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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 300 241 299
Rank change year-on-year -59 +58 +154
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 372 313 308
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 1.09% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.90% 1.20% 0.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 273 170 244
10th Percentile £359 £361 £388
25th Percentile £404 £424 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £587 £675
90th Percentile £750 £678 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £551
% change year-on-year -1.26% -13.83% +0.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 15 2
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.61 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +21.85% -53.56%
75th Percentile £46.40 £65.13 -
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 41,286 26,078 36,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.54% 91.02% 85.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,818 16,706 23,627
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £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 2,472 1,084 2,486
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.08 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.52 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.64% -23.57% -1.09%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.84 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.19 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.93% -32.93% +7.14%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -56 319 £500 -1.74% 117
UK excluding London -60 184 £469 -1.26% 69
London -28 157 £575 +7.60% 60
Work from Home -19 132 £594 +12.56% 53
North of England -30 76 £463 -2.63% 20
Yorkshire -7 59 £470 -12.56% 4
South East -27 43 £425 +32.40% 23
Scotland -16 28 £500 +7.53% 4
Midlands -61 18 £525 +10.53% 5
South West -32 15 £400 -20.00% 10
West Midlands -56 14 £550 +10.00% 3
North West -51 10 £487 +2.53% 13
North East -23 7 £320 -14.67% 3
East Midlands -30 4 £413 +5.77% 2
Wales - 2 £543 -
East of England -51 1 £400 -22.33% 5
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 3

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 (8.33%) SharePoint
2 22 (5.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.96%) Confluence
4 8 (2.15%) Appian
5 4 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.81%) Apache
7 2 (0.54%) CMS
7 2 (0.54%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.54%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.27%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.27%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 11 (2.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.61%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.08%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
1 3 (0.81%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.54%) Maximo
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 186 (50.00%) Azure
2 124 (33.33%) AWS
3 74 (19.89%) GCP
4 50 (13.44%) Entra ID
5 48 (12.90%) Microsoft 365
6 44 (11.83%) GitHub
7 32 (8.60%) OpenShift
8 29 (7.80%) GitHub Actions
8 29 (7.80%) Power Platform
9 26 (6.99%) Power Automate
10 25 (6.72%) Azure DevOps
11 21 (5.65%) Amazon S3
12 18 (4.84%) Azure Monitor
13 16 (4.30%) AWS CloudFormation
13 16 (4.30%) PaaS
14 15 (4.03%) Azure Key Vault
15 13 (3.49%) Microsoft Copilot
15 13 (3.49%) OneDrive
16 12 (3.23%) PowerApps
16 12 (3.23%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 42 (11.29%) DNS
2 33 (8.87%) DHCP
3 21 (5.65%) Firewall
4 18 (4.84%) Kerberos
5 15 (4.03%) VPN
6 11 (2.96%) SAN
7 10 (2.69%) Network Security
7 10 (2.69%) SSH
8 9 (2.42%) WAN
9 8 (2.15%) TCP/IP
10 7 (1.88%) SD-WAN
10 7 (1.88%) VLAN
11 5 (1.34%) LAN
11 5 (1.34%) SSL
12 4 (1.08%) Cisco Nexus
13 3 (0.81%) BIG-IP
13 3 (0.81%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 3 (0.81%) Intranet
13 3 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.54%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (10.48%) SQL Server
2 18 (4.84%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (4.03%) Power BI
4 9 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (2.42%) Oracle Database
5 8 (2.15%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.15%) Pinecone
6 6 (1.61%) Metadata
6 6 (1.61%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 5 (1.34%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.34%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.34%) Snowflake Schema
7 5 (1.34%) Tableau
8 4 (1.08%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (1.08%) Big Data
8 4 (1.08%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.08%) MySQL
8 4 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.81%) DTS
Development Applications
1 37 (9.95%) Jenkins
2 33 (8.87%) GitLab
3 27 (7.26%) Git
4 22 (5.91%) JIRA
5 12 (3.23%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.15%) MLflow
7 7 (1.88%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.34%) CircleCI
9 4 (1.08%) Flyway
10 3 (0.81%) AdminStudio
10 3 (0.81%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.81%) InstallShield
10 3 (0.81%) Maven
10 3 (0.81%) Selenium
11 2 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.54%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.54%) JUnit
11 2 (0.54%) Postman
11 2 (0.54%) Snyk
12 1 (0.27%) REST Assured
General
1 151 (40.59%) Social Skills
2 64 (17.20%) Finance
3 46 (12.37%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 29 (7.80%) Banking
6 12 (3.23%) Legal
7 11 (2.96%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.34%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.34%) Investment Banking
9 4 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.08%) Law
10 3 (0.81%) Military
10 3 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.54%) Front Office
11 2 (0.54%) Retail
12 1 (0.27%) International Banking
12 1 (0.27%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (11.56%) Architect
2 37 (9.95%) Developer
3 36 (9.68%) CyberArk Architect
4 24 (6.45%) DBA
5 21 (5.65%) Administrator
6 20 (5.38%) Automation Engineer
6 20 (5.38%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 17 (4.57%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (4.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 15 (4.03%) Consultant
