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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 371 251 285
Rank change year-on-year -120 +34 +172
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 308 314 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 1.03% 0.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.71% 1.13% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 213 170 259
10th Percentile £300 £304 £388
25th Percentile £400 £407 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £588 £580 £675
90th Percentile £625 £677 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £475 £525
% change year-on-year -1.68% -9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 16 3
10th Percentile - £19.91 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £21.00 -
Median hourly rate £19.57 £29.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -33.66% +23.95% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £46.40 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.33 £23.33 -
% change year-on-year -30.00% - -

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 43,613 27,816 36,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.98% 90.91% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,139 17,565 23,448
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £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 2,612 1,364 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.49 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.95 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.00% -34.42% +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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -88 265 £460 -8.00% 68
UK excluding London -85 157 £467 -1.68% 57
London -85 123 £475 -5.00% 19
Work from Home -50 102 £500 -1.82% 25
North of England -37 66 £500 +5.26% 12
Yorkshire -12 50 £500 +25.00% 2
South East -37 41 £401 -19.75% 24
Scotland -36 18 £508 +12.78% 3
Midlands -63 15 £500 +2.56% 7
South West -34 13 £363 -30.29% 9
North West -50 11 £459 -3.37% 9
West Midlands -55 11 £575 +15.00% 3
North East -31 5 £275 -26.67% 1
East Midlands -19 4 £413 +7.14% 4
Wales -14 2 £543 +106.67% 1
East of England -47 1 £400 -11.11% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 -

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 36 (11.69%) SharePoint
2 22 (7.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.25%) Confluence
4 6 (1.95%) Appian
5 4 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.97%) Apache
7 2 (0.65%) CMS
7 2 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.62%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.97%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.65%) Maximo
2 2 (0.65%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.65%) Remedy AR System
3 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 141 (45.78%) Azure
2 79 (25.65%) AWS
3 55 (17.86%) Microsoft 365
4 49 (15.91%) Entra ID
5 38 (12.34%) GCP
6 37 (12.01%) GitHub
7 24 (7.79%) Azure DevOps
7 24 (7.79%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (7.79%) Power Automate
7 24 (7.79%) Power Platform
8 20 (6.49%) OpenShift
9 17 (5.52%) Amazon S3
9 17 (5.52%) Azure Monitor
10 15 (4.87%) Azure Key Vault
10 15 (4.87%) Microsoft Copilot
11 14 (4.55%) PaaS
12 13 (4.22%) OneDrive
12 13 (4.22%) PowerApps
12 13 (4.22%) Serverless
13 11 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 40 (12.99%) DNS
2 32 (10.39%) DHCP
3 21 (6.82%) Firewall
4 19 (6.17%) VPN
5 15 (4.87%) Kerberos
6 13 (4.22%) SAN
7 11 (3.57%) Network Security
8 9 (2.92%) TCP/IP
8 9 (2.92%) WAN
9 8 (2.60%) SD-WAN
9 8 (2.60%) VLAN
10 5 (1.62%) LAN
10 5 (1.62%) SSH
11 4 (1.30%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.30%) Intranet
11 4 (1.30%) SSL
12 3 (0.97%) BGP
12 3 (0.97%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.97%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.97%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (11.69%) SQL Server
2 10 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
2 10 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (3.25%) Power BI
3 8 (2.60%) Amazon RDS
4 7 (2.27%) Metadata
4 7 (2.27%) MySQL
5 6 (1.95%) Pinecone
5 6 (1.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 5 (1.62%) Snowflake Schema
6 5 (1.62%) Sybase ASE
7 4 (1.30%) Big Data
7 4 (1.30%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.30%) EDRMS
7 4 (1.30%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.30%) Tableau
8 3 (0.97%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.97%) MongoDB
8 3 (0.97%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.97%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 27 (8.77%) Jenkins
2 25 (8.12%) GitLab
3 21 (6.82%) Git
4 19 (6.17%) JIRA
5 9 (2.92%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (1.95%) MLflow
7 5 (1.62%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.30%) Flyway
9 3 (0.97%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.97%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.65%) Selenium
11 1 (0.32%) Chocolatey
11 1 (0.32%) IBM UrbanCode
11 1 (0.32%) JMeter
11 1 (0.32%) Postman
11 1 (0.32%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.32%) Snyk
11 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.32%) TestNG
11 1 (0.32%) TestRail
General
1 121 (39.29%) Social Skills
2 56 (18.18%) Finance
3 43 (13.96%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (7.79%) Banking
5 22 (7.14%) Public Sector
6 15 (4.87%) Legal
7 13 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.60%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.62%) Front Office
10 4 (1.30%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.65%) Military
12 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.65%) Retail
13 1 (0.32%) International Banking
13 1 (0.32%) Local Government
13 1 (0.32%) Marketing
13 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 32 (10.39%) Developer
2 21 (6.82%) DBA
3 18 (5.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 16 (5.19%) Architect
4 16 (5.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 16 (5.19%) Consultant
4 16 (5.19%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 15 (4.87%) Senior
