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 12 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 252 227 391
Rank change year-on-year -25 +164 +71
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 410 353 221
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 1.14% 0.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.18% 1.27% 0.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 289 217 170
10th Percentile £320 £329 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £522
Median % change year-on-year - -9.00% -5.09%
75th Percentile £606 £575 £600
90th Percentile £750 £662 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -1.06% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 11 0
10th Percentile £47.98 £21.00 -
25th Percentile £50.94 £21.61 -
Median hourly rate £56.25 £29.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +93.97% - -
75th Percentile £61.94 £65.31 -
90th Percentile £65.13 £65.62 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £24.66 -
% change year-on-year +169.67% - -

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 34,652 27,713 38,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.01% 89.46% 87.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,939 16,970 25,283
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £498 £500
% change year-on-year -4.06% -0.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,087 853 2,111
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.28
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -1.71% +1.74%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.51 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.18% -9.97% +9.38%

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 12 February 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 12 February 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 12 February 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 -39 344 £500 +5.26% 100
UK excluding London -18 202 £465 -1.06% 85
London -29 165 £563 +7.14% 29
Work from Home +34 154 £550 +15.18% 43
North of England -39 62 £450 -3.23% 27
South East -16 44 £440 +9.94% 23
Midlands -34 39 £519 +8.46% 12
Yorkshire -35 38 £450 +9.09% 8
West Midlands -30 37 £520 +7.33% 10
Scotland +10 27 £438 -8.85% 3
North West -28 20 £448 -4.68% 14
South West -32 18 £525 +11.70% 12
East of England -31 8 £500 +8.11% 12
North East -13 4 £365 -22.34% 5
Wales - 4 £525 - 1
East Midlands -24 2 £450 +13.92% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £683 - 2

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 26 (6.34%) Microsoft Exchange
2 23 (5.61%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.20%) Confluence
4 8 (1.95%) Appian
4 8 (1.95%) IIS
5 6 (1.46%) Apache
6 5 (1.22%) iPlanet
6 5 (1.22%) JBoss
6 5 (1.22%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.22%) WebSphere Application Server
7 4 (0.98%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.49%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.24%) Apache Spark
10 1 (0.24%) CMS
10 1 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.24%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 20 (4.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.98%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.73%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.49%) Maximo
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
1 2 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.24%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 197 (48.05%) Azure
2 138 (33.66%) AWS
3 101 (24.63%) GCP
4 52 (12.68%) Entra ID
5 44 (10.73%) Microsoft 365
6 40 (9.76%) GitHub
7 37 (9.02%) OpenShift
8 29 (7.07%) GitHub Actions
9 26 (6.34%) Azure DevOps
10 25 (6.10%) AWS CloudFormation
11 23 (5.61%) Serverless
12 22 (5.37%) Power Automate
13 21 (5.12%) Power Platform
14 16 (3.90%) Amazon S3
15 14 (3.41%) OneDrive
16 13 (3.17%) Amazon EKS
16 13 (3.17%) Datadog
17 12 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
17 12 (2.93%) Azure Monitor
17 12 (2.93%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 37 (9.02%) DNS
2 32 (7.80%) Firewall
3 29 (7.07%) DHCP
4 21 (5.12%) Kerberos
5 18 (4.39%) SSH
6 15 (3.66%) TCP/IP
7 12 (2.93%) VPN
