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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 58 54
Rank change year-on-year +20 -4 -25
Contract jobs citing Java 216 118 188
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 4.85% 3.58% 3.65%
As % of the Programming Languages category 23.00% 12.45% 16.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 81 136
10th Percentile £204 £225 £305
25th Percentile £259 £390 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £418 £575 £528
Median % change year-on-year -27.39% +9.00% -4.09%
75th Percentile £551 £638 £638
90th Percentile £638 £660 £700
England median daily rate £515 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -14.17% +4.35% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 1 10
10th Percentile £27.50 - £53.51
25th Percentile £40.00 £27.75 £62.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £28.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.44% -56.15% -
75th Percentile £58.75 £29.25 £66.52
90th Percentile £60.00 - £67.07
England median hourly rate £60.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.35% -8.00% -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 939 948 1,148
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 21.08% 28.78% 22.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 671 602 787
10th Percentile £275 £347 £325
25th Percentile £390 £420 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.71% -4.05% -2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £614
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 31 85
10th Percentile £41.46 £27.75 £38.84
25th Percentile £46.25 £51.75 £48.40
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.75 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -2.83%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.38 £67.02
90th Percentile £60.18 £71.25 £76.53
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.14
% change year-on-year +4.00% +3.92% -7.48%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 22 January 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 -1 73 £413 -29.49% 101
Hampshire +25 66 £462 -26.16% 23
Berkshire -4 64 £398 -30.87% 81
Surrey +21 51 £208 -2.35% 21
West Sussex -15 15 £360 -29.76% 12
Buckinghamshire -7 7 £563 -11.76% 10
Middlesex - 5 £725 - 1
East Sussex +5 3 £450 +50.00% 11
Sussex - 3 £475 - 3
Oxfordshire -10 2 £500 - 10
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 (2.31%) Apache
2 4 (1.85%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.85%) IIS
2 4 (1.85%) Tomcat
3 3 (1.39%) Documentum
4 2 (0.93%) CMS
4 2 (0.93%) Confluence
4 2 (0.93%) JBoss
5 1 (0.46%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.46%) Drupal
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 3 (1.39%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 3 (1.39%) Maximo
1 3 (1.39%) Oracle BRM
2 2 (0.93%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle CRM
3 1 (0.46%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 64 (29.63%) AWS
2 47 (21.76%) GitHub
3 42 (19.44%) Azure
4 27 (12.50%) GCP
5 23 (10.65%) GitHub Actions
5 23 (10.65%) OpenShift
6 22 (10.19%) SaaS
7 17 (7.87%) Sauce Labs
8 10 (4.63%) Entra ID
9 9 (4.17%) Datadog
10 8 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (3.70%) Serverless
11 7 (3.24%) Amazon S3
11 7 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.85%) Amazon EC2
12 4 (1.85%) Snowflake
12 4 (1.85%) Tricentis Tosca
13 3 (1.39%) Amazon Cognito
13 3 (1.39%) Azure Machine Learning
13 3 (1.39%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 14 (6.48%) Wireless
2 5 (2.31%) HTTP
2 5 (2.31%) Kerberos
3 4 (1.85%) FTP
3 4 (1.85%) NFC
3 4 (1.85%) PPP
3 4 (1.85%) Wireshark
4 3 (1.39%) Broadband
4 3 (1.39%) DNS
4 3 (1.39%) Firewall
4 3 (1.39%) GPRS
4 3 (1.39%) GSM
4 3 (1.39%) SSL
5 2 (0.93%) Bluetooth
5 2 (0.93%) DHCP
5 2 (0.93%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.46%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (20.37%) Relational Database
2 39 (18.06%) MySQL
3 30 (13.89%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (7.41%) MongoDB
5 14 (6.48%) NoSQL
6 8 (3.70%) DynamoDB
6 8 (3.70%) HBase
7 7 (3.24%) SQL Server
8 5 (2.31%) Pinecone
8 5 (2.31%) Weaviate
9 3 (1.39%) RDBMS
10 2 (0.93%) Big Data
10 2 (0.93%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
11 1 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.46%) Couchbase
11 1 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 34 (15.74%) Jenkins
2 28 (12.96%) Cucumber
2 28 (12.96%) JUnit
3 24 (11.11%) Git
3 24 (11.11%) Gradle
4 21 (9.72%) Android Studio
4 21 (9.72%) Browser DevTools
4 21 (9.72%) Eclipse
5 18 (8.33%) Sonatype Nexus
6 17 (7.87%) Xcode
7 13 (6.02%) Maven
8 12 (5.56%) JIRA
9 11 (5.09%) JMeter
10 10 (4.63%) GitLab
11 8 (3.70%) Artifactory
12 7 (3.24%) Bitbucket
12 7 (3.24%) Selenium
13 5 (2.31%) SonarQube
14 4 (1.85%) Valgrind
14 4 (1.85%) WebDriver
General
1 78 (36.11%) Social Skills
2 26 (12.04%) Finance
3 20 (9.26%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (8.80%) Public Sector
5 6 (2.78%) Marketing
6 4 (1.85%) Banking
6 4 (1.85%) Billing
6 4 (1.85%) Electronics
7 3 (1.39%) Aerospace
7 3 (1.39%) Manufacturing
7 3 (1.39%) Telecoms
8 2 (0.93%) Back Office
8 2 (0.93%) Front Office
9 1 (0.46%) Digital Healthcare
