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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 305 232 329
Rank change year-on-year -73 +97 +123
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 368 338 269
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 1.16% 0.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.92% 1.27% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 279 199 209
10th Percentile £313 £339 £398
25th Percentile £400 £419 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £597 £675
90th Percentile £750 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £553
% change year-on-year -3.16% -14.03% +0.45%
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 £35.15 £65.00 -
90th Percentile £41.66 £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 39,989 26,597 37,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.62% 90.89% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,206 17,155 24,229
10th Percentile £319 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.62% -3.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,387 1,068 2,445
10th Percentile £14.99 £14.65 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -18.65% -4.42%
75th Percentile £66.00 £60.84 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.76 £37.18
% change year-on-year +57.38% -25.34% +3.28%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -63 309 £491 -1.80% 99
UK excluding London -79 176 £460 -3.16% 67
London -29 155 £575 +5.75% 43
Work from Home -10 137 £550 +4.76% 72
North of England -43 65 £454 -4.42% 13
Yorkshire -14 49 £460 -7.54% 4
South East -33 40 £404 -1.64% 24
Scotland -13 30 £500 +5.82% 5
Midlands -74 21 £503 +5.89% 8
West Midlands -59 17 £550 +12.82% 5
South West -44 15 £400 -15.79% 9
North West -61 10 £450 -5.26% 7
North East -17 6 £365 -22.34% 2
East Midlands -31 4 £413 +4.43% 3
East of England -43 2 £450 -20.35% 11
Wales - 2 £543 -
Northern Ireland - 1 £675 -

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 (8.42%) SharePoint
2 28 (7.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.72%) Confluence
4 8 (2.17%) Appian
5 4 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.82%) Apache
7 2 (0.54%) CMS
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.54%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.27%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 11 (2.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.63%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.09%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.54%) Maximo
1 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.27%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 190 (51.63%) Azure
2 127 (34.51%) AWS
3 74 (20.11%) GCP
4 55 (14.95%) Entra ID
5 51 (13.86%) Microsoft 365
6 42 (11.41%) GitHub
7 34 (9.24%) OpenShift
8 28 (7.61%) GitHub Actions
9 27 (7.34%) Power Platform
10 24 (6.52%) Amazon S3
11 23 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
12 22 (5.98%) Power Automate
13 20 (5.43%) Azure Monitor
13 20 (5.43%) PaaS
14 18 (4.89%) Serverless
15 16 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
15 16 (4.35%) Azure Key Vault
16 15 (4.08%) Azure App Service
16 15 (4.08%) Azure Service Bus
16 15 (4.08%) Azure WebJobs
Communications & Networking
1 37 (10.05%) DNS
2 30 (8.15%) DHCP
3 19 (5.16%) Firewall
4 18 (4.89%) Kerberos
5 15 (4.08%) SSH
6 13 (3.53%) VPN
7 9 (2.45%) Network Security
8 8 (2.17%) TCP/IP
8 8 (2.17%) WAN
9 7 (1.90%) SAN
10 6 (1.63%) LAN
10 6 (1.63%) SD-WAN
11 4 (1.09%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.09%) VLAN
12 3 (0.82%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 3 (0.82%) SSL
12 3 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
12 3 (0.82%) WLAN
13 2 (0.54%) DWDM
13 2 (0.54%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (9.78%) SQL Server
2 20 (5.43%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (4.35%) Power BI
4 11 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (2.72%) Amazon RDS
6 9 (2.45%) Relational Database
7 8 (2.17%) Oracle Database
7 8 (2.17%) Pinecone
8 6 (1.63%) Metadata
8 6 (1.63%) Snowflake Schema
8 6 (1.63%) Tableau
9 5 (1.36%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.36%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (1.09%) Big Data
10 4 (1.09%) InfluxDB
10 4 (1.09%) MongoDB
10 4 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
10 4 (1.09%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 37 (10.05%) Jenkins
2 31 (8.42%) GitLab
3 30 (8.15%) Git
4 18 (4.89%) JIRA
5 11 (2.99%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.17%) MLflow
7 5 (1.36%) CircleCI
8 4 (1.09%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.82%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.82%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.82%) Flyway
9 3 (0.82%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.82%) Maven
9 3 (0.82%) Selenium
10 2 (0.54%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.54%) Gatling
10 2 (0.54%) JMeter
10 2 (0.54%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.54%) Postman
10 2 (0.54%) Snyk
General
1 148 (40.22%) Social Skills
2 62 (16.85%) Finance
3 46 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (9.78%) Public Sector
5 25 (6.79%) Banking
6 11 (2.99%) Organisational Skills
7 9 (2.45%) Legal
8 7 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.36%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.36%) Retail
10 4 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.09%) Law
11 3 (0.82%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.82%) Military
11 3 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.54%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.54%) Front Office
13 1 (0.27%) Marketing
13 1 (0.27%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (12.23%) Developer
2 43 (11.68%) Architect
3 37 (10.05%) CyberArk Architect
4 23 (6.25%) Administrator
5 22 (5.98%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 21 (5.71%) Automation Engineer
6 21 (5.71%) DBA
7 19 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
8 18 (4.89%) Analyst
9 16 (4.35%) Site Engineer
10 15 (4.08%) Platform Engineer
11 14 (3.80%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 13 (3.53%) Azure Developer
12 13 (3.53%) Consultant
12 13 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 13 (3.53%) Java Developer
