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 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 255 253 367
Rank change year-on-year -2 +114 +100
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 380 356 253
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.04% 1.03% 0.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.18% 1.17% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 248 224 184
10th Percentile £313 £350 £363
25th Percentile £400 £405 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £484 £516
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% -6.20% -10.26%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £603
90th Percentile £631 £675 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.13% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 0
10th Percentile £26.97 - -
25th Percentile £39.20 £61.87 -
Median hourly rate £54.75 £63.75 -
Median % change year-on-year -14.11% - -
75th Percentile £65.75 £65.62 -
90th Percentile £66.65 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £63.75 -
% change year-on-year +4.32% - -

All Process and 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 32,261 30,399 39,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.54% 87.91% 88.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,301 18,546 26,335
10th Percentile £300 £306 £310
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.13% -3.45%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £744 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,097 1,021 1,510
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.53 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.23% -26.97% +37.98%

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 14 December 2025.

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 14 December 2025.

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 14 December 2025. 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 -33 314 £498 +2.79% 211
UK excluding London +1 193 £480 +2.13% 193
London -24 140 £500 -9.09% 67
Work from Home +31 120 £468 -1.47% 148
North of England -18 59 £450 +3.15% 51
Midlands -19 41 £550 +13.64% 28
South East +5 40 £447 -0.67% 55
West Midlands -15 40 £550 +10.00% 18
Yorkshire -25 33 £450 +9.09% 21
North West -21 25 £443 -3.70% 25
Scotland +12 22 £362 -31.14% 13
South West -19 15 £525 +11.70% 19
East of England -20 11 £500 +17.65% 24
Wales +4 6 £263 -46.15% 5
Northern Ireland -7 1 £690 - 1
North East -12 1 £475 +1.06% 7
East Midlands -21 1 £450 +5.88% 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 24 (6.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 19 (5.00%) Confluence
2 19 (5.00%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.37%) Apache
4 8 (2.11%) IIS
5 5 (1.32%) iPlanet
5 5 (1.32%) JBoss
5 5 (1.32%) OpenStack
5 5 (1.32%) WebSphere
5 5 (1.32%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.53%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.26%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.26%) CICS
7 1 (0.26%) CMS
7 1 (0.26%) MQSeries
7 1 (0.26%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.05%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.53%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.26%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 4 (1.05%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.26%) Eikon
3 1 (0.26%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.26%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 148 (38.95%) Azure
2 110 (28.95%) AWS
3 65 (17.11%) GCP
4 45 (11.84%) GitHub
5 39 (10.26%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (9.47%) Entra ID
6 36 (9.47%) GitHub Actions
7 32 (8.42%) OpenShift
8 28 (7.37%) Serverless
9 27 (7.11%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (5.53%) Power Platform
11 20 (5.26%) AWS CloudFormation
12 18 (4.74%) Amazon S3
13 16 (4.21%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (3.95%) Amazon EC2
15 13 (3.42%) Azure AKS
16 12 (3.16%) Amazon EKS
16 12 (3.16%) Datadog
16 12 (3.16%) OneDrive
16 12 (3.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 40 (10.53%) Firewall
2 25 (6.58%) DNS
