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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 371 271 276
Rank change year-on-year -100 +5 +181
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 314 316 354
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.98% 0.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.08% 0.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 175 265
10th Percentile £300 £306 £382
25th Percentile £400 £408 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £564 £584 £675
90th Percentile £625 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £520
% change year-on-year -2.11% -8.65% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 12 3
10th Percentile - £19.04 -
25th Percentile £16.33 £24.94 -
Median hourly rate £19.57 £46.75 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -58.14% +96.43% -73.56%
75th Percentile £24.29 £65.25 -
90th Percentile £46.40 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.33 £43.50 -
% change year-on-year -62.46% - -

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 44,833 29,276 36,875
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.19% 90.47% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,910 18,456 23,540
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.48% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,660 1,489 2,488
10th Percentile £14.95 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -6.25%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -3.62%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -84 270 £460 -8.00% 89
UK excluding London -97 162 £465 -2.11% 69
London -71 121 £460 -12.38% 28
Work from Home -52 101 £500 -4.63% 37
North of England -40 68 £500 +5.26% 16
Yorkshire -7 51 £500 +25.00% 1
South East -27 45 £403 -19.50% 25
Scotland -33 17 £508 +9.14% 3
Midlands -57 17 £500 - 10
West Midlands -65 13 £575 +14.71% 6
South West -37 12 £363 -30.29% 9
North West -45 12 £459 -3.37% 11
North East -34 5 £275 -26.67% 4
East Midlands -17 4 £413 +7.14% 4
Wales -15 2 £543 +106.67% 1
East of England -54 1 £400 -11.11% 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 36 (11.46%) SharePoint
2 22 (7.01%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.18%) Confluence
4 5 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.27%) Appian
6 3 (0.96%) Apache
6 3 (0.96%) CMS
7 2 (0.64%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.32%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 7 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.59%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.96%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.64%) Maximo
2 2 (0.64%) Remedy AR System
3 1 (0.32%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.32%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.32%) PeopleSoft HCM
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 139 (44.27%) Azure
2 80 (25.48%) AWS
3 56 (17.83%) Microsoft 365
4 51 (16.24%) Entra ID
5 39 (12.42%) GitHub
6 34 (10.83%) GCP
7 28 (8.92%) Azure DevOps
8 26 (8.28%) GitHub Actions
9 25 (7.96%) Power Platform
10 22 (7.01%) Power Automate
11 21 (6.69%) OpenShift
12 18 (5.73%) Amazon S3
12 18 (5.73%) Azure Monitor
13 16 (5.10%) Azure Key Vault
14 15 (4.78%) Microsoft Copilot
15 14 (4.46%) Datadog
15 14 (4.46%) PaaS
15 14 (4.46%) Serverless
16 13 (4.14%) OneDrive
16 13 (4.14%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 42 (13.38%) DNS
2 30 (9.55%) DHCP
3 21 (6.69%) Firewall
4 20 (6.37%) VPN
5 14 (4.46%) Kerberos
6 13 (4.14%) SAN
7 11 (3.50%) Network Security
8 10 (3.18%) TCP/IP
9 9 (2.87%) WAN
10 8 (2.55%) SD-WAN
10 8 (2.55%) VLAN
11 6 (1.91%) SSH
12 5 (1.59%) LAN
13 4 (1.27%) Cisco Nexus
13 4 (1.27%) Intranet
13 4 (1.27%) SSL
14 3 (0.96%) BIG-IP
14 3 (0.96%) Cisco IOS
14 3 (0.96%) OSPF
14 3 (0.96%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (11.46%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.50%) Data Warehouse
2 11 (3.50%) Power BI
