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 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 46 42
Rank change year-on-year -21 -4 +2
Contract jobs citing Java 216 157 219
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.27% 4.53% 4.27%
As % of the Programming Languages category 16.13% 17.70% 17.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 130 102 151
10th Percentile £243 £226 £363
25th Percentile £358 £365 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £473 £600
Median % change year-on-year +8.47% -21.25% +14.29%
75th Percentile £600 £569 £661
90th Percentile £701 £600 £738
England median daily rate £525 £530 £600
% change year-on-year -0.94% -11.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 10 7
10th Percentile - £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 £67.50 £50.00 £68.75
% change year-on-year +35.00% -27.27% +5.36%

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 1,339 887 1,228
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 20.27% 25.60% 23.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 846 614 843
10th Percentile £310 £314 £325
25th Percentile £403 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +2.65% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £688 £638 £652
England median daily rate £523 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.55% -6.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 23 64
10th Percentile £33.70 £33.10 £27.00
25th Percentile £43.81 £47.62 £53.19
Median hourly rate £62.50 £52.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.05% -19.23% +18.18%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.72 £75.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £64.36 £77.50
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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 +8 58 £511 +7.63% 3
West Sussex +7 53 £313 -17.60% 5
Hampshire -25 49 £600 +0.42% 16
Thames Valley -60 49 £528 +17.22% 35
Berkshire -56 29 £450 -2.96% 18
Oxfordshire -13 10 £530 - 12
Buckinghamshire -39 10 £463 +29.37% 5
Sussex - 3 £475 - 1
East Sussex -2 1 £600 +88.24% 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 (3.24%) Apache Spark
1 7 (3.24%) Documentum
2 4 (1.85%) NetWeaver
2 4 (1.85%) SAP EP
2 4 (1.85%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.93%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 2 (0.93%) Apache
5 1 (0.46%) CMS
5 1 (0.46%) Confluence
5 1 (0.46%) IIS
5 1 (0.46%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.46%) WebLogic
Applications
1 4 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.46%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (1.85%) SAP CRM
1 4 (1.85%) SAP PSCD
2 2 (0.93%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.46%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 51 (23.61%) AWS
1 51 (23.61%) Azure
2 29 (13.43%) OpenShift
3 25 (11.57%) GCP
4 18 (8.33%) GitHub
5 12 (5.56%) Amazon S3
5 12 (5.56%) Azure DevOps
6 10 (4.63%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (3.70%) Serverless
8 7 (3.24%) Amazon ECS
8 7 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (2.31%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (2.31%) Power Platform
9 5 (2.31%) Snowflake
9 5 (2.31%) SuccessFactors
10 4 (1.85%) Amazon SQS
11 3 (1.39%) AWS CodePipeline
11 3 (1.39%) SaaS
11 3 (1.39%) Sauce Labs
12 2 (0.93%) Amazon OpenSearch
Communications & Networking
1 7 (3.24%) HTTPS
2 5 (2.31%) Wireshark
3 4 (1.85%) HTTP
4 2 (0.93%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (12.50%) Relational Database
2 21 (9.72%) NoSQL
2 21 (9.72%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (5.09%) Big Data
3 11 (5.09%) MySQL
4 10 (4.63%) DynamoDB
5 8 (3.70%) SQL Server
6 7 (3.24%) Data Lake
6 7 (3.24%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (2.78%) Apache Cassandra
7 6 (2.78%) Couchbase
8 5 (2.31%) Power BI
9 4 (1.85%) Metadata
10 3 (1.39%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.39%) MongoDB
10 3 (1.39%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.93%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.93%) Db2
12 1 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
12 1 (0.46%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 41 (18.98%) Git
2 25 (11.57%) Jenkins
3 23 (10.65%) SonarQube
4 12 (5.56%) JIRA
5 11 (5.09%) JUnit
5 11 (5.09%) Maven
6 7 (3.24%) Eclipse
6 7 (3.24%) Gradle
6 7 (3.24%) Selenium
7 6 (2.78%) GitLab
8 5 (2.31%) Bitbucket
8 5 (2.31%) REST Assured
9 4 (1.85%) Android Studio
9 4 (1.85%) Cucumber
9 4 (1.85%) Postman
9 4 (1.85%) Subversion
9 4 (1.85%) Visual Studio
9 4 (1.85%) WebDriver
10 3 (1.39%) JMeter
10 3 (1.39%) Xcode
General
1 54 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 22 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
2 22 (10.19%) Finance
3 7 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 6 (2.78%) Banking
5 5 (2.31%) Public Sector
6 3 (1.39%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (1.39%) Military
7 2 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (0.93%) Marketing
