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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 397 262 252
Rank change year-on-year -135 -10 +136
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 308 349 362
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 1.06% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 1.17% 1.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 200 247
10th Percentile £320 £306 £358
25th Percentile £408 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -3.66%
75th Percentile £556 £583 £625
90th Percentile £682 £669 £703
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £470
% change year-on-year +8.42% +1.06% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 7 3
10th Percentile - £17.89 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £40.28 -
Median hourly rate £22.25 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -64.96% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £35.63 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £66.05 £66.05 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.92 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -71.56% - -

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 46,295 29,870 32,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 90.52% 85.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,040 18,573 20,019
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 £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,185 1,844 1,407
10th Percentile £13.72 £14.33 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.25 £74.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.91% -47.67% +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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 -142 261 £500 +1.52% 490
UK excluding London -115 159 £515 +8.42% 240
London -118 109 £450 -10.00% 264
Work from Home -79 88 £500 - 195
North of England -43 65 £500 +5.26% 77
South East -48 49 £538 +16.22% 56
Yorkshire -22 37 £516 +7.48% 20
North West -54 24 £492 +3.61% 48
Midlands -69 16 £600 +17.94% 26
Scotland -39 13 £438 -4.89% 11
West Midlands -62 11 £600 +15.50% 17
South West -39 8 £535 +2.88% 33
East of England -46 8 £503 +11.67% 25
East Midlands -12 5 £500 +19.76% 9
North East -40 4 £275 +37.50% 10
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 8

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 (10.06%) SharePoint
2 15 (4.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.62%) JBoss
5 4 (1.30%) Confluence
5 4 (1.30%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.97%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.97%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.97%) WebLogic Portal
7 2 (0.65%) CMS
7 2 (0.65%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) Apache
8 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
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 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.97%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (2.27%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.95%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.30%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.97%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.32%) PeopleSoft HCM
5 1 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 117 (37.99%) Azure
2 76 (24.68%) AWS
3 47 (15.26%) Microsoft 365
4 33 (10.71%) Entra ID
4 33 (10.71%) GitHub
5 30 (9.74%) GCP
6 29 (9.42%) Azure DevOps
7 28 (9.09%) Power Platform
8 24 (7.79%) GitHub Actions
9 21 (6.82%) Amazon S3
9 21 (6.82%) Microsoft Copilot
10 19 (6.17%) AWS Lambda
10 19 (6.17%) Serverless
11 18 (5.84%) Azure Monitor
11 18 (5.84%) Datadog
11 18 (5.84%) Power Automate
12 15 (4.87%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (4.55%) OneDrive
13 14 (4.55%) SaaS
14 11 (3.57%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 49 (15.91%) DNS
2 28 (9.09%) DHCP
3 27 (8.77%) VPN
4 26 (8.44%) Firewall
5 21 (6.82%) TCP/IP
6 17 (5.52%) Network Security
7 8 (2.60%) SSH
7 8 (2.60%) VLAN
8 7 (2.27%) Kerberos
8 7 (2.27%) SAN
8 7 (2.27%) WAN
9 6 (1.95%) SD-WAN
9 6 (1.95%) Skype
9 6 (1.95%) Wireless
10 5 (1.62%) BIG-IP
11 4 (1.30%) Intranet
11 4 (1.30%) PSTN
11 4 (1.30%) Reverse Proxy
11 4 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
12 3 (0.97%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.79%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.22%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (3.90%) Power BI
4 11 (3.57%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.60%) MySQL
6 7 (2.27%) Metadata
6 7 (2.27%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.95%) Hadoop
7 6 (1.95%) Oracle Database
8 5 (1.62%) Big Data
8 5 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
8 5 (1.62%) Sybase ASE
9 4 (1.30%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.30%) EDRMS
9 4 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.97%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database 10g
10 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database 11g
10 3 (0.97%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 39 (12.66%) Git
2 22 (7.14%) GitLab
3 20 (6.49%) Jenkins
4 11 (3.57%) JIRA
5 5 (1.62%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.30%) Flyway
6 4 (1.30%) Oracle Forms
6 4 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.97%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.97%) Oracle APEX
8 2 (0.65%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.65%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.65%) JUnit
8 2 (0.65%) Maven
8 2 (0.65%) Postman
8 2 (0.65%) Selenium
8 2 (0.65%) Snyk
8 2 (0.65%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.32%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 95 (30.84%) Social Skills
2 57 (18.51%) Analytical Skills
3 53 (17.21%) Finance
4 32 (10.39%) Banking
5 17 (5.52%) Legal
6 14 (4.55%) Public Sector
7 10 (3.25%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.27%) Front Office
9 6 (1.95%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.97%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.97%) Military
11 2 (0.65%) Billing
11 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.65%) Law
11 2 (0.65%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.65%) Marketing
11 2 (0.65%) Retail
