Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 February 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 372 395 459
Rank change year-on-year +23 +64 -83
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 232 140 140
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.45% 0.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.63% 0.49% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 153 95 96
10th Percentile £356 £335 £392
25th Percentile £400 £466 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £586 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% +6.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £813 £688
90th Percentile £780 £883 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £480 £475
% change year-on-year +0.52% +1.05% -18.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 9 3
10th Percentile £50.00 £37.95 £60.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £57.50 £63.13
Median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.54% -7.14% +6.70%
75th Percentile £66.88 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% +4.00% -4.73%

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 36,606 28,720 41,783
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.62% 92.93% 93.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,016 17,759 27,499
10th Percentile £303 £290 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +0.32% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,236 814 2,315
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.07 £13.14
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.77% -5.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £61.84 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £72.52 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.60 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -6.80% -9.26% -

Java Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Java Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Java Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Java Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java Engineer over the 6 months to 15 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Java Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Java Engineer over the 6 months to 15 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Top 15 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 Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 15 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
England -14 195 £525 -12.50% 78
UK excluding London +4 117 £483 +0.52% 72
London -13 102 £550 -8.33% 25
Work from Home +10 72 £525 -32.26% 35
North of England -36 35 £478 +4.37% 13
Scotland +23 25 £600 +26.32% 8
Midlands -29 25 £469 -10.67% 12
West Midlands -22 23 £469 -10.67% 9
North West -11 22 £438 - 8
South East -15 18 £365 -43.85% 21
South West -27 12 £384 -31.12% 18
North East -5 8 £575 +47.44% 4
Yorkshire -64 5 £511 -2.62% 1
Wales +1 2 £388 +96.20%
East Midlands - 2 £313 - 3

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

For the 6 months to 15 February 2026, Java Engineer 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 Engineer in the job title.

1 232 (100.00%) Java
2 112 (48.28%) Spring
3 107 (46.12%) Software Engineering
4 94 (40.52%) Spring Boot
5 85 (36.64%) CI/CD
6 84 (36.21%) AWS
7 78 (33.62%) Microservices
8 76 (32.76%) Kubernetes
9 66 (28.45%) Agile
10 43 (18.53%) Azure
11 42 (18.10%) DevOps
11 42 (18.10%) Docker
12 38 (16.38%) TDD
13 37 (15.95%) Full-Stack Development
14 34 (14.66%) Kafka
15 33 (14.22%) SQL
16 32 (13.79%) Test Automation
17 30 (12.93%) Containerisation
17 30 (12.93%) QA
18 29 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
19 28 (12.07%) Jenkins
20 27 (11.64%) Git
20 27 (11.64%) JUnit
20 27 (11.64%) Python
21 26 (11.21%) GitLab
21 26 (11.21%) RESTful
21 26 (11.21%) Security Cleared
22 25 (10.78%) Gradle
23 23 (9.91%) Event-Driven
23 23 (9.91%) SC Cleared

