Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £528, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 July 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 362 330 299
Rank change year-on-year -32 -31 +188
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 337 224 302
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.68% 0.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.69% 0.75% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 164 213
10th Percentile £363 £400 £440
25th Percentile £450 £492 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £625 £675
Median % change year-on-year -15.60% -7.41% +12.50%
75th Percentile £609 £825 £850
90th Percentile £670 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +6.09% -1.50% +2.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 7 28
10th Percentile £61.25 £39.50 £66.25
25th Percentile £65.63 £53.75 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £70.00
75th Percentile - £83.75 -
90th Percentile £76.20 £89.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +3.70% -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 48,972 29,978 37,340
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 91.54% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,547 19,070 24,184
10th Percentile £331 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,337 1,464 2,247
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.71 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -40.16% -2.97%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.02 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.59%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 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 -21 301 £525 -30.00% 150
UK excluding London +14 159 £523 +6.09% 63
London -71 154 £540 -28.00% 112
Work from Home -62 110 £525 -30.00% 51
North of England -21 61 £523 +47.47% 10
South East -46 32 £513 - 13
North West -27 27 £555 - 6
South West -18 22 £528 -1.86% 7
Midlands -37 21 £470 -10.48% 18
Yorkshire -23 19 £500 +56.94% 1
West Midlands -38 19 £470 -11.32% 16
North East -26 16 £640 +64.10% 3
East of England -13 13 £538 -10.42% 1
Scotland -15 10 £600 +28.00% 9
Wales - 5 £375 - 1
East Midlands -12 2 £400 +26.98% 2
Northern Ireland -3 1 - - 4

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

For the 6 months to 28 July 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.

1 337 (100.00%) Java
2 192 (56.97%) Software Engineering
3 130 (38.58%) Spring
4 123 (36.50%) Spring Boot
5 115 (34.12%) CI/CD
6 105 (31.16%) Agile
7 102 (30.27%) AWS
8 101 (29.97%) Kubernetes
9 98 (29.08%) Microservices
10 85 (25.22%) Security Cleared
11 83 (24.63%) Docker
12 78 (23.15%) Kafka
13 76 (22.55%) SC Cleared
14 69 (20.47%) DevOps
15 65 (19.29%) SQL
16 51 (15.13%) Test Automation
17 50 (14.84%) Containerisation
17 50 (14.84%) Full-Stack Development
18 49 (14.54%) Azure
19 42 (12.46%) Event-Driven
19 42 (12.46%) PostgreSQL
20 41 (12.17%) Python
20 41 (12.17%) React
21 38 (11.28%) Problem-Solving
21 38 (11.28%) TDD
22 37 (10.98%) REST
23 35 (10.39%) QA
24 33 (9.79%) Event-Driven Architecture
25 32 (9.50%) GCP
25 32 (9.50%) Git