9 15 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 14 (3.76%) Analyst
10 14 (3.76%) Platform Engineer
11 13 (3.49%) Lead
11 13 (3.49%) Site Engineer
12 11 (2.96%) Azure Developer
13 10 (2.69%) Data Engineer
13 10 (2.69%) Java Developer
13 10 (2.69%) Support Engineer
13 10 (2.69%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (18.28%) REST
2 50 (13.44%) LDAP
3 47 (12.63%) SOAP
4 25 (6.72%) OAuth
5 20 (5.38%) .NET
5 20 (5.38%) Web Services
6 17 (4.57%) Elastic Stack
6 17 (4.57%) SAML
7 16 (4.30%) Node.js
8 13 (3.49%) JWT
9 12 (3.23%) .NET Framework
9 12 (3.23%) Microsoft Graph
9 12 (3.23%) RESTful
10 11 (2.96%) JSON
10 11 (2.96%) Pandas
10 11 (2.96%) PyTorch
11 10 (2.69%) FastAPI
11 10 (2.69%) Kafka
11 10 (2.69%) NumPy
12 9 (2.42%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 42 (11.29%) Enterprise Software
2 38 (10.22%) Security Posture
3 22 (5.91%) Onboarding
3 22 (5.91%) Replication
4 17 (4.57%) Cloud Native
5 16 (4.30%) Legacy Systems
6 15 (4.03%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (3.76%) Product Ownership
8 13 (3.49%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (2.96%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (2.15%) Clustering
10 8 (2.15%) Data Centre
10 8 (2.15%) Low-Code
11 6 (1.61%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (1.34%) FlexPod
12 5 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.34%) Virtual Team
13 4 (1.08%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.08%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 75 (20.16%) Linux
2 73 (19.62%) Windows
3 30 (8.06%) Windows Server
4 20 (5.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (4.84%) Unix
6 9 (2.42%) Mac OS
7 8 (2.15%) VMS
7 8 (2.15%) Windows 10
8 5 (1.34%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.34%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.54%) AIX
9 2 (0.54%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.54%) CentOS
9 2 (0.54%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.27%) Android
10 1 (0.27%) Solaris
10 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.27%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (36.02%) Problem-Solving
2 117 (31.45%) CI/CD
3 90 (24.19%) DevOps
4 62 (16.67%) AI
5 58 (15.59%) Agile
6 57 (15.32%) Disaster Recovery
6 57 (15.32%) Infrastructure as Code
7 51 (13.71%) High Availability
7 51 (13.71%) Migration
8 47 (12.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 47 (12.63%) Technical Leadership
9 46 (12.37%) Continuous Improvement
10 44 (11.83%) Containerisation
10 44 (11.83%) ITSM
11 43 (11.56%) Analytics
11 43 (11.56%) SIEM
12 42 (11.29%) Observability
13 41 (11.02%) ITIL
14 39 (10.48%) Integration Patterns
14 39 (10.48%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 174 (46.77%) Python
2 146 (39.25%) PowerShell
3 68 (18.28%) SQL
4 50 (13.44%) Bash
5 39 (10.48%) Java
6 28 (7.53%) JavaScript
7 24 (6.45%) Shell Script
8 20 (5.38%) C#
9 19 (5.11%) Go
10 18 (4.84%) TypeScript
11 11 (2.96%) Kusto Query Language
11 11 (2.96%) PL/SQL
12 9 (2.42%) T-SQL
13 5 (1.34%) Bicep
14 3 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 3 (0.81%) Perl
15 2 (0.54%) ActionScript
15 2 (0.54%) Korn
15 2 (0.54%) Scala
15 2 (0.54%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 136 (36.56%) Security Cleared
2 107 (28.76%) SC Cleared
3 28 (7.53%) Degree
4 23 (6.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (4.84%) DV Cleared
6 16 (4.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.15%) OCP
7 8 (2.15%) Oracle Certification
8 7 (1.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.61%) CISSP
10 5 (1.34%) AWS Certification
10 5 (1.34%) Azure Certification
11 4 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (1.08%) CISM
12 3 (0.81%) CCNA
12 3 (0.81%) CCNP
12 3 (0.81%) JNCIA
12 3 (0.81%) JNCIS
12 3 (0.81%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.54%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.18%) Data Quality
2 22 (5.91%) GDPR
3 14 (3.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (2.96%) NIST
6 10 (2.69%) QA
7 8 (2.15%) SLA
8 3 (0.81%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.54%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.54%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.54%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.27%) GMP
10 1 (0.27%) GRC
10 1 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 92 (24.73%) Active Directory
2 37 (9.95%) Docker
3 19 (5.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (4.30%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (2.42%) NFS
6 7 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (1.88%) vSphere
7 6 (1.61%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.81%) Oracle RAC
9 2 (0.54%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.54%) Firmware
9 2 (0.54%) KVM
9 2 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.27%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.27%) HDFS
10 1 (0.27%) RHEV
10 1 (0.27%) UAG
10 1 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.27%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.27%) Xen
Systems Management
1 68 (18.28%) Kubernetes
2 64 (17.20%) Terraform
3 58 (15.59%) Ansible
4 26 (6.99%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (6.45%) Grafana
6 20 (5.38%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (5.11%) Prometheus
8 14 (3.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 13 (3.49%) Progress Chef
10 11 (2.96%) SCCM
11 9 (2.42%) Puppet
12 7 (1.88%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (1.61%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 5 (1.34%) Data Guard
14 5 (1.34%) SnapMirror
15 4 (1.08%) Nessus
15 4 (1.08%) Red Hat Satellite
15 4 (1.08%) SCOM
16 3 (0.81%) Foglight
16 3 (0.81%) Nagios
Vendors
1 102 (27.42%) Microsoft
2 37 (9.95%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.14%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.14%) Centrify
4 28 (7.53%) Oracle
5 25 (6.72%) Red Hat
5 25 (6.72%) ServiceNow
5 25 (6.72%) VMware
6 24 (6.45%) Google
7 19 (5.11%) Okta
7 19 (5.11%) Splunk
8 16 (4.30%) OpenAI
9 14 (3.76%) Databricks
10 8 (2.15%) Automation Anywhere
10 8 (2.15%) Cisco
10 8 (2.15%) UiPath
11 7 (1.88%) F5
11 7 (1.88%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.34%) AppDynamics
12 5 (1.34%) Informatica