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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 303 241 301
Rank change year-on-year -62 +60 +141
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 374 319 297
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 1.10% 0.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.92% 1.20% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 279 178 233
10th Percentile £349 £349 £383
25th Percentile £400 £413 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £592 £675
90th Percentile £750 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £550
% change year-on-year -1.26% -13.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 13 2
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +21.85% -53.56%
75th Percentile £46.40 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £59.66 £65.62 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.81 £24.66 -
% change year-on-year -7.50% - -

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 40,694 26,498 36,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.34% 91.04% 86.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,533 17,004 23,615
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,389 1,106 2,441
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.35 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -23.29% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.50 £59.98 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 May 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 21 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Task Automation in the UK

Task Automation
Top 17 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 May 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 -36 317 £500 -3.24% 117
UK excluding London -73 187 £469 -1.26% 82
London -20 153 £575 +5.75% 51
Work from Home -17 134 £585 +10.90% 53
North of England -26 76 £470 -1.05% 21
Yorkshire 0 60 £475 -11.63% 6
South East -30 43 £425 +32.40% 32
Scotland -15 29 £500 +7.53% 4
Midlands -55 19 £500 +2.56% 6
South West -41 16 £400 -17.95% 10
West Midlands -53 15 £550 +10.00% 3
North West -51 10 £487 +2.53% 11
North East -19 6 £365 -2.67% 4
East Midlands -29 4 £413 +5.77% 3
Wales - 2 £543 -
East of England -46 1 £400 -22.33% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 - 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 28 (7.49%) SharePoint
2 20 (5.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.94%) Confluence
4 8 (2.14%) Appian
5 4 (1.07%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.80%) Apache
7 2 (0.53%) CMS
7 2 (0.53%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.53%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.27%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.27%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 12 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.60%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.53%) Maximo
2 2 (0.53%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.27%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 187 (50.00%) Azure
2 128 (34.22%) AWS
3 76 (20.32%) GCP
4 49 (13.10%) Entra ID
5 46 (12.30%) GitHub
6 45 (12.03%) Microsoft 365
7 33 (8.82%) OpenShift
8 30 (8.02%) GitHub Actions
9 28 (7.49%) Power Platform
10 24 (6.42%) Azure DevOps
10 24 (6.42%) Power Automate
11 21 (5.61%) Amazon S3
12 18 (4.81%) Azure Monitor
13 17 (4.55%) PaaS
14 16 (4.28%) AWS CloudFormation
15 15 (4.01%) Azure Key Vault
16 13 (3.48%) Microsoft Copilot
16 13 (3.48%) Serverless
17 11 (2.94%) Azure Service Bus
17 11 (2.94%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 43 (11.50%) DNS
2 34 (9.09%) DHCP
3 22 (5.88%) Firewall
4 18 (4.81%) Kerberos
5 17 (4.55%) VPN
6 11 (2.94%) SSH
7 10 (2.67%) SAN
7 10 (2.67%) WAN
8 9 (2.41%) Network Security
8 9 (2.41%) TCP/IP
9 8 (2.14%) SD-WAN
10 7 (1.87%) VLAN
11 6 (1.60%) LAN
12 5 (1.34%) SSL
13 4 (1.07%) Cisco Nexus
14 3 (0.80%) BIG-IP
14 3 (0.80%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 3 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
14 3 (0.80%) WLAN
15 2 (0.53%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (10.43%) SQL Server
2 19 (5.08%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (4.01%) Power BI
4 10 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.14%) Oracle Database
5 8 (2.14%) Pinecone
6 6 (1.60%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.60%) Tableau
7 5 (1.34%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.34%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.34%) Metadata
7 5 (1.34%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.34%) Snowflake Schema
8 4 (1.07%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (1.07%) Big Data
8 4 (1.07%) MySQL
8 4 (1.07%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (1.07%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 38 (10.16%) Jenkins
2 34 (9.09%) GitLab
3 28 (7.49%) Git
4 22 (5.88%) JIRA
5 13 (3.48%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.14%) MLflow
7 7 (1.87%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.34%) CircleCI
9 4 (1.07%) Flyway
10 3 (0.80%) AdminStudio
10 3 (0.80%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.80%) InstallShield
10 3 (0.80%) Maven
10 3 (0.80%) Selenium
11 2 (0.53%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.53%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.53%) JUnit
11 2 (0.53%) Postman
11 2 (0.53%) Snyk
12 1 (0.27%) REST Assured
General
1 150 (40.11%) Social Skills
2 61 (16.31%) Finance
3 46 (12.30%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (9.36%) Public Sector
5 28 (7.49%) Banking
6 12 (3.21%) Legal
7 11 (2.94%) Organisational Skills
8 5 (1.34%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.34%) Investment Banking
9 4 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.07%) Law
10 3 (0.80%) Military
10 3 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.80%) Retail
11 2 (0.53%) Front Office
12 1 (0.27%) Marketing
12 1 (0.27%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (11.76%) Architect
2 39 (10.43%) Developer
3 36 (9.63%) CyberArk Architect
4 23 (6.15%) DBA
5 21 (5.61%) Administrator
6 20 (5.35%) Automation Engineer
