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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 259 237 366
Rank change year-on-year -22 +129 +85
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 402 345 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.04% 1.12% 0.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.19% 1.25% 0.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 283 213 181
10th Percentile £320 £343 £363
25th Percentile £400 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.47% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £599 £575 £613
90th Percentile £750 £667 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £464 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -1.33% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 10 0
10th Percentile £47.98 £21.00 -
25th Percentile £50.94 £21.31 -
Median hourly rate £56.25 £26.83 -
Median % change year-on-year +109.65% - -
75th Percentile £61.94 £57.79 -
90th Percentile £65.13 £66.81 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £23.77 -
% change year-on-year +179.79% - -

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 33,753 27,550 39,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.16% 89.25% 87.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,385 16,677 25,860
10th Percentile £306 £306 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £498 £500
% change year-on-year -3.66% -0.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,027 862 2,114
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +8.53%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £61.13
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £31.50 £35.50
% change year-on-year -20.63% -11.27% +22.41%

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 3 February 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 3 February 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 3 February 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 -36 337 £500 +5.26% 129
UK excluding London -31 196 £464 -1.33% 95
London -10 163 £575 +9.52% 44
Work from Home +30 148 £550 +15.79% 56
North of England -38 60 £447 -4.89% 27
South East -17 40 £425 +6.25% 32
Midlands -39 39 £520 +7.33% 12
West Midlands -17 38 £520 +5.69% 8
Yorkshire -30 32 £450 +9.09% 7
Scotland +9 27 £460 -6.36% 3
North West -35 24 £446 -5.11% 14
South West -31 18 £525 +11.70% 17
East of England -22 8 £500 -2.44% 11
North East -12 4 £365 -22.34% 6
Wales - 4 £525 -
Northern Ireland - 2 £683 -
East Midlands -29 1 £450 +13.92% 4

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 22 (5.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 19 (4.73%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.24%) Confluence
4 8 (1.99%) IIS
5 7 (1.74%) Apache
5 7 (1.74%) Appian
6 5 (1.24%) iPlanet
6 5 (1.24%) JBoss
6 5 (1.24%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.24%) WebSphere Application Server
7 4 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
7 4 (1.00%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.50%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.25%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.25%) CMS
9 1 (0.25%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 23 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.00%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.75%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.50%) Maximo
1 2 (0.50%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
1 2 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 191 (47.51%) Azure
2 135 (33.58%) AWS
3 95 (23.63%) GCP
4 48 (11.94%) Entra ID
5 39 (9.70%) Microsoft 365
6 37 (9.20%) GitHub
7 35 (8.71%) OpenShift
8 27 (6.72%) GitHub Actions
9 24 (5.97%) AWS CloudFormation
9 24 (5.97%) Serverless
10 23 (5.72%) Azure DevOps
11 21 (5.22%) Power Platform
12 20 (4.98%) Power Automate
13 17 (4.23%) Amazon S3
14 13 (3.23%) Amazon EKS
14 13 (3.23%) AWS Lambda
14 13 (3.23%) Datadog
15 12 (2.99%) OneDrive
16 10 (2.49%) Amazon EC2
16 10 (2.49%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 37 (9.20%) DNS
2 34 (8.46%) Firewall
3 29 (7.21%) DHCP
4 21 (5.22%) Kerberos
5 18 (4.48%) SSH
6 17 (4.23%) TCP/IP
7 14 (3.48%) Network Security
