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 16 February 2026.

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

 6 months to
16 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 365 369 445
Rank change year-on-year +4 +76 -74
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 196 124 108
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.58% 0.48% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.63% 0.52% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 124 81 82
10th Percentile £350 £400 £401
25th Percentile £400 £513 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £589
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +1.91% -5.80%
75th Percentile £630 £825 £711
90th Percentile £800 £888 £788
UK median daily rate £543 £585 £550
% change year-on-year -7.26% +6.36% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 9 1
10th Percentile £50.00 £37.95 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £57.50 £58.75
Median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.54% +4.00% -4.73%
75th Percentile £66.88 £68.75 £66.25
90th Percentile £87.50 - -
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year -11.54% -7.14% +6.70%

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 31,201 23,999 35,365
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.73% 93.03% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,793 14,993 23,712
10th Percentile £300 £296 £275
25th Percentile £409 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £643
90th Percentile £725 £750 £748
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,009 697 2,128
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.23 £13.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.53
Median hourly rate £31.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - -9.68%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £33.54 £35.00
% change year-on-year -10.55% -4.17% -5.74%

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 16 February 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 16 February 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 16 February 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 -31 103 £550 -8.33% 35
North of England -33 35 £478 +4.37% 10
Midlands -27 25 £469 -10.67% 12
West Midlands -24 23 £469 -10.67% 9
North West -9 22 £438 - 7
South East -15 18 £365 -43.85% 24
South West -26 12 £384 -31.12% 16
North East -5 8 £575 +47.44% 3
Yorkshire -57 5 £511 -2.62%
East Midlands - 2 £313 - 3
Java Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 16 February 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.

1 196 (100.00%) Java
2 92 (46.94%) Software Engineering
3 88 (44.90%) Spring
4 76 (38.78%) AWS
5 73 (37.24%) Kubernetes
5 73 (37.24%) Spring Boot
6 72 (36.73%) Microservices
7 64 (32.65%) CI/CD
8 61 (31.12%) Agile
9 38 (19.39%) DevOps
10 37 (18.88%) TDD
11 36 (18.37%) Docker
12 33 (16.84%) Full-Stack Development
12 33 (16.84%) Kafka
13 30 (15.31%) Test Automation
14 29 (14.80%) SQL
15 28 (14.29%) QA
16 27 (13.78%) Containerisation
17 26 (13.27%) Security Cleared
18 25 (12.76%) Gradle
18 25 (12.76%) Python
19 24 (12.24%) GitLab
20 23 (11.73%) SC Cleared
21 22 (11.22%) Git
21 22 (11.22%) JUnit
21 22 (11.22%) Problem-Solving
22 21 (10.71%) Event-Driven
23 20 (10.20%) PostgreSQL
23 20 (10.20%) React
23 20 (10.20%) RESTful

