Java Contract Job Trends in the North West

Java
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Java skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 22 29
Rank change year-on-year -10 +7 +3
Contract jobs citing Java 232 182 122
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 5.83% 8.25% 5.04%
As % of the Programming Languages category 25.95% 31.82% 23.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 140 145 91
10th Percentile £400 £314 £323
25th Percentile £420 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £425 £445
Median % change year-on-year +22.82% -4.49% -17.21%
75th Percentile £600 £500 £550
90th Percentile £653 £603 £613
England median daily rate £525 £520 £600
% change year-on-year +0.96% -13.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 3 2
10th Percentile - £70.70 £39.35
25th Percentile £62.50 £71.75 £44.38
Median hourly rate £76.00 £79.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% +46.30% -13.60%
75th Percentile £77.00 £89.75 £64.88
90th Percentile £89.88 £92.90 £70.65
England median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% -28.57% +7.69%

All Programming Languages
North West

Java falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 894 572 527
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 22.47% 25.94% 21.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 563 437 331
10th Percentile £358 £313 £325
25th Percentile £419 £360 £377
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £425 £450
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £588 £500 £543
90th Percentile £650 £612 £606
England median daily rate £525 £515 £543
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 10 19
10th Percentile £29.96 £29.28 £37.55
25th Percentile £55.00 £47.89 £46.18
Median hourly rate £72.00 £68.25 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.49% +39.29% +6.11%
75th Percentile £77.00 £85.63 £73.00
90th Percentile £87.38 £95.23 £90.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% +3.17%

Java
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Java relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Java job vacancy trend in the North West

Java
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Java.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Java

Java
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java in the North West over the 6 months to 11 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Java in the North West

Java
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Java.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Java

Java
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Java in the North West over the 6 months to 11 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java in the North West

Java
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Java within the North West region over the 6 months to 11 October 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
Manchester -2 192 £525 +6.06% 211
Cheshire -35 25 £520 +35.42% 12
Cumbria - 5 £395 - 2
Lancashire - 5 £220 - 7
Merseyside -15 4 £538 +22.86% 7
Java
England

