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

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 266 260 376
Rank change year-on-year -6 +116 +71
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 359 356 255
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.00% 0.98% 0.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.12% 1.13% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 227 191
10th Percentile £306 £357 £363
25th Percentile £385 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £493 £517
Median % change year-on-year -4.46% -4.64% -10.28%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £625
90th Percentile £625 £693 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.13% -6.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 0
10th Percentile £18.12 - -
25th Percentile £39.20 - -
Median hourly rate £63.50 £23.80 -
Median % change year-on-year +166.81% - -
75th Percentile £65.25 - -
90th Percentile £65.85 - -
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 32,161 31,515 40,985
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 89.65% 86.38% 88.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,137 18,969 27,555
10th Percentile £300 £310 £308
25th Percentile £404 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
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 2,122 1,120 1,583
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.20 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.23 £18.98
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.27% +25.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.48 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £33.00 £44.25
% change year-on-year -31.42% -25.42% +42.74%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -28 302 £488 +0.72% 272
UK excluding London -5 175 £480 +2.13% 149
London -36 143 £475 -13.64% 149
Work from Home +8 109 £454 -7.91% 132
North of England -32 50 £450 -2.17% 45
Midlands -12 42 £550 +14.94% 14
West Midlands -2 39 £550 +13.64% 14
South East 0 35 £446 -4.13% 45
North West -16 25 £440 -4.61% 30
Yorkshire -28 25 £450 +9.09% 12
Scotland 0 16 £358 -31.81% 15
East of England -6 13 £500 +17.65% 11
South West -11 13 £525 +11.11% 21
Wales +8 7 £263 -46.15% 1
East Midlands -17 3 £450 +0.22%
Northern Ireland -7 1 £690 - 2

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 24 (6.69%) 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%) AutoCAD
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
1 130 (36.21%) Azure
2 92 (25.63%) AWS
3 55 (15.32%) GCP
4 40 (11.14%) Microsoft 365
5 39 (10.86%) GitHub
6 35 (9.75%) GitHub Actions
7 31 (8.64%) Entra ID
8 27 (7.52%) Azure DevOps
9 25 (6.96%) Serverless
10 23 (6.41%) OpenShift
11 18 (5.01%) Power Platform
12 16 (4.46%) Azure Logic Apps
13 13 (3.62%) Amazon EC2
13 13 (3.62%) AWS CloudFormation
13 13 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
14 11 (3.06%) Amazon S3
14 11 (3.06%) Azure AKS
14 11 (3.06%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (3.06%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 43 (11.98%) Firewall
2 18 (5.01%) DNS
3 15 (4.18%) Network Security
4 14 (3.90%) TCP/IP
5 13 (3.62%) DHCP
6 11 (3.06%) SSH
7 7 (1.95%) BGP
7 7 (1.95%) VPN
7 7 (1.95%) WAN
8 6 (1.67%) Cisco IOS
9 5 (1.39%) Kerberos
9 5 (1.39%) NX-OS
9 5 (1.39%) OpenLDAP
9 5 (1.39%) PSTN
10 4 (1.11%) HTTP
10 4 (1.11%) LAN
10 4 (1.11%) VoIP
10 4 (1.11%) WLAN
11 3 (0.84%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.84%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (9.75%) SQL Server
2 23 (6.41%) Relational Database
3 21 (5.85%) 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
1 125 (34.82%) Social Skills
2 64 (17.83%) Finance
3 54 (15.04%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (8.91%) Banking
4 32 (8.91%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (2.79%) Manufacturing
7 9 (2.51%) Legal
8 8 (2.23%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.23%) Marketing
9 7 (1.95%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.67%) Electronics
10 6 (1.67%) Front Office
10 6 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
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 27 (7.52%) Analyst
5 19 (5.29%) Administrator
5 19 (5.29%) Automation Engineer
6 18 (5.01%) Support Engineer
7 16 (4.46%) Platform Engineer
7 16 (4.46%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 15 (4.18%) Consultant
