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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 54 56
Rank change year-on-year +13 +2 -23
Contract jobs citing Java 219 118 186
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.58% 3.76% 3.37%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.53% 13.10% 16.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 149 79 128
10th Percentile £204 £300 £343
25th Percentile £300 £395 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £423 £575 £554
Median % change year-on-year -26.52% +3.84% +1.61%
75th Percentile £569 £638 £678
90th Percentile £630 £658 £738
England median daily rate £515 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.97% +1.74% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 0 12
10th Percentile £33.75 - £45.59
25th Percentile £47.50 - £60.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 - £65.00
75th Percentile £61.88 - £67.02
90th Percentile £68.13 - £74.20
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £63.75
% change year-on-year +4.00% -1.96% -1.92%

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 972 901 1,150
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 20.31% 28.74% 20.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 701 581 779
10th Percentile £305 £350 £325
25th Percentile £403 £420 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% -4.67% -0.94%
75th Percentile £588 £615 £614
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 25 83
10th Percentile £30.33 £43.31 £44.93
25th Percentile £46.25 £52.50 £46.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £60.50 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +2.54% +7.27%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £82.15 £69.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +21 69 £456 -27.08% 26
Thames Valley -24 69 £390 -32.17% 21
Berkshire -12 59 £375 -34.78% 11
Surrey +16 44 £208 -51.60% 19
West Sussex -11 23 £360 -17.24% 14
Buckinghamshire -7 9 £575 -9.80% 7
Sussex - 6 £475 - 3
Middlesex - 5 £725 - 1
East Sussex +3 3 £450 +50.00% 2
Oxfordshire -13 1 £500 - 3
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 (2.74%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.28%) Apache
3 3 (1.37%) IIS
3 3 (1.37%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.91%) Confluence
4 2 (0.91%) NetWeaver
4 2 (0.91%) SAP EP
5 1 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.46%) CMS
5 1 (0.46%) Documentum
5 1 (0.46%) JBoss
5 1 (0.46%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.37%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.37%) Maximo
1 3 (1.37%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.91%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.91%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 63 (28.77%) AWS
2 48 (21.92%) GitHub
3 37 (16.89%) Azure
4 28 (12.79%) OpenShift
5 25 (11.42%) GCP
5 25 (11.42%) GitHub Actions
6 17 (7.76%) SaaS
7 14 (6.39%) Sauce Labs
8 11 (5.02%) Amazon S3
9 10 (4.57%) Entra ID
10 9 (4.11%) AWS Lambda
10 9 (4.11%) Datadog
10 9 (4.11%) Serverless
11 7 (3.20%) Snowflake
12 5 (2.28%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (1.83%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.83%) Tricentis Tosca
14 3 (1.37%) Amazon Cognito
14 3 (1.37%) Azure Machine Learning
14 3 (1.37%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 11 (5.02%) Wireless
2 7 (3.20%) HTTP
3 5 (2.28%) FTP
3 5 (2.28%) Kerberos
3 5 (2.28%) Wireshark
4 3 (1.37%) Broadband
4 3 (1.37%) GPRS
4 3 (1.37%) GSM
4 3 (1.37%) HTTPS
4 3 (1.37%) NFC
4 3 (1.37%) PPP
4 3 (1.37%) SSL
5 2 (0.91%) Bluetooth
5 2 (0.91%) Firewall
6 1 (0.46%) DHCP
6 1 (0.46%) DNS
6 1 (0.46%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (17.81%) Relational Database
2 35 (15.98%) PostgreSQL
3 32 (14.61%) MySQL
4 18 (8.22%) NoSQL
5 16 (7.31%) MongoDB
6 11 (5.02%) DynamoDB
7 8 (3.65%) HBase
8 5 (2.28%) Big Data
8 5 (2.28%) Pinecone
8 5 (2.28%) SQL Server
8 5 (2.28%) Weaviate
9 3 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.91%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.91%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.91%) RDBMS
11 1 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
11 1 (0.46%) Couchbase
Development Applications
1 34 (15.53%) Jenkins
2 30 (13.70%) JUnit
3 27 (12.33%) Cucumber
4 25 (11.42%) Gradle
5 23 (10.50%) Git
6 19 (8.68%) Eclipse
7 18 (8.22%) Android Studio
7 18 (8.22%) Sonatype Nexus
8 17 (7.76%) Browser DevTools
8 17 (7.76%) Maven
9 14 (6.39%) Xcode
10 13 (5.94%) JIRA
11 11 (5.02%) JMeter
12 8 (3.65%) Artifactory
13 7 (3.20%) GitLab
13 7 (3.20%) Selenium
13 7 (3.20%) SonarQube
14 6 (2.74%) Bitbucket
15 4 (1.83%) Storybook
15 4 (1.83%) Toad
General
1 69 (31.51%) Social Skills
2 29 (13.24%) Finance
3 21 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (6.85%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.74%) Marketing
6 4 (1.83%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.83%) Banking
6 4 (1.83%) Billing
6 4 (1.83%) Electronics