3 9 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (2.55%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.23%) Metadata
5 7 (2.23%) MySQL
6 6 (1.91%) Relational Database
6 6 (1.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.91%) Sybase ASE
7 4 (1.27%) Big Data
7 4 (1.27%) EDRMS
7 4 (1.27%) Pinecone
7 4 (1.27%) Snowflake Schema
7 4 (1.27%) Tableau
8 3 (0.96%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.96%) DTS
8 3 (0.96%) MongoDB
8 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 29 (9.24%) Git
2 28 (8.92%) Jenkins
3 26 (8.28%) GitLab
4 19 (6.05%) JIRA
5 8 (2.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (1.59%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.27%) Flyway
7 4 (1.27%) MLflow
8 3 (0.96%) AdminStudio
8 3 (0.96%) InstallShield
9 2 (0.64%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.64%) Selenium
9 2 (0.64%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.32%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.32%) IBM UrbanCode
10 1 (0.32%) Postman
10 1 (0.32%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.32%) Snyk
10 1 (0.32%) TestNG
10 1 (0.32%) TestRail
General
1 120 (38.22%) Social Skills
2 55 (17.52%) Finance
3 50 (15.92%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (8.60%) Banking
5 22 (7.01%) Public Sector
6 17 (5.41%) Legal
7 13 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.55%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.59%) Front Office
9 5 (1.59%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.96%) Law
11 3 (0.96%) Military
12 2 (0.64%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.64%) Retail
13 1 (0.32%) Local Government
13 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 32 (10.19%) Developer
2 21 (6.69%) DBA
3 18 (5.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 18 (5.73%) Senior
3 18 (5.73%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 16 (5.10%) Consultant
4 16 (5.10%) Support Engineer
5 15 (4.78%) DevOps Engineer
6 14 (4.46%) Site Engineer
7 13 (4.14%) Analyst
7 13 (4.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 12 (3.82%) Data Engineer
9 11 (3.50%) Azure Developer
10 10 (3.18%) Automation Engineer
10 10 (3.18%) Lead
10 10 (3.18%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.18%) SQL DBA
10 10 (3.18%) Technical Support
11 9 (2.87%) Administrator
11 9 (2.87%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (11.78%) REST
2 23 (7.32%) .NET
3 18 (5.73%) OAuth
4 15 (4.78%) Microsoft Graph
4 15 (4.78%) SOAP
4 15 (4.78%) Web Services
5 14 (4.46%) LDAP
5 14 (4.46%) SAML
6 12 (3.82%) .NET Framework
6 12 (3.82%) Elastic Stack
7 11 (3.50%) CSS
7 11 (3.50%) React
8 10 (3.18%) AWS CDK
8 10 (3.18%) JSON
8 10 (3.18%) Node.js
8 10 (3.18%) SPFx
9 9 (2.87%) JWT
9 9 (2.87%) RESTful
10 8 (2.55%) HTML
10 8 (2.55%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 24 (7.64%) Replication
2 22 (7.01%) Onboarding
3 19 (6.05%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (4.78%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (4.46%) Cloud Native
6 13 (4.14%) AI Agents
6 13 (4.14%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (3.50%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (3.50%) Product Ownership
8 8 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (2.23%) Data Centre
9 7 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (2.23%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.91%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.91%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.59%) Autonomous Agent
11 5 (1.59%) Clustering
11 5 (1.59%) CMDB
11 5 (1.59%) FlexPod
11 5 (1.59%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 73 (23.25%) Windows
2 61 (19.43%) Linux
3 30 (9.55%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (4.14%) Unix
6 9 (2.87%) Windows 10
7 8 (2.55%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.91%) VMS
9 5 (1.59%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.59%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.64%) AIX
11 2 (0.64%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.32%) Android
