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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 303 238 300
Rank change year-on-year -65 +62 +144
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 371 316 297
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 1.10% 0.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.91% 1.20% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 276 176 234
10th Percentile £358 £348 £383
25th Percentile £401 £413 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £589 £675
90th Percentile £750 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £550
% change year-on-year -1.26% -13.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 13 2
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +21.85% -53.56%
75th Percentile £46.40 £65.00 -
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 40,767 26,234 36,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 91.05% 86.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,562 16,839 23,562
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.66% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,067 2,440
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.36 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.82% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £59.95 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -51 316 £500 -3.24% 121
UK excluding London -77 185 £469 -1.26% 81
London -24 153 £575 +6.98% 54
Work from Home +1 134 £585 +10.90% 57
North of England -27 76 £470 -1.05% 22
Yorkshire 0 60 £475 -11.63% 7
South East -31 43 £425 +32.40% 32
Scotland -18 28 £500 +7.53% 5
Midlands -65 18 £525 +10.53% 4
South West -35 16 £400 -17.95% 10
West Midlands -51 14 £550 +10.00% 2
North West -56 10 £487 +2.53% 11
North East -24 6 £365 -2.67% 4
East Midlands -26 4 £413 +5.77% 2
Wales - 2 £543 -
East of England -50 1 £400 -22.33% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 5

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 29 (7.82%) SharePoint
2 21 (5.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.96%) Confluence
4 8 (2.16%) 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 12 (3.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.62%) 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%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.54%) Maximo
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 187 (50.40%) Azure
2 127 (34.23%) AWS
3 75 (20.22%) GCP
4 50 (13.48%) Entra ID
5 46 (12.40%) GitHub
5 46 (12.40%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (8.89%) OpenShift
7 30 (8.09%) GitHub Actions
8 28 (7.55%) Power Platform
9 24 (6.47%) Azure DevOps
9 24 (6.47%) Power Automate
10 21 (5.66%) Amazon S3
11 18 (4.85%) Azure Monitor
12 17 (4.58%) PaaS
13 16 (4.31%) AWS CloudFormation
14 15 (4.04%) Azure Key Vault
15 13 (3.50%) Microsoft Copilot
15 13 (3.50%) Serverless
16 11 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
16 11 (2.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 42 (11.32%) DNS
2 33 (8.89%) DHCP
3 22 (5.93%) Firewall
4 18 (4.85%) Kerberos
5 16 (4.31%) VPN
6 10 (2.70%) Network Security
6 10 (2.70%) SAN
6 10 (2.70%) SSH
7 9 (2.43%) WAN
8 8 (2.16%) TCP/IP
9 7 (1.89%) SD-WAN
10 6 (1.62%) VLAN
11 5 (1.35%) LAN
11 5 (1.35%) 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%) Wi-Fi
14 2 (0.54%) DWDM
14 2 (0.54%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (10.51%) SQL Server
2 18 (4.85%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (4.04%) Power BI
4 10 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.16%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.16%) Oracle Database
5 8 (2.16%) Pinecone
6 6 (1.62%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.62%) Tableau
7 5 (1.35%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.35%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.35%) Metadata
7 5 (1.35%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.35%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (1.08%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (1.08%) Big Data
8 4 (1.08%) MySQL
8 4 (1.08%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (1.08%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 38 (10.24%) Jenkins
2 34 (9.16%) GitLab
3 28 (7.55%) Git
4 22 (5.93%) JIRA
5 13 (3.50%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.16%) MLflow
7 7 (1.89%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.35%) 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
1 149 (40.16%) Social Skills
2 61 (16.44%) Finance
3 47 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 28 (7.55%) Banking
6 12 (3.23%) Legal
7 11 (2.96%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.35%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.35%) Investment Banking
9 4 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.08%) Law
10 3 (0.81%) Military
10 3 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.81%) Retail
11 2 (0.54%) Front Office
12 1 (0.27%) Marketing
12 1 (0.27%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (11.86%) Architect
2 38 (10.24%) Developer
3 36 (9.70%) CyberArk Architect
4 23 (6.20%) DBA
5 21 (5.66%) Administrator
6 20 (5.39%) Automation Engineer
6 20 (5.39%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 18 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (4.31%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 15 (4.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 14 (3.77%) Analyst
10 14 (3.77%) Consultant
10 14 (3.77%) Platform Engineer
11 13 (3.50%) Site Engineer
12 12 (3.23%) Lead
13 11 (2.96%) Azure Developer
