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 27 March 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 361 431
Rank change year-on-year +13 +70 +2
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 292 161 164
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 0.55% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.72% 0.60% 0.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 112 107
10th Percentile £375 £327 £408
25th Percentile £425 £462 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £825 £688
90th Percentile £686 £875 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +5.85% -6.00% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 9 4
10th Percentile - £53.70 £61.38
25th Percentile £52.50 £61.25 £65.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%
75th Percentile £69.06 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year - -1.89% +1.15%

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 40,577 26,954 41,100
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 92.86% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,287 17,764 26,916
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.18%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.11% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,523 918 2,518
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.19 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.41 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £32.90
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -1.20% -24.38%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.74 £60.00
90th Percentile £76.73 £76.53 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.63 £31.88 £32.90
% change year-on-year +21.17% -3.09% -21.31%

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 27 March 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 27 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Top 16 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 27 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
England -7 252 £525 -12.50% 71
UK excluding London +6 158 £498 +5.85% 39
London -55 116 £550 -8.33% 39
Work from Home -15 79 £478 -36.33% 36
North of England -28 51 £488 +6.56% 17
Midlands -39 28 £469 -10.67% 3
West Midlands -32 27 £469 -10.67% 1
South West -9 26 £488 -12.56% 7
North West -12 26 £478 - 8
South East -27 25 £400 -38.46% 8
Scotland +18 24 £600 +28.69% 4
Yorkshire -43 16 £511 -2.62% 6
North East -3 10 £439 +12.50% 3
Wales -8 2 £388 +96.20%
East of England -32 2 £500 +6.95%
East Midlands - 1 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 27 March 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.

1 292 (100.00%) Java
2 150 (51.37%) Software Engineering
3 115 (39.38%) Spring
4 104 (35.62%) Spring Boot
5 89 (30.48%) AWS
6 84 (28.77%) Kubernetes
7 83 (28.42%) Microservices
8 81 (27.74%) CI/CD
9 75 (25.68%) Agile
10 54 (18.49%) DevOps
11 52 (17.81%) Kafka
12 50 (17.12%) Full-Stack Development
13 47 (16.10%) Azure
13 47 (16.10%) Docker
14 46 (15.75%) Security Cleared
15 42 (14.38%) SC Cleared
15 42 (14.38%) TDD
16 37 (12.67%) SQL
17 36 (12.33%) Python
18 34 (11.64%) QA
18 34 (11.64%) Test Automation
19 33 (11.30%) React
20 32 (10.96%) Containerisation
20 32 (10.96%) Jenkins
21 29 (9.93%) PostgreSQL
21 29 (9.93%) Problem-Solving
22 27 (9.25%) Git
22 27 (9.25%) GitLab
22 27 (9.25%) Gradle
22 27 (9.25%) Scrum

