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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 41 43
Rank change year-on-year -16 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Java 223 150 230
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.53% 4.72% 4.04%
As % of the Programming Languages category 17.42% 17.73% 17.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 87 164
10th Percentile £213 £313 £365
25th Percentile £357 £396 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £590
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -19.49% +12.38%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £675
90th Percentile £683 £628 £738
England median daily rate £525 £533 £600
% change year-on-year -1.51% -11.16% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 10 11
10th Percentile £56.50 £43.71 £35.00
25th Percentile £62.50 - £58.75
Median hourly rate £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -23.08% -1.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £53.75 £70.39
90th Percentile - £55.00 £75.00
England median hourly rate £67.25 £50.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +34.50% -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 1,280 846 1,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 20.26% 26.63% 22.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 833 573 896
10th Percentile £310 £325 £325
25th Percentile £403 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -1.46% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
England median daily rate £519 £521 £543
% change year-on-year -0.29% -4.06% -2.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 27 85
10th Percentile £34.01 £37.60 £35.00
25th Percentile £43.81 £47.62 £46.25
Median hourly rate £62.50 £54.88 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.90% -12.20% +11.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £59.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.48 £64.52 £76.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +14.54% -12.69% +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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +12 59 £511 +7.63% 9
Thames Valley -53 57 £456 -1.88% 34
Hampshire -19 51 £600 +2.56% 22
West Sussex 0 45 £355 -24.15% 2
Berkshire -45 38 £389 -22.20% 20
Buckinghamshire -35 13 £513 +34.87% 6
Sussex - 7 £475 - 1
Oxfordshire -26 6 £800 - 8
East Sussex -5 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 8 (3.59%) Apache Spark
2 6 (2.69%) Documentum
3 4 (1.79%) NetWeaver
3 4 (1.79%) SAP EP
3 4 (1.79%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.90%) 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 (0.90%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (1.79%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.90%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.45%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.45%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 58 (26.01%) AWS
2 56 (25.11%) Azure
3 31 (13.90%) GCP
4 29 (13.00%) OpenShift
5 21 (9.42%) GitHub
6 14 (6.28%) Amazon S3
7 11 (4.93%) Azure DevOps
7 11 (4.93%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (4.48%) Serverless
9 9 (4.04%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (3.59%) Snowflake
11 7 (3.14%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (2.24%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.24%) Power Platform
12 5 (2.24%) SuccessFactors
13 3 (1.35%) Amazon SQS
13 3 (1.35%) AWS CodePipeline
13 3 (1.35%) SaaS
13 3 (1.35%) Sauce Labs
14 2 (0.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.79%) HTTP
1 4 (1.79%) HTTPS
2 2 (0.90%) FTP
2 2 (0.90%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (13.45%) Relational Database
2 22 (9.87%) NoSQL
2 22 (9.87%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (7.17%) MySQL
4 13 (5.83%) Big Data
5 12 (5.38%) DynamoDB
6 8 (3.59%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (3.59%) SQL Server
7 7 (3.14%) Data Lake
8 6 (2.69%) Apache Cassandra
8 6 (2.69%) Couchbase
9 5 (2.24%) Power BI
10 3 (1.35%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.35%) Metadata
10 3 (1.35%) MongoDB
10 3 (1.35%) Pinecone
10 3 (1.35%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.35%) Weaviate
11 2 (0.90%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.90%) Db2
Development Applications
1 37 (16.59%) Git
2 26 (11.66%) Jenkins
3 20 (8.97%) SonarQube
4 14 (6.28%) JUnit
5 13 (5.83%) Maven
6 9 (4.04%) Gradle
7 8 (3.59%) JIRA
7 8 (3.59%) Selenium
8 7 (3.14%) Eclipse
9 6 (2.69%) GitLab
10 5 (2.24%) Bitbucket
10 5 (2.24%) WebDriver
11 4 (1.79%) Android Studio
11 4 (1.79%) Cucumber
11 4 (1.79%) Postman
11 4 (1.79%) Subversion
11 4 (1.79%) Visual Studio
12 3 (1.35%) Browser DevTools
12 3 (1.35%) REST Assured
12 3 (1.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 59 (26.46%) Social Skills
2 24 (10.76%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (10.31%) Finance
