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 29 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 397 260 252
Rank change year-on-year -137 -8 +128
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 311 340 364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 1.04% 0.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.68% 1.15% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 192 245
10th Percentile £319 £308 £358
25th Percentile £405 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £625
90th Percentile £677 £649 £698
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £470
% change year-on-year +8.42% +1.06% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 7 3
10th Percentile - £17.89 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £40.28 -
Median hourly rate £22.25 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -64.96% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £35.63 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £66.05 £66.05 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.92 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -71.56% - -

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 46,073 29,551 32,512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.64% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,867 18,364 19,652
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,200 1,847 1,359
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.30 £20.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.05% -40.82% -1.16%
75th Percentile £65.88 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 29 September 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 29 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Task Automation in the UK

Task Automation
Top 16 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 29 September 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 -135 264 £500 +1.57% 454
UK excluding London -105 161 £515 +8.42% 229
London -108 108 £450 -6.74% 238
Work from Home -80 89 £500 - 185
North of England -56 66 £500 +5.26% 70
South East -47 49 £538 +12.57% 50
Yorkshire -25 37 £516 +7.48% 17
North West -50 25 £492 +3.63% 46
Midlands -63 16 £600 +15.61% 26
Scotland -38 13 £438 -4.89% 13
West Midlands -66 11 £600 +15.38% 17
East of England -39 9 £480 +6.67% 25
South West -39 8 £535 - 32
East Midlands -16 5 £500 +19.76% 9
North East -37 4 £275 +37.50% 8
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7

