Java Developer Contract Job Trends

Java Developer
UK

The median Java Developer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 July 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 166 128 134
Rank change year-on-year -38 +6 -19
Contract jobs requiring a Java Developer 877 701 755
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.67% 2.17% 1.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.80% 2.36% 1.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 594 500 615
10th Percentile £400 £358 £390
25th Percentile £443 £425 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £597
Median % change year-on-year - -12.06% -4.48%
75th Percentile £650 £641 £800
90th Percentile £859 £838 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +7.03% -2.63% -7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 1 13
10th Percentile £35.00 - £36.00
25th Percentile £58.75 - £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -18.52% -6.90%
75th Percentile £67.50 - £70.00
90th Percentile £70.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -18.52% -3.57%

All Contract IT Job Roles
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 48,674 29,733 40,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,515 18,978 25,840
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,263 1,368 2,770
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.79
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -14.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.06 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +0.50%

Java Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Java Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Java Developer job vacancy trend in the UK

Java Developer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the UK

Java Developer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java Developer over the 6 months to 10 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Java Developer in the UK

Java Developer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the UK

Java Developer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Java Developer over the 6 months to 10 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Developer in the UK

Java Developer
Top 17 Contract Job 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 10 July 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
England -7 715 £540 +1.22% 88
UK excluding London -41 388 £495 +7.03% 74
London -34 379 £575 -0.43% 38
Work from Home -79 222 £525 -4.55% 50
North of England +3 143 £500 +7.70% 22
North West -11 67 £510 +8.74% 8
South East -12 62 £513 +2.40% 13
Yorkshire -8 52 £481 -6.10% 5
Midlands -56 51 £463 +10.12% 11
Scotland -57 48 £405 -10.11% 11
West Midlands -53 47 £475 -5.00% 8
South West +9 45 £515 +8.42% 8
East of England 0 37 £505 +3.48% 2
North East -13 28 £569 +49.67% 9
Northern Ireland -2 5 £375 -8.54% 4
Wales -15 3 £375 -20.00% 3
East Midlands -29 3 £401 +25.51% 3

Java Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 10 July 2026, Java Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Java Developer in the job title.

1 877 (100.00%) Java
2 408 (46.52%) Spring
3 373 (42.53%) Agile
4 352 (40.14%) Spring Boot
5 348 (39.68%) Microservices
6 326 (37.17%) CI/CD
7 315 (35.92%) AWS
8 236 (26.91%) Kubernetes
9 225 (25.66%) Security Cleared
10 214 (24.40%) SQL
11 208 (23.72%) Docker
12 202 (23.03%) DevOps
13 201 (22.92%) SC Cleared
14 198 (22.58%) TDD
15 179 (20.41%) Azure
16 172 (19.61%) Containerisation
17 168 (19.16%) Kafka
18 164 (18.70%) RESTful
19 159 (18.13%) Software Engineering
20 155 (17.67%) Test Automation
21 144 (16.42%) Git
22 141 (16.08%) Jenkins
23 132 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
23 132 (15.05%) React
24 129 (14.71%) REST
25 127 (14.48%) Scrum
26 124 (14.14%) JavaScript
27 113 (12.88%) Event-Driven
28 108 (12.31%) Full-Stack Development
29 106 (12.09%) GCP

