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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 47 44
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Java 212 126 218
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.54% 4.31% 3.92%
As % of the Programming Languages category 18.45% 15.97% 17.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 69 148
10th Percentile £204 £362 £365
25th Percentile £332 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £580
Median % change year-on-year - -13.79% +10.48%
75th Percentile £598 £627 £675
90th Percentile £661 £663 £738
England median daily rate £525 £550 £594
% change year-on-year -4.55% -7.41% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 6 15
10th Percentile £52.25 £35.43 £44.00
25th Percentile £60.00 - £60.63
Median hourly rate £66.25 £50.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.50% -23.08% -3.70%
75th Percentile £69.06 £53.75 £67.02
90th Percentile £70.00 £55.00 £74.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £53.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +20.93% -17.31% -0.76%

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 1,149 789 1,252
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.16% 27.01% 22.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 787 539 872
10th Percentile £310 £357 £325
25th Percentile £401 £434 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £501
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -0.10% -4.57%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £660 £675
England median daily rate £513 £525 £548
% change year-on-year -2.38% -4.11% -2.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 28 79
10th Percentile £34.01 £38.83 £35.00
25th Percentile £44.60 £47.99 £46.25
Median hourly rate £53.75 £55.00 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -10.71% +12.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.94 £67.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £65.62 £75.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.84% -0.80% -

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -43 62 £425 -15.00% 25
Surrey +13 50 £500 -6.10% 9
Hampshire -9 49 £580 +28.18% 24
Berkshire -40 43 £380 -24.00% 13
West Sussex -2 35 £355 -24.47% 8
Buckinghamshire -27 13 £513 -10.87% 3
Sussex - 7 £475 - 1
Oxfordshire -20 6 £800 - 9
Middlesex - 4 £725 - 2
East Sussex -1 2 £525 +40.00% 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 (3.77%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.89%) IIS
2 4 (1.89%) NetWeaver
2 4 (1.89%) SAP EP
3 3 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.94%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.47%) Apache
5 1 (0.47%) CMS
5 1 (0.47%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (1.89%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.94%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.47%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 58 (27.36%) AWS
2 48 (22.64%) Azure
3 26 (12.26%) GCP
4 24 (11.32%) GitHub
5 22 (10.38%) OpenShift
6 14 (6.60%) Amazon S3
6 14 (6.60%) GitHub Actions
7 10 (4.72%) Serverless
8 9 (4.25%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (3.77%) Snowflake
10 7 (3.30%) Amazon ECS
11 6 (2.83%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (2.83%) SaaS
11 6 (2.83%) Sauce Labs
12 5 (2.36%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.36%) SuccessFactors
13 3 (1.42%) Amazon SQS
13 3 (1.42%) AWS CodePipeline
14 2 (0.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 2 (0.94%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.89%) HTTP
1 4 (1.89%) HTTPS
2 2 (0.94%) FTP
2 2 (0.94%) Wireshark
3 1 (0.47%) DHCP
3 1 (0.47%) DNS
3 1 (0.47%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (18.40%) Relational Database
2 23 (10.85%) NoSQL
3 20 (9.43%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (8.96%) MySQL
5 13 (6.13%) Big Data
6 12 (5.66%) DynamoDB
7 8 (3.77%) Data Warehouse
8 7 (3.30%) SQL Server
9 5 (2.36%) MongoDB
10 3 (1.42%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.42%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.42%) Data Lake
10 3 (1.42%) Metadata
10 3 (1.42%) Pinecone
10 3 (1.42%) Weaviate
11 2 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.94%) RDBMS
12 1 (0.47%) Apache Cassandra
12 1 (0.47%) HBase
12 1 (0.47%) Redis
Development Applications
1 29 (13.68%) Git
2 23 (10.85%) Jenkins
3 14 (6.60%) SonarQube
4 13 (6.13%) Maven
5 10 (4.72%) Eclipse
5 10 (4.72%) Gradle
6 9 (4.25%) JIRA
6 9 (4.25%) Selenium
7 8 (3.77%) JUnit
8 7 (3.30%) Android Studio
8 7 (3.30%) GitLab
9 6 (2.83%) Browser DevTools
9 6 (2.83%) WebDriver
9 6 (2.83%) Xcode
10 5 (2.36%) Bitbucket
11 4 (1.89%) Cucumber
11 4 (1.89%) Postman
11 4 (1.89%) Subversion
12 3 (1.42%) SpecFlow
12 3 (1.42%) TeamCity
General
1 56 (26.42%) Social Skills
2 22 (10.38%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (6.60%) Finance
4 6 (2.83%) Public Sector
5 4 (1.89%) Marketing
6 3 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.47%) Advertising
