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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 317 235 297
Rank change year-on-year -82 +62 +137
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 356 323 314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.72% 1.11% 0.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.22% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 179 246
10th Percentile £366 £345 £388
25th Percentile £404 £411 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £582 £675
90th Percentile £750 £675 £705
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £550
% change year-on-year - -13.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 16 3
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.92 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -22.68% +23.95% -53.56%
75th Percentile £46.40 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £59.66 £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 41,843 26,418 36,777
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.72% 90.98% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,135 16,804 23,539
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £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 2,505 1,141 2,540
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.76 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.36% -23.95% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.78 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +82.03% -34.02% +8.91%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -51 309 £500 - 139
UK excluding London -78 174 £475 - 97
London -44 153 £575 +12.99% 61
Work from Home -15 129 £600 +17.82% 77
North of England -32 75 £475 - 26
Yorkshire -15 57 £500 +8.11% 5
South East -36 41 £405 -19.00% 28
Scotland -30 22 £508 +10.93% 9
Midlands -56 17 £550 +15.79% 8
South West -30 15 £400 -22.33% 13
West Midlands -54 13 £563 +12.50% 6
North West -53 11 £487 +2.53% 18
North East -21 7 £320 -14.67% 3
East Midlands -28 4 £413 +5.77% 2
Wales - 2 £543 - 1
East of England -49 1 £400 -20.00% 5
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 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 31 (8.71%) SharePoint
2 21 (5.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.81%) Confluence
4 8 (2.25%) Appian
5 4 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.84%) Apache
7 2 (0.56%) CMS
7 2 (0.56%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.28%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 8 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.40%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.12%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.56%) Maximo
2 2 (0.56%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.28%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 180 (50.56%) Azure
2 115 (32.30%) AWS
3 71 (19.94%) GCP
4 51 (14.33%) Microsoft 365
5 49 (13.76%) Entra ID
6 43 (12.08%) GitHub
7 29 (8.15%) GitHub Actions
8 27 (7.58%) Power Automate
8 27 (7.58%) Power Platform
9 25 (7.02%) OpenShift
10 23 (6.46%) Azure DevOps
11 19 (5.34%) Amazon S3
12 17 (4.78%) Azure Monitor
13 16 (4.49%) PaaS
14 15 (4.21%) Azure Key Vault
15 13 (3.65%) Microsoft Copilot
15 13 (3.65%) OneDrive
16 12 (3.37%) PowerApps
16 12 (3.37%) Serverless
17 11 (3.09%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 41 (11.52%) DNS
2 32 (8.99%) DHCP
3 23 (6.46%) Firewall
4 18 (5.06%) Kerberos
5 17 (4.78%) VPN
6 12 (3.37%) Network Security
6 12 (3.37%) SAN
7 10 (2.81%) TCP/IP
7 10 (2.81%) WAN
8 8 (2.25%) SD-WAN
8 8 (2.25%) SSH
8 8 (2.25%) VLAN
9 6 (1.69%) LAN
10 4 (1.12%) Cisco Nexus
10 4 (1.12%) Intranet
11 3 (0.84%) BGP
11 3 (0.84%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.84%) Cisco IOS
11 3 (0.84%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 3 (0.84%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (10.39%) SQL Server
2 14 (3.93%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (3.65%) Power BI
4 10 (2.81%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.25%) Pinecone
6 7 (1.97%) Metadata
6 7 (1.97%) Oracle Database
