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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 292 219 349
Rank change year-on-year -73 +130 +99
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 394 344 236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.86% 1.18% 0.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.01% 1.30% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 294 207 185
10th Percentile £313 £329 £400
25th Percentile £400 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £605 £600 £675
90th Percentile £750 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £454 £475 £531
% change year-on-year -4.42% -10.59% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 13 0
10th Percentile - £21.00 -
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.22 -
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% - -
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 39,137 26,475 37,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.32% 90.62% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,793 17,183 24,611
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £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 £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.05% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,000 2,387
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.25 £16.00
Median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.28 £70.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £29.23 £33.07
% change year-on-year +25.59% -11.60% -7.64%

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 April 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 April 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 10 April 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 -56 332 £487 -2.60% 97
UK excluding London -80 180 £454 -4.42% 68
London -39 170 £575 +5.75% 40
Work from Home +2 148 £550 +6.80% 41
North of England -53 63 £452 -4.84% 17
Yorkshire -17 48 £454 -8.74% 4
South East -28 43 £403 +3.21% 26
Scotland -4 24 £415 -11.94% 2
Midlands -60 24 £500 +6.38% 5
West Midlands -57 20 £527 +10.84% 1
South West -40 19 £413 -13.16% 11
North West -47 11 £450 -5.01% 7
North East -17 4 £365 -22.34% 6
East Midlands -35 4 £413 -2.37% 4
East of England -43 4 £500 -11.50% 7
Wales - 4 £525 - 2
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 32 (8.12%) SharePoint
2 31 (7.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.79%) Confluence
4 8 (2.03%) Appian
5 3 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.51%) Apache
6 2 (0.51%) CMS
6 2 (0.51%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.51%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.51%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.25%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.25%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.25%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 13 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.02%) Chatbot
2 4 (1.02%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.51%) Maximo
1 2 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
1 2 (0.51%) Oracle EBS R12
1 2 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
1 2 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.25%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 197 (50.00%) Azure
2 128 (32.49%) AWS
3 78 (19.80%) GCP
4 62 (15.74%) Entra ID
5 53 (13.45%) Microsoft 365
6 44 (11.17%) GitHub
7 33 (8.38%) OpenShift
8 30 (7.61%) GitHub Actions
9 25 (6.35%) Azure DevOps
9 25 (6.35%) Power Platform
10 22 (5.58%) Amazon S3
10 22 (5.58%) Azure Monitor
10 22 (5.58%) Power Automate
11 21 (5.33%) PaaS
12 18 (4.57%) Serverless
13 17 (4.31%) AWS CloudFormation
13 17 (4.31%) Azure Key Vault
14 16 (4.06%) Azure App Service
14 16 (4.06%) Azure Service Bus
14 16 (4.06%) Azure WebJobs
Communications & Networking
1 39 (9.90%) DNS
2 32 (8.12%) DHCP
3 21 (5.33%) Firewall
4 19 (4.82%) SSH
5 17 (4.31%) Kerberos
6 14 (3.55%) VPN
7 10 (2.54%) TCP/IP
8 9 (2.28%) Network Security
9 7 (1.78%) SAN
9 7 (1.78%) WAN
10 6 (1.52%) LAN
11 4 (1.02%) Cisco Nexus
11 4 (1.02%) SD-WAN
11 4 (1.02%) VLAN
12 3 (0.76%) Cisco IOS
12 3 (0.76%) SSL
13 2 (0.51%) AMQP
13 2 (0.51%) DWDM
