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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 45 42
Rank change year-on-year -13 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Java 220 135 228
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.55% 4.42% 3.99%
As % of the Programming Languages category 17.77% 16.75% 17.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 75 160
10th Percentile £210 £315 £365
25th Percentile £357 £396 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £475 £586
Median % change year-on-year +6.32% -18.98% +11.67%
75th Percentile £600 £569 £675
90th Percentile £675 £636 £738
England median daily rate £525 £534 £600
% change year-on-year -1.59% -11.01% -0.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 9 12
10th Percentile £56.00 £41.17 £37.25
25th Percentile £61.25 - £59.38
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -23.08% -3.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £55.00 £68.70
90th Percentile - - £74.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -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 1,238 806 1,305
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.95% 26.37% 22.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 808 547 891
10th Percentile £312 £337 £325
25th Percentile £403 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% -2.34% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
England median daily rate £518 £520 £540
% change year-on-year -0.48% -3.70% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 26 90
10th Percentile £34.01 £36.38 £35.00
25th Percentile £43.81 £46.93 £46.25
Median hourly rate £60.00 £54.94 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +9.22% -12.10% +10.68%
75th Percentile £70.00 £59.78 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.55 £64.52 £75.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £63.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.70% +0.80%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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
Surrey +11 58 £511 +7.63% 6
Thames Valley -60 57 £450 -1.64% 21
Hampshire -7 52 £600 +20.60% 18
West Sussex 0 42 £357 -23.99% 2
Berkshire -50 38 £385 -23.00% 15
Buckinghamshire -36 13 £513 +34.87% 5
Sussex - 7 £475 - 1
Oxfordshire -23 6 £800 - 1
East Sussex -5 1 £600 +77.78% 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 8 (3.64%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.27%) Documentum
3 4 (1.82%) NetWeaver
3 4 (1.82%) SAP EP
3 4 (1.82%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.91%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.45%) Apache
6 1 (0.45%) CMS
6 1 (0.45%) Confluence
6 1 (0.45%) IIS
6 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 55 (25.00%) Azure
3 31 (14.09%) GCP
4 28 (12.73%) OpenShift
5 20 (9.09%) GitHub
6 14 (6.36%) Amazon S3
7 11 (5.00%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (4.55%) Serverless
9 9 (4.09%) AWS Lambda
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 3 (1.36%) Amazon SQS
13 3 (1.36%) AWS CodePipeline
13 3 (1.36%) SaaS
13 3 (1.36%) Sauce Labs
14 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
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (13.64%) Relational Database
2 22 (10.00%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (9.55%) NoSQL
4 17 (7.73%) MySQL
5 13 (5.91%) Big Data
6 12 (5.45%) DynamoDB
7 8 (3.64%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (3.64%) SQL Server
8 7 (3.18%) Data Lake
9 5 (2.27%) Apache Cassandra
9 5 (2.27%) Couchbase
9 5 (2.27%) Power BI
10 3 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.36%) Metadata
10 3 (1.36%) Pinecone
10 3 (1.36%) Weaviate
11 2 (0.91%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.91%) RDBMS
12 1 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 35 (15.91%) Git
2 26 (11.82%) Jenkins
3 19 (8.64%) SonarQube
4 13 (5.91%) JUnit
5 12 (5.45%) Maven
6 8 (3.64%) Gradle
6 8 (3.64%) JIRA
6 8 (3.64%) Selenium
7 7 (3.18%) Eclipse
8 6 (2.73%) GitLab
9 5 (2.27%) Bitbucket
9 5 (2.27%) WebDriver
10 4 (1.82%) Android Studio
10 4 (1.82%) Cucumber
10 4 (1.82%) Subversion
10 4 (1.82%) Visual Studio
11 3 (1.36%) Postman
11 3 (1.36%) REST Assured
11 3 (1.36%) TeamCity
11 3 (1.36%) Xcode
General
1 57 (25.91%) Social Skills
2 23 (10.45%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (10.00%) Finance
4 7 (3.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 7 (3.18%) Public Sector
