Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £540, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 May 2026.

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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 326 351 370
Rank change year-on-year +25 +19 +90
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 331 178 225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.61% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.76% 0.66% 0.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 117 151
10th Percentile £375 £386 £418
25th Percentile £450 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £675 £575
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +17.39% -4.17%
75th Percentile £625 £825 £750
90th Percentile £672 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +8.85% -4.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 9 16
10th Percentile £52.50 £53.00 £67.50
25th Percentile £54.06 £61.25 £69.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 -
90th Percentile £76.00 £73.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%

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 43,836 26,998 39,901
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.47% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,861 17,609 25,964
10th Percentile £319 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.07% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,872 1,048 2,673
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.34 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.85% -23.73% -16.67%
75th Percentile £66.63 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.65% -31.25% -5.73%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 -13 285 £525 -30.00% 77
UK excluding London -5 163 £523 +8.85% 47
London -22 140 £550 -26.67% 47
Work from Home -30 95 £525 -30.00% 37
North of England -19 61 £523 -0.48% 11
North West -15 30 £528 - 7
South East -38 29 £488 -25.00% 25
South West -17 28 £488 -6.02% 4
Midlands -36 22 £469 -10.67% 2
West Midlands -46 21 £469 -10.67% 1
Scotland +11 19 £600 +28.69% 2
Yorkshire -40 17 £523 -18.04% 2
North East -4 15 £478 +22.44% 2
East of England -31 3 £535 -10.83% 3
Wales - 3 £388 - 1
East Midlands - 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 12 May 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.

