Java Contract Job Trends in the South East

Java
England > South East

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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 45 42
Rank change year-on-year -26 -3 +4
Contract jobs citing Java 210 165 216
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.14% 4.71% 4.35%
As % of the Programming Languages category 15.58% 18.58% 17.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 110 146
10th Percentile £244 £204 £363
25th Percentile £363 £365 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £473 £600
Median % change year-on-year +8.47% -21.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £611 £574 £662
90th Percentile £711 £601 £738
England median daily rate £525 £530 £600
% change year-on-year -0.94% -11.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 10 7
10th Percentile £53.25 £43.71 £32.10
25th Percentile £55.00 - £46.25
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -16.67% -11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £53.75 £68.75
90th Percentile - £55.00 £76.25
England median hourly rate £67.00 £50.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +34.00% -25.93% +3.05%

All Programming Languages
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 1,348 888 1,218
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 20.19% 25.37% 24.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 843 619 829
10th Percentile £310 £313 £325
25th Percentile £406 £408 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £511
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -2.15% -2.67%
75th Percentile £600 £594 £608
90th Percentile £688 £638 £651
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 23 64
10th Percentile £28.00 £33.10 £27.00
25th Percentile £38.25 £47.62 £53.25
Median hourly rate £63.48 £52.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.91% -19.23% +18.18%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.72 £74.06
90th Percentile £82.25 £64.36 £76.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%

Java
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Java job vacancy trend in the South East

Java
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Java.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Java

Java
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java in the South East over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Java in the South East

Java
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Java.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Java

Java
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Java in the South East over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java in the South East

Java
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 within the South East region over the 6 months to 6 August 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
Surrey +2 57 £513 +7.89% 7
West Sussex +6 49 £295 -23.58% 8
Hampshire -32 48 £621 +3.97% 20
Thames Valley -71 48 £525 +16.67% 40
Berkshire -57 28 £445 -4.04% 20
Oxfordshire -12 10 £530 - 14
Buckinghamshire -41 10 £463 +38.06% 6
Sussex - 3 £475 - 2
East Sussex 0 1 £600 +88.24% 7
Middlesex -18 1 - - 2
Java
England

Java
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:

Application Platforms
1 7 (3.33%) Apache Spark
1 7 (3.33%) Documentum
2 4 (1.90%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.43%) NetWeaver
3 3 (1.43%) SAP EP
4 2 (0.95%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 2 (0.95%) Apache
5 1 (0.48%) CMS
5 1 (0.48%) Confluence
5 1 (0.48%) IIS
5 1 (0.48%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.48%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.48%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.90%) SAP PSCD
2 3 (1.43%) SAP CRM
3 2 (0.95%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.48%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 50 (23.81%) AWS
2 49 (23.33%) Azure
3 29 (13.81%) OpenShift
4 23 (10.95%) GCP
5 18 (8.57%) GitHub
6 12 (5.71%) Amazon S3
6 12 (5.71%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (4.76%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (3.81%) Serverless
9 7 (3.33%) Amazon ECS
9 7 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (2.38%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (2.38%) Power Platform
10 5 (2.38%) Snowflake
11 4 (1.90%) Amazon SQS
11 4 (1.90%) SuccessFactors
12 3 (1.43%) AWS CodePipeline
12 3 (1.43%) SaaS
12 3 (1.43%) Sauce Labs
13 2 (0.95%) Amazon OpenSearch
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.86%) HTTPS
2 4 (1.90%) Wireshark
3 2 (0.95%) HTTP
4 1 (0.48%) Broadband
4 1 (0.48%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (12.86%) Relational Database
2 22 (10.48%) PostgreSQL
3 20 (9.52%) NoSQL
4 11 (5.24%) Big Data
4 11 (5.24%) MySQL
5 10 (4.76%) DynamoDB
6 9 (4.29%) SQL Server
7 7 (3.33%) Couchbase
7 7 (3.33%) Data Lake
7 7 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (2.86%) Apache Cassandra
9 5 (2.38%) Power BI
10 4 (1.90%) Metadata
11 3 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (1.43%) MongoDB
11 3 (1.43%) RDBMS
12 2 (0.95%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.95%) Db2
13 1 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
13 1 (0.48%) Redis
Development Applications
1 39 (18.57%) Git
2 25 (11.90%) Jenkins
3 23 (10.95%) SonarQube
4 11 (5.24%) JUnit
5 10 (4.76%) JIRA
5 10 (4.76%) Maven
6 7 (3.33%) Eclipse
6 7 (3.33%) Selenium
7 6 (2.86%) GitLab
7 6 (2.86%) Gradle
8 5 (2.38%) REST Assured
9 4 (1.90%) Android Studio
9 4 (1.90%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.90%) Cucumber
9 4 (1.90%) Postman
9 4 (1.90%) Subversion
9 4 (1.90%) Visual Studio
9 4 (1.90%) WebDriver
10 3 (1.43%) TeamCity
10 3 (1.43%) Xcode
General
1 52 (24.76%) Social Skills
2 20 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
2 20 (9.52%) Finance
3 7 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 6 (2.86%) Banking
5 5 (2.38%) Public Sector
6 3 (1.43%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.43%) Military
7 2 (0.95%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (0.95%) Marketing
8 1 (0.48%) Advertising
8 1 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.48%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.48%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 70 (33.33%) Developer
2 49 (23.33%) Java Developer
3 31 (14.76%) Java Engineer
3 31 (14.76%) Software Engineer
4 29 (13.81%) Senior
5 24 (11.43%) Architect
6 13 (6.19%) Technical Architect
7 10 (4.76%) Lead
7 10 (4.76%) SC Cleared Java Developer
7 10 (4.76%) Senior Developer
7 10 (4.76%) Software Developer
8 8 (3.81%) DevOps Engineer
8 8 (3.81%) Java Architect
8 8 (3.81%) Technical Engineer
9 7 (3.33%) Consultant
9 7 (3.33%) Documentum Architect
9 7 (3.33%) Senior Java Developer
9 7 (3.33%) Senior Java Engineer
10 6 (2.86%) Analyst
10 6 (2.86%) Java Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (21.43%) REST
2 35 (16.67%) AngularJS
3 33 (15.71%) Spring
4 25 (11.90%) Spring Boot
5 23 (10.95%) .NET
5 23 (10.95%) Quarkus
6 17 (8.10%) Kafka
7 16 (7.62%) React
7 16 (7.62%) RESTful
8 15 (7.14%) GraphQL
8 15 (7.14%) SOAP
9 13 (6.19%) CSS
10 11 (5.24%) HTML
11 10 (4.76%) Hibernate
11 10 (4.76%) Web Services
12 9 (4.29%) XML
13 8 (3.81%) OAuth
14 7 (3.33%) SAP PI
15 6 (2.86%) JSON
15 6 (2.86%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 31 (14.76%) Distributed Systems
2 21 (10.00%) Cloud Native
3 6 (2.86%) Data Protection Act
3 6 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
3 6 (2.86%) Mobile App
3 6 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.38%) Algorithms
4 5 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
5 4 (1.90%) Data Centre
5 4 (1.90%) Distributed Architecture
6 3 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (1.43%) Data Structures
7 2 (0.95%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.48%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (0.48%) IoT
8 1 (0.48%) Life Science
8 1 (0.48%) Low-Code
8 1 (0.48%) Marketing Technology
8 1 (0.48%) Robotics
8 1 (0.48%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 17 (8.10%) Unix
2 15 (7.14%) Linux
3 12 (5.71%) Windows
4 8 (3.81%) Android
5 2 (0.95%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.48%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (40.00%) Agile
2 77 (36.67%) Software Engineering
3 72 (34.29%) CI/CD
4 59 (28.10%) Test Automation
5 52 (24.76%) DevOps
6 50 (23.81%) Scrum
7 45 (21.43%) Microservices
8 43 (20.48%) SDLC
9 35 (16.67%) Sprint Planning
9 35 (16.67%) Unit Testing
10 28 (13.33%) Sprint Review
11 27 (12.86%) DevSecOps
11 27 (12.86%) Front End Development
11 27 (12.86%) Problem-Solving
12 22 (10.48%) Event-Driven
13 20 (9.52%) High Availability
14 19 (9.05%) Design Patterns
15 18 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
16 16 (7.62%) Containerisation
17 15 (7.14%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 46 (21.90%) Python
2 41 (19.52%) SQL
3 29 (13.81%) JavaScript
4 20 (9.52%) Go
5 18 (8.57%) C#
6 11 (5.24%) PowerShell
7 10 (4.76%) Kotlin
8 9 (4.29%) Shell Script
9 7 (3.33%) ABAP
9 7 (3.33%) C++
10 5 (2.38%) Bash
10 5 (2.38%) Perl
10 5 (2.38%) PL/SQL
10 5 (2.38%) TypeScript
11 4 (1.90%) Scala
11 4 (1.90%) VB.NET
12 3 (1.43%) C
12 3 (1.43%) Groovy
12 3 (1.43%) Lua
13 2 (0.95%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 86 (40.95%) Security Cleared
2 74 (35.24%) SC Cleared
3 17 (8.10%) Degree
4 12 (5.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.81%) DV Cleared
6 5 (2.38%) AWS Certification
6 5 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.90%) DBS Check
8 3 (1.43%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.95%) CISM
9 2 (0.95%) CISSP
9 2 (0.95%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.48%) CCNA
10 1 (0.48%) CEH
10 1 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.48%) ISEB
10 1 (0.48%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (17.14%) QA
2 6 (2.86%) Data Quality
3 5 (2.38%) GDPR
3 5 (2.38%) NCSC
4 2 (0.95%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.48%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.48%) WCAG
System Software
1 21 (10.00%) Docker
2 5 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.90%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 47 (22.38%) Kubernetes
2 24 (11.43%) Argo
3 5 (2.38%) Terraform
4 4 (1.90%) Grafana
4 4 (1.90%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.95%) Ansible
6 2 (0.95%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.95%) Puppet
7 1 (0.48%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 22 (10.48%) Red Hat
2 15 (7.14%) Microsoft
3 13 (6.19%) Oracle
4 9 (4.29%) SAP
5 8 (3.81%) Google
6 6 (2.86%) Splunk
7 5 (2.38%) webMethods
8 4 (1.90%) Ariba
8 4 (1.90%) Atlassian
8 4 (1.90%) VMware
9 3 (1.43%) Ab Initio
9 3 (1.43%) Blue Prism
9 3 (1.43%) Databricks
9 3 (1.43%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.43%) IBM
9 3 (1.43%) Teradata
9 3 (1.43%) UiPath
10 2 (0.95%) Adobe
10 2 (0.95%) Solace
10 2 (0.95%) Sparx