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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 281 226 366
Rank change year-on-year -55 +140 +79
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 401 338 236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.91% 1.16% 0.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.06% 1.28% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 298 202 186
10th Percentile £313 £341 £394
25th Percentile £400 £413 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £605 £594 £675
90th Percentile £750 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £475 £525
% change year-on-year -4.42% -9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 13 0
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% - -
75th Percentile £35.15 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £41.66 £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 37,704 26,329 38,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.90% 90.53% 86.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,901 17,073 24,878
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.13% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,218 942 2,338
10th Percentile £14.94 £15.20 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.75 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.31 £57.75
90th Percentile £75.12 £77.10 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -5.54% +0.83% -12.50%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 -69 333 £491 -1.75% 97
UK excluding London -65 186 £454 -4.42% 68
London -40 169 £575 +8.87% 40
Work from Home +20 153 £550 +6.80% 41
North of England -40 66 £450 -4.51% 17
Yorkshire -23 48 £454 -13.52% 4
South East -30 40 £405 +1.25% 26
Scotland +3 27 £440 -6.63% 2
Midlands -63 24 £503 +5.89% 5
West Midlands -46 21 £550 +13.64% 1
South West -28 20 £425 -10.05% 11
North West -47 14 £358 -23.83% 7
East of England -40 5 £500 -11.50% 7
North East -11 4 £365 -22.34% 6
Wales - 4 £525 - 2
East Midlands -34 3 £344 -18.64% 4
Northern Ireland - 2 £683 -

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 34 (8.48%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (7.98%) SharePoint
3 12 (2.99%) Confluence
4 8 (2.00%) Appian
5 4 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.50%) Apache
6 2 (0.50%) CMS
6 2 (0.50%) IIS
6 2 (0.50%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.50%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.50%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.25%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 14 (3.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.00%) Chatbot
2 4 (1.00%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.50%) Maximo
1 2 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
1 2 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 198 (49.38%) Azure
2 134 (33.42%) AWS
3 81 (20.20%) GCP
4 64 (15.96%) Entra ID
5 52 (12.97%) Microsoft 365
6 46 (11.47%) GitHub
7 34 (8.48%) OpenShift
8 32 (7.98%) GitHub Actions
9 26 (6.48%) Azure DevOps
10 25 (6.23%) Power Platform
11 22 (5.49%) Amazon S3
11 22 (5.49%) Azure Monitor
12 21 (5.24%) AWS CloudFormation
12 21 (5.24%) PaaS
12 21 (5.24%) Power Automate
13 19 (4.74%) Serverless
14 17 (4.24%) Azure Key Vault
15 16 (3.99%) Azure App Service
15 16 (3.99%) Azure Service Bus
15 16 (3.99%) Azure WebJobs
Communications & Networking
1 41 (10.22%) DNS
2 32 (7.98%) DHCP
3 20 (4.99%) Firewall
4 19 (4.74%) SSH
5 16 (3.99%) Kerberos
6 14 (3.49%) VPN
7 11 (2.74%) TCP/IP
8 10 (2.49%) Network Security
9 7 (1.75%) SAN
9 7 (1.75%) WAN
10 6 (1.50%) LAN
11 4 (1.00%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.00%) SD-WAN
11 4 (1.00%) VLAN
12 3 (0.75%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.75%) SSL
13 2 (0.50%) DWDM
13 2 (0.50%) HTTP
13 2 (0.50%) Reverse Proxy
13 2 (0.50%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (8.48%) SQL Server
2 20 (4.99%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (4.49%) Power BI
4 11 (2.74%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (2.74%) Relational Database