1 331 (100.00%) Java
2 163 (49.24%) Software Engineering
3 133 (40.18%) Spring
4 124 (37.46%) Spring Boot
5 94 (28.40%) Kubernetes
6 92 (27.79%) AWS
7 86 (25.98%) Microservices
8 85 (25.68%) CI/CD
9 77 (23.26%) Agile
10 65 (19.64%) Security Cleared
11 64 (19.34%) Docker
12 59 (17.82%) Kafka
12 59 (17.82%) SC Cleared
13 55 (16.62%) Full-Stack Development
14 54 (16.31%) DevOps
15 48 (14.50%) SQL
16 45 (13.60%) Azure
17 40 (12.08%) Containerisation
17 40 (12.08%) React
17 40 (12.08%) TDD
18 38 (11.48%) Test Automation
19 37 (11.18%) Python
20 35 (10.57%) PostgreSQL
21 34 (10.27%) Event-Driven
22 32 (9.67%) QA
23 29 (8.76%) Gradle
23 29 (8.76%) Jenkins
23 29 (8.76%) Problem-Solving
24 25 (7.55%) RESTful
24 25 (7.55%) 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 (2.42%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.21%) Confluence
3 3 (0.91%) Apache
3 3 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.60%) MQSeries
5 1 (0.30%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.30%) Camunda
5 1 (0.30%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.30%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.30%) nginx
5 1 (0.30%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.60%) Shopify
2 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 92 (27.79%) AWS
2 45 (13.60%) Azure
3 20 (6.04%) Serverless
4 19 (5.74%) AWS Lambda
4 19 (5.74%) GitHub
5 16 (4.83%) GCP
6 15 (4.53%) OpenShift
7 14 (4.23%) Amazon S3
8 13 (3.93%) Amazon ECS
9 12 (3.63%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (2.42%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (1.81%) AWS Step Functions
13 4 (1.21%) Azure Service Bus
13 4 (1.21%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 3 (0.91%) Amazon EKS
14 3 (0.91%) Amazon SQS
14 3 (0.91%) AWS Fargate
14 3 (0.91%) Azure DevOps
14 3 (0.91%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.51%) HTTP
2 3 (0.91%) MQTT
3 1 (0.30%) DNS
3 1 (0.30%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.30%) Internet
3 1 (0.30%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (10.57%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (6.34%) MongoDB
3 13 (3.93%) SQL Server
4 11 (3.32%) DynamoDB
5 9 (2.72%) Big Data
5 9 (2.72%) Relational Database
6 8 (2.42%) Amazon RDS
6 8 (2.42%) MySQL
7 7 (2.11%) NoSQL
8 6 (1.81%) Apache Cassandra
9 4 (1.21%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (0.91%) Hadoop
10 3 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (0.60%) HBase
11 2 (0.60%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.60%) Redis
12 1 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
12 1 (0.30%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.30%) Bigtable
12 1 (0.30%) Flink
Development Applications
1 29 (8.76%) Gradle
1 29 (8.76%) Jenkins
2 24 (7.25%) GitLab
3 22 (6.65%) Git
3 22 (6.65%) JUnit
4 15 (4.53%) IntelliJ
5 14 (4.23%) SonarQube
6 12 (3.63%) Maven
7 9 (2.72%) Mockito
8 8 (2.42%) JIRA
9 6 (1.81%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.51%) Liquibase
10 5 (1.51%) Selenium
11 4 (1.21%) Artifactory
12 3 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.60%) Flyway
13 2 (0.60%) Gatling
13 2 (0.60%) TeamCity
13 2 (0.60%) WebDriver
13 2 (0.60%) XCUITest
General
1 64 (19.34%) Finance
2 32 (9.67%) Social Skills
3 29 (8.76%) Banking
4 21 (6.34%) Front Office
5 20 (6.04%) Public Sector
6 9 (2.72%) Law
7 8 (2.42%) Analytical Skills
7 8 (2.42%) Financial Institution
8 6 (1.81%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.91%) Back Office
9 3 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.91%) Retail
10 2 (0.60%) Automotive
10 2 (0.60%) Military
11 1 (0.30%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.30%) French Language
11 1 (0.30%) Health Technology
11 1 (0.30%) Legal
11 1 (0.30%) Police
11 1 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (40.18%) Spring
2 124 (37.46%) Spring Boot
3 59 (17.82%) Kafka
4 40 (12.08%) React
5 25 (7.55%) RESTful
6 22 (6.65%) REST
7 18 (5.44%) AngularJS
7 18 (5.44%) GraphQL
8 17 (5.14%) Middleware
8 17 (5.14%) Node.js
9 16 (4.83%) Swagger
10 14 (4.23%) Quarkus
11 13 (3.93%) OpenTelemetry
12 12 (3.63%) OpenAPI
13 9 (2.72%) Redux
14 8 (2.42%) FIX Protocol
15 7 (2.11%) AWS CDK
15 7 (2.11%) Hibernate
15 7 (2.11%) Next.js
16 6 (1.81%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 50 (15.11%) Cloud Native
2 24 (7.25%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (3.02%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (2.72%) Fixed Income
5 8 (2.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 8 (2.42%) Greenfield Project
6 6 (1.81%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.51%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.21%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 4 (1.21%) TWAP
8 4 (1.21%) VWAP
9 3 (0.91%) Derivative
9 3 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (0.91%) Low-Code
9 3 (0.91%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.91%) Product Ownership
9 3 (0.91%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.60%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.60%) Distributed Computing
10 2 (0.60%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 19 (5.74%) Linux
2 6 (1.81%) Unix
3 1 (0.30%) Android
3 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.30%) Solaris
3 1 (0.30%) SUSE
3 1 (0.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.30%) VMS
3 1 (0.30%) Windows
3 1 (0.30%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
3 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
3 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 163 (49.24%) Software Engineering
2 86 (25.98%) Microservices
3 85 (25.68%) CI/CD
4 77 (23.26%) Agile
5 55 (16.62%) Full-Stack Development
6 54 (16.31%) DevOps
7 40 (12.08%) Containerisation
7 40 (12.08%) TDD
8 38 (11.48%) Test Automation
9 34 (10.27%) Event-Driven
10 29 (8.76%) Problem-Solving
11 25 (7.55%) Scrum
12 24 (7.25%) Unit Testing
13 21 (6.34%) Clean Code
13 21 (6.34%) Migration
14 20 (6.04%) Front End Development
14 20 (6.04%) SDLC
15 19 (5.74%) Code Quality
15 19 (5.74%) High Availability
16 18 (5.44%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 331 (100.00%) Java
2 48 (14.50%) SQL
3 37 (11.18%) Python
4 25 (7.55%) TypeScript
5 17 (5.14%) JavaScript
5 17 (5.14%) Kotlin
6 13 (3.93%) Go
7 11 (3.32%) Ada
8 5 (1.51%) C++
8 5 (1.51%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.91%) C#
9 3 (0.91%) Scala
10 1 (0.30%) Groovy
10 1 (0.30%) Korn
10 1 (0.30%) Rust
10 1 (0.30%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.30%) Solidity
10 1 (0.30%) Swift
Qualifications
1 65 (19.64%) Security Cleared
2 59 (17.82%) SC Cleared
3 10 (3.02%) Degree
4 5 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (1.21%) DV Cleared
6 3 (0.91%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.60%) OCP
7 2 (0.60%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.30%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.30%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (9.67%) QA
2 11 (3.32%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.32%) IEC 61508
3 7 (2.11%) GDPR
3 7 (2.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 6 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.81%) ISO 20022
5 4 (1.21%) SEPA
6 3 (0.91%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.60%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.30%) WCAG
System Software
1 64 (19.34%) Docker
2 1 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.30%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 94 (28.40%) Kubernetes
2 21 (6.34%) Terraform
3 16 (4.83%) Grafana
4 13 (3.93%) Argo
5 6 (1.81%) Ansible
6 3 (0.91%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.60%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.30%) Kibana
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.30%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (3.63%) Red Hat
2 11 (3.32%) Google
2 11 (3.32%) Microsoft
3 10 (3.02%) Oracle
4 6 (1.81%) Splunk
4 6 (1.81%) Spotify
5 5 (1.51%) IBM
6 3 (0.91%) Databricks
6 3 (0.91%) Dynatrace
6 3 (0.91%) SAP
6 3 (0.91%) ServiceNow
6 3 (0.91%) Solace
7 2 (0.60%) Checkmarx
7 2 (0.60%) Confluent
7 2 (0.60%) MKS
7 2 (0.60%) New Relic
8 1 (0.30%) Actian
8 1 (0.30%) Netlify
8 1 (0.30%) Sonatype
8 1 (0.30%) Veracode