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 23 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 36 62 49
Rank change year-on-year +26 -13 -20
Contract jobs citing Java 219 130 200
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.96% 3.54% 4.03%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.65% 12.88% 17.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 172 92 144
10th Percentile £204 £203 £285
25th Percentile £267 £389 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -14.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £638
90th Percentile £625 £662 £688
England median daily rate £525 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -12.50% +4.35% -6.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 6
10th Percentile £27.50 - £49.55
25th Percentile £36.88 £27.75 £56.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.50 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year +57.89% -55.29% -1.92%
75th Percentile £51.25 £29.25 £66.52
90th Percentile £55.75 - £67.26
England median hourly rate £55.00 £58.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year -6.38% -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 967 1,009 1,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 21.89% 27.47% 23.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 687 644 801
10th Percentile £257 £321 £313
25th Percentile £381 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £615
90th Percentile £640 £668 £675
England median daily rate £513 £542 £550
% change year-on-year -5.44% -1.46% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 32 56
10th Percentile £40.00 £27.00 £45.11
25th Percentile £46.25 £47.50 £50.94
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.06 £70.00
90th Percentile £60.25 £69.70 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -0.79%

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 23 December 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Java in the South East over the 6 months to 23 December 2025.

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 23 December 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
Hampshire +31 74 £516 -1.67% 56
Thames Valley -11 69 £488 -16.67% 159
Berkshire +3 61 £463 -19.57% 107
Surrey +16 50 £208 +1.22% 52
West Sussex -17 12 £360 -18.64% 19
Middlesex - 7 £680 - 4
Buckinghamshire +3 6 £550 -14.56% 29
East Sussex +7 5 £338 +12.50% 17
Oxfordshire -13 2 £500 - 23
Kent - 1 £600 - 32
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 (2.28%) Apache
2 4 (1.83%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.83%) IIS
2 4 (1.83%) Tomcat
3 3 (1.37%) Documentum
4 2 (0.91%) CMS
4 2 (0.91%) Confluence
4 2 (0.91%) JBoss
5 1 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.46%) Drupal
5 1 (0.46%) HCL Domino
5 1 (0.46%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.46%) nginx
5 1 (0.46%) SAP EP
5 1 (0.46%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.46%) WordPress
Applications
1 2 (0.91%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.37%) Maximo
1 3 (1.37%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.91%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle CRM
3 1 (0.46%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 58 (26.48%) AWS
2 45 (20.55%) GitHub
3 43 (19.63%) Azure
4 26 (11.87%) SaaS
5 25 (11.42%) GitHub Actions
5 25 (11.42%) OpenShift
6 22 (10.05%) GCP
7 21 (9.59%) Sauce Labs
8 10 (4.57%) Entra ID
9 9 (4.11%) Datadog
10 8 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (3.65%) Serverless
11 7 (3.20%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (3.20%) Amazon S3
12 5 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (1.83%) Tricentis Tosca
14 3 (1.37%) Amazon Cognito
14 3 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
14 3 (1.37%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 18 (8.22%) Wireless
2 5 (2.28%) Firewall
2 5 (2.28%) HTTP
2 5 (2.28%) Kerberos
3 4 (1.83%) FTP
3 4 (1.83%) NFC
3 4 (1.83%) PPP
3 4 (1.83%) Wireshark
4 3 (1.37%) Broadband
4 3 (1.37%) DNS
4 3 (1.37%) GPRS
4 3 (1.37%) GSM
4 3 (1.37%) SSL
5 2 (0.91%) Bluetooth
5 2 (0.91%) DHCP
5 2 (0.91%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.46%) MQTT
6 1 (0.46%) VoIP
6 1 (0.46%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (20.55%) Relational Database
2 40 (18.26%) MySQL
3 31 (14.16%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (7.31%) MongoDB
5 14 (6.39%) NoSQL
6 8 (3.65%) HBase
7 7 (3.20%) DynamoDB
7 7 (3.20%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.83%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.91%) Big Data
9 2 (0.91%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.91%) Pinecone
9 2 (0.91%) Weaviate
10 1 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.46%) Couchbase
10 1 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 47 (21.46%) Jenkins
2 31 (14.16%) Git
3 30 (13.70%) Cucumber
4 25 (11.42%) Android Studio
4 25 (11.42%) Browser DevTools
4 25 (11.42%) Eclipse
5 24 (10.96%) JUnit
6 21 (9.59%) Gradle
6 21 (9.59%) Xcode
7 18 (8.22%) Sonatype Nexus
8 14 (6.39%) GitLab
9 13 (5.94%) JIRA
10 11 (5.02%) JMeter
11 10 (4.57%) Maven
12 8 (3.65%) Artifactory
12 8 (3.65%) Selenium
13 7 (3.20%) Bitbucket
14 5 (2.28%) Postman
14 5 (2.28%) WebDriver
15 4 (1.83%) Valgrind
General
1 79 (36.07%) Social Skills
2 22 (10.05%) Finance
3 21 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 4 (1.83%) Billing
