Automation Engineer Contracts with Hybrid/Remote/WFH Options

Automation Engineer
UK > Work from Home

The median Automation Engineer daily rate for remote or hybrid work is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 April 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
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 256 315 395
Rank change year-on-year +59 +80 +120
Contract jobs requiring an Automation Engineer 46 37 75
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 0.46% 0.24% 0.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.50% 0.26% 0.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 21 55
10th Percentile £373 - £378
25th Percentile £414 £450 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% -6.82% +1.85%
75th Percentile £726 £622 £650
90th Percentile £775 £663 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £535
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.54% +1.90%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
Work from Home

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies with WFH or hybrid options. 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 Work from Home with a recognized job title 9,291 14,382 24,650
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.73% 93.53% 95.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,357 9,618 17,416
10th Percentile £337 £325 £360
25th Percentile £413 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.73% +2.81%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £650
90th Percentile £763 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 229 573 564
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.30 £18.50
25th Percentile £18.22 £23.25 £26.19
Median hourly rate £39.00 £43.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.30% -21.82% +57.14%
75th Percentile £67.50 £62.50 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.25 £80.25
UK median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -19.25% -20.00% +91.86%

Automation Engineer
Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

Job vacancies with remote working options which featured Automation Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Automation Engineer trend for jobs with Hybrid/Remote/WFH options

Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in job vacancies with remote working options citing Automation Engineer.

Automation Engineer daily rate for jobs with a WFH option

Automation Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram for Jobs with a WFH Option

Daily rate distribution for jobs with remote working options citing Automation Engineer over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Automation Engineer daily rate histogram for jobs with a WFH option

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Job Vacancies with WFH Options

For the 6 months to 30 April 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 jobs with a WFH option featuring Automation Engineer in the job title.

1 21 (45.65%) Python
2 14 (30.43%) Microsoft
2 14 (30.43%) CI/CD
3 13 (28.26%) DevOps
4 11 (23.91%) Jenkins
4 11 (23.91%) Ansible
5 10 (21.74%) Deployment Automation
5 10 (21.74%) Test Automation
6 9 (19.57%) PowerShell
6 9 (19.57%) Java
7 8 (17.39%) Firewall
7 8 (17.39%) Workflow
7 8 (17.39%) Git
7 8 (17.39%) Azure
7 8 (17.39%) AWS
7 8 (17.39%) Google
7 8 (17.39%) Social Skills
7 8 (17.39%) Docker
8 7 (15.22%) SDLC
8 7 (15.22%) Palo Alto
8 7 (15.22%) Hyperautomation
8 7 (15.22%) SOAR
8 7 (15.22%) Incident Response
8 7 (15.22%) Security Operations
8 7 (15.22%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (15.22%) Agile
8 7 (15.22%) SIEM
9 6 (13.04%) Linux
9 6 (13.04%) Terraform
9 6 (13.04%) Problem-Solving