13 2 (0.51%) NAS
13 2 (0.51%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (8.88%) SQL Server
2 21 (5.33%) PostgreSQL
3 17 (4.31%) Power BI
4 11 (2.79%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (2.54%) Relational Database
6 9 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (2.03%) Oracle Database
7 8 (2.03%) Pinecone
8 6 (1.52%) Tableau
9 5 (1.27%) Big Data
9 5 (1.27%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.27%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.27%) Snowflake Schema
9 5 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (1.02%) Metadata
10 4 (1.02%) MongoDB
10 4 (1.02%) MySQL
10 4 (1.02%) Oracle Reports
10 4 (1.02%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 41 (10.41%) Jenkins
2 35 (8.88%) GitLab
3 33 (8.38%) Git
4 20 (5.08%) JIRA
5 11 (2.79%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (2.03%) MLflow
7 5 (1.27%) CircleCI
7 5 (1.27%) Gatling
7 5 (1.27%) JMeter
7 5 (1.27%) LoadRunner
8 4 (1.02%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.76%) AdminStudio
9 3 (0.76%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.76%) Flyway
9 3 (0.76%) InstallShield
9 3 (0.76%) Maven
9 3 (0.76%) Selenium
10 2 (0.51%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.51%) Postman
10 2 (0.51%) Snyk
General
1 164 (41.62%) Social Skills
2 69 (17.51%) Finance
3 49 (12.44%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (9.39%) Public Sector
5 26 (6.60%) Banking
6 11 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.54%) Legal
8 7 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.78%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.27%) Retail
11 4 (1.02%) Financial Institution
11 4 (1.02%) Law
11 4 (1.02%) Military
12 3 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.51%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.51%) Front Office
13 2 (0.51%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.25%) Billing
14 1 (0.25%) Games
Job Titles
1 49 (12.44%) Developer
2 42 (10.66%) Architect
3 37 (9.39%) CyberArk Architect
4 23 (5.84%) Administrator
4 23 (5.84%) Automation Engineer
5 21 (5.33%) Analyst
5 21 (5.33%) DBA
5 21 (5.33%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 20 (5.08%) DevOps Engineer
6 20 (5.08%) Platform Engineer
7 17 (4.31%) Java Developer
8 14 (3.55%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 14 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 14 (3.55%) Senior
8 14 (3.55%) Site Engineer
9 13 (3.30%) Azure Developer
9 13 (3.30%) Lead
10 12 (3.05%) Consultant
11 11 (2.79%) Data Engineer
12 10 (2.54%) Microsoft 365 Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (17.51%) REST
2 50 (12.69%) LDAP
2 50 (12.69%) SOAP
3 27 (6.85%) OAuth
4 25 (6.35%) Web Services
5 24 (6.09%) .NET
6 20 (5.08%) Node.js
7 18 (4.57%) Microsoft Graph
7 18 (4.57%) SAML
8 17 (4.31%) .NET Framework
9 14 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
9 14 (3.55%) Kafka
10 13 (3.30%) RESTful
11 11 (2.79%) JWT
12 10 (2.54%) Pandas
12 10 (2.54%) PyTorch
13 9 (2.28%) FastAPI
13 9 (2.28%) NumPy
13 9 (2.28%) scikit-learn
13 9 (2.28%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 44 (11.17%) Security Posture
2 43 (10.91%) Enterprise Software
3 24 (6.09%) Onboarding
4 21 (5.33%) Replication
5 14 (3.55%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (3.30%) Cloud Native
6 13 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (2.79%) Hybrid Cloud
8 10 (2.54%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (2.28%) Low-Code
9 9 (2.28%) Product Ownership
10 8 (2.03%) Clustering
10 8 (2.03%) Data Centre
11 7 (1.78%) PKI
12 5 (1.27%) FlexPod
13 4 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (1.02%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.02%) Legacy Applications
13 4 (1.02%) Management Information System
13 4 (1.02%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 89 (22.59%) Linux
2 81 (20.56%) Windows
3 34 (8.63%) Windows Server
4 18 (4.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (4.06%) Unix
6 12 (3.05%) VMS
7 9 (2.28%) Mac OS
8 7 (1.78%) Windows 10
9 5 (1.27%) CoreOS
9 5 (1.27%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (1.02%) CentOS
11 2 (0.51%) AIX
11 2 (0.51%) Android
