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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 95 37 48
Rank change year-on-year -58 +11 0
Contract jobs citing Java 156 179 175
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.38% 5.03% 3.94%
As % of the Programming Languages category 12.40% 19.10% 15.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 131 130
10th Percentile £243 £204 £350
25th Percentile £349 £295 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £450 £563
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -20.00% +7.14%
75th Percentile £612 £561 £643
90th Percentile £750 £600 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £600
% change year-on-year - -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 10 3
10th Percentile £44.10 £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 1,258 937 1,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.19% 26.32% 25.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 785 649 737
10th Percentile £304 £273 £330
25th Percentile £406 £380 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -2.72% -2.10%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £625 £660
England median daily rate £525 £515 £545
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.50% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 33 55
10th Percentile £17.50 £50.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £38.25 £52.50 £50.88
Median hourly rate £60.00 £55.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -21.43% +27.27%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £74.93
90th Percentile £77.50 - £75.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +14.04% -12.31% -

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 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 2 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 2 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 +10 46 £375 +10.29% 17
Surrey -23 36 £468 +125.30% 25
Thames Valley -68 36 £525 +16.67% 84
Hampshire -47 35 £650 +13.04% 42
Berkshire -55 21 £440 -2.22% 35
Oxfordshire -19 9 £530 - 37
Buckinghamshire -27 6 £525 +61.54% 12
Middlesex -20 1 - - 1
Sussex - 1 £600 -
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 (4.49%) Documentum
2 5 (3.21%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.56%) NetWeaver
3 4 (2.56%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.28%) SAP EP
5 1 (0.64%) Apache
5 1 (0.64%) Confluence
5 1 (0.64%) IIS
5 1 (0.64%) OpenEdge
5 1 (0.64%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.64%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (1.92%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.64%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.64%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 4 (2.56%) SAP PSCD
2 2 (1.28%) SAP CRM
2 2 (1.28%) SAP ERP
2 2 (1.28%) SAP FI-CA
2 2 (1.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.64%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 42 (26.92%) Azure
2 39 (25.00%) AWS
3 23 (14.74%) GCP
3 23 (14.74%) OpenShift
4 16 (10.26%) GitHub
5 11 (7.05%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (5.13%) GitHub Actions
7 6 (3.85%) Power Platform
8 5 (3.21%) Amazon ECS
8 5 (3.21%) Amazon S3
9 4 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (2.56%) Serverless
10 3 (1.92%) Amazon EKS
10 3 (1.92%) SaaS
10 3 (1.92%) Sauce Labs
10 3 (1.92%) Snowflake
11 2 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 2 (1.28%) Amazon SQS
11 2 (1.28%) AWS CodePipeline
11 2 (1.28%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 5 (3.21%) HTTPS
2 3 (1.92%) Wireshark
3 1 (0.64%) Broadband
3 1 (0.64%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (10.90%) Relational Database
2 14 (8.97%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (7.69%) MySQL
3 12 (7.69%) NoSQL
4 8 (5.13%) Couchbase
5 7 (4.49%) SQL Server
6 6 (3.85%) Power BI
7 5 (3.21%) Apache Cassandra
7 5 (3.21%) Big Data
7 5 (3.21%) Data Lake
7 5 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (2.56%) DynamoDB
8 4 (2.56%) Metadata
9 3 (1.92%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.92%) MongoDB
10 2 (1.28%) RDBMS
11 1 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (0.64%) Db2
11 1 (0.64%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.64%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 30 (19.23%) Git
2 18 (11.54%) SonarQube
3 14 (8.97%) Jenkins
4 11 (7.05%) JUnit
5 9 (5.77%) JIRA
6 7 (4.49%) Gradle
6 7 (4.49%) Maven
7 6 (3.85%) GitLab
7 6 (3.85%) Selenium
8 5 (3.21%) REST Assured
9 4 (2.56%) Bitbucket
9 4 (2.56%) Visual Studio
10 3 (1.92%) Browser DevTools
10 3 (1.92%) Cucumber
10 3 (1.92%) Eclipse
10 3 (1.92%) JMeter
10 3 (1.92%) Postman
10 3 (1.92%) Rational DOORS
10 3 (1.92%) WebDriver
10 3 (1.92%) Xcode
General
1 33 (21.15%) Social Skills
2 25 (16.03%) Finance
3 10 (6.41%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (5.13%) Banking
5 6 (3.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 4 (2.56%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.92%) Military
