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 9 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 257 247 370
Rank change year-on-year -10 +123 +104
Contract jobs citing Task Automation 371 357 251
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 1.00% 0.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.15% 1.14% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 228 183
10th Percentile £308 £350 £363
25th Percentile £398 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £483 £519
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% -6.94% -11.77%
75th Percentile £575 £589 £619
90th Percentile £625 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £467 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -0.64% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile £29.69 - -
25th Percentile £46.00 - -
Median hourly rate £63.50 - -
75th Percentile £65.25 - -
90th Percentile £66.45 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 - -

All Process and 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 32,247 31,236 40,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 88.88% 87.47% 88.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,285 18,990 26,947
10th Percentile £300 £308 £310
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,090 1,084 1,559
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.19 £18.94
Median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £45.46 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%

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 9 December 2025.

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 9 December 2025.

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 9 December 2025. 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 -29 304 £485 +0.52% 191
UK excluding London -3 187 £467 -0.64% 168
London -36 138 £500 -9.09% 82
Work from Home +8 115 £447 -5.89% 124
North of England -24 56 £450 -2.17% 44
Midlands -12 42 £520 +7.44% 16
West Midlands -3 41 £535 +8.74% 11
South East -14 36 £445 -3.26% 56
Yorkshire -24 30 £465 +12.73% 20
North West -15 26 £439 -4.82% 22
Scotland +13 21 £362 -31.14% 21
South West -26 14 £525 +11.70% 16
East of England -9 12 £500 +17.65% 11
Wales +8 7 £263 -46.15% 3
Northern Ireland -6 1 £690 - 2
East Midlands -20 1 £450 +5.88% 5

