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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 52 56
Rank change year-on-year +12 +4 -24
Contract jobs citing Java 243 112 185
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.51% 3.74% 3.29%
As % of the Programming Languages category 23.32% 13.04% 15.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 157 70 119
10th Percentile £204 £327 £345
25th Percentile £313 £450 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -21.74% +4.55% +2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £694
90th Percentile £638 £663 £738
England median daily rate £518 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.54% +1.74% -7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 1 12
10th Percentile £38.75 - £37.63
25th Percentile £51.88 £20.85 £62.19
Median hourly rate £60.00 £21.90 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +173.97% -66.31% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £22.95 £67.02
90th Percentile - - £74.20
England median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.64% -6.00% -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 1,042 859 1,175
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.33% 28.70% 20.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 746 556 807
10th Percentile £311 £350 £325
25th Percentile £403 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £516 £511
Median % change year-on-year -3.15% +1.03% -2.67%
75th Percentile £591 £621 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.90% -2.33% -5.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 30 72
10th Percentile £34.01 £41.28 £36.13
25th Percentile £46.25 £47.87 £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.65 £59.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.59% -3.12% +8.18%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.32 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.18 £66.18 £73.38
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -5.51%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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
Hampshire +21 77 £473 -5.40% 12
Thames Valley -27 67 £425 -26.09% 27
Berkshire -25 54 £378 -34.35% 14
Surrey +20 49 £213 -67.31% 20
West Sussex -4 35 £358 -23.78% 4
Buckinghamshire -18 11 £563 -7.22% 7
Sussex - 6 £475 -
Middlesex - 5 £725 -
East Sussex +3 3 £450 +33.33% 5
Oxfordshire -10 2 £515 - 6
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 (2.47%) Apache
1 6 (2.47%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.06%) NetWeaver
2 5 (2.06%) SAP EP
3 3 (1.23%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.23%) IIS
3 3 (1.23%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.82%) CMS
4 2 (0.82%) Confluence
5 1 (0.41%) JBoss
5 1 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.41%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.23%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (2.06%) SAP CRM
2 3 (1.23%) Maximo
2 3 (1.23%) Oracle BRM
3 2 (0.82%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.41%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 69 (28.40%) AWS
2 48 (19.75%) GitHub
3 41 (16.87%) Azure
4 29 (11.93%) OpenShift
5 27 (11.11%) GCP
6 26 (10.70%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (6.17%) Amazon S3
8 13 (5.35%) SaaS
9 11 (4.53%) Serverless
10 10 (4.12%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (4.12%) Sauce Labs
11 9 (3.70%) Datadog
12 7 (2.88%) Snowflake
13 6 (2.47%) Entra ID
14 5 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
14 5 (2.06%) SuccessFactors
15 4 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
15 4 (1.65%) Tricentis Tosca
16 3 (1.23%) Amazon Cognito
16 3 (1.23%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.88%) Wireless
2 5 (2.06%) Kerberos
3 3 (1.23%) Broadband
3 3 (1.23%) GPRS
3 3 (1.23%) GSM
3 3 (1.23%) HTTP
3 3 (1.23%) HTTPS
4 2 (0.82%) Bluetooth
4 2 (0.82%) FTP
4 2 (0.82%) NFC
4 2 (0.82%) PPP
4 2 (0.82%) SSL
4 2 (0.82%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.41%) DHCP
5 1 (0.41%) DNS
5 1 (0.41%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (18.11%) Relational Database
2 40 (16.46%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (11.52%) MySQL
4 25 (10.29%) NoSQL
5 17 (7.00%) MongoDB
6 14 (5.76%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.70%) Big Data
8 8 (3.29%) HBase
9 6 (2.47%) SQL Server
10 5 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (2.06%) Pinecone
10 5 (2.06%) Weaviate
11 3 (1.23%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.23%) RDBMS
12 2 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
12 2 (0.82%) Couchbase
12 2 (0.82%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
13 1 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
13 1 (0.41%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 42 (17.28%) Jenkins
2 30 (12.35%) Git
3 29 (11.93%) JUnit
4 27 (11.11%) Cucumber
5 26 (10.70%) Gradle
6 19 (7.82%) Maven
7 17 (7.00%) Sonatype Nexus
8 16 (6.58%) Eclipse
9 15 (6.17%) Android Studio
10 13 (5.35%) JIRA
11 12 (4.94%) Browser DevTools
12 11 (4.53%) JMeter
13 10 (4.12%) Xcode
14 9 (3.70%) GitLab
14 9 (3.70%) SonarQube
15 8 (3.29%) Artifactory
16 7 (2.88%) Selenium
17 6 (2.47%) Bitbucket
18 4 (1.65%) Cypress.io
18 4 (1.65%) Subversion
General
1 74 (30.45%) Social Skills
2 28 (11.52%) Finance
3 27 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (6.17%) Public Sector
5 8 (3.29%) Marketing
