UiPath has recently released its State of the Automation Professional 2024 report, a comprehensive survey of automation professionals to understand how organizations are staffing for, and supporting this industry, as well as what automation professionals think about their jobs and what the future holds. Here we try to list the most interesting facts from the report:
- The industry continues to grow, but the rate of growth is slowing. 61% of the respondents report their company has increased the number of people working in software automation in the past 12 months, a bit lower than it was last year (68%).
- AI is becoming more entrenched in automation processes. 40% of automation professionals are currently using AI tools and 50% plan to. Automation developers are using AI in many ways, most commonly for writing code, creating documentation, and testing.
- ChatGPT is the most used AI product (70%) to support automation projects.
- 71% of developers consider themselves experts in software automation development. Well-versed in other programming languages, developers most commonly know SQL, Python, and .NET.
- Finance and banking continue to be the most common industries for which developers are building automations.
- 98% of automation professionals have educated themselves in the past year. Video tutorials and documentation continue to top the list, while self-paced online courses are being used less often. 33% report using AI engines and 20% report using social media video reels (both new options for 2024).
- 34% of students have taken an online course in the past year, up from 24% last year. The most common sources continue to be the UiPath Academy and YouTube.
