Java Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Java Engineer
UK > England

The median Java Engineer daily rate in England is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 319 326 372
Rank change year-on-year +7 +46 +71
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 281 159 172
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.70% 0.65% 0.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.75% 0.71% 0.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 101 121
10th Percentile £358 £400 £425
25th Percentile £425 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £688 £600
Median % change year-on-year -23.64% +14.58% -
75th Percentile £600 £875 £788
90th Percentile £677 - £888
UK median daily rate £536 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -10.67% +4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 8 9
10th Percentile £52.50 £50.75 £67.25
25th Percentile £53.13 £60.31 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 -
90th Percentile - - £70.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 37,282 22,549 34,489
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.63% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,335 15,006 22,895
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £643
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,521 899 2,432
10th Percentile £15.79 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £47.00 £30.78 £36.31
Median % change year-on-year +52.70% -15.22% -19.32%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.42
% change year-on-year +51.72% -20.37% -19.07%

Java Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Java Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Java Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Java Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in England

Java Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Java Engineer in England

Java Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in England

Java Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Java Engineer in England over the 6 months to 1 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in England

Java 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 Java Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 1 May 2026. 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 -27 138 £550 -26.67% 44
North of England -21 57 £511 -2.62% 11
South East -38 29 £469 -27.88% 17
South West -15 28 £488 -6.02% 6
North West -21 28 £528 - 9
Midlands -55 24 £469 -10.67% 2
West Midlands -42 23 £469 -10.67% 1
Yorkshire -38 17 £523 -18.04% 1
North East -7 13 £425 +8.97% 1
East of England -30 3 £535 -10.83%
East Midlands - 1 - - 1
Java Engineer
UK

Java Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 1 May 2026, Java Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Java Engineer in the job title.

1 281 (100.00%) Java
2 142 (50.53%) Software Engineering
3 102 (36.30%) Spring
4 93 (33.10%) Spring Boot
5 88 (31.32%) Kubernetes
6 77 (27.40%) AWS
6 77 (27.40%) Microservices
7 73 (25.98%) Agile
8 67 (23.84%) CI/CD
9 58 (20.64%) Security Cleared
10 56 (19.93%) Docker
11 54 (19.22%) Kafka
12 53 (18.86%) Full-Stack Development
13 52 (18.51%) SC Cleared
14 49 (17.44%) DevOps
15 41 (14.59%) TDD
16 40 (14.23%) SQL
17 36 (12.81%) Python
17 36 (12.81%) React
18 35 (12.46%) Test Automation
19 34 (12.10%) Containerisation
19 34 (12.10%) QA
20 32 (11.39%) Event-Driven
21 29 (10.32%) PostgreSQL
22 28 (9.96%) Gradle
23 26 (9.25%) Problem-Solving
24 25 (8.90%) Unit Testing
25 24 (8.54%) Azure
25 24 (8.54%) Scrum
26 22 (7.83%) Clean Code