Java Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 29 (3.31%) Apache Spark
2 23 (2.62%) Apache
3 19 (2.17%) WebLogic
4 17 (1.94%) Confluence
5 10 (1.14%) nginx
6 6 (0.68%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.57%) Camunda
7 5 (0.57%) Documentum
8 4 (0.46%) Ethereum
8 4 (0.46%) Hyperledger
9 3 (0.34%) JBoss
9 3 (0.34%) Mule
9 3 (0.34%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.23%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.23%) CMS
11 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.11%) Headless CMS
11 1 (0.11%) Mendix
11 1 (0.11%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.46%) Fidessa
2 3 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
3 1 (0.11%) Endur
3 1 (0.11%) ION MarketView
3 1 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 315 (35.92%) AWS
2 179 (20.41%) Azure
3 106 (12.09%) GCP
4 76 (8.67%) GitHub
5 48 (5.47%) Amazon S3
6 45 (5.13%) GitHub Actions
7 37 (4.22%) OpenShift
8 33 (3.76%) Serverless
9 32 (3.65%) Amazon EC2
9 32 (3.65%) Amazon SQS
10 26 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
11 25 (2.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 24 (2.74%) Azure AKS
13 21 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
14 20 (2.28%) Amazon ECS
15 18 (2.05%) AWS KMS
15 18 (2.05%) Route 53
16 17 (1.94%) Amazon EKS
17 16 (1.82%) Entra ID
18 10 (1.14%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 19 (2.17%) FIX Connectivity
2 11 (1.25%) HTTP
3 10 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
4 8 (0.91%) Firewall
5 7 (0.80%) Multicast
5 7 (0.80%) VPN
6 4 (0.46%) SSH
7 2 (0.23%) Ethernet
7 2 (0.23%) HTTPS
8 1 (0.11%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.11%) NFC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (12.09%) PostgreSQL
2 70 (7.98%) Relational Database
3 68 (7.75%) MongoDB
4 60 (6.84%) NoSQL
5 33 (3.76%) DynamoDB
5 33 (3.76%) MySQL
6 31 (3.53%) Amazon RDS
7 23 (2.62%) Flink
8 19 (2.17%) Amazon Aurora
9 17 (1.94%) SQL Server
10 16 (1.82%) Elasticsearch
10 16 (1.82%) KDB
11 15 (1.71%) Redis
12 12 (1.37%) Big Data
13 10 (1.14%) Db2
14 9 (1.03%) Apache Cassandra
14 9 (1.03%) RDBMS
15 6 (0.68%) InterSystems Cache
15 6 (0.68%) Kdb+
16 5 (0.57%) Hazelcast
Development Applications
1 144 (16.42%) Git
2 141 (16.08%) Jenkins
3 85 (9.69%) JUnit
4 71 (8.10%) Maven
5 65 (7.41%) Mockito
6 58 (6.61%) Gradle
7 54 (6.16%) GitLab
8 48 (5.47%) JIRA
9 45 (5.13%) SonarQube
10 14 (1.60%) DbUnit
11 13 (1.48%) jMock
12 11 (1.25%) Bitbucket Server
13 10 (1.14%) Bitbucket
14 9 (1.03%) Cucumber
15 8 (0.91%) GoCD
15 8 (0.91%) IntelliJ
16 6 (0.68%) JProfiler
17 5 (0.57%) Snyk
17 5 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
18 4 (0.46%) Liquibase
General
1 212 (24.17%) Finance
2 182 (20.75%) Banking
3 151 (17.22%) Public Sector
4 124 (14.14%) Social Skills
5 99 (11.29%) Investment Banking
6 95 (10.83%) Front Office
7 55 (6.27%) Analytical Skills
8 10 (1.14%) Manufacturing
9 9 (1.03%) Financial Institution
9 9 (1.03%) Law
10 8 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (0.57%) Automotive
11 5 (0.57%) Back Office
11 5 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.46%) Police
12 4 (0.46%) Publishing
13 3 (0.34%) Retail
13 3 (0.34%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.23%) Advertising
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (46.52%) Spring
2 352 (40.14%) Spring Boot
3 168 (19.16%) Kafka
4 164 (18.70%) RESTful
5 132 (15.05%) React
6 129 (14.71%) REST
7 74 (8.44%) Node.js
8 71 (8.10%) Redux
9 70 (7.98%) AngularJS
10 54 (6.16%) JPA
11 49 (5.59%) Hibernate
12 46 (5.25%) HTML
13 41 (4.68%) Web Services
14 37 (4.22%) FIX Protocol
15 36 (4.10%) ActiveMQ
16 35 (3.99%) CSS
17 33 (3.76%) Spring MVC
18 30 (3.42%) Spring Cloud
19 29 (3.31%) Spring Batch