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 10 (5.10%) Apache
2 6 (3.06%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (2.04%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.04%) JBoss
3 4 (2.04%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.51%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.51%) Camunda
4 1 (0.51%) Confluence
4 1 (0.51%) Ethereum
4 1 (0.51%) Hyperledger
4 1 (0.51%) Oracle SOA Suite
Business Applications
1 2 (1.02%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 76 (38.78%) AWS
2 17 (8.67%) Azure
3 16 (8.16%) AWS Lambda
3 16 (8.16%) GCP
3 16 (8.16%) Serverless
4 15 (7.65%) Amazon S3
5 14 (7.14%) Amazon EC2
6 12 (6.12%) Amazon ECS
7 11 (5.61%) GitHub
8 10 (5.10%) OpenShift
9 9 (4.59%) AWS CloudFormation
9 9 (4.59%) AWS Step Functions
10 8 (4.08%) Amazon Kinesis
10 8 (4.08%) Snowflake
11 6 (3.06%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (3.06%) dbt
11 6 (3.06%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (2.04%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (2.04%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 3 (1.53%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.53%) MQTT
2 2 (1.02%) HTTP
3 1 (0.51%) FTP
3 1 (0.51%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.51%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.51%) SSL
3 1 (0.51%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (10.20%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (9.69%) MongoDB
3 12 (6.12%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (6.12%) MySQL
4 10 (5.10%) Apache Cassandra
5 8 (4.08%) Hadoop
6 7 (3.57%) NoSQL
7 6 (3.06%) Amazon Athena
7 6 (3.06%) Apache Arrow
7 6 (3.06%) Apache Iceberg
7 6 (3.06%) Apache Ignite
7 6 (3.06%) Big Data
7 6 (3.06%) Data Lake
7 6 (3.06%) Dremio
8 5 (2.55%) DynamoDB
9 3 (1.53%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.53%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.53%) HBase
9 3 (1.53%) Relational Database
10 2 (1.02%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 25 (12.76%) Gradle
2 24 (12.24%) GitLab
3 22 (11.22%) Git
3 22 (11.22%) JUnit
4 17 (8.67%) Jenkins
5 16 (8.16%) Cucumber
5 16 (8.16%) IntelliJ
6 11 (5.61%) Maven
7 10 (5.10%) Selenium
8 7 (3.57%) JMeter
8 7 (3.57%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (2.55%) JIRA
9 5 (2.55%) Postman
10 4 (2.04%) Eclipse
11 3 (1.53%) Artifactory
11 3 (1.53%) Mockito
11 3 (1.53%) SonarQube
12 2 (1.02%) Gatling
13 1 (0.51%) CircleCI
13 1 (0.51%) REST Assured
General
1 42 (21.43%) Finance
2 33 (16.84%) Social Skills
3 16 (8.16%) Banking
3 16 (8.16%) Front Office
4 10 (5.10%) Public Sector
5 9 (4.59%) Investment Banking
6 4 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.53%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (1.53%) Back Office
8 2 (1.02%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.02%) Retail
9 1 (0.51%) Law
9 1 (0.51%) Military
9 1 (0.51%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (44.90%) Spring
2 73 (37.24%) Spring Boot
3 33 (16.84%) Kafka
4 20 (10.20%) React
4 20 (10.20%) RESTful
5 16 (8.16%) REST
6 14 (7.14%) Hibernate
7 12 (6.12%) GraphQL
7 12 (6.12%) Node.js
8 11 (5.61%) OpenTelemetry
9 10 (5.10%) Middleware
10 9 (4.59%) Swagger
11 8 (4.08%) gRPC
12 7 (3.57%) AngularJS
12 7 (3.57%) HTML
12 7 (3.57%) JSON
12 7 (3.57%) Playwright
13 6 (3.06%) NumPy
13 6 (3.06%) Protocol Buffers
13 6 (3.06%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 27 (13.78%) Cloud Native
2 21 (10.71%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (5.10%) Derivative
3 10 (5.10%) Fixed Income
3 10 (5.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 8 (4.08%) Onboarding
5 7 (3.57%) Equities
5 7 (3.57%) Hedge funds
6 6 (3.06%) Pricing Data
7 5 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (2.55%) Virtual Team
8 4 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.04%) Product Ownership
9 3 (1.53%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (1.53%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.53%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.02%) Equity Derivative
10 2 (1.02%) Exotic Derivative
10 2 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
11 1 (0.51%) Media Streaming
Operating Systems
1 16 (8.16%) Linux
2 8 (4.08%) Unix
3 1 (0.51%) SUSE
3 1 (0.51%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.51%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (46.94%) Software Engineering
2 72 (36.73%) Microservices
3 64 (32.65%) CI/CD
4 61 (31.12%) Agile
5 38 (19.39%) DevOps
6 37 (18.88%) TDD
7 33 (16.84%) Full-Stack Development
8 30 (15.31%) Test Automation
9 27 (13.78%) Containerisation
10 22 (11.22%) Problem-Solving
11 21 (10.71%) Event-Driven
12 20 (10.20%) Software Testing
13 18 (9.18%) Clean Code
14 16 (8.16%) Scrum
15 15 (7.65%) BDD
15 15 (7.65%) Mentoring
15 15 (7.65%) Observability
16 14 (7.14%) Fintech
17 13 (6.63%) API Design
17 13 (6.63%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 196 (100.00%) Java
2 29 (14.80%) SQL
3 25 (12.76%) Python
4 19 (9.69%) JavaScript
5 18 (9.18%) TypeScript
6 17 (8.67%) Kotlin
7 9 (4.59%) Go
8 5 (2.55%) Scala
9 4 (2.04%) Ada
9 4 (2.04%) C++
10 3 (1.53%) C#
10 3 (1.53%) Rust
11 2 (1.02%) PL/SQL
11 2 (1.02%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.51%) Bash
12 1 (0.51%) Ruby
12 1 (0.51%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 26 (13.27%) Security Cleared
2 23 (11.73%) SC Cleared
3 7 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (2.55%) Degree
5 3 (1.53%) OCP
5 3 (1.53%) Oracle Certification
6 2 (1.02%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.02%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.51%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (14.29%) QA
2 4 (2.04%) Accessibility
2 4 (2.04%) Def Stans
2 4 (2.04%) IEC 61508
3 1 (0.51%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.51%) ISO 15022
3 1 (0.51%) ISO 20022
3 1 (0.51%) WCAG
System Software
1 36 (18.37%) Docker
Systems Management
1 73 (37.24%) Kubernetes
2 17 (8.67%) Grafana
3 10 (5.10%) Terraform
4 6 (3.06%) Ansible
5 4 (2.04%) Progress Chef
5 4 (2.04%) Puppet
6 3 (1.53%) Argo
7 1 (0.51%) Kibana
Vendors
1 9 (4.59%) Google
2 8 (4.08%) Oracle
3 6 (3.06%) Splunk
4 5 (2.55%) Microsoft
5 4 (2.04%) Databricks
5 4 (2.04%) VMware
5 4 (2.04%) webMethods
6 3 (1.53%) IBM
6 3 (1.53%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.02%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.02%) New Relic
7 2 (1.02%) Solace
8 1 (0.51%) Actian
8 1 (0.51%) Adobe
8 1 (0.51%) Calypso
8 1 (0.51%) Cisco
8 1 (0.51%) Confluent
8 1 (0.51%) Netlify
8 1 (0.51%) ServiceNow
8 1 (0.51%) Virgin Media
84 Java Engineer jobs in England