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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 48 59
Rank change year-on-year +9 +11 -26
Contract jobs citing Java 235 113 181
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.45% 3.78% 3.22%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.75% 12.87% 15.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 151 72 114
10th Percentile £204 £300 £354
25th Percentile £309 £435 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -21.74% +4.55% +2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £683
90th Percentile £638 £662 £738
England median daily rate £515 £585 £568
% change year-on-year -11.97% +3.08% -7.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 1 12
10th Percentile £38.75 - £37.63
25th Percentile £51.88 £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 £60.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +8.33% -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 1,033 878 1,171
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 19.56% 29.34% 20.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 740 568 796
10th Percentile £310 £350 £325
25th Percentile £403 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £501
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.30% -5.47%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £606
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 31 77
10th Percentile £34.01 £30.25 £41.75
25th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.54 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.41% -2.47% +7.27%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.20 £65.62 £74.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +22 72 £462 -16.09% 13
Thames Valley -27 72 £425 -27.35% 19
Berkshire -24 60 £378 -35.47% 11
Surrey +15 46 £208 -51.60% 14
West Sussex -7 30 £357 -24.15% 3
Buckinghamshire -13 11 £563 -7.22% 3
Sussex - 6 £475 - 1
Middlesex - 5 £725 -
East Sussex +4 3 £450 +33.33% 1
Oxfordshire -13 1 £500 - 5
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 (2.55%) Apache
1 6 (2.55%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.28%) IIS
2 3 (1.28%) Tomcat
3 2 (0.85%) CMS
3 2 (0.85%) Confluence
3 2 (0.85%) NetWeaver
3 2 (0.85%) SAP EP
4 1 (0.43%) JBoss
4 1 (0.43%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.43%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.28%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.28%) Maximo
1 3 (1.28%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.85%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.85%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 67 (28.51%) AWS
2 50 (21.28%) GitHub
3 38 (16.17%) Azure
4 29 (12.34%) OpenShift
5 27 (11.49%) GCP
6 25 (10.64%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (6.38%) Amazon S3
8 14 (5.96%) SaaS
9 11 (4.68%) Sauce Labs
9 11 (4.68%) Serverless
10 10 (4.26%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (4.26%) Entra ID
11 9 (3.83%) Datadog
12 7 (2.98%) Snowflake
13 5 (2.13%) Amazon EC2
14 4 (1.70%) Tricentis Tosca
15 3 (1.28%) Amazon SQS
15 3 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
15 3 (1.28%) Azure DevOps
15 3 (1.28%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 8 (3.40%) Wireless
2 5 (2.13%) Kerberos
3 4 (1.70%) HTTP
4 3 (1.28%) Broadband
4 3 (1.28%) GPRS
4 3 (1.28%) GSM
4 3 (1.28%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.28%) NFC
4 3 (1.28%) PPP
4 3 (1.28%) SSL
5 2 (0.85%) Bluetooth
5 2 (0.85%) Firewall
5 2 (0.85%) FTP
5 2 (0.85%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.43%) DHCP
6 1 (0.43%) DNS
6 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (17.45%) PostgreSQL
2 40 (17.02%) Relational Database
3 29 (12.34%) MySQL
4 24 (10.21%) NoSQL
5 16 (6.81%) MongoDB
6 14 (5.96%) DynamoDB
7 9 (3.83%) Big Data
8 8 (3.40%) HBase
9 7 (2.98%) SQL Server
10 5 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (2.13%) Pinecone
10 5 (2.13%) Weaviate
11 3 (1.28%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
12 2 (0.85%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
12 2 (0.85%) RDBMS
13 1 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
13 1 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
13 1 (0.43%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 41 (17.45%) Jenkins
2 30 (12.77%) Git
3 29 (12.34%) JUnit
4 27 (11.49%) Cucumber
5 25 (10.64%) Gradle
6 19 (8.09%) Maven
7 18 (7.66%) Eclipse
8 17 (7.23%) Sonatype Nexus
9 15 (6.38%) Android Studio
10 14 (5.96%) Browser DevTools
11 13 (5.53%) JIRA
12 11 (4.68%) Xcode
13 10 (4.26%) JMeter
14 9 (3.83%) GitLab
14 9 (3.83%) SonarQube
15 8 (3.40%) Artifactory
16 7 (2.98%) Selenium
17 6 (2.55%) Bitbucket
18 4 (1.70%) Cypress.io
18 4 (1.70%) Subversion
General
1 69 (29.36%) Social Skills
2 29 (12.34%) Finance
3 21 (8.94%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (5.96%) Public Sector
5 8 (3.40%) Marketing
6 4 (1.70%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.70%) Billing
6 4 (1.70%) Electronics
7 3 (1.28%) Banking
