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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 316 237 297
Rank change year-on-year -79 +60 +135
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 358 318 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.11% 0.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.87% 1.21% 0.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 260 175 246
10th Percentile £366 £347 £388
25th Percentile £403 £413 £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 41,363 26,184 36,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 91.01% 85.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,810 16,717 23,641
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -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 2,496 1,118 2,535
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.85 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.27% -23.70% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £57.19 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.14 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -63 307 £500 - 145
UK excluding London -75 177 £475 - 99
London -46 151 £575 +9.52% 63
Work from Home -14 128 £600 +12.46% 75
North of England -36 74 £470 -1.05% 26
Yorkshire -11 57 £488 +5.41% 9
South East -36 41 £405 -19.00% 32
Scotland -18 25 £500 +9.29% 5
Midlands -56 17 £550 +15.79% 8
South West -34 16 £400 -20.00% 15
West Midlands -54 13 £563 +12.50% 5
North West -48 10 £487 +2.53% 15
North East -25 7 £320 -14.67% 2
East Midlands -31 4 £413 +5.77% 3
Wales - 2 £543 - 1
East of England -53 1 £400 -20.00% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 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 (8.66%) SharePoint
2 22 (6.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.07%) Confluence
4 8 (2.23%) 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 (2.23%) 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%) 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
1 183 (51.12%) Azure
2 119 (33.24%) AWS
3 74 (20.67%) GCP
4 50 (13.97%) Entra ID
5 48 (13.41%) Microsoft 365
6 44 (12.29%) GitHub
7 29 (8.10%) GitHub Actions
8 28 (7.82%) Power Platform
9 26 (7.26%) OpenShift
9 26 (7.26%) Power Automate
10 23 (6.42%) Azure DevOps
11 20 (5.59%) Amazon S3
12 17 (4.75%) Azure Monitor
13 16 (4.47%) PaaS
14 15 (4.19%) Azure Key Vault
15 13 (3.63%) OneDrive
15 13 (3.63%) Serverless
16 12 (3.35%) AWS CloudFormation
16 12 (3.35%) Microsoft Copilot
16 12 (3.35%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 42 (11.73%) DNS
2 33 (9.22%) DHCP
3 22 (6.15%) Firewall
4 18 (5.03%) Kerberos
5 16 (4.47%) VPN
6 12 (3.35%) Network Security
6 12 (3.35%) SAN
7 10 (2.79%) WAN
8 9 (2.51%) SSH
9 8 (2.23%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.23%) TCP/IP
9 8 (2.23%) VLAN
10 6 (1.68%) LAN
11 4 (1.12%) Cisco Nexus
12 3 (0.84%) BGP
12 3 (0.84%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.84%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.84%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 3 (0.84%) OSPF
12 3 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (10.34%) SQL Server
2 16 (4.47%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (3.91%) Power BI
4 9 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.23%) Pinecone
6 7 (1.96%) Oracle Database
7 6 (1.68%) Metadata
7 6 (1.68%) MongoDB
7 6 (1.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (1.40%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.40%) MySQL
8 5 (1.40%) Snowflake Schema
8 5 (1.40%) Tableau
9 4 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (1.12%) Big Data
9 4 (1.12%) DynamoDB
9 4 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
9 4 (1.12%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.84%) EDRMS
Development Applications
1 35 (9.78%) Jenkins
2 32 (8.94%) GitLab
3 27 (7.54%) Git
4 22 (6.15%) JIRA
5 12 (3.35%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.23%) MLflow
7 7 (1.96%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.40%) CircleCI
9 4 (1.12%) Flyway
10 3 (0.84%) AdminStudio
10 3 (0.84%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.84%) InstallShield
10 3 (0.84%) Maven
10 3 (0.84%) Selenium
11 2 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.56%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.56%) JUnit
11 2 (0.56%) Postman
11 2 (0.56%) Snyk
12 1 (0.28%) Visual Studio
General
1 151 (42.18%) Social Skills
2 58 (16.20%) Finance
3 46 (12.85%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (8.66%) Public Sector
5 30 (8.38%) Banking
6 12 (3.35%) Legal
7 11 (3.07%) Organisational Skills
8 6 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.40%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.12%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.12%) Law
11 3 (0.84%) Military
11 3 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.56%) Front Office
12 2 (0.56%) Retail
13 1 (0.28%) International Banking
13 1 (0.28%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (12.29%) Architect
2 37 (10.34%) Developer
3 36 (10.06%) CyberArk Architect
4 22 (6.15%) DBA
5 18 (5.03%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 17 (4.75%) Administrator
6 17 (4.75%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 17 (4.75%) Automation Engineer
7 16 (4.47%) Consultant
7 16 (4.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 15 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
9 13 (3.63%) Site Engineer
10 12 (3.35%) Analyst
10 12 (3.35%) Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.07%) Azure Developer
