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 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 48 43
Rank change year-on-year -4 -5 -4
Contract jobs citing Java 220 131 223
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.62% 4.38% 3.88%
As % of the Programming Languages category 18.35% 16.33% 17.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 73 153
10th Percentile £204 £360 £365
25th Percentile £357 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £575
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -17.39% +9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £675
90th Percentile £675 £638 £738
England median daily rate £525 £540 £588
% change year-on-year -2.78% -8.09% -2.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 8 14
10th Percentile £55.50 £41.26 £41.75
25th Percentile £60.63 - £60.31
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -23.08% -5.45%
75th Percentile £70.00 £55.00 £67.02
90th Percentile - - £74.63
England median hourly rate £65.00 £52.50 £67.02
% change year-on-year +23.81% -21.67% +2.32%

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 1,199 802 1,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.75% 26.84% 22.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 802 552 884
10th Percentile £310 £350 £325
25th Percentile £402 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% -0.15% -4.57%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £656 £675
England median daily rate £513 £524 £540
% change year-on-year -2.10% -3.06% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 27 88
10th Percentile £34.01 £37.60 £35.00
25th Percentile £44.42 £48.99 £46.25
Median hourly rate £57.50 £55.00 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -11.29% +10.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £65.62 £75.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £58.88 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.40% -5.80% -

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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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
Thames Valley -54 60 £456 -8.75% 16
Surrey +13 56 £513 +3.64% 10
Hampshire -6 52 £600 +32.60% 14
Berkshire -46 41 £389 -22.20% 11
West Sussex -2 40 £364 -22.39% 4
Buckinghamshire -33 13 £513 +34.74% 4
Sussex - 7 £475 - 1
Oxfordshire -22 6 £800 - 1
East Sussex -3 1 £600 +60.00% 1
Middlesex - 1 £725 - 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 8 (3.64%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.82%) IIS
2 4 (1.82%) NetWeaver
2 4 (1.82%) SAP EP
3 3 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.36%) Documentum
4 2 (0.91%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 2 (0.91%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.45%) Apache
5 1 (0.45%) CMS
5 1 (0.45%) Confluence
5 1 (0.45%) OpenStack
Applications
1 2 (0.91%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.82%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.91%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 58 (26.36%) AWS
2 53 (24.09%) Azure
3 31 (14.09%) GCP
4 25 (11.36%) OpenShift
5 21 (9.55%) GitHub
6 14 (6.36%) Amazon S3
7 12 (5.45%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (4.55%) Serverless
9 9 (4.09%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (3.64%) Snowflake
11 7 (3.18%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.27%) Power Platform
12 5 (2.27%) SuccessFactors
13 4 (1.82%) SaaS
13 4 (1.82%) Sauce Labs
14 3 (1.36%) Amazon SQS
14 3 (1.36%) AWS CodePipeline
15 2 (0.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.82%) HTTP
1 4 (1.82%) HTTPS
2 2 (0.91%) FTP
2 2 (0.91%) Wireshark
3 1 (0.45%) DHCP
3 1 (0.45%) DNS
3 1 (0.45%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (16.36%) Relational Database
2 21 (9.55%) NoSQL
3 20 (9.09%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (8.64%) MySQL
5 13 (5.91%) Big Data
6 12 (5.45%) DynamoDB
7 10 (4.55%) SQL Server
8 8 (3.64%) Data Warehouse
9 7 (3.18%) Data Lake
10 5 (2.27%) Apache Cassandra
10 5 (2.27%) Couchbase
10 5 (2.27%) Power BI
11 4 (1.82%) MongoDB
12 3 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (1.36%) Metadata
12 3 (1.36%) Pinecone
12 3 (1.36%) Weaviate
13 2 (0.91%) BigQuery
13 2 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
13 2 (0.91%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 33 (15.00%) Git
2 25 (11.36%) Jenkins
3 17 (7.73%) SonarQube
4 13 (5.91%) Maven
5 11 (5.00%) JUnit
6 9 (4.09%) Gradle
7 8 (3.64%) Eclipse
7 8 (3.64%) JIRA
7 8 (3.64%) Selenium
8 6 (2.73%) GitLab
9 5 (2.27%) Android Studio
9 5 (2.27%) Bitbucket
9 5 (2.27%) WebDriver
10 4 (1.82%) Browser DevTools
10 4 (1.82%) Subversion
10 4 (1.82%) Xcode
11 3 (1.36%) Cucumber
11 3 (1.36%) Postman
11 3 (1.36%) REST Assured
11 3 (1.36%) Visual Studio
General
1 58 (26.36%) Social Skills
2 23 (10.45%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (9.09%) Finance
4 7 (3.18%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (2.27%) Banking
7 4 (1.82%) Marketing
8 3 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.45%) Advertising
