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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 53 58
Rank change year-on-year +11 +5 -26
Contract jobs citing Java 231 109 182
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.53% 3.52% 3.28%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.54% 12.30% 15.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 72 122
10th Percentile £204 £300 £363
25th Percentile £303 £405 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £575 £560
Median % change year-on-year -26.09% +2.68% +3.70%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £685
90th Percentile £634 £662 £738
England median daily rate £520 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.11% +1.74% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 0 11
10th Percentile £35.00 - £44.60
25th Percentile £50.00 - £63.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 - £65.00
75th Percentile £67.50 - £67.02
90th Percentile £68.75 - £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -3.85%

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 1,025 886 1,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 20.10% 28.59% 20.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 739 576 788
10th Percentile £308 £350 £325
25th Percentile £403 £422 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% -4.05% -
75th Percentile £588 £616 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.23% -5.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 27 81
10th Percentile £27.88 £43.71 -
25th Percentile £46.25 £48.24 £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.75 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.12% +7.32%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.13 £67.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.87 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -21 72 £425 -27.35% 30
Hampshire +21 70 £462 -26.16% 24
Berkshire -8 61 £380 -35.04% 18
Surrey +21 46 £208 -51.60% 16
West Sussex -8 28 £358 -17.64% 11
Buckinghamshire -12 10 £575 -5.15% 9
Sussex - 6 £475 - 3
Middlesex - 5 £725 - 1
East Sussex +2 3 £450 +33.33% 3
Oxfordshire -12 1 £500 - 3
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 6 (2.60%) Apache
1 6 (2.60%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.30%) IIS
2 3 (1.30%) Tomcat
3 2 (0.87%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 2 (0.87%) CMS
3 2 (0.87%) Confluence
3 2 (0.87%) NetWeaver
3 2 (0.87%) SAP EP
4 1 (0.43%) JBoss
4 1 (0.43%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.43%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Maximo
1 3 (1.30%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.87%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.87%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 68 (29.44%) AWS
2 50 (21.65%) GitHub
3 38 (16.45%) Azure
4 29 (12.55%) OpenShift
5 28 (12.12%) GCP
6 26 (11.26%) GitHub Actions
7 16 (6.93%) SaaS
8 14 (6.06%) Amazon S3
9 13 (5.63%) Sauce Labs
10 11 (4.76%) Serverless
11 10 (4.33%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (4.33%) Entra ID
12 9 (3.90%) Datadog
13 7 (3.03%) Snowflake
14 5 (2.16%) Amazon EC2
15 4 (1.73%) Tricentis Tosca
16 3 (1.30%) Amazon SQS
16 3 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
16 3 (1.30%) Azure DevOps
16 3 (1.30%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 10 (4.33%) Wireless
2 6 (2.60%) HTTP
3 5 (2.16%) Kerberos
4 4 (1.73%) FTP
4 4 (1.73%) Wireshark
5 3 (1.30%) Broadband
5 3 (1.30%) GPRS
5 3 (1.30%) GSM
5 3 (1.30%) HTTPS
5 3 (1.30%) NFC
5 3 (1.30%) PPP
5 3 (1.30%) SSL
6 2 (0.87%) Bluetooth
6 2 (0.87%) Firewall
7 1 (0.43%) DHCP
7 1 (0.43%) DNS
7 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (17.75%) Relational Database
2 40 (17.32%) PostgreSQL
3 31 (13.42%) MySQL
4 22 (9.52%) NoSQL
5 16 (6.93%) MongoDB
6 13 (5.63%) DynamoDB
7 8 (3.46%) HBase
8 7 (3.03%) Big Data
9 6 (2.60%) SQL Server
10 5 (2.16%) Pinecone
10 5 (2.16%) Weaviate
11 4 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
12 3 (1.30%) BigQuery
13 2 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
13 2 (0.87%) RDBMS
14 1 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
14 1 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
14 1 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
14 1 (0.43%) Couchbase
14 1 (0.43%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 40 (17.32%) Jenkins
2 30 (12.99%) JUnit
3 28 (12.12%) Cucumber
3 28 (12.12%) Git
4 25 (10.82%) Gradle
5 20 (8.66%) Eclipse
6 19 (8.23%) Maven
7 18 (7.79%) Sonatype Nexus
8 17 (7.36%) Android Studio
9 16 (6.93%) Browser DevTools
10 13 (5.63%) JIRA
10 13 (5.63%) Xcode
11 11 (4.76%) JMeter
12 8 (3.46%) Artifactory
12 8 (3.46%) GitLab
12 8 (3.46%) SonarQube
13 7 (3.03%) Selenium
14 6 (2.60%) Bitbucket
15 4 (1.73%) Cypress.io
15 4 (1.73%) Subversion
General
1 73 (31.60%) Social Skills
2 29 (12.55%) Finance
3 22 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (6.49%) Public Sector
5 8 (3.46%) Marketing
6 4 (1.73%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.73%) Banking
6 4 (1.73%) Billing
6 4 (1.73%) Electronics
7 3 (1.30%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.30%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.87%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.43%) Back Office
