Automation Engineer Contracts in England

Automation Engineer
UK > England

The median Automation Engineer daily rate in England is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 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
23 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 380 456 554
Rank change year-on-year +76 +98 +114
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Engineer 100 82 96
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.42% 0.23% 0.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.45% 0.24% 0.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 76 56 66
10th Percentile £385 £325 £343
25th Percentile £422 £450 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% +4.78%
75th Percentile £623 £550 £619
90th Percentile £738 £631 £694
UK median daily rate £521 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.10% -4.76% +2.34%
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 22,000 33,716 45,324
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.29% 92.79% 94.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,637 22,379 32,182
10th Percentile £290 £283 £313
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £638 £640 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £763
UK median daily rate £508 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.33% -2.82% +2.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 882 2,449 1,335
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.86 £14.51
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £29.07 £37.18 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.81% -17.38% +95.65%
75th Percentile £61.09 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.90 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £27.94 £36.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.45% -18.89% +88.21%

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 23 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 23 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 +53 51 £550 +8.64% 96
North of England +16 19 £482 -3.70% 98
Yorkshire +17 13 £463 -25.56% 39
South West +46 12 £615 +27.79% 59
Midlands +22 7 £400 -11.11% 91
East Midlands - 5 £400 - 36
North West +5 4 £710 +42.00% 48
South East +50 3 £388 -39.22% 117
East of England - 3 £550 - 68
West Midlands +12 2 £413 -8.33% 51
North East - 2 £395 - 14
Automation Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 23 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 55 (55.00%) Python
2 49 (49.00%) Ansible
3 36 (36.00%) CI/CD
4 27 (27.00%) Test Automation
4 27 (27.00%) AWS
5 26 (26.00%) DevOps
6 25 (25.00%) Social Skills
7 24 (24.00%) Terraform
7 24 (24.00%) Azure
8 23 (23.00%) Jenkins
8 23 (23.00%) Linux
8 23 (23.00%) Agile
9 22 (22.00%) Microsoft
9 22 (22.00%) Problem-Solving
10 21 (21.00%) Infrastructure Automation
10 21 (21.00%) PowerShell
11 20 (20.00%) Java
11 20 (20.00%) Configuration Management
12 18 (18.00%) Firewall
13 17 (17.00%) Kubernetes
14 16 (16.00%) Containerisation
14 16 (16.00%) VMware
14 16 (16.00%) Security Cleared
14 16 (16.00%) Docker
15 15 (15.00%) Git
15 15 (15.00%) GitLab
16 14 (14.00%) Deployment Automation
16 14 (14.00%) Bash
17 13 (13.00%) Puppet
17 13 (13.00%) Finance

