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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 50 54
Rank change year-on-year +10 +4 -22
Contract jobs citing Java 231 115 188
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.52% 3.80% 3.33%
As % of the Programming Languages category 22.41% 13.10% 15.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 153 74 121
10th Percentile £204 £300 £363
25th Percentile £313 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £575 £560
Median % change year-on-year -21.74% +2.68% +4.19%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £688
90th Percentile £636 £661 £738
England median daily rate £520 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.11% +1.74% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 1 12
10th Percentile £35.00 - £37.63
25th Percentile £50.00 £20.85 £62.19
Median hourly rate £55.00 £21.90 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.14% -66.31% -
75th Percentile £67.50 £22.95 £67.02
90th Percentile £68.75 - £74.20
England median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.64% -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 1,031 878 1,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 20.18% 29.02% 20.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 741 569 797
10th Percentile £310 £350 £325
25th Percentile £403 £422 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £511
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -0.20% -2.67%
75th Percentile £588 £618 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
England median daily rate £506 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.71% -2.78% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 28 83
10th Percentile £33.40 £38.83 £46.25
25th Percentile £46.25 £46.88 £46.88
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.65 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.59% -2.30% +7.32%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.94 £67.02
90th Percentile £82.40 £67.31 £76.22
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 9 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 9 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 9 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
Thames Valley -20 72 £425 -27.35% 46
Hampshire +24 71 £462 -26.16% 23
Berkshire -13 60 £390 -33.33% 29
Surrey +15 45 £208 -51.60% 27
West Sussex -8 28 £358 -20.65% 17
Buckinghamshire -11 11 £563 -7.22% 12
Sussex - 6 £475 - 8
Middlesex - 5 £725 - 1
East Sussex +4 3 £450 +33.33% 3
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 (2.60%) Apache
1 6 (2.60%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 3 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.30%) IIS
2 3 (1.30%) Tomcat
3 2 (0.87%) CMS
3 2 (0.87%) Confluence
3 2 (0.87%) NetWeaver
3 2 (0.87%) SAP EP
4 1 (0.43%) JBoss
4 1 (0.43%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.43%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Maximo
1 3 (1.30%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.87%) SAP CRM
2 2 (0.87%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 67 (29.00%) AWS
2 50 (21.65%) GitHub
3 37 (16.02%) Azure
4 29 (12.55%) OpenShift
5 27 (11.69%) GCP
6 26 (11.26%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (6.49%) SaaS
8 14 (6.06%) Amazon S3
9 12 (5.19%) Sauce Labs
10 11 (4.76%) Serverless
11 10 (4.33%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (4.33%) Entra ID
12 9 (3.90%) Datadog
13 7 (3.03%) Snowflake
14 5 (2.16%) Amazon EC2
15 4 (1.73%) Tricentis Tosca
16 3 (1.30%) Amazon SQS
16 3 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
16 3 (1.30%) Azure DevOps
16 3 (1.30%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.90%) Wireless
2 5 (2.16%) HTTP
2 5 (2.16%) Kerberos
3 3 (1.30%) Broadband
3 3 (1.30%) FTP
3 3 (1.30%) GPRS
3 3 (1.30%) GSM
3 3 (1.30%) HTTPS
3 3 (1.30%) NFC
3 3 (1.30%) PPP
3 3 (1.30%) SSL
3 3 (1.30%) Wireshark
4 2 (0.87%) Bluetooth
4 2 (0.87%) Firewall
5 1 (0.43%) DHCP
5 1 (0.43%) DNS
5 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (17.32%) PostgreSQL
1 40 (17.32%) Relational Database
2 30 (12.99%) MySQL
3 22 (9.52%) NoSQL
4 16 (6.93%) MongoDB
5 13 (5.63%) DynamoDB
6 8 (3.46%) HBase
7 7 (3.03%) Big Data
8 6 (2.60%) SQL Server
9 5 (2.16%) Pinecone
9 5 (2.16%) Weaviate
10 4 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
11 3 (1.30%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
12 2 (0.87%) RDBMS
13 1 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
13 1 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
13 1 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
13 1 (0.43%) Couchbase
13 1 (0.43%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 40 (17.32%) Jenkins
2 30 (12.99%) JUnit
3 28 (12.12%) Cucumber
3 28 (12.12%) Git
4 25 (10.82%) Gradle
5 19 (8.23%) Eclipse
5 19 (8.23%) Maven
6 18 (7.79%) Sonatype Nexus
7 16 (6.93%) Android Studio
8 15 (6.49%) Browser DevTools
9 13 (5.63%) JIRA
10 12 (5.19%) Xcode
11 11 (4.76%) JMeter
12 8 (3.46%) Artifactory
12 8 (3.46%) GitLab
12 8 (3.46%) SonarQube
13 7 (3.03%) Selenium
14 6 (2.60%) Bitbucket
15 4 (1.73%) Cypress.io