3 18 (4.74%) DHCP
4 16 (4.21%) TCP/IP
5 15 (3.95%) SSH
6 14 (3.68%) Network Security
7 10 (2.63%) VPN
8 8 (2.11%) Kerberos
8 8 (2.11%) WAN
9 6 (1.58%) Cisco IOS
9 6 (1.58%) LAN
10 5 (1.32%) BGP
10 5 (1.32%) NX-OS
10 5 (1.32%) OpenLDAP
10 5 (1.32%) WLAN
11 4 (1.05%) AMQP
11 4 (1.05%) HTTP
12 3 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 3 (0.79%) VLAN
13 2 (0.53%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (8.95%) SQL Server
2 25 (6.58%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (6.32%) Relational Database
4 20 (5.26%) Oracle Database
5 13 (3.42%) Power BI
6 11 (2.89%) MySQL
7 10 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (2.37%) NoSQL
9 7 (1.84%) BigQuery
9 7 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
9 7 (1.84%) RDBMS
10 6 (1.58%) Big Data
11 5 (1.32%) Oracle Reports
11 5 (1.32%) Tableau
12 4 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
12 4 (1.05%) Elasticsearch
12 4 (1.05%) InfluxDB
12 4 (1.05%) Metadata
13 3 (0.79%) DynamoDB
13 3 (0.79%) Redis
Development Applications
1 68 (17.89%) Git
2 51 (13.42%) Jenkins
3 36 (9.47%) GitLab
4 27 (7.11%) JIRA
5 17 (4.47%) Sonatype Nexus
6 13 (3.42%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.89%) Maven
8 9 (2.37%) JUnit
8 9 (2.37%) SonarQube
9 8 (2.11%) CircleCI
10 7 (1.84%) Artifactory
10 7 (1.84%) Postman
11 6 (1.58%) Selenium
12 5 (1.32%) Bitbucket Server
12 5 (1.32%) CA Release Automation
12 5 (1.32%) Cypress.io
12 5 (1.32%) Gradle
12 5 (1.32%) JMeter
12 5 (1.32%) LoadRunner
12 5 (1.32%) Snyk
General
1 123 (32.37%) Social Skills
2 63 (16.58%) Finance
3 53 (13.95%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (8.95%) Public Sector
5 30 (7.89%) Banking
6 8 (2.11%) Investment Banking
6 8 (2.11%) Legal
7 6 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.58%) Front Office
7 6 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (1.58%) Retail
8 5 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.32%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.05%) Games
9 4 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (0.79%) Marketing
11 2 (0.53%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.53%) Military
11 2 (0.53%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 39 (10.26%) Developer
2 33 (8.68%) DevOps Engineer
3 31 (8.16%) Senior
4 27 (7.11%) Administrator
5 24 (6.32%) Analyst
5 24 (6.32%) Automation Engineer
6 20 (5.26%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 18 (4.74%) Platform Engineer
8 17 (4.47%) Support Engineer
9 15 (3.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (3.95%) Java Developer
10 14 (3.68%) Consultant
11 13 (3.42%) DBA
11 13 (3.42%) Site Engineer
12 12 (3.16%) Data Engineer
12 12 (3.16%) Network Engineer
13 11 (2.89%) Lead
13 11 (2.89%) Python Engineer
14 10 (2.63%) Architect
14 10 (2.63%) NetBackup Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (10.26%) REST
2 22 (5.79%) Elastic Stack
3 19 (5.00%) Node.js
4 16 (4.21%) LDAP
5 15 (3.95%) .NET
6 12 (3.16%) FastAPI
6 12 (3.16%) Kafka
7 11 (2.89%) OAuth
7 11 (2.89%) SOAP
8 10 (2.63%) YAML
9 9 (2.37%) GraphQL
9 9 (2.37%) Microsoft Graph
10 8 (2.11%) SAML
11 7 (1.84%) boto
11 7 (1.84%) JSON
11 7 (1.84%) OpenID
11 7 (1.84%) Web Services
12 6 (1.58%) AngularJS
12 6 (1.58%) React
13 5 (1.32%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 24 (6.32%) Onboarding
2 19 (5.00%) Cloud Native
3 17 (4.47%) Distributed Systems
4 16 (4.21%) Security Posture
5 10 (2.63%) Private Cloud
6 9 (2.37%) Cyber Threat
6 9 (2.37%) Data Centre
6 9 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (2.11%) Clustering
7 8 (2.11%) Linux Command Line
8 7 (1.84%) AI Agents
8 7 (1.84%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.84%) PKI
8 7 (1.84%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.58%) Replication
9 6 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.05%) NHS
11 4 (1.05%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 112 (29.47%) Linux
2 70 (18.42%) Windows
3 26 (6.84%) Unix
4 23 (6.05%) Windows Server
5 15 (3.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (2.63%) CentOS
7 9 (2.37%) VMS
8 6 (1.58%) Ubuntu
9 4 (1.05%) AIX