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 7 (7.00%) Confluence
2 2 (2.00%) Apache
2 2 (2.00%) nginx
2 2 (2.00%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.00%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 2 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.00%) CATIA
2 1 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (1.00%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (2.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.00%) Oracle Payables
2 1 (1.00%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 27 (27.00%) AWS
2 24 (24.00%) Azure
3 9 (9.00%) GCP
4 7 (7.00%) Power Automate
5 6 (6.00%) GitHub
5 6 (6.00%) Power Platform
5 6 (6.00%) PowerApps
6 5 (5.00%) OpenShift
7 4 (4.00%) Serverless
8 3 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (3.00%) Azure Logic Apps
8 3 (3.00%) Dynamics 365
8 3 (3.00%) Entra ID
8 3 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (2.00%) AWS Lambda
9 2 (2.00%) Azure Functions
9 2 (2.00%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (2.00%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (1.00%) Amazon SageMaker
10 1 (1.00%) AWS CodePipeline
Communications & Networking
1 18 (18.00%) Firewall
2 7 (7.00%) DHCP
2 7 (7.00%) DNS
2 7 (7.00%) HTTP
3 5 (5.00%) TCP/IP
4 4 (4.00%) Wireless
5 3 (3.00%) Cisco Wireless
5 3 (3.00%) LAN
5 3 (3.00%) SAN
5 3 (3.00%) WAN
5 3 (3.00%) WLAN
6 2 (2.00%) Network Security
7 1 (1.00%) BGP
7 1 (1.00%) Multicast
7 1 (1.00%) NAS
7 1 (1.00%) OSPF
7 1 (1.00%) SNMP
7 1 (1.00%) Unicast
7 1 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (6.00%) Power BI
2 3 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.00%) DynamoDB
3 1 (1.00%) Flink
3 1 (1.00%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.00%) MySQL
3 1 (1.00%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 23 (23.00%) Jenkins
2 15 (15.00%) Git
2 15 (15.00%) GitLab
3 11 (11.00%) JIRA
4 10 (10.00%) Cucumber
5 9 (9.00%) Selenium
6 6 (6.00%) Bitbucket
7 5 (5.00%) REST Assured
8 4 (4.00%) Cypress.io
8 4 (4.00%) Postman
8 4 (4.00%) Visual Studio
9 3 (3.00%) TestNG
10 2 (2.00%) JUnit
10 2 (2.00%) Octopus Deploy
10 2 (2.00%) SoapUI
11 1 (1.00%) Appium
11 1 (1.00%) Eclipse
11 1 (1.00%) Subversion
11 1 (1.00%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (1.00%) WebDriver
General
1 25 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 13 (13.00%) Finance
3 11 (11.00%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (9.00%) Banking
5 5 (5.00%) Public Sector
6 3 (3.00%) Investment Banking
6 3 (3.00%) Manufacturing
6 3 (3.00%) Retail
7 2 (2.00%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.00%) Aerospace
8 1 (1.00%) Aviation
8 1 (1.00%) Corporate Banking
8 1 (1.00%) Front Office
8 1 (1.00%) Military
8 1 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.00%) Retail Banking
8 1 (1.00%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (11.00%) REST
2 6 (6.00%) .NET
3 5 (5.00%) Gherkin
4 4 (4.00%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (4.00%) Playwright
4 4 (4.00%) pytest
4 4 (4.00%) SOAP
5 2 (2.00%) .NET Framework
5 2 (2.00%) React
5 2 (2.00%) RESTful
6 1 (1.00%) AngularJS
6 1 (1.00%) ASP.NET
6 1 (1.00%) CSS
6 1 (1.00%) HTML
6 1 (1.00%) JSON
6 1 (1.00%) Kafka
6 1 (1.00%) Middleware
6 1 (1.00%) Node.js
6 1 (1.00%) Pandas
6 1 (1.00%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 5 (5.00%) Hedge funds
2 4 (4.00%) Data Centre
3 3 (3.00%) Cloud Native
3 3 (3.00%) EMC VMAX
3 3 (3.00%) Enterprise Storage
3 3 (3.00%) Mainframe
4 2 (2.00%) Algorithms
4 2 (2.00%) Cyber Defence
4 2 (2.00%) Cyber Threat
4 2 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (2.00%) Data Structures
4 2 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (2.00%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (2.00%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.00%) Derivative
5 1 (1.00%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.00%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.00%) SCADA
5 1 (1.00%) Security Posture
5 1 (1.00%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 23 (23.00%) Linux
2 13 (13.00%) Windows
3 9 (9.00%) Windows Server
4 8 (8.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (4.00%) Unix
6 3 (3.00%) Android
6 3 (3.00%) MVS
6 3 (3.00%) Rocky
7 1 (1.00%) CentOS
7 1 (1.00%) Ubuntu
7 1 (1.00%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (36.00%) CI/CD
2 27 (27.00%) Test Automation
3 26 (26.00%) DevOps
4 23 (23.00%) Agile
5 22 (22.00%) Problem-Solving
6 21 (21.00%) Infrastructure Automation
7 20 (20.00%) Configuration Management
8 16 (16.00%) Containerisation
9 14 (14.00%) Deployment Automation
10 12 (12.00%) Security Operations
11 11 (11.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 11 (11.00%) Service Management
11 11 (11.00%) Validation
12 10 (10.00%) SIEM
12 10 (10.00%) SOAR
13 9 (9.00%) Incident Response
13 9 (9.00%) Workflow
14 8 (8.00%) Hyperautomation
15 7 (7.00%) Infrastructure as Code
15 7 (7.00%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 55 (55.00%) Python
2 21 (21.00%) PowerShell
3 20 (20.00%) Java
4 14 (14.00%) Bash
5 8 (8.00%) JavaScript
6 7 (7.00%) Shell Script
7 6 (6.00%) TypeScript
8 5 (5.00%) C#
9 4 (4.00%) Go
9 4 (4.00%) SQL
10 3 (3.00%) Groovy
10 3 (3.00%) REXX
11 2 (2.00%) Kotlin
12 1 (1.00%) Assembly Language
12 1 (1.00%) C
12 1 (1.00%) JCL
12 1 (1.00%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (1.00%) Perl
12 1 (1.00%) Tcl
12 1 (1.00%) VBA
Qualifications
1 16 (16.00%) Security Cleared
2 10 (10.00%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.00%) Cisco Certification
3 5 (5.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 4 (4.00%) CCNP
4 4 (4.00%) DV Cleared
4 4 (4.00%) OCA
4 4 (4.00%) Oracle Certification
5 3 (3.00%) RHCA
5 3 (3.00%) RHCE
6 2 (2.00%) AWS Certification
6 2 (2.00%) Degree
6 2 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (1.00%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (1.00%) CCIE
7 1 (1.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (1.00%) HNC
7 1 (1.00%) JNCIP
7 1 (1.00%) MCSA
7 1 (1.00%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (11.00%) QA
2 3 (3.00%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.00%) SOC 2
4 1 (1.00%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.00%) GDPR
4 1 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.00%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (1.00%) SLA
4 1 (1.00%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (16.00%) Docker
2 11 (11.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (8.00%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (5.00%) Hyper-V
5 4 (4.00%) Active Directory
6 1 (1.00%) ACF2
6 1 (1.00%) RACF
6 1 (1.00%) Veritas Cluster Server
6 1 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 1 (1.00%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 49 (49.00%) Ansible
2 24 (24.00%) Terraform
3 17 (17.00%) Kubernetes
4 13 (13.00%) Puppet
5 7 (7.00%) Progress Chef
6 4 (4.00%) vCenter Server
7 3 (3.00%) Consul
7 3 (3.00%) Podman
7 3 (3.00%) vRealize
8 2 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (2.00%) PowerCLI
9 1 (1.00%) HP Quality Center
9 1 (1.00%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 22 (22.00%) Microsoft
2 16 (16.00%) VMware
3 11 (11.00%) Cisco
4 10 (10.00%) Google
5 9 (9.00%) Palo Alto
6 8 (8.00%) Oracle
6 8 (8.00%) Red Hat
7 6 (6.00%) Fortinet
8 5 (5.00%) Infoblox
8 5 (5.00%) ServiceNow
8 5 (5.00%) Splunk
9 4 (4.00%) Arista
10 3 (3.00%) AppDynamics
10 3 (3.00%) CheckPoint
10 3 (3.00%) EMC
10 3 (3.00%) F5
11 2 (2.00%) HP
11 2 (2.00%) IBM
11 2 (2.00%) Salesforce
11 2 (2.00%) SAP