Automation Engineer Contracts in England

Automation Engineer
UK > England

The median Automation Engineer daily rate in England is £544, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 386 473 541
Rank change year-on-year +87 +68 +107
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Engineer 99 69 112
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.41% 0.19% 0.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.44% 0.20% 0.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 74 46 77
10th Percentile £387 £325 £370
25th Percentile £428 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £544 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +8.75% -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £634 £584 £650
90th Percentile £750 £638 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £535
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 1
10th Percentile £35.58 - -
25th Percentile £36.46 £52.50 -
Median hourly rate £37.92 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.05% -21.43% -
75th Percentile £39.38 £57.50 -
90th Percentile £40.26 - -
UK median hourly rate £37.92 £55.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -31.05% -21.43% -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. 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 England with a recognized job title 22,549 34,488 47,741
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 92.73% 94.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,007 22,894 33,903
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £409 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £638 £643 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £763
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 900 2,432 1,409
10th Percentile £14.20 £13.00 £14.35
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £30.62 £36.31 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.67% -19.32% +100.00%
75th Percentile £63.75 £61.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £76.60
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings that featured Automation Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Automation Engineer in England

Automation Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Automation Engineer in England.

Daily rate trend for Automation Engineer in England

Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Automation Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Automation Engineer in England

Automation Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Automation Engineer in England.

Hourly rate trend for Automation Engineer in England

Automation Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Automation Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
London +44 52 £550 +10.00% 54
North of England +26 20 £525 +5.00% 45
South West +55 12 £615 +23.00% 20
Yorkshire +14 12 £463 -25.82% 22
North West +16 6 £625 +25.00% 20
Midlands +24 5 £400 -11.11% 33
East Midlands - 5 £400 - 20
South East +45 4 £425 -32.00% 40
East of England +31 2 £450 -5.26% 27
North East - 2 £395 - 7
Automation Engineer
UK

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Automation Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 56 (56.57%) Python
2 47 (47.47%) Ansible
3 37 (37.37%) CI/CD
4 28 (28.28%) Terraform
5 27 (27.27%) DevOps
5 27 (27.27%) Test Automation
6 25 (25.25%) Infrastructure Automation
7 24 (24.24%) Azure
8 23 (23.23%) AWS
8 23 (23.23%) Jenkins
8 23 (23.23%) Linux
8 23 (23.23%) Microsoft
8 23 (23.23%) Problem-Solving
9 22 (22.22%) PowerShell
10 21 (21.21%) Configuration Management
10 21 (21.21%) Social Skills
11 20 (20.20%) Agile
12 18 (18.18%) Java
12 18 (18.18%) Kubernetes
13 17 (17.17%) GitLab
13 17 (17.17%) Docker
13 17 (17.17%) Git
13 17 (17.17%) VMware
13 17 (17.17%) Firewall
14 15 (15.15%) Security Cleared
14 15 (15.15%) Containerisation
15 14 (14.14%) Bash
15 14 (14.14%) Windows
16 13 (13.13%) Puppet
16 13 (13.13%) Infrastructure Engineering