5 10 (2.49%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (2.00%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.00%) Pinecone
7 7 (1.75%) Tableau
8 5 (1.25%) Big Data
8 5 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.25%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.25%) Metadata
8 5 (1.25%) Snowflake Schema
8 5 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (1.00%) InfluxDB
9 4 (1.00%) MongoDB
9 4 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 4 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
9 4 (1.00%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 48 (11.97%) Jenkins
2 39 (9.73%) GitLab
3 36 (8.98%) Git
4 22 (5.49%) JIRA
5 12 (2.99%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.00%) CircleCI
6 8 (2.00%) MLflow
7 5 (1.25%) Bitbucket
7 5 (1.25%) Gatling
7 5 (1.25%) JMeter
7 5 (1.25%) LoadRunner
8 4 (1.00%) Maven
8 4 (1.00%) Selenium
8 4 (1.00%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.75%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.75%) Flyway
9 3 (0.75%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.75%) JUnit
9 3 (0.75%) Postman
10 2 (0.50%) Cypress.io
General
1 169 (42.14%) Social Skills
2 73 (18.20%) Finance
3 52 (12.97%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 27 (6.73%) Banking
6 10 (2.49%) Legal
7 8 (2.00%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.50%) Retail
10 4 (1.00%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.00%) Law
10 4 (1.00%) Military
10 4 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.75%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.50%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.50%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.50%) Front Office
12 2 (0.50%) Games
Job Titles
1 50 (12.47%) Developer
2 42 (10.47%) Architect
3 37 (9.23%) CyberArk Architect
4 24 (5.99%) Administrator
4 24 (5.99%) DevOps Engineer
5 23 (5.74%) Automation Engineer
6 22 (5.49%) Analyst
6 22 (5.49%) Platform Engineer
7 21 (5.24%) DBA
8 19 (4.74%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 18 (4.49%) Java Developer
10 14 (3.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 14 (3.49%) Lead
10 14 (3.49%) Senior
11 13 (3.24%) Azure Developer
11 13 (3.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 12 (2.99%) Consultant
12 12 (2.99%) Site Engineer
13 11 (2.74%) Data Engineer
13 11 (2.74%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (17.71%) REST
2 50 (12.47%) SOAP
3 49 (12.22%) LDAP
4 27 (6.73%) OAuth
5 25 (6.23%) Web Services
6 24 (5.99%) .NET
7 20 (4.99%) Node.js
8 18 (4.49%) Elastic Stack
8 18 (4.49%) Microsoft Graph
8 18 (4.49%) SAML
9 17 (4.24%) .NET Framework
10 14 (3.49%) Kafka
11 13 (3.24%) RESTful
12 11 (2.74%) JWT
12 11 (2.74%) Pandas
13 10 (2.49%) PyTorch
14 9 (2.24%) FastAPI
14 9 (2.24%) scikit-learn
14 9 (2.24%) TensorFlow
14 9 (2.24%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 45 (11.22%) Security Posture
2 43 (10.72%) Enterprise Software
3 22 (5.49%) Onboarding
4 20 (4.99%) Replication
5 13 (3.24%) Cloud Native
5 13 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (3.24%) Legacy Systems
6 11 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
7 10 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (2.24%) Low-Code
8 9 (2.24%) Product Ownership
9 8 (2.00%) Clustering
10 7 (1.75%) Data Centre
10 7 (1.75%) PKI
11 5 (1.25%) FlexPod
11 5 (1.25%) Management Information System
12 4 (1.00%) Data Structures
12 4 (1.00%) Legacy Applications
12 4 (1.00%) NHS
12 4 (1.00%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 93 (23.19%) Linux
2 81 (20.20%) Windows
3 37 (9.23%) Windows Server
4 18 (4.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (4.24%) Unix
6 12 (2.99%) VMS
7 8 (2.00%) Windows 10
8 6 (1.50%) Mac OS
9 5 (1.25%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.25%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.00%) CentOS
11 2 (0.50%) AIX
11 2 (0.50%) Android
11 2 (0.50%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.50%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.25%) Rocky
12 1 (0.25%) Solaris
12 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (38.40%) Problem-Solving
