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 18 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 380 260 280
Rank change year-on-year -120 +20 +181
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 303 322 360
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.99% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 1.09% 1.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 206 178 272
10th Percentile £300 £306 £388
25th Percentile £400 £407 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £500 £531
Median % change year-on-year -5.60% -5.88% -3.19%
75th Percentile £556 £587 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 11 3
10th Percentile - £18.82 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £23.63 -
Median hourly rate £19.57 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -69.18% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £46.40 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.33 £43.50 -
% change year-on-year -62.46% - -

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 45,026 29,407 35,968
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.11% 90.34% 85.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,974 18,494 23,016
10th Percentile £325 £300 £301
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,654 1,554 2,302
10th Percentile £14.87 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.37 £16.71
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.50 £51.55 £62.00
90th Percentile £82.46 £70.00 £73.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.33 £38.20
% change year-on-year +84.96% -36.30% -4.51%

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 18 July 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 18 July 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 18 July 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 -104 257 £467 -6.60% 79
UK excluding London -100 159 £488 +2.63% 56
London -75 111 £455 -11.02% 25
Work from Home -68 96 £500 - 27
North of England -44 64 £500 +5.26% 14
Yorkshire -3 49 £500 +25.00% 1
South East -26 45 £463 -7.50% 22
Scotland -30 18 £500 +6.67% 2
Midlands -57 17 £500 - 10
West Midlands -59 13 £575 +14.71% 5
North West -56 12 £459 -3.37% 11
South West -40 11 £385 -25.96% 5
East Midlands -15 4 £413 +7.14% 5
North East -32 3 £275 -26.67% 2
Wales -16 2 £543 +106.67%
East of England -41 2 £550 +22.22% 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 38 (12.54%) SharePoint
2 23 (7.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.30%) Confluence
4 5 (1.65%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.32%) Appian
6 3 (0.99%) Apache
6 3 (0.99%) CMS
7 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
7 1 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.32%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.99%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.66%) Maximo
2 2 (0.66%) Remedy AR System
3 1 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.33%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.33%) PeopleSoft HCM
3 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 135 (44.55%) Azure
2 76 (25.08%) AWS
3 57 (18.81%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (15.84%) Entra ID
5 40 (13.20%) GitHub
6 32 (10.56%) Azure DevOps
6 32 (10.56%) GCP
7 27 (8.91%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (7.92%) Power Platform
9 21 (6.93%) Azure Monitor
10 20 (6.60%) Power Automate
11 19 (6.27%) OpenShift
12 17 (5.61%) Amazon S3
13 16 (5.28%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (4.95%) Datadog
14 15 (4.95%) Microsoft Copilot
15 14 (4.62%) OneDrive
15 14 (4.62%) PaaS
16 13 (4.29%) PowerApps
16 13 (4.29%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 41 (13.53%) DNS
2 29 (9.57%) DHCP
3 23 (7.59%) Firewall
4 22 (7.26%) VPN
5 13 (4.29%) SAN
5 13 (4.29%) TCP/IP
6 11 (3.63%) Network Security
7 9 (2.97%) VLAN
8 8 (2.64%) Kerberos
8 8 (2.64%) SSH
9 7 (2.31%) SD-WAN
9 7 (2.31%) WAN
10 4 (1.32%) Intranet
10 4 (1.32%) LAN
11 3 (0.99%) BGP
11 3 (0.99%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.99%) Cisco IOS
11 3 (0.99%) OSPF
11 3 (0.99%) SNMP
11 3 (0.99%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (11.88%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.63%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.30%) Power BI
4 8 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.31%) Metadata
5 7 (2.31%) MySQL
5 7 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (1.98%) Relational Database
6 6 (1.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.98%) Sybase ASE
7 4 (1.32%) Big Data
7 4 (1.32%) EDRMS
7 4 (1.32%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.32%) Pinecone
7 4 (1.32%) Snowflake Schema
7 4 (1.32%) Tableau
8 3 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.99%) DTS
8 3 (0.99%) MongoDB
8 3 (0.99%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 33 (10.89%) Git
2 27 (8.91%) Jenkins
3 24 (7.92%) GitLab
4 19 (6.27%) JIRA
5 5 (1.65%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.65%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (1.32%) Flyway
6 4 (1.32%) MLflow
7 3 (0.99%) AdminStudio
7 3 (0.99%) InstallShield
7 3 (0.99%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 2 (0.66%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.66%) Selenium
9 1 (0.33%) Chocolatey
9 1 (0.33%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.33%) Postman
9 1 (0.33%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.33%) Snyk
9 1 (0.33%) TestNG
9 1 (0.33%) TestRail
General
1 109 (35.97%) Social Skills
2 54 (17.82%) Finance
3 46 (15.18%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (8.91%) Banking
5 20 (6.60%) Public Sector
6 17 (5.61%) Legal
7 12 (3.96%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.64%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.65%) Front Office
9 5 (1.65%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.65%) Military
10 4 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.99%) Law
12 2 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.66%) Retail
13 1 (0.33%) International Banking
13 1 (0.33%) Local Government
13 1 (0.33%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 31 (10.23%) Developer
2 22 (7.26%) DBA
2 22 (7.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 21 (6.93%) Senior
4 18 (5.94%) Support Engineer
