Automation Engineer Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Automation Engineer
Central London > City of London

The median Automation Engineer daily rate in the City of London is £613, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 June 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

 6 months to
3 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 117 123
Rank change year-on-year -11 +6 +39
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Engineer 8 5 4
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.34% 0.30% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.32% 0.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 5 2
10th Percentile £601 - £320
25th Percentile £603 £506 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £613 £513 £400
Median % change year-on-year +19.51% +28.13% -27.27%
75th Percentile £628 £600 £450
90th Percentile £634 £638 £480
Central London median daily rate £613 £513 £500
% change year-on-year +19.51% +2.50% -9.09%

All Contract IT Job Roles
City of London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the City of London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the City of London with a recognized job title 2,209 1,574 2,055
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.48% 93.58% 95.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,484 991 1,432
10th Percentile £355 £355 £344
25th Percentile £450 £455 £449
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £555 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.90% +0.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 15 14
10th Percentile £17.42 £18.70 £14.90
25th Percentile £18.75 £24.21 £20.22
Median hourly rate £26.64 £28.50 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% +25.27% -35.00%
75th Percentile £52.41 £46.25 £37.34
90th Percentile £65.00 £85.50 £47.18
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £28.15 £27.41
% change year-on-year -7.25% +2.72% -21.70%

Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Automation Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Automation Engineer job vacancy trend in the City of London

Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Automation Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Automation Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Automation Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Automation Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Automation Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London

For the 6 months to 3 June 2026, Automation Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the City of London region featuring Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 7 (87.50%) CI/CD
2 6 (75.00%) Test Automation
3 5 (62.50%) Agile
3 5 (62.50%) API Testing
3 5 (62.50%) AWS
3 5 (62.50%) BDD
3 5 (62.50%) Docker
3 5 (62.50%) Gherkin
3 5 (62.50%) GitHub
3 5 (62.50%) GitLab
3 5 (62.50%) Jenkins
3 5 (62.50%) JIRA
3 5 (62.50%) Kubernetes
4 4 (50.00%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (50.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 4 (50.00%) Amazon EC2
4 4 (50.00%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (50.00%) Amazon S3
4 4 (50.00%) AWS Lambda
4 4 (50.00%) C#
4 4 (50.00%) Cucumber
4 4 (50.00%) DynamoDB
4 4 (50.00%) Git
4 4 (50.00%) Issue Tracking
4 4 (50.00%) Java
4 4 (50.00%) JUnit
4 4 (50.00%) Kafka
4 4 (50.00%) Mockito
4 4 (50.00%) OOP
4 4 (50.00%) Postman

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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 1 (12.50%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 5 (62.50%) AWS
1 5 (62.50%) GitHub
2 4 (50.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 4 (50.00%) Amazon EC2
2 4 (50.00%) Amazon S3
2 4 (50.00%) AWS Lambda
2 4 (50.00%) Serverless
3 1 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (50.00%) Amazon Athena
1 4 (50.00%) Amazon RDS
1 4 (50.00%) DynamoDB
2 1 (12.50%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (62.50%) GitLab
1 5 (62.50%) Jenkins
1 5 (62.50%) JIRA
2 4 (50.00%) Cucumber
2 4 (50.00%) Git
2 4 (50.00%) JUnit
2 4 (50.00%) Mockito
2 4 (50.00%) Postman
3 1 (12.50%) Gatling
3 1 (12.50%) JMeter
3 1 (12.50%) REST Assured
3 1 (12.50%) Zephyr
General
1 7 (87.50%) Finance
2 6 (75.00%) Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (62.50%) Gherkin
2 4 (50.00%) Kafka
2 4 (50.00%) SOAP
2 4 (50.00%) Spring
2 4 (50.00%) Spring Boot
2 4 (50.00%) WireMock
2 4 (50.00%) YAML
3 1 (12.50%) Playwright
3 1 (12.50%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 1 (12.50%) AI Agents
1 1 (12.50%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (25.00%) Linux
2 1 (12.50%) Unix
2 1 (12.50%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (87.50%) CI/CD
2 6 (75.00%) Test Automation
3 5 (62.50%) Agile
3 5 (62.50%) API Testing
3 5 (62.50%) BDD
4 4 (50.00%) Issue Tracking
4 4 (50.00%) OOP
4 4 (50.00%) Webhook
5 2 (25.00%) QA Automation
6 1 (12.50%) Acceptance Criteria
6 1 (12.50%) Case Management
6 1 (12.50%) Defect Management
6 1 (12.50%) Deployment Automation
6 1 (12.50%) DevOps
6 1 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1 (12.50%) Non-Functional Testing
6 1 (12.50%) Process Improvement
6 1 (12.50%) Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (12.50%) SDLC
6 1 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 4 (50.00%) C#
1 4 (50.00%) Java
2 1 (12.50%) Python
2 1 (12.50%) SQL
Qualifications
1 1 (12.50%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (25.00%) QA
2 1 (12.50%) Accessibility
2 1 (12.50%) WCAG
System Software
1 5 (62.50%) Docker
Systems Management
1 5 (62.50%) Kubernetes
2 2 (25.00%) Terraform
3 1 (12.50%) Ansible
Vendors
1 1 (12.50%) Broadcom
1 1 (12.50%) VMware
Automation Engineer jobs