6 13 (4.22%) Support Engineer
7 12 (3.90%) Analyst
7 12 (3.90%) Automation Engineer
7 12 (3.90%) Site Engineer
8 11 (3.57%) Azure Developer
8 11 (3.57%) Data Engineer
8 11 (3.57%) Platform Engineer
9 10 (3.25%) Administrator
9 10 (3.25%) DevOps Engineer
9 10 (3.25%) Technical Support
10 9 (2.92%) Network Engineer
10 9 (2.92%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (13.96%) REST
2 23 (7.47%) .NET
3 21 (6.82%) LDAP
3 21 (6.82%) OAuth
3 21 (6.82%) SOAP
4 17 (5.52%) Web Services
5 15 (4.87%) Microsoft Graph
5 15 (4.87%) SAML
6 12 (3.90%) .NET Framework
7 11 (3.57%) CSS
7 11 (3.57%) Elastic Stack
7 11 (3.57%) JWT
7 11 (3.57%) React
8 10 (3.25%) AWS CDK
8 10 (3.25%) JSON
8 10 (3.25%) Node.js
8 10 (3.25%) RESTful
8 10 (3.25%) SPFx
9 9 (2.92%) Pandas
9 9 (2.92%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 24 (7.79%) Replication
2 21 (6.82%) Onboarding
3 17 (5.52%) Legacy Systems
4 15 (4.87%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (4.55%) Enterprise Software
6 13 (4.22%) Hybrid Cloud
7 12 (3.90%) AI Agents
7 12 (3.90%) Cloud Native
8 11 (3.57%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (3.57%) Product Ownership
9 10 (3.25%) Security Posture
10 7 (2.27%) Data Centre
10 7 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
10 7 (2.27%) Virtual Team
11 6 (1.95%) Low-Code
11 6 (1.95%) Management Information System
12 5 (1.62%) Autonomous Agent
12 5 (1.62%) Clustering
12 5 (1.62%) CMDB
12 5 (1.62%) FlexPod
Operating Systems
1 72 (23.38%) Windows
2 57 (18.51%) Linux
3 30 (9.74%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (3.90%) Unix
6 9 (2.92%) Windows 10
7 8 (2.60%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.95%) VMS
9 5 (1.62%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.62%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.65%) AIX
10 2 (0.65%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.65%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.32%) Android
11 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.32%) CentOS
11 1 (0.32%) Solaris
11 1 (0.32%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (27.60%) Problem-Solving
2 80 (25.97%) CI/CD
3 68 (22.08%) DevOps
4 64 (20.78%) AI
5 51 (16.56%) Agile
6 48 (15.58%) Disaster Recovery
6 48 (15.58%) High Availability
7 47 (15.26%) ITIL
8 46 (14.94%) Migration
9 40 (12.99%) Analytics
10 39 (12.66%) Continuous Improvement
11 38 (12.34%) Infrastructure as Code
11 38 (12.34%) Observability
12 37 (12.01%) Workflow
13 33 (10.71%) Change Management
13 33 (10.71%) Containerisation
13 33 (10.71%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 28 (9.09%) Data Protection
15 27 (8.77%) ETL
15 27 (8.77%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 135 (43.83%) Python
2 118 (38.31%) PowerShell
3 58 (18.83%) SQL
4 40 (12.99%) Bash
5 27 (8.77%) JavaScript
6 25 (8.12%) Java
7 19 (6.17%) C#
8 18 (5.84%) TypeScript
9 14 (4.55%) Go
10 12 (3.90%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (2.92%) Shell Script
11 9 (2.92%) T-SQL
12 8 (2.60%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.62%) Bicep
14 2 (0.65%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.65%) Scala
14 2 (0.65%) VBScript
15 1 (0.32%) ABAP
15 1 (0.32%) REXX
15 1 (0.32%) VB
Qualifications
1 95 (30.84%) Security Cleared
2 71 (23.05%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.74%) Degree
4 22 (7.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (6.17%) DV Cleared
6 9 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.62%) OCP
8 5 (1.62%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.30%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.30%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.30%) CISSP
10 3 (0.97%) CCNP
11 2 (0.65%) CCNA
11 2 (0.65%) JNCIA
11 2 (0.65%) JNCIS
11 2 (0.65%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.65%) MCITP
11 2 (0.65%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.79%) Data Quality
2 15 (4.87%) GDPR
3 13 (4.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 11 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (3.25%) NIST
6 9 (2.92%) QA
7 7 (2.27%) SLA
8 3 (0.97%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.97%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.65%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.32%) GMP
10 1 (0.32%) GRC
System Software
1 65 (21.10%) Active Directory
2 25 (8.12%) Docker
3 18 (5.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.57%) NFS
6 7 (2.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (2.27%) vSphere
7 5 (1.62%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.65%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.65%) Firmware
8 2 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.32%) KVM
9 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.32%) UAG
9 1 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.32%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 50 (16.23%) Ansible
2 48 (15.58%) Kubernetes
3 46 (14.94%) Terraform
4 26 (8.44%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (5.84%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.87%) SCCM
7 13 (4.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 12 (3.90%) Grafana
9 11 (3.57%) Prometheus
10 9 (2.92%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.95%) Puppet
11 6 (1.95%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (1.62%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.30%) Nessus
13 4 (1.30%) SCOM
14 3 (0.97%) Foglight
14 3 (0.97%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.97%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.97%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.97%) WSUS
Vendors
1 101 (32.79%) Microsoft
2 25 (8.12%) VMware
3 23 (7.47%) Google
3 23 (7.47%) ServiceNow
4 21 (6.82%) Red Hat
5 18 (5.84%) Okta
6 16 (5.19%) OpenAI
7 15 (4.87%) Oracle
7 15 (4.87%) Splunk
8 12 (3.90%) Databricks
9 9 (2.92%) Cisco
10 8 (2.60%) CyberArk
11 7 (2.27%) Palo Alto
12 6 (1.95%) AppDynamics
12 6 (1.95%) Automation Anywhere
12 6 (1.95%) BeyondTrust
12 6 (1.95%) Bloomberg
12 6 (1.95%) Centrify
12 6 (1.95%) Citrix
12 6 (1.95%) UiPath