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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 40 46
Rank change year-on-year -56 +6 -2
Contract jobs citing Java 154 180 176
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.34% 4.97% 4.11%
As % of the Programming Languages category 12.31% 19.52% 15.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 96 136 130
10th Percentile £241 £204 £225
25th Percentile £341 £288 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £450 £575
Median % change year-on-year +6.89% -21.74% +9.52%
75th Percentile £625 £558 £649
90th Percentile £750 £600 £675
England median daily rate £525 £520 £600
% change year-on-year +1.01% -13.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 10 3
10th Percentile £52.28 £49.63 £33.70
25th Percentile £55.00 - £42.63
Median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% -16.67% -9.43%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £68.13
90th Percentile - £55.00 £71.50
England median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% -28.57% +7.69%

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 1,251 922 1,127
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.00% 25.46% 26.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 772 642 720
10th Percentile £303 £255 £325
25th Percentile £402 £382 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £492 £513
Median % change year-on-year +6.65% -3.95% -3.30%
75th Percentile £609 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £620 £660
England median daily rate £525 £513 £543
% change year-on-year +2.44% -5.53% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 30 56
10th Percentile £15.98 £50.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £36.69 £50.63 £50.94
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £64.76
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -15.07% +17.75%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £70.94
90th Percentile £77.50 - £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £59.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +10.17% -9.23% +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 16 October 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 16 October 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 16 October 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
West Sussex +15 50 £372 +6.14% 8
Surrey -20 37 £425 +104.82% 9
Hampshire -47 33 £650 +18.99% 11
Thames Valley -63 30 £525 +20.00% 11
Berkshire -59 16 £449 -2.97% 9
Oxfordshire -21 8 £665 +33.00% 1
Buckinghamshire -28 6 £525 +61.54% 1
Sussex - 2 £613 - 2
Middlesex -21 1 - - 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 7 (4.55%) Documentum
2 4 (2.60%) NetWeaver
2 4 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.95%) Apache Spark
4 2 (1.30%) SAP EP
4 2 (1.30%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.65%) Apache
5 1 (0.65%) Confluence
5 1 (0.65%) IIS
5 1 (0.65%) OpenEdge
5 1 (0.65%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.65%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (2.60%) SAP PSCD
2 2 (1.30%) SAP CRM
2 2 (1.30%) SAP ERP
2 2 (1.30%) SAP FI-CA
2 2 (1.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.65%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 35 (22.73%) Azure
2 34 (22.08%) AWS
3 23 (14.94%) OpenShift
4 20 (12.99%) GitHub
5 16 (10.39%) GCP
6 12 (7.79%) GitHub Actions
7 11 (7.14%) Azure DevOps
8 7 (4.55%) Amazon ECS
9 6 (3.90%) Power Platform
10 4 (2.60%) Amazon S3
10 4 (2.60%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (2.60%) Serverless
11 3 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (1.95%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 3 (1.95%) Amazon SQS
11 3 (1.95%) AWS CodePipeline
11 3 (1.95%) SaaS
11 3 (1.95%) Sauce Labs
11 3 (1.95%) Sentry
12 2 (1.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 6 (3.90%) HTTPS
2 3 (1.95%) Wireshark
3 1 (0.65%) Broadband
3 1 (0.65%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (9.09%) Relational Database
2 13 (8.44%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (7.79%) MySQL
4 11 (7.14%) NoSQL
5 8 (5.19%) Couchbase
6 7 (4.55%) SQL Server
7 6 (3.90%) Power BI
8 5 (3.25%) Apache Cassandra
8 5 (3.25%) Data Lake
9 4 (2.60%) DynamoDB
9 4 (2.60%) Metadata
10 3 (1.95%) Big Data
10 3 (1.95%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (1.95%) MongoDB
11 2 (1.30%) RDBMS
12 1 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
12 1 (0.65%) Db2
12 1 (0.65%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 30 (19.48%) Git
2 20 (12.99%) SonarQube
3 14 (9.09%) Jenkins
4 10 (6.49%) JIRA
4 10 (6.49%) JUnit
5 9 (5.84%) Gradle
6 6 (3.90%) Maven
7 5 (3.25%) GitLab
7 5 (3.25%) REST Assured
7 5 (3.25%) Selenium
8 4 (2.60%) Visual Studio
9 3 (1.95%) Browser DevTools
9 3 (1.95%) CircleCI
9 3 (1.95%) Cucumber
9 3 (1.95%) Eclipse
9 3 (1.95%) JMeter
9 3 (1.95%) Postman
9 3 (1.95%) Rational DOORS
9 3 (1.95%) WebDriver
9 3 (1.95%) Xcode
General
1 27 (17.53%) Social Skills
2 25 (16.23%) Finance