9 14 (3.90%) DBA
9 14 (3.90%) Network Engineer
10 12 (3.34%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.34%) Python Engineer
11 11 (3.06%) Java Developer
11 11 (3.06%) Site Engineer
12 10 (2.79%) Lead
12 10 (2.79%) NetBackup Engineer
13 9 (2.51%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (9.47%) REST
2 17 (4.74%) .NET
3 15 (4.18%) Elastic Stack
3 15 (4.18%) Node.js
4 14 (3.90%) FastAPI
5 11 (3.06%) LDAP
5 11 (3.06%) YAML
6 10 (2.79%) Kafka
6 10 (2.79%) OAuth
7 9 (2.51%) GraphQL
7 9 (2.51%) Microsoft Graph
7 9 (2.51%) Web Services
8 8 (2.23%) ARM Templates
9 7 (1.95%) OpenID
9 7 (1.95%) SAML
9 7 (1.95%) SOAP
10 6 (1.67%) AngularJS
10 6 (1.67%) Flask
10 6 (1.67%) React
10 6 (1.67%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 20 (5.57%) Onboarding
2 16 (4.46%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (3.90%) Cloud Native
3 14 (3.90%) Security Posture
4 11 (3.06%) Private Cloud
5 9 (2.51%) AI Agents
5 9 (2.51%) Cyber Threat
5 9 (2.51%) Data Centre
5 9 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (1.95%) Clustering
6 7 (1.95%) Linux Command Line
6 7 (1.95%) Management Information System
6 7 (1.95%) Replication
7 6 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (1.67%) Public Cloud
7 6 (1.67%) Security Operations Centre
8 5 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (1.11%) PKI
10 3 (0.84%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 95 (26.46%) Linux
2 62 (17.27%) Windows
3 24 (6.69%) Unix
4 18 (5.01%) 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
2 118 (32.87%) CI/CD
3 109 (30.36%) DevOps
4 75 (20.89%) Agile
5 63 (17.55%) Infrastructure as Code
6 59 (16.43%) Containerisation
7 42 (11.70%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 39 (10.86%) Incident Response
9 38 (10.58%) Disaster Recovery
10 34 (9.47%) AI
10 34 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
10 34 (9.47%) Migration
11 33 (9.19%) Identity Access Management
12 31 (8.64%) High Availability
13 30 (8.36%) Root Cause Analysis
14 29 (8.08%) Analytics
14 29 (8.08%) ITIL
14 29 (8.08%) SIEM
14 29 (8.08%) Workflow
15 28 (7.80%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 190 (52.92%) Python
2 124 (34.54%) PowerShell
3 72 (20.06%) Bash
4 65 (18.11%) SQL
5 44 (12.26%) Java
6 33 (9.19%) Go
7 32 (8.91%) Shell Script
8 16 (4.46%) JavaScript
9 15 (4.18%) C#
9 15 (4.18%) Kusto Query Language
10 14 (3.90%) Bicep
11 13 (3.62%) TypeScript
12 9 (2.51%) Perl
12 9 (2.51%) VBA
13 8 (2.23%) Groovy
14 7 (1.95%) T-SQL
15 5 (1.39%) PL/SQL
16 3 (0.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 2 (0.56%) VB.NET
17 2 (0.56%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 86 (23.96%) Security Cleared
2 63 (17.55%) SC Cleared
3 30 (8.36%) Degree
4 18 (5.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.18%) DV Cleared
6 12 (3.34%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (3.34%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (3.06%) Azure Certification
8 8 (2.23%) CISSP
8 8 (2.23%) Master's Degree
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%) AWS Certification
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 12 (3.34%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.95%) HIPAA
7 6 (1.67%) 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 58 (16.16%) Docker
2 44 (12.26%) Active Directory
3 29 (8.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (3.34%) Oracle RAC
5 9 (2.51%) Firmware
6 5 (1.39%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 5 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.84%) KVM
7 3 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.56%) vSphere
9 1 (0.28%) iptables
9 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.28%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.28%) Xen
9 1 (0.28%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 78 (21.73%) Terraform
2 68 (18.94%) Kubernetes
3 65 (18.11%) 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 32 (8.91%) Google
4 31 (8.64%) Splunk
4 31 (8.64%) VMware
5 21 (5.85%) CyberArk
6 16 (4.46%) Atlassian
7 14 (3.90%) SAP
8 13 (3.62%) Cisco
8 13 (3.62%) ServiceNow
9 11 (3.06%) Palo Alto
10 10 (2.79%) Veritas
11 9 (2.51%) Red Hat
12 8 (2.23%) BeyondTrust
13 7 (1.95%) F5
14 6 (1.67%) ArcSight
14 6 (1.67%) Databricks
14 6 (1.67%) IBM
14 6 (1.67%) LogRhythm
15 5 (1.39%) AppDynamics