9 1 (0.46%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.46%) Legal
9 1 (0.46%) Retail
Job Titles
1 81 (37.50%) Developer
2 57 (26.39%) Java Developer
3 37 (17.13%) Technical Support
4 27 (12.50%) Support Engineer
5 25 (11.57%) Technical Engineer
5 25 (11.57%) Technical Support Engineer
6 21 (9.72%) Senior
7 18 (8.33%) Full-Stack Developer
7 18 (8.33%) UX Engineer
8 15 (6.94%) Java Engineer
9 14 (6.48%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
10 13 (6.02%) Senior Developer
11 12 (5.56%) Full-Stack Java Developer
12 11 (5.09%) Lead
13 10 (4.63%) AWS Developer
13 10 (4.63%) Senior Java Developer
13 10 (4.63%) Software Engineer
14 9 (4.17%) Architect
15 8 (3.70%) Automation Engineer
16 7 (3.24%) Android Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (21.76%) Spring
2 37 (17.13%) React
3 36 (16.67%) AngularJS
3 36 (16.67%) Spring Boot
4 30 (13.89%) CSS
5 28 (12.96%) REST
6 26 (12.04%) Kafka
7 24 (11.11%) GraphQL
8 19 (8.80%) RESTful
9 18 (8.33%) Ajax
10 15 (6.94%) XML
11 14 (6.48%) HTML
12 11 (5.09%) Hibernate
12 11 (5.09%) SOAP
13 10 (4.63%) JSON
13 10 (4.63%) Node.js
14 8 (3.70%) SailPoint
15 7 (3.24%) Vue
16 6 (2.78%) OAuth
16 6 (2.78%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 24 (11.11%) Mobile App
2 20 (9.26%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (1.85%) Smartcard
4 3 (1.39%) Cloud Native
4 3 (1.39%) IPTV
4 3 (1.39%) Security Posture
5 2 (0.93%) Data Centre
5 2 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (0.93%) Onboarding
5 2 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.46%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.46%) Algorithms
6 1 (0.46%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.46%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (0.46%) EMV
6 1 (0.46%) Java Card
6 1 (0.46%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (0.46%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (0.46%) Private Cloud
6 1 (0.46%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 55 (25.46%) Windows
2 54 (25.00%) Linux
3 39 (18.06%) Unix
4 27 (12.50%) Android
5 7 (3.24%) Apple iOS
6 6 (2.78%) Windows Server
7 4 (1.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.85%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.93%) VMS
8 2 (0.93%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.46%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (38.43%) CI/CD
2 56 (25.93%) Agile
3 43 (19.91%) OO
4 42 (19.44%) Problem-Solving
5 40 (18.52%) DevOps
6 37 (17.13%) Test Automation
7 32 (14.81%) User Experience
8 31 (14.35%) Microservices
9 27 (12.50%) Software Engineering
10 23 (10.65%) Computer Science
10 23 (10.65%) High Availability
10 23 (10.65%) OOP
11 22 (10.19%) Containerisation
11 22 (10.19%) Full-Stack Development
12 21 (9.72%) Mobile Application Development
12 21 (9.72%) Observability
13 18 (8.33%) Scrum
14 17 (7.87%) Infrastructure as Code
15 16 (7.41%) AI
16 15 (6.94%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 84 (38.89%) Python
2 72 (33.33%) JavaScript
3 45 (20.83%) SQL
4 31 (14.35%) Perl
5 19 (8.80%) PowerShell
6 17 (7.87%) C#
6 17 (7.87%) Go
7 9 (4.17%) C++
8 8 (3.70%) Bash
8 8 (3.70%) BeanShell
9 4 (1.85%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.85%) Swift
10 3 (1.39%) C
10 3 (1.39%) Jython
10 3 (1.39%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.39%) Objective-C
10 3 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 3 (1.39%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.93%) Groovy
11 2 (0.93%) R
Qualifications
1 54 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 44 (20.37%) SC Cleared
3 25 (11.57%) Degree
4 20 (9.26%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.63%) OCP
5 10 (4.63%) Oracle Certification
6 8 (3.70%) DV Cleared
7 4 (1.85%) ISTQB
8 3 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.93%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.93%) ISEB
10 1 (0.46%) A+ Certification
10 1 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 1 (0.46%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.46%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.63%) QA
2 3 (1.39%) Def Stans
3 2 (0.93%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.46%) Accessibility
System Software
1 18 (8.33%) Docker
2 12 (5.56%) Active Directory
3 9 (4.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.46%) NDS
5 1 (0.46%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 54 (25.00%) Kubernetes
2 21 (9.72%) Ansible
3 15 (6.94%) Terraform
4 9 (4.17%) Grafana
4 9 (4.17%) Progress Chef
5 4 (1.85%) Argo
6 3 (1.39%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.39%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.39%) Rundeck
6 3 (1.39%) Salt
7 2 (0.93%) SCCM
8 1 (0.46%) vRealize
Vendors
1 43 (19.91%) Oracle
2 31 (14.35%) Microsoft
3 22 (10.19%) Splunk
4 17 (7.87%) ServiceNow
4 17 (7.87%) VMware
5 8 (3.70%) SAP
6 5 (2.31%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.39%) Apple
7 3 (1.39%) Ariba
7 3 (1.39%) OpenAI
7 3 (1.39%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.93%) Citrix
8 2 (0.93%) CyberArk
8 2 (0.93%) Google
8 2 (0.93%) webMethods
9 1 (0.46%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.46%) NetIQ
9 1 (0.46%) Pega
9 1 (0.46%) Teradata
9 1 (0.46%) Virgin Media