8 11 (2.68%) Network Security
9 6 (1.46%) WAN
10 5 (1.22%) LAN
11 4 (0.98%) AMQP
11 4 (0.98%) HTTP
12 3 (0.73%) SSL
13 2 (0.49%) DWDM
13 2 (0.49%) Internet
13 2 (0.49%) NetScaler
13 2 (0.49%) SAN
13 2 (0.49%) SMTP
13 2 (0.49%) Wireless
13 2 (0.49%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (7.07%) SQL Server
2 27 (6.59%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (4.88%) Relational Database
4 15 (3.66%) Power BI
5 13 (3.17%) Oracle Database
6 10 (2.44%) Amazon RDS
6 10 (2.44%) MySQL
7 9 (2.20%) Pinecone
8 8 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
9 6 (1.46%) RDBMS
10 5 (1.22%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (1.22%) Metadata
10 5 (1.22%) MongoDB
10 5 (1.22%) NoSQL
11 4 (0.98%) BigQuery
11 4 (0.98%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (0.98%) InfluxDB
11 4 (0.98%) Power Query
11 4 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
11 4 (0.98%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 54 (13.17%) Jenkins
2 44 (10.73%) Git
3 36 (8.78%) GitLab
4 18 (4.39%) JIRA
5 17 (4.15%) Sonatype Nexus
6 10 (2.44%) CircleCI
7 8 (1.95%) Bitbucket
7 8 (1.95%) Maven
7 8 (1.95%) MLflow
8 7 (1.71%) SonarQube
9 5 (1.22%) Artifactory
9 5 (1.22%) Bitbucket Server
9 5 (1.22%) CA Release Automation
9 5 (1.22%) Gatling
9 5 (1.22%) JMeter
9 5 (1.22%) JUnit
9 5 (1.22%) LoadRunner
9 5 (1.22%) Postman
9 5 (1.22%) Selenium
10 4 (0.98%) Snyk
General
1 162 (39.51%) Social Skills
2 73 (17.80%) Finance
3 57 (13.90%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (9.27%) Public Sector
5 28 (6.83%) Banking
6 7 (1.71%) Investment Banking
6 7 (1.71%) Legal
6 7 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.22%) Retail
9 4 (0.98%) Games
9 4 (0.98%) Military
10 3 (0.73%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.73%) Law
11 2 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.49%) Front Office
11 2 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 48 (11.71%) Developer
2 42 (10.24%) Architect
3 37 (9.02%) CyberArk Architect
4 28 (6.83%) DevOps Engineer
5 27 (6.59%) Administrator
6 23 (5.61%) Automation Engineer
7 22 (5.37%) Analyst
8 21 (5.12%) Platform Engineer
8 21 (5.12%) Senior
9 17 (4.15%) Java Developer
9 17 (4.15%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 15 (3.66%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 15 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 14 (3.41%) DBA
12 13 (3.17%) Lead
13 12 (2.93%) Site Engineer
14 11 (2.68%) Consultant
14 11 (2.68%) Support Engineer
15 10 (2.44%) Data Engineer
16 9 (2.20%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (15.61%) REST
2 54 (13.17%) LDAP
3 41 (10.00%) SOAP
4 33 (8.05%) OAuth
5 25 (6.10%) Elastic Stack
5 25 (6.10%) Node.js
6 23 (5.61%) SAML
7 17 (4.15%) .NET
7 17 (4.15%) Web Services
8 14 (3.41%) RESTful
9 13 (3.17%) Kafka
10 12 (2.93%) Pandas
11 11 (2.68%) FastAPI
11 11 (2.68%) JWT
11 11 (2.68%) Microsoft Graph
11 11 (2.68%) NumPy
12 10 (2.44%) PyTorch
13 9 (2.20%) Faiss
13 9 (2.20%) Hugging Face
13 9 (2.20%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 44 (10.73%) Security Posture
2 43 (10.49%) Enterprise Software
3 23 (5.61%) Onboarding
4 22 (5.37%) Cloud Native
5 20 (4.88%) Replication
6 13 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
7 12 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (2.44%) Low-Code
9 8 (1.95%) Clustering
9 8 (1.95%) Data Centre
10 7 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
10 7 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
10 7 (1.71%) PKI
10 7 (1.71%) Private Cloud
11 6 (1.46%) Management Information System
12 5 (1.22%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.22%) Product Ownership
13 4 (0.98%) Data Structures
13 4 (0.98%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 111 (27.07%) Linux
2 88 (21.46%) Windows
3 37 (9.02%) Windows Server
4 28 (6.83%) Unix
5 15 (3.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (2.44%) VMS
7 8 (1.95%) CentOS
8 5 (1.22%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.98%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.73%) AIX
10 3 (0.73%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.49%) Android
