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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 54 52
Rank change year-on-year +14 -2 -21
Contract jobs citing Java 238 107 194
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.40% 3.64% 3.45%
As % of the Programming Languages category 23.04% 12.83% 16.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 151 67 127
10th Percentile £204 £325 £355
25th Percentile £319 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £575 £540
Median % change year-on-year -17.74% +6.48% +0.47%
75th Percentile £581 £638 £688
90th Percentile £638 £663 £738
England median daily rate £515 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.97% +1.74% -7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 1 12
10th Percentile £40.00 - £37.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £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 1,033 834 1,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.12% 28.39% 21.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 729 548 819
10th Percentile £313 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £501
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.30% -4.57%
75th Percentile £594 £620 £608
90th Percentile £676 £675 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -5.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 31 71
10th Percentile £34.01 £42.50 £35.00
25th Percentile £46.25 £48.24 £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.75 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.12% +7.27%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.52 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.03 £68.50 £73.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -4.38%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +17 74 £488 -2.21% 12
Thames Valley -31 62 £438 -23.91% 37
Surrey +22 50 £413 -36.54% 20
Berkshire -33 49 £378 -34.35% 21
West Sussex -2 36 £358 -23.61% 4
Buckinghamshire -16 11 £563 -7.22% 8
Sussex - 6 £475 - 1
Middlesex - 5 £725 - 1
East Sussex -1 3 £450 +33.33% 3
Oxfordshire -10 2 £515 - 8
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 (2.52%) Apache
1 6 (2.52%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.10%) NetWeaver
2 5 (2.10%) SAP EP
3 3 (1.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (1.26%) IIS
3 3 (1.26%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.84%) CMS
5 1 (0.42%) Confluence
5 1 (0.42%) JBoss
5 1 (0.42%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.42%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.26%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (2.10%) SAP CRM
2 3 (1.26%) Maximo
2 3 (1.26%) Oracle BRM
3 2 (0.84%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.42%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 65 (27.31%) AWS
2 48 (20.17%) GitHub
3 38 (15.97%) Azure
4 29 (12.18%) OpenShift
5 26 (10.92%) GitHub Actions
6 23 (9.66%) GCP
7 12 (5.04%) Amazon S3
7 12 (5.04%) SaaS
8 11 (4.62%) Serverless
9 10 (4.20%) AWS Lambda
10 9 (3.78%) Sauce Labs
11 6 (2.52%) Datadog
12 5 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (2.10%) Entra ID
12 5 (2.10%) SuccessFactors
13 4 (1.68%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.68%) Snowflake
13 4 (1.68%) Tricentis Tosca
14 3 (1.26%) Amazon Cognito
14 3 (1.26%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.52%) Wireless
2 5 (2.10%) Kerberos
3 3 (1.26%) Broadband
3 3 (1.26%) GPRS
3 3 (1.26%) GSM
3 3 (1.26%) HTTP
3 3 (1.26%) HTTPS
4 2 (0.84%) Bluetooth
4 2 (0.84%) FTP
4 2 (0.84%) NFC
4 2 (0.84%) PPP
4 2 (0.84%) SSL
4 2 (0.84%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.42%) DHCP
5 1 (0.42%) DNS
5 1 (0.42%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (18.07%) Relational Database
2 37 (15.55%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (11.34%) MySQL
4 25 (10.50%) NoSQL
5 17 (7.14%) MongoDB
6 14 (5.88%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.78%) Big Data
8 8 (3.36%) HBase
9 6 (2.52%) SQL Server
10 5 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (2.10%) Pinecone
10 5 (2.10%) Weaviate
11 3 (1.26%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.26%) RDBMS
12 2 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
12 2 (0.84%) Couchbase
12 2 (0.84%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
13 1 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
13 1 (0.42%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 41 (17.23%) Jenkins
2 29 (12.18%) Git
2 29 (12.18%) JUnit
3 26 (10.92%) Gradle
4 22 (9.24%) Cucumber
5 19 (7.98%) Maven
6 17 (7.14%) Sonatype Nexus
7 15 (6.30%) Eclipse
8 14 (5.88%) Android Studio
9 12 (5.04%) JIRA
9 12 (5.04%) SonarQube
10 11 (4.62%) JMeter
11 10 (4.20%) Browser DevTools
12 9 (3.78%) GitLab
12 9 (3.78%) Xcode
13 8 (3.36%) Artifactory
14 7 (2.94%) Selenium
15 5 (2.10%) Bitbucket
16 4 (1.68%) Cypress.io
16 4 (1.68%) Subversion
General
1 70 (29.41%) Social Skills
2 27 (11.34%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (10.92%) Finance
4 14 (5.88%) Public Sector
5 8 (3.36%) Marketing
6 4 (1.68%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.68%) Billing