12 1 (0.32%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.32%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 40 (12.99%) Senior
2 31 (10.06%) Support Engineer
3 29 (9.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 22 (7.14%) DevOps Engineer
5 19 (6.17%) Cloud Engineer
5 19 (6.17%) Developer
6 18 (5.84%) Analyst
7 16 (5.19%) DBA
7 16 (5.19%) Platform Engineer
8 13 (4.22%) Consultant
8 13 (4.22%) Data Engineer
9 12 (3.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 11 (3.57%) Architect
11 10 (3.25%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (3.25%) Lead
11 10 (3.25%) Linux Engineer
11 10 (3.25%) Site Engineer
12 8 (2.60%) Data Analyst
12 8 (2.60%) Security Engineer
12 8 (2.60%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 67 (21.75%) Terraform
2 29 (9.42%) REST
3 18 (5.84%) React
4 15 (4.87%) ARM Templates
5 13 (4.22%) JSON
6 11 (3.57%) .NET
6 11 (3.57%) CSS
6 11 (3.57%) Kafka
6 11 (3.57%) Node.js
7 10 (3.25%) Elastic Stack
7 10 (3.25%) SPFx
8 9 (2.92%) SOAP
8 9 (2.92%) YAML
9 8 (2.60%) HTML
10 7 (2.27%) Middleware
10 7 (2.27%) RESTful
11 6 (1.95%) JWT
12 5 (1.62%) ASP.NET
12 5 (1.62%) AWS CDK
12 5 (1.62%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.14%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.82%) Onboarding
3 16 (5.19%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.87%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (4.55%) AI Agents
6 13 (4.22%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (3.90%) Clustering
8 11 (3.57%) Management Information System
9 10 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (3.25%) Private Cloud
9 10 (3.25%) Replication
10 9 (2.92%) CMDB
10 9 (2.92%) Product Ownership
11 8 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
12 7 (2.27%) Public Cloud
12 7 (2.27%) Virtual Team
13 6 (1.95%) Blackberry
14 5 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
14 5 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (1.62%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 67 (21.75%) Windows
2 60 (19.48%) Linux
3 23 (7.47%) Windows Server
4 21 (6.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.55%) Windows 10
6 13 (4.22%) Unix
6 13 (4.22%) Windows Server 2019
7 8 (2.60%) Android
7 8 (2.60%) Mac OS
8 7 (2.27%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.95%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.97%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.65%) AIX
11 2 (0.65%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.65%) VMS
11 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.65%) zOS
12 1 (0.32%) MVS
12 1 (0.32%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (30.52%) CI/CD
2 80 (25.97%) DevOps
3 68 (22.08%) Infrastructure as Code
3 68 (22.08%) ITIL
4 66 (21.43%) Problem-Solving
5 64 (20.78%) Agile
6 53 (17.21%) AI
7 51 (16.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 48 (15.58%) Migration
9 46 (14.94%) Observability
10 45 (14.61%) Root Cause Analysis
11 43 (13.96%) Workflow
12 41 (13.31%) Performance Tuning
13 38 (12.34%) ITSM
14 35 (11.36%) Containerisation
14 35 (11.36%) Disaster Recovery
14 35 (11.36%) Runbook
15 33 (10.71%) Analytics
15 33 (10.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 30 (9.74%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 138 (44.81%) Python
2 110 (35.71%) PowerShell
3 63 (20.45%) SQL
4 55 (17.86%) Bash
5 36 (11.69%) JavaScript
6 17 (5.52%) Bicep
6 17 (5.52%) Java
7 15 (4.87%) Go
8 14 (4.55%) TypeScript
9 12 (3.90%) Shell Script
9 12 (3.90%) T-SQL
10 8 (2.60%) PL/SQL
11 7 (2.27%) C#
12 5 (1.62%) Perl
12 5 (1.62%) VBScript
13 2 (0.65%) REXX
13 2 (0.65%) Scala
14 1 (0.32%) JCL
14 1 (0.32%) Korn
14 1 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 104 (33.77%) Security Cleared
2 67 (21.75%) SC Cleared
3 38 (12.34%) DV Cleared
4 33 (10.71%) Degree
5 20 (6.49%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (4.87%) Azure Certification
7 14 (4.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.95%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.97%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.97%) CCNA
10 3 (0.97%) CCNP
11 2 (0.65%) CIPD
11 2 (0.65%) CISM
11 2 (0.65%) CISSP
11 2 (0.65%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.65%) GSEC
11 2 (0.65%) OSCP
12 1 (0.32%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 18 (5.84%) SLA
3 13 (4.22%) QA
4 9 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (1.95%) NIST
6 4 (1.30%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.30%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.65%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.65%) 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 62 (20.13%) Active Directory
2 30 (9.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (9.42%) Docker
4 14 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (4.55%) VMware ESXi
5 10 (3.25%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (1.95%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.95%) NFS
6 6 (1.95%) vSphere
7 2 (0.65%) BitLocker
7 2 (0.65%) Firmware
7 2 (0.65%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.32%) NDS
8 1 (0.32%) NetIQ eDirectory
8 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
8 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 44 (14.29%) Ansible
2 41 (13.31%) Kubernetes
3 26 (8.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 24 (7.79%) SCCM
5 18 (5.84%) Grafana
6 17 (5.52%) SCOM
7 16 (5.19%) Prometheus
7 16 (5.19%) Puppet
8 14 (4.55%) vCenter Server
9 11 (3.57%) Progress Chef
9 11 (3.57%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (2.27%) Failover Clustering
10 7 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (1.62%) Oracle RMAN
12 3 (0.97%) Istio
12 3 (0.97%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 2 (0.65%) linkerd
13 2 (0.65%) Nagios
13 2 (0.65%) Podman
13 2 (0.65%) WSUS
Vendors
1 108 (35.06%) Microsoft
2 34 (11.04%) VMware
3 24 (7.79%) Google
4 22 (7.14%) ServiceNow
5 21 (6.82%) Oracle
6 20 (6.49%) Red Hat
7 17 (5.52%) Splunk
8 15 (4.87%) SolarWinds
9 12 (3.90%) Broadcom
10 11 (3.57%) Cisco
11 8 (2.60%) BMC
12 7 (2.27%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.27%) Citrix
12 7 (2.27%) OpenAI
12 7 (2.27%) Remedy
13 6 (1.95%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.95%) Ivanti
13 6 (1.95%) Okta
14 5 (1.62%) BeyondTrust
14 5 (1.62%) F5