5 4 (1.83%) Electronics
5 4 (1.83%) Marketing
6 3 (1.37%) Aerospace
6 3 (1.37%) Banking
6 3 (1.37%) Manufacturing
6 3 (1.37%) Telecoms
7 2 (0.91%) Back Office
7 2 (0.91%) Front Office
8 1 (0.46%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (0.46%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.46%) Legal
8 1 (0.46%) Retail
Job Titles
1 65 (29.68%) Developer
2 41 (18.72%) Java Developer
3 40 (18.26%) Technical Support
4 30 (13.70%) Support Engineer
5 29 (13.24%) Technical Engineer
5 29 (13.24%) Technical Support Engineer
6 24 (10.96%) Architect
7 22 (10.05%) Senior
7 22 (10.05%) UX Engineer
8 18 (8.22%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
8 18 (8.22%) Full-Stack Developer
9 14 (6.39%) Java Architect
9 14 (6.39%) Solutions Architect
10 13 (5.94%) Java Solutions Architect
11 12 (5.48%) Full-Stack Java Developer
11 12 (5.48%) Java Engineer
11 12 (5.48%) Senior Developer
12 11 (5.02%) Lead
13 10 (4.57%) Senior Java Developer
13 10 (4.57%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (21.92%) React
2 43 (19.63%) Spring
3 37 (16.89%) AngularJS
4 36 (16.44%) Spring Boot
5 35 (15.98%) CSS
6 33 (15.07%) REST
7 29 (13.24%) GraphQL
8 28 (12.79%) Kafka
9 22 (10.05%) Ajax
10 20 (9.13%) RESTful
11 15 (6.85%) HTML
11 15 (6.85%) XML
12 12 (5.48%) SOAP
13 11 (5.02%) Hibernate
14 10 (4.57%) JSON
14 10 (4.57%) Middleware
15 9 (4.11%) Node.js
16 8 (3.65%) SailPoint
16 8 (3.65%) Vue
17 7 (3.20%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 27 (12.33%) Mobile App
2 11 (5.02%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (3.20%) Private Cloud
4 5 (2.28%) Security Posture
5 4 (1.83%) Algorithms
5 4 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (1.83%) Smartcard
6 3 (1.37%) Cloud Native
6 3 (1.37%) Data Centre
6 3 (1.37%) IPTV
6 3 (1.37%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (0.91%) Linux Command Line
7 2 (0.91%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.46%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.46%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (0.46%) EMV
8 1 (0.46%) IoT
8 1 (0.46%) Java Card
Operating Systems
1 57 (26.03%) Windows
2 56 (25.57%) Linux
3 40 (18.26%) Unix
4 31 (14.16%) Android
5 6 (2.74%) Apple iOS
5 6 (2.74%) Windows Server
6 4 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.83%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.91%) VMS
7 2 (0.91%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.46%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (42.47%) CI/CD
2 57 (26.03%) Agile
3 45 (20.55%) DevOps
3 45 (20.55%) OO
4 40 (18.26%) Problem-Solving
5 36 (16.44%) User Experience
6 32 (14.61%) Test Automation
7 28 (12.79%) Microservices
8 27 (12.33%) Containerisation
9 26 (11.87%) Software Engineering
10 25 (11.42%) Mobile Application Development
11 23 (10.50%) Full-Stack Development
11 23 (10.50%) Infrastructure as Code
12 21 (9.59%) Computer Science
12 21 (9.59%) Observability
12 21 (9.59%) OOP
13 18 (8.22%) Scrum
14 17 (7.76%) AI
14 17 (7.76%) High Availability
15 13 (5.94%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 90 (41.10%) Python
2 83 (37.90%) JavaScript
3 49 (22.37%) SQL
4 33 (15.07%) Perl
5 25 (11.42%) PowerShell
6 24 (10.96%) C#
7 13 (5.94%) C++
7 13 (5.94%) Go
8 8 (3.65%) Bash
8 8 (3.65%) BeanShell
9 6 (2.74%) C
10 5 (2.28%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.83%) R
11 4 (1.83%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.83%) TypeScript
12 3 (1.37%) Jython
12 3 (1.37%) Objective-C
12 3 (1.37%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.37%) Swift
13 2 (0.91%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 61 (27.85%) Security Cleared
2 40 (18.26%) SC Cleared
3 22 (10.05%) Degree
4 19 (8.68%) DV Cleared
5 18 (8.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (4.57%) OCP
6 10 (4.57%) Oracle Certification
7 4 (1.83%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.37%) Network+ Certification
9 2 (0.91%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.91%) CCNA
9 2 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.91%) ISEB
10 1 (0.46%) A+ Certification
10 1 (0.46%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.46%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.46%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.11%) QA
2 5 (2.28%) GDPR
3 4 (1.83%) EU AI Act
3 4 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (1.37%) Def Stans
5 2 (0.91%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.91%) NIST
6 1 (0.46%) Accessibility
System Software
1 20 (9.13%) Docker
2 12 (5.48%) Active Directory
3 9 (4.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.46%) NDS
5 1 (0.46%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 58 (26.48%) Kubernetes
2 27 (12.33%) Ansible
3 15 (6.85%) Terraform
4 12 (5.48%) Grafana
5 9 (4.11%) Progress Chef
6 4 (1.83%) Prometheus
7 3 (1.37%) Proxmox
7 3 (1.37%) Rundeck
7 3 (1.37%) Salt
8 2 (0.91%) SCCM
9 1 (0.46%) Argo
9 1 (0.46%) vRealize
Vendors
1 46 (21.00%) Oracle
2 37 (16.89%) Microsoft
3 22 (10.05%) Splunk
4 21 (9.59%) ServiceNow
5 17 (7.76%) VMware
6 8 (3.65%) Red Hat
6 8 (3.65%) SAP
7 3 (1.37%) Apple
7 3 (1.37%) Ariba
7 3 (1.37%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.91%) Citrix
8 2 (0.91%) CyberArk
8 2 (0.91%) Google
8 2 (0.91%) webMethods
9 1 (0.46%) Databricks
9 1 (0.46%) IBM
9 1 (0.46%) NetIQ
9 1 (0.46%) OpenText
9 1 (0.46%) Pega
9 1 (0.46%) Virgin Media