7 3 (1.28%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.28%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.85%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.43%) Back Office
9 1 (0.43%) Front Office
9 1 (0.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.43%) Legal
9 1 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 99 (42.13%) Developer
2 75 (31.91%) Java Developer
3 25 (10.64%) Java Engineer
3 25 (10.64%) Technical Support
4 23 (9.79%) Software Engineer
5 18 (7.66%) Full-Stack Developer
5 18 (7.66%) Senior
6 17 (7.23%) Support Engineer
7 16 (6.81%) Technical Engineer
7 16 (6.81%) Technical Support Engineer
8 15 (6.38%) Lead
9 12 (5.11%) Senior Developer
10 11 (4.68%) AWS Developer
10 11 (4.68%) Full-Stack Java Developer
10 11 (4.68%) UX Engineer
11 10 (4.26%) Senior Java Developer
12 9 (3.83%) Architect
12 9 (3.83%) DevOps Engineer
13 8 (3.40%) Applications Developer
13 8 (3.40%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (25.11%) Spring
2 49 (20.85%) Spring Boot
3 34 (14.47%) React
4 33 (14.04%) AngularJS
5 32 (13.62%) Kafka
6 29 (12.34%) REST
7 24 (10.21%) CSS
8 18 (7.66%) GraphQL
8 18 (7.66%) RESTful
9 16 (6.81%) XML
10 15 (6.38%) Hibernate
11 14 (5.96%) HTML
12 11 (4.68%) Ajax
12 11 (4.68%) Node.js
13 10 (4.26%) SOAP
14 8 (3.40%) JSON
14 8 (3.40%) Quarkus
14 8 (3.40%) SailPoint
14 8 (3.40%) Vue
14 8 (3.40%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 19 (8.09%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (6.81%) Mobile App
3 9 (3.83%) Cloud Native
4 5 (2.13%) Data Centre
4 5 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
5 3 (1.28%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.28%) IPTV
5 3 (1.28%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.28%) Security Posture
5 3 (1.28%) Smartcard
6 2 (0.85%) Algorithms
6 2 (0.85%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.43%) Clustering
7 1 (0.43%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.43%) EMV
7 1 (0.43%) Java Card
7 1 (0.43%) Life Science
7 1 (0.43%) Marketing Technology
7 1 (0.43%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 41 (17.45%) Linux
2 34 (14.47%) Windows
3 28 (11.91%) Unix
4 19 (8.09%) Android
5 5 (2.13%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.70%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.28%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.85%) VMS
9 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (35.32%) CI/CD
2 65 (27.66%) Agile
3 49 (20.85%) Software Engineering
4 46 (19.57%) DevOps
5 44 (18.72%) Test Automation
6 41 (17.45%) Microservices
7 35 (14.89%) Problem-Solving
8 32 (13.62%) OO
8 32 (13.62%) Scrum
9 28 (11.91%) Containerisation
10 23 (9.79%) Full-Stack Development
10 23 (9.79%) User Experience
11 22 (9.36%) AI
12 20 (8.51%) OOP
13 19 (8.09%) Software Testing
14 18 (7.66%) Fintech
14 18 (7.66%) Observability
14 18 (7.66%) Unit Testing
15 17 (7.23%) Computer Science
16 16 (6.81%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 69 (29.36%) Python
2 61 (25.96%) JavaScript
3 49 (20.85%) SQL
4 21 (8.94%) Perl
5 18 (7.66%) PowerShell
6 16 (6.81%) Go
7 15 (6.38%) C#
8 8 (3.40%) BeanShell
8 8 (3.40%) C++
9 7 (2.98%) Bash
9 7 (2.98%) Kotlin
9 7 (2.98%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.70%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.28%) Groovy
11 3 (1.28%) Jython
11 3 (1.28%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.85%) ABAP
12 2 (0.85%) C
12 2 (0.85%) PHP
12 2 (0.85%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 59 (25.11%) Security Cleared
2 52 (22.13%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.51%) Degree
4 17 (7.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.26%) OCP
5 10 (4.26%) Oracle Certification
6 5 (2.13%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (0.85%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.85%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.85%) ISEB
8 2 (0.85%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.43%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.96%) QA
2 5 (2.13%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.28%) Def Stans
4 2 (0.85%) Accessibility
System Software
1 23 (9.79%) Docker
2 11 (4.68%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.43%) NDS
4 1 (0.43%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 1 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (23.83%) Kubernetes
2 16 (6.81%) Ansible
3 11 (4.68%) Terraform
4 10 (4.26%) Grafana
5 8 (3.40%) Argo
5 8 (3.40%) Progress Chef
6 4 (1.70%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.85%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.43%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.43%) SCCM
Vendors
1 32 (13.62%) Oracle
2 21 (8.94%) Microsoft
3 16 (6.81%) Splunk
4 12 (5.11%) VMware
5 9 (3.83%) Red Hat
5 9 (3.83%) SAP
5 9 (3.83%) ServiceNow
6 5 (2.13%) Google
7 4 (1.70%) Ariba
7 4 (1.70%) Atlassian
8 3 (1.28%) Ab Initio
8 3 (1.28%) Adobe
8 3 (1.28%) OpenAI
8 3 (1.28%) Salesforce
8 3 (1.28%) Teradata
9 2 (0.85%) Databricks
9 2 (0.85%) UiPath
9 2 (0.85%) webMethods
10 1 (0.43%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.43%) Virgin Media