Java Engineer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Java Engineer
England > South East

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the South East is £365, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 27 November 2025.

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

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 172 174 203
Rank change year-on-year +2 +29 +38
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 9 1 5
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.22% 0.024% 0.096%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.24% 0.026% 0.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 1 5
10th Percentile £313 - -
25th Percentile £330 - £563
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £365 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year -27.00% -13.04% +6.98%
75th Percentile £388 - £588
90th Percentile £501 - -
England median daily rate £586 £725 £600
% change year-on-year -19.17% +20.83% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £41.25 - -
25th Percentile £43.13 - -
Median hourly rate £47.50 - -
75th Percentile £53.13 - -
90th Percentile £55.75 - -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £68.75
% change year-on-year - +1.82% +4.79%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. 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 the South East with a recognized job title 3,720 3,805 4,916
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.96% 92.74% 94.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,369 2,301 3,217
10th Percentile £209 £245 £207
25th Percentile £390 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% - +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -3.81% -1.69% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 382 200 248
10th Percentile £13.75 £18.41 £16.00
25th Percentile £16.19 £25.44 £23.91
Median hourly rate £25.00 £56.75 £51.66
Median % change year-on-year -55.94% +9.84% +37.76%
75th Percentile £57.50 £71.25 £66.30
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.16 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.47 £40.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -36.33% -11.11% +38.38%

Java Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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 the South East.

Java Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

Java Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Java Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 27 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Java Engineer in the South East

Java Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Java Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Java Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 27 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the South East

Java Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 27 November 2025. 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
Hampshire - 6 £370 -
West Sussex - 2 £295 - 2
Surrey - 1 £330 - 1
Java Engineer
England

Java Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 27 November 2025, 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 South East region featuring Java Engineer in the job title.

1 9 (100.00%) Java
2 7 (77.78%) Cucumber
2 7 (77.78%) Jenkins
2 7 (77.78%) Spring
3 6 (66.67%) AWS
3 6 (66.67%) CI/CD
4 5 (55.56%) GitHub
4 5 (55.56%) JUnit
4 5 (55.56%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (55.56%) Spring Boot
5 4 (44.44%) Kafka
5 4 (44.44%) Kubernetes
5 4 (44.44%) Observability
5 4 (44.44%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (44.44%) Test Automation
6 3 (33.33%) Ansible
6 3 (33.33%) Datadog
6 3 (33.33%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (33.33%) Gradle
6 3 (33.33%) JMeter
6 3 (33.33%) OpenShift
7 2 (22.22%) Agile
7 2 (22.22%) Artifactory
7 2 (22.22%) Containerisation
7 2 (22.22%) Docker
7 2 (22.22%) Full-Stack Development
7 2 (22.22%) Git
7 2 (22.22%) HBase
7 2 (22.22%) Hibernate
7 2 (22.22%) Linux

Java Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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:

Cloud Services
1 6 (66.67%) AWS
2 5 (55.56%) GitHub
3 3 (33.33%) Datadog
3 3 (33.33%) GitHub Actions
3 3 (33.33%) OpenShift
4 1 (11.11%) Amazon S3
4 1 (11.11%) Azure
4 1 (11.11%) GCP
4 1 (11.11%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (55.56%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (22.22%) HBase
3 1 (11.11%) Big Data
3 1 (11.11%) DynamoDB
3 1 (11.11%) MongoDB
3 1 (11.11%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 7 (77.78%) Cucumber
1 7 (77.78%) Jenkins
2 5 (55.56%) JUnit
3 4 (44.44%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (33.33%) Gradle
4 3 (33.33%) JMeter
5 2 (22.22%) Artifactory
5 2 (22.22%) Git
6 1 (11.11%) Gatling
6 1 (11.11%) JIRA
6 1 (11.11%) Maven
6 1 (11.11%) Postman
6 1 (11.11%) REST Assured
6 1 (11.11%) TestNG
General
1 3 (33.33%) Finance
1 3 (33.33%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (77.78%) Spring
2 5 (55.56%) Spring Boot
3 4 (44.44%) Kafka
4 2 (22.22%) Hibernate
4 2 (22.22%) Spring Batch
5 1 (11.11%) Apache NiFi
5 1 (11.11%) Gherkin
5 1 (11.11%) Middleware
5 1 (11.11%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 1 (11.11%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (22.22%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (66.67%) CI/CD
2 4 (44.44%) Observability
2 4 (44.44%) Test Automation
3 2 (22.22%) Agile
3 2 (22.22%) Containerisation
3 2 (22.22%) Full-Stack Development
3 2 (22.22%) Microservices
3 2 (22.22%) User Stories
4 1 (11.11%) Acceptance Criteria
4 1 (11.11%) API Testing
4 1 (11.11%) Computer Science
4 1 (11.11%) Event-Driven
4 1 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
4 1 (11.11%) Platform Engineering
4 1 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
4 1 (11.11%) QA Automation
4 1 (11.11%) Smoke Testing
4 1 (11.11%) Sprint Planning
4 1 (11.11%) Sprint Retrospective
4 1 (11.11%) Sprint Review
Programming Languages
1 9 (100.00%) Java
2 1 (11.11%) C++
Qualifications
1 2 (22.22%) OCP
1 2 (22.22%) Oracle Certification
2 1 (11.11%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (11.11%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (11.11%) QA
System Software
1 2 (22.22%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (44.44%) Kubernetes
2 3 (33.33%) Ansible
3 2 (22.22%) Progress Chef
4 1 (11.11%) Grafana
4 1 (11.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 2 (22.22%) VMware
2 1 (11.11%) Oracle