Java Developer Contracts

Java Developer
UK

The median Java Developer daily rate in the UK is £530, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 144 151 82
Rank change year-on-year +7 -69 -15
Contract jobs requiring a Java Developer 588 706 1,733
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.01% 1.62% 2.90%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.17% 1.75% 3.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 385 572 1,398
10th Percentile £380 £400 £459
25th Percentile £425 £450 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £669
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% -14.05% +11.50%
75th Percentile £640 £750 £775
90th Percentile £825 £875 £863
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £490 £547
% change year-on-year -8.16% -10.42% +4.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 21
10th Percentile £65.30 £35.00 £62.50
25th Percentile £65.75 £37.50 £70.00
Median hourly rate £69.11 £52.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year +31.64% -27.59% +20.83%
75th Percentile £75.10 £56.25 £75.00
90th Percentile £77.12 £66.95 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.11 £52.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year +31.64% -27.59% +29.46%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,050 40,453 56,471
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.79% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,687 26,352 39,474
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.55% -1.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 2,658 1,569
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.25% -20.00% +91.86%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.75 £38.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -25.32% -9.41% +117.95%

Java Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Java Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Java Developer in the UK

Java Developer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Java Developer.

Daily rate trend for Java Developer in the UK

Java Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java Developer over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Java Developer in the UK

Java Developer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Java Developer.

Hourly rate trend for Java Developer in the UK

Java Developer
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Java Developer within the UK over the 6 months to 30 April 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
England +2 405 £550 -8.33% 125
London -10 294 £585 -10.00% 63
UK excluding London +46 248 £450 -8.16% 91
Work from Home +11 229 £550 -8.33% 95
Scotland +21 129 £441 -2.00% 21
North of England +6 49 £530 +0.95% 31
North West -3 26 £530 +0.95% 21
Midlands +25 21 £425 -10.53% 7
Northern Ireland +6 20 £408 -9.44% 7
Yorkshire +3 17 £525 -4.55% 8
West Midlands +15 16 £470 -1.05% 5
South East +10 13 £501 +0.10% 17
South West +46 10 £441 +17.60% 7
North East +4 7 £380 -15.56% 2
East of England +30 5 £488 -9.80% 3
East Midlands +12 5 £326 -36.23% 2
Wales +5 1 - -

Java Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 30 April 2025, Java Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Java Developer in the job title.

1 588 (100.00%) Java
2 287 (48.81%) Spring
3 236 (40.14%) Agile
4 226 (38.44%) SQL
5 204 (34.69%) Spring Boot
6 187 (31.80%) Microservices
7 183 (31.12%) AWS
7 183 (31.12%) Finance
8 159 (27.04%) CI/CD
9 158 (26.87%) Kafka
10 141 (23.98%) TDD
10 141 (23.98%) Problem-Solving
11 134 (22.79%) Social Skills
11 134 (22.79%) Kubernetes
12 130 (22.11%) Banking
12 130 (22.11%) PostgreSQL
12 130 (22.11%) JUnit
13 129 (21.94%) Software Engineering
14 125 (21.26%) Linux
15 124 (21.09%) Relational Database
16 121 (20.58%) MongoDB
17 120 (20.41%) Docker
18 115 (19.56%) DevOps
19 112 (19.05%) Security Cleared
20 111 (18.88%) SC Cleared
21 108 (18.37%) Python
22 102 (17.35%) Analytical Skills
23 99 (16.84%) React
24 92 (15.65%) Multithreading
25 89 (15.14%) Investment Banking

