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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 57 55
Rank change year-on-year +17 -2 -23
Contract jobs citing Java 216 115 191
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.65% 3.66% 3.47%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.36% 12.61% 16.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 158 77 138
10th Percentile £204 £300 £305
25th Percentile £299 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £424 £575 £528
Median % change year-on-year -26.30% +9.00% -4.09%
75th Percentile £569 £638 £638
90th Percentile £631 £659 £712
England median daily rate £515 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.97% +1.74% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 0 12
10th Percentile £30.00 - £45.59
25th Percentile £40.00 - £60.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 - £65.00
75th Percentile £60.00 - £67.02
90th Percentile - - £67.45
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -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 966 912 1,154
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 20.78% 29.02% 20.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 699 578 795
10th Percentile £295 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £425 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.94% -3.33% -1.87%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £615
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
England median daily rate £512 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.51% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 25 88
10th Percentile £42.43 £43.50 £45.75
25th Percentile £46.25 £55.38 £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +7.20% +5.05%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £71.88 £73.42 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -7.69%

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 9 February 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 9 February 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 9 February 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 +24 72 £473 -24.32% 32
Thames Valley -20 66 £400 -30.43% 27
Berkshire -12 57 £375 -34.78% 13
Surrey +17 45 £208 -51.60% 29
West Sussex -13 20 £360 -25.00% 15
Buckinghamshire -3 8 £575 -9.80% 8
Middlesex - 5 £725 - 7
Sussex - 5 £475 - 6
East Sussex +2 3 £450 +50.00% 3
Oxfordshire -11 1 £500 - 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 5 (2.31%) Apache
1 5 (2.31%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.39%) Documentum
2 3 (1.39%) IIS
2 3 (1.39%) Tomcat
3 2 (0.93%) Confluence
3 2 (0.93%) JBoss
3 2 (0.93%) NetWeaver
3 2 (0.93%) SAP EP
4 1 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.46%) CMS
4 1 (0.46%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.39%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.39%) Maximo
1 3 (1.39%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.93%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.93%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 62 (28.70%) AWS
2 47 (21.76%) GitHub
3 39 (18.06%) Azure
4 25 (11.57%) GCP
4 25 (11.57%) OpenShift
5 24 (11.11%) GitHub Actions
6 19 (8.80%) SaaS
7 15 (6.94%) Sauce Labs
8 10 (4.63%) Entra ID
9 9 (4.17%) Amazon S3
9 9 (4.17%) Datadog
10 8 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (3.70%) Serverless
11 6 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (2.78%) Snowflake
12 4 (1.85%) Amazon EC2
12 4 (1.85%) Tricentis Tosca
13 3 (1.39%) Amazon Cognito
13 3 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (1.39%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 12 (5.56%) Wireless
2 7 (3.24%) HTTP
3 5 (2.31%) FTP
3 5 (2.31%) Kerberos
3 5 (2.31%) Wireshark
4 3 (1.39%) Broadband
4 3 (1.39%) GPRS
4 3 (1.39%) GSM
4 3 (1.39%) NFC
4 3 (1.39%) PPP
4 3 (1.39%) SSL
5 2 (0.93%) Bluetooth
5 2 (0.93%) Firewall
6 1 (0.46%) DHCP
6 1 (0.46%) DNS
6 1 (0.46%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.46%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (19.44%) Relational Database
2 36 (16.67%) MySQL
3 33 (15.28%) PostgreSQL
4 17 (7.87%) NoSQL
5 16 (7.41%) MongoDB
6 9 (4.17%) DynamoDB
7 8 (3.70%) HBase
8 5 (2.31%) Pinecone
8 5 (2.31%) SQL Server
8 5 (2.31%) Weaviate
9 4 (1.85%) Big Data
10 3 (1.39%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.93%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
12 1 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
12 1 (0.46%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 34 (15.74%) Jenkins
2 29 (13.43%) JUnit
3 28 (12.96%) Cucumber
4 24 (11.11%) Gradle
5 22 (10.19%) Git
6 19 (8.80%) Android Studio
6 19 (8.80%) Browser DevTools
7 18 (8.33%) Eclipse
7 18 (8.33%) Sonatype Nexus
8 15 (6.94%) Xcode
9 13 (6.02%) Maven
10 12 (5.56%) JIRA
11 11 (5.09%) JMeter
12 10 (4.63%) GitLab
13 8 (3.70%) Artifactory
14 7 (3.24%) Selenium
15 6 (2.78%) Bitbucket
16 5 (2.31%) SonarQube
17 4 (1.85%) Cypress.io
17 4 (1.85%) WebDriver
General
1 70 (32.41%) Social Skills
2 29 (13.43%) Finance
3 21 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (7.87%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.78%) Marketing
6 4 (1.85%) Banking
6 4 (1.85%) Billing
6 4 (1.85%) Electronics
7 3 (1.39%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.39%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.39%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.46%) Back Office