8 11 (2.74%) VPN
9 8 (1.99%) WAN
10 7 (1.74%) LAN
11 4 (1.00%) AMQP
11 4 (1.00%) HTTP
11 4 (1.00%) WLAN
12 3 (0.75%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.75%) SSL
13 2 (0.50%) DWDM
13 2 (0.50%) Internet
13 2 (0.50%) NX-OS
13 2 (0.50%) SD-WAN
13 2 (0.50%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (7.71%) SQL Server
2 27 (6.72%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (5.22%) Relational Database
4 15 (3.73%) Power BI
5 14 (3.48%) Oracle Database
6 10 (2.49%) Amazon RDS
6 10 (2.49%) MySQL
7 9 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (1.99%) Pinecone
9 6 (1.49%) RDBMS
10 5 (1.24%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (1.24%) Metadata
10 5 (1.24%) MongoDB
10 5 (1.24%) NoSQL
10 5 (1.24%) Oracle Reports
10 5 (1.24%) Power Query
10 5 (1.24%) Tableau
11 4 (1.00%) BigQuery
11 4 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (1.00%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 51 (12.69%) Jenkins
2 46 (11.44%) Git
3 36 (8.96%) GitLab
4 17 (4.23%) Sonatype Nexus
5 16 (3.98%) JIRA
6 10 (2.49%) CircleCI
7 9 (2.24%) Bitbucket
8 8 (1.99%) Maven
9 7 (1.74%) MLflow
10 6 (1.49%) SonarQube
11 5 (1.24%) Artifactory
11 5 (1.24%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.24%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.24%) Gatling
11 5 (1.24%) JMeter
11 5 (1.24%) JUnit
11 5 (1.24%) LoadRunner
11 5 (1.24%) Postman
11 5 (1.24%) Selenium
12 4 (1.00%) Cypress.io
General
1 161 (40.05%) Social Skills
2 68 (16.92%) Finance
3 59 (14.68%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.70%) Public Sector
5 26 (6.47%) Banking
6 7 (1.74%) Investment Banking
6 7 (1.74%) Legal
6 7 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (1.49%) Retail
8 5 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.00%) Games
9 4 (1.00%) Military
9 4 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (0.75%) Front Office
10 3 (0.75%) Law
11 2 (0.50%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.50%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.50%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 46 (11.44%) Developer
2 41 (10.20%) Architect
3 37 (9.20%) CyberArk Architect
4 28 (6.97%) Administrator
5 26 (6.47%) DevOps Engineer
6 23 (5.72%) Analyst
7 22 (5.47%) Automation Engineer
8 21 (5.22%) Senior
9 19 (4.73%) Platform Engineer
10 17 (4.23%) Java Developer
10 17 (4.23%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 15 (3.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 14 (3.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 14 (3.48%) DBA
13 13 (3.23%) Lead
14 11 (2.74%) Site Engineer
14 11 (2.74%) Support Engineer
15 10 (2.49%) Consultant
15 10 (2.49%) Data Engineer
15 10 (2.49%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (15.17%) REST
2 54 (13.43%) LDAP
3 39 (9.70%) SOAP
4 32 (7.96%) OAuth
5 25 (6.22%) Elastic Stack
5 25 (6.22%) Node.js
6 23 (5.72%) SAML
7 16 (3.98%) .NET
8 14 (3.48%) Web Services
9 13 (3.23%) Kafka
10 12 (2.99%) Pandas
10 12 (2.99%) RESTful
11 11 (2.74%) FastAPI
12 10 (2.49%) JWT
12 10 (2.49%) NumPy
13 9 (2.24%) Microsoft Graph
13 9 (2.24%) OpenID
13 9 (2.24%) PyTorch
14 8 (1.99%) Faiss
14 8 (1.99%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 43 (10.70%) Security Posture
2 42 (10.45%) Enterprise Software
3 23 (5.72%) Onboarding
4 21 (5.22%) Cloud Native
5 20 (4.98%) Replication
6 13 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.24%) Low-Code
9 8 (1.99%) Clustering
9 8 (1.99%) Data Centre
9 8 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
10 7 (1.74%) PKI
10 7 (1.74%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.24%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.24%) Hybrid Cloud
11 5 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.24%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.24%) Product Ownership
12 4 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (1.00%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 107 (26.62%) Linux
2 86 (21.39%) Windows
3 36 (8.96%) Windows Server
4 28 (6.97%) Unix
5 13 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (1.99%) CentOS
6 8 (1.99%) VMS