12 1 (0.32%) CentOS
12 1 (0.32%) Solaris
12 1 (0.32%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (26.75%) CI/CD
1 84 (26.75%) Problem-Solving
2 76 (24.20%) DevOps
3 62 (19.75%) AI
4 54 (17.20%) Agile
5 52 (16.56%) ITIL
6 50 (15.92%) Disaster Recovery
7 49 (15.61%) High Availability
8 46 (14.65%) Migration
9 44 (14.01%) Continuous Improvement
9 44 (14.01%) Infrastructure as Code
10 42 (13.38%) Analytics
11 41 (13.06%) Observability
12 36 (11.46%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 36 (11.46%) Workflow
13 35 (11.15%) Containerisation
14 32 (10.19%) Change Management
14 32 (10.19%) Performance Tuning
15 30 (9.55%) Data Protection
16 28 (8.92%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 136 (43.31%) Python
2 117 (37.26%) PowerShell
3 61 (19.43%) SQL
4 42 (13.38%) Bash
5 30 (9.55%) JavaScript
6 26 (8.28%) Java
7 20 (6.37%) C#
8 18 (5.73%) TypeScript
9 17 (5.41%) Go
10 12 (3.82%) Kusto Query Language
11 11 (3.50%) T-SQL
12 10 (3.18%) Shell Script
13 7 (2.23%) PL/SQL
14 6 (1.91%) Bicep
15 3 (0.96%) VBScript
16 2 (0.64%) ActionScript
16 2 (0.64%) Scala
17 1 (0.32%) ABAP
17 1 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 1 (0.32%) REXX
Qualifications
1 91 (28.98%) Security Cleared
2 64 (20.38%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.55%) Degree
4 22 (7.01%) Computer Science Degree
4 22 (7.01%) DV Cleared
5 9 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 7 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (1.59%) OCP
7 5 (1.59%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (1.27%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.27%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.27%) CCNP
8 4 (1.27%) CISSP
9 3 (0.96%) CCNA
10 2 (0.64%) CISM
10 2 (0.64%) JNCIA
10 2 (0.64%) JNCIS
10 2 (0.64%) MCTS
10 2 (0.64%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 14 (4.46%) GDPR
3 12 (3.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 10 (3.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (2.87%) NIST
5 9 (2.87%) QA
6 8 (2.55%) SLA
7 3 (0.96%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.96%) SOC 2
8 2 (0.64%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.32%) GMP
9 1 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.32%) GRC
System Software
1 62 (19.75%) Active Directory
2 27 (8.60%) Docker
3 20 (6.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.46%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.50%) NFS
6 7 (2.23%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (2.23%) vSphere
7 5 (1.59%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.64%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.64%) Firmware
9 2 (0.64%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.32%) KVM
10 1 (0.32%) OpenSSH
10 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.32%) UAG
10 1 (0.32%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 53 (16.88%) Ansible
2 52 (16.56%) Terraform
3 49 (15.61%) Kubernetes
4 26 (8.28%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (5.41%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (4.78%) SCCM
7 13 (4.14%) Grafana
8 12 (3.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 12 (3.82%) Prometheus
9 11 (3.50%) Progress Chef
10 8 (2.55%) Puppet
11 7 (2.23%) SCOM
12 6 (1.91%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (1.91%) vCenter Server
13 5 (1.59%) SnapMirror
14 4 (1.27%) Nessus
15 3 (0.96%) Foglight
15 3 (0.96%) OpenVAS
15 3 (0.96%) PowerCLI
15 3 (0.96%) WSUS
Vendors
1 106 (33.76%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.92%) VMware
3 25 (7.96%) ServiceNow
4 23 (7.32%) Google
5 20 (6.37%) Red Hat
6 19 (6.05%) Splunk
7 17 (5.41%) Okta
8 16 (5.10%) Oracle
9 13 (4.14%) OpenAI
10 12 (3.82%) Databricks
11 10 (3.18%) Cisco
12 7 (2.23%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.23%) Palo Alto
13 6 (1.91%) Bloomberg
13 6 (1.91%) Citrix
13 6 (1.91%) SolarWinds
13 6 (1.91%) Sybase
14 5 (1.59%) F5
14 5 (1.59%) NetApp
15 4 (1.27%) Automation Anywhere