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 10 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 39 45
Rank change year-on-year -41 +6 +1
Contract jobs citing Java 178 166 193
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.68% 4.75% 4.17%
As % of the Programming Languages category 13.92% 18.24% 16.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 115 145
10th Percentile £240 £204 £363
25th Percentile £334 £313 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £455 £550
Median % change year-on-year +12.09% -17.27% +8.64%
75th Percentile £622 £561 £650
90th Percentile £735 £600 £683
England median daily rate £525 £525 £600
% change year-on-year - -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 10 4
10th Percentile £46.83 £49.63 £36.68
25th Percentile £55.00 - £50.06
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -16.67% -9.43%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £65.31
90th Percentile - £55.00 £70.38
England median hourly rate £69.75 £50.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +39.50% -28.57% +7.69%

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 1,279 910 1,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.27% 26.02% 24.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 800 625 776
10th Percentile £306 £292 £325
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £611
90th Percentile £688 £637 £659
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 37 56
10th Percentile £27.75 £49.59 £27.00
25th Percentile £38.25 £50.00 £49.94
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -21.43% +26.06%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £75.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £58.75 £76.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.12% -14.62% +3.17%

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 10 September 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 10 September 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 10 September 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
West Sussex +12 48 £295 -11.68% 13
Surrey -11 46 £513 +146.99% 7
Thames Valley -61 40 £525 +16.67% 44
Hampshire -42 39 £643 +7.98% 18
Berkshire -54 23 £440 -2.22% 23
Oxfordshire -16 10 £530 - 12
Buckinghamshire -33 7 £370 +13.69% 9
East Sussex -3 1 £600 +100.00% 4
Middlesex -20 1 - - 2
Sussex - 1 £600 - 1
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 (3.93%) Apache Spark
1 7 (3.93%) Documentum
2 4 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.69%) NetWeaver
3 3 (1.69%) SAP EP
4 1 (0.56%) Apache
4 1 (0.56%) Confluence
4 1 (0.56%) IIS
4 1 (0.56%) OpenEdge
4 1 (0.56%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.56%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (2.25%) SAP PSCD
2 3 (1.69%) SAP CRM
3 2 (1.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 48 (26.97%) Azure
2 43 (24.16%) AWS
3 27 (15.17%) OpenShift
4 21 (11.80%) GCP
5 18 (10.11%) GitHub
6 13 (7.30%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (5.06%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (3.93%) Amazon S3
9 6 (3.37%) Power Platform
10 5 (2.81%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (2.81%) Serverless
11 4 (2.25%) Snowflake
11 4 (2.25%) SuccessFactors
12 3 (1.69%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (1.69%) SaaS
12 3 (1.69%) Sauce Labs
13 2 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 2 (1.12%) Amazon SQS
13 2 (1.12%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.25%) HTTPS
2 3 (1.69%) Wireshark
3 1 (0.56%) Broadband
3 1 (0.56%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (12.92%) Relational Database
2 17 (9.55%) NoSQL
2 17 (9.55%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (6.18%) MySQL
4 9 (5.06%) Big Data
5 8 (4.49%) Couchbase
5 8 (4.49%) SQL Server
6 6 (3.37%) Apache Cassandra
6 6 (3.37%) Data Lake
6 6 (3.37%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (3.37%) DynamoDB
6 6 (3.37%) Power BI
7 4 (2.25%) Metadata
8 3 (1.69%) MongoDB
8 3 (1.69%) RDBMS
9 2 (1.12%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (1.12%) BigQuery
9 2 (1.12%) Db2
10 1 (0.56%) Redis
10 1 (0.56%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 33 (18.54%) Git
2 21 (11.80%) SonarQube
3 19 (10.67%) Jenkins
4 11 (6.18%) JUnit
5 9 (5.06%) JIRA
6 7 (3.93%) Gradle
6 7 (3.93%) Selenium
7 6 (3.37%) GitLab
7 6 (3.37%) Maven
8 5 (2.81%) Bitbucket
8 5 (2.81%) REST Assured
9 4 (2.25%) Android Studio
9 4 (2.25%) JMeter
9 4 (2.25%) Postman
9 4 (2.25%) Visual Studio
9 4 (2.25%) WebDriver
10 3 (1.69%) Cucumber
10 3 (1.69%) Eclipse
10 3 (1.69%) Rational DOORS
10 3 (1.69%) Xcode
General
1 40 (22.47%) Social Skills
2 23 (12.92%) Finance
3 18 (10.11%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (4.49%) Banking
5 7 (3.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 4 (2.25%) Public Sector