7 4 (1.00%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.00%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.75%) AIX
8 3 (0.75%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.50%) Android
9 2 (0.50%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 159 (39.55%) Problem-Solving
2 136 (33.83%) CI/CD
3 99 (24.63%) DevOps
4 67 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
5 64 (15.92%) Containerisation
6 57 (14.18%) Agile
7 56 (13.93%) SIEM
8 46 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 45 (11.19%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 43 (10.70%) Continuous Improvement
10 43 (10.70%) Disaster Recovery
10 43 (10.70%) Technical Leadership
11 42 (10.45%) High Availability
11 42 (10.45%) Migration
12 41 (10.20%) AI
12 41 (10.20%) Identity Access Management
12 41 (10.20%) Observability
13 40 (9.95%) Privileged Access Management
13 40 (9.95%) Root Cause Analysis
13 40 (9.95%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 213 (52.99%) Python
2 155 (38.56%) PowerShell
3 71 (17.66%) SQL
4 68 (16.92%) Bash
5 54 (13.43%) Java
6 40 (9.95%) Shell Script
7 28 (6.97%) Go
8 26 (6.47%) JavaScript
9 22 (5.47%) TypeScript
10 16 (3.98%) C#
11 12 (2.99%) Kusto Query Language
11 12 (2.99%) VBA
12 10 (2.49%) Perl
13 9 (2.24%) Bicep
14 7 (1.74%) PL/SQL
15 6 (1.49%) Groovy
16 3 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 3 (0.75%) PHP
16 3 (0.75%) Ruby
17 2 (0.50%) Korn
Qualifications
1 138 (34.33%) Security Cleared
2 106 (26.37%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.21%) Degree
4 25 (6.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 15 (3.73%) DV Cleared
6 12 (2.99%) Azure Certification
7 9 (2.24%) CISSP
7 9 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (1.99%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.24%) CCNP
10 5 (1.24%) Master's Degree
10 5 (1.24%) OCP
10 5 (1.24%) Oracle Certification
11 4 (1.00%) CFCE
11 4 (1.00%) GCFA
11 4 (1.00%) GCIA
11 4 (1.00%) GCIH
11 4 (1.00%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (9.20%) GDPR
2 23 (5.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (4.48%) NIST
4 17 (4.23%) Data Quality
5 14 (3.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (2.49%) QA
7 7 (1.74%) SLA
8 5 (1.24%) HIPAA
8 5 (1.24%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.75%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.50%) EU AI Act
11 1 (0.25%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.25%) COBIT
11 1 (0.25%) GMP
11 1 (0.25%) GRC
11 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.25%) PMO
System Software
1 92 (22.89%) Active Directory
2 63 (15.67%) Docker
3 24 (5.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.99%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.24%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 4 (1.00%) Hyper-V
6 4 (1.00%) KVM
7 3 (0.75%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.75%) Xen
8 1 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.25%) Firmware
8 1 (0.25%) HDFS
8 1 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
8 1 (0.25%) RHEV
8 1 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.25%) vSphere
8 1 (0.25%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 82 (20.40%) Terraform
2 81 (20.15%) Kubernetes
3 68 (16.92%) Ansible
4 45 (11.19%) Grafana
5 38 (9.45%) Prometheus
6 25 (6.22%) Single Sign-On
7 23 (5.72%) Progress Chef
8 16 (3.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 15 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
10 14 (3.48%) Puppet
11 13 (3.23%) SCCM
12 11 (2.74%) Oracle RMAN
13 7 (1.74%) Podman
14 6 (1.49%) CA Single Sign-On
14 6 (1.49%) NetBackup
14 6 (1.49%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 5 (1.24%) CA Wily
15 5 (1.24%) Kibana
15 5 (1.24%) Tivoli
16 4 (1.00%) logstash
Vendors
1 104 (25.87%) Microsoft
2 51 (12.69%) CyberArk
3 41 (10.20%) BeyondTrust
4 39 (9.70%) Oracle
5 35 (8.71%) Google
6 34 (8.46%) Centrify
7 32 (7.96%) Splunk
8 25 (6.22%) VMware
9 18 (4.48%) Okta
9 18 (4.48%) Red Hat
10 16 (3.98%) ServiceNow
11 15 (3.73%) OpenAI
12 10 (2.49%) Cisco
13 8 (1.99%) Databricks
14 7 (1.74%) Automation Anywhere
14 7 (1.74%) IBM
14 7 (1.74%) Palo Alto
14 7 (1.74%) UiPath
15 6 (1.49%) AppDynamics
15 6 (1.49%) Veritas