8 2 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.28%) Public Sector
9 1 (0.64%) Advertising
9 1 (0.64%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.64%) German Language
9 1 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.64%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 52 (33.33%) Developer
2 32 (20.51%) Java Developer
3 26 (16.67%) Senior
4 22 (14.10%) Architect
5 21 (13.46%) Java Engineer
6 13 (8.33%) Technical Architect
7 11 (7.05%) Software Engineer
8 9 (5.77%) Senior Developer
8 9 (5.77%) Software Developer
9 7 (4.49%) Analyst
9 7 (4.49%) Consultant
9 7 (4.49%) Documentum Architect
9 7 (4.49%) Java Architect
9 7 (4.49%) SC Cleared Java Developer
9 7 (4.49%) Senior Java Developer
10 6 (3.85%) Java Solutions Architect
10 6 (3.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 6 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
11 5 (3.21%) Support Engineer
11 5 (3.21%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (23.08%) REST
2 29 (18.59%) AngularJS
2 29 (18.59%) Spring
3 25 (16.03%) Spring Boot
4 18 (11.54%) .NET
4 18 (11.54%) Quarkus
5 16 (10.26%) Kafka
6 14 (8.97%) React
6 14 (8.97%) RESTful
7 13 (8.33%) CSS
8 12 (7.69%) GraphQL
9 11 (7.05%) HTML
9 11 (7.05%) SOAP
10 9 (5.77%) Node.js
10 9 (5.77%) Web Services
11 8 (5.13%) Hibernate
12 7 (4.49%) JSON
12 7 (4.49%) OAuth
13 6 (3.85%) ADO
13 6 (3.85%) SAP PI
Miscellaneous
1 25 (16.03%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (9.62%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.49%) Data Protection Act
3 7 (4.49%) Enterprise Software
4 6 (3.85%) Product Ownership
5 4 (2.56%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (1.92%) Algorithms
6 3 (1.92%) Distributed Architecture
6 3 (1.92%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.28%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.64%) AI Agents
8 1 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.64%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.64%) EMV
8 1 (0.64%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (0.64%) IoT
8 1 (0.64%) Java Card
8 1 (0.64%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 15 (9.62%) Unix
2 11 (7.05%) Windows
3 10 (6.41%) Linux
4 5 (3.21%) Android
5 1 (0.64%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.64%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (42.95%) Agile
2 59 (37.82%) CI/CD
3 55 (35.26%) Test Automation
4 51 (32.69%) Software Engineering
5 41 (26.28%) Microservices
6 40 (25.64%) DevOps
7 39 (25.00%) SDLC
8 31 (19.87%) Scrum
9 28 (17.95%) Sprint Planning
10 27 (17.31%) Unit Testing
11 24 (15.38%) Sprint Review
12 22 (14.10%) Problem-Solving
13 21 (13.46%) Front End Development
14 20 (12.82%) DevSecOps
15 18 (11.54%) Event-Driven
16 17 (10.90%) Continuous Improvement
16 17 (10.90%) High Availability
17 14 (8.97%) Containerisation
18 13 (8.33%) Design Patterns
18 13 (8.33%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 39 (25.00%) Python
2 30 (19.23%) SQL
3 25 (16.03%) JavaScript
4 12 (7.69%) Go
5 9 (5.77%) C#
6 8 (5.13%) ABAP
6 8 (5.13%) PowerShell
6 8 (5.13%) Shell Script
6 8 (5.13%) TypeScript
7 5 (3.21%) C++
7 5 (3.21%) Perl
7 5 (3.21%) PL/SQL
8 4 (2.56%) Bash
8 4 (2.56%) VB.NET
9 3 (1.92%) C
9 3 (1.92%) Kotlin
9 3 (1.92%) Lua
9 3 (1.92%) Scala
10 2 (1.28%) BeanShell
10 2 (1.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 66 (42.31%) Security Cleared
2 54 (34.62%) SC Cleared
3 13 (8.33%) Degree
4 8 (5.13%) Computer Science Degree
4 8 (5.13%) DV Cleared
5 5 (3.21%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (2.56%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.92%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.28%) CISM
8 2 (1.28%) CISSP
8 2 (1.28%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.64%) CCNA
9 1 (0.64%) CEH
9 1 (0.64%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.64%) ISEB
9 1 (0.64%) ISTQB
9 1 (0.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (24.36%) QA
2 5 (3.21%) GDPR
2 5 (3.21%) NCSC
3 3 (1.92%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.64%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 23 (14.74%) Docker
2 5 (3.21%) Active Directory
3 4 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 43 (27.56%) Kubernetes
2 20 (12.82%) Argo
3 3 (1.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 3 (1.92%) Grafana
3 3 (1.92%) Prometheus
4 2 (1.28%) Ansible
4 2 (1.28%) Puppet
5 1 (0.64%) Amdocs OSS
5 1 (0.64%) Podman
5 1 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 20 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 18 (11.54%) Red Hat
3 14 (8.97%) Oracle
4 10 (6.41%) SAP
5 7 (4.49%) Google
5 7 (4.49%) Splunk
6 5 (3.21%) webMethods
7 4 (2.56%) IBM
7 4 (2.56%) VMware
8 2 (1.28%) Ab Initio
8 2 (1.28%) Sparx
8 2 (1.28%) Teradata
9 1 (0.64%) Concur
9 1 (0.64%) Conga
9 1 (0.64%) Cramer
9 1 (0.64%) Databricks
9 1 (0.64%) Dynatrace
9 1 (0.64%) GoCardless
9 1 (0.64%) NetCracker
9 1 (0.64%) Solace