Automation engineers in the US bill roughly $50 to $125 per hour on vetted marketplaces, $115 to $200 through agencies, and earn $90,000 to $155,000 full-time. RPA specialists working in regulated back offices price at the top; script-level workflow automation sits lower.
Vetted marketplace
$50–125
per hour · USA, 2026
Vetted marketplace · like HireDeveloperUSA.com
$50–$125/hour
Development agency
$115–$200/hour
In-house full-time · base salary
$90,000–$155,000/year
Add 25–40% for benefits, payroll taxes and overhead before comparing with hourly automation engineers rates.
Junior
$50 – $70/hour
Mid-level
$70 – $98/hour
Senior
$98 – $125/hour
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$50 to $125 per hour on a vetted marketplace, $115 to $200 through an agency, or $90,000 to $155,000 full-time.
A well-chosen back-office process with two to three full-time equivalents of manual work usually pays back within four to nine months, including maintenance.
If the systems have APIs, build the integration: it is cheaper to maintain. RPA earns its place when the system genuinely has no API and will not get one.
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