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 £553, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 109 130
Rank change year-on-year -11 +21 +35
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Engineer 7 11 5
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.37% 0.59% 0.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.40% 0.63% 0.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 9 3
10th Percentile £437 - £355
25th Percentile £455 £506 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £553 £538 £600
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -10.42% -
75th Percentile £641 £600 £638
90th Percentile £646 £650 £645
Central London median daily rate £480 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -10.70% -2.27% -15.38%

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 1,770 1,743 2,311
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 94.15% 93.01% 94.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,220 1,059 1,662
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £431 £463 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £563
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% +2.22% -4.26%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
Central London median daily rate £540 £575 £551
% change year-on-year -6.09% +4.45% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 8 22
10th Percentile £19.98 £13.18 £17.00
25th Percentile £24.37 £20.00 £19.18
Median hourly rate £37.25 £27.25 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.70% +13.54% -5.88%
75th Percentile £43.86 £58.19 £40.00
90th Percentile £52.96 £112.00 £50.10
Central London median hourly rate £26.11 £35.00 £26.91
% change year-on-year -25.40% +30.09% +6.55%

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
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Automation Engineer in the City of London over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Automation Engineer 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 31 January 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 4 (57.14%) AWS
1 4 (57.14%) CI/CD
2 3 (42.86%) Agile
2 3 (42.86%) BDD
2 3 (42.86%) Cucumber
2 3 (42.86%) Docker
2 3 (42.86%) Java
2 3 (42.86%) Kubernetes
2 3 (42.86%) Manual Testing
2 3 (42.86%) QA
2 3 (42.86%) SOAP
2 3 (42.86%) Test Automation
3 2 (28.57%) Containerisation
3 2 (28.57%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (28.57%) Performance Testing
3 2 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
3 2 (28.57%) Python
3 2 (28.57%) REST
3 2 (28.57%) REST Assured
3 2 (28.57%) Scenario Testing
3 2 (28.57%) SoapUI
3 2 (28.57%) Software Delivery
3 2 (28.57%) Test Strategy
4 1 (14.29%) AI
4 1 (14.29%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (14.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (14.29%) Amazon EC2
4 1 (14.29%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (14.29%) Amazon S3
4 1 (14.29%) Ansible

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 (14.29%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (14.29%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 4 (57.14%) AWS
2 1 (14.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 1 (14.29%) Amazon EC2
2 1 (14.29%) Amazon S3
2 1 (14.29%) AWS Lambda
2 1 (14.29%) GitHub
2 1 (14.29%) Power Automate
2 1 (14.29%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (14.29%) Amazon Athena
1 1 (14.29%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (14.29%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 3 (42.86%) Cucumber
2 2 (28.57%) REST Assured
2 2 (28.57%) SoapUI
3 1 (14.29%) Git
3 1 (14.29%) GitLab
3 1 (14.29%) Jenkins
3 1 (14.29%) JIRA
3 1 (14.29%) JUnit
3 1 (14.29%) Mockito
3 1 (14.29%) Postman
3 1 (14.29%) SpecFlow
General
1 4 (57.14%) Finance
2 3 (42.86%) Banking
3 2 (28.57%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (42.86%) SOAP
2 2 (28.57%) REST
3 1 (14.29%) Gherkin
3 1 (14.29%) ISPF
3 1 (14.29%) Kafka
3 1 (14.29%) Playwright
3 1 (14.29%) Spring
3 1 (14.29%) Spring Boot
3 1 (14.29%) WireMock
3 1 (14.29%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 1 (14.29%) AI Agents
1 1 (14.29%) Mainframe
1 1 (14.29%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 1 (14.29%) Linux
1 1 (14.29%) Windows
1 1 (14.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (57.14%) CI/CD
2 3 (42.86%) Agile
2 3 (42.86%) BDD
2 3 (42.86%) Manual Testing
2 3 (42.86%) Test Automation
3 2 (28.57%) Containerisation
3 2 (28.57%) Continuous Improvement
3 2 (28.57%) Performance Testing
3 2 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
3 2 (28.57%) Scenario Testing
3 2 (28.57%) Software Delivery
3 2 (28.57%) Test Strategy
4 1 (14.29%) API Testing
4 1 (14.29%) Automated Trading
4 1 (14.29%) Deployment Automation
4 1 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1 (14.29%) Issue Tracking
4 1 (14.29%) Runbook
4 1 (14.29%) Task Automation
4 1 (14.29%) Webhook
Programming Languages
1 3 (42.86%) Java
2 2 (28.57%) Python
3 1 (14.29%) C#
3 1 (14.29%) JCL
3 1 (14.29%) REXX
3 1 (14.29%) SQL
3 1 (14.29%) VBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (42.86%) QA
System Software
1 3 (42.86%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (42.86%) Kubernetes
2 1 (14.29%) Ansible
2 1 (14.29%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (14.29%) Splunk