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 32 (10.29%) SharePoint
2 16 (5.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.61%) JBoss
5 4 (1.29%) Confluence
5 4 (1.29%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.96%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.96%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.96%) WebLogic Portal
7 2 (0.64%) CMS
7 2 (0.64%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) Apache
8 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.32%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.32%) IIS
8 1 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.96%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.93%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.29%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.96%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.32%) PeopleSoft HCM
5 1 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 119 (38.26%) Azure
2 78 (25.08%) AWS
3 48 (15.43%) Microsoft 365
4 35 (11.25%) GitHub
5 33 (10.61%) Entra ID
6 31 (9.97%) GCP
7 30 (9.65%) Power Platform
8 29 (9.32%) Azure DevOps
9 25 (8.04%) GitHub Actions
10 23 (7.40%) Microsoft Copilot
11 21 (6.75%) Amazon S3
12 20 (6.43%) Power Automate
13 19 (6.11%) AWS Lambda
13 19 (6.11%) Serverless
14 18 (5.79%) Azure Monitor
14 18 (5.79%) Datadog
15 15 (4.82%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (4.50%) OneDrive
16 14 (4.50%) SaaS
17 13 (4.18%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (15.43%) DNS
2 27 (8.68%) DHCP
2 27 (8.68%) VPN
3 26 (8.36%) Firewall
4 21 (6.75%) TCP/IP
5 17 (5.47%) Network Security
6 8 (2.57%) SSH
6 8 (2.57%) VLAN
7 7 (2.25%) SAN
7 7 (2.25%) WAN
8 6 (1.93%) Kerberos
8 6 (1.93%) SD-WAN
8 6 (1.93%) Skype
8 6 (1.93%) Wireless
9 5 (1.61%) BIG-IP
10 4 (1.29%) Intranet
10 4 (1.29%) PSTN
10 4 (1.29%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (0.96%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.00%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.18%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (3.86%) Power BI
4 11 (3.54%) Amazon RDS
5 9 (2.89%) MySQL
6 8 (2.57%) Relational Database
7 7 (2.25%) Metadata
7 7 (2.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.93%) Hadoop
8 6 (1.93%) Oracle Database
8 6 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (1.61%) Big Data
9 5 (1.61%) Sybase ASE
10 4 (1.29%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.29%) EDRMS
11 3 (0.96%) BigQuery
11 3 (0.96%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database 10g
11 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database 11g
11 3 (0.96%) SSDT
Development Applications
1 40 (12.86%) Git
2 22 (7.07%) GitLab
3 21 (6.75%) Jenkins
4 11 (3.54%) JIRA
5 4 (1.29%) Flyway
5 4 (1.29%) Oracle Forms
5 4 (1.29%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.96%) Oracle APEX
7 2 (0.64%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.64%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.64%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.64%) JUnit
7 2 (0.64%) Maven
7 2 (0.64%) Postman
7 2 (0.64%) Selenium
7 2 (0.64%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.64%) Subversion
7 2 (0.64%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.32%) VersionOne
General
1 96 (30.87%) Social Skills
2 59 (18.97%) Analytical Skills
3 53 (17.04%) Finance
4 32 (10.29%) Banking
5 17 (5.47%) Legal
6 15 (4.82%) Public Sector
7 10 (3.22%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.25%) Front Office
9 6 (1.93%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.96%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.96%) Military
11 2 (0.64%) Billing
11 2 (0.64%) Law
11 2 (0.64%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.64%) Marketing
11 2 (0.64%) Retail
12 1 (0.32%) Automotive
12 1 (0.32%) Local Government
12 1 (0.32%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 40 (12.86%) Senior
2 31 (9.97%) Support Engineer
3 29 (9.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 22 (7.07%) Developer
4 22 (7.07%) DevOps Engineer
5 21 (6.75%) Cloud Engineer
6 18 (5.79%) Analyst
7 17 (5.47%) DBA
8 16 (5.14%) Platform Engineer
9 13 (4.18%) Consultant
9 13 (4.18%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.86%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (3.54%) Architect
12 10 (3.22%) Lead
12 10 (3.22%) Linux Engineer
12 10 (3.22%) Site Engineer
13 9 (2.89%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (2.57%) Data Analyst
14 8 (2.57%) Security Engineer
14 8 (2.57%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (22.19%) Terraform
2 31 (9.97%) REST
3 19 (6.11%) React
4 16 (5.14%) ARM Templates
5 14 (4.50%) JSON
6 13 (4.18%) .NET
7 12 (3.86%) CSS
7 12 (3.86%) SOAP
8 11 (3.54%) Elastic Stack
8 11 (3.54%) HTML
8 11 (3.54%) Kafka
8 11 (3.54%) Node.js
9 10 (3.22%) SPFx
10 9 (2.89%) YAML
11 8 (2.57%) RESTful
11 8 (2.57%) XML
12 7 (2.25%) ASP.NET
12 7 (2.25%) Middleware
13 6 (1.93%) JWT
14 5 (1.61%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.07%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.75%) Onboarding
3 16 (5.14%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.82%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (4.50%) AI Agents
6 13 (4.18%) Clustering
6 13 (4.18%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (3.54%) Management Information System
8 10 (3.22%) Legacy Systems
8 10 (3.22%) Private Cloud
8 10 (3.22%) Replication
8 10 (3.22%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (2.89%) CMDB
9 9 (2.89%) Product Ownership
10 7 (2.25%) Public Cloud
10 7 (2.25%) Virtual Team
11 6 (1.93%) Blackberry
12 5 (1.61%) Data Centre
12 5 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.61%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 67 (21.54%) Windows
2 62 (19.94%) Linux
3 24 (7.72%) Windows Server
4 21 (6.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.50%) Windows 10
6 13 (4.18%) Unix
6 13 (4.18%) Windows Server 2019
7 8 (2.57%) Android
7 8 (2.57%) Mac OS
8 7 (2.25%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.93%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.96%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.64%) AIX
11 2 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.64%) VMS
11 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.64%) zOS
12 1 (0.32%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (30.87%) CI/CD
2 81 (26.05%) DevOps
3 70 (22.51%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (22.19%) ITIL
5 68 (21.86%) Problem-Solving
6 67 (21.54%) Agile
7 55 (17.68%) AI
8 51 (16.40%) Continuous Improvement
9 50 (16.08%) Migration
10 47 (15.11%) Observability
11 45 (14.47%) Root Cause Analysis
11 45 (14.47%) Workflow
12 42 (13.50%) Performance Tuning
13 38 (12.22%) ITSM
14 37 (11.90%) Containerisation
15 36 (11.58%) Disaster Recovery
16 35 (11.25%) Runbook
17 34 (10.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 33 (10.61%) Analytics
19 31 (9.97%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 141 (45.34%) Python
2 110 (35.37%) PowerShell
3 66 (21.22%) SQL
4 57 (18.33%) Bash
5 39 (12.54%) JavaScript
6 18 (5.79%) Bicep
7 17 (5.47%) Java
8 15 (4.82%) Go
8 15 (4.82%) TypeScript
9 14 (4.50%) T-SQL
10 13 (4.18%) Shell Script
11 9 (2.89%) C#
12 8 (2.57%) PL/SQL
13 5 (1.61%) Perl
13 5 (1.61%) VBScript
14 2 (0.64%) REXX
14 2 (0.64%) Scala
15 1 (0.32%) JCL
15 1 (0.32%) Korn
15 1 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 105 (33.76%) Security Cleared
2 68 (21.86%) SC Cleared
3 38 (12.22%) DV Cleared
4 33 (10.61%) Degree
5 20 (6.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (4.82%) Azure Certification
7 14 (4.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.93%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.96%) CCNA
10 3 (0.96%) CCNP
11 2 (0.64%) CIPD
11 2 (0.64%) CISM
11 2 (0.64%) CISSP
11 2 (0.64%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.64%) GSEC
11 2 (0.64%) OSCP
12 1 (0.32%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 17 (5.47%) SLA
3 13 (4.18%) QA
4 8 (2.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.61%) NIST
6 4 (1.29%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.29%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.64%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.64%) GDPR
8 1 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.32%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.32%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.32%) PMO
8 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 62 (19.94%) Active Directory
2 31 (9.97%) Docker
3 30 (9.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (4.82%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (4.50%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (3.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (1.93%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.93%) NFS
7 6 (1.93%) vSphere
8 2 (0.64%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.64%) Firmware
8 2 (0.64%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.32%) NDS
9 1 (0.32%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
9 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 44 (14.15%) Ansible
2 42 (13.50%) Kubernetes
3 26 (8.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 23 (7.40%) SCCM
5 19 (6.11%) Grafana
6 17 (5.47%) Prometheus
6 17 (5.47%) SCOM
7 16 (5.14%) Puppet
8 14 (4.50%) vCenter Server
9 11 (3.54%) Progress Chef
9 11 (3.54%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (2.25%) Failover Clustering
11 6 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (1.61%) Oracle RMAN
13 3 (0.96%) Istio
13 3 (0.96%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 2 (0.64%) linkerd
14 2 (0.64%) Nagios
14 2 (0.64%) Podman
14 2 (0.64%) WSUS
Vendors
1 111 (35.69%) Microsoft
2 34 (10.93%) VMware
3 25 (8.04%) Google
4 22 (7.07%) ServiceNow
5 21 (6.75%) Oracle
6 20 (6.43%) Red Hat
7 17 (5.47%) Splunk
8 15 (4.82%) SolarWinds
9 12 (3.86%) Broadcom
10 11 (3.54%) Cisco
11 9 (2.89%) BMC
12 8 (2.57%) Remedy
13 7 (2.25%) AppDynamics
13 7 (2.25%) Citrix
13 7 (2.25%) OpenAI
14 6 (1.93%) Dynatrace
14 6 (1.93%) Ivanti
14 6 (1.93%) Okta
15 5 (1.61%) BeyondTrust
15 5 (1.61%) F5