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 6 (6.06%) Confluence
2 4 (4.04%) Apache
2 4 (4.04%) nginx
2 4 (4.04%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.01%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.01%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.01%) CATIA
2 1 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.01%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.01%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 24 (24.24%) Azure
2 23 (23.23%) AWS
3 9 (9.09%) GCP
3 9 (9.09%) Power Automate
4 8 (8.08%) Power Platform
4 8 (8.08%) PowerApps
5 7 (7.07%) OpenShift
6 4 (4.04%) Cloud Computing
6 4 (4.04%) GitHub
6 4 (4.04%) Microsoft 365
6 4 (4.04%) Serverless
7 3 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (3.03%) BrowserStack
7 3 (3.03%) Dynamics 365
7 3 (3.03%) Entra ID
7 3 (3.03%) Sauce Labs
8 2 (2.02%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (2.02%) Azure Functions
8 2 (2.02%) Azure Logic Apps
9 1 (1.01%) AWS CodeBuild
Communications & Networking
1 17 (17.17%) Firewall
2 9 (9.09%) HTTP
3 7 (7.07%) DHCP
3 7 (7.07%) DNS
4 5 (5.05%) TCP/IP
5 4 (4.04%) Wireless
6 3 (3.03%) Cisco Wireless
6 3 (3.03%) LAN
6 3 (3.03%) SAN
6 3 (3.03%) WAN
6 3 (3.03%) WLAN
7 2 (2.02%) Network Security
8 1 (1.01%) NAS
8 1 (1.01%) SNMP
8 1 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.08%) Power BI
2 3 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.01%) DynamoDB
3 1 (1.01%) Flink
3 1 (1.01%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.01%) MySQL
3 1 (1.01%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.01%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 23 (23.23%) Jenkins
2 17 (17.17%) Git
2 17 (17.17%) GitLab
3 10 (10.10%) JIRA
4 9 (9.09%) Cucumber
4 9 (9.09%) Selenium
5 5 (5.05%) Bitbucket
5 5 (5.05%) TestNG
6 4 (4.04%) JUnit
6 4 (4.04%) Visual Studio
7 3 (3.03%) Appium
7 3 (3.03%) Cypress.io
7 3 (3.03%) Postman
7 3 (3.03%) REST Assured
8 2 (2.02%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (1.01%) SoapUI
9 1 (1.01%) SonarQube
9 1 (1.01%) Subversion
9 1 (1.01%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (1.01%) WebDriver
General
1 21 (21.21%) Social Skills
2 11 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (8.08%) Banking
3 8 (8.08%) Finance
4 4 (4.04%) Public Sector
5 3 (3.03%) Manufacturing
5 3 (3.03%) Retail
6 2 (2.02%) Financial Institution
6 2 (2.02%) Investment Banking
7 1 (1.01%) Aerospace
7 1 (1.01%) Aviation
7 1 (1.01%) Corporate Banking
7 1 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.01%) Front Office
7 1 (1.01%) Military
7 1 (1.01%) Retail Banking
7 1 (1.01%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (10.10%) REST
2 6 (6.06%) .NET
2 6 (6.06%) Elastic Stack
2 6 (6.06%) pytest
3 4 (4.04%) Gherkin
3 4 (4.04%) SOAP
4 3 (3.03%) Kafka
4 3 (3.03%) Playwright
5 2 (2.02%) .NET Framework
5 2 (2.02%) React
5 2 (2.02%) RESTful
6 1 (1.01%) AngularJS
6 1 (1.01%) ASP.NET
6 1 (1.01%) CSS
6 1 (1.01%) HTML
6 1 (1.01%) Jinja
6 1 (1.01%) JSON
6 1 (1.01%) Node.js
6 1 (1.01%) Pandas
6 1 (1.01%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (6.06%) Cloud Native
2 4 (4.04%) Data Centre
2 4 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
3 3 (3.03%) EMC VMAX
3 3 (3.03%) Enterprise Storage
3 3 (3.03%) Hedge funds
3 3 (3.03%) Mainframe
4 2 (2.02%) Algorithms
4 2 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (2.02%) Data Structures
4 2 (2.02%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (2.02%) Mobile App
4 2 (2.02%) Public Cloud
4 2 (2.02%) Virtual Team
