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 14 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 40 46 46
Rank change year-on-year +6 0 -18
Contract jobs citing Java 176 176 261
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.91% 4.13% 4.74%
As % of the Programming Languages category 19.34% 15.81% 19.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 132 130 185
10th Percentile £204 £225 £305
25th Percentile £282 £400 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £563 £525
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +7.14% -4.55%
75th Percentile £558 £643 £638
90th Percentile £600 £675 £700
England median daily rate £518 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -13.75% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 3 14
10th Percentile £49.63 £33.70 £51.63
25th Percentile - £42.63 £54.63
Median hourly rate £50.00 £60.00 £66.25
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -9.43% +1.45%
75th Percentile £53.75 £68.13 £72.78
90th Percentile £55.00 £71.50 £74.63
England median hourly rate £50.00 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -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 910 1,113 1,327
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 25.39% 26.10% 24.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 631 710 935
10th Percentile £255 £325 £318
25th Percentile £377 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £514 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.62% -3.07% +0.95%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £615
90th Percentile £625 £660 £678
England median daily rate £513 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -5.53% -1.36% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 56 71
10th Percentile £50.00 £27.00 £32.32
25th Percentile £50.63 £50.94 £49.07
Median hourly rate £55.00 £64.76 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.07% +17.75% -12.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.94 £69.38
90th Percentile - £75.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £56.25 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -13.46% +4.00% +4.17%

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 14 October 2025.

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
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 14 October 2025. 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 0 63 £425 -26.09% 60
Hampshire +34 59 £546 -7.02% 16
Berkshire -1 52 £456 -20.65% 39
Surrey +7 42 £208 -42.76% 45
Buckinghamshire +4 9 £325 -48.00% 11
West Sussex -18 5 £340 -21.84% 12
East Sussex +1 3 £300 -
Middlesex -5 2 £635 +1.60% 2
Oxfordshire -8 2 £500 +17.65% 15
Kent - 1 £600 - 11
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 4 (2.27%) JBoss
2 3 (1.70%) Documentum
3 2 (1.14%) CMS
3 2 (1.14%) Tomcat
4 1 (0.57%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.57%) Confluence
4 1 (0.57%) Drupal
4 1 (0.57%) HCL Domino
4 1 (0.57%) IIS
4 1 (0.57%) nginx
4 1 (0.57%) WordPress
Business Applications
1 3 (1.70%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.57%) Maximo
2 1 (0.57%) Oracle BPM
2 1 (0.57%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 41 (23.30%) Azure
2 38 (21.59%) AWS
3 19 (10.80%) GitHub
3 19 (10.80%) OpenShift
4 18 (10.23%) SaaS
5 16 (9.09%) GCP
6 15 (8.52%) Sauce Labs
7 13 (7.39%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (4.55%) Amazon S3
9 7 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (3.98%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (3.98%) Serverless
