) REXX
15 1 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 122 (35.88%) Security Cleared
2 96 (28.24%) SC Cleared
3 25 (7.35%) Degree
4 21 (6.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (5.29%) DV Cleared
6 12 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (1.47%) OCP
8 5 (1.47%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.18%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.18%) CISSP
10 3 (0.88%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.88%) CCNP
11 2 (0.59%) CCNA
11 2 (0.59%) CISM
11 2 (0.59%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.59%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.59%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.59%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 15 (4.41%) GDPR
3 13 (3.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (3.24%) NIST
6 10 (2.94%) QA
7 9 (2.65%) SLA
8 3 (0.88%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.59%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.59%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.29%) GMP
10 1 (0.29%) GRC
10 1 (0.29%) PMO
System Software
1 88 (25.88%) Active Directory
2 29 (8.53%) Docker
3 18 (5.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (3.82%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.24%) NFS
6 7 (2.06%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (2.06%) vSphere
7 5 (1.47%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.59%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.59%) Firmware
8 2 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.29%) KVM
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.29%) UAG
9 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.29%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 55 (16.18%) Kubernetes
2 51 (15.00%) Ansible
3 49 (14.41%) Terraform
4 24 (7.06%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (5.00%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.41%) Grafana
7 14 (4.12%) SCCM
8 13 (3.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 11 (3.24%) Prometheus
10 8 (2.35%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.76%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.47%) Puppet
12 5 (1.47%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.18%) Nessus
13 4 (1.18%) SCOM
14 3 (0.88%) Foglight
14 3 (0.88%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.88%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.88%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.88%) WSUS
Vendors
1 97 (28.53%) Microsoft
2 34 (10.00%) CyberArk
3 31 (9.12%) BeyondTrust
3 31 (9.12%) Centrify
4 26 (7.65%) Google
5 25 (7.35%) ServiceNow
5 25 (7.35%) VMware
6 20 (5.88%) Red Hat
7 19 (5.59%) OpenAI
7 19 (5.59%) Oracle
8 17 (5.00%) Okta
8 17 (5.00%) Splunk
9 12 (3.53%) Databricks
10 9 (2.65%) Cisco
11 8 (2.35%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (2.35%) UiPath
12 7 (2.06%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.06%) Palo Alto
13 5 (1.47%) Citrix
13 5 (1.47%) F5
83 Task Automation jobs Nationwide