7 3 (1.69%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.69%) Military
8 2 (1.12%) Advertising
8 2 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.56%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 58 (32.58%) Developer
2 38 (21.35%) Java Developer
3 28 (15.73%) Senior
4 26 (14.61%) Java Engineer
5 22 (12.36%) Architect
6 21 (11.80%) Software Engineer
7 12 (6.74%) Technical Architect
8 10 (5.62%) Senior Developer
9 9 (5.06%) Software Developer
10 8 (4.49%) Consultant
10 8 (4.49%) Java Architect
10 8 (4.49%) SC Cleared Java Developer
11 7 (3.93%) Analyst
11 7 (3.93%) Documentum Architect
11 7 (3.93%) Lead
11 7 (3.93%) Senior Java Developer
11 7 (3.93%) Technical Engineer
12 6 (3.37%) Java Software Engineer
12 6 (3.37%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 6 (3.37%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (22.47%) REST
2 32 (17.98%) AngularJS
3 30 (16.85%) Spring
4 24 (13.48%) Spring Boot
5 23 (12.92%) .NET
6 21 (11.80%) Quarkus
7 19 (10.67%) Kafka
8 15 (8.43%) React
9 14 (7.87%) GraphQL
10 13 (7.30%) CSS
10 13 (7.30%) RESTful
11 12 (6.74%) SOAP
12 11 (6.18%) HTML
13 8 (4.49%) Web Services
14 7 (3.93%) Hibernate
14 7 (3.93%) JSON
14 7 (3.93%) Node.js
14 7 (3.93%) OAuth
14 7 (3.93%) SAP PI
15 6 (3.37%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 27 (15.17%) Distributed Systems
2 17 (9.55%) Cloud Native
3 7 (3.93%) Data Protection Act
3 7 (3.93%) Product Ownership
4 6 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (2.81%) Algorithms
5 5 (2.81%) Mobile App
6 4 (2.25%) Distributed Architecture
6 4 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (1.12%) Data Structures
8 2 (1.12%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.56%) AI Agents
9 1 (0.56%) EMV
9 1 (0.56%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.56%) IoT
9 1 (0.56%) Java Card
9 1 (0.56%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.56%) Robotics
9 1 (0.56%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 15 (8.43%) Unix
2 11 (6.18%) Windows
3 10 (5.62%) Linux
4 7 (3.93%) Android
5 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.56%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (41.01%) Agile
2 65 (36.52%) CI/CD
3 63 (35.39%) Software Engineering
4 57 (32.02%) Test Automation
5 46 (25.84%) DevOps
6 43 (24.16%) Microservices
7 39 (21.91%) SDLC
8 38 (21.35%) Scrum
9 32 (17.98%) Unit Testing
10 31 (17.42%) Sprint Planning
11 26 (14.61%) Sprint Review
12 25 (14.04%) DevSecOps
12 25 (14.04%) Front End Development
12 25 (14.04%) Problem-Solving
13 20 (11.24%) Event-Driven
13 20 (11.24%) High Availability
14 16 (8.99%) Continuous Improvement
15 14 (7.87%) Containerisation
15 14 (7.87%) Design Patterns
15 14 (7.87%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 43 (24.16%) Python
2 37 (20.79%) SQL
3 28 (15.73%) JavaScript
4 16 (8.99%) C#
5 15 (8.43%) Go
6 10 (5.62%) PowerShell
7 8 (4.49%) Shell Script
8 7 (3.93%) ABAP
8 7 (3.93%) C++
9 6 (3.37%) Kotlin
9 6 (3.37%) TypeScript
10 5 (2.81%) Perl
10 5 (2.81%) PL/SQL
11 4 (2.25%) Bash
11 4 (2.25%) Scala
11 4 (2.25%) VB.NET
12 3 (1.69%) C
12 3 (1.69%) Lua
13 2 (1.12%) Groovy
13 2 (1.12%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 72 (40.45%) Security Cleared
2 60 (33.71%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.87%) Degree
4 9 (5.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (4.49%) DV Cleared
6 5 (2.81%) AWS Certification
6 5 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (2.25%) DBS Check
8 3 (1.69%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.12%) CISM
9 2 (1.12%) CISSP
9 2 (1.12%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.56%) CCNA
10 1 (0.56%) CEH
10 1 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.56%) ISEB
10 1 (0.56%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (21.35%) QA
2 5 (2.81%) GDPR
2 5 (2.81%) NCSC
3 4 (2.25%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.56%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.56%) Software Quality Assurance
4 1 (0.56%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (11.24%) Docker
2 5 (2.81%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 45 (25.28%) Kubernetes
2 22 (12.36%) Argo
3 3 (1.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 3 (1.69%) Grafana
3 3 (1.69%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.12%) Ansible
4 2 (1.12%) Puppet
5 1 (0.56%) Amdocs OSS
5 1 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 20 (11.24%) Red Hat
2 17 (9.55%) Microsoft
3 14 (7.87%) Oracle
4 9 (5.06%) SAP
5 7 (3.93%) Splunk
6 6 (3.37%) Google
7 5 (2.81%) webMethods
8 4 (2.25%) Ariba
8 4 (2.25%) VMware
9 3 (1.69%) Blue Prism
9 3 (1.69%) IBM
10 2 (1.12%) Ab Initio
10 2 (1.12%) Databricks
10 2 (1.12%) Dynatrace
10 2 (1.12%) Solace
10 2 (1.12%) Sparx
10 2 (1.12%) Teradata
11 1 (0.56%) Conga
11 1 (0.56%) Cramer
11 1 (0.56%) NetCracker