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 10 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
10 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 379 255 253
Rank change year-on-year -124 -2 +128
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 325 340 366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 1.03% 0.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.13% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 195 244
10th Percentile £324 £314 £352
25th Percentile £413 £400 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -3.29%
75th Percentile £566 £575 £625
90th Percentile £673 £633 £705
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £475 £470
% change year-on-year +8.42% +1.06% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 7 3
10th Percentile £16.33 £17.89 -
25th Percentile £18.54 £40.28 -
Median hourly rate £25.00 £63.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -60.63% +166.81% -
75th Percentile £62.45 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £65.00 £66.05 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £66.50 -
% change year-on-year -65.41% - -

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 46,195 29,974 32,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.49% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,749 18,609 19,667
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,350 1,884 1,294
10th Percentile £13.54 £14.35 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.03
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.16
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.38% -8.38%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £73.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £41.50
% change year-on-year +68.43% -46.35% -2.35%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 -117 276 £500 +2.56% 625
UK excluding London -86 170 £515 +8.42% 254
London -103 110 £450 -6.01% 373
Work from Home -75 96 £500 - 221
North of England -51 72 £500 +10.74% 82
South East -47 49 £538 +12.57% 59
Yorkshire -10 42 £515 +10.75% 21
North West -49 26 £492 +8.64% 53
Midlands -62 16 £600 +15.38% 30
Scotland -32 13 £438 -5.41% 13
West Midlands -65 12 £600 +14.29% 20
South West -26 11 £535 +2.88% 30
East of England -44 10 £440 -2.22% 29
East Midlands -13 4 - - 10
North East -39 4 £275 +37.50% 8
Northern Ireland +6 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 31 (9.54%) SharePoint
2 17 (5.23%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.15%) Confluence
4 5 (1.54%) Apache
4 5 (1.54%) JBoss
5 4 (1.23%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.92%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.92%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 3 (0.92%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.92%) WebLogic Portal
7 2 (0.62%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.31%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.31%) CMS
8 1 (0.31%) FactoryTalk
8 1 (0.31%) IIS
8 1 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.31%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 6 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.62%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.46%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.85%) Remedy AR System
3 4 (1.23%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.92%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.31%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.31%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.31%) PeopleSoft HCM
6 1 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 123 (37.85%) Azure
2 80 (24.62%) AWS
3 44 (13.54%) Microsoft 365
4 38 (11.69%) GitHub
5 36 (11.08%) Entra ID
6 34 (10.46%) GCP
7 30 (9.23%) Azure DevOps
8 29 (8.92%) Power Platform
9 26 (8.00%) Amazon S3
9 26 (8.00%) GitHub Actions
10 23 (7.08%) Microsoft Copilot
11 22 (6.77%) Azure Monitor
12 20 (6.15%) AWS Lambda
12 20 (6.15%) Serverless
13 19 (5.85%) Datadog
13 19 (5.85%) Power Automate
14 16 (4.92%) OpenShift
15 15 (4.62%) AWS CloudFormation
16 14 (4.31%) OneDrive
16 14 (4.31%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 52 (16.00%) DNS
2 31 (9.54%) DHCP
3 30 (9.23%) VPN
4 29 (8.92%) Firewall
5 24 (7.38%) TCP/IP
6 19 (5.85%) Network Security