10 6 (3.41%) Datadog
10 6 (3.41%) Entra ID
11 5 (2.84%) Amazon EC2
11 5 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (2.84%) Cloud Computing
12 3 (1.70%) Amazon EMR
12 3 (1.70%) Amazon Kinesis
12 3 (1.70%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (8.52%) Wireless
2 8 (4.55%) NFC
2 8 (4.55%) PPP
3 7 (3.98%) Wireshark
4 5 (2.84%) Firewall
4 5 (2.84%) HTTP
5 4 (2.27%) FTP
5 4 (2.27%) HTTPS
5 4 (2.27%) VPN
6 3 (1.70%) ATM
6 3 (1.70%) Ethernet
6 3 (1.70%) GPRS
6 3 (1.70%) GSM
6 3 (1.70%) Kerberos
6 3 (1.70%) LAN
6 3 (1.70%) MPLS
6 3 (1.70%) SAN
6 3 (1.70%) SDH
6 3 (1.70%) UMTS
6 3 (1.70%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (14.20%) Relational Database
2 23 (13.07%) MySQL
3 14 (7.95%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (3.98%) NoSQL
5 6 (3.41%) MongoDB
6 4 (2.27%) Amazon Redshift
6 4 (2.27%) DynamoDB
6 4 (2.27%) RDBMS
7 3 (1.70%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (1.70%) HBase
7 3 (1.70%) SQL Server
8 1 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.57%) Big Data
8 1 (0.57%) Delta Lake
8 1 (0.57%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 37 (21.02%) Jenkins
2 34 (19.32%) Git
3 24 (13.64%) Eclipse
4 21 (11.93%) Cucumber
5 19 (10.80%) Browser DevTools
6 18 (10.23%) JIRA
7 15 (8.52%) Android Studio
7 15 (8.52%) Xcode
8 14 (7.95%) GitLab
8 14 (7.95%) Selenium
9 11 (6.25%) JUnit
10 8 (4.55%) Valgrind
11 7 (3.98%) Maven
11 7 (3.98%) WebDriver
12 6 (3.41%) Gradle
12 6 (3.41%) Postman
13 5 (2.84%) Bitbucket
13 5 (2.84%) Sonatype Nexus
14 4 (2.27%) JMeter
15 3 (1.70%) Firebug
General
1 62 (35.23%) Social Skills
2 25 (14.20%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (9.09%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.68%) Finance
5 6 (3.41%) Aerospace
6 5 (2.84%) Banking
7 4 (2.27%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (1.14%) Billing
9 2 (1.14%) Law
10 1 (0.57%) Automotive
10 1 (0.57%) Back Office
10 1 (0.57%) Digital Healthcare
10 1 (0.57%) Front Office
10 1 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 43 (24.43%) Developer
2 29 (16.48%) Technical Support
3 26 (14.77%) Senior
4 24 (13.64%) Architect
4 24 (13.64%) Support Engineer
5 23 (13.07%) Technical Engineer
5 23 (13.07%) Technical Support Engineer
6 22 (12.50%) Java Developer
7 16 (9.09%) Java Architect
7 16 (9.09%) Solutions Architect
7 16 (9.09%) UX Engineer
8 15 (8.52%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
8 15 (8.52%) Java Solutions Architect
9 13 (7.39%) Platform Engineer
10 12 (6.82%) Software Engineer
10 12 (6.82%) Test Engineer
11 9 (5.11%) Senior Developer
12 8 (4.55%) C++ Software Engineer
12 8 (4.55%) Senior Software Engineer
12 8 (4.55%) Software Development Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (22.16%) React
2 38 (21.59%) REST
3 25 (14.20%) Spring
4 24 (13.64%) CSS
5 23 (13.07%) Spring Boot
6 21 (11.93%) AngularJS
7 17 (9.66%) Ajax
7 17 (9.66%) GraphQL
7 17 (9.66%) RESTful
7 17 (9.66%) Web Services
8 16 (9.09%) Kafka
8 16 (9.09%) XML
9 15 (8.52%) JSON
10 12 (6.82%) Middleware
11 11 (6.25%) HTML
12 10 (5.68%) Hibernate
13 8 (4.55%) SOAP
14 6 (3.41%) SailPoint
15 5 (2.84%) Elastic Stack
15 5 (2.84%) jQuery
Miscellaneous
1 20 (11.36%) Mobile App
2 17 (9.66%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (6.25%) Private Cloud
3 11 (6.25%) Self-Motivation
4 8 (4.55%) Smartcard
5 6 (3.41%) Cloud Native
6 5 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (2.84%) Product Ownership
7 4 (2.27%) Algorithms
7 4 (2.27%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (1.14%) CMDB