5 16 (5.28%) Consultant
5 16 (5.28%) DevOps Engineer
6 15 (4.95%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 13 (4.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 13 (4.29%) Platform Engineer
8 12 (3.96%) Site Engineer
9 11 (3.63%) Azure Developer
9 11 (3.63%) Data Engineer
9 11 (3.63%) SQL DBA
10 10 (3.30%) Analyst
10 10 (3.30%) Automation Engineer
10 10 (3.30%) Lead
11 9 (2.97%) Architect
11 9 (2.97%) Microsoft 365 Developer
11 9 (2.97%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (12.54%) REST
2 23 (7.59%) .NET
3 15 (4.95%) Microsoft Graph
3 15 (4.95%) SOAP
3 15 (4.95%) Web Services
4 12 (3.96%) .NET Framework
4 12 (3.96%) React
5 11 (3.63%) CSS
5 11 (3.63%) OAuth
5 11 (3.63%) SPFx
6 10 (3.30%) ARM Templates
6 10 (3.30%) JSON
7 8 (2.64%) AWS CDK
7 8 (2.64%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (2.64%) HTML
7 8 (2.64%) JWT
7 8 (2.64%) Kafka
7 8 (2.64%) LDAP
7 8 (2.64%) Node.js
7 8 (2.64%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.59%) Onboarding
2 18 (5.94%) Replication
3 16 (5.28%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (4.95%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (4.95%) Legacy Systems
5 13 (4.29%) AI Agents
6 12 (3.96%) Cloud Native
6 12 (3.96%) Product Ownership
7 10 (3.30%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (2.64%) Management Information System
9 7 (2.31%) Data Centre
9 7 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.31%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.98%) CMDB
10 6 (1.98%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.65%) Clustering
11 5 (1.65%) FlexPod
11 5 (1.65%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.65%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 69 (22.77%) Windows
2 58 (19.14%) Linux
3 29 (9.57%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (3.63%) Unix
6 9 (2.97%) Windows 10
7 7 (2.31%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.98%) VMS
9 5 (1.65%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.65%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (1.65%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.66%) AIX
10 2 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.33%) Android
11 1 (0.33%) CentOS
11 1 (0.33%) Solaris
11 1 (0.33%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (27.06%) CI/CD
2 77 (25.41%) DevOps
2 77 (25.41%) Problem-Solving
3 60 (19.80%) AI
4 56 (18.48%) Agile
5 55 (18.15%) ITIL
6 46 (15.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 46 (15.18%) Migration
7 43 (14.19%) Disaster Recovery
8 41 (13.53%) Continuous Improvement
9 39 (12.87%) Analytics
9 39 (12.87%) High Availability
9 39 (12.87%) Observability
10 36 (11.88%) Workflow
11 32 (10.56%) Change Management
11 32 (10.56%) Containerisation
11 32 (10.56%) Performance Tuning
12 30 (9.90%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 29 (9.57%) Data Protection
14 27 (8.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 128 (42.24%) Python
2 115 (37.95%) PowerShell
3 59 (19.47%) SQL
4 45 (14.85%) Bash
5 30 (9.90%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.27%) C#
6 19 (6.27%) Java
7 17 (5.61%) TypeScript
8 13 (4.29%) Go
9 12 (3.96%) Kusto Query Language
9 12 (3.96%) T-SQL
10 10 (3.30%) Bicep
11 9 (2.97%) Shell Script
12 7 (2.31%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.99%) VBScript
14 2 (0.66%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.66%) Scala
15 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.33%) Perl
15 1 (0.33%) REXX
Qualifications
1 85 (28.05%) Security Cleared
2 56 (18.48%) SC Cleared
3 29 (9.57%) Degree
4 26 (8.58%) DV Cleared
5 19 (6.27%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.30%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.31%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.65%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.65%) OCP
8 5 (1.65%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.99%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.99%) CCNP
10 3 (0.99%) CISSP
11 2 (0.66%) CCNA
11 2 (0.66%) CISM
11 2 (0.66%) MCITP
11 2 (0.66%) MCTS
11 2 (0.66%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.59%) Data Quality
2 11 (3.63%) QA
3 8 (2.64%) GDPR
3 8 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (2.64%) NIST
3 8 (2.64%) SLA
4 7 (2.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.99%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.66%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.33%) GMP
7 1 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.33%) GRC
7 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
System Software
1 60 (19.80%) Active Directory
2 27 (8.91%) Docker
3 22 (7.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.62%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.63%) NFS
6 8 (2.64%) vSphere
7 7 (2.31%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (1.65%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.65%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.66%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.66%) Firmware
9 2 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.33%) KVM
10 1 (0.33%) OpenSSH
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.33%) UAG
10 1 (0.33%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 53 (17.49%) Ansible
2 50 (16.50%) Terraform
3 43 (14.19%) Kubernetes
4 28 (9.24%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (5.61%) SCCM
6 14 (4.62%) Grafana
7 12 (3.96%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (3.63%) Prometheus
9 10 (3.30%) Progress Chef
10 9 (2.97%) Puppet
11 8 (2.64%) SCOM
11 8 (2.64%) vCenter Server
12 6 (1.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (1.98%) Red Hat Satellite
13 5 (1.65%) SnapMirror
14 3 (0.99%) Foglight
14 3 (0.99%) Nessus
14 3 (0.99%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.99%) WSUS
15 2 (0.66%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 109 (35.97%) Microsoft
2 30 (9.90%) VMware
3 26 (8.58%) ServiceNow
4 25 (8.25%) Google
5 18 (5.94%) Red Hat
6 17 (5.61%) Oracle
7 16 (5.28%) Splunk
8 13 (4.29%) OpenAI
9 10 (3.30%) Databricks
9 10 (3.30%) Okta
10 9 (2.97%) Cisco
11 8 (2.64%) SolarWinds
12 7 (2.31%) AppDynamics
13 6 (1.98%) Bloomberg
13 6 (1.98%) Citrix
13 6 (1.98%) Palo Alto
13 6 (1.98%) Sybase
14 5 (1.65%) CrowdStrike
14 5 (1.65%) F5
14 5 (1.65%) NetApp