4 7 (3.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 7 (3.14%) Public Sector
5 5 (2.24%) Banking
6 4 (1.79%) Marketing
7 3 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.90%) 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
9 1 (0.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 80 (35.87%) Developer
2 65 (29.15%) Java Developer
3 34 (15.25%) Java Engineer
4 24 (10.76%) Architect
4 24 (10.76%) Software Engineer
5 22 (9.87%) Senior
6 14 (6.28%) Technical Architect
7 11 (4.93%) Lead
8 10 (4.48%) Applications Developer
8 10 (4.48%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 10 (4.48%) Senior Developer
8 10 (4.48%) Technical Support
9 9 (4.04%) Technical Engineer
10 8 (3.59%) DevOps Engineer
10 8 (3.59%) Support Engineer
11 7 (3.14%) Java Architect
11 7 (3.14%) Senior Java Engineer
11 7 (3.14%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 7 (3.14%) Technical Support Engineer
12 6 (2.69%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (18.39%) Spring
2 37 (16.59%) REST
3 31 (13.90%) Spring Boot
4 28 (12.56%) AngularJS
5 22 (9.87%) .NET
6 20 (8.97%) Quarkus
6 20 (8.97%) React
7 18 (8.07%) Kafka
8 15 (6.73%) CSS
8 15 (6.73%) GraphQL
8 15 (6.73%) RESTful
9 13 (5.83%) HTML
9 13 (5.83%) SOAP
10 9 (4.04%) Hibernate
11 8 (3.59%) OAuth
11 8 (3.59%) Web Services
12 7 (3.14%) Spring MVC
13 6 (2.69%) JPA
13 6 (2.69%) Node.js
13 6 (2.69%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 36 (16.14%) Distributed Systems
2 20 (8.97%) Cloud Native
3 8 (3.59%) Mobile App
3 8 (3.59%) Product Ownership
4 7 (3.14%) Self-Motivation
5 6 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (2.24%) Data Structures
6 5 (2.24%) Distributed Architecture
7 4 (1.79%) Algorithms
7 4 (1.79%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (0.90%) Security Posture
10 1 (0.45%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (0.45%) IoT
10 1 (0.45%) Low-Code
10 1 (0.45%) Marketing Technology
10 1 (0.45%) Robotics
10 1 (0.45%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 1 (0.45%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (8.97%) Unix
2 19 (8.52%) Linux
3 16 (7.17%) Windows
4 8 (3.59%) Android
5 4 (1.79%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.45%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (35.43%) CI/CD
2 74 (33.18%) Agile
3 64 (28.70%) Software Engineering
4 55 (24.66%) DevOps
5 50 (22.42%) Test Automation
6 48 (21.52%) Microservices
7 43 (19.28%) Scrum
8 35 (15.70%) Problem-Solving
9 33 (14.80%) Unit Testing
10 32 (14.35%) SDLC
11 29 (13.00%) Sprint Planning
12 26 (11.66%) High Availability
13 24 (10.76%) DevSecOps
13 24 (10.76%) Front End Development
14 23 (10.31%) Event-Driven
14 23 (10.31%) Sprint Review
15 21 (9.42%) Containerisation
16 19 (8.52%) OOP
17 17 (7.62%) Continuous Improvement
17 17 (7.62%) Fintech
Programming Languages
1 55 (24.66%) Python
2 47 (21.08%) SQL
3 35 (15.70%) JavaScript
4 24 (10.76%) Go
5 18 (8.07%) C#
6 11 (4.93%) Kotlin
7 9 (4.04%) Perl
7 9 (4.04%) Shell Script
8 8 (3.59%) PowerShell
9 7 (3.14%) C++
10 6 (2.69%) TypeScript
11 5 (2.24%) ABAP
11 5 (2.24%) Bash
11 5 (2.24%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.79%) Scala
12 4 (1.79%) VB.NET
13 2 (0.90%) BeanShell
13 2 (0.90%) Groovy
13 2 (0.90%) R
13 2 (0.90%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 87 (39.01%) Security Cleared
2 75 (33.63%) SC Cleared
3 19 (8.52%) Degree
4 15 (6.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (2.69%) DV Cleared
6 5 (2.24%) AWS Certification
6 5 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.79%) DBS Check
8 3 (1.35%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.90%) CISM
9 2 (0.90%) CISSP
9 2 (0.90%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.45%) CCNA
10 1 (0.45%) CEH
10 1 (0.45%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.45%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (13.45%) QA
2 5 (2.24%) Data Quality
2 5 (2.24%) GDPR
2 5 (2.24%) NCSC
3 3 (1.35%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.45%) Software Quality Assurance
4 1 (0.45%) WCAG
System Software
1 20 (8.97%) Docker
2 5 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 53 (23.77%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.42%) Argo
3 5 (2.24%) Terraform
4 4 (1.79%) Grafana
4 4 (1.79%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (0.90%) Ansible
6 2 (0.90%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.90%) Puppet
7 1 (0.45%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.45%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (8.52%) Red Hat
2 15 (6.73%) Oracle
3 13 (5.83%) Microsoft
4 8 (3.59%) Google
4 8 (3.59%) Splunk
5 6 (2.69%) SAP
6 5 (2.24%) Ab Initio
6 5 (2.24%) Ariba
6 5 (2.24%) Teradata
7 4 (1.79%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.35%) Blue Prism
8 3 (1.35%) Dynatrace
8 3 (1.35%) UiPath
9 2 (0.90%) Adobe
9 2 (0.90%) Databricks
9 2 (0.90%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.90%) Solace
9 2 (0.90%) Sparx
10 1 (0.45%) HP
10 1 (0.45%) Parasoft