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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 377 263 271
Rank change year-on-year -114 +8 +186
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 300 318 361
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.98% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 1.08% 1.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 177 272
10th Percentile £300 £306 £383
25th Percentile £400 £408 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £500 £531
Median % change year-on-year -5.60% -5.88% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £584 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -8.68%
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 44,805 29,397 36,049
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.38% 85.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,846 18,489 23,062
10th Percentile £325 £300 £303
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 2,636 1,550 2,325
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.34 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.50 £51.65 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.75 £70.00 £73.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.33 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.96% -36.18% -4.70%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -109 255 £465 -7.00% 111
UK excluding London -86 155 £475 - 98
London -96 112 £458 -10.54% 26
Work from Home -63 95 £500 - 71
North of England -38 64 £500 +5.26% 25
Yorkshire -4 49 £500 +25.00% 5
South East -37 42 £433 -13.50% 31
Scotland -29 17 £508 +8.27% 8
Midlands -60 17 £500 - 17
West Midlands -59 13 £575 +14.71% 7
North West -52 12 £459 -3.37% 17
South West -45 11 £385 -25.96% 6
East Midlands -17 4 £413 +7.14% 10
North East -36 3 £275 -26.67% 3
Wales -15 2 £543 +106.67% 1
East of England -43 2 £550 +22.22% 8

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 (12.67%) SharePoint
2 23 (7.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.33%) Confluence
4 5 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.33%) Appian
6 3 (1.00%) Apache
6 3 (1.00%) 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 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.33%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.33%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.00%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.67%) Maximo
2 2 (0.67%) 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
1 133 (44.33%) Azure
2 76 (25.33%) AWS
3 57 (19.00%) Microsoft 365
4 47 (15.67%) Entra ID
5 40 (13.33%) GitHub
6 32 (10.67%) Azure DevOps
6 32 (10.67%) GCP
7 27 (9.00%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (8.00%) Power Platform
9 20 (6.67%) Power Automate
10 19 (6.33%) OpenShift
11 18 (6.00%) Azure Monitor
12 17 (5.67%) Amazon S3
13 16 (5.33%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (5.00%) Datadog
14 15 (5.00%) Microsoft Copilot
15 14 (4.67%) OneDrive
15 14 (4.67%) PaaS
16 13 (4.33%) PowerApps
16 13 (4.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 39 (13.00%) DNS
2 27 (9.00%) DHCP
3 20 (6.67%) Firewall
4 19 (6.33%) VPN
5 13 (4.33%) SAN
6 10 (3.33%) TCP/IP
7 9 (3.00%) Kerberos
7 9 (3.00%) Network Security
7 9 (3.00%) VLAN
8 7 (2.33%) SD-WAN
8 7 (2.33%) WAN
9 5 (1.67%) SSH
10 4 (1.33%) Intranet
10 4 (1.33%) LAN
11 3 (1.00%) BGP
11 3 (1.00%) BIG-IP
11 3 (1.00%) Cisco IOS
11 3 (1.00%) OSPF
11 3 (1.00%) SNMP
11 3 (1.00%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (11.67%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.67%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.33%) Power BI
4 8 (2.67%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.33%) Metadata
5 7 (2.33%) MySQL
5 7 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (2.00%) Relational Database
6 6 (2.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (2.00%) Sybase ASE
7 4 (1.33%) Big Data
7 4 (1.33%) EDRMS
7 4 (1.33%) Pinecone
7 4 (1.33%) Snowflake Schema
7 4 (1.33%) Tableau
8 3 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (1.00%) DTS
8 3 (1.00%) MongoDB
8 3 (1.00%) Oracle Database
8 3 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 33 (11.00%) Git
2 27 (9.00%) Jenkins
3 24 (8.00%) GitLab
4 19 (6.33%) JIRA
5 5 (1.67%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.67%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (1.33%) Flyway
6 4 (1.33%) MLflow
7 3 (1.00%) AdminStudio
7 3 (1.00%) InstallShield
8 2 (0.67%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.67%) Selenium
8 2 (0.67%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.33%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.33%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.33%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.33%) TestNG
9 1 (0.33%) VersionOne
9 1 (0.33%) WebDriver
9 1 (0.33%) WiX
General
1 109 (36.33%) Social Skills
2 53 (17.67%) Finance
3 46 (15.33%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (9.00%) Banking
5 20 (6.67%) Public Sector
6 17 (5.67%) Legal
7 12 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.67%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.67%) Front Office
9 5 (1.67%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.00%) Law
11 3 (1.00%) Military
12 2 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.67%) Retail
13 1 (0.33%) International Banking
13 1 (0.33%) Local Government
13 1 (0.33%) Marketing
13 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 31 (10.33%) Developer
2 21 (7.00%) DBA
3 20 (6.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (6.33%) Senior
5 18 (6.00%) Support Engineer
6 16 (5.33%) Consultant
6 16 (5.33%) DevOps Engineer
7 15 (5.00%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 13 (4.33%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 12 (4.00%) Site Engineer