9 1 (0.43%) Front Office
9 1 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.43%) Legal
9 1 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 99 (42.86%) Developer
2 74 (32.03%) Java Developer
3 29 (12.55%) Technical Support
4 21 (9.09%) Java Engineer
4 21 (9.09%) Support Engineer
5 20 (8.66%) Technical Engineer
5 20 (8.66%) Technical Support Engineer
6 19 (8.23%) Full-Stack Developer
6 19 (8.23%) Senior
7 17 (7.36%) Software Engineer
8 15 (6.49%) Lead
9 13 (5.63%) Senior Developer
9 13 (5.63%) UX Engineer
10 12 (5.19%) Full-Stack Java Developer
11 11 (4.76%) AWS Developer
12 10 (4.33%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
12 10 (4.33%) Senior Java Developer
13 8 (3.46%) Applications Developer
14 7 (3.03%) Architect
14 7 (3.03%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (25.97%) Spring
2 49 (21.21%) Spring Boot
3 37 (16.02%) React
4 35 (15.15%) AngularJS
5 32 (13.85%) Kafka
6 30 (12.99%) REST
7 26 (11.26%) CSS
8 20 (8.66%) GraphQL
9 18 (7.79%) RESTful
10 16 (6.93%) Hibernate
10 16 (6.93%) XML
11 14 (6.06%) HTML
12 13 (5.63%) Ajax
13 12 (5.19%) Node.js
13 12 (5.19%) SOAP
14 9 (3.90%) Web Services
15 8 (3.46%) JSON
15 8 (3.46%) SailPoint
15 8 (3.46%) Vue
16 7 (3.03%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 19 (8.23%) Distributed Systems
2 18 (7.79%) Mobile App
3 7 (3.03%) Cloud Native
4 5 (2.16%) Data Centre
4 5 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
5 3 (1.30%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.30%) IPTV
5 3 (1.30%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.30%) Security Posture
5 3 (1.30%) Smartcard
6 2 (0.87%) Algorithms
6 2 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (0.87%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.43%) AI Agents
7 1 (0.43%) Clustering
7 1 (0.43%) EMV
7 1 (0.43%) Java Card
7 1 (0.43%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.43%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.43%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 44 (19.05%) Linux
2 38 (16.45%) Windows
3 32 (13.85%) Unix
4 22 (9.52%) Android
5 6 (2.60%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.73%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.30%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.87%) VMS
9 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (35.93%) CI/CD
2 64 (27.71%) Agile
3 43 (18.61%) DevOps
3 43 (18.61%) Test Automation
4 41 (17.75%) Microservices
4 41 (17.75%) Software Engineering
5 36 (15.58%) OO
5 36 (15.58%) Problem-Solving
6 30 (12.99%) Scrum
7 28 (12.12%) Containerisation
8 25 (10.82%) User Experience
9 24 (10.39%) Full-Stack Development
10 22 (9.52%) OOP
11 21 (9.09%) AI
12 19 (8.23%) Observability
12 19 (8.23%) Software Testing
13 17 (7.36%) Computer Science
14 16 (6.93%) Fintech
14 16 (6.93%) High Availability
14 16 (6.93%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 69 (29.87%) Python
2 64 (27.71%) JavaScript
3 48 (20.78%) SQL
4 23 (9.96%) Perl
5 17 (7.36%) PowerShell
6 15 (6.49%) C#
7 14 (6.06%) Go
8 8 (3.46%) BeanShell
8 8 (3.46%) C++
9 7 (3.03%) TypeScript
10 6 (2.60%) Bash
10 6 (2.60%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.73%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.30%) Groovy
12 3 (1.30%) Jython
12 3 (1.30%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.87%) ABAP
13 2 (0.87%) C
13 2 (0.87%) PHP
13 2 (0.87%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 57 (24.68%) Security Cleared
2 49 (21.21%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.66%) Degree
4 17 (7.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.33%) OCP
5 10 (4.33%) Oracle Certification
6 5 (2.16%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (0.87%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.87%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.87%) ISEB
8 2 (0.87%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.43%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.63%) QA
2 4 (1.73%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.30%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.43%) Accessibility
System Software
1 23 (9.96%) Docker
2 11 (4.76%) Active Directory
3 5 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.43%) NDS
4 1 (0.43%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 1 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 55 (23.81%) Kubernetes
2 17 (7.36%) Ansible
3 11 (4.76%) Terraform
4 10 (4.33%) Grafana
5 9 (3.90%) Progress Chef
6 7 (3.03%) Argo
7 4 (1.73%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.87%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.43%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.43%) SCCM
Vendors
1 34 (14.72%) Oracle
2 23 (9.96%) Microsoft
3 18 (7.79%) Splunk
4 13 (5.63%) VMware
5 11 (4.76%) ServiceNow
6 9 (3.90%) SAP
7 8 (3.46%) Red Hat
8 5 (2.16%) Google
9 4 (1.73%) Ariba
9 4 (1.73%) Atlassian
10 3 (1.30%) Ab Initio
10 3 (1.30%) OpenAI
10 3 (1.30%) Salesforce
10 3 (1.30%) Teradata
11 2 (0.87%) Adobe
11 2 (0.87%) UiPath
11 2 (0.87%) webMethods
12 1 (0.43%) Databricks
12 1 (0.43%) Dynatrace
12 1 (0.43%) Virgin Media