Java Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 8 (2.85%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.07%) Apache
2 3 (1.07%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (0.71%) MQSeries
4 1 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.36%) Camunda
4 1 (0.36%) Ethereum
4 1 (0.36%) Hyperledger
4 1 (0.36%) nginx
4 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.36%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 2 (0.71%) Shopify
2 1 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 77 (27.40%) AWS
2 24 (8.54%) Azure
3 20 (7.12%) Serverless
4 19 (6.76%) AWS Lambda
5 16 (5.69%) GCP
6 15 (5.34%) Amazon S3
6 15 (5.34%) GitHub
6 15 (5.34%) OpenShift
7 13 (4.63%) Amazon ECS
8 9 (3.20%) Amazon EC2
8 9 (3.20%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (2.85%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (1.78%) AWS Step Functions
11 3 (1.07%) Amazon Kinesis
11 3 (1.07%) AWS CodePipeline
11 3 (1.07%) AWS Fargate
11 3 (1.07%) Azure Service Bus
11 3 (1.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 2 (0.71%) Amazon ElastiCache
12 2 (0.71%) Azure API Management
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.78%) HTTP
2 3 (1.07%) MQTT
3 1 (0.36%) DNS
3 1 (0.36%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.36%) Internet
3 1 (0.36%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.36%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (10.32%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (6.76%) MongoDB
3 10 (3.56%) SQL Server
4 9 (3.20%) DynamoDB
5 7 (2.49%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (2.49%) Big Data
5 7 (2.49%) MySQL
5 7 (2.49%) Relational Database
6 6 (2.14%) Apache Cassandra
7 5 (1.78%) NoSQL
8 4 (1.42%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.07%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.71%) HBase
10 2 (0.71%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.71%) Redis
11 1 (0.36%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.36%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.36%) Bigtable
11 1 (0.36%) Flink
Development Applications
1 28 (9.96%) Gradle
2 22 (7.83%) Git
3 21 (7.47%) GitLab
3 21 (7.47%) Jenkins
4 18 (6.41%) JUnit
5 15 (5.34%) IntelliJ
6 14 (4.98%) SonarQube
7 13 (4.63%) Maven
8 8 (2.85%) Cucumber
9 6 (2.14%) Mockito
10 5 (1.78%) JIRA
10 5 (1.78%) Selenium
11 4 (1.42%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.42%) Postman
12 3 (1.07%) Liquibase
12 3 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.71%) Gatling
13 2 (0.71%) WebDriver
13 2 (0.71%) XCUITest
14 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
General
1 57 (20.28%) Finance
2 26 (9.25%) Social Skills
3 25 (8.90%) Banking
4 19 (6.76%) Front Office
5 15 (5.34%) Public Sector
6 9 (3.20%) Law
7 5 (1.78%) Analytical Skills
7 5 (1.78%) Financial Institution
7 5 (1.78%) Investment Banking
8 3 (1.07%) Back Office
8 3 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.07%) Retail
9 2 (0.71%) Automotive
10 1 (0.36%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.36%) Corporate Banking
10 1 (0.36%) French Language
10 1 (0.36%) Legal
10 1 (0.36%) Military
10 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (36.30%) Spring
2 93 (33.10%) Spring Boot
3 54 (19.22%) Kafka
4 36 (12.81%) React
5 22 (7.83%) RESTful
6 19 (6.76%) REST
7 18 (6.41%) AngularJS
7 18 (6.41%) GraphQL
8 17 (6.05%) Middleware
8 17 (6.05%) Node.js
9 14 (4.98%) Quarkus
10 13 (4.63%) Swagger
11 12 (4.27%) OpenTelemetry
12 9 (3.20%) Redux
13 8 (2.85%) OpenAPI
14 7 (2.49%) AWS CDK
15 6 (2.14%) FIX Protocol
15 6 (2.14%) Hibernate
16 5 (1.78%) JSON
16 5 (1.78%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 42 (14.95%) Cloud Native
2 21 (7.47%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.85%) Data Protection Act
3 8 (2.85%) Fixed Income
4 7 (2.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 6 (2.14%) Legacy Applications
6 5 (1.78%) Public Cloud
7 4 (1.42%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.42%) TWAP
7 4 (1.42%) VWAP
8 3 (1.07%) Derivative
8 3 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.07%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.07%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.07%) Virtual Team
9 2 (0.71%) Equity Derivative
9 2 (0.71%) Exotic Derivative
9 2 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (0.71%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.76%) Linux
2 6 (2.14%) Unix
3 1 (0.36%) Android
3 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.36%) Solaris
3 1 (0.36%) SUSE
3 1 (0.36%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.36%) VMS
3 1 (0.36%) Windows
3 1 (0.36%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
3 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
3 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (50.53%) Software Engineering
2 77 (27.40%) Microservices
3 73 (25.98%) Agile
4 67 (23.84%) CI/CD
5 53 (18.86%) Full-Stack Development
6 49 (17.44%) DevOps
7 41 (14.59%) TDD
8 35 (12.46%) Test Automation
9 34 (12.10%) Containerisation
10 32 (11.39%) Event-Driven
11 26 (9.25%) Problem-Solving
12 25 (8.90%) Unit Testing
13 24 (8.54%) Scrum
14 22 (7.83%) Clean Code
15 19 (6.76%) Code Quality
15 19 (6.76%) Front End Development
16 18 (6.41%) Software Testing
17 17 (6.05%) High Availability
17 17 (6.05%) SDLC
18 16 (5.69%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 281 (100.00%) Java
2 40 (14.23%) SQL
3 36 (12.81%) Python
4 22 (7.83%) TypeScript
5 17 (6.05%) Kotlin
6 15 (5.34%) JavaScript
7 13 (4.63%) Go
8 11 (3.91%) Ada
9 5 (1.78%) C++
10 4 (1.42%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.07%) C#
11 3 (1.07%) Scala
12 2 (0.71%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.36%) Groovy
13 1 (0.36%) Korn
13 1 (0.36%) Rust
13 1 (0.36%) Solidity
13 1 (0.36%) Swift
Qualifications
1 58 (20.64%) Security Cleared
2 52 (18.51%) SC Cleared
3 9 (3.20%) Degree
4 4 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (1.42%) DV Cleared
5 3 (1.07%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.71%) OCP
6 2 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.36%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (12.10%) QA
2 11 (3.91%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.91%) IEC 61508
3 6 (2.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 5 (1.78%) GDPR
5 4 (1.42%) Accessibility
5 4 (1.42%) ISO 20022
6 3 (1.07%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.71%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.71%) SEPA
System Software
1 56 (19.93%) Docker
2 1 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.36%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 88 (31.32%) Kubernetes
2 15 (5.34%) Grafana
3 12 (4.27%) Argo
3 12 (4.27%) Terraform
4 5 (1.78%) Ansible
5 3 (1.07%) HAProxy
6 1 (0.36%) Kibana
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.36%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.36%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (4.27%) Red Hat
2 11 (3.91%) Google
2 11 (3.91%) Microsoft
3 9 (3.20%) Oracle
4 6 (2.14%) Splunk
5 5 (1.78%) IBM
6 3 (1.07%) Dynatrace
6 3 (1.07%) SAP
6 3 (1.07%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.07%) Solace
7 2 (0.71%) Checkmarx
7 2 (0.71%) Confluent
7 2 (0.71%) Databricks
7 2 (0.71%) MKS
7 2 (0.71%) New Relic
8 1 (0.36%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.36%) Adobe
8 1 (0.36%) Netlify
8 1 (0.36%) Teradata
8 1 (0.36%) VMware