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 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
15 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 381 258 241
Rank change year-on-year -123 -17 +173
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 311 338 383
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 1.03% 0.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.68% 1.13% 1.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 192 283
10th Percentile £300 £306 £400
25th Percentile £400 £407 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £550 £588 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.76% -0.75% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 9 3
10th Percentile - £18.35 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £26.25 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -64.08% +166.81% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £34.37 £65.65 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.16 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -66.68% - -

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 45,525 29,831 33,211
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.51% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,003 18,596 21,236
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £424 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,834 1,716 1,828
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -39.40% -1.19%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.71 £68.00 £74.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +13.33%

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 15 August 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 15 August 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 15 August 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 -109 273 £475 -5.00% 326
UK excluding London -96 163 £500 +0.76% 132
London -85 117 £450 -10.00% 214
Work from Home -69 89 £475 -5.00% 109
North of England -41 67 £500 +4.17% 33
South East -39 49 £475 -3.55% 35
Yorkshire -19 42 £500 -6.98% 6
North West -50 22 £492 +3.58% 23
Midlands -59 17 £575 +11.65% 20
Scotland -33 14 £438 -7.89% 6
South West -48 11 £385 -25.96% 19
West Midlands -57 11 £600 +15.50% 16
East Midlands -16 6 £413 +7.14% 4
East of England -36 4 £550 +12.24% 13
North East -42 3 £275 -26.67% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 6