15 4 (1.73%) Subversion
General
1 70 (30.30%) Social Skills
2 29 (12.55%) Finance
3 21 (9.09%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (6.06%) Public Sector
5 8 (3.46%) Marketing
6 4 (1.73%) Aerospace
6 4 (1.73%) Banking
6 4 (1.73%) Billing
6 4 (1.73%) Electronics
7 3 (1.30%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.30%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.87%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (0.87%) 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%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 98 (42.42%) Developer
2 74 (32.03%) Java Developer
3 27 (11.69%) Technical Support
4 21 (9.09%) Java Engineer
5 19 (8.23%) Full-Stack Developer
5 19 (8.23%) Software Engineer
5 19 (8.23%) Support Engineer
6 18 (7.79%) Senior
6 18 (7.79%) Technical Engineer
6 18 (7.79%) Technical Support Engineer
7 15 (6.49%) Lead
8 12 (5.19%) Full-Stack Java Developer
8 12 (5.19%) Senior Developer
8 12 (5.19%) UX Engineer
9 11 (4.76%) AWS Developer
10 10 (4.33%) Senior Java Developer
11 9 (3.90%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
12 8 (3.46%) Applications Developer
12 8 (3.46%) Architect
13 7 (3.03%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (25.97%) Spring
2 49 (21.21%) Spring Boot
3 35 (15.15%) React
4 33 (14.29%) AngularJS
5 32 (13.85%) Kafka
6 29 (12.55%) REST
7 25 (10.82%) CSS
8 19 (8.23%) GraphQL
9 18 (7.79%) RESTful
10 16 (6.93%) Hibernate
10 16 (6.93%) XML
11 14 (6.06%) HTML
12 12 (5.19%) Ajax
13 11 (4.76%) Node.js
13 11 (4.76%) SOAP
14 8 (3.46%) JSON
14 8 (3.46%) SailPoint
14 8 (3.46%) Vue
14 8 (3.46%) Web Services
15 7 (3.03%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 19 (8.23%) Distributed Systems
2 17 (7.36%) Mobile App
3 7 (3.03%) Cloud Native
4 5 (2.16%) Data Centre
4 5 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
5 3 (1.30%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.30%) IPTV
5 3 (1.30%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.30%) Security Posture
5 3 (1.30%) Smartcard
6 2 (0.87%) Algorithms
6 2 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (0.87%) 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 43 (18.61%) Linux
2 36 (15.58%) Windows
3 30 (12.99%) Unix
4 20 (8.66%) Android
5 5 (2.16%) Apple iOS
6 4 (1.73%) Windows Server
7 3 (1.30%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.87%) VMS
9 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (35.93%) CI/CD
2 65 (28.14%) Agile
3 44 (19.05%) DevOps
4 43 (18.61%) Test Automation
5 42 (18.18%) Software Engineering
6 41 (17.75%) Microservices
7 35 (15.15%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (14.72%) OO
9 31 (13.42%) Scrum
10 28 (12.12%) Containerisation
11 24 (10.39%) Full-Stack Development
11 24 (10.39%) User Experience
12 21 (9.09%) AI
12 21 (9.09%) OOP
13 19 (8.23%) Observability
13 19 (8.23%) Software Testing
14 17 (7.36%) Computer Science
15 16 (6.93%) Fintech
15 16 (6.93%) High Availability
15 16 (6.93%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 68 (29.44%) Python
2 62 (26.84%) JavaScript
3 48 (20.78%) SQL
4 22 (9.52%) Perl
5 17 (7.36%) PowerShell
6 15 (6.49%) C#
7 14 (6.06%) Go
8 8 (3.46%) BeanShell
8 8 (3.46%) C++
9 7 (3.03%) TypeScript
10 6 (2.60%) Bash
10 6 (2.60%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.73%) PL/SQL
12 3 (1.30%) Groovy
12 3 (1.30%) Jython
12 3 (1.30%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.87%) ABAP
13 2 (0.87%) C
13 2 (0.87%) PHP
13 2 (0.87%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 58 (25.11%) Security Cleared
2 51 (22.08%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.66%) Degree
4 17 (7.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.33%) OCP
5 10 (4.33%) Oracle Certification
6 5 (2.16%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (0.87%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.87%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.87%) ISEB
8 2 (0.87%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.43%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.63%) QA
2 4 (1.73%) Data Quality
3 3 (1.30%) Def Stans
4 2 (0.87%) Accessibility
System Software
1 23 (9.96%) Docker
2 11 (4.76%) Active Directory
3 5 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.43%) NDS
4 1 (0.43%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 1 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 55 (23.81%) Kubernetes
2 17 (7.36%) Ansible
3 11 (4.76%) Terraform
4 10 (4.33%) Grafana
5 9 (3.90%) Progress Chef
6 7 (3.03%) Argo
7 4 (1.73%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.87%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.43%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.43%) SCCM
Vendors
1 33 (14.29%) Oracle
2 22 (9.52%) Microsoft
3 17 (7.36%) Splunk
4 13 (5.63%) VMware
5 10 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 9 (3.90%) SAP
7 8 (3.46%) Red Hat
8 5 (2.16%) Google
9 4 (1.73%) Ariba
9 4 (1.73%) Atlassian
10 3 (1.30%) Ab Initio
10 3 (1.30%) Adobe
10 3 (1.30%) OpenAI
10 3 (1.30%) Salesforce
10 3 (1.30%) Teradata
11 2 (0.87%) UiPath
11 2 (0.87%) webMethods
12 1 (0.43%) Citrix
12 1 (0.43%) HP
12 1 (0.43%) IBM