11 11 (3.07%) Support Engineer
12 10 (2.79%) Lead
12 10 (2.79%) Network Engineer
12 10 (2.79%) Senior
12 10 (2.79%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (19.83%) REST
2 50 (13.97%) LDAP
3 47 (13.13%) SOAP
4 25 (6.98%) OAuth
5 21 (5.87%) .NET
6 20 (5.59%) Web Services
7 17 (4.75%) SAML
8 15 (4.19%) Elastic Stack
8 15 (4.19%) Node.js
9 13 (3.63%) JWT
10 12 (3.35%) .NET Framework
10 12 (3.35%) Microsoft Graph
10 12 (3.35%) RESTful
11 11 (3.07%) JSON
11 11 (3.07%) Pandas
11 11 (3.07%) PyTorch
12 10 (2.79%) FastAPI
12 10 (2.79%) NumPy
13 9 (2.51%) CSS
13 9 (2.51%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 42 (11.73%) Enterprise Software
2 38 (10.61%) Security Posture
3 22 (6.15%) Onboarding
3 22 (6.15%) Replication
4 16 (4.47%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.47%) Legacy Systems
5 15 (4.19%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (3.63%) Hybrid Cloud
7 12 (3.35%) Product Ownership
8 11 (3.07%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (2.51%) Data Centre
10 8 (2.23%) Clustering
10 8 (2.23%) Low-Code
11 7 (1.96%) AI Agents
11 7 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.40%) FlexPod
12 5 (1.40%) Virtual Team
13 4 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (1.12%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.12%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 73 (20.39%) Windows
2 71 (19.83%) Linux
3 28 (7.82%) Windows Server
4 22 (6.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (3.91%) Unix
6 9 (2.51%) Mac OS
7 8 (2.23%) Windows 10
8 7 (1.96%) VMS
9 5 (1.40%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.40%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.84%) CentOS
11 2 (0.56%) AIX
11 2 (0.56%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.56%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.56%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.28%) Android
12 1 (0.28%) Solaris
12 1 (0.28%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.28%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (35.47%) Problem-Solving
2 107 (29.89%) CI/CD
3 80 (22.35%) DevOps
4 61 (17.04%) AI
5 55 (15.36%) Agile
5 55 (15.36%) Disaster Recovery
6 50 (13.97%) High Availability
6 50 (13.97%) Infrastructure as Code
7 47 (13.13%) Migration
7 47 (13.13%) Technical Leadership
8 46 (12.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 44 (12.29%) ITSM
10 43 (12.01%) ITIL
11 42 (11.73%) Containerisation
11 42 (11.73%) Continuous Improvement
11 42 (11.73%) SIEM
12 40 (11.17%) Analytics
12 40 (11.17%) Observability
13 39 (10.89%) Integration Patterns
14 38 (10.61%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 168 (46.93%) Python
2 145 (40.50%) PowerShell
3 65 (18.16%) SQL
4 45 (12.57%) Bash
5 38 (10.61%) Java
6 29 (8.10%) JavaScript
7 24 (6.70%) Shell Script
8 20 (5.59%) C#
9 19 (5.31%) Go
10 18 (5.03%) TypeScript
11 11 (3.07%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (2.51%) PL/SQL
12 9 (2.51%) T-SQL
13 4 (1.12%) Bicep
14 2 (0.56%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 2 (0.56%) Korn
14 2 (0.56%) Scala
14 2 (0.56%) VBScript
15 1 (0.28%) VB
Qualifications
1 133 (37.15%) Security Cleared
2 104 (29.05%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.70%) Degree
4 21 (5.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (5.31%) DV Cleared
6 15 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.23%) OCP
7 8 (2.23%) Oracle Certification
8 6 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.40%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.40%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.12%) CCNP
10 4 (1.12%) CISSP
11 3 (0.84%) CCNA
11 3 (0.84%) JNCIA
11 3 (0.84%) JNCIS
12 2 (0.56%) CISM
12 2 (0.56%) MCITP
12 2 (0.56%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.15%) Data Quality
2 19 (5.31%) GDPR
3 14 (3.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (3.07%) NIST
6 10 (2.79%) QA
7 8 (2.23%) 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 (25.70%) Active Directory
2 35 (9.78%) Docker
3 19 (5.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (4.47%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (2.79%) NFS
6 7 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (1.96%) vSphere
7 6 (1.68%) 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 61 (17.04%) Kubernetes
2 57 (15.92%) Ansible
3 56 (15.64%) Terraform
4 26 (7.26%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (6.15%) Grafana
6 20 (5.59%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (4.75%) Prometheus
8 14 (3.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 12 (3.35%) SCCM
10 11 (3.07%) Progress Chef
11 8 (2.23%) Puppet
12 5 (1.40%) Data Guard
12 5 (1.40%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.40%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.40%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.12%) Nessus
13 4 (1.12%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 4 (1.12%) SCOM
14 3 (0.84%) Foglight
14 3 (0.84%) Nagios
Vendors
1 99 (27.65%) Microsoft
2 37 (10.34%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.50%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.50%) Centrify
4 26 (7.26%) Red Hat
5 25 (6.98%) ServiceNow
5 25 (6.98%) VMware
6 24 (6.70%) Google
6 24 (6.70%) Oracle
7 19 (5.31%) Okta
8 18 (5.03%) Splunk
9 17 (4.75%) OpenAI
10 12 (3.35%) Databricks
11 9 (2.51%) Cisco
12 8 (2.23%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (2.23%) UiPath
13 7 (1.96%) F5
13 7 (1.96%) Palo Alto
14 6 (1.68%) AppDynamics
15 5 (1.40%) Informatica