11 2 (0.51%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.51%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.25%) Rocky
12 1 (0.25%) Solaris
12 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (39.34%) Problem-Solving
2 126 (31.98%) CI/CD
3 95 (24.11%) DevOps
4 61 (15.48%) Agile
4 61 (15.48%) Infrastructure as Code
5 51 (12.94%) Migration
6 49 (12.44%) AI
6 49 (12.44%) Analytics
6 49 (12.44%) Containerisation
7 48 (12.18%) Disaster Recovery
7 48 (12.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 47 (11.93%) Observability
9 46 (11.68%) SIEM
9 46 (11.68%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 45 (11.42%) Continuous Improvement
10 45 (11.42%) High Availability
11 42 (10.66%) Technical Leadership
12 40 (10.15%) ITIL
12 40 (10.15%) Privileged Access Management
13 37 (9.39%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 182 (46.19%) Python
2 159 (40.36%) PowerShell
3 68 (17.26%) SQL
4 51 (12.94%) Bash
5 49 (12.44%) Java
6 33 (8.38%) Shell Script
7 28 (7.11%) JavaScript
8 24 (6.09%) C#
8 24 (6.09%) TypeScript
9 22 (5.58%) Go
10 21 (5.33%) Kusto Query Language
11 8 (2.03%) PL/SQL
11 8 (2.03%) T-SQL
12 5 (1.27%) VBA
13 4 (1.02%) Bicep
13 4 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 4 (1.02%) Perl
14 3 (0.76%) PHP
14 3 (0.76%) Ruby
15 2 (0.51%) Korn
Qualifications
1 138 (35.03%) Security Cleared
2 108 (27.41%) SC Cleared
3 31 (7.87%) Degree
4 25 (6.35%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (5.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 10 (2.54%) CISSP
8 8 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.03%) OCP
8 8 (2.03%) Oracle Certification
9 7 (1.78%) Azure Certification
10 6 (1.52%) AWS Certification
11 5 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
12 4 (1.02%) CISM
13 3 (0.76%) CFCE
13 3 (0.76%) GCFA
13 3 (0.76%) GCIA
13 3 (0.76%) GCIH
13 3 (0.76%) GIAC
13 3 (0.76%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (7.61%) GDPR
2 23 (5.84%) Data Quality
3 22 (5.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (4.31%) NIST
5 14 (3.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 10 (2.54%) QA
7 6 (1.52%) SLA
8 5 (1.27%) PCI DSS
9 4 (1.02%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.76%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.51%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.51%) GRC
12 1 (0.25%) COBIT
12 1 (0.25%) GMP
12 1 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.25%) PMO
System Software
1 101 (25.63%) Active Directory
2 43 (10.91%) Docker
3 24 (6.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (3.81%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.52%) vSphere
6 5 (1.27%) NFS
6 5 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.76%) Xen
8 2 (0.51%) KVM
8 2 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.25%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.25%) HDFS
9 1 (0.25%) RHEV
9 1 (0.25%) UAG
9 1 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.25%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.25%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 75 (19.04%) Kubernetes
2 74 (18.78%) Terraform
3 67 (17.01%) Ansible
4 33 (8.38%) Grafana
5 27 (6.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (6.85%) Prometheus
6 23 (5.84%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (3.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 13 (3.30%) Progress Chef
9 12 (3.05%) SCCM
10 7 (1.78%) Puppet
11 6 (1.52%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 5 (1.27%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.27%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.02%) Nessus
13 4 (1.02%) Podman
13 4 (1.02%) Proxmox
13 4 (1.02%) vCenter Server
14 3 (0.76%) Data Guard
14 3 (0.76%) SCOM
Vendors
1 108 (27.41%) Microsoft
2 40 (10.15%) CyberArk
3 35 (8.88%) BeyondTrust
4 34 (8.63%) Centrify
5 30 (7.61%) VMware
6 27 (6.85%) Google
7 26 (6.60%) Oracle
8 21 (5.33%) Red Hat
8 21 (5.33%) ServiceNow
9 20 (5.08%) Okta
10 18 (4.57%) Splunk
11 14 (3.55%) Databricks
12 13 (3.30%) OpenAI
13 10 (2.54%) Cisco
14 8 (2.03%) Automation Anywhere
14 8 (2.03%) UiPath
15 5 (1.27%) Citrix
15 5 (1.27%) Informatica
15 5 (1.27%) Palo Alto
15 5 (1.27%) SAP