Java Engineer 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 10 (4.31%) Apache
2 6 (2.59%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (1.72%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.72%) JBoss
3 4 (1.72%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.29%) Confluence
5 1 (0.43%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.43%) Camunda
5 1 (0.43%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.43%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 1 (0.43%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.86%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 84 (36.21%) AWS
2 43 (18.53%) Azure
3 17 (7.33%) AWS Lambda
3 17 (7.33%) GCP
3 17 (7.33%) Serverless
4 15 (6.47%) Amazon S3
4 15 (6.47%) GitHub
5 14 (6.03%) Amazon EC2
6 13 (5.60%) Amazon ECS
7 10 (4.31%) OpenShift
8 9 (3.88%) AWS CloudFormation
8 9 (3.88%) AWS Step Functions
9 8 (3.45%) Amazon Kinesis
9 8 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (3.45%) Snowflake
10 7 (3.02%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (2.59%) dbt
12 5 (2.16%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (1.72%) Azure Monitor
13 4 (1.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.86%) HTTP
1 2 (0.86%) MQTT
2 1 (0.43%) FTP
2 1 (0.43%) HTTPS
2 1 (0.43%) Kerberos
2 1 (0.43%) SSL
2 1 (0.43%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (9.48%) MongoDB
1 22 (9.48%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (6.03%) MySQL
3 13 (5.60%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (4.31%) Apache Cassandra
5 9 (3.88%) NoSQL
6 8 (3.45%) Big Data
6 8 (3.45%) Hadoop
7 7 (3.02%) DynamoDB
8 6 (2.59%) Amazon Athena
8 6 (2.59%) Apache Arrow
8 6 (2.59%) Apache Iceberg
8 6 (2.59%) Apache Ignite
8 6 (2.59%) Data Lake
8 6 (2.59%) Dremio
9 5 (2.16%) Relational Database
10 3 (1.29%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.29%) HBase
10 3 (1.29%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 28 (12.07%) Jenkins
2 27 (11.64%) Git
2 27 (11.64%) JUnit
3 26 (11.21%) GitLab
4 25 (10.78%) Gradle
5 16 (6.90%) Cucumber
5 16 (6.90%) IntelliJ
6 11 (4.74%) Maven
7 10 (4.31%) Selenium
8 7 (3.02%) JIRA
8 7 (3.02%) JMeter
8 7 (3.02%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (2.16%) Eclipse
9 5 (2.16%) Mockito
9 5 (2.16%) Postman
10 3 (1.29%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.29%) Cypress.io
10 3 (1.29%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.86%) Gatling
12 1 (0.43%) CircleCI
General
1 52 (22.41%) Finance
2 38 (16.38%) Social Skills
3 20 (8.62%) Banking
4 17 (7.33%) Front Office
5 11 (4.74%) Public Sector
6 10 (4.31%) Investment Banking
7 6 (2.59%) Analytical Skills
8 4 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.29%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.86%) Back Office
10 2 (0.86%) Retail
11 1 (0.43%) Law
11 1 (0.43%) Military
11 1 (0.43%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (48.28%) Spring
2 94 (40.52%) Spring Boot
3 34 (14.66%) Kafka
4 26 (11.21%) RESTful
5 22 (9.48%) React
6 18 (7.76%) REST
7 15 (6.47%) Hibernate
8 13 (5.60%) Node.js
9 12 (5.17%) GraphQL
9 12 (5.17%) OpenTelemetry
10 11 (4.74%) AngularJS
10 11 (4.74%) Swagger
11 10 (4.31%) Middleware
12 8 (3.45%) gRPC
13 7 (3.02%) HTML
13 7 (3.02%) JSON
13 7 (3.02%) Playwright
14 6 (2.59%) NumPy
14 6 (2.59%) SciPy
14 6 (2.59%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 28 (12.07%) Cloud Native
2 23 (9.91%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (4.74%) Fixed Income
3 11 (4.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 10 (4.31%) Derivative
5 8 (3.45%) Onboarding
6 7 (3.02%) Equities
6 7 (3.02%) Hedge funds
6 7 (3.02%) Virtual Team
7 6 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (2.59%) Pricing Data
8 5 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (2.16%) Product Ownership
9 3 (1.29%) Data Structures
9 3 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.29%) Legacy Applications
9 3 (1.29%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.29%) Public Cloud
10 2 (0.86%) Equity Derivative
10 2 (0.86%) Exotic Derivative
Operating Systems
1 18 (7.76%) Linux
2 8 (3.45%) Unix
3 1 (0.43%) SUSE
3 1 (0.43%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.43%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (46.12%) Software Engineering
2 85 (36.64%) CI/CD
3 78 (33.62%) Microservices
4 66 (28.45%) Agile
5 42 (18.10%) DevOps
6 38 (16.38%) TDD
7 37 (15.95%) Full-Stack Development
8 32 (13.79%) Test Automation
9 30 (12.93%) Containerisation
10 29 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
11 23 (9.91%) Event-Driven
12 20 (8.62%) Software Testing
13 19 (8.19%) Clean Code
13 19 (8.19%) Observability
14 17 (7.33%) Fintech
14 17 (7.33%) Scrum
15 16 (6.90%) Mentoring
16 15 (6.47%) BDD
16 15 (6.47%) Infrastructure as Code
16 15 (6.47%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 232 (100.00%) Java
2 33 (14.22%) SQL
3 27 (11.64%) Python
4 21 (9.05%) TypeScript
5 20 (8.62%) JavaScript
6 17 (7.33%) Kotlin
7 9 (3.88%) Go
8 5 (2.16%) Scala
9 4 (1.72%) Ada
9 4 (1.72%) C++
10 3 (1.29%) C#
10 3 (1.29%) Rust
11 2 (0.86%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.86%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.43%) Bash
12 1 (0.43%) Ruby
12 1 (0.43%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 26 (11.21%) Security Cleared
2 23 (9.91%) SC Cleared
3 7 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (2.59%) Degree
5 5 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.29%) OCP
6 3 (1.29%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.86%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.86%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.43%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.43%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (12.93%) QA
2 7 (3.02%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.72%) Def Stans
3 4 (1.72%) IEC 61508
4 2 (0.86%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.86%) WCAG
5 1 (0.43%) GDPR
5 1 (0.43%) ISO 15022
5 1 (0.43%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 42 (18.10%) Docker
Systems Management
1 76 (32.76%) Kubernetes
2 23 (9.91%) Terraform
3 19 (8.19%) Grafana
4 9 (3.88%) Ansible
5 4 (1.72%) Argo
5 4 (1.72%) Progress Chef
5 4 (1.72%) Puppet
6 2 (0.86%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.43%) Kibana
Vendors
1 9 (3.88%) Google
1 9 (3.88%) Oracle
2 6 (2.59%) Microsoft
2 6 (2.59%) Splunk
3 5 (2.16%) Databricks
4 4 (1.72%) VMware
4 4 (1.72%) webMethods
5 3 (1.29%) IBM
5 3 (1.29%) Red Hat
6 2 (0.86%) Dynatrace
6 2 (0.86%) New Relic
6 2 (0.86%) Solace
7 1 (0.43%) Actian
7 1 (0.43%) Confluent
7 1 (0.43%) Guidewire
7 1 (0.43%) Netlify
7 1 (0.43%) Okta
7 1 (0.43%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.43%) Teradata
7 1 (0.43%) Virgin Media