8 1 (0.46%) Advertising
8 1 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.46%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.46%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.46%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 74 (34.26%) Developer
2 53 (24.54%) Java Developer
3 31 (14.35%) Java Engineer
4 30 (13.89%) Software Engineer
5 29 (13.43%) Senior
6 25 (11.57%) Architect
7 14 (6.48%) Technical Architect
8 10 (4.63%) Lead
8 10 (4.63%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 10 (4.63%) Senior Developer
8 10 (4.63%) Software Developer
9 9 (4.17%) Technical Engineer
10 8 (3.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 8 (3.70%) Java Architect
11 7 (3.24%) Applications Developer
11 7 (3.24%) Documentum Architect
11 7 (3.24%) Senior Java Developer
11 7 (3.24%) Senior Java Engineer
11 7 (3.24%) Technical Support
11 7 (3.24%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (21.30%) REST
2 37 (17.13%) Spring
3 35 (16.20%) AngularJS
4 30 (13.89%) Spring Boot
5 23 (10.65%) Quarkus
6 22 (10.19%) .NET
7 20 (9.26%) RESTful
8 18 (8.33%) Kafka
9 17 (7.87%) React
10 16 (7.41%) SOAP
11 15 (6.94%) GraphQL
12 13 (6.02%) CSS
13 12 (5.56%) Hibernate
14 11 (5.09%) HTML
14 11 (5.09%) Web Services
15 9 (4.17%) XML
16 8 (3.70%) OAuth
16 8 (3.70%) SAP PI
17 7 (3.24%) JSON
17 7 (3.24%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 31 (14.35%) Distributed Systems
2 21 (9.72%) Cloud Native
3 8 (3.70%) Product Ownership
4 7 (3.24%) Mobile App
4 7 (3.24%) Self-Motivation
5 6 (2.78%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (2.31%) Algorithms
6 5 (2.31%) Data Structures
6 5 (2.31%) Distributed Architecture
7 4 (1.85%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (0.93%) Security Posture
10 1 (0.46%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (0.46%) IoT
10 1 (0.46%) Life Science
10 1 (0.46%) Low-Code
10 1 (0.46%) Marketing Technology
10 1 (0.46%) Robotics
10 1 (0.46%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 18 (8.33%) Unix
2 15 (6.94%) Linux
3 13 (6.02%) Windows
4 9 (4.17%) Android
5 3 (1.39%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.46%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (39.35%) Agile
2 75 (34.72%) CI/CD
3 74 (34.26%) Software Engineering
4 58 (26.85%) Test Automation
5 54 (25.00%) DevOps
6 51 (23.61%) Scrum
7 49 (22.69%) Microservices
8 42 (19.44%) SDLC
9 36 (16.67%) Sprint Planning
10 35 (16.20%) Unit Testing
11 31 (14.35%) Problem-Solving
12 28 (12.96%) Sprint Review
13 27 (12.50%) DevSecOps
13 27 (12.50%) Front End Development
14 23 (10.65%) Event-Driven
15 21 (9.72%) Design Patterns
16 20 (9.26%) High Availability
17 19 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
18 17 (7.87%) Containerisation
19 15 (6.94%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 46 (21.30%) Python
2 43 (19.91%) SQL
3 30 (13.89%) JavaScript
4 21 (9.72%) Go
5 17 (7.87%) C#
6 12 (5.56%) Kotlin
7 11 (5.09%) PowerShell
8 9 (4.17%) Shell Script
9 8 (3.70%) ABAP
10 7 (3.24%) C++
11 6 (2.78%) PL/SQL
11 6 (2.78%) TypeScript
12 5 (2.31%) Bash
12 5 (2.31%) Perl
13 4 (1.85%) C
13 4 (1.85%) Scala
13 4 (1.85%) VB.NET
14 3 (1.39%) Groovy
14 3 (1.39%) Lua
15 2 (0.93%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 88 (40.74%) Security Cleared
2 76 (35.19%) SC Cleared
3 18 (8.33%) Degree
4 12 (5.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (3.70%) DV Cleared
6 5 (2.31%) AWS Certification
6 5 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.85%) DBS Check
8 3 (1.39%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.93%) CISM
9 2 (0.93%) CISSP
9 2 (0.93%) ISTQB
9 2 (0.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.93%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.46%) CCNA
10 1 (0.46%) CEH
10 1 (0.46%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.46%) ISEB
10 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (17.13%) QA
2 6 (2.78%) Data Quality
3 5 (2.31%) GDPR
3 5 (2.31%) NCSC
4 2 (0.93%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.46%) Software Quality Assurance
5 1 (0.46%) WCAG
System Software
1 23 (10.65%) Docker
2 5 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.85%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 49 (22.69%) Kubernetes
2 24 (11.11%) Argo
3 5 (2.31%) Terraform
4 4 (1.85%) Grafana
4 4 (1.85%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.93%) Ansible
6 2 (0.93%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.93%) Puppet
7 1 (0.46%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.46%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 22 (10.19%) Red Hat
2 15 (6.94%) Microsoft
3 12 (5.56%) Oracle
4 10 (4.63%) SAP
5 8 (3.70%) Google
6 6 (2.78%) Splunk
7 5 (2.31%) Ariba
7 5 (2.31%) webMethods
8 4 (1.85%) Atlassian
8 4 (1.85%) VMware
9 3 (1.39%) Ab Initio
9 3 (1.39%) Blue Prism
9 3 (1.39%) Databricks
9 3 (1.39%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.39%) IBM
9 3 (1.39%) Teradata
9 3 (1.39%) UiPath
10 2 (0.93%) Adobe
10 2 (0.93%) Solace
10 2 (0.93%) Sparx