5 5 (2.27%) Banking
6 4 (1.82%) Marketing
7 3 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.45%) Advertising
9 1 (0.45%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 79 (35.91%) Developer
2 64 (29.09%) Java Developer
3 34 (15.45%) Java Engineer
4 24 (10.91%) Software Engineer
5 23 (10.45%) Architect
6 22 (10.00%) Senior
7 14 (6.36%) Technical Architect
8 11 (5.00%) Lead
8 11 (5.00%) Technical Support
9 10 (4.55%) Applications Developer
9 10 (4.55%) SC Cleared Java Developer
9 10 (4.55%) Senior Developer
10 9 (4.09%) Technical Engineer
11 8 (3.64%) DevOps Engineer
11 8 (3.64%) Support Engineer
12 7 (3.18%) Senior Java Engineer
12 7 (3.18%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 7 (3.18%) Technical Support Engineer
13 6 (2.73%) Analyst
13 6 (2.73%) Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (17.73%) Spring
2 34 (15.45%) REST
3 29 (13.18%) Spring Boot
4 27 (12.27%) AngularJS
5 22 (10.00%) .NET
6 19 (8.64%) Quarkus
6 19 (8.64%) React
7 17 (7.73%) Kafka
8 15 (6.82%) GraphQL
8 15 (6.82%) RESTful
9 14 (6.36%) CSS
10 12 (5.45%) SOAP
11 11 (5.00%) HTML
12 9 (4.09%) Hibernate
13 8 (3.64%) OAuth
14 7 (3.18%) Web Services
15 6 (2.73%) JPA
15 6 (2.73%) Node.js
15 6 (2.73%) Spring MVC
16 5 (2.27%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 35 (15.91%) Distributed Systems
2 20 (9.09%) Cloud Native
3 8 (3.64%) Mobile App
3 8 (3.64%) Product Ownership
4 6 (2.73%) Enterprise Software
4 6 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.27%) Data Protection Act
5 5 (2.27%) Distributed Architecture
6 4 (1.82%) Data Centre
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%) Clustering
9 1 (0.45%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.45%) IoT
9 1 (0.45%) Life Science
9 1 (0.45%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (0.45%) Robotics
9 1 (0.45%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (9.09%) Unix
2 19 (8.64%) Linux
3 16 (7.27%) Windows
4 8 (3.64%) Android
5 4 (1.82%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.45%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (35.00%) CI/CD
2 72 (32.73%) Agile
3 63 (28.64%) Software Engineering
4 53 (24.09%) DevOps
5 48 (21.82%) Test Automation
6 46 (20.91%) Microservices
7 42 (19.09%) Scrum
8 34 (15.45%) Problem-Solving
9 31 (14.09%) SDLC
9 31 (14.09%) Unit Testing
10 27 (12.27%) Sprint Planning
11 24 (10.91%) High Availability
12 23 (10.45%) DevSecOps
12 23 (10.45%) Front End Development
13 22 (10.00%) Event-Driven
14 21 (9.55%) Containerisation
14 21 (9.55%) Sprint Review
15 20 (9.09%) OOP
16 19 (8.64%) Fintech
17 16 (7.27%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 55 (25.00%) Python
2 47 (21.36%) SQL
3 35 (15.91%) JavaScript
4 24 (10.91%) Go
5 18 (8.18%) C#
6 11 (5.00%) Kotlin
7 10 (4.55%) Perl
8 8 (3.64%) PowerShell
8 8 (3.64%) Shell Script
9 7 (3.18%) C++
10 6 (2.73%) TypeScript
11 5 (2.27%) Bash
11 5 (2.27%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.82%) ABAP
12 4 (1.82%) Scala
12 4 (1.82%) VB.NET
13 2 (0.91%) BeanShell
13 2 (0.91%) Groovy
13 2 (0.91%) R
13 2 (0.91%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 83 (37.73%) Security Cleared
2 72 (32.73%) SC Cleared
3 20 (9.09%) Degree
4 16 (7.27%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (2.27%) AWS Certification
5 5 (2.27%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.82%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.36%) Azure Certification
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 29 (13.18%) 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 20 (9.09%) Docker
2 5 (2.27%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 52 (23.64%) Kubernetes
2 20 (9.09%) Argo
3 5 (2.27%) Terraform
4 4 (1.82%) Grafana
4 4 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.91%) Ansible
6 2 (0.91%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.91%) Puppet
7 1 (0.45%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 18 (8.18%) Red Hat
2 16 (7.27%) Oracle
3 12 (5.45%) Microsoft
4 8 (3.64%) Google
5 7 (3.18%) Splunk
6 5 (2.27%) Ab Initio
6 5 (2.27%) Ariba
6 5 (2.27%) SAP
6 5 (2.27%) Teradata
7 4 (1.82%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.36%) Blue Prism
8 3 (1.36%) Dynatrace
8 3 (1.36%) UiPath
9 2 (0.91%) Adobe
9 2 (0.91%) Databricks
9 2 (0.91%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.91%) Sparx
10 1 (0.45%) HP
10 1 (0.45%) Remedy
10 1 (0.45%) Salesforce