6 4 (1.68%) Electronics
6 4 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.26%) Banking
7 3 (1.26%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.26%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.42%) Advertising
9 1 (0.42%) Front Office
9 1 (0.42%) Legal
9 1 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 102 (42.86%) Developer
2 77 (32.35%) Java Developer
3 26 (10.92%) Software Engineer
4 24 (10.08%) Java Engineer
5 21 (8.82%) Technical Support
6 19 (7.98%) Full-Stack Developer
6 19 (7.98%) Lead
7 18 (7.56%) Senior
8 14 (5.88%) Technical Engineer
9 13 (5.46%) Support Engineer
10 12 (5.04%) Senior Developer
10 12 (5.04%) Technical Support Engineer
11 11 (4.62%) Architect
11 11 (4.62%) AWS Developer
11 11 (4.62%) Full-Stack Java Developer
12 10 (4.20%) Senior Java Developer
13 9 (3.78%) DevOps Engineer
13 9 (3.78%) UX Engineer
14 8 (3.36%) Applications Developer
15 6 (2.52%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (23.11%) Spring
2 45 (18.91%) Spring Boot
3 35 (14.71%) React
4 34 (14.29%) AngularJS
4 34 (14.29%) Kafka
5 30 (12.61%) REST
6 21 (8.82%) CSS
7 19 (7.98%) RESTful
8 17 (7.14%) GraphQL
9 15 (6.30%) Hibernate
10 14 (5.88%) XML
11 13 (5.46%) HTML
12 11 (4.62%) Quarkus
12 11 (4.62%) SOAP
13 10 (4.20%) Node.js
14 9 (3.78%) Ajax
15 8 (3.36%) .NET
15 8 (3.36%) JSON
15 8 (3.36%) Vue
16 7 (2.94%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.82%) Distributed Systems
2 14 (5.88%) Mobile App
3 10 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 7 (2.94%) Self-Motivation
5 5 (2.10%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.68%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.68%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.26%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.26%) IPTV
8 2 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.84%) Distributed Architecture
8 2 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.84%) Security Posture
8 2 (0.84%) Smartcard
9 1 (0.42%) AI Agents
9 1 (0.42%) Legacy Applications
9 1 (0.42%) Low-Code
9 1 (0.42%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (0.42%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.42%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 37 (15.55%) Linux
2 31 (13.03%) Windows
3 26 (10.92%) Unix
4 16 (6.72%) Android
5 4 (1.68%) Windows Server
6 3 (1.26%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.84%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.84%) VMS
8 1 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (35.71%) CI/CD
2 69 (28.99%) Agile
3 52 (21.85%) Software Engineering
4 47 (19.75%) Test Automation
5 46 (19.33%) DevOps
6 45 (18.91%) Microservices
7 38 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
7 38 (15.97%) Scrum
8 28 (11.76%) OO
9 25 (10.50%) Containerisation
9 25 (10.50%) Full-Stack Development
10 24 (10.08%) User Experience
11 22 (9.24%) AI
12 21 (8.82%) Unit Testing
13 20 (8.40%) OOP
14 19 (7.98%) Fintech
14 19 (7.98%) Front End Development
15 18 (7.56%) DevSecOps
15 18 (7.56%) SDLC
15 18 (7.56%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 67 (28.15%) Python
2 60 (25.21%) JavaScript
3 54 (22.69%) SQL
4 20 (8.40%) C#
5 19 (7.98%) Perl
6 17 (7.14%) Go
7 15 (6.30%) PowerShell
8 10 (4.20%) C++
9 9 (3.78%) Kotlin
10 7 (2.94%) Bash
10 7 (2.94%) TypeScript
11 5 (2.10%) ABAP
12 4 (1.68%) PL/SQL
13 3 (1.26%) BeanShell
13 3 (1.26%) Groovy
13 3 (1.26%) Jython
13 3 (1.26%) Shell Script
14 2 (0.84%) C
14 2 (0.84%) R
14 2 (0.84%) Scala
Qualifications
1 68 (28.57%) Security Cleared
2 63 (26.47%) SC Cleared
3 19 (7.98%) Degree
4 16 (6.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.20%) OCP
5 10 (4.20%) Oracle Certification
6 5 (2.10%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (0.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.84%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.84%) ISEB
8 2 (0.84%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.42%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (6.30%) QA
2 5 (2.10%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.26%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.26%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.42%) WCAG
System Software
1 22 (9.24%) Docker
2 6 (2.52%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 55 (23.11%) Kubernetes
2 16 (6.72%) Ansible
3 11 (4.62%) Argo
4 10 (4.20%) Grafana
5 8 (3.36%) Progress Chef
5 8 (3.36%) Terraform
6 4 (1.68%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.84%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.42%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.42%) SCCM
Vendors
1 29 (12.18%) Oracle
2 19 (7.98%) Microsoft
3 14 (5.88%) Splunk
4 12 (5.04%) SAP
4 12 (5.04%) VMware
5 11 (4.62%) Red Hat
6 7 (2.94%) Ariba
6 7 (2.94%) ServiceNow
7 6 (2.52%) Google
8 4 (1.68%) Atlassian
9 3 (1.26%) Ab Initio
9 3 (1.26%) Adobe
9 3 (1.26%) Blue Prism
9 3 (1.26%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.26%) Salesforce
9 3 (1.26%) Teradata
9 3 (1.26%) UiPath
10 2 (0.84%) Databricks
10 2 (0.84%) Dynatrace
10 2 (0.84%) webMethods