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 27 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 37 54 47
Rank change year-on-year +17 -7 -19
Contract jobs citing Java 216 148 221
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 5.22% 3.61% 4.23%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.38% 13.39% 18.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 105 158
10th Percentile £204 £203 £305
25th Percentile £300 £390 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.53% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £650 £636
90th Percentile £619 £675 £688
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -4.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 7
10th Percentile £27.50 - £48.59
25th Percentile £41.56 £27.75 £52.88
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.44% -56.15% -
75th Percentile £53.75 £29.25 £69.38
90th Percentile £55.25 - £70.00
England median hourly rate £50.00 £67.50 £64.00
% change year-on-year -25.93% +5.47% -1.54%

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 965 1,105 1,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 23.34% 26.93% 23.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 675 691 864
10th Percentile £261 £321 £333
25th Percentile £377 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.64% -2.86% -2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £615
90th Percentile £635 £663 £675
England median daily rate £513 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -5.53% -1.36% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 50 59
10th Percentile £42.50 £27.00 £40.85
25th Percentile £50.00 £52.88 £49.87
Median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +13.64% -12.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.94 £69.38
90th Percentile £59.15 £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £61.84
% change year-on-year - +5.11% -1.06%

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025. 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
Hampshire +42 77 £513 -18.65% 14
Thames Valley +5 69 £413 -28.26% 49
Berkshire -6 54 £478 +6.11% 26
Surrey +16 49 £208 +1.22% 21
Buckinghamshire +4 13 £330 -48.24% 4
West Sussex -18 11 £360 -18.64% 5
East Sussex +2 5 £300 - 1
Middlesex -3 3 £615 -3.61%
Oxfordshire -8 2 £500 - 20
Kent - 1 £600 - 4
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 5 (2.31%) Apache
1 5 (2.31%) Tomcat
2 4 (1.85%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.39%) Documentum
3 3 (1.39%) JBoss
4 2 (0.93%) CMS
4 2 (0.93%) Confluence
5 1 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.46%) Drupal
5 1 (0.46%) HCL Domino
5 1 (0.46%) IIS
5 1 (0.46%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.46%) nginx
5 1 (0.46%) SAP EP
5 1 (0.46%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.46%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.93%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.39%) Maximo
1 3 (1.39%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.93%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle CRM
3 1 (0.46%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 53 (24.54%) AWS
2 44 (20.37%) GitHub
3 43 (19.91%) Azure
4 27 (12.50%) OpenShift
5 23 (10.65%) SaaS
6 22 (10.19%) GitHub Actions
7 21 (9.72%) GCP
8 18 (8.33%) Sauce Labs
9 10 (4.63%) Entra ID
10 9 (4.17%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (4.17%) Datadog
11 8 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (3.70%) Serverless
12 7 (3.24%) Amazon S3
13 5 (2.31%) Amazon EC2
14 4 (1.85%) Tricentis Tosca
15 3 (1.39%) Amazon Cognito
15 3 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
15 3 (1.39%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 18 (8.33%) Wireless
2 8 (3.70%) NFC
2 8 (3.70%) PPP
3 5 (2.31%) Firewall
3 5 (2.31%) HTTP
3 5 (2.31%) Kerberos
4 4 (1.85%) FTP
4 4 (1.85%) Wireshark
5 3 (1.39%) Broadband
5 3 (1.39%) GPRS
5 3 (1.39%) GSM
5 3 (1.39%) SSL
6 2 (0.93%) Bluetooth
6 2 (0.93%) DNS
6 2 (0.93%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.46%) DHCP
7 1 (0.46%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.46%) MQTT
7 1 (0.46%) VoIP
7 1 (0.46%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (15.74%) Relational Database
2 33 (15.28%) MySQL
3 30 (13.89%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (6.02%) MongoDB
5 12 (5.56%) NoSQL
6 7 (3.24%) DynamoDB
6 7 (3.24%) HBase
7 3 (1.39%) RDBMS
7 3 (1.39%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.93%) Big Data
8 2 (0.93%) Pinecone
8 2 (0.93%) Weaviate
9 1 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
9 1 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (0.46%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.46%) Couchbase
9 1 (0.46%) Delta Lake
9 1 (0.46%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 48 (22.22%) Jenkins
2 34 (15.74%) Git
3 31 (14.35%) Cucumber
4 27 (12.50%) Eclipse
5 24 (11.11%) JUnit
6 22 (10.19%) Android Studio
6 22 (10.19%) Browser DevTools
7 20 (9.26%) Gradle
8 18 (8.33%) Xcode
9 17 (7.87%) Sonatype Nexus
10 16 (7.41%) JIRA
11 14 (6.48%) GitLab
12 11 (5.09%) JMeter
12 11 (5.09%) Selenium
13 10 (4.63%) Maven
14 8 (3.70%) Valgrind
15 7 (3.24%) Artifactory
15 7 (3.24%) Bitbucket
16 6 (2.78%) Postman
16 6 (2.78%) WebDriver
General
1 77 (35.65%) Social Skills
2 26 (12.04%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (11.57%) Finance
4 21 (9.72%) Public Sector
5 5 (2.31%) Aerospace
5 5 (2.31%) Banking
6 4 (1.85%) Billing