Automation Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities with WFH Options 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 4 (8.70%) Apache
1 4 (8.70%) nginx
1 4 (8.70%) OpenStack
2 2 (4.35%) Confluence
3 1 (2.17%) Apache Spark
3 1 (2.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (4.35%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (2.17%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 8 (17.39%) AWS
1 8 (17.39%) Azure
2 5 (10.87%) Power Automate
2 5 (10.87%) Power Platform
3 4 (8.70%) Cloud Computing
3 4 (8.70%) Microsoft 365
4 3 (6.52%) PowerApps
5 2 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
5 2 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (4.35%) Entra ID
5 2 (4.35%) Serverless
6 1 (2.17%) Amazon Kinesis
6 1 (2.17%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (2.17%) AWS CodeBuild
6 1 (2.17%) AWS CodePipeline
6 1 (2.17%) GCP
6 1 (2.17%) GitHub
6 1 (2.17%) Kong
6 1 (2.17%) OneDrive
6 1 (2.17%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 8 (17.39%) Firewall
2 5 (10.87%) HTTP
3 2 (4.35%) DHCP
3 2 (4.35%) DNS
4 1 (2.17%) BGP
4 1 (2.17%) Ethernet VPN
4 1 (2.17%) IPv6
4 1 (2.17%) MPLS
4 1 (2.17%) Network Security
4 1 (2.17%) TCP/IP
4 1 (2.17%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (10.87%) Power BI
2 3 (6.52%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (2.17%) Flink
3 1 (2.17%) MongoDB
3 1 (2.17%) MySQL
3 1 (2.17%) Redis
3 1 (2.17%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 11 (23.91%) Jenkins
2 8 (17.39%) Git
3 5 (10.87%) Selenium
4 4 (8.70%) Cucumber
5 3 (6.52%) Bitbucket
5 3 (6.52%) GitLab
5 3 (6.52%) JIRA
5 3 (6.52%) Octopus Deploy
5 3 (6.52%) Postman
6 2 (4.35%) REST Assured
6 2 (4.35%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (4.35%) Visual Studio
7 1 (2.17%) Cypress.io
7 1 (2.17%) JUnit
7 1 (2.17%) SoapUI
7 1 (2.17%) SonarQube
7 1 (2.17%) Spinnaker
7 1 (2.17%) Subversion
7 1 (2.17%) Vagrant
General
1 8 (17.39%) Social Skills
2 6 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (10.87%) Finance
4 3 (6.52%) Banking
5 1 (2.17%) Manufacturing
5 1 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
5 1 (2.17%) Public Sector
5 1 (2.17%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (13.04%) REST
2 5 (10.87%) Elastic Stack
3 2 (4.35%) .NET
3 2 (4.35%) Gherkin
3 2 (4.35%) Playwright
3 2 (4.35%) React
3 2 (4.35%) SOAP
4 1 (2.17%) AngularJS
4 1 (2.17%) ASP.NET
4 1 (2.17%) CSS
4 1 (2.17%) HTML
4 1 (2.17%) JSON
4 1 (2.17%) Kafka
4 1 (2.17%) Node.js
4 1 (2.17%) RabbitMQ
4 1 (2.17%) Spring
4 1 (2.17%) Spring Boot
4 1 (2.17%) Vue
4 1 (2.17%) WF
4 1 (2.17%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 4 (8.70%) Cloud Native
1 4 (8.70%) Distributed Systems
2 2 (4.35%) Data Centre
2 2 (4.35%) Hybrid Cloud
2 2 (4.35%) Mainframe
2 2 (4.35%) Public Cloud
3 1 (2.17%) Algorithms
3 1 (2.17%) Data Structures
3 1 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (2.17%) Onboarding
3 1 (2.17%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 6 (13.04%) Linux
2 4 (8.70%) Unix
2 4 (8.70%) Windows
3 2 (4.35%) MVS
4 1 (2.17%) Android
4 1 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (2.17%) Windows Server
4 1 (2.17%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (30.43%) CI/CD
2 13 (28.26%) DevOps
3 10 (21.74%) Deployment Automation
3 10 (21.74%) Test Automation
4 8 (17.39%) Workflow
5 7 (15.22%) Agile
5 7 (15.22%) Hyperautomation
5 7 (15.22%) Incident Response
5 7 (15.22%) SDLC
5 7 (15.22%) Security Operations
5 7 (15.22%) SIEM
5 7 (15.22%) SOAR
6 6 (13.04%) Problem-Solving
7 5 (10.87%) Business Intelligence
7 5 (10.87%) Configuration Management
7 5 (10.87%) High Availability
8 4 (8.70%) Canary Deployment
8 4 (8.70%) Infrastructure Automation
8 4 (8.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 4 (8.70%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 21 (45.65%) Python
2 9 (19.57%) Java
2 9 (19.57%) PowerShell
3 5 (10.87%) JavaScript
4 4 (8.70%) Bash
4 4 (8.70%) Groovy
4 4 (8.70%) Shell Script
4 4 (8.70%) TypeScript
5 2 (4.35%) REXX
5 2 (4.35%) SQL
6 1 (2.17%) Assembly Language
6 1 (2.17%) C#
6 1 (2.17%) JCL
6 1 (2.17%) Kotlin
6 1 (2.17%) Ruby
6 1 (2.17%) VBA
Qualifications
1 4 (8.70%) Security Cleared
2 3 (6.52%) Degree
2 3 (6.52%) SC Cleared
3 2 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
3 2 (4.35%) Microsoft Certification
3 2 (4.35%) OCA
3 2 (4.35%) Oracle Certification
3 2 (4.35%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
4 1 (2.17%) AWS Certification
4 1 (2.17%) CCNP
4 1 (2.17%) Cisco Certification
4 1 (2.17%) MCSA
4 1 (2.17%) MCSE
4 1 (2.17%) RHCA
4 1 (2.17%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (10.87%) QA
2 1 (2.17%) Accessibility
2 1 (2.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
2 1 (2.17%) SLA
2 1 (2.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 8 (17.39%) Docker
2 7 (15.22%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (6.52%) Active Directory
3 3 (6.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (2.17%) ACF2
4 1 (2.17%) RACF
Systems Management
1 11 (23.91%) Ansible
2 6 (13.04%) Kubernetes
2 6 (13.04%) Terraform
3 3 (6.52%) Progress Chef
3 3 (6.52%) Puppet
4 2 (4.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (4.35%) vCenter Server
5 1 (2.17%) Argo
5 1 (2.17%) Packer
5 1 (2.17%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 14 (30.43%) Microsoft
2 8 (17.39%) Google
3 7 (15.22%) Palo Alto
4 5 (10.87%) Splunk
5 4 (8.70%) AppDynamics
5 4 (8.70%) Dynatrace
6 3 (6.52%) Oracle
6 3 (6.52%) VMware
7 2 (4.35%) Cisco
8 1 (2.17%) Atlassian
8 1 (2.17%) Broadcom
8 1 (2.17%) CyberArk
8 1 (2.17%) IBM
8 1 (2.17%) ServiceNow
8 1 (2.17%) SolarWinds
8 1 (2.17%) Veeam