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 (2.08%) Apache Spark
1 7 (2.08%) WebLogic
2 5 (1.48%) Apache
3 3 (0.89%) Confluence
3 3 (0.89%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.59%) MQSeries
5 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.30%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.30%) Camunda
5 1 (0.30%) nginx
5 1 (0.30%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.30%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (0.89%) Trello
2 1 (0.30%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.59%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 102 (30.27%) AWS
2 49 (14.54%) Azure
3 32 (9.50%) GCP
4 28 (8.31%) GitHub
5 24 (7.12%) GitHub Actions
6 20 (5.93%) OpenShift
7 13 (3.86%) Serverless
8 12 (3.56%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (2.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 6 (1.78%) Amazon SQS
10 6 (1.78%) Cloud Run
11 5 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 5 (1.48%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (1.48%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (1.48%) Amazon S3
11 5 (1.48%) Azure DevOps
12 3 (0.89%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 3 (0.89%) Azure Service Bus
12 3 (0.89%) Power Platform
12 3 (0.89%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.08%) Firewall
1 7 (2.08%) VPN
2 4 (1.19%) HTTP
2 4 (1.19%) Internet
3 3 (0.89%) MQTT
4 1 (0.30%) DNS
4 1 (0.30%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (12.46%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (5.64%) Relational Database
3 16 (4.75%) MongoDB
4 15 (4.45%) NoSQL
5 12 (3.56%) SQL Server
6 11 (3.26%) DynamoDB
6 11 (3.26%) Elasticsearch
6 11 (3.26%) MySQL
7 7 (2.08%) Apache Cassandra
7 7 (2.08%) Big Data
8 6 (1.78%) Couchbase
8 6 (1.78%) Redis
9 4 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.89%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.89%) Flink
10 3 (0.89%) Power BI
11 2 (0.59%) HBase
11 2 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
12 1 (0.30%) Bigtable
12 1 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 32 (9.50%) Git
1 32 (9.50%) JUnit
2 30 (8.90%) Jenkins
3 19 (5.64%) GitLab
4 18 (5.34%) SonarQube
5 13 (3.86%) Gradle
6 12 (3.56%) Maven
6 12 (3.56%) Mockito
7 10 (2.97%) JIRA
8 8 (2.37%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.78%) Selenium
10 5 (1.48%) Bitbucket
11 4 (1.19%) Cucumber
11 4 (1.19%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.89%) Flyway
12 3 (0.89%) XCUITest
13 2 (0.59%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.59%) Gatling
13 2 (0.59%) Katalon Studio
13 2 (0.59%) Postman
General
1 91 (27.00%) Finance
2 50 (14.84%) Banking
3 30 (8.90%) Social Skills
4 19 (5.64%) Public Sector
5 18 (5.34%) Front Office
6 10 (2.97%) Financial Institution
6 10 (2.97%) Law
6 10 (2.97%) Retail
7 9 (2.67%) Manufacturing
8 7 (2.08%) Analytical Skills
9 5 (1.48%) Military
10 3 (0.89%) Automotive
10 3 (0.89%) Back Office
10 3 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.89%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.89%) Retail Banking
11 2 (0.59%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.59%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.30%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (38.58%) Spring
2 123 (36.50%) Spring Boot
3 78 (23.15%) Kafka
4 41 (12.17%) React
5 37 (10.98%) REST
6 27 (8.01%) RESTful
7 24 (7.12%) AngularJS
8 18 (5.34%) Node.js
8 18 (5.34%) Quarkus
9 12 (3.56%) GraphQL
9 12 (3.56%) Middleware
10 10 (2.97%) OpenAPI
10 10 (2.97%) Swagger
11 9 (2.67%) Hibernate
12 8 (2.37%) Next.js
12 8 (2.37%) Redux
13 7 (2.08%) AWS CDK
13 7 (2.08%) Web Services
14 6 (1.78%) FIX Protocol
14 6 (1.78%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 63 (18.69%) Cloud Native
2 47 (13.95%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (3.86%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
5 8 (2.37%) Fixed Income
6 7 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 7 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.48%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.48%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.48%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.48%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 4 (1.19%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.19%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.19%) Product Ownership
8 4 (1.19%) TWAP
8 4 (1.19%) VWAP
9 3 (0.89%) AI Agents
9 3 (0.89%) Distributed Architecture
9 3 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 22 (6.53%) Linux
2 10 (2.97%) Unix
3 2 (0.59%) Android
3 2 (0.59%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.30%) Solaris
4 1 (0.30%) SUSE
4 1 (0.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 1 (0.30%) Windows
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (56.97%) Software Engineering
2 115 (34.12%) CI/CD
3 105 (31.16%) Agile
4 98 (29.08%) Microservices
5 69 (20.47%) DevOps
6 51 (15.13%) Test Automation
7 50 (14.84%) Containerisation
7 50 (14.84%) Full-Stack Development
8 42 (12.46%) Event-Driven
9 38 (11.28%) Problem-Solving
9 38 (11.28%) TDD
10 33 (9.79%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 32 (9.50%) Scrum
11 32 (9.50%) SDLC
12 29 (8.61%) Unit Testing
13 28 (8.31%) Migration
14 25 (7.42%) AI
14 25 (7.42%) Front End Development
14 25 (7.42%) Observability
15 24 (7.12%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 337 (100.00%) Java
2 65 (19.29%) SQL
3 41 (12.17%) Python
4 32 (9.50%) TypeScript
5 23 (6.82%) JavaScript
6 21 (6.23%) Kotlin
7 10 (2.97%) Shell Script
8 9 (2.67%) Go
9 7 (2.08%) Ada
9 7 (2.08%) PL/SQL
10 4 (1.19%) Groovy
11 3 (0.89%) C#
11 3 (0.89%) C++
12 2 (0.59%) Scala
12 2 (0.59%) Swift
13 1 (0.30%) Korn
13 1 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 85 (25.22%) Security Cleared
2 76 (22.55%) SC Cleared
3 12 (3.56%) Degree
4 7 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.19%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.19%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.59%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.30%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (10.39%) QA
2 9 (2.67%) ISO 20022
3 7 (2.08%) Def Stans
3 7 (2.08%) IEC 61508
3 7 (2.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 6 (1.78%) GDPR
5 5 (1.48%) SEPA
6 3 (0.89%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.59%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.59%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.30%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 83 (24.63%) 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
1 101 (29.97%) Kubernetes
2 18 (5.34%) Terraform
3 16 (4.75%) Argo
4 4 (1.19%) Ansible
4 4 (1.19%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.89%) Grafana
5 3 (0.89%) HAProxy
6 2 (0.59%) Kibana
7 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.30%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 21 (6.23%) Oracle
2 16 (4.75%) Red Hat
3 12 (3.56%) Google
4 11 (3.26%) Microsoft
5 6 (1.78%) Splunk
5 6 (1.78%) Spotify
6 5 (1.48%) IBM
7 4 (1.19%) SAP
8 3 (0.89%) Checkmarx
8 3 (0.89%) ServiceNow
9 2 (0.59%) Confluent
9 2 (0.59%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.59%) FIS
9 2 (0.59%) MKS
9 2 (0.59%) Solace
10 1 (0.30%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.30%) Concur
10 1 (0.30%) Sonatype
10 1 (0.30%) Teradata
10 1 (0.30%) VMware