6 4 (1.85%) Marketing
6 4 (1.85%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.39%) Electronics
7 3 (1.39%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.46%) Automotive
8 1 (0.46%) Back Office
8 1 (0.46%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (0.46%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.46%) Front Office
8 1 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 66 (30.56%) Developer
2 37 (17.13%) Java Developer
3 33 (15.28%) Technical Support
4 27 (12.50%) Support Engineer
5 26 (12.04%) Technical Engineer
5 26 (12.04%) Technical Support Engineer
6 25 (11.57%) Architect
6 25 (11.57%) Senior
7 19 (8.80%) UX Engineer
8 18 (8.33%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
8 18 (8.33%) Full-Stack Developer
9 16 (7.41%) Java Architect
9 16 (7.41%) Solutions Architect
10 15 (6.94%) Java Solutions Architect
11 12 (5.56%) Full-Stack Java Developer
12 10 (4.63%) Senior Developer
12 10 (4.63%) Software Engineer
13 9 (4.17%) C++ Software Engineer
13 9 (4.17%) Java Engineer
13 9 (4.17%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (22.22%) React
2 41 (18.98%) Spring
3 37 (17.13%) REST
4 34 (15.74%) Spring Boot
5 33 (15.28%) CSS
6 31 (14.35%) AngularJS
7 25 (11.57%) GraphQL
8 24 (11.11%) Kafka
9 23 (10.65%) RESTful
10 20 (9.26%) Ajax
11 19 (8.80%) XML
12 15 (6.94%) HTML
12 15 (6.94%) JSON
13 12 (5.56%) Hibernate
14 11 (5.09%) Middleware
14 11 (5.09%) SOAP
14 11 (5.09%) Web Services
15 8 (3.70%) SailPoint
16 7 (3.24%) Node.js
16 7 (3.24%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 24 (11.11%) Mobile App
2 12 (5.56%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (4.17%) Private Cloud
4 8 (3.70%) Smartcard
5 5 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (2.31%) Security Posture
6 4 (1.85%) Algorithms
6 4 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.39%) Cloud Native
7 3 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.39%) IPTV
7 3 (1.39%) Product Ownership
8 2 (0.93%) Data Centre
8 2 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.93%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.46%) Data Protection Act
9 1 (0.46%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (0.46%) EMV
9 1 (0.46%) IoT
9 1 (0.46%) Java Card
Operating Systems
1 52 (24.07%) Linux
2 46 (21.30%) Windows
3 33 (15.28%) Unix
4 28 (12.96%) Android
5 8 (3.70%) Ubuntu
6 6 (2.78%) Apple iOS
7 3 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.93%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.46%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (41.67%) CI/CD
2 52 (24.07%) Agile
3 44 (20.37%) DevOps
4 39 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
5 37 (17.13%) OO
5 37 (17.13%) User Experience
6 36 (16.67%) Test Automation
7 26 (12.04%) Software Engineering
8 25 (11.57%) Infrastructure as Code
8 25 (11.57%) Microservices
9 23 (10.65%) Containerisation
10 22 (10.19%) Full-Stack Development
10 22 (10.19%) Mobile Application Development
11 21 (9.72%) Observability
12 19 (8.80%) High Availability
13 17 (7.87%) Computer Science
14 16 (7.41%) AI
14 16 (7.41%) OOP
14 16 (7.41%) Scrum
15 13 (6.02%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 84 (38.89%) Python
2 78 (36.11%) JavaScript
3 47 (21.76%) SQL
4 28 (12.96%) C#
5 26 (12.04%) Perl
6 24 (11.11%) PowerShell
7 18 (8.33%) C++
8 13 (6.02%) Go
9 8 (3.70%) BeanShell
10 6 (2.78%) C
10 6 (2.78%) Kotlin
11 5 (2.31%) Apex Code
11 5 (2.31%) Bash
12 4 (1.85%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.85%) R
12 4 (1.85%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.85%) TypeScript
13 3 (1.39%) Jython
13 3 (1.39%) Objective-C
13 3 (1.39%) Swift
Qualifications
1 62 (28.70%) Security Cleared
2 38 (17.59%) SC Cleared
3 21 (9.72%) DV Cleared
4 17 (7.87%) Degree
5 14 (6.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (4.17%) OCP
6 9 (4.17%) Oracle Certification
7 4 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.85%) Network+ Certification
8 3 (1.39%) CCNA
8 3 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (1.39%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.93%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.93%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.93%) ISEB
10 1 (0.46%) A+ Certification
10 1 (0.46%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.70%) QA
2 5 (2.31%) GDPR
3 4 (1.85%) EU AI Act
3 4 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (1.39%) Def Stans
5 2 (0.93%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.93%) NIST
6 1 (0.46%) Accessibility
System Software
1 15 (6.94%) Docker
2 11 (5.09%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.46%) NDS
4 1 (0.46%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 1 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 53 (24.54%) Kubernetes
2 27 (12.50%) Ansible
3 15 (6.94%) Terraform
4 13 (6.02%) Grafana
5 9 (4.17%) Progress Chef
6 4 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 3 (1.39%) Proxmox
7 3 (1.39%) Rundeck
7 3 (1.39%) Salt
8 1 (0.46%) Argo
8 1 (0.46%) SCCM
8 1 (0.46%) vRealize
Vendors
1 40 (18.52%) Oracle
2 35 (16.20%) Microsoft
3 21 (9.72%) ServiceNow
4 20 (9.26%) Splunk
5 16 (7.41%) VMware
6 11 (5.09%) Red Hat
7 8 (3.70%) Salesforce
7 8 (3.70%) SAP
8 5 (2.31%) MuleSoft
9 3 (1.39%) Apple
9 3 (1.39%) Ariba
10 2 (0.93%) CyberArk
10 2 (0.93%) Databricks
10 2 (0.93%) webMethods
11 1 (0.46%) Adobe
11 1 (0.46%) Citrix
11 1 (0.46%) IBM
11 1 (0.46%) NetIQ
11 1 (0.46%) OpenText
11 1 (0.46%) Virgin Media