20 28 (3.19%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 86 (9.81%) Distributed Systems
2 78 (8.89%) Cloud Native
3 67 (7.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 63 (7.18%) Fixed Income
5 61 (6.96%) Equities
6 46 (5.25%) Greenfield Project
6 46 (5.25%) Product Ownership
7 39 (4.45%) Derivative
8 28 (3.19%) Enterprise Software
9 21 (2.39%) Data Protection Act
10 20 (2.28%) Algorithms
10 20 (2.28%) TWAP
10 20 (2.28%) VWAP
11 17 (1.94%) Data Structures
12 10 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (0.91%) Onboarding
14 7 (0.80%) Mobile App
15 6 (0.68%) Equity Derivative
15 6 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 78 (8.89%) Linux
2 47 (5.36%) Unix
3 14 (1.60%) Mac OS X
4 9 (1.03%) Windows
5 3 (0.34%) AIX
5 3 (0.34%) VMS
6 2 (0.23%) Android
6 2 (0.23%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.23%) Solaris
7 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
7 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
7 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 373 (42.53%) Agile
2 348 (39.68%) Microservices
3 326 (37.17%) CI/CD
4 202 (23.03%) DevOps
5 198 (22.58%) TDD
6 172 (19.61%) Containerisation
7 159 (18.13%) Software Engineering
8 155 (17.67%) Test Automation
9 132 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
10 127 (14.48%) Scrum
11 113 (12.88%) Event-Driven
12 108 (12.31%) Full-Stack Development
13 103 (11.74%) Electronic Trading
14 102 (11.63%) Low Latency
15 80 (9.12%) Code Quality
16 79 (9.01%) Multithreading
17 78 (8.89%) BDD
18 76 (8.67%) Design Patterns
19 75 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
20 72 (8.21%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 877 (100.00%) Java
2 214 (24.40%) SQL
3 124 (14.14%) JavaScript
4 84 (9.58%) Python
5 80 (9.12%) TypeScript
6 39 (4.45%) Kotlin
7 35 (3.99%) C#
8 26 (2.96%) PL/SQL
9 22 (2.51%) Go
10 20 (2.28%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.57%) R
12 4 (0.46%) Ada
12 4 (0.46%) Bash
12 4 (0.46%) C++
12 4 (0.46%) Perl
12 4 (0.46%) Scala
13 3 (0.34%) Ruby
14 2 (0.23%) Groovy
14 2 (0.23%) PromQL
15 1 (0.11%) Dart
Qualifications
1 225 (25.66%) Security Cleared
2 201 (22.92%) SC Cleared
3 47 (5.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 32 (3.65%) Degree
5 16 (1.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (1.37%) DV Cleared
7 7 (0.80%) AWS Certification
8 5 (0.57%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.23%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.11%) Master's Degree
10 1 (0.11%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (8.44%) QA
2 33 (3.76%) Accessibility
3 5 (0.57%) Data Quality
3 5 (0.57%) ISO 20022
4 4 (0.46%) Def Stans
4 4 (0.46%) IEC 61508
4 4 (0.46%) PCI DSS
4 4 (0.46%) SEPA
5 3 (0.34%) PSD2
6 1 (0.11%) EMIR
6 1 (0.11%) HL7
6 1 (0.11%) MiFID
6 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 208 (23.72%) Docker
2 11 (1.25%) Postfix
3 4 (0.46%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 3 (0.34%) GridGain
5 1 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 236 (26.91%) Kubernetes
2 51 (5.82%) Terraform
3 39 (4.45%) Ansible
4 38 (4.33%) Grafana
5 30 (3.42%) Prometheus
6 20 (2.28%) Argo
7 7 (0.80%) Control-M
8 6 (0.68%) Kibana
9 5 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.23%) Consul
10 2 (0.23%) Zipkin
11 1 (0.11%) HAProxy
11 1 (0.11%) Istio
11 1 (0.11%) Kiali
Vendors
1 75 (8.55%) Oracle
2 30 (3.42%) Microsoft
3 21 (2.39%) Okta
4 19 (2.17%) Sybase
5 17 (1.94%) Jaspersoft
6 16 (1.82%) ForgeRock
6 16 (1.82%) Google
6 16 (1.82%) Red Hat
7 15 (1.71%) Atlassian
8 13 (1.48%) MuleSoft
9 11 (1.25%) Databricks
10 10 (1.14%) IBM
10 10 (1.14%) Solace
11 8 (0.91%) Splunk
12 6 (0.68%) TikTok
13 5 (0.57%) OpenAI
14 3 (0.34%) Ab Initio
14 3 (0.34%) Checkmarx
14 3 (0.34%) Teradata
15 2 (0.23%) VMware