Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 27 September 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 383 358 313
Rank change year-on-year -25 -45 +162
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 325 215 267
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.65% 0.70%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.65% 0.71% 0.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 161 194
10th Percentile £328 £375 £450
25th Percentile £425 £513 £521
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £750
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% -20.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £600 £825 £850
90th Percentile £656 £850 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £500
% change year-on-year - +5.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 6 27
10th Percentile - £38.75 £66.25
25th Percentile £70.00 £49.38 -
Median hourly rate £75.00 £75.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - +7.14% +27.27%
75th Percentile £77.00 £85.63 -
90th Percentile - £87.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +3.57% - +7.69%

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 50,385 30,076 35,581
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.19% 91.01% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,746 18,991 21,622
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,923 1,619 1,598
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -1.71%

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 September 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 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
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 Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 27 September 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 -18 299 £525 -16.00% 477
UK excluding London +9 156 £525 - 296
London -78 147 £525 -30.00% 268
Work from Home -76 93 £470 -37.33% 214
North of England -10 67 £500 -13.04% 81
Midlands -1 45 £593 +12.86% 22
North West -17 40 £540 +77.05% 49
West Midlands -12 39 £595 +12.80% 17
South East -56 21 £500 +44.93% 18
East of England -6 17 £600 - 2
Yorkshire -31 17 £470 +47.52% 16
North East -30 10 £640 +11.30% 16
South West -28 7 £484 -12.05% 52
East Midlands -12 6 £400 +26.98% 5
Wales - 4 - - 6
Scotland -35 3 £550 +12.82% 101
Northern Ireland - 3 £275 - 14

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

For the 6 months to 27 September 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.

1 325 (100.00%) Java
2 174 (53.54%) Software Engineering
3 159 (48.92%) Spring
4 146 (44.92%) CI/CD
5 145 (44.62%) Spring Boot
6 118 (36.31%) AWS
7 117 (36.00%) Agile
8 113 (34.77%) Microservices
9 108 (33.23%) Kubernetes
10 83 (25.54%) Docker
11 75 (23.08%) DevOps
11 75 (23.08%) Kafka
12 74 (22.77%) SQL
13 73 (22.46%) Security Cleared
14 69 (21.23%) Test Automation
15 66 (20.31%) SC Cleared
16 59 (18.15%) Event-Driven
16 59 (18.15%) REST
17 46 (14.15%) Git
18 45 (13.85%) AI
19 44 (13.54%) TDD
20 43 (13.23%) Azure
21 42 (12.92%) Containerisation
21 42 (12.92%) JUnit
21 42 (12.92%) Python
22 41 (12.62%) Event-Driven Architecture
22 41 (12.62%) QA
23 39 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
23 39 (12.00%) Scrum
23 39 (12.00%) SDLC