14 10 (2.70%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (2.70%) Data Engineer
14 10 (2.70%) Java Developer
14 10 (2.70%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (18.33%) REST
2 50 (13.48%) LDAP
3 47 (12.67%) SOAP
4 26 (7.01%) OAuth
5 20 (5.39%) Web Services
6 19 (5.12%) .NET
7 18 (4.85%) Elastic Stack
8 17 (4.58%) SAML
9 16 (4.31%) Node.js
10 13 (3.50%) JWT
11 12 (3.23%) .NET Framework
11 12 (3.23%) Microsoft Graph
11 12 (3.23%) RESTful
12 11 (2.96%) Pandas
12 11 (2.96%) PyTorch
13 10 (2.70%) FastAPI
13 10 (2.70%) JSON
13 10 (2.70%) Kafka
13 10 (2.70%) NumPy
14 9 (2.43%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 42 (11.32%) Enterprise Software
2 38 (10.24%) Security Posture
3 23 (6.20%) Onboarding
4 22 (5.93%) Replication
5 17 (4.58%) Cloud Native
6 15 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (3.77%) Legacy Systems
7 14 (3.77%) Product Ownership
8 13 (3.50%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (2.96%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (2.16%) Clustering
10 8 (2.16%) Data Centre
10 8 (2.16%) Low-Code
11 5 (1.35%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.35%) FlexPod
11 5 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.35%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.08%) Data Structures
12 4 (1.08%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 74 (19.95%) Linux
1 74 (19.95%) Windows
2 31 (8.36%) Windows Server
3 18 (4.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (4.58%) Unix
5 9 (2.43%) Mac OS
6 8 (2.16%) VMS
6 8 (2.16%) Windows 10
7 5 (1.35%) CoreOS
7 5 (1.35%) Data ONTAP
8 2 (0.54%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.54%) CentOS
9 1 (0.27%) Android
9 1 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.27%) Windows 7
9 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (35.85%) Problem-Solving
2 119 (32.08%) CI/CD
3 91 (24.53%) DevOps
4 61 (16.44%) AI
5 59 (15.90%) Agile
6 58 (15.63%) Infrastructure as Code
7 57 (15.36%) Disaster Recovery
8 50 (13.48%) High Availability
8 50 (13.48%) Migration
9 48 (12.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 47 (12.67%) Continuous Improvement
10 47 (12.67%) Technical Leadership
11 45 (12.13%) Containerisation
12 44 (11.86%) ITSM
13 43 (11.59%) Analytics
13 43 (11.59%) Observability
13 43 (11.59%) SIEM
14 40 (10.78%) ITIL
15 39 (10.51%) Integration Patterns
15 39 (10.51%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 178 (47.98%) Python
2 144 (38.81%) PowerShell
3 68 (18.33%) SQL
4 49 (13.21%) Bash
5 40 (10.78%) Java
6 27 (7.28%) JavaScript
7 23 (6.20%) Shell Script
8 20 (5.39%) C#
9 19 (5.12%) Go
10 18 (4.85%) TypeScript
11 11 (2.96%) Kusto Query Language
12 10 (2.70%) PL/SQL
13 9 (2.43%) T-SQL
14 5 (1.35%) Bicep
15 3 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.81%) Perl
15 3 (0.81%) VBA
16 2 (0.54%) ActionScript
16 2 (0.54%) Korn
16 2 (0.54%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 136 (36.66%) Security Cleared
2 108 (29.11%) SC Cleared
3 28 (7.55%) Degree
4 23 (6.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (4.58%) DV Cleared
6 16 (4.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.16%) OCP
7 8 (2.16%) Oracle Certification
8 6 (1.62%) CISSP
9 5 (1.35%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.35%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.08%) CISM
11 3 (0.81%) CCNA
11 3 (0.81%) CCNP
11 3 (0.81%) JNCIA
11 3 (0.81%) JNCIS
11 3 (0.81%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.54%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.20%) Data Quality
2 22 (5.93%) GDPR
3 14 (3.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (2.96%) NIST
6 10 (2.70%) QA
7 8 (2.16%) 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 (24.80%) Active Directory
2 37 (9.97%) Docker
3 20 (5.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (4.31%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (2.16%) NFS
6 7 (1.89%) Hyper-V
6 7 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (1.89%) vSphere
7 2 (0.54%) BitLocker
7 2 (0.54%) Firmware
7 2 (0.54%) KVM
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.27%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.27%) HDFS
8 1 (0.27%) RHEV
8 1 (0.27%) UAG
8 1 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.27%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.27%) Xen
Systems Management
1 69 (18.60%) Kubernetes
2 65 (17.52%) Terraform
3 58 (15.63%) Ansible
4 26 (7.01%) Grafana
5 25 (6.74%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (5.39%) Prometheus
6 20 (5.39%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (3.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 13 (3.50%) Progress Chef
9 11 (2.96%) SCCM
10 9 (2.43%) Puppet
11 6 (1.62%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 6 (1.62%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.35%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.08%) Data Guard
13 4 (1.08%) Nessus
13 4 (1.08%) SCOM
14 3 (0.81%) Foglight
14 3 (0.81%) Nagios
14 3 (0.81%) OpenVAS
Vendors
1 99 (26.68%) Microsoft
2 37 (9.97%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.16%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.16%) Centrify
4 28 (7.55%) Oracle
5 26 (7.01%) VMware
6 25 (6.74%) Google
6 25 (6.74%) Red Hat
6 25 (6.74%) ServiceNow
7 19 (5.12%) Okta
7 19 (5.12%) Splunk
8 16 (4.31%) OpenAI
9 14 (3.77%) Databricks
10 8 (2.16%) Automation Anywhere
10 8 (2.16%) Cisco
10 8 (2.16%) UiPath
11 7 (1.89%) F5
11 7 (1.89%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.35%) AppDynamics
12 5 (1.35%) Informatica