7 9 (2.77%) SSH
8 8 (2.46%) VLAN
9 7 (2.15%) SAN
9 7 (2.15%) WAN
10 6 (1.85%) Kerberos
10 6 (1.85%) SD-WAN
10 6 (1.85%) Skype
10 6 (1.85%) Wireless
11 5 (1.54%) BIG-IP
12 4 (1.23%) Intranet
12 4 (1.23%) PSTN
12 4 (1.23%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
13 3 (0.92%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.62%) SQL Server
2 13 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (3.69%) Power BI
4 11 (3.38%) Amazon RDS
4 11 (3.38%) Metadata
5 9 (2.77%) Hadoop
5 9 (2.77%) MySQL
5 9 (2.77%) Relational Database
6 8 (2.46%) Big Data
7 7 (2.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.85%) Oracle Database
8 6 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
9 5 (1.54%) Parquet
9 5 (1.54%) Sybase ASE
10 4 (1.23%) Data Lake
10 4 (1.23%) EDRMS
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 10g
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 11g
11 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database 12c
11 3 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 42 (12.92%) Git
2 27 (8.31%) GitLab
3 22 (6.77%) Jenkins
4 12 (3.69%) JIRA
5 4 (1.23%) Flyway
5 4 (1.23%) Oracle Forms
5 4 (1.23%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.92%) Oracle APEX
6 3 (0.92%) Subversion
6 3 (0.92%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.62%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.62%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.62%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.62%) JUnit
7 2 (0.62%) Maven
7 2 (0.62%) Postman
7 2 (0.62%) Selenium
7 2 (0.62%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.31%) Eclipse
General
1 103 (31.69%) Social Skills
2 62 (19.08%) Analytical Skills
3 59 (18.15%) Finance
4 34 (10.46%) Banking
5 17 (5.23%) Legal
6 16 (4.92%) Public Sector
7 7 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.15%) Front Office
7 7 (2.15%) Organisational Skills
8 6 (1.85%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.23%) Military
10 3 (0.92%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.62%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.62%) Automotive
11 2 (0.62%) Billing
11 2 (0.62%) Law
11 2 (0.62%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.62%) Marketing
11 2 (0.62%) Retail
11 2 (0.62%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 49 (15.08%) Senior
2 32 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 32 (9.85%) Support Engineer
3 24 (7.38%) Developer
3 24 (7.38%) DevOps Engineer
4 22 (6.77%) Cloud Engineer
5 18 (5.54%) Analyst
6 17 (5.23%) Data Engineer
6 17 (5.23%) DBA
7 16 (4.92%) Platform Engineer
8 13 (4.00%) Consultant
9 12 (3.69%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 11 (3.38%) Architect
11 10 (3.08%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (3.08%) Lead
11 10 (3.08%) Linux Engineer
11 10 (3.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 9 (2.77%) Security Engineer
12 9 (2.77%) Site Engineer
13 8 (2.46%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (23.69%) Terraform
2 35 (10.77%) REST
3 20 (6.15%) ARM Templates
4 19 (5.85%) React
5 15 (4.62%) JSON
6 14 (4.31%) .NET
7 13 (4.00%) SOAP
8 12 (3.69%) CSS
9 11 (3.38%) Elastic Stack
9 11 (3.38%) HTML
9 11 (3.38%) Kafka
9 11 (3.38%) YAML
10 10 (3.08%) Node.js
11 9 (2.77%) RESTful
11 9 (2.77%) SPFx
11 9 (2.77%) XML
12 7 (2.15%) ASP.NET
12 7 (2.15%) Middleware
13 6 (1.85%) AngularJS
13 6 (1.85%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.08%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.46%) Onboarding
3 19 (5.85%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (4.92%) AI Agents
5 14 (4.31%) Data Protection Act
5 14 (4.31%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (4.00%) Clustering
7 12 (3.69%) Management Information System
8 11 (3.38%) Replication
9 10 (3.08%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (3.08%) Private Cloud
9 10 (3.08%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (2.77%) CMDB
10 9 (2.77%) Product Ownership
11 8 (2.46%) Public Cloud
11 8 (2.46%) Virtual Team
12 6 (1.85%) Blackberry
13 5 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
13 5 (1.54%) ARM Cortex
13 5 (1.54%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 67 (20.62%) Linux
2 66 (20.31%) Windows
3 27 (8.31%) Windows Server