7 3 (1.37%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.37%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.91%) 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 98 (44.75%) Developer
2 73 (33.33%) Java Developer
3 31 (14.16%) Technical Support
4 23 (10.50%) Support Engineer
5 22 (10.05%) Technical Engineer
5 22 (10.05%) Technical Support Engineer
6 19 (8.68%) Full-Stack Developer
6 19 (8.68%) Java Engineer
7 18 (8.22%) Senior
8 14 (6.39%) UX Engineer
9 13 (5.94%) Lead
9 13 (5.94%) Senior Developer
9 13 (5.94%) Software Engineer
10 12 (5.48%) Full-Stack Java Developer
11 11 (5.02%) AWS Developer
11 11 (5.02%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
12 10 (4.57%) Senior Java Developer
13 7 (3.20%) Architect
14 6 (2.74%) Applications Developer
14 6 (2.74%) Applications Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (26.48%) Spring
2 47 (21.46%) Spring Boot
3 36 (16.44%) React
4 34 (15.53%) AngularJS
5 30 (13.70%) Kafka
6 27 (12.33%) REST
7 26 (11.87%) CSS
8 20 (9.13%) GraphQL
9 17 (7.76%) RESTful
10 16 (7.31%) Hibernate
11 14 (6.39%) Ajax
11 14 (6.39%) XML
12 13 (5.94%) HTML
13 12 (5.48%) SOAP
14 11 (5.02%) Node.js
15 8 (3.65%) JSON
15 8 (3.65%) SailPoint
15 8 (3.65%) Web Services
16 7 (3.20%) RabbitMQ
16 7 (3.20%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 19 (8.68%) Mobile App
2 17 (7.76%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (2.28%) Cloud Native
3 5 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
4 3 (1.37%) Data Centre
4 3 (1.37%) Data Structures
4 3 (1.37%) IPTV
4 3 (1.37%) Product Ownership
4 3 (1.37%) Security Posture
4 3 (1.37%) Smartcard
5 2 (0.91%) Algorithms
5 2 (0.91%) Distributed Architecture
5 2 (0.91%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (0.46%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.46%) EMV
6 1 (0.46%) Java Card
6 1 (0.46%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (0.46%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.46%) Private Cloud
6 1 (0.46%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 45 (20.55%) Linux
2 43 (19.63%) Windows
3 34 (15.53%) Unix
4 23 (10.50%) Android
5 6 (2.74%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.83%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.37%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.91%) VMS
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (36.53%) CI/CD
2 61 (27.85%) Agile
3 41 (18.72%) DevOps
3 41 (18.72%) Test Automation
4 39 (17.81%) Microservices
5 38 (17.35%) OO
6 34 (15.53%) Problem-Solving
7 33 (15.07%) Software Engineering
8 27 (12.33%) Containerisation
8 27 (12.33%) Scrum
9 26 (11.87%) User Experience
10 24 (10.96%) Full-Stack Development
11 23 (10.50%) OOP
12 19 (8.68%) Observability
12 19 (8.68%) Software Testing
13 18 (8.22%) Computer Science
14 17 (7.76%) AI
15 16 (7.31%) High Availability
16 15 (6.85%) Mobile Application Development
17 14 (6.39%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 66 (30.14%) Python
2 63 (28.77%) JavaScript
3 44 (20.09%) SQL
4 24 (10.96%) Perl
5 16 (7.31%) PowerShell
6 15 (6.85%) C#
7 10 (4.57%) Go
8 8 (3.65%) BeanShell
8 8 (3.65%) C++
9 7 (3.20%) TypeScript
10 5 (2.28%) Bash
10 5 (2.28%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.83%) C
11 4 (1.83%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.37%) Groovy
12 3 (1.37%) Jython
13 2 (0.91%) Ada
13 2 (0.91%) Assembly Language
13 2 (0.91%) MATLAB
13 2 (0.91%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 55 (25.11%) Security Cleared
2 47 (21.46%) SC Cleared
3 21 (9.59%) Degree
4 16 (7.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.57%) OCP
5 10 (4.57%) Oracle Certification
6 5 (2.28%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 3 (1.37%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.91%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.91%) ISEB
9 2 (0.91%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.46%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.94%) QA
2 3 (1.37%) Def Stans
3 2 (0.91%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.46%) Accessibility
System Software
1 21 (9.59%) Docker
2 11 (5.02%) Active Directory
3 5 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.46%) NDS
4 1 (0.46%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 1 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 53 (24.20%) Kubernetes
2 17 (7.76%) Ansible
3 11 (5.02%) Terraform
4 10 (4.57%) Grafana
5 9 (4.11%) Progress Chef
6 6 (2.74%) Argo
7 4 (1.83%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.46%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.46%) SCCM
Vendors
1 35 (15.98%) Oracle
2 24 (10.96%) Microsoft
3 19 (8.68%) Splunk
4 13 (5.94%) VMware
5 12 (5.48%) ServiceNow
6 9 (4.11%) SAP
7 7 (3.20%) Red Hat
8 4 (1.83%) Ariba
9 3 (1.37%) Ab Initio
9 3 (1.37%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.37%) Salesforce
9 3 (1.37%) Teradata
10 2 (0.91%) Atlassian
10 2 (0.91%) Google
10 2 (0.91%) webMethods
11 1 (0.46%) Adobe
11 1 (0.46%) IBM
11 1 (0.46%) NetIQ
11 1 (0.46%) OpenText
11 1 (0.46%) Remedy