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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 56 53
Rank change year-on-year +20 -3 -25
Contract jobs citing Java 205 127 190
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.65% 3.55% 3.86%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.02% 12.89% 16.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 87 136
10th Percentile £204 £203 £286
25th Percentile £236 £388 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £528
Median % change year-on-year - -14.69% -4.09%
75th Percentile £580 £638 £638
90th Percentile £638 £656 £688
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -6.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 7
10th Percentile £27.50 - £50.54
25th Percentile £36.88 £27.75 £58.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.89% -56.15% -
75th Percentile £55.63 £29.25 £66.01
90th Percentile £58.25 - £67.21
England median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year -4.35% -8.00% -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 931 985 1,135
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 21.13% 27.52% 23.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 667 625 783
10th Percentile £259 £330 £325
25th Percentile £381 £413 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £615
90th Percentile £650 £671 £675
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 31 66
10th Percentile £40.00 £27.00 £45.11
25th Percentile £46.25 £47.50 £49.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% -1.31% -4.17%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.13 £69.38
90th Percentile £60.25 £67.02 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.59% +0.40% -3.47%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 1 January 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 -5 68 £444 -24.15% 70
Hampshire +23 66 £503 +11.67% 15
Berkshire +1 60 £419 -27.17% 54
Surrey +15 50 £208 +1.22% 33
West Sussex -19 11 £368 -16.95% 5
Buckinghamshire +4 6 £550 -13.73% 4
Middlesex - 6 £680 - 3
East Sussex +4 3 £450 +50.00% 4
Oxfordshire -10 2 £500 - 12
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 (2.44%) Apache
2 4 (1.95%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.95%) IIS
2 4 (1.95%) Tomcat
3 3 (1.46%) Documentum
4 2 (0.98%) CMS
4 2 (0.98%) Confluence
4 2 (0.98%) JBoss
5 1 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.49%) Drupal
5 1 (0.49%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.49%) nginx
5 1 (0.49%) SAP EP
5 1 (0.49%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.49%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.98%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.46%) Maximo
1 3 (1.46%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.98%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.49%) Oracle CRM
3 1 (0.49%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 57 (27.80%) AWS
2 44 (21.46%) GitHub
3 39 (19.02%) Azure
4 25 (12.20%) SaaS
5 24 (11.71%) GitHub Actions
6 23 (11.22%) OpenShift
7 21 (10.24%) GCP
8 20 (9.76%) Sauce Labs
9 10 (4.88%) Entra ID
10 9 (4.39%) Datadog
11 8 (3.90%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (3.90%) Serverless
12 7 (3.41%) Amazon S3
13 5 (2.44%) Amazon EC2
14 4 (1.95%) Amazon EKS
14 4 (1.95%) Tricentis Tosca
15 3 (1.46%) Amazon Cognito
15 3 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
15 3 (1.46%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 17 (8.29%) Wireless
2 5 (2.44%) HTTP
2 5 (2.44%) Kerberos
3 4 (1.95%) FTP
3 4 (1.95%) NFC
3 4 (1.95%) PPP
3 4 (1.95%) Wireshark
4 3 (1.46%) Broadband
4 3 (1.46%) DNS
4 3 (1.46%) Firewall
4 3 (1.46%) GPRS
4 3 (1.46%) GSM
4 3 (1.46%) SSL
5 2 (0.98%) Bluetooth
5 2 (0.98%) DHCP
5 2 (0.98%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.49%) MQTT
6 1 (0.49%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (21.95%) Relational Database
2 40 (19.51%) MySQL
3 30 (14.63%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (7.80%) MongoDB
5 13 (6.34%) NoSQL
6 8 (3.90%) HBase
7 7 (3.41%) DynamoDB
7 7 (3.41%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.95%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.98%) Big Data
9 2 (0.98%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.98%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.98%) Pinecone
9 2 (0.98%) Weaviate
10 1 (0.49%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.49%) Couchbase
10 1 (0.49%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 40 (19.51%) Jenkins
2 28 (13.66%) Cucumber
3 25 (12.20%) Git
4 24 (11.71%) Android Studio
4 24 (11.71%) Browser DevTools
4 24 (11.71%) Eclipse
4 24 (11.71%) JUnit
5 21 (10.24%) Gradle
6 20 (9.76%) Xcode
7 18 (8.78%) Sonatype Nexus
8 12 (5.85%) GitLab
8 12 (5.85%) JIRA
9 11 (5.37%) JMeter
10 10 (4.88%) Maven
11 8 (3.90%) Artifactory
12 7 (3.41%) Bitbucket
12 7 (3.41%) Selenium
13 4 (1.95%) Toad
13 4 (1.95%) Valgrind
13 4 (1.95%) WebDriver
General
1 76 (37.07%) Social Skills
2 22 (10.73%) Finance
3 20 (9.76%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (8.78%) Public Sector
5 4 (1.95%) Billing
5 4 (1.95%) Electronics
5 4 (1.95%) Marketing