7 1 (0.47%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.47%) Back Office
7 1 (0.47%) Banking
7 1 (0.47%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.47%) Front Office
7 1 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (0.47%) Retail
Job Titles
1 76 (35.85%) Developer
2 63 (29.72%) Java Developer
3 29 (13.68%) Java Engineer
4 27 (12.74%) Software Engineer
5 18 (8.49%) Technical Support
6 17 (8.02%) Senior
7 16 (7.55%) Architect
8 15 (7.08%) Lead
9 12 (5.66%) Technical Engineer
10 11 (5.19%) Support Engineer
10 11 (5.19%) Technical Architect
11 10 (4.72%) Applications Developer
11 10 (4.72%) Technical Support Engineer
12 9 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
12 9 (4.25%) SC Cleared Java Developer
12 9 (4.25%) Senior Developer
13 7 (3.30%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 6 (2.83%) Java Software Engineer
14 6 (2.83%) Mid-Level Java Developer
14 6 (2.83%) UX Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (16.98%) Spring
2 29 (13.68%) AngularJS
2 29 (13.68%) REST
3 25 (11.79%) Spring Boot
4 24 (11.32%) React
5 21 (9.91%) Kafka
6 19 (8.96%) GraphQL
7 14 (6.60%) Quarkus
7 14 (6.60%) RESTful
8 12 (5.66%) CSS
9 10 (4.72%) .NET
9 10 (4.72%) SOAP
10 7 (3.30%) HTML
11 6 (2.83%) Ajax
11 6 (2.83%) Node.js
11 6 (2.83%) OAuth
11 6 (2.83%) Vue
11 6 (2.83%) Web Services
12 5 (2.36%) Hibernate
12 5 (2.36%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 33 (15.57%) Distributed Systems
2 19 (8.96%) Cloud Native
3 11 (5.19%) Mobile App
4 6 (2.83%) Product Ownership
4 6 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.36%) Data Centre
5 5 (2.36%) Distributed Architecture
6 4 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.89%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.42%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (0.94%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.47%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (0.47%) Legacy Applications
9 1 (0.47%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.47%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (0.47%) Robotics
9 1 (0.47%) Team-Oriented Environment
9 1 (0.47%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 27 (12.74%) Linux
2 23 (10.85%) Unix
2 23 (10.85%) Windows
3 10 (4.72%) Android
4 5 (2.36%) Windows Server
5 3 (1.42%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.94%) VMS
7 1 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (36.32%) CI/CD
2 69 (32.55%) Agile
3 64 (30.19%) Software Engineering
4 44 (20.75%) DevOps
5 42 (19.81%) Test Automation
6 41 (19.34%) Microservices
7 40 (18.87%) Scrum
8 33 (15.57%) Problem-Solving
9 27 (12.74%) Unit Testing
10 25 (11.79%) Containerisation
10 25 (11.79%) OOP
11 23 (10.85%) High Availability
11 23 (10.85%) OO
12 21 (9.91%) DevSecOps
12 21 (9.91%) SDLC
13 20 (9.43%) Event-Driven
13 20 (9.43%) Fintech
14 19 (8.96%) Sprint Planning
15 18 (8.49%) Computer Science
15 18 (8.49%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 60 (28.30%) Python
2 47 (22.17%) SQL
3 42 (19.81%) JavaScript
4 24 (11.32%) Go
5 18 (8.49%) C#
6 17 (8.02%) Perl
7 11 (5.19%) Kotlin
7 11 (5.19%) PowerShell
8 8 (3.77%) Bash
9 6 (2.83%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.89%) ABAP
10 4 (1.89%) Scala
10 4 (1.89%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.42%) C++
12 2 (0.94%) BeanShell
12 2 (0.94%) Groovy
12 2 (0.94%) R
12 2 (0.94%) VBScript
13 1 (0.47%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.47%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 72 (33.96%) Security Cleared
2 68 (32.08%) SC Cleared
3 23 (10.85%) Degree
4 18 (8.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.42%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.94%) CISM
7 2 (0.94%) CISSP
7 2 (0.94%) ISTQB
7 2 (0.94%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.47%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.47%) CEH
8 1 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (0.47%) OCP
8 1 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (9.43%) QA
2 4 (1.89%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.42%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.42%) GDPR
3 3 (1.42%) NCSC
4 1 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.47%) Software Quality Assurance
4 1 (0.47%) WCAG
System Software
1 22 (10.38%) Docker
2 5 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 52 (24.53%) Kubernetes
2 15 (7.08%) Argo
3 5 (2.36%) Terraform
4 4 (1.89%) Ansible
4 4 (1.89%) Grafana
4 4 (1.89%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (0.94%) Kubeflow
5 2 (0.94%) Puppet
6 1 (0.47%) HP ALM
6 1 (0.47%) SCCM
6 1 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (8.96%) Oracle
2 13 (6.13%) Microsoft
2 13 (6.13%) Red Hat
3 10 (4.72%) Splunk
4 5 (2.36%) Ab Initio
4 5 (2.36%) Ariba
4 5 (2.36%) Google
4 5 (2.36%) SAP
4 5 (2.36%) Teradata
5 4 (1.89%) Atlassian
6 3 (1.42%) Blue Prism
6 3 (1.42%) Dynatrace
6 3 (1.42%) UiPath
7 2 (0.94%) Adobe
7 2 (0.94%) Databricks
7 2 (0.94%) OpenAI
7 2 (0.94%) Sparx
7 2 (0.94%) VMware
8 1 (0.47%) Citrix
8 1 (0.47%) HP