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 8 (2.74%) Apache
1 8 (2.74%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.03%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.03%) JBoss
2 3 (1.03%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 3 (1.03%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.68%) Confluence
4 1 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.34%) Camunda
4 1 (0.34%) Ethereum
4 1 (0.34%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 1 (0.34%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 89 (30.48%) AWS
2 47 (16.10%) Azure
3 18 (6.16%) AWS Lambda
3 18 (6.16%) Serverless
4 17 (5.82%) GCP
4 17 (5.82%) GitHub
5 15 (5.14%) Amazon S3
6 13 (4.45%) Amazon ECS
6 13 (4.45%) OpenShift
7 11 (3.77%) Amazon EC2
8 10 (3.42%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
9 8 (2.74%) AWS Step Functions
10 6 (2.05%) Amazon Kinesis
11 4 (1.37%) AWS CodePipeline
11 4 (1.37%) Cloud Computing
11 4 (1.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 3 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
12 3 (1.03%) Azure Service Bus
12 3 (1.03%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.03%) MQTT
2 2 (0.68%) HTTP
3 1 (0.34%) FTP
3 1 (0.34%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.34%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.34%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (9.93%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (8.22%) MongoDB
3 11 (3.77%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (3.77%) MySQL
4 10 (3.42%) Big Data
5 9 (3.08%) Apache Cassandra
5 9 (3.08%) DynamoDB
5 9 (3.08%) SQL Server
6 7 (2.40%) NoSQL
7 6 (2.05%) Hadoop
7 6 (2.05%) Relational Database
8 3 (1.03%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.03%) HBase
9 2 (0.68%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.68%) Apache Arrow
9 2 (0.68%) Apache Ignite
9 2 (0.68%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.68%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.68%) Dremio
9 2 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 32 (10.96%) Jenkins
2 27 (9.25%) Git
2 27 (9.25%) GitLab
2 27 (9.25%) Gradle
3 25 (8.56%) JUnit
4 17 (5.82%) IntelliJ
5 12 (4.11%) Cucumber
5 12 (4.11%) Maven
6 10 (3.42%) SonarQube
7 8 (2.74%) Selenium
8 7 (2.40%) JIRA
8 7 (2.40%) Mockito
9 6 (2.05%) Sonatype Nexus
10 4 (1.37%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.37%) Eclipse
10 4 (1.37%) JMeter
10 4 (1.37%) Postman
11 3 (1.03%) Gatling
11 3 (1.03%) Liquibase
12 1 (0.34%) CircleCI
General
1 62 (21.23%) Finance
2 36 (12.33%) Social Skills
3 24 (8.22%) Banking
4 16 (5.48%) Public Sector
5 15 (5.14%) Front Office
6 7 (2.40%) Analytical Skills
6 7 (2.40%) Investment Banking
6 7 (2.40%) Law
7 5 (1.71%) Financial Institution
8 3 (1.03%) Back Office
8 3 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.68%) Retail
10 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.34%) French Language
10 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.34%) Legal
10 1 (0.34%) Military
10 1 (0.34%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (39.38%) Spring
2 104 (35.62%) Spring Boot
3 52 (17.81%) Kafka
4 33 (11.30%) React
5 25 (8.56%) RESTful
6 20 (6.85%) Node.js
7 19 (6.51%) REST
8 17 (5.82%) GraphQL
8 17 (5.82%) Middleware
9 15 (5.14%) AngularJS
10 14 (4.79%) Swagger
11 12 (4.11%) OpenTelemetry
12 11 (3.77%) Hibernate
13 10 (3.42%) Quarkus
14 9 (3.08%) OpenAPI
14 9 (3.08%) Redux
15 7 (2.40%) JSON
15 7 (2.40%) Playwright
16 6 (2.05%) AWS CDK
16 6 (2.05%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 40 (13.70%) Cloud Native
2 23 (7.88%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (4.11%) Data Protection Act
4 11 (3.77%) Fixed Income
5 9 (3.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 7 (2.40%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.71%) Derivative
7 5 (1.71%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.71%) Product Ownership
7 5 (1.71%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.71%) Virtual Team
8 4 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.03%) Hedge funds
9 3 (1.03%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.03%) Pricing Data
10 2 (0.68%) Algorithms
10 2 (0.68%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.68%) Equities
10 2 (0.68%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 20 (6.85%) Linux
2 9 (3.08%) Unix
3 1 (0.34%) SUSE
3 1 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.34%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (51.37%) Software Engineering
2 83 (28.42%) Microservices
3 81 (27.74%) CI/CD
4 75 (25.68%) Agile
5 54 (18.49%) DevOps
6 50 (17.12%) Full-Stack Development
7 42 (14.38%) TDD
8 34 (11.64%) Test Automation
9 32 (10.96%) Containerisation
10 29 (9.93%) Problem-Solving
11 27 (9.25%) Scrum
12 26 (8.90%) Event-Driven
13 20 (6.85%) Migration
13 20 (6.85%) Unit Testing
14 19 (6.51%) Clean Code
15 17 (5.82%) Code Quality
15 17 (5.82%) Software Testing
16 16 (5.48%) Front End Development
16 16 (5.48%) Mentoring
17 15 (5.14%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 292 (100.00%) Java
2 37 (12.67%) SQL
3 36 (12.33%) Python
4 24 (8.22%) TypeScript
5 16 (5.48%) JavaScript
6 15 (5.14%) Kotlin
7 13 (4.45%) Go
8 11 (3.77%) Ada
9 5 (1.71%) C++
9 5 (1.71%) Scala
10 4 (1.37%) PL/SQL
11 3 (1.03%) C#
12 2 (0.68%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.34%) Rust
13 1 (0.34%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 46 (15.75%) Security Cleared
2 42 (14.38%) SC Cleared
3 11 (3.77%) Degree
4 6 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.03%) Master's Degree
6 3 (1.03%) OCP
6 3 (1.03%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.68%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.34%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (11.64%) QA
2 11 (3.77%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.77%) IEC 61508
3 5 (1.71%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.03%) GDPR
4 3 (1.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.68%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.68%) ISO 15022
5 2 (0.68%) ISO 20022
5 2 (0.68%) WCAG
System Software
1 47 (16.10%) Docker
2 1 (0.34%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 84 (28.77%) Kubernetes
2 23 (7.88%) Terraform
3 19 (6.51%) Grafana
4 10 (3.42%) Argo
5 6 (2.05%) Ansible
6 3 (1.03%) Puppet
7 2 (0.68%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.68%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.68%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.34%) Kibana
8 1 (0.34%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 11 (3.77%) Google
2 10 (3.42%) Microsoft
3 9 (3.08%) Oracle
4 8 (2.74%) Red Hat
5 7 (2.40%) Splunk
6 4 (1.37%) IBM
7 3 (1.03%) Databricks
7 3 (1.03%) Solace
7 3 (1.03%) Spotify
7 3 (1.03%) webMethods
8 2 (0.68%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.68%) New Relic
8 2 (0.68%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.68%) VMware
9 1 (0.34%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.34%) Actian
9 1 (0.34%) Sonatype
9 1 (0.34%) Teradata
9 1 (0.34%) Veracode
9 1 (0.34%) Virgin Media