6 3 (1.46%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.46%) Banking
6 3 (1.46%) Manufacturing
6 3 (1.46%) Telecoms
7 2 (0.98%) Back Office
7 2 (0.98%) Front Office
8 1 (0.49%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (0.49%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.49%) Legal
8 1 (0.49%) Retail
Job Titles
1 67 (32.68%) Developer
2 44 (21.46%) Java Developer
3 40 (19.51%) Technical Support
4 29 (14.15%) Support Engineer
5 28 (13.66%) Technical Engineer
5 28 (13.66%) Technical Support Engineer
6 21 (10.24%) Senior
6 21 (10.24%) UX Engineer
7 18 (8.78%) Full-Stack Developer
8 17 (8.29%) Architect
8 17 (8.29%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
9 12 (5.85%) Full-Stack Java Developer
9 12 (5.85%) Java Engineer
9 12 (5.85%) Senior Developer
10 11 (5.37%) Lead
11 10 (4.88%) AWS Developer
11 10 (4.88%) Senior Java Developer
11 10 (4.88%) Software Engineer
12 9 (4.39%) Java Architect
12 9 (4.39%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (20.49%) React
1 42 (20.49%) Spring
2 37 (18.05%) AngularJS
3 35 (17.07%) Spring Boot
4 32 (15.61%) CSS
5 29 (14.15%) REST
6 27 (13.17%) GraphQL
6 27 (13.17%) Kafka
7 21 (10.24%) Ajax
8 19 (9.27%) RESTful
9 15 (7.32%) XML
10 13 (6.34%) HTML
11 11 (5.37%) Hibernate
11 11 (5.37%) SOAP
12 10 (4.88%) JSON
13 9 (4.39%) Node.js
14 8 (3.90%) SailPoint
15 7 (3.41%) Middleware
15 7 (3.41%) Vue
16 6 (2.93%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 26 (12.68%) Mobile App
2 11 (5.37%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (2.44%) Security Posture
4 4 (1.95%) Private Cloud
4 4 (1.95%) Smartcard
5 3 (1.46%) Algorithms
5 3 (1.46%) IPTV
6 2 (0.98%) Cloud Native
6 2 (0.98%) Data Centre
6 2 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (0.98%) Linux Command Line
6 2 (0.98%) Onboarding
6 2 (0.98%) Product Ownership
6 2 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (0.49%) AI Agents
7 1 (0.49%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.49%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (0.49%) IoT
7 1 (0.49%) Legacy Applications
7 1 (0.49%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 57 (27.80%) Windows
2 56 (27.32%) Linux
3 40 (19.51%) Unix
4 30 (14.63%) Android
5 6 (2.93%) Apple iOS
5 6 (2.93%) Windows Server
6 4 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.95%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.98%) VMS
7 2 (0.98%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.49%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (40.00%) CI/CD
2 54 (26.34%) Agile
3 45 (21.95%) OO
4 40 (19.51%) DevOps
5 38 (18.54%) Problem-Solving
6 35 (17.07%) User Experience
7 31 (15.12%) Test Automation
8 27 (13.17%) Microservices
9 25 (12.20%) Containerisation
9 25 (12.20%) Software Engineering
10 24 (11.71%) Mobile Application Development
11 22 (10.73%) Computer Science
11 22 (10.73%) Full-Stack Development
11 22 (10.73%) OOP
12 21 (10.24%) Observability
13 20 (9.76%) Infrastructure as Code
14 17 (8.29%) Scrum
15 16 (7.80%) High Availability
16 15 (7.32%) AI
17 13 (6.34%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 83 (40.49%) Python
2 76 (37.07%) JavaScript
3 46 (22.44%) SQL
4 33 (16.10%) Perl
5 22 (10.73%) PowerShell
6 20 (9.76%) C#
7 12 (5.85%) Go
8 11 (5.37%) C++
9 8 (3.90%) Bash
9 8 (3.90%) BeanShell
10 5 (2.44%) C
11 4 (1.95%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.46%) Jython
12 3 (1.46%) Kotlin
12 3 (1.46%) Objective-C
12 3 (1.46%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.46%) Swift
12 3 (1.46%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.98%) Groovy
13 2 (0.98%) R
Qualifications
1 52 (25.37%) Security Cleared
2 37 (18.05%) SC Cleared
3 23 (11.22%) Degree
4 19 (9.27%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (6.83%) DV Cleared
6 10 (4.88%) OCP
6 10 (4.88%) Oracle Certification
7 4 (1.95%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.98%) ISEB
10 1 (0.49%) A+ Certification
10 1 (0.49%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.49%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.49%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.39%) QA
2 3 (1.46%) Def Stans
2 3 (1.46%) GDPR
3 2 (0.98%) Data Quality
3 2 (0.98%) EU AI Act
3 2 (0.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (0.98%) NIST
4 1 (0.49%) Accessibility
System Software
1 19 (9.27%) Docker
2 12 (5.85%) Active Directory
3 9 (4.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.49%) NDS
5 1 (0.49%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 53 (25.85%) Kubernetes
2 24 (11.71%) Ansible
3 15 (7.32%) Terraform
4 10 (4.88%) Grafana
5 9 (4.39%) Progress Chef
6 4 (1.95%) Prometheus
7 3 (1.46%) Proxmox
7 3 (1.46%) Rundeck
7 3 (1.46%) Salt
8 2 (0.98%) Argo
8 2 (0.98%) SCCM
9 1 (0.49%) vRealize
Vendors
1 45 (21.95%) Oracle
2 35 (17.07%) Microsoft
3 21 (10.24%) Splunk
4 20 (9.76%) ServiceNow
5 17 (8.29%) VMware
6 8 (3.90%) SAP
7 6 (2.93%) Red Hat
8 3 (1.46%) Apple
8 3 (1.46%) Ariba
8 3 (1.46%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.98%) Citrix
9 2 (0.98%) CyberArk
9 2 (0.98%) Google
9 2 (0.98%) webMethods
10 1 (0.49%) Adobe
10 1 (0.49%) Databricks
10 1 (0.49%) IBM
10 1 (0.49%) NetIQ
10 1 (0.49%) Pega
10 1 (0.49%) Virgin Media