This is less about affiliate marketing and more about running automation. But you guys are geniuses at automation so I thought I would ask here.
When I get an SEO client, one of the things I do is take data from 3 programs that are downloaded on my computer, plus keyword research from AHREFs and put that info in different sheets of an excel document.
My question - Can that be automated? Like I enter the domain name and the keywords and the downloaded software runs and populates the proper sheets and AHREFs runs and populates the proper sheets? That would save a ton of time.
If it is possible, how do I word it to create a task on Upwork to attract the right programmers?
It can be automated for sure
First thing I would do is to check if all programs you're using offers API connection.
Here you can see what API functionalities AHREFs is offering.
I hope this will help you a bit with your further research. 
Thanks. But, APIs are not available. Even for AHREF, they do not have keyword APIs https://help.ahrefs.com/api/does-the...d-related-data