2 128 (31.92%) CI/CD
3 101 (25.19%) DevOps
4 66 (16.46%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (16.21%) Agile
6 53 (13.22%) Containerisation
7 52 (12.97%) Migration
8 49 (12.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 48 (11.97%) Analytics
9 48 (11.97%) Observability
9 48 (11.97%) SIEM
10 47 (11.72%) AI
11 46 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
11 46 (11.47%) High Availability
12 45 (11.22%) Disaster Recovery
12 45 (11.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 42 (10.47%) Technical Leadership
14 40 (9.98%) Privileged Access Management
15 38 (9.48%) Root Cause Analysis
15 38 (9.48%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 187 (46.63%) Python
2 165 (41.15%) PowerShell
3 69 (17.21%) SQL
4 55 (13.72%) Bash
5 49 (12.22%) Java
6 33 (8.23%) Shell Script
7 28 (6.98%) JavaScript
8 24 (5.99%) C#
8 24 (5.99%) TypeScript
9 23 (5.74%) Kusto Query Language
10 22 (5.49%) Go
11 7 (1.75%) PL/SQL
12 6 (1.50%) T-SQL
13 5 (1.25%) VBA
14 4 (1.00%) Bicep
14 4 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 4 (1.00%) Perl
15 3 (0.75%) PHP
15 3 (0.75%) Ruby
16 2 (0.50%) Korn
Qualifications
1 142 (35.41%) Security Cleared
2 111 (27.68%) SC Cleared
3 32 (7.98%) Degree
4 25 (6.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (4.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (3.24%) DV Cleared
7 10 (2.49%) CISSP
8 8 (2.00%) Azure Certification
8 8 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.00%) OCP
8 8 (2.00%) Oracle Certification
9 7 (1.75%) AWS Certification
10 4 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.00%) CISM
10 4 (1.00%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.75%) CCNA
11 3 (0.75%) CCNP
11 3 (0.75%) GCIA
11 3 (0.75%) GCIH
11 3 (0.75%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (8.23%) GDPR
2 24 (5.99%) Data Quality
3 23 (5.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 18 (4.49%) NIST
5 14 (3.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (2.49%) QA
7 6 (1.50%) SLA
8 5 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 4 (1.00%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.75%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.50%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.50%) GRC
12 1 (0.25%) COBIT
12 1 (0.25%) GMP
12 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.25%) PMO
System Software
1 101 (25.19%) Active Directory
2 47 (11.72%) Docker
3 24 (5.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (3.49%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.75%) vSphere
6 6 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 5 (1.25%) NFS
8 4 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.75%) Xen
10 2 (0.50%) KVM
10 2 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
10 2 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 1 (0.25%) HDFS
11 1 (0.25%) RHEV
11 1 (0.25%) UAG
11 1 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.25%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 77 (19.20%) Kubernetes
1 77 (19.20%) Terraform
2 73 (18.20%) Ansible
3 37 (9.23%) Grafana
4 31 (7.73%) Prometheus
5 24 (5.99%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (5.49%) Single Sign-On
7 16 (3.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (3.49%) Progress Chef
9 12 (2.99%) SCCM
10 8 (2.00%) Puppet
11 6 (1.50%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 5 (1.25%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.25%) Podman
12 5 (1.25%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.00%) Nessus
13 4 (1.00%) Packer
13 4 (1.00%) PowerCLI
13 4 (1.00%) Proxmox
13 4 (1.00%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 108 (26.93%) Microsoft
2 40 (9.98%) CyberArk
3 35 (8.73%) BeyondTrust
4 34 (8.48%) Centrify
5 30 (7.48%) VMware
6 27 (6.73%) Google
7 26 (6.48%) Oracle
8 22 (5.49%) ServiceNow
9 21 (5.24%) Red Hat
10 20 (4.99%) Okta
11 19 (4.74%) Splunk
12 14 (3.49%) Databricks
13 13 (3.24%) OpenAI
14 9 (2.24%) Cisco
15 8 (2.00%) Automation Anywhere
15 8 (2.00%) UiPath
16 5 (1.25%) Citrix
16 5 (1.25%) Informatica
16 5 (1.25%) Palo Alto
16 5 (1.25%) SAP