7 6 (1.69%) MongoDB
7 6 (1.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (1.40%) MySQL
8 5 (1.40%) Snowflake Schema
9 4 (1.12%) Big Data
9 4 (1.12%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.12%) EDRMS
9 4 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
9 4 (1.12%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.12%) Tableau
10 3 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.84%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 33 (9.27%) Jenkins
2 30 (8.43%) GitLab
3 26 (7.30%) Git
4 21 (5.90%) JIRA
5 11 (3.09%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.25%) MLflow
7 7 (1.97%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.12%) CircleCI
8 4 (1.12%) Flyway
9 3 (0.84%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.84%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.84%) Maven
9 3 (0.84%) Selenium
10 2 (0.56%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.56%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.56%) JUnit
10 2 (0.56%) Postman
10 2 (0.56%) Snyk
11 1 (0.28%) SoapUI
11 1 (0.28%) WebDriver
General
1 155 (43.54%) Social Skills
2 61 (17.13%) Finance
3 46 (12.92%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (8.15%) Banking
4 29 (8.15%) Public Sector
5 12 (3.37%) Legal
6 10 (2.81%) Organisational Skills
7 6 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.69%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.40%) Investment Banking
9 4 (1.12%) Front Office
9 4 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.12%) Law
10 3 (0.84%) Military
11 2 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.56%) Retail
12 1 (0.28%) International Banking
12 1 (0.28%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (12.36%) Architect
2 36 (10.11%) CyberArk Architect
2 36 (10.11%) Developer
3 22 (6.18%) DBA
4 18 (5.06%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
5 17 (4.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 17 (4.78%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 16 (4.49%) Automation Engineer
6 16 (4.49%) Consultant
7 15 (4.21%) Administrator
8 14 (3.93%) Analyst
9 13 (3.65%) DevOps Engineer
10 12 (3.37%) Platform Engineer
10 12 (3.37%) Site Engineer
10 12 (3.37%) Support Engineer
11 11 (3.09%) Azure Developer
11 11 (3.09%) Lead
11 11 (3.09%) Senior
12 10 (2.81%) Data Engineer
12 10 (2.81%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (19.94%) REST
2 50 (14.04%) LDAP
3 47 (13.20%) SOAP
4 25 (7.02%) OAuth
5 23 (6.46%) .NET
6 20 (5.62%) Web Services
7 17 (4.78%) SAML
8 14 (3.93%) Node.js
9 13 (3.65%) Elastic Stack
9 13 (3.65%) JWT
10 12 (3.37%) .NET Framework
10 12 (3.37%) Microsoft Graph
10 12 (3.37%) RESTful
11 11 (3.09%) Pandas
11 11 (3.09%) PyTorch
12 10 (2.81%) CSS
12 10 (2.81%) FastAPI
12 10 (2.81%) JSON
12 10 (2.81%) NumPy
13 9 (2.53%) React
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.52%) Enterprise Software
2 38 (10.67%) Security Posture
3 23 (6.46%) Onboarding
4 22 (6.18%) Replication
5 18 (5.06%) Legacy Systems
6 15 (4.21%) Cloud Native
6 15 (4.21%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
8 12 (3.37%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (3.37%) Product Ownership
9 9 (2.53%) AI Agents
9 9 (2.53%) Data Centre
10 8 (2.25%) Low-Code
11 7 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (1.97%) Virtual Team
12 6 (1.69%) Clustering
13 5 (1.40%) FlexPod
14 4 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
14 4 (1.12%) Private Cloud
15 3 (0.84%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 75 (21.07%) Windows
2 70 (19.66%) Linux
3 28 (7.87%) Windows Server
4 21 (5.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (3.93%) Unix
6 8 (2.25%) Mac OS
6 8 (2.25%) Windows 10
7 7 (1.97%) VMS
8 5 (1.40%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.40%) Data ONTAP
9 3 (0.84%) CentOS
10 2 (0.56%) AIX
10 2 (0.56%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.56%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.28%) Android
11 1 (0.28%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.28%) Solaris