3 9 (5.84%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (5.19%) Banking
5 6 (3.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (3.25%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.95%) Military
8 2 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.30%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.65%) Advertising
9 1 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.65%) German Language
9 1 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.65%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 53 (34.42%) Developer
2 33 (21.43%) Java Developer
3 26 (16.88%) Senior
4 22 (14.29%) Architect
5 20 (12.99%) Java Engineer
6 13 (8.44%) Technical Architect
7 11 (7.14%) Software Engineer
8 10 (6.49%) Software Developer
9 9 (5.84%) Senior Developer
10 8 (5.19%) Analyst
10 8 (5.19%) Senior Java Developer
11 7 (4.55%) Consultant
11 7 (4.55%) Documentum Architect
11 7 (4.55%) Java Architect
11 7 (4.55%) SC Cleared Java Developer
12 6 (3.90%) Java Solutions Architect
12 6 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
13 5 (3.25%) Support Engineer
13 5 (3.25%) Technical Engineer
13 5 (3.25%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (24.03%) REST
2 31 (20.13%) Spring
3 30 (19.48%) AngularJS
4 25 (16.23%) Spring Boot
5 18 (11.69%) .NET
5 18 (11.69%) Quarkus
6 16 (10.39%) RESTful
7 14 (9.09%) React
8 13 (8.44%) GraphQL
8 13 (8.44%) Kafka
9 12 (7.79%) CSS
9 12 (7.79%) SOAP
10 10 (6.49%) HTML
10 10 (6.49%) Web Services
11 9 (5.84%) Hibernate
11 9 (5.84%) Node.js
12 8 (5.19%) OAuth
13 7 (4.55%) JSON
13 7 (4.55%) Terraform
14 6 (3.90%) SAP PI
Miscellaneous
1 21 (13.64%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (10.39%) Cloud Native
3 10 (6.49%) Enterprise Software
4 7 (4.55%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (3.90%) Product Ownership
6 4 (2.60%) Mobile App
6 4 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (1.95%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.95%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (1.30%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.65%) AI Agents
9 1 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.65%) Data Structures
9 1 (0.65%) EMV
9 1 (0.65%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.65%) IoT
9 1 (0.65%) Java Card
Operating Systems
1 13 (8.44%) Unix
2 12 (7.79%) Windows
3 10 (6.49%) Linux
4 6 (3.90%) Android
5 2 (1.30%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.65%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (45.45%) Agile
2 61 (39.61%) Test Automation
3 56 (36.36%) Software Engineering
4 55 (35.71%) CI/CD
5 47 (30.52%) Microservices
6 42 (27.27%) SDLC
7 41 (26.62%) DevOps
8 36 (23.38%) Scrum
9 31 (20.13%) Sprint Planning
10 29 (18.83%) Unit Testing
11 26 (16.88%) Sprint Review
12 22 (14.29%) DevSecOps
12 22 (14.29%) Front End Development
13 19 (12.34%) Problem-Solving
14 18 (11.69%) Continuous Improvement
14 18 (11.69%) Event-Driven
15 15 (9.74%) Design Patterns
16 13 (8.44%) AI
16 13 (8.44%) Computer Science
16 13 (8.44%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 31 (20.13%) Python
2 28 (18.18%) SQL
3 24 (15.58%) JavaScript
4 9 (5.84%) C#
4 9 (5.84%) TypeScript
5 8 (5.19%) ABAP
5 8 (5.19%) PowerShell
6 7 (4.55%) Go
6 7 (4.55%) Shell Script
7 5 (3.25%) C++
7 5 (3.25%) Kotlin
7 5 (3.25%) Perl
7 5 (3.25%) PL/SQL
8 4 (2.60%) Bash
8 4 (2.60%) VB.NET
9 3 (1.95%) C
9 3 (1.95%) Lua
9 3 (1.95%) Scala
10 2 (1.30%) BeanShell
10 2 (1.30%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 64 (41.56%) Security Cleared
2 52 (33.77%) SC Cleared
3 15 (9.74%) Degree
4 10 (6.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (5.19%) DV Cleared
6 5 (3.25%) AWS Certification
6 5 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (2.60%) DBS Check
8 3 (1.95%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.30%) CISM
9 2 (1.30%) CISSP
9 2 (1.30%) ISEB
9 2 (1.30%) ISTQB
9 2 (1.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (1.30%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.65%) CCNA
10 1 (0.65%) CEH
10 1 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (25.32%) QA
2 5 (3.25%) GDPR
2 5 (3.25%) NCSC
3 3 (1.95%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 22 (14.29%) Docker
2 5 (3.25%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 39 (25.32%) Kubernetes
2 22 (14.29%) Argo
3 3 (1.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 3 (1.95%) Grafana
3 3 (1.95%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.30%) Ansible
4 2 (1.30%) Puppet
5 1 (0.65%) Amdocs OSS
5 1 (0.65%) Podman
5 1 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (13.64%) Microsoft
2 20 (12.99%) Red Hat
3 15 (9.74%) Oracle
4 11 (7.14%) SAP
5 7 (4.55%) Google
5 7 (4.55%) Splunk
6 6 (3.90%) webMethods
7 4 (2.60%) IBM
7 4 (2.60%) VMware
8 2 (1.30%) Sparx
9 1 (0.65%) Ariba
9 1 (0.65%) Cisco
9 1 (0.65%) Concur
9 1 (0.65%) Conga
9 1 (0.65%) Databricks
9 1 (0.65%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.65%) GoCardless
9 1 (0.65%) Nokia
9 1 (0.65%) Parasoft
9 1 (0.65%) Solace