12 13 (3.53%) Senior
13 12 (3.26%) Data Engineer
14 10 (2.72%) Microsoft 365 Developer
14 10 (2.72%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (16.85%) REST
2 50 (13.59%) LDAP
3 49 (13.32%) SOAP
4 26 (7.07%) OAuth
5 23 (6.25%) .NET
5 23 (6.25%) Web Services
6 17 (4.62%) SAML
7 16 (4.35%) .NET Framework
8 15 (4.08%) Microsoft Graph
8 15 (4.08%) Node.js
9 14 (3.80%) Elastic Stack
10 13 (3.53%) Kafka
11 12 (3.26%) JWT
11 12 (3.26%) RESTful
12 11 (2.99%) Pandas
12 11 (2.99%) PyTorch
13 10 (2.72%) FastAPI
13 10 (2.72%) NumPy
14 9 (2.45%) scikit-learn
14 9 (2.45%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.68%) Enterprise Software
2 42 (11.41%) Security Posture
3 22 (5.98%) Replication
4 21 (5.71%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.80%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (3.53%) Cloud Native
6 13 (3.53%) Distributed Systems
7 12 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
8 11 (2.99%) Product Ownership
9 10 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (2.45%) Clustering
10 9 (2.45%) Data Centre
11 8 (2.17%) Low-Code
12 5 (1.36%) FlexPod
13 4 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (1.09%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.09%) NHS
13 4 (1.09%) PKI
13 4 (1.09%) Virtual Team
14 3 (0.82%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 78 (21.20%) Linux
2 70 (19.02%) Windows
3 30 (8.15%) Windows Server
4 17 (4.62%) Unix
5 15 (4.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (2.45%) Mac OS
6 9 (2.45%) VMS
7 7 (1.90%) Windows 10
8 5 (1.36%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.36%) Data ONTAP
9 3 (0.82%) CentOS
10 2 (0.54%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.27%) Android
11 1 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.27%) Rocky
11 1 (0.27%) Solaris
11 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (38.32%) Problem-Solving
2 116 (31.52%) CI/CD
3 86 (23.37%) DevOps
4 55 (14.95%) Agile
5 54 (14.67%) Infrastructure as Code
6 53 (14.40%) Disaster Recovery
7 51 (13.86%) AI
8 49 (13.32%) Analytics
9 48 (13.04%) High Availability
9 48 (13.04%) Migration
10 46 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 45 (12.23%) Containerisation
12 44 (11.96%) Observability
13 42 (11.41%) SIEM
13 42 (11.41%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 42 (11.41%) Technical Leadership
14 41 (11.14%) Continuous Improvement
15 38 (10.33%) Privileged Access Management
16 36 (9.78%) Integration Patterns
16 36 (9.78%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 177 (48.10%) Python
2 145 (39.40%) PowerShell
3 67 (18.21%) SQL
4 46 (12.50%) Bash
5 45 (12.23%) Java
6 29 (7.88%) Shell Script
7 25 (6.79%) JavaScript
8 23 (6.25%) C#
9 22 (5.98%) Go
10 19 (5.16%) TypeScript
11 18 (4.89%) Kusto Query Language
12 10 (2.72%) PL/SQL
12 10 (2.72%) T-SQL
13 4 (1.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 3 (0.82%) Bicep
14 3 (0.82%) Perl
14 3 (0.82%) PHP
14 3 (0.82%) VBA
15 2 (0.54%) ActionScript
15 2 (0.54%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 132 (35.87%) Security Cleared
2 105 (28.53%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.88%) Degree
4 22 (5.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (5.71%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (3.26%) DV Cleared
7 8 (2.17%) OCP
7 8 (2.17%) Oracle Certification
8 7 (1.90%) CISSP
9 6 (1.63%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.63%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.36%) Azure Certification
11 4 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
11 4 (1.09%) CISM
12 3 (0.82%) CCNA
12 3 (0.82%) CCNP
12 3 (0.82%) JNCIA
12 3 (0.82%) JNCIS
12 3 (0.82%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.54%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (7.34%) GDPR
2 23 (6.25%) Data Quality
3 20 (5.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (4.08%) NIST
5 14 (3.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 9 (2.45%) QA
7 5 (1.36%) SLA
8 4 (1.09%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.82%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.54%) GRC
10 2 (0.54%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.27%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.27%) COBIT
11 1 (0.27%) GMP
11 1 (0.27%) PMO
System Software
1 93 (25.27%) Active Directory
2 37 (10.05%) Docker
3 19 (5.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (4.08%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.63%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.63%) vSphere
6 5 (1.36%) NFS
6 5 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.82%) Xen
8 2 (0.54%) Firmware
8 2 (0.54%) KVM
8 2 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.27%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.27%) HDFS
9 1 (0.27%) RHEV
9 1 (0.27%) UAG
9 1 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.27%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.27%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 71 (19.29%) Kubernetes
2 64 (17.39%) Terraform
3 62 (16.85%) Ansible
4 27 (7.34%) Grafana
5 24 (6.52%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (5.98%) Prometheus
7 20 (5.43%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (3.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (3.80%) Progress Chef
9 9 (2.45%) SCCM
10 8 (2.17%) Puppet
11 6 (1.63%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 5 (1.36%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.36%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.09%) Nessus
14 3 (0.82%) Data Guard
14 3 (0.82%) Docker Swarm
14 3 (0.82%) Foglight
14 3 (0.82%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.82%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 101 (27.45%) Microsoft
2 39 (10.60%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.24%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.24%) Centrify
4 28 (7.61%) Oracle
5 25 (6.79%) VMware
6 22 (5.98%) Google
7 20 (5.43%) ServiceNow
8 19 (5.16%) Okta
8 19 (5.16%) Red Hat
9 15 (4.08%) OpenAI
10 14 (3.80%) Databricks
10 14 (3.80%) Splunk
11 9 (2.45%) Cisco
12 8 (2.17%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (2.17%) UiPath
13 6 (1.63%) F5
13 6 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.36%) Informatica
14 5 (1.36%) NetApp