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 24 (6.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 20 (5.39%) SharePoint
3 19 (5.12%) Confluence
4 9 (2.43%) Apache
5 8 (2.16%) IIS
6 5 (1.35%) iPlanet
6 5 (1.35%) JBoss
6 5 (1.35%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.35%) WebSphere Application Server
7 4 (1.08%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.54%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.54%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.27%) CICS
10 1 (0.27%) CMS
10 1 (0.27%) MQSeries
10 1 (0.27%) OpenEdge
10 1 (0.27%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.54%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.54%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 4 (1.08%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.54%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.27%) Eikon
3 1 (0.27%) Eze OMS
3 1 (0.27%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 138 (37.20%) Azure
2 102 (27.49%) AWS
3 60 (16.17%) GCP
4 43 (11.59%) GitHub
5 41 (11.05%) Microsoft 365
6 35 (9.43%) GitHub Actions
7 33 (8.89%) Entra ID
8 29 (7.82%) OpenShift
9 27 (7.28%) Serverless
10 26 (7.01%) Azure DevOps
11 21 (5.66%) Power Platform
12 19 (5.12%) AWS CloudFormation
13 15 (4.04%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (3.77%) Amazon S3
15 12 (3.23%) Amazon EC2
15 12 (3.23%) Azure AKS
16 11 (2.96%) Azure Logic Apps
16 11 (2.96%) Azure Sentinel
16 11 (2.96%) Microsoft Copilot
16 11 (2.96%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 40 (10.78%) Firewall
2 22 (5.93%) DNS
3 16 (4.31%) DHCP
4 15 (4.04%) TCP/IP
5 14 (3.77%) SSH
6 12 (3.23%) Network Security
7 9 (2.43%) VPN
8 7 (1.89%) WAN
9 6 (1.62%) Cisco IOS
10 5 (1.35%) BGP
10 5 (1.35%) Kerberos
10 5 (1.35%) LAN
10 5 (1.35%) NX-OS
10 5 (1.35%) OpenLDAP
10 5 (1.35%) WLAN
11 4 (1.08%) HTTP
12 3 (0.81%) AMQP
12 3 (0.81%) PSTN
12 3 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 2 (0.54%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (9.70%) SQL Server
2 26 (7.01%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (6.47%) Relational Database
4 19 (5.12%) Oracle Database
5 12 (3.23%) NoSQL
5 12 (3.23%) Power BI
6 11 (2.96%) MySQL
7 8 (2.16%) RDBMS
8 7 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
8 7 (1.89%) Big Data
8 7 (1.89%) BigQuery
8 7 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (1.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (1.35%) Tableau
10 4 (1.08%) DynamoDB
10 4 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (1.08%) Metadata
10 4 (1.08%) MongoDB
10 4 (1.08%) Redis
11 3 (0.81%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 67 (18.06%) Git
2 51 (13.75%) Jenkins
3 35 (9.43%) GitLab
4 28 (7.55%) JIRA
5 17 (4.58%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (3.23%) Bitbucket
7 9 (2.43%) Maven
8 8 (2.16%) JUnit
9 7 (1.89%) Artifactory
9 7 (1.89%) CircleCI
9 7 (1.89%) SonarQube
10 6 (1.62%) Postman
11 5 (1.35%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.35%) CA Release Automation
11 5 (1.35%) Gatling
11 5 (1.35%) JMeter
11 5 (1.35%) LoadRunner
11 5 (1.35%) Selenium
12 4 (1.08%) Cypress.io
12 4 (1.08%) Gradle
General
1 119 (32.08%) Social Skills
2 66 (17.79%) Finance
3 53 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 31 (8.36%) Banking
6 9 (2.43%) Investment Banking
6 9 (2.43%) Legal
7 8 (2.16%) Manufacturing
8 7 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.62%) Front Office
9 6 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.62%) Marketing
9 6 (1.62%) Retail
10 5 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.08%) Electronics
11 4 (1.08%) Games
11 4 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.54%) German Language
Job Titles
1 38 (10.24%) Developer
2 34 (9.16%) DevOps Engineer
3 32 (8.63%) Senior
4 25 (6.74%) Analyst
5 24 (6.47%) Administrator
6 23 (6.20%) Automation Engineer
7 19 (5.12%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 18 (4.85%) Platform Engineer
9 17 (4.58%) Support Engineer
10 15 (4.04%) Consultant
10 15 (4.04%) DBA
11 14 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 14 (3.77%) Java Developer
12 13 (3.50%) Data Engineer
13 12 (3.23%) Python Engineer
13 12 (3.23%) Site Engineer
14 11 (2.96%) Lead
14 11 (2.96%) Network Engineer
15 10 (2.70%) NetBackup Engineer
16 9 (2.43%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (9.16%) REST
2 20 (5.39%) Elastic Stack
3 18 (4.85%) Node.js
4 15 (4.04%) .NET
5 13 (3.50%) FastAPI
6 12 (3.23%) Kafka
7 11 (2.96%) LDAP
8 10 (2.70%) OAuth
9 9 (2.43%) GraphQL
9 9 (2.43%) Microsoft Graph
9 9 (2.43%) YAML
10 7 (1.89%) boto
10 7 (1.89%) SOAP
10 7 (1.89%) Web Services
11 6 (1.62%) AngularJS
11 6 (1.62%) JSON
11 6 (1.62%) OpenID
11 6 (1.62%) React
11 6 (1.62%) SAML
12 5 (1.35%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 23 (6.20%) Onboarding
