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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 272 258 376
Rank change year-on-year -14 +118 +83
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 359 357 255
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.00% 0.98% 0.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.12% 1.13% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 224 224 189
10th Percentile £306 £350 £361
25th Percentile £382 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £493 £515
Median % change year-on-year -5.68% -4.27% -10.43%
75th Percentile £575 £607 £625
90th Percentile £625 £684 £676
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +1.17% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 0
10th Percentile £17.89 - -
25th Percentile £32.41 - -
Median hourly rate £63.50 £23.80 -
Median % change year-on-year +166.81% - -
75th Percentile £65.25 - -
90th Percentile £66.05 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 - -

All Process and 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 32,027 31,522 40,787
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.46% 86.80% 88.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,051 18,965 27,382
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,103 1,143 1,561
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.22 £14.27
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.15 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +27.14%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.85 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -29.69% -26.97% +48.33%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 25 November 2025. 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 -32 299 £480 -1.74% 120
UK excluding London -2 176 £476 +1.17% 101
London -20 141 £475 -13.64% 51
Work from Home +16 110 £450 -8.72% 57
North of England -34 50 £450 +3.15% 23
Midlands -18 42 £535 +10.54% 9
West Midlands -2 40 £550 +11.79% 9
South East -4 35 £446 -3.59% 34
North West -20 25 £440 -4.61% 14
Yorkshire -20 25 £450 +9.09% 6
Scotland +3 17 £348 -33.76% 13
East of England -10 13 £500 +17.65% 8
South West -13 13 £525 +11.70% 14
Wales +7 7 £263 -46.15%
East Midlands -18 2 £450 +0.22%
Northern Ireland -4 1 £690 - 3

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 23 (6.41%) Microsoft Exchange
2 19 (5.29%) Confluence
3 18 (5.01%) SharePoint
4 9 (2.51%) Apache
5 8 (2.23%) IIS
6 5 (1.39%) iPlanet
6 5 (1.39%) JBoss
6 5 (1.39%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.39%) WebSphere Application Server
7 4 (1.11%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.28%) CICS
9 1 (0.28%) CMS
9 1 (0.28%) MQSeries
9 1 (0.28%) OpenEdge
9 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 22 (6.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.56%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.11%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.56%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.28%) Eikon
3 1 (0.28%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.28%) Fidessa
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 132 (36.77%) Azure
2 94 (26.18%) AWS
3 56 (15.60%) GCP
4 39 (10.86%) GitHub
4 39 (10.86%) Microsoft 365
5 35 (9.75%) GitHub Actions
6 32 (8.91%) Entra ID
7 27 (7.52%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (6.96%) Serverless
9 23 (6.41%) OpenShift
10 18 (5.01%) Power Platform
11 15 (4.18%) Azure Logic Apps
12 13 (3.62%) Amazon EC2
12 13 (3.62%) AWS CloudFormation
12 13 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
13 11 (3.06%) Amazon S3
13 11 (3.06%) Azure AKS
13 11 (3.06%) Azure Sentinel
13 11 (3.06%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 44 (12.26%) Firewall
2 20 (5.57%) DNS
3 15 (4.18%) DHCP
3 15 (4.18%) Network Security
3 15 (4.18%) TCP/IP
4 12 (3.34%) SSH
5 9 (2.51%) VPN
6 8 (2.23%) WAN
7 7 (1.95%) BGP
8 6 (1.67%) Cisco IOS
9 5 (1.39%) Kerberos
9 5 (1.39%) LAN
9 5 (1.39%) NX-OS
9 5 (1.39%) OpenLDAP
9 5 (1.39%) WLAN