6 4 (1.65%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.65%) Billing
6 4 (1.65%) Electronics
6 4 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.23%) Banking
7 3 (1.23%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.23%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.82%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.41%) Back Office
9 1 (0.41%) Front Office
9 1 (0.41%) Legal
9 1 (0.41%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 103 (42.39%) Developer
2 77 (31.69%) Java Developer
3 26 (10.70%) Java Engineer
3 26 (10.70%) Software Engineer
4 23 (9.47%) Technical Support
5 19 (7.82%) Full-Stack Developer
5 19 (7.82%) Senior
6 18 (7.41%) Lead
7 16 (6.58%) Technical Engineer
8 15 (6.17%) Support Engineer
9 14 (5.76%) Technical Support Engineer
10 13 (5.35%) Senior Developer
11 12 (4.94%) Architect
12 11 (4.53%) AWS Developer
12 11 (4.53%) Full-Stack Java Developer
13 10 (4.12%) Senior Java Developer
13 10 (4.12%) UX Engineer
14 9 (3.70%) DevOps Engineer
15 8 (3.29%) Applications Developer
16 7 (2.88%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (24.69%) Spring
2 50 (20.58%) Spring Boot
3 37 (15.23%) React
4 33 (13.58%) AngularJS
4 33 (13.58%) Kafka
5 30 (12.35%) REST
6 23 (9.47%) CSS
7 19 (7.82%) RESTful
8 17 (7.00%) GraphQL
9 15 (6.17%) Hibernate
9 15 (6.17%) XML
10 14 (5.76%) HTML
11 11 (4.53%) Node.js
11 11 (4.53%) SOAP
12 10 (4.12%) Ajax
13 8 (3.29%) .NET
13 8 (3.29%) JSON
13 8 (3.29%) Quarkus
13 8 (3.29%) Vue
13 8 (3.29%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.64%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (6.17%) Mobile App
3 10 (4.12%) Cloud Native
4 7 (2.88%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.06%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.65%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.65%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.23%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.23%) IPTV
8 2 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.82%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.82%) Security Posture
8 2 (0.82%) Smartcard
9 1 (0.41%) AI Agents
9 1 (0.41%) Legacy Applications
9 1 (0.41%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.41%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (0.41%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.41%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 38 (15.64%) Linux
2 32 (13.17%) Windows
3 27 (11.11%) Unix
4 18 (7.41%) Android
5 4 (1.65%) Apple iOS
5 4 (1.65%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.82%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.82%) VMS
7 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (36.21%) CI/CD
2 69 (28.40%) Agile
3 53 (21.81%) Software Engineering
4 47 (19.34%) DevOps
4 47 (19.34%) Test Automation
5 45 (18.52%) Microservices
6 38 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
7 37 (15.23%) Scrum
8 30 (12.35%) OO
9 28 (11.52%) Containerisation
10 25 (10.29%) Full-Stack Development
10 25 (10.29%) User Experience
11 22 (9.05%) AI
12 20 (8.23%) OOP
13 19 (7.82%) Fintech
13 19 (7.82%) High Availability
13 19 (7.82%) Software Testing
14 18 (7.41%) Observability
14 18 (7.41%) Unit Testing
15 17 (7.00%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 69 (28.40%) Python
2 64 (26.34%) JavaScript
3 54 (22.22%) SQL
4 20 (8.23%) C#
4 20 (8.23%) Perl
5 17 (7.00%) Go
6 16 (6.58%) PowerShell
7 10 (4.12%) C++
8 9 (3.70%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.88%) Bash
9 7 (2.88%) TypeScript
10 5 (2.06%) ABAP
11 4 (1.65%) BeanShell
11 4 (1.65%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.23%) Groovy
12 3 (1.23%) Jython
12 3 (1.23%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.82%) C
13 2 (0.82%) PHP
13 2 (0.82%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 66 (27.16%) Security Cleared
2 60 (24.69%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.82%) Degree
4 16 (6.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.12%) OCP
5 10 (4.12%) Oracle Certification
6 5 (2.06%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.65%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (0.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.82%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.82%) ISEB
8 2 (0.82%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.41%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.76%) QA
2 5 (2.06%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.23%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.23%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.41%) WCAG
System Software
1 22 (9.05%) Docker
2 7 (2.88%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 55 (22.63%) Kubernetes
2 16 (6.58%) Ansible
3 10 (4.12%) Grafana
4 8 (3.29%) Argo
4 8 (3.29%) Progress Chef
4 8 (3.29%) Terraform
5 4 (1.65%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.82%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.41%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.41%) SCCM
Vendors
1 31 (12.76%) Oracle
2 20 (8.23%) Microsoft
3 15 (6.17%) Splunk
4 12 (4.94%) SAP
4 12 (4.94%) VMware
5 9 (3.70%) Red Hat
6 8 (3.29%) ServiceNow
7 7 (2.88%) Ariba
8 6 (2.47%) Google
9 4 (1.65%) Atlassian
10 3 (1.23%) Ab Initio
10 3 (1.23%) Adobe
10 3 (1.23%) Blue Prism
10 3 (1.23%) OpenAI
10 3 (1.23%) Salesforce
10 3 (1.23%) Teradata
10 3 (1.23%) UiPath
11 2 (0.82%) Databricks
11 2 (0.82%) Dynatrace
11 2 (0.82%) webMethods