Java
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 6 (2.59%) Camunda
2 5 (2.16%) Confluence
3 4 (1.72%) Apache
3 4 (1.72%) Tomcat
4 3 (1.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 3 (1.29%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.43%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.43%) CMS
Applications
1 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 139 (59.91%) AWS
2 44 (18.97%) Azure
3 31 (13.36%) GCP
4 23 (9.91%) Serverless
5 19 (8.19%) Amazon ECS
5 19 (8.19%) AWS Lambda
6 17 (7.33%) GitHub
7 16 (6.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 14 (6.03%) Amazon EKS
9 13 (5.60%) AWS CloudFormation
9 13 (5.60%) Azure DevOps
10 10 (4.31%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (3.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (3.45%) dbt
12 7 (3.02%) Azure AKS
13 6 (2.59%) Amazon S3
13 6 (2.59%) AWS KMS
13 6 (2.59%) OpenShift
13 6 (2.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 5 (2.16%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (5.60%) Firewall
2 7 (3.02%) HTTP
3 4 (1.72%) Network Security
4 1 (0.43%) IPsec
4 1 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (9.48%) NoSQL
2 19 (8.19%) MongoDB
3 17 (7.33%) Relational Database
4 12 (5.17%) MySQL
5 9 (3.88%) SQL Server
6 8 (3.45%) DynamoDB
7 7 (3.02%) Ataccama
7 7 (3.02%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.86%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.43%) Apache Arrow
10 1 (0.43%) Apache Iceberg
10 1 (0.43%) Pinecone
10 1 (0.43%) Power BI
10 1 (0.43%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.43%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 31 (13.36%) Jenkins
2 22 (9.48%) Git
3 18 (7.76%) REST Assured
3 18 (7.76%) Selenium
4 17 (7.33%) GitLab
5 15 (6.47%) JUnit
5 15 (6.47%) Mockito
6 14 (6.03%) Cucumber
7 9 (3.88%) Gradle
8 8 (3.45%) Claude Code
9 7 (3.02%) Gatling
9 7 (3.02%) Maven
9 7 (3.02%) SonarQube
9 7 (3.02%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (2.16%) Bitbucket
10 5 (2.16%) Cypress.io
10 5 (2.16%) JIRA
11 4 (1.72%) Bitbucket Server
11 4 (1.72%) TestNG
12 3 (1.29%) Postman
General
1 68 (29.31%) Social Skills
2 51 (21.98%) Finance
3 29 (12.50%) Public Sector
4 16 (6.90%) Banking
5 8 (3.45%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (3.02%) Military
7 6 (2.59%) iGaming
8 4 (1.72%) Retail
9 2 (0.86%) Front Office
9 2 (0.86%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.43%) Automotive
10 1 (0.43%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.43%) Games
10 1 (0.43%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.43%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.43%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.43%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 71 (30.60%) Developer
2 56 (24.14%) Software Engineer
3 51 (21.98%) Java Developer
4 46 (19.83%) Java Engineer
5 41 (17.67%) Senior
6 29 (12.50%) Java Software Engineer
7 19 (8.19%) AWS Engineer
7 19 (8.19%) Lead
7 19 (8.19%) Senior Developer
7 19 (8.19%) Senior Java Developer
8 16 (6.90%) Cloud Engineer
9 14 (6.03%) AWS Software Engineer
9 14 (6.03%) Security Engineer
10 13 (5.60%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 13 (5.60%) Senior Java Engineer
11 12 (5.17%) Test Engineer
12 11 (4.74%) Senior Software Engineer
13 10 (4.31%) Architect
14 9 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
15 8 (3.45%) Cloud Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (40.95%) Spring Boot
2 94 (40.52%) Spring
3 53 (22.84%) Kafka
4 51 (21.98%) REST
5 36 (15.52%) React
6 28 (12.07%) Terraform
7 21 (9.05%) RESTful
8 18 (7.76%) Node.js
9 13 (5.60%) AngularJS
10 12 (5.17%) Playwright
11 11 (4.74%) GraphQL
11 11 (4.74%) HTML
12 10 (4.31%) Vue
13 9 (3.88%) CSS
13 9 (3.88%) Hibernate
14 8 (3.45%) Spring MVC
15 7 (3.02%) Redux
16 6 (2.59%) .NET
16 6 (2.59%) Jakarta EE
16 6 (2.59%) JPA
Miscellaneous
1 70 (30.17%) Cloud Native
2 44 (18.97%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (6.47%) Security Posture
4 12 (5.17%) Onboarding
5 10 (4.31%) AI Agents
6 9 (3.88%) Management Information System
7 7 (3.02%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (3.02%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.59%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (2.16%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (2.16%) Data Structures
9 5 (2.16%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.72%) Distributed Architecture
10 4 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (1.29%) IoT
11 3 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (1.29%) Mainframe
11 3 (1.29%) PKI
11 3 (1.29%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 29 (12.50%) Linux
2 17 (7.33%) Windows
3 16 (6.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (3.02%) Android
4 7 (3.02%) Unix
5 3 (1.29%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.43%) AIX
6 1 (0.43%) macOS
6 1 (0.43%) VMS
6 1 (0.43%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (58.19%) CI/CD
2 110 (47.41%) Agile
3 95 (40.95%) Software Engineering
4 86 (37.07%) Microservices
5 72 (31.03%) DevOps
6 63 (27.16%) Test Automation
7 45 (19.40%) Observability
8 38 (16.38%) Event-Driven
9 37 (15.95%) Continuous Improvement
10 32 (13.79%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 31 (13.36%) Full-Stack Development
12 30 (12.93%) Containerisation
12 30 (12.93%) TDD
13 29 (12.50%) Scrum
14 28 (12.07%) AI
14 28 (12.07%) Infrastructure as Code
15 25 (10.78%) SDLC
16 24 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
17 23 (9.91%) Migration
18 21 (9.05%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 50 (21.55%) Python
2 38 (16.38%) JavaScript
3 33 (14.22%) SQL
4 29 (12.50%) TypeScript
5 21 (9.05%) Bash
6 20 (8.62%) PowerShell
7 18 (7.76%) Kotlin
8 7 (3.02%) Bicep
9 6 (2.59%) C#
10 3 (1.29%) C
10 3 (1.29%) C++
10 3 (1.29%) Perl
10 3 (1.29%) Rust
10 3 (1.29%) Swift
11 2 (0.86%) Go
12 1 (0.43%) BeanShell
12 1 (0.43%) Ruby
12 1 (0.43%) Scala
Qualifications
1 37 (15.95%) Security Cleared
2 32 (13.79%) SC Cleared
3 23 (9.91%) Degree
4 20 (8.62%) AWS Certification
5 16 (6.90%) Azure Certification
6 14 (6.03%) CISSP
7 8 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (2.16%) DBS Check
9 3 (1.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.03%) Accessibility
2 12 (5.17%) QA
3 5 (2.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 3 (1.29%) GDPR
5 2 (0.86%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.86%) WCAG
6 1 (0.43%) NIST
System Software
1 61 (26.29%) Docker
2 5 (2.16%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.29%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 76 (32.76%) Kubernetes
2 14 (6.03%) Progress Chef
3 7 (3.02%) Grafana
4 4 (1.72%) Ansible
4 4 (1.72%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.86%) Istio
6 1 (0.43%) BladeLogic
6 1 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 16 (6.90%) Google
1 16 (6.90%) Red Hat
2 10 (4.31%) Microsoft
3 6 (2.59%) Splunk
4 5 (2.16%) IBM
4 5 (2.16%) SAP
4 5 (2.16%) Veracode
5 3 (1.29%) Adobe
5 3 (1.29%) Dynatrace
6 2 (0.86%) Oracle
6 2 (0.86%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.43%) Glassbox
7 1 (0.43%) NetScout
7 1 (0.43%) Remedy
7 1 (0.43%) Salesforce