4 21 (6.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.31%) Unix
5 14 (4.31%) Windows 10
6 13 (4.00%) Windows Server 2019
7 8 (2.46%) Android
8 7 (2.15%) Mac OS
8 7 (2.15%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.85%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (0.92%) AIX
10 3 (0.92%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.92%) zOS
11 2 (0.62%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.62%) VMS
11 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.31%) Rocky
12 1 (0.31%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (31.69%) CI/CD
2 93 (28.62%) DevOps
3 77 (23.69%) Infrastructure as Code
4 71 (21.85%) ITIL
5 68 (20.92%) Problem-Solving
6 66 (20.31%) Agile
7 56 (17.23%) AI
8 53 (16.31%) Continuous Improvement
9 52 (16.00%) Migration
10 51 (15.69%) Observability
11 47 (14.46%) Root Cause Analysis
11 47 (14.46%) Workflow
12 43 (13.23%) Performance Tuning
13 40 (12.31%) Containerisation
14 38 (11.69%) Disaster Recovery
14 38 (11.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 38 (11.69%) ITSM
15 37 (11.38%) Runbook
16 34 (10.46%) Analytics
17 32 (9.85%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 147 (45.23%) Python
2 114 (35.08%) PowerShell
3 71 (21.85%) SQL
4 63 (19.38%) Bash
5 38 (11.69%) JavaScript
6 23 (7.08%) Bicep
7 15 (4.62%) Go
7 15 (4.62%) Java
7 15 (4.62%) TypeScript
8 14 (4.31%) T-SQL
9 13 (4.00%) Shell Script
10 9 (2.77%) C#
11 7 (2.15%) PL/SQL
12 5 (1.54%) Perl
12 5 (1.54%) VBScript
13 2 (0.62%) C++
13 2 (0.62%) JCL
13 2 (0.62%) REXX
13 2 (0.62%) Scala
14 1 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 113 (34.77%) Security Cleared
2 69 (21.23%) SC Cleared
3 46 (14.15%) DV Cleared
4 36 (11.08%) Degree
5 18 (5.54%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (4.92%) Azure Certification
7 15 (4.62%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.85%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.23%) CCNA
11 3 (0.92%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 3 (0.92%) CCNP
12 2 (0.62%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.62%) CIPD
12 2 (0.62%) CISM
12 2 (0.62%) CISSP
12 2 (0.62%) ECDL
12 2 (0.62%) MCSE
12 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 17 (5.23%) SLA
3 12 (3.69%) QA
4 9 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.54%) NIST
6 4 (1.23%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.23%) SOC 2
7 3 (0.92%) GDPR
8 2 (0.62%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.31%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.31%) PMO
9 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 65 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 32 (9.85%) Docker
3 31 (9.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (4.62%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (4.31%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (2.77%) Virtual Desktop
7 8 (2.46%) Hyper-V
8 7 (2.15%) vSphere
9 6 (1.85%) NFS
10 2 (0.62%) NDS
10 2 (0.62%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 1 (0.31%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.31%) Firmware
11 1 (0.31%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.31%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 52 (16.00%) Ansible
2 47 (14.46%) Kubernetes
3 26 (8.00%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (7.69%) SCCM
5 20 (6.15%) Grafana
6 18 (5.54%) Prometheus
7 17 (5.23%) SCOM
8 16 (4.92%) Puppet
9 14 (4.31%) vCenter Server
10 11 (3.38%) Progress Chef
10 11 (3.38%) Red Hat Satellite
11 7 (2.15%) Failover Clustering
12 6 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (1.54%) Oracle RMAN
14 3 (0.92%) Istio
14 3 (0.92%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 2 (0.62%) linkerd
15 2 (0.62%) Nagios
15 2 (0.62%) Podman
15 2 (0.62%) WSUS
Vendors
1 117 (36.00%) Microsoft
2 35 (10.77%) VMware
3 28 (8.62%) Google
4 23 (7.08%) ServiceNow
5 20 (6.15%) Oracle
5 20 (6.15%) Red Hat
6 19 (5.85%) Splunk
7 15 (4.62%) SolarWinds
8 12 (3.69%) Broadcom
9 10 (3.08%) Cisco
10 9 (2.77%) BMC
10 9 (2.77%) Remedy
11 8 (2.46%) Dynatrace
11 8 (2.46%) OpenAI
12 7 (2.15%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.15%) Citrix
13 6 (1.85%) Ivanti
13 6 (1.85%) Okta
14 5 (1.54%) CrowdStrike
14 5 (1.54%) F5
697 Task Automation jobs Nationwide