Automation Engineer Contracts in the South East

Automation Engineer
England > South East

The median Automation Engineer daily rate in the South East is £350, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 July 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
2 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 150 199 210
Rank change year-on-year +49 +11 +54
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Engineer 4 8 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South East 0.13% 0.14% 0.087%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.14% 0.15% 0.091%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 8 5
10th Percentile - £393 £378
25th Percentile £325 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £350 £543 £425
Median % change year-on-year -35.48% +27.65% -5.56%
75th Percentile £375 £678 £438
90th Percentile - £733 £648
England median daily rate £516 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +3.20% -9.09% +8.91%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. 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 South East with a recognized job title 2,882 5,259 5,486
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.71% 92.43% 94.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,868 3,097 3,785
10th Percentile £218 £250 £225
25th Percentile £375 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £604
90th Percentile £660 £688 £700
England median daily rate £513 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 217 537 244
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.88 £16.00
25th Percentile £15.50 £18.35 £21.18
Median hourly rate £28.50 £48.40 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.12% -3.20% +138.10%
75th Percentile £62.24 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £28.34 £40.00 £43.93
% change year-on-year -29.15% -8.95% +75.72%

Automation Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Job vacancy trend for Automation Engineer in the South East

Automation Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Automation Engineer in the South East.

Daily rate trend for Automation Engineer in the South East

Automation Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Automation Engineer in the South East.

Hourly rate trend for Automation Engineer in the South East

Automation Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 2 July 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
Thames Valley +28 2 £350 -36.36% 44
Berkshire +20 2 £350 -36.36% 19
Surrey +23 1 - - 14
Middlesex - 1 - -
Automation Engineer
England

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 2 July 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 South East region featuring Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 3 (75.00%) CI/CD
2 2 (50.00%) Ansible
2 2 (50.00%) GitHub Actions
2 2 (50.00%) DevOps
2 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure Automation
2 2 (50.00%) Agile
2 2 (50.00%) Azure
2 2 (50.00%) GitHub
2 2 (50.00%) Jenkins
2 2 (50.00%) Kubernetes
3 1 (25.00%) Software Delivery
3 1 (25.00%) Terraform
3 1 (25.00%) Cloud Native
3 1 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (25.00%) Sprint Planning
3 1 (25.00%) DevSecOps
3 1 (25.00%) Cybersecurity
3 1 (25.00%) Performance Tuning
3 1 (25.00%) AWS
3 1 (25.00%) Cucumber
3 1 (25.00%) BDD
3 1 (25.00%) REST
3 1 (25.00%) Test Strategy
3 1 (25.00%) Pair Programming
3 1 (25.00%) Software Engineering
3 1 (25.00%) JNCIP
3 1 (25.00%) Fortinet
3 1 (25.00%) JSON
3 1 (25.00%) QA

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South East 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (50.00%) Azure
1 2 (50.00%) GitHub
1 2 (50.00%) GitHub Actions
2 1 (25.00%) AWS
2 1 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
2 1 (25.00%) GCP
2 1 (25.00%) Power Automate
Development Applications
1 2 (50.00%) Jenkins
2 1 (25.00%) Cucumber
2 1 (25.00%) Cypress.io
2 1 (25.00%) GitLab
General
1 1 (25.00%) Finance
1 1 (25.00%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (25.00%) Jinja
1 1 (25.00%) JSON
1 1 (25.00%) NETCONF
1 1 (25.00%) Playwright
1 1 (25.00%) REST
1 1 (25.00%) RESTCONF
Miscellaneous
1 1 (25.00%) Cloud Native
1 1 (25.00%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (75.00%) CI/CD
2 2 (50.00%) Agile
2 2 (50.00%) DevOps
2 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure Automation
3 1 (25.00%) BDD
3 1 (25.00%) Configuration Management
3 1 (25.00%) Cybersecurity
3 1 (25.00%) Data Protection
3 1 (25.00%) DevSecOps
3 1 (25.00%) End-to-End Testing
3 1 (25.00%) Observability
3 1 (25.00%) Pair Programming
3 1 (25.00%) Performance Tuning
3 1 (25.00%) Software Delivery
3 1 (25.00%) Software Engineering
3 1 (25.00%) Sprint Planning
3 1 (25.00%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 1 (25.00%) Java
1 1 (25.00%) JavaScript
1 1 (25.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (25.00%) CCNP
1 1 (25.00%) Cisco Certification
1 1 (25.00%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (25.00%) QA
System Software
1 1 (25.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (50.00%) Ansible
1 2 (50.00%) Kubernetes
2 1 (25.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (25.00%) Cisco
1 1 (25.00%) Fortinet
1 1 (25.00%) Microsoft