6 20 (5.35%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 18 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (4.28%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 16 (4.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (4.01%) Platform Engineer
10 14 (3.74%) Analyst
10 14 (3.74%) Consultant
11 13 (3.48%) Site Engineer
12 12 (3.21%) Lead
13 11 (2.94%) Azure Developer
13 11 (2.94%) Java Developer
14 10 (2.67%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (2.67%) Network Engineer
14 10 (2.67%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (18.18%) REST
2 50 (13.37%) LDAP
3 47 (12.57%) SOAP
4 26 (6.95%) OAuth
5 20 (5.35%) Web Services
6 19 (5.08%) .NET
7 18 (4.81%) Elastic Stack
8 17 (4.55%) Node.js
8 17 (4.55%) SAML
9 13 (3.48%) JWT
10 12 (3.21%) .NET Framework
10 12 (3.21%) Microsoft Graph
10 12 (3.21%) RESTful
11 11 (2.94%) Kafka
11 11 (2.94%) Pandas
11 11 (2.94%) PyTorch
12 10 (2.67%) FastAPI
12 10 (2.67%) JSON
12 10 (2.67%) NumPy
13 9 (2.41%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 42 (11.23%) Enterprise Software
2 38 (10.16%) Security Posture
3 23 (6.15%) Onboarding
4 22 (5.88%) Replication
5 17 (4.55%) Cloud Native
6 15 (4.01%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (3.74%) Legacy Systems
7 14 (3.74%) Product Ownership
8 13 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
9 11 (2.94%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (2.14%) Clustering
10 8 (2.14%) Data Centre
10 8 (2.14%) Low-Code
11 5 (1.34%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.34%) FlexPod
11 5 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.34%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.07%) Data Structures
12 4 (1.07%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 76 (20.32%) Linux
2 74 (19.79%) Windows
3 31 (8.29%) Windows Server
4 18 (4.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (4.55%) Unix
6 9 (2.41%) Mac OS
7 8 (2.14%) VMS
7 8 (2.14%) Windows 10
8 5 (1.34%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.34%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.53%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.53%) CentOS
10 1 (0.27%) AIX
10 1 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.27%) Rocky
10 1 (0.27%) Solaris
10 1 (0.27%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (36.10%) Problem-Solving
2 121 (32.35%) CI/CD
3 92 (24.60%) DevOps
4 61 (16.31%) AI
5 60 (16.04%) Agile
6 58 (15.51%) Infrastructure as Code
7 57 (15.24%) Disaster Recovery
8 51 (13.64%) High Availability
9 50 (13.37%) Migration
10 48 (12.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 47 (12.57%) Continuous Improvement
11 47 (12.57%) Technical Leadership
12 46 (12.30%) Containerisation
13 44 (11.76%) ITSM
14 43 (11.50%) Analytics
14 43 (11.50%) Observability
14 43 (11.50%) SIEM
15 39 (10.43%) Integration Patterns
15 39 (10.43%) ITIL
15 39 (10.43%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 180 (48.13%) Python
2 143 (38.24%) PowerShell
3 68 (18.18%) SQL
4 51 (13.64%) Bash
5 42 (11.23%) Java
6 28 (7.49%) JavaScript
7 24 (6.42%) Shell Script
8 20 (5.35%) C#
9 19 (5.08%) Go
9 19 (5.08%) TypeScript
10 11 (2.94%) Kusto Query Language
11 10 (2.67%) PL/SQL
12 9 (2.41%) T-SQL
13 5 (1.34%) Bicep
14 4 (1.07%) Perl
15 3 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 3 (0.80%) VBA
16 2 (0.53%) ActionScript
16 2 (0.53%) Korn
16 2 (0.53%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 136 (36.36%) Security Cleared
2 108 (28.88%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.75%) Degree
4 24 (6.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (4.55%) DV Cleared
6 8 (2.14%) OCP
6 8 (2.14%) Oracle Certification
7 6 (1.60%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.60%) Azure Certification
7 6 (1.60%) CISSP
8 5 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (1.07%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.07%) CISM
10 3 (0.80%) CCNA
10 3 (0.80%) CCNP
10 3 (0.80%) JNCIA
10 3 (0.80%) JNCIS
10 3 (0.80%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.53%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.15%) Data Quality
2 22 (5.88%) GDPR
3 14 (3.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (2.94%) NIST
6 10 (2.67%) QA
7 8 (2.14%) SLA
8 3 (0.80%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.53%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.53%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.53%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.27%) GMP
10 1 (0.27%) GRC
10 1 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 92 (24.60%) Active Directory
2 38 (10.16%) Docker
3 21 (5.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (2.14%) Hyper-V
5 8 (2.14%) NFS
6 7 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (1.87%) vSphere
7 2 (0.53%) BitLocker
7 2 (0.53%) Firmware
7 2 (0.53%) KVM
7 2 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.53%) Xen
8 1 (0.27%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.27%) HDFS
8 1 (0.27%) RHEV
8 1 (0.27%) UAG
8 1 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.27%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 70 (18.72%) Kubernetes
2 65 (17.38%) Terraform
3 59 (15.78%) Ansible
4 26 (6.95%) Grafana
5 24 (6.42%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (5.35%) Prometheus
6 20 (5.35%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (3.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 13 (3.48%) Progress Chef
9 10 (2.67%) SCCM
10 9 (2.41%) Puppet
11 6 (1.60%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 6 (1.60%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.34%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.07%) Data Guard
13 4 (1.07%) Nessus
13 4 (1.07%) SCOM
14 3 (0.80%) Foglight
14 3 (0.80%) Nagios
14 3 (0.80%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 100 (26.74%) Microsoft
2 37 (9.89%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.09%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.09%) Centrify
4 28 (7.49%) Oracle
5 27 (7.22%) VMware
6 25 (6.68%) Google
6 25 (6.68%) Red Hat
6 25 (6.68%) ServiceNow
7 19 (5.08%) Okta
7 19 (5.08%) Splunk
8 16 (4.28%) OpenAI
9 14 (3.74%) Databricks
10 9 (2.41%) Cisco
11 8 (2.14%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (2.14%) Palo Alto
11 8 (2.14%) UiPath
12 7 (1.87%) F5
13 5 (1.34%) AppDynamics
13 5 (1.34%) Informatica