10 11 (3.67%) Azure Developer
10 11 (3.67%) Data Engineer
11 10 (3.33%) Analyst
11 10 (3.33%) Automation Engineer
11 10 (3.33%) Lead
11 10 (3.33%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.33%) SQL DBA
12 9 (3.00%) Architect
12 9 (3.00%) Microsoft 365 Developer
12 9 (3.00%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (12.67%) REST
2 23 (7.67%) .NET
3 15 (5.00%) Microsoft Graph
3 15 (5.00%) SOAP
3 15 (5.00%) Web Services
4 12 (4.00%) .NET Framework
4 12 (4.00%) OAuth
4 12 (4.00%) React
5 11 (3.67%) CSS
5 11 (3.67%) SPFx
6 10 (3.33%) JSON
7 9 (3.00%) LDAP
8 8 (2.67%) AWS CDK
8 8 (2.67%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (2.67%) HTML
8 8 (2.67%) JWT
8 8 (2.67%) Kafka
8 8 (2.67%) Node.js
8 8 (2.67%) RESTful
8 8 (2.67%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (6.67%) Onboarding
2 19 (6.33%) Replication
3 15 (5.00%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (5.00%) Legacy Systems
4 13 (4.33%) AI Agents
4 13 (4.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (4.00%) Cloud Native
5 12 (4.00%) Product Ownership
6 10 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.33%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (2.33%) Virtual Team
9 6 (2.00%) CMDB
9 6 (2.00%) Management Information System
9 6 (2.00%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.67%) Clustering
10 5 (1.67%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.67%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.67%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 67 (22.33%) Windows
2 55 (18.33%) Linux
3 27 (9.00%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (3.67%) Unix
6 9 (3.00%) Windows 10
7 7 (2.33%) Mac OS
8 6 (2.00%) VMS
9 5 (1.67%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.67%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (1.67%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.67%) AIX
10 2 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.33%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.33%) Solaris
11 1 (0.33%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.33%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (26.67%) CI/CD
2 77 (25.67%) Problem-Solving
3 74 (24.67%) DevOps
4 60 (20.00%) AI
5 56 (18.67%) Agile
6 53 (17.67%) ITIL
7 46 (15.33%) Migration
8 43 (14.33%) Disaster Recovery
8 43 (14.33%) Infrastructure as Code
9 41 (13.67%) Continuous Improvement
10 39 (13.00%) High Availability
11 36 (12.00%) Analytics
11 36 (12.00%) Observability
11 36 (12.00%) Workflow
12 32 (10.67%) Change Management
12 32 (10.67%) Containerisation
13 31 (10.33%) Performance Tuning
14 30 (10.00%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 29 (9.67%) Data Protection
16 24 (8.00%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 128 (42.67%) Python
2 113 (37.67%) PowerShell
3 58 (19.33%) SQL
4 42 (14.00%) Bash
5 30 (10.00%) JavaScript
6 19 (6.33%) C#
6 19 (6.33%) Java
7 17 (5.67%) TypeScript
8 13 (4.33%) Go
9 12 (4.00%) Kusto Query Language
10 11 (3.67%) T-SQL
11 9 (3.00%) Shell Script
12 7 (2.33%) Bicep
12 7 (2.33%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.00%) VBScript
14 2 (0.67%) ActionScript
14 2 (0.67%) Scala
15 1 (0.33%) ABAP
15 1 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.33%) REXX
Qualifications
1 83 (27.67%) Security Cleared
2 57 (19.00%) SC Cleared
3 27 (9.00%) Degree
4 23 (7.67%) DV Cleared
5 19 (6.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.33%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.67%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.67%) OCP
8 5 (1.67%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.00%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (1.00%) CCNP
10 3 (1.00%) CISSP
11 2 (0.67%) CCNA
11 2 (0.67%) CISM
11 2 (0.67%) MCITP
11 2 (0.67%) MCTS
11 2 (0.67%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.67%) Data Quality
2 11 (3.67%) QA
3 9 (3.00%) GDPR
4 8 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (2.67%) NIST
4 8 (2.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 8 (2.67%) SLA
5 3 (1.00%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.67%) 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 58 (19.33%) Active Directory
2 27 (9.00%) Docker
3 22 (7.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.67%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.67%) NFS
6 8 (2.67%) vSphere
7 7 (2.33%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (1.67%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.67%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.67%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.67%) Firmware
9 2 (0.67%) 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 51 (17.00%) Ansible
2 47 (15.67%) Terraform
3 43 (14.33%) Kubernetes
4 26 (8.67%) Microsoft Intune
5 15 (5.00%) SCCM
6 14 (4.67%) Grafana
7 13 (4.33%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (3.67%) Prometheus
9 10 (3.33%) Progress Chef
10 9 (3.00%) Puppet
11 8 (2.67%) SCOM
11 8 (2.67%) vCenter Server
12 7 (2.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (2.00%) Red Hat Satellite
14 5 (1.67%) SnapMirror
15 3 (1.00%) Foglight
15 3 (1.00%) Nessus
15 3 (1.00%) PowerCLI
15 3 (1.00%) WSUS
16 2 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 106 (35.33%) Microsoft
2 30 (10.00%) VMware
3 26 (8.67%) ServiceNow
4 25 (8.33%) Google
5 18 (6.00%) Red Hat
6 16 (5.33%) Oracle
6 16 (5.33%) Splunk
7 13 (4.33%) OpenAI
8 11 (3.67%) Okta
9 10 (3.33%) Databricks
10 9 (3.00%) Cisco
11 7 (2.33%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.33%) SolarWinds
12 6 (2.00%) Bloomberg
12 6 (2.00%) Citrix
12 6 (2.00%) Palo Alto
12 6 (2.00%) Sybase
13 5 (1.67%) F5
13 5 (1.67%) NetApp
14 4 (1.33%) Broadcom