10 1 (0.45%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.45%) Back Office
10 1 (0.45%) Front Office
10 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 76 (34.55%) Developer
2 62 (28.18%) Java Developer
3 33 (15.00%) Java Engineer
4 28 (12.73%) Software Engineer
5 22 (10.00%) Architect
6 21 (9.55%) Senior
7 14 (6.36%) Technical Architect
7 14 (6.36%) Technical Support
8 12 (5.45%) Lead
9 10 (4.55%) Applications Developer
9 10 (4.55%) Technical Engineer
10 9 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 9 (4.09%) SC Cleared Java Developer
10 9 (4.09%) Senior Developer
10 9 (4.09%) Support Engineer
11 8 (3.64%) Technical Support Engineer
12 7 (3.18%) Java Software Engineer
12 7 (3.18%) Senior Java Engineer
12 7 (3.18%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 6 (2.73%) Mid-Level Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (16.82%) Spring
2 34 (15.45%) REST
3 31 (14.09%) AngularJS
4 27 (12.27%) Spring Boot
5 22 (10.00%) React
6 19 (8.64%) Kafka
7 18 (8.18%) .NET
8 17 (7.73%) Quarkus
9 16 (7.27%) GraphQL
10 15 (6.82%) CSS
11 14 (6.36%) RESTful
12 12 (5.45%) SOAP
13 11 (5.00%) HTML
14 9 (4.09%) Hibernate
15 8 (3.64%) OAuth
16 7 (3.18%) Web Services
17 6 (2.73%) JPA
17 6 (2.73%) Node.js
17 6 (2.73%) Spring MVC
17 6 (2.73%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 33 (15.00%) Distributed Systems
2 19 (8.64%) Cloud Native
3 9 (4.09%) Mobile App
4 6 (2.73%) Product Ownership
4 6 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.27%) Data Centre
5 5 (2.27%) Distributed Architecture
5 5 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.82%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.36%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.91%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.45%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.45%) IoT
9 1 (0.45%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.45%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (0.45%) Robotics
9 1 (0.45%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 1 (0.45%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 23 (10.45%) Linux
1 23 (10.45%) Unix
2 21 (9.55%) Windows
3 9 (4.09%) Android
4 5 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.82%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.91%) VMS
7 1 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (35.91%) CI/CD
2 74 (33.64%) Agile
3 66 (30.00%) Software Engineering
4 50 (22.73%) DevOps
5 45 (20.45%) Microservices
6 44 (20.00%) Test Automation
7 43 (19.55%) Scrum
8 35 (15.91%) Problem-Solving
9 28 (12.73%) SDLC
9 28 (12.73%) Unit Testing
10 24 (10.91%) Containerisation
11 23 (10.45%) High Availability
11 23 (10.45%) Sprint Planning
12 22 (10.00%) DevSecOps
12 22 (10.00%) OOP
13 21 (9.55%) Front End Development
14 20 (9.09%) Event-Driven
14 20 (9.09%) Fintech
15 18 (8.18%) Computer Science
15 18 (8.18%) OO
Programming Languages
1 59 (26.82%) Python
2 49 (22.27%) SQL
3 42 (19.09%) JavaScript
4 24 (10.91%) Go
5 20 (9.09%) C#
6 13 (5.91%) Perl
7 11 (5.00%) Kotlin
7 11 (5.00%) PowerShell
8 8 (3.64%) Bash
8 8 (3.64%) Shell Script
9 6 (2.73%) C++
9 6 (2.73%) TypeScript
10 5 (2.27%) PL/SQL
11 4 (1.82%) ABAP
11 4 (1.82%) Scala
12 3 (1.36%) VB.NET
13 2 (0.91%) BeanShell
13 2 (0.91%) Groovy
13 2 (0.91%) R
13 2 (0.91%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 81 (36.82%) Security Cleared
2 72 (32.73%) SC Cleared
3 22 (10.00%) Degree
4 18 (8.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (2.27%) AWS Certification
6 4 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (1.36%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.36%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.36%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.91%) CISM
8 2 (0.91%) CISSP
8 2 (0.91%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.45%) CEH
9 1 (0.45%) ISTQB
9 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (11.36%) QA
2 5 (2.27%) GDPR
2 5 (2.27%) NCSC
3 4 (1.82%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.36%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.45%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.45%) WCAG
System Software
1 22 (10.00%) Docker
2 6 (2.73%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 54 (24.55%) Kubernetes
2 18 (8.18%) Argo
3 5 (2.27%) Terraform
4 4 (1.82%) Ansible
4 4 (1.82%) Grafana
4 4 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.91%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.91%) Puppet
7 1 (0.45%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.45%) SCCM
7 1 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (8.64%) Oracle
2 16 (7.27%) Red Hat
3 13 (5.91%) Microsoft
4 8 (3.64%) Google
4 8 (3.64%) Splunk
5 5 (2.27%) Ab Initio
5 5 (2.27%) Ariba
5 5 (2.27%) SAP
5 5 (2.27%) Teradata
6 4 (1.82%) Atlassian
7 3 (1.36%) Blue Prism
7 3 (1.36%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.36%) UiPath
8 2 (0.91%) Adobe
8 2 (0.91%) Databricks
8 2 (0.91%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.91%) Sparx
8 2 (0.91%) VMware
9 1 (0.45%) HP
9 1 (0.45%) Parasoft