9 2 (1.14%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.57%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.57%) EMV
10 1 (0.57%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.57%) IoT
10 1 (0.57%) Java Card
10 1 (0.57%) Legacy Systems
10 1 (0.57%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 48 (27.27%) Linux
2 37 (21.02%) Windows
3 29 (16.48%) Unix
4 21 (11.93%) Android
5 8 (4.55%) Ubuntu
6 6 (3.41%) Apple iOS
7 3 (1.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (1.14%) Windows Server
9 1 (0.57%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 68 (38.64%) CI/CD
2 43 (24.43%) Agile
3 40 (22.73%) DevOps
4 35 (19.89%) Problem-Solving
5 29 (16.48%) OO
6 27 (15.34%) User Experience
7 25 (14.20%) Software Engineering
8 23 (13.07%) Test Automation
9 21 (11.93%) Containerisation
9 21 (11.93%) Infrastructure as Code
10 19 (10.80%) High Availability
10 19 (10.80%) Mobile Application Development
11 18 (10.23%) Microservices
12 16 (9.09%) Computer Science
12 16 (9.09%) Scrum
13 15 (8.52%) Configuration Management
14 14 (7.95%) SDLC
15 13 (7.39%) Observability
15 13 (7.39%) Sprint Planning
16 12 (6.82%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 77 (43.75%) Python
2 67 (38.07%) JavaScript
3 35 (19.89%) SQL
4 27 (15.34%) C#
5 23 (13.07%) Perl
6 20 (11.36%) PowerShell
7 13 (7.39%) C++
8 12 (6.82%) Go
9 6 (3.41%) BeanShell
9 6 (3.41%) C
9 6 (3.41%) Kotlin
10 5 (2.84%) Apex Code
10 5 (2.84%) R
10 5 (2.84%) Shell Script
11 4 (2.27%) Scala
12 3 (1.70%) Bash
12 3 (1.70%) Objective-C
12 3 (1.70%) Swift
13 2 (1.14%) MATLAB
13 2 (1.14%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 57 (32.39%) Security Cleared
2 35 (19.89%) SC Cleared
3 20 (11.36%) DV Cleared
4 16 (9.09%) Degree
5 13 (7.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (3.41%) Cisco Certification
7 5 (2.84%) AWS Certification
8 4 (2.27%) Network+ Certification
8 4 (2.27%) OCP
8 4 (2.27%) Oracle Certification
9 3 (1.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.70%) CCNA
9 3 (1.70%) CCNP
9 3 (1.70%) ISEB
9 3 (1.70%) ISTQB
9 3 (1.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (1.14%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.57%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.84%) GDPR
2 4 (2.27%) EU AI Act
2 4 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (1.70%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.70%) Def Stans
3 3 (1.70%) QA
4 2 (1.14%) NIST
5 1 (0.57%) Accessibility
System Software
1 15 (8.52%) Docker
2 7 (3.98%) Active Directory
3 5 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.57%) NDS
4 1 (0.57%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 1 (0.57%) Postfix
4 1 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 46 (26.14%) Kubernetes
2 20 (11.36%) Ansible
3 11 (6.25%) Grafana
4 10 (5.68%) Terraform
5 5 (2.84%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.70%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.70%) Rundeck
6 3 (1.70%) Salt
7 2 (1.14%) Docker Swarm
7 2 (1.14%) Kibana
7 2 (1.14%) Podman
7 2 (1.14%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.57%) SCCM
8 1 (0.57%) vRealize
Vendors
1 30 (17.05%) Microsoft
2 29 (16.48%) Oracle
3 20 (11.36%) ServiceNow
4 19 (10.80%) Splunk
5 13 (7.39%) Red Hat
6 9 (5.11%) VMware
7 6 (3.41%) Salesforce
8 5 (2.84%) MuleSoft
9 3 (1.70%) Apple
9 3 (1.70%) Cisco
9 3 (1.70%) Juniper
10 2 (1.14%) CyberArk
10 2 (1.14%) Databricks
10 2 (1.14%) Dynatrace
10 2 (1.14%) SAP
11 1 (0.57%) Adobe
11 1 (0.57%) Citrix
11 1 (0.57%) IBM
11 1 (0.57%) Jaspersoft
11 1 (0.57%) NetIQ