10 4 (1.11%) HTTP
10 4 (1.11%) PSTN
10 4 (1.11%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.84%) Ethernet VPN
11 3 (0.84%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (9.75%) SQL Server
2 23 (6.41%) Relational Database
3 22 (6.13%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (5.29%) Oracle Database
5 14 (3.90%) NoSQL
6 10 (2.79%) MySQL
6 10 (2.79%) Power BI
7 8 (2.23%) Amazon RDS
7 8 (2.23%) Big Data
7 8 (2.23%) RDBMS
8 6 (1.67%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (1.67%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (1.39%) BigQuery
9 5 (1.39%) Redis
10 4 (1.11%) Metadata
10 4 (1.11%) MongoDB
10 4 (1.11%) Tableau
11 3 (0.84%) Apache Cassandra
11 3 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
11 3 (0.84%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 67 (18.66%) Git
2 50 (13.93%) Jenkins
3 31 (8.64%) GitLab
4 27 (7.52%) JIRA
5 16 (4.46%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (3.06%) Bitbucket
7 9 (2.51%) Maven
8 8 (2.23%) Artifactory
8 8 (2.23%) JUnit
9 7 (1.95%) Postman
9 7 (1.95%) Selenium
9 7 (1.95%) SonarQube
10 6 (1.67%) CircleCI
11 5 (1.39%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.39%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.39%) Gatling
11 5 (1.39%) JMeter
11 5 (1.39%) LoadRunner
12 4 (1.11%) Cypress.io
12 4 (1.11%) Gradle
General
1 124 (34.54%) Social Skills
2 63 (17.55%) Finance
3 53 (14.76%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (8.91%) Public Sector
5 31 (8.64%) Banking
6 11 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.51%) Legal
7 9 (2.51%) Manufacturing
8 8 (2.23%) Investment Banking
9 7 (1.95%) Marketing
10 6 (1.67%) Front Office
10 6 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.67%) Telecoms
11 5 (1.39%) Electronics
11 5 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.39%) Retail
12 4 (1.11%) Games
12 4 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.84%) Law
13 3 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 39 (10.86%) Developer
2 36 (10.03%) Senior
3 31 (8.64%) DevOps Engineer
4 26 (7.24%) Analyst
5 19 (5.29%) Administrator
5 19 (5.29%) Automation Engineer
6 17 (4.74%) Platform Engineer
6 17 (4.74%) Support Engineer
7 16 (4.46%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 15 (4.18%) Consultant
8 15 (4.18%) Network Engineer
9 14 (3.90%) DBA
9 14 (3.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.34%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.34%) Java Developer
10 12 (3.34%) Python Engineer
11 11 (3.06%) Site Engineer
12 10 (2.79%) NetBackup Engineer
13 9 (2.51%) Applications Engineer
13 9 (2.51%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (9.47%) REST
2 17 (4.74%) .NET
3 16 (4.46%) Node.js
4 15 (4.18%) Elastic Stack
5 14 (3.90%) FastAPI
6 12 (3.34%) YAML
7 11 (3.06%) Kafka
7 11 (3.06%) LDAP
8 10 (2.79%) OAuth
9 9 (2.51%) GraphQL
9 9 (2.51%) Microsoft Graph
9 9 (2.51%) Web Services
10 8 (2.23%) ARM Templates
11 7 (1.95%) OpenID
11 7 (1.95%) SAML
11 7 (1.95%) SOAP
12 6 (1.67%) AngularJS
12 6 (1.67%) Flask
12 6 (1.67%) React
12 6 (1.67%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 20 (5.57%) Onboarding
2 16 (4.46%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (3.90%) Cloud Native
4 13 (3.62%) Security Posture
5 11 (3.06%) Private Cloud
6 9 (2.51%) AI Agents
6 9 (2.51%) Cyber Threat
6 9 (2.51%) Data Centre
6 9 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (2.23%) Linux Command Line
8 7 (1.95%) Clustering
8 7 (1.95%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.95%) Replication
9 6 (1.67%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.67%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.11%) PKI
12 3 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 98 (27.30%) Linux
2 63 (17.55%) Windows
3 24 (6.69%) Unix
4 19 (5.29%) Windows Server
5 10 (2.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (2.23%) CentOS
7 7 (1.95%) VMS
8 5 (1.39%) AIX