11 2 (0.49%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.49%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.49%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 156 (38.05%) Problem-Solving
2 139 (33.90%) CI/CD
3 102 (24.88%) DevOps
4 69 (16.83%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (15.85%) Containerisation
6 57 (13.90%) Agile
6 57 (13.90%) SIEM
7 48 (11.71%) Continuous Improvement
7 48 (11.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 46 (11.22%) Migration
8 46 (11.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 44 (10.73%) Disaster Recovery
9 44 (10.73%) Observability
10 43 (10.49%) High Availability
10 43 (10.49%) Technical Leadership
11 42 (10.24%) AI
11 42 (10.24%) Identity Access Management
12 41 (10.00%) Configuration Management
13 40 (9.76%) Privileged Access Management
13 40 (9.76%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 216 (52.68%) Python
2 162 (39.51%) PowerShell
3 71 (17.32%) Bash
4 67 (16.34%) SQL
5 52 (12.68%) Java
6 38 (9.27%) Shell Script
7 27 (6.59%) Go
8 26 (6.34%) JavaScript
9 21 (5.12%) TypeScript
10 18 (4.39%) C#
11 14 (3.41%) Kusto Query Language
12 11 (2.68%) VBA
13 9 (2.20%) Perl
14 8 (1.95%) Bicep
15 7 (1.71%) PL/SQL
16 6 (1.46%) Groovy
17 3 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 3 (0.73%) PHP
17 3 (0.73%) Ruby
18 2 (0.49%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 140 (34.15%) Security Cleared
2 108 (26.34%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.07%) Degree
4 25 (6.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (3.66%) DV Cleared
7 13 (3.17%) Azure Certification
8 11 (2.68%) CISSP
9 9 (2.20%) AWS Certification
9 9 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (1.71%) OCP
10 7 (1.71%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.22%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.98%) CFCE
12 4 (0.98%) CISM
12 4 (0.98%) GCFA
12 4 (0.98%) GCIA
12 4 (0.98%) GCIH
12 4 (0.98%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (9.27%) GDPR
2 25 (6.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (4.63%) NIST
4 16 (3.90%) Data Quality
5 14 (3.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (2.44%) QA
7 7 (1.71%) SLA
8 5 (1.22%) HIPAA
8 5 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.98%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.49%) EU AI Act
10 2 (0.49%) GRC
11 1 (0.24%) COBIT
11 1 (0.24%) GMP
11 1 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.24%) PMO
System Software
1 96 (23.41%) Active Directory
2 65 (15.85%) Docker
3 26 (6.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (2.44%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.22%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 4 (0.98%) Hyper-V
6 4 (0.98%) KVM
7 3 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.73%) vSphere
7 3 (0.73%) Xen
8 2 (0.49%) NFS
8 2 (0.49%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.24%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.24%) HDFS
9 1 (0.24%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.24%) RHEV
9 1 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.24%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 88 (21.46%) Kubernetes
2 85 (20.73%) Terraform
3 72 (17.56%) Ansible
4 45 (10.98%) Grafana
5 37 (9.02%) Prometheus
6 25 (6.10%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (5.61%) Progress Chef
8 18 (4.39%) Microsoft Intune
9 16 (3.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 14 (3.41%) Puppet
11 12 (2.93%) SCCM
12 11 (2.68%) Oracle RMAN
13 7 (1.71%) Podman
14 6 (1.46%) CA Single Sign-On
14 6 (1.46%) NetBackup
14 6 (1.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 5 (1.22%) CA Wily
15 5 (1.22%) Kibana
15 5 (1.22%) logstash
15 5 (1.22%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 105 (25.61%) Microsoft
2 51 (12.44%) CyberArk
3 41 (10.00%) BeyondTrust
4 38 (9.27%) Google
5 37 (9.02%) Oracle
6 34 (8.29%) Centrify
7 33 (8.05%) Splunk
8 28 (6.83%) VMware
9 20 (4.88%) Red Hat
10 19 (4.63%) Okta
11 18 (4.39%) ServiceNow
12 15 (3.66%) OpenAI
13 8 (1.95%) Automation Anywhere
13 8 (1.95%) Cisco
13 8 (1.95%) Databricks
13 8 (1.95%) UiPath
14 7 (1.71%) IBM
15 6 (1.46%) AppDynamics
15 6 (1.46%) Veritas
16 5 (1.22%) Broadcom