Java Developer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 28 (4.76%) Apache
2 27 (4.59%) Apache Spark
3 17 (2.89%) Confluence
4 13 (2.21%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (1.70%) Oracle Coherence
6 8 (1.36%) Camunda
6 8 (1.36%) GemFire
7 5 (0.85%) JBoss
8 4 (0.68%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.51%) OpenROAD
9 3 (0.51%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 3 (0.51%) WebLogic
10 2 (0.34%) MQSeries
10 2 (0.34%) nginx
11 1 (0.17%) Alfresco
11 1 (0.17%) Apache Solr
11 1 (0.17%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 183 (31.12%) AWS
2 53 (9.01%) Azure
3 28 (4.76%) GCP
4 23 (3.91%) Serverless
5 22 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
6 19 (3.23%) Amazon EC2
7 16 (2.72%) Amazon S3
8 15 (2.55%) Cloud Computing
9 14 (2.38%) Amazon SQS
9 14 (2.38%) dbt
9 14 (2.38%) OpenShift
9 14 (2.38%) Slack
10 13 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (2.04%) Snowflake
12 11 (1.87%) GitHub
13 7 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (1.19%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (1.19%) AWS KMS
13 7 (1.19%) Route 53
14 6 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (2.04%) FIX Connectivity
2 8 (1.36%) HTTP
3 2 (0.34%) Firewall
4 1 (0.17%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (22.11%) PostgreSQL
2 124 (21.09%) Relational Database
3 121 (20.58%) MongoDB
4 54 (9.18%) NoSQL
5 49 (8.33%) DB2
6 36 (6.12%) MySQL
7 23 (3.91%) Apache Cassandra
7 23 (3.91%) RDBMS
8 22 (3.74%) Big Data
9 21 (3.57%) Redis
10 15 (2.55%) SQL Server
11 14 (2.38%) DynamoDB
11 14 (2.38%) Hadoop
12 13 (2.21%) Amazon Athena
12 13 (2.21%) Apache Arrow
12 13 (2.21%) Apache Iceberg
12 13 (2.21%) Dremio
13 12 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
14 7 (1.19%) Amazon Aurora
14 7 (1.19%) KDB
Development Applications
1 130 (22.11%) JUnit
2 78 (13.27%) Git
3 77 (13.10%) Jenkins
4 42 (7.14%) Maven
5 41 (6.97%) Mockito
6 40 (6.80%) Gradle
6 40 (6.80%) JIRA
7 31 (5.27%) Cucumber
8 27 (4.59%) GitLab
9 20 (3.40%) Liquibase
10 19 (3.23%) SonarQube
11 16 (2.72%) Jasmine
12 15 (2.55%) IntelliJ
13 14 (2.38%) Bitbucket Server
13 14 (2.38%) Selenium
14 9 (1.53%) Subversion
15 8 (1.36%) Bitbucket
16 7 (1.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 6 (1.02%) TeamCity
18 5 (0.85%) Eclipse
General
1 183 (31.12%) Finance
2 134 (22.79%) Social Skills
3 130 (22.11%) Banking
4 102 (17.35%) Analytical Skills
5 89 (15.14%) Investment Banking
6 83 (14.12%) Public Sector
7 81 (13.78%) Front Office
8 17 (2.89%) Financial Institution
9 15 (2.55%) Marketing
10 12 (2.04%) Electronics
10 12 (2.04%) Manufacturing
10 12 (2.04%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (1.53%) Law
13 5 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
14 4 (0.68%) Retail
15 2 (0.34%) Corporate Banking
15 2 (0.34%) Games
15 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
15 2 (0.34%) Wholesale Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 287 (48.81%) Spring
2 204 (34.69%) Spring Boot
3 158 (26.87%) Kafka
4 99 (16.84%) React
5 69 (11.73%) AngularJS
5 69 (11.73%) RESTful
6 50 (8.50%) REST
7 44 (7.48%) Swagger
8 42 (7.14%) OpenAPI
9 41 (6.97%) Hibernate
10 39 (6.63%) JMS
10 39 (6.63%) Web Services
11 35 (5.95%) HTML
12 29 (4.93%) Node.js
13 28 (4.76%) FIX Protocol
14 25 (4.25%) CSS
15 22 (3.74%) Spring Batch
16 21 (3.57%) XML
17 20 (3.40%) ActiveMQ
17 20 (3.40%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 80 (13.61%) Equities
2 61 (10.37%) Data Structures
3 43 (7.31%) Derivative
4 37 (6.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 31 (5.27%) Distributed Systems
6 30 (5.10%) Algorithms
7 27 (4.59%) Fixed Income
8 16 (2.72%) Equity Derivative
9 14 (2.38%) Market Risk
