Nobody in this industry publishes what the work pays. So we did. Every number below was read on 11 August 2026 off our own live, publicly visible contract postings — the rates a signed-out visitor sees, across 17 real contracts.
These are the rates paid to the professional doing the work.
The hourly rates
| Role | Published hourly rate |
|---|---|
| Controls Engineer | $56 – $96 |
| PLC Programmer | $56 – $76 |
| Robot Programmer | $56 – $68 |
| Senior Robot Programmer | $80 |
| Vision Engineer | $80 |
| Senior Automation Engineer | $84 |
| Maintenance Technician | $64 |
The spread inside a single title is the first thing worth noticing. "Controls engineer" covers $56 an hour and $96 an hour in the same sample. The title tells you almost nothing; the scope, the stack and the schedule tell you everything.
Per diem: a 4× spread
Daily per diem ran from $50 to $200 a day. Over a six-week contract that is more than $6,000 of difference — frequently larger than the gap in hourly rate between two competing offers. Whether receipts are required matters too, and the best of these said plainly: receipts not required.
The finding almost nobody talks about
8 of the 17 contracts pay no overtime premium at all. The overtime rate is identical to the base rate. Five paid time-and-a-half. Four paid 1.3×.
That is not a footnote. These contracts run six-day schedules — eight hours a day, six days a week is 48 hours, so eight of those hours are overtime every single week.
| At $70/hr, 48-hour week | Paid for those 8 hours |
|---|---|
| Overtime at 1.5× | $840 |
| Overtime at base rate | $560 |
| Difference, per week | $280 |
| Difference over six weeks | $1,680 |
A contract with a lower base rate and a real overtime premium can pay more than a higher base rate with flat overtime. If you only negotiate the base rate, you are negotiating the smaller number.
What to ask before you talk about the base rate
- What is the overtime rate? And the double-time rate?
- What is the daily per diem, and are receipts required?
- What is the travel time rate? (In this sample one contract paid $44/hr for travel time, with 16 travel hours per round trip.)
- How many planned days per week? Six changes the whole calculation.
- How many travel trips are allowed per month?
Every one of those terms is published on the contract itself on our marketplace, before you apply, without an account. That is deliberate.
Why we publish rates at all
Rate secrecy gets defended as professionalism. It is not. It only ever protects the party who already knows the number. The engineer guessing what to ask for is not protected by it. Neither is the plant manager trying to budget a commissioning window, or the service company deciding whether it can afford to keep an engineer available another three weeks.
We are a free, fair and open global marketplace for skilled work. Free to post, free to apply, free to hire.
- If you have work to fill, posting it costs nothing. You name the rate you are willing to pay, and it goes out written, designed and published across every channel on our dime. Professionals apply to you directly and nothing gets bid down. Post your work here, free.
- If you are a service company, your non-billable bench is your single largest cost. You can apply your own available employees straight to open contracts here and take on work bigger than your own headcount without hiring for it first.
- If you are the professional, you apply directly, to a published rate, with no recruiter in the middle deciding what you are worth. Browse every open contract.
Method: 17 contracts sampled from live public postings on 11 August 2026. Rates shown are the published rates paid to the professional. Individual contracts open and fill continuously, so treat these as a snapshot of what was posted, not a live index.
Now tell me where I am wrong: should a flat overtime rate on a six-day schedule have to be disclosed up front, every time? I say yes, and I know that costs us leverage on both sides of the table. I would rather hear the argument against it than not.
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Tony Wallace
Co-Founder, Automate America
PO BOX 1638, Greer, SC 29652
automateamerica.com