9 1 (0.46%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.46%) Front Office
9 1 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.46%) Legal
9 1 (0.46%) Retail
Job Titles
1 90 (41.67%) Developer
2 67 (31.02%) Java Developer
3 35 (16.20%) Technical Support
4 25 (11.57%) Support Engineer
5 24 (11.11%) Technical Engineer
5 24 (11.11%) Technical Support Engineer
6 19 (8.80%) Full-Stack Developer
7 18 (8.33%) Senior
8 17 (7.87%) Java Engineer
9 16 (7.41%) UX Engineer
10 13 (6.02%) Senior Developer
11 12 (5.56%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
11 12 (5.56%) Full-Stack Java Developer
11 12 (5.56%) Lead
12 11 (5.09%) AWS Developer
13 10 (4.63%) Senior Java Developer
14 9 (4.17%) Architect
14 9 (4.17%) Software Engineer
15 8 (3.70%) Automation Engineer
16 6 (2.78%) Mid-Level Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (24.54%) Spring
2 43 (19.91%) Spring Boot
3 38 (17.59%) React
4 34 (15.74%) AngularJS
5 29 (13.43%) Kafka
6 28 (12.96%) CSS
6 28 (12.96%) REST
7 22 (10.19%) GraphQL
8 18 (8.33%) RESTful
9 16 (7.41%) Ajax
10 13 (6.02%) Hibernate
10 13 (6.02%) HTML
11 12 (5.56%) XML
12 11 (5.09%) Node.js
12 11 (5.09%) SOAP
13 8 (3.70%) JSON
13 8 (3.70%) SailPoint
14 7 (3.24%) RabbitMQ
14 7 (3.24%) Vue
15 6 (2.78%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 20 (9.26%) Mobile App
2 16 (7.41%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
4 4 (1.85%) Cloud Native
5 3 (1.39%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.39%) IPTV
5 3 (1.39%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.39%) Security Posture
5 3 (1.39%) Smartcard
6 2 (0.93%) Algorithms
6 2 (0.93%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.46%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.46%) EMV
7 1 (0.46%) Java Card
7 1 (0.46%) Legacy Applications
7 1 (0.46%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.46%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.46%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.46%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 52 (24.07%) Windows
2 50 (23.15%) Linux
3 37 (17.13%) Unix
4 23 (10.65%) Android
5 5 (2.31%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.85%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (1.39%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.93%) VMS
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (36.11%) CI/CD
2 58 (26.85%) Agile
3 42 (19.44%) DevOps
4 41 (18.98%) OO
5 38 (17.59%) Test Automation
6 36 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
7 35 (16.20%) Microservices
8 28 (12.96%) User Experience
9 27 (12.50%) Containerisation
9 27 (12.50%) Software Engineering
10 25 (11.57%) OOP
11 24 (11.11%) Full-Stack Development
12 22 (10.19%) Scrum
13 21 (9.72%) Observability
14 19 (8.80%) Software Testing
15 18 (8.33%) Computer Science
16 17 (7.87%) AI
16 17 (7.87%) High Availability
16 17 (7.87%) Mobile Application Development
17 16 (7.41%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 74 (34.26%) Python
2 70 (32.41%) JavaScript
3 46 (21.30%) SQL
4 28 (12.96%) Perl
5 19 (8.80%) PowerShell
6 15 (6.94%) C#
7 13 (6.02%) Go
8 8 (3.70%) Bash
8 8 (3.70%) BeanShell
8 8 (3.70%) C++
9 7 (3.24%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.85%) C
10 4 (1.85%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.39%) Jython
11 3 (1.39%) Kotlin
11 3 (1.39%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.93%) Assembly Language
12 2 (0.93%) Groovy
12 2 (0.93%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.93%) R
Qualifications
1 54 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 44 (20.37%) SC Cleared
3 21 (9.72%) Degree
4 16 (7.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.63%) OCP
5 10 (4.63%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (3.70%) DV Cleared
7 5 (2.31%) ISTQB
8 4 (1.85%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.93%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.93%) ISEB
9 2 (0.93%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.46%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.56%) QA
2 3 (1.39%) Def Stans
3 2 (0.93%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.46%) Accessibility
System Software
1 21 (9.72%) Docker
2 11 (5.09%) Active Directory
3 8 (3.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.46%) NDS
4 1 (0.46%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 1 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 52 (24.07%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.72%) Ansible
3 14 (6.48%) Terraform
4 9 (4.17%) Grafana
4 9 (4.17%) Progress Chef
5 4 (1.85%) Argo
6 3 (1.39%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.39%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.39%) Rundeck
6 3 (1.39%) Salt
7 1 (0.46%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.46%) SCCM
7 1 (0.46%) vRealize
Vendors
1 39 (18.06%) Oracle
2 26 (12.04%) Microsoft
3 20 (9.26%) Splunk
4 16 (7.41%) VMware
5 15 (6.94%) ServiceNow
6 9 (4.17%) SAP
7 5 (2.31%) Red Hat
8 4 (1.85%) Ariba
9 3 (1.39%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.39%) Salesforce
10 2 (0.93%) Ab Initio
10 2 (0.93%) CyberArk
10 2 (0.93%) Google
10 2 (0.93%) Teradata
10 2 (0.93%) webMethods
11 1 (0.46%) Citrix
11 1 (0.46%) HP
11 1 (0.46%) NetIQ
11 1 (0.46%) Remedy
11 1 (0.46%) Virgin Media