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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 302 245 313
Rank change year-on-year -57 +68 +133
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 363 313 286
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 1.08% 0.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.91% 1.19% 0.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 278 175 226
10th Percentile £311 £350 £384
25th Percentile £400 £413 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £600 £675
90th Percentile £750 £690 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £483 £550
% change year-on-year -4.87% -12.27% -
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 39,805 26,361 36,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.96% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,996 16,941 23,723
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.71% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,368 1,073 2,431
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.90 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.31 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.78 £38.00
% change year-on-year +74.59% -32.17% +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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -66 305 £485 -7.71% 107
UK excluding London -66 173 £459 -4.87% 75
London -29 156 £575 +4.55% 42
Work from Home -5 138 £563 +4.75% 68
North of England -41 66 £454 -4.42% 17
Yorkshire -11 49 £460 -14.42% 6
South East -34 38 £415 +1.10% 29
Scotland -1 31 £500 +7.53% 3
Midlands -50 21 £503 +3.18% 7
West Midlands -51 17 £550 +10.00% 3
South West -42 13 £400 -17.95% 12
North West -47 11 £450 -5.26% 9
North East -15 6 £365 -2.67% 2
East Midlands -30 4 £413 +5.77% 4
Wales - 2 £543 -
East of England -47 1 £400 -29.20% 8
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 30 (8.26%) SharePoint
2 23 (6.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.75%) Confluence
4 8 (2.20%) Appian
5 4 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.83%) Apache
7 2 (0.55%) CMS
7 2 (0.55%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 2 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.55%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.28%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 12 (3.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.65%) Chatbot
3 4 (1.10%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.55%) Maximo
1 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.55%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.28%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 185 (50.96%) Azure
2 127 (34.99%) AWS
3 75 (20.66%) GCP
4 49 (13.50%) Entra ID
5 47 (12.95%) Microsoft 365
6 43 (11.85%) GitHub
7 32 (8.82%) OpenShift
8 29 (7.99%) GitHub Actions
8 29 (7.99%) Power Platform
9 24 (6.61%) Power Automate
10 23 (6.34%) Amazon S3
11 22 (6.06%) Azure DevOps
12 19 (5.23%) PaaS
13 17 (4.68%) Azure Monitor
14 16 (4.41%) AWS CloudFormation
14 16 (4.41%) Serverless
15 15 (4.13%) Azure Key Vault
16 14 (3.86%) AWS Lambda
17 13 (3.58%) Azure App Service
17 13 (3.58%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 38 (10.47%) DNS
2 31 (8.54%) DHCP
3 21 (5.79%) Firewall
4 18 (4.96%) Kerberos
5 15 (4.13%) VPN
6 13 (3.58%) SSH
7 10 (2.75%) Network Security
7 10 (2.75%) WAN
8 8 (2.20%) SD-WAN
8 8 (2.20%) TCP/IP
9 7 (1.93%) SAN
10 6 (1.65%) LAN
11 5 (1.38%) SSL
12 4 (1.10%) Cisco Nexus
12 4 (1.10%) VLAN
13 3 (0.83%) BIG-IP
13 3 (0.83%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
13 3 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
13 3 (0.83%) WLAN
14 2 (0.55%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (9.92%) SQL Server
2 20 (5.51%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (4.41%) Power BI
4 11 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (2.48%) Amazon RDS
6 8 (2.20%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.20%) Pinecone
7 7 (1.93%) Relational Database
8 6 (1.65%) Metadata
8 6 (1.65%) Snowflake Schema
8 6 (1.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.65%) Tableau
9 5 (1.38%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.38%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.38%) MongoDB
10 4 (1.10%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (1.10%) Big Data
10 4 (1.10%) MySQL
10 4 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
10 4 (1.10%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 34 (9.37%) Jenkins
2 29 (7.99%) GitLab
3 28 (7.71%) Git
4 18 (4.96%) JIRA
5 11 (3.03%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.20%) MLflow
7 5 (1.38%) CircleCI
8 4 (1.10%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.83%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.83%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.83%) Flyway
9 3 (0.83%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.83%) Selenium
10 2 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.55%) Maven
10 2 (0.55%) Postman
10 2 (0.55%) Snyk
11 1 (0.28%) Gradle
11 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (0.28%) webpack
General
1 145 (39.94%) Social Skills
2 61 (16.80%) Finance
3 48 (13.22%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (9.92%) Public Sector
5 26 (7.16%) Banking
6 11 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.75%) Legal
8 7 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.38%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.10%) Law
11 3 (0.83%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.83%) Military
11 3 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.83%) Retail
12 2 (0.55%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.55%) Front Office
13 1 (0.28%) Marketing
13 1 (0.28%) Private Banking
13 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (12.40%) Architect
2 39 (10.74%) Developer
3 37 (10.19%) CyberArk Architect
4 22 (6.06%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 21 (5.79%) Administrator
5 21 (5.79%) DBA
6 20 (5.51%) Automation Engineer
7 18 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (4.41%) Analyst
8 16 (4.41%) Site Engineer
9 15 (4.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