10 13 (2.21%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 12 (2.04%) Greenfield Project
11 12 (2.04%) Product Ownership
12 11 (1.87%) Distributed Computing
13 10 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
14 9 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
14 9 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
15 8 (1.36%) Cloud Native
15 8 (1.36%) Hedge funds
15 8 (1.36%) Virtual Team
16 7 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 125 (21.26%) Linux
2 39 (6.63%) Unix
3 21 (3.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (0.85%) Windows
5 4 (0.68%) Android
6 3 (0.51%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.17%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 236 (40.14%) Agile
2 187 (31.80%) Microservices
3 159 (27.04%) CI/CD
4 141 (23.98%) Problem-Solving
4 141 (23.98%) TDD
5 129 (21.94%) Software Engineering
6 115 (19.56%) DevOps
7 92 (15.65%) Multithreading
8 78 (13.27%) SDLC
9 76 (12.93%) Full-Stack Development
10 70 (11.90%) Containerisation
11 61 (10.37%) BDD
12 60 (10.20%) Performance Tuning
13 59 (10.03%) Clean Code
14 58 (9.86%) Continuous Integration
15 52 (8.84%) Test Automation
16 50 (8.50%) Code Quality
17 48 (8.16%) Computer Science
18 47 (7.99%) Low Latency
19 46 (7.82%) Continuous Delivery
Programming Languages
1 588 (100.00%) Java
2 226 (38.44%) SQL
3 108 (18.37%) Python
4 63 (10.71%) JavaScript
5 49 (8.33%) Shell Script
6 44 (7.48%) TypeScript
7 21 (3.57%) Bash
8 14 (2.38%) Kotlin
8 14 (2.38%) Scala
9 8 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 7 (1.19%) Ruby
11 6 (1.02%) Perl
12 5 (0.85%) C#
12 5 (0.85%) Clojure
13 3 (0.51%) C++
13 3 (0.51%) DAML
13 3 (0.51%) Go
14 2 (0.34%) Groovy
14 2 (0.34%) PHP
14 2 (0.34%) Rust
Qualifications
1 112 (19.05%) Security Cleared
2 111 (18.88%) SC Cleared
3 42 (7.14%) Degree
4 18 (3.06%) Numerate Degree
5 16 (2.72%) AWS Certified Developer
6 15 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (0.68%) AWS Certification
7 4 (0.68%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (0.34%) OCP
8 2 (0.34%) Oracle Certification
8 2 (0.34%) Sun Certification
9 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.17%) CTC Cleared
9 1 (0.17%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.17%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.72%) QA
2 7 (1.19%) Disclosure Scotland
3 6 (1.02%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.51%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.17%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.17%) IEC 61508
5 1 (0.17%) PMO
5 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 120 (20.41%) Docker
2 8 (1.36%) GridGain
3 5 (0.85%) Postfix
4 4 (0.68%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.34%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 2 (0.34%) HDFS
5 2 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 134 (22.79%) Kubernetes
2 44 (7.48%) Terraform
3 14 (2.38%) Ansible
4 13 (2.21%) Grafana
4 13 (2.21%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.85%) Kibana
6 4 (0.68%) Docker Swarm
6 4 (0.68%) Podman
6 4 (0.68%) Puppet
7 3 (0.51%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.34%) Argo
8 2 (0.34%) Istio
8 2 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.17%) Rancher
9 1 (0.17%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 53 (9.01%) Sybase
2 46 (7.82%) Oracle
3 17 (2.89%) Virgin Media
4 15 (2.55%) SAP
5 14 (2.38%) Splunk
6 10 (1.70%) Google
6 10 (1.70%) ServiceNow
7 9 (1.53%) Dynatrace
7 9 (1.53%) ION Trading
7 9 (1.53%) Microsoft
8 7 (1.19%) Solace
8 7 (1.19%) TIBCO
9 6 (1.02%) IBM
9 6 (1.02%) Jaspersoft
10 5 (0.85%) CA Agile Central
10 5 (0.85%) Salesforce
11 4 (0.68%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.51%) DocuSign
13 2 (0.34%) Bloomberg
13 2 (0.34%) Red Hat