5 1 (1.01%) Cyber Defence
5 1 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
5 1 (1.01%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.01%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.01%) SCADA
5 1 (1.01%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 23 (23.23%) Linux
2 14 (14.14%) Windows
3 9 (9.09%) Windows Server
4 8 (8.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (5.05%) Android
5 5 (5.05%) Unix
6 3 (3.03%) MVS
6 3 (3.03%) Rocky
7 1 (1.01%) CentOS
7 1 (1.01%) Ubuntu
7 1 (1.01%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (37.37%) CI/CD
2 27 (27.27%) DevOps
2 27 (27.27%) Test Automation
3 25 (25.25%) Infrastructure Automation
4 23 (23.23%) Problem-Solving
5 21 (21.21%) Configuration Management
6 20 (20.20%) Agile
7 15 (15.15%) Containerisation
8 13 (13.13%) Deployment Automation
8 13 (13.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 12 (12.12%) Security Operations
10 11 (11.11%) Service Management
10 11 (11.11%) Validation
11 10 (10.10%) SIEM
11 10 (10.10%) SOAR
11 10 (10.10%) Workflow
12 9 (9.09%) Hyperautomation
12 9 (9.09%) Incident Response
13 8 (8.08%) Infrastructure as Code
14 7 (7.07%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 56 (56.57%) Python
2 22 (22.22%) PowerShell
3 18 (18.18%) Java
4 14 (14.14%) Bash
5 8 (8.08%) JavaScript
6 6 (6.06%) Shell Script
7 5 (5.05%) C#
7 5 (5.05%) Groovy
7 5 (5.05%) SQL
7 5 (5.05%) TypeScript
8 4 (4.04%) Go
9 3 (3.03%) REXX
10 2 (2.02%) Kotlin
11 1 (1.01%) Assembly Language
11 1 (1.01%) Bicep
11 1 (1.01%) C
11 1 (1.01%) JCL
11 1 (1.01%) Perl
11 1 (1.01%) Tcl
11 1 (1.01%) VBA
Qualifications
1 15 (15.15%) Security Cleared
2 10 (10.10%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 4 (4.04%) CCNP
4 4 (4.04%) Cisco Certification
4 4 (4.04%) DV Cleared
4 4 (4.04%) OCA
4 4 (4.04%) Oracle Certification
5 3 (3.03%) Degree
5 3 (3.03%) RHCA
5 3 (3.03%) RHCE
6 2 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (1.01%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.01%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (1.01%) HNC
7 1 (1.01%) JNCIP
7 1 (1.01%) MCSA
7 1 (1.01%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (11.11%) QA
2 2 (2.02%) Accessibility
2 2 (2.02%) SOC 2
3 1 (1.01%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.01%) GDPR
3 1 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.01%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.01%) SLA
3 1 (1.01%) WCAG
System Software
1 17 (17.17%) Docker
2 11 (11.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (9.09%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (5.05%) Hyper-V
5 4 (4.04%) Active Directory
6 1 (1.01%) ACF2
6 1 (1.01%) RACF
6 1 (1.01%) Veritas Cluster Server
6 1 (1.01%) VMware NSX
6 1 (1.01%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 47 (47.47%) Ansible
2 28 (28.28%) Terraform
3 18 (18.18%) Kubernetes
4 13 (13.13%) Puppet
5 9 (9.09%) Progress Chef
6 4 (4.04%) vCenter Server
7 3 (3.03%) Consul
7 3 (3.03%) Podman
7 3 (3.03%) vRealize
8 2 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (2.02%) PowerCLI
9 1 (1.01%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 23 (23.23%) Microsoft
2 17 (17.17%) VMware
3 11 (11.11%) Cisco
3 11 (11.11%) Google
4 10 (10.10%) Palo Alto
5 8 (8.08%) Oracle
5 8 (8.08%) Red Hat
6 7 (7.07%) Splunk
7 6 (6.06%) Fortinet
8 5 (5.05%) AppDynamics
8 5 (5.05%) Infoblox
8 5 (5.05%) ServiceNow
9 4 (4.04%) Dynatrace
10 3 (3.03%) CheckPoint
10 3 (3.03%) EMC
10 3 (3.03%) F5
10 3 (3.03%) Salesforce
11 2 (2.02%) Brocade
11 2 (2.02%) HP
11 2 (2.02%) SAP