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 7 (2.15%) Apache
1 7 (2.15%) WebLogic
2 5 (1.54%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.92%) Confluence
4 2 (0.62%) MQSeries
4 2 (0.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.31%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.31%) nginx
5 1 (0.31%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.31%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (0.92%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 118 (36.31%) AWS
2 43 (13.23%) Azure
3 31 (9.54%) GCP
4 27 (8.31%) GitHub
5 19 (5.85%) GitHub Actions
6 17 (5.23%) Serverless
7 16 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
8 12 (3.69%) OpenShift
9 9 (2.77%) Amazon SQS
10 8 (2.46%) Amazon ECS
10 8 (2.46%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.15%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (1.85%) Amazon S3
13 5 (1.54%) Amazon OpenSearch
13 5 (1.54%) Azure DevOps
13 5 (1.54%) GitHub Copilot
13 5 (1.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 4 (1.23%) Cloud Run
14 4 (1.23%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.38%) Firewall
1 11 (3.38%) VPN
2 6 (1.85%) HTTP
3 4 (1.23%) Internet
4 1 (0.31%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (11.38%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (7.69%) Relational Database
3 20 (6.15%) NoSQL
4 15 (4.62%) MongoDB
5 13 (4.00%) MySQL
6 9 (2.77%) DynamoDB
6 9 (2.77%) Elasticsearch
7 8 (2.46%) Couchbase
7 8 (2.46%) Redis
7 8 (2.46%) SQL Server
8 6 (1.85%) Apache Cassandra
8 6 (1.85%) Flink
9 3 (0.92%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.92%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.92%) Power BI
10 2 (0.62%) Big Data
10 2 (0.62%) HBase
10 2 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.31%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 46 (14.15%) Git
2 42 (12.92%) JUnit
3 38 (11.69%) GitLab
4 29 (8.92%) Maven
5 21 (6.46%) Mockito
6 18 (5.54%) Jenkins
7 16 (4.92%) Gradle
8 12 (3.69%) SonarQube
9 9 (2.77%) Cucumber
10 8 (2.46%) JIRA
11 7 (2.15%) Selenium
12 6 (1.85%) Bitbucket
13 5 (1.54%) Liquibase
13 5 (1.54%) TeamCity
14 3 (0.92%) Cypress.io
14 3 (0.92%) Flyway
14 3 (0.92%) Gatling
15 2 (0.62%) Katalon Studio
15 2 (0.62%) REST Assured
15 2 (0.62%) XCUITest
General
1 84 (25.85%) Finance
2 62 (19.08%) Social Skills
3 56 (17.23%) Banking
4 17 (5.23%) Public Sector
5 13 (4.00%) Manufacturing
6 12 (3.69%) Front Office
7 10 (3.08%) Retail
8 8 (2.46%) Analytical Skills
9 6 (1.85%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.85%) Military
10 4 (1.23%) iGaming
10 4 (1.23%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.23%) Law
10 4 (1.23%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.92%) Automotive
11 3 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.62%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.31%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.31%) International Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 159 (48.92%) Spring
2 145 (44.62%) Spring Boot
3 75 (23.08%) Kafka
4 59 (18.15%) REST
5 30 (9.23%) React
6 29 (8.92%) RESTful
7 20 (6.15%) AngularJS
7 20 (6.15%) OpenAPI
8 19 (5.85%) Terraform
9 17 (5.23%) JPA
10 12 (3.69%) JSON
10 12 (3.69%) OAuth
10 12 (3.69%) Swagger
11 11 (3.38%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (3.08%) Quarkus
13 8 (2.46%) Hibernate
13 8 (2.46%) Node.js
13 8 (2.46%) Spring MVC
13 8 (2.46%) Web Services
14 7 (2.15%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 71 (21.85%) Cloud Native
2 57 (17.54%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (4.00%) Greenfield Project
4 12 (3.69%) Enterprise Software
4 12 (3.69%) Product Ownership
5 9 (2.77%) AI Agents
6 8 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.46%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.15%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.85%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (1.85%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.54%) Linux Command Line
10 4 (1.23%) Algorithms
10 4 (1.23%) Client/Server
10 4 (1.23%) Low-Code
10 4 (1.23%) Public Cloud
10 4 (1.23%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 4 (1.23%) TWAP
10 4 (1.23%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 20 (6.15%) Linux
2 12 (3.69%) Unix
3 2 (0.62%) Android
3 2 (0.62%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.31%) Solaris
4 1 (0.31%) Windows
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (53.54%) Software Engineering
2 146 (44.92%) CI/CD
3 117 (36.00%) Agile
4 113 (34.77%) Microservices
5 75 (23.08%) DevOps
6 69 (21.23%) Test Automation
7 59 (18.15%) Event-Driven
8 45 (13.85%) AI
9 44 (13.54%) TDD
10 42 (12.92%) Containerisation
11 41 (12.62%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 39 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
12 39 (12.00%) Scrum
12 39 (12.00%) SDLC
13 37 (11.38%) Full-Stack Development
14 36 (11.08%) Observability
15 33 (10.15%) Clean Code
16 30 (9.23%) Front End Development
17 29 (8.92%) Unit Testing
18 25 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 325 (100.00%) Java
2 74 (22.77%) SQL
3 42 (12.92%) Python
4 28 (8.62%) JavaScript
5 27 (8.31%) Kotlin
6 26 (8.00%) TypeScript
7 18 (5.54%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.54%) C#
9 4 (1.23%) Bash
9 4 (1.23%) Groovy
9 4 (1.23%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.23%) PowerShell
9 4 (1.23%) Ruby
10 3 (0.92%) Go
11 2 (0.62%) C++
11 2 (0.62%) Swift
12 1 (0.31%) Perl
12 1 (0.31%) Rust
12 1 (0.31%) Scala
12 1 (0.31%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 73 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 66 (20.31%) SC Cleared
3 27 (8.31%) BPSS Clearance
4 12 (3.69%) Degree
5 8 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.92%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.62%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.31%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.31%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (12.62%) QA
2 9 (2.77%) ISO 20022
3 5 (1.54%) SEPA
4 4 (1.23%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.23%) GDPR
4 4 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.92%) ISO 15022
5 3 (0.92%) SLA
6 2 (0.62%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.62%) WCAG
7 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.31%) PSD2
System Software
1 83 (25.54%) Docker
2 1 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 108 (33.23%) Kubernetes
2 12 (3.69%) Argo
2 12 (3.69%) Kibana
3 5 (1.54%) Prometheus
4 4 (1.23%) Ansible
5 2 (0.62%) Grafana
5 2 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
6 1 (0.31%) HAProxy
6 1 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 29 (8.92%) Oracle
2 10 (3.08%) Red Hat
3 9 (2.77%) Microsoft
4 5 (1.54%) Confluent
4 5 (1.54%) Google
4 5 (1.54%) Splunk
5 4 (1.23%) Databricks
5 4 (1.23%) Dynatrace
5 4 (1.23%) IBM
5 4 (1.23%) SAP
6 3 (0.92%) FIS
6 3 (0.92%) Spotify
7 2 (0.62%) Checkmarx
7 2 (0.62%) MKS
7 2 (0.62%) OpenAI
7 2 (0.62%) ServiceNow
8 1 (0.31%) Concur
8 1 (0.31%) Okta
8 1 (0.31%) Solace
8 1 (0.31%) VMware