2 16 (4.31%) Cloud Native
2 16 (4.31%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (3.23%) Security Posture
4 10 (2.70%) Private Cloud
5 9 (2.43%) Clustering
5 9 (2.43%) Cyber Threat
6 8 (2.16%) AI Agents
6 8 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.16%) Linux Command Line
7 7 (1.89%) Data Centre
7 7 (1.89%) Management Information System
7 7 (1.89%) Replication
8 6 (1.62%) PKI
8 6 (1.62%) Public Cloud
8 6 (1.62%) Security Operations Centre
9 5 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.08%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 103 (27.76%) Linux
2 67 (18.06%) Windows
3 27 (7.28%) Unix
4 22 (5.93%) Windows Server
5 10 (2.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (2.16%) CentOS
6 8 (2.16%) VMS
7 5 (1.35%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.08%) AIX
8 4 (1.08%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.27%) Android
9 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.27%) Debian
9 1 (0.27%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (34.77%) CI/CD
2 128 (34.50%) Problem-Solving
3 115 (31.00%) DevOps
4 73 (19.68%) Agile
5 70 (18.87%) Infrastructure as Code
6 62 (16.71%) Containerisation
7 44 (11.86%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 41 (11.05%) Migration
9 38 (10.24%) Disaster Recovery
9 38 (10.24%) Incident Response
10 37 (9.97%) Continuous Improvement
11 35 (9.43%) AI
12 34 (9.16%) High Availability
13 33 (8.89%) Identity Access Management
14 32 (8.63%) Configuration Management
14 32 (8.63%) Observability
14 32 (8.63%) Root Cause Analysis
15 31 (8.36%) ITIL
15 31 (8.36%) Workflow
16 28 (7.55%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 197 (53.10%) Python
2 122 (32.88%) PowerShell
3 76 (20.49%) Bash
4 67 (18.06%) SQL
5 49 (13.21%) Java
6 36 (9.70%) Shell Script
7 33 (8.89%) Go
8 19 (5.12%) JavaScript
9 17 (4.58%) TypeScript
10 14 (3.77%) C#
11 13 (3.50%) Kusto Query Language
12 12 (3.23%) Bicep
13 11 (2.96%) Perl
13 11 (2.96%) VBA
14 8 (2.16%) Groovy
15 6 (1.62%) PL/SQL
15 6 (1.62%) T-SQL
16 4 (1.08%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 2 (0.54%) Ruby
17 2 (0.54%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 87 (23.45%) Security Cleared
2 62 (16.71%) SC Cleared
3 34 (9.16%) Degree
4 22 (5.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.04%) DV Cleared
6 14 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (3.23%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (2.96%) Azure Certification
9 10 (2.70%) CISSP
10 8 (2.16%) AWS Certification
10 8 (2.16%) Master's Degree
11 6 (1.62%) CFCE
11 6 (1.62%) GCFA
11 6 (1.62%) GCIA
11 6 (1.62%) GCIH
11 6 (1.62%) GIAC
12 4 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
12 4 (1.08%) OCP
12 4 (1.08%) Oracle Certification
13 3 (0.81%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (7.01%) GDPR
2 20 (5.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (4.58%) NIST
4 14 (3.77%) QA
5 12 (3.23%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.62%) HIPAA
7 5 (1.35%) PCI DSS
8 4 (1.08%) SLA
9 2 (0.54%) EU AI Act
9 2 (0.54%) PMO
10 1 (0.27%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.27%) COBIT
10 1 (0.27%) GRC
10 1 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 62 (16.71%) Docker
2 49 (13.21%) Active Directory
3 29 (7.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (3.50%) Oracle RAC
5 9 (2.43%) Firmware
6 6 (1.62%) Hyper-V
7 5 (1.35%) Tivoli Directory Server
8 3 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.54%) KVM
9 2 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.54%) Xen
10 1 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.27%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.27%) vSphere
10 1 (0.27%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 87 (23.45%) Terraform
2 77 (20.75%) Kubernetes
3 66 (17.79%) Ansible
4 41 (11.05%) Grafana
5 35 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 19 (5.12%) Progress Chef
7 18 (4.85%) SCCM
8 14 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 13 (3.50%) Oracle RMAN
9 13 (3.50%) Puppet
10 11 (2.96%) Data Guard
11 10 (2.70%) NetBackup
12 9 (2.43%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (2.43%) yum
13 7 (1.89%) Podman
14 6 (1.62%) CA Single Sign-On
14 6 (1.62%) Kibana
15 5 (1.35%) CA Wily
15 5 (1.35%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
15 5 (1.35%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 115 (31.00%) Microsoft
2 44 (11.86%) Oracle
3 34 (9.16%) Google
3 34 (9.16%) Splunk
4 31 (8.36%) VMware
5 21 (5.66%) CyberArk
6 16 (4.31%) Atlassian
7 13 (3.50%) ServiceNow
8 12 (3.23%) Cisco
8 12 (3.23%) SAP
9 11 (2.96%) Palo Alto
10 10 (2.70%) Red Hat
10 10 (2.70%) Veritas
11 8 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
11 8 (2.16%) Databricks
12 7 (1.89%) IBM
13 6 (1.62%) ArcSight
13 6 (1.62%) LogRhythm
14 5 (1.35%) AppDynamics
14 5 (1.35%) F5