11 1 (0.28%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.28%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (35.11%) Problem-Solving
2 101 (28.37%) CI/CD
3 76 (21.35%) DevOps
4 64 (17.98%) AI
5 55 (15.45%) Agile
6 52 (14.61%) Disaster Recovery
7 50 (14.04%) High Availability
8 47 (13.20%) Infrastructure as Code
8 47 (13.20%) Migration
8 47 (13.20%) Technical Leadership
9 45 (12.64%) ITSM
9 45 (12.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 44 (12.36%) ITIL
11 42 (11.80%) Continuous Improvement
11 42 (11.80%) SIEM
12 41 (11.52%) Observability
13 40 (11.24%) Analytics
13 40 (11.24%) Containerisation
14 39 (10.96%) Integration Patterns
15 38 (10.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 166 (46.63%) Python
2 147 (41.29%) PowerShell
3 65 (18.26%) SQL
4 43 (12.08%) Bash
5 37 (10.39%) Java
6 30 (8.43%) JavaScript
7 22 (6.18%) Shell Script
8 21 (5.90%) C#
9 19 (5.34%) Go
9 19 (5.34%) TypeScript
10 11 (3.09%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (2.53%) PL/SQL
11 9 (2.53%) T-SQL
12 4 (1.12%) Bicep
13 2 (0.56%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.56%) Scala
13 2 (0.56%) VBScript
14 1 (0.28%) ABAP
14 1 (0.28%) VB
Qualifications
1 131 (36.80%) Security Cleared
2 103 (28.93%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.74%) Degree
4 21 (5.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (5.34%) DV Cleared
6 13 (3.65%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.25%) OCP
7 8 (2.25%) Oracle Certification
8 7 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.69%) Azure Certification
10 5 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (1.12%) CCNP
11 4 (1.12%) CISSP
12 3 (0.84%) AWS Certification
12 3 (0.84%) CCNA
12 3 (0.84%) JNCIA
12 3 (0.84%) JNCIS
13 2 (0.56%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.56%) MCITP
13 2 (0.56%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.46%) Data Quality
2 19 (5.34%) GDPR
3 14 (3.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (3.09%) NIST
6 9 (2.53%) QA
7 8 (2.25%) SLA
8 3 (0.84%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.56%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.56%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.28%) GMP
10 1 (0.28%) GRC
10 1 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 92 (25.84%) Active Directory
2 33 (9.27%) Docker
3 19 (5.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (4.49%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (2.81%) NFS
6 7 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (1.97%) vSphere
7 5 (1.40%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.56%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.56%) Firmware
8 2 (0.56%) KVM
8 2 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.28%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.28%) HDFS
9 1 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.28%) RHEV
9 1 (0.28%) UAG
9 1 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.28%) Xen
Systems Management
1 59 (16.57%) Kubernetes
2 56 (15.73%) Ansible
3 54 (15.17%) Terraform
4 25 (7.02%) Microsoft Intune
5 20 (5.62%) Grafana
5 20 (5.62%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.21%) Prometheus
6 15 (4.21%) SCCM
7 14 (3.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 10 (2.81%) Progress Chef
9 7 (1.97%) Puppet
10 5 (1.40%) Data Guard
10 5 (1.40%) Oracle RMAN
10 5 (1.40%) Red Hat Satellite
10 5 (1.40%) SnapMirror
11 4 (1.12%) Nessus
11 4 (1.12%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 4 (1.12%) SCOM
12 3 (0.84%) Foglight
12 3 (0.84%) Nagios
Vendors
1 100 (28.09%) Microsoft
2 37 (10.39%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.55%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.55%) Centrify
4 25 (7.02%) Google
4 25 (7.02%) ServiceNow
4 25 (7.02%) VMware
5 24 (6.74%) Red Hat
6 23 (6.46%) Oracle
7 19 (5.34%) Okta
8 18 (5.06%) OpenAI
8 18 (5.06%) Splunk
9 12 (3.37%) Databricks
10 9 (2.53%) Cisco
11 8 (2.25%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (2.25%) UiPath
12 7 (1.97%) AppDynamics
12 7 (1.97%) F5
12 7 (1.97%) Palo Alto
13 6 (1.69%) Citrix