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 39 (12.54%) SharePoint
2 21 (6.75%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.25%) Confluence
4 5 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.29%) JBoss
6 3 (0.96%) CMS
6 3 (0.96%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.64%) Apache
7 2 (0.64%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.32%) IIS
8 1 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.29%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.32%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (1.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (1.29%) Remedy AR System
3 3 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.32%) PeopleSoft HCM
4 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 121 (38.91%) Azure
2 74 (23.79%) AWS
3 56 (18.01%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (12.86%) Entra ID
5 37 (11.90%) GitHub
6 30 (9.65%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (9.32%) Power Platform
8 27 (8.68%) GitHub Actions
9 25 (8.04%) GCP
10 22 (7.07%) Azure Monitor
11 20 (6.43%) Microsoft Copilot
12 19 (6.11%) Power Automate
13 18 (5.79%) OpenShift
14 17 (5.47%) Datadog
15 16 (5.14%) Amazon S3
16 14 (4.50%) Azure Key Vault
16 14 (4.50%) OneDrive
17 13 (4.18%) SaaS
18 12 (3.86%) PowerApps
18 12 (3.86%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 45 (14.47%) DNS
2 29 (9.32%) DHCP
3 26 (8.36%) VPN
4 24 (7.72%) Firewall
5 17 (5.47%) TCP/IP
6 14 (4.50%) Network Security
7 12 (3.86%) SAN
8 10 (3.22%) VLAN
9 9 (2.89%) WAN
10 8 (2.57%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.57%) SSH
11 6 (1.93%) Kerberos
12 5 (1.61%) BIG-IP
12 5 (1.61%) LAN
13 4 (1.29%) Cisco IOS
13 4 (1.29%) Intranet
13 4 (1.29%) Skype
13 4 (1.29%) SNMP
13 4 (1.29%) Wireless
14 3 (0.96%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.29%) SQL Server
2 14 (4.50%) Power BI
3 12 (3.86%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.57%) Big Data
5 8 (2.57%) MySQL
6 7 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (2.25%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.93%) Metadata
7 6 (1.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 6 (1.93%) Sybase ASE
8 5 (1.61%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.61%) Hadoop
9 4 (1.29%) EDRMS
9 4 (1.29%) Snowflake Schema
9 4 (1.29%) Tableau
10 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.96%) DTS
10 3 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 32 (10.29%) Git
2 28 (9.00%) GitLab
3 25 (8.04%) Jenkins
4 13 (4.18%) JIRA
5 6 (1.93%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (1.61%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.29%) Flyway
8 3 (0.96%) AdminStudio
8 3 (0.96%) InstallShield
8 3 (0.96%) Oracle Forms
8 3 (0.96%) Selenium
9 2 (0.64%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.64%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.64%) JUnit
9 2 (0.64%) Maven
9 2 (0.64%) Postman
9 2 (0.64%) Snyk
9 2 (0.64%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.32%) REST Assured
General
1 108 (34.73%) Social Skills
2 59 (18.97%) Analytical Skills
3 49 (15.76%) Finance
4 27 (8.68%) Banking
5 18 (5.79%) Legal
6 17 (5.47%) Public Sector
7 12 (3.86%) Organisational Skills
8 9 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.25%) Front Office
10 6 (1.93%) Financial Institution
11 4 (1.29%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.96%) Law
12 3 (0.96%) Military
12 3 (0.96%) Retail
13 2 (0.64%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.64%) Marketing
14 1 (0.32%) Influencing Skills
14 1 (0.32%) Local Government
14 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 29 (9.32%) Senior
2 27 (8.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 26 (8.36%) Support Engineer
4 25 (8.04%) Developer
5 22 (7.07%) DBA
6 18 (5.79%) Platform Engineer
7 17 (5.47%) Consultant
8 16 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (5.14%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 14 (4.50%) Analyst
10 12 (3.86%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.86%) Site Engineer
11 11 (3.54%) Architect
11 11 (3.54%) SQL DBA
12 10 (3.22%) Cloud Engineer
12 10 (3.22%) Lead
13 9 (2.89%) Azure Developer
13 9 (2.89%) Systems Engineer
14 8 (2.57%) Administrator
14 8 (2.57%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (11.58%) REST
2 19 (6.11%) .NET
3 15 (4.82%) SOAP
4 13 (4.18%) Microsoft Graph
5 12 (3.86%) JSON
5 12 (3.86%) React
6 11 (3.54%) ARM Templates
6 11 (3.54%) CSS
6 11 (3.54%) SPFx
7 10 (3.22%) .NET Framework
7 10 (3.22%) Kafka
8 9 (2.89%) Elastic Stack
8 9 (2.89%) Web Services
8 9 (2.89%) YAML
9 8 (2.57%) AWS CDK
9 8 (2.57%) HTML
10 6 (1.93%) Node.js
11 5 (1.61%) ASP.NET
11 5 (1.61%) LangChain
12 4 (1.29%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.40%) Onboarding
2 18 (5.79%) Hybrid Cloud
3 14 (4.50%) AI Agents
3 14 (4.50%) Cloud Native
4 13 (4.18%) Data Protection Act
5 12 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (3.86%) Replication
6 11 (3.54%) Clustering
6 11 (3.54%) Product Ownership
7 10 (3.22%) Legacy Systems
7 10 (3.22%) Management Information System
8 9 (2.89%) Private Cloud
9 7 (2.25%) CMDB
9 7 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.93%) Data Centre
10 6 (1.93%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.61%) Autonomous Agent
11 5 (1.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 71 (22.83%) Windows
2 60 (19.29%) Linux
3 26 (8.36%) Windows Server
4 23 (7.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (5.47%) Windows 10
6 11 (3.54%) Unix
7 8 (2.57%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (1.93%) Windows 7
9 5 (1.61%) Android
9 5 (1.61%) Mac OS
9 5 (1.61%) VMS
9 5 (1.61%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.96%) CoreOS
10 3 (0.96%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.64%) AIX
11 2 (0.64%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.64%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (26.69%) CI/CD
2 81 (26.05%) Problem-Solving
3 79 (25.40%) DevOps
4 66 (21.22%) ITIL
5 60 (19.29%) AI
6 54 (17.36%) Agile
7 51 (16.40%) Infrastructure as Code
8 47 (15.11%) Migration
9 44 (14.15%) Observability
10 43 (13.83%) Analytics
10 43 (13.83%) Continuous Improvement
11 40 (12.86%) Disaster Recovery
11 40 (12.86%) Performance Tuning
12 36 (11.58%) High Availability
12 36 (11.58%) Workflow
13 35 (11.25%) Runbook
14 33 (10.61%) Data Protection
15 32 (10.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 32 (10.29%) Root Cause Analysis
16 30 (9.65%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 124 (39.87%) Python
2 120 (38.59%) PowerShell
3 62 (19.94%) SQL
4 50 (16.08%) Bash
5 35 (11.25%) JavaScript
6 18 (5.79%) Java
7 16 (5.14%) TypeScript
8 15 (4.82%) C#
9 13 (4.18%) Bicep
10 12 (3.86%) T-SQL
11 10 (3.22%) Go
11 10 (3.22%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (2.89%) Shell Script
13 6 (1.93%) PL/SQL
14 5 (1.61%) VBScript
15 4 (1.29%) Scala
16 3 (0.96%) Perl
17 2 (0.64%) ActionScript
18 1 (0.32%) ABAP
18 1 (0.32%) REXX
Qualifications
1 97 (31.19%) Security Cleared
2 64 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.61%) Degree
4 32 (10.29%) DV Cleared
5 20 (6.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.25%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 3 (0.96%) CCNA
10 3 (0.96%) CCNP
10 3 (0.96%) OCP
10 3 (0.96%) Oracle Certification
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%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.72%) Data Quality
2 14 (4.50%) SLA
3 8 (2.57%) NIST
3 8 (2.57%) QA
4 5 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.64%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.32%) GDPR
6 1 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
6 1 (0.32%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.32%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 63 (20.26%) Active Directory
2 30 (9.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (6.75%) Docker
4 14 (4.50%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (2.89%) NFS
5 9 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (2.57%) Hyper-V
6 8 (2.57%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (2.25%) vSphere
8 2 (0.64%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.64%) Firmware
8 2 (0.64%) Virtual Servers
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
9 1 (0.32%) UAG
Systems Management
1 51 (16.40%) Ansible
1 51 (16.40%) Terraform
2 33 (10.61%) Kubernetes
3 30 (9.65%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (8.04%) SCCM
5 15 (4.82%) Grafana
5 15 (4.82%) Puppet
6 13 (4.18%) Prometheus
7 12 (3.86%) Progress Chef
7 12 (3.86%) SCOM
8 10 (3.22%) Red Hat Satellite
8 10 (3.22%) vCenter Server
9 6 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (1.61%) Failover Clustering
11 3 (0.96%) Foglight
11 3 (0.96%) SnapMirror
11 3 (0.96%) WSUS
12 2 (0.64%) FortiGate
12 2 (0.64%) Nagios
12 2 (0.64%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 112 (36.01%) Microsoft
2 37 (11.90%) VMware
3 23 (7.40%) ServiceNow
4 22 (7.07%) Google
5 21 (6.75%) Red Hat
6 19 (6.11%) Oracle
7 16 (5.14%) Splunk
8 14 (4.50%) Cisco
9 10 (3.22%) Databricks
9 10 (3.22%) SolarWinds
10 8 (2.57%) OpenAI
11 7 (2.25%) AppDynamics
11 7 (2.25%) F5
12 6 (1.93%) Bloomberg
12 6 (1.93%) BMC
12 6 (1.93%) Broadcom
12 6 (1.93%) Citrix
12 6 (1.93%) Palo Alto
12 6 (1.93%) Sybase
13 5 (1.61%) Remedy
364 Task Automation jobs Nationwide