8 5 (1.39%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.84%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.56%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.28%) Android
11 1 (0.28%) Debian
11 1 (0.28%) Solaris
11 1 (0.28%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (34.54%) Problem-Solving
2 119 (33.15%) CI/CD
3 109 (30.36%) DevOps
4 73 (20.33%) Agile
5 63 (17.55%) Infrastructure as Code
6 60 (16.71%) Containerisation
7 42 (11.70%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 38 (10.58%) Disaster Recovery
8 38 (10.58%) Incident Response
9 35 (9.75%) Migration
10 33 (9.19%) AI
10 33 (9.19%) Continuous Improvement
10 33 (9.19%) Identity Access Management
11 32 (8.91%) High Availability
12 30 (8.36%) ITIL
12 30 (8.36%) Root Cause Analysis
13 29 (8.08%) Configuration Management
14 28 (7.80%) Analytics
14 28 (7.80%) SIEM
14 28 (7.80%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 191 (53.20%) Python
2 123 (34.26%) PowerShell
3 73 (20.33%) Bash
4 65 (18.11%) SQL
5 46 (12.81%) Java
6 33 (9.19%) Go
6 33 (9.19%) Shell Script
7 17 (4.74%) JavaScript
8 15 (4.18%) C#
9 14 (3.90%) Bicep
9 14 (3.90%) Kusto Query Language
9 14 (3.90%) TypeScript
10 10 (2.79%) Perl
11 9 (2.51%) VBA
12 8 (2.23%) Groovy
13 7 (1.95%) T-SQL
14 5 (1.39%) PL/SQL
15 3 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 2 (0.56%) Ruby
16 2 (0.56%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 85 (23.68%) Security Cleared
2 62 (17.27%) SC Cleared
3 30 (8.36%) Degree
4 19 (5.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.18%) DV Cleared
6 13 (3.62%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (3.34%) Azure Certification
7 12 (3.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.23%) CISSP
8 8 (2.23%) Master's Degree
9 6 (1.67%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.67%) CFCE
9 6 (1.67%) GCFA
9 6 (1.67%) GCIA
9 6 (1.67%) GCIH
9 6 (1.67%) GIAC
10 5 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (1.11%) CCNP
11 4 (1.11%) OCP
11 4 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (6.96%) GDPR
2 20 (5.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (4.74%) NIST
4 16 (4.46%) QA
5 11 (3.06%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.95%) HIPAA
7 5 (1.39%) SLA
8 3 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.56%) EU AI Act
9 2 (0.56%) PMO
10 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.28%) COBIT
10 1 (0.28%) GRC
10 1 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 59 (16.43%) Docker
2 46 (12.81%) Active Directory
3 31 (8.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (3.34%) Oracle RAC
5 9 (2.51%) Firmware
6 6 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (1.39%) Hyper-V
7 5 (1.39%) Tivoli Directory Server
8 3 (0.84%) KVM
8 3 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.56%) vSphere
9 2 (0.56%) Xen
10 1 (0.28%) iptables
10 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.28%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.28%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 78 (21.73%) Terraform
2 69 (19.22%) Kubernetes
3 66 (18.38%) Ansible
4 36 (10.03%) Grafana
5 31 (8.64%) Prometheus
6 18 (5.01%) SCCM
7 17 (4.74%) Progress Chef
8 13 (3.62%) Puppet
9 12 (3.34%) Microsoft Intune
9 12 (3.34%) Oracle RMAN
10 11 (3.06%) Data Guard
11 10 (2.79%) NetBackup
11 10 (2.79%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (2.51%) yum
13 7 (1.95%) Podman
14 6 (1.67%) CA Single Sign-On
15 5 (1.39%) CA Wily
15 5 (1.39%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
15 5 (1.39%) Kibana
15 5 (1.39%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 110 (30.64%) Microsoft
2 41 (11.42%) Oracle
3 33 (9.19%) VMware
4 32 (8.91%) Google
5 31 (8.64%) Splunk
6 21 (5.85%) CyberArk
7 16 (4.46%) Atlassian
8 14 (3.90%) Cisco
9 13 (3.62%) SAP
9 13 (3.62%) ServiceNow
10 12 (3.34%) Palo Alto
11 10 (2.79%) Veritas
12 9 (2.51%) Red Hat
13 8 (2.23%) BeyondTrust
14 7 (1.95%) F5
15 6 (1.67%) ArcSight
15 6 (1.67%) Databricks
15 6 (1.67%) IBM
15 6 (1.67%) LogRhythm
16 5 (1.39%) AppDynamics