9 15 (4.13%) Platform Engineer
10 13 (3.58%) Consultant
11 12 (3.31%) Azure Developer
11 12 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 12 (3.31%) Senior
12 11 (3.03%) Data Engineer
12 11 (3.03%) Java Developer
13 10 (2.75%) Network Engineer
13 10 (2.75%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (17.36%) REST
2 50 (13.77%) LDAP
3 48 (13.22%) SOAP
4 26 (7.16%) OAuth
5 22 (6.06%) .NET
5 22 (6.06%) Web Services
6 17 (4.68%) SAML
7 15 (4.13%) Elastic Stack
8 14 (3.86%) .NET Framework
9 13 (3.58%) JWT
9 13 (3.58%) Microsoft Graph
9 13 (3.58%) Node.js
10 12 (3.31%) RESTful
11 11 (3.03%) Kafka
11 11 (3.03%) Pandas
11 11 (3.03%) PyTorch
12 10 (2.75%) FastAPI
12 10 (2.75%) NumPy
13 9 (2.48%) scikit-learn
13 9 (2.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.85%) Enterprise Software
2 38 (10.47%) Security Posture
3 22 (6.06%) Replication
4 21 (5.79%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.86%) Cloud Native
5 14 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.86%) Legacy Systems
6 11 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.03%) Product Ownership
7 9 (2.48%) Clustering
8 8 (2.20%) Data Centre
8 8 (2.20%) Low-Code
9 6 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (1.38%) FlexPod
10 5 (1.38%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.10%) Data Structures
11 4 (1.10%) PKI
12 3 (0.83%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.83%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 76 (20.94%) Linux
2 71 (19.56%) Windows
3 31 (8.54%) Windows Server
4 17 (4.68%) Unix
5 15 (4.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (2.48%) Mac OS
6 9 (2.48%) VMS
7 8 (2.20%) Windows 10
8 5 (1.38%) CoreOS
8 5 (1.38%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.55%) CentOS
10 1 (0.28%) Android
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.28%) Rocky
10 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.28%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.28%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (37.74%) Problem-Solving
2 112 (30.85%) CI/CD
3 86 (23.69%) DevOps
4 56 (15.43%) AI
5 55 (15.15%) Agile
6 54 (14.88%) Disaster Recovery
6 54 (14.88%) Infrastructure as Code
7 50 (13.77%) Migration
8 48 (13.22%) High Availability
9 45 (12.40%) Analytics
10 44 (12.12%) Containerisation
11 43 (11.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 43 (11.85%) Technical Leadership
12 42 (11.57%) Continuous Improvement
12 42 (11.57%) SIEM
13 41 (11.29%) Observability
14 39 (10.74%) ITSM
15 38 (10.47%) Privileged Access Management
15 38 (10.47%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 37 (10.19%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 175 (48.21%) Python
2 141 (38.84%) PowerShell
3 67 (18.46%) SQL
4 46 (12.67%) Bash
5 40 (11.02%) Java
6 26 (7.16%) JavaScript
6 26 (7.16%) Shell Script
7 22 (6.06%) C#
7 22 (6.06%) Go
8 17 (4.68%) TypeScript
9 13 (3.58%) Kusto Query Language
10 10 (2.75%) PL/SQL
10 10 (2.75%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 4 (1.10%) Perl
12 3 (0.83%) PHP
12 3 (0.83%) VBA
13 2 (0.55%) ActionScript
13 2 (0.55%) Ruby
13 2 (0.55%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 133 (36.64%) Security Cleared
2 106 (29.20%) SC Cleared
3 28 (7.71%) Degree
4 23 (6.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (4.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.58%) DV Cleared
7 8 (2.20%) OCP
7 8 (2.20%) Oracle Certification
8 6 (1.65%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.65%) CISSP
9 5 (1.38%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.10%) CISM
10 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.83%) CCNA
11 3 (0.83%) CCNP
11 3 (0.83%) JNCIA
11 3 (0.83%) JNCIS
11 3 (0.83%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.55%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.34%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.06%) GDPR
3 14 (3.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 13 (3.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (3.31%) NIST
6 9 (2.48%) QA
7 7 (1.93%) SLA
8 3 (0.83%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.55%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.55%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.28%) GMP
10 1 (0.28%) GRC
10 1 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 90 (24.79%) Active Directory
2 37 (10.19%) Docker
3 19 (5.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (4.41%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.65%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.65%) vSphere
6 5 (1.38%) NFS
6 5 (1.38%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.83%) Xen
8 2 (0.55%) BitLocker
8 2 (0.55%) Firmware
8 2 (0.55%) KVM
8 2 (0.55%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.28%) HDFS
9 1 (0.28%) RHEV
9 1 (0.28%) UAG
9 1 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.28%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.28%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 70 (19.28%) Kubernetes
2 60 (16.53%) Terraform
3 57 (15.70%) Ansible
4 24 (6.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (6.34%) Grafana
6 20 (5.51%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (5.23%) Prometheus
8 14 (3.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 14 (3.86%) Progress Chef
9 11 (3.03%) SCCM
10 9 (2.48%) Puppet
11 6 (1.65%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 5 (1.38%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.38%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.10%) Nessus
14 3 (0.83%) Data Guard
14 3 (0.83%) Nagios
14 3 (0.83%) OpenVAS
14 3 (0.83%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.83%) SCOM
Vendors
1 97 (26.72%) Microsoft
2 39 (10.74%) CyberArk
3 34 (9.37%) BeyondTrust
3 34 (9.37%) Centrify
4 26 (7.16%) Oracle
5 25 (6.89%) VMware
6 24 (6.61%) Google
7 20 (5.51%) Red Hat
8 19 (5.23%) Okta
8 19 (5.23%) ServiceNow
9 15 (4.13%) OpenAI
9 15 (4.13%) Splunk
10 14 (3.86%) Databricks
11 9 (2.48%) Cisco
12 8 (2.20%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (2.20%) Palo Alto
12 8 (2.20%) UiPath
13 7 (1.93%) F5
14 5 (1.38%) Informatica
14 5 (1.38%) NetApp