9 4 (1.05%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.26%) Android
10 1 (0.26%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.26%) Debian
10 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (35.53%) Problem-Solving
2 134 (35.26%) CI/CD
3 117 (30.79%) DevOps
4 74 (19.47%) Infrastructure as Code
5 71 (18.68%) Agile
6 63 (16.58%) Containerisation
7 45 (11.84%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 41 (10.79%) Migration
9 40 (10.53%) Continuous Improvement
10 36 (9.47%) Incident Response
11 35 (9.21%) Disaster Recovery
11 35 (9.21%) Root Cause Analysis
12 34 (8.95%) Configuration Management
12 34 (8.95%) High Availability
12 34 (8.95%) ITIL
13 33 (8.68%) AI
13 33 (8.68%) Observability
14 32 (8.42%) Identity Access Management
14 32 (8.42%) SIEM
15 30 (7.89%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 199 (52.37%) Python
2 124 (32.63%) PowerShell
3 78 (20.53%) Bash
4 66 (17.37%) SQL
5 53 (13.95%) Java
6 43 (11.32%) Shell Script
7 34 (8.95%) Go
8 21 (5.53%) JavaScript
9 18 (4.74%) TypeScript
10 14 (3.68%) C#
11 13 (3.42%) Kusto Query Language
12 12 (3.16%) Bicep
12 12 (3.16%) VBA
13 11 (2.89%) Perl
14 8 (2.11%) Groovy
15 5 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 4 (1.05%) PL/SQL
16 4 (1.05%) T-SQL
17 3 (0.79%) PHP
18 2 (0.53%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 96 (25.26%) Security Cleared
2 67 (17.63%) SC Cleared
3 32 (8.42%) Degree
4 23 (6.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (3.95%) DV Cleared
6 13 (3.42%) Azure Certification
6 13 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
8 10 (2.63%) CISSP
9 8 (2.11%) AWS Certification
10 7 (1.84%) Master's Degree
11 6 (1.58%) CFCE
11 6 (1.58%) GCFA
11 6 (1.58%) GCIA
11 6 (1.58%) GCIH
11 6 (1.58%) GIAC
12 5 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (1.32%) OCP
12 5 (1.32%) Oracle Certification
13 4 (1.05%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (7.63%) GDPR
2 20 (5.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (4.47%) NIST
4 13 (3.42%) QA
5 12 (3.16%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.58%) HIPAA
7 5 (1.32%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.05%) SLA
9 2 (0.53%) EU AI Act
10 1 (0.26%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.26%) COBIT
10 1 (0.26%) GRC
10 1 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.26%) PMO
10 1 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 65 (17.11%) Docker
2 56 (14.74%) Active Directory
3 30 (7.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.89%) Oracle RAC
5 8 (2.11%) Firmware
6 5 (1.32%) Hyper-V
6 5 (1.32%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 5 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (1.05%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.79%) KVM
8 3 (0.79%) Xen
9 2 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.26%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.26%) HDFS
10 1 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.26%) RHEV
10 1 (0.26%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.26%) vSphere
10 1 (0.26%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 90 (23.68%) Terraform
2 79 (20.79%) Kubernetes
3 72 (18.95%) Ansible
4 45 (11.84%) Grafana
5 38 (10.00%) Prometheus
6 21 (5.53%) Progress Chef
7 18 (4.74%) SCCM
8 15 (3.95%) Puppet
9 14 (3.68%) Oracle RMAN
10 13 (3.42%) Microsoft Intune
11 12 (3.16%) Data Guard
11 12 (3.16%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (2.63%) NetBackup
13 9 (2.37%) yum
14 8 (2.11%) Podman
15 6 (1.58%) CA Single Sign-On
15 6 (1.58%) Kibana
16 5 (1.32%) CA Wily
16 5 (1.32%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 5 (1.32%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 115 (30.26%) Microsoft
2 46 (12.11%) Oracle
3 35 (9.21%) Splunk
4 34 (8.95%) Google
5 32 (8.42%) VMware
6 25 (6.58%) CyberArk
7 15 (3.95%) Red Hat
8 14 (3.68%) Atlassian
9 13 (3.42%) Cisco
9 13 (3.42%) ServiceNow
10 12 (3.16%) BeyondTrust
11 10 (2.63%) Palo Alto
11 10 (2.63%) SAP
11 10 (2.63%) Veritas
12 7 (1.84%) Databricks
12 7 (1.84%) F5
12 7 (1.84%) IBM
13 6 (1.58%) ArcSight
13 6 (1.58%) LogRhythm
14 5 (1.32%) AppDynamics