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 19 June 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 309 341 324
Rank change year-on-year +32 -17 +155
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 362 197 287
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.72% 0.66% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.78% 0.72% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 139 191
10th Percentile £382 £380 £413
25th Percentile £450 £470 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £586 £600
Median % change year-on-year -10.41% -2.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £613 £825 £850
90th Percentile £667 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +8.85% -4.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 7 26
10th Percentile £52.50 £53.00 £67.50
25th Percentile £65.00 £65.63 -
Median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -3.57% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 -
90th Percentile £76.80 £85.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -3.57% +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 46,676 27,509 40,765
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.24% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,368 17,700 26,113
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,110 1,183 2,977
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.88 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.92 £17.47 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.69 £27.21 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.57% -27.44% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 +2 318 £525 -22.22% 44
UK excluding London +7 170 £523 +8.85% 30
London -37 163 £548 -27.00% 24
Work from Home -24 112 £525 -30.00% 28
North of England -14 64 £523 +14.21% 5
South East -41 34 £500 -23.08% 15
South West +4 32 £484 -6.75% 2
North West -13 31 £540 - 2
North East -19 17 £478 +22.44%
Yorkshire -43 17 £523 -0.48% 3
Midlands -48 16 £542 +3.14% 3
Scotland -3 15 £600 +26.32% 2
West Midlands -51 14 £600 +14.29% 3
East of England -25 9 £505 -15.83% 2
Wales - 4 £388 -
East Midlands -17 2 £400 +26.98%
Northern Ireland -4 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 19 June 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.

1 362 (100.00%) Java
2 192 (53.04%) Software Engineering
3 146 (40.33%) Spring
4 134 (37.02%) Spring Boot
5 109 (30.11%) AWS
6 107 (29.56%) CI/CD
7 103 (28.45%) Microservices
8 101 (27.90%) Agile
9 100 (27.62%) Kubernetes
10 80 (22.10%) Docker
10 80 (22.10%) Kafka
11 76 (20.99%) Security Cleared
12 68 (18.78%) SC Cleared
13 66 (18.23%) DevOps
14 58 (16.02%) Full-Stack Development
15 57 (15.75%) SQL
16 50 (13.81%) Azure
17 47 (12.98%) React
18 46 (12.71%) TDD
18 46 (12.71%) Test Automation
19 44 (12.15%) Containerisation
20 43 (11.88%) Event-Driven
21 40 (11.05%) Python
22 37 (10.22%) PostgreSQL
23 36 (9.94%) QA
24 35 (9.67%) Jenkins
25 34 (9.39%) JUnit
25 34 (9.39%) Problem-Solving
26 32 (8.84%) TypeScript
27 31 (8.56%) REST

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 (2.21%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.10%) Apache
3 3 (0.83%) Confluence
3 3 (0.83%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.55%) MQSeries
5 1 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.28%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.28%) Camunda
5 1 (0.28%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.28%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.28%) nginx
5 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.28%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Payment Gateway
1 2 (0.55%) Shopify
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 109 (30.11%) AWS
2 50 (13.81%) Azure
3 24 (6.63%) GCP
3 24 (6.63%) GitHub
4 20 (5.52%) OpenShift
5 18 (4.97%) GitHub Actions
6 17 (4.70%) Serverless
7 16 (4.42%) AWS Lambda
8 12 (3.31%) Amazon S3
9 8 (2.21%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (1.93%) Amazon EC2
11 6 (1.66%) AWS Step Functions
12 5 (1.38%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (1.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 4 (1.10%) AWS Fargate
13 4 (1.10%) Cloud Run
14 3 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
14 3 (0.83%) Azure Service Bus
14 3 (0.83%) Power Platform
14 3 (0.83%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.66%) HTTP
2 4 (1.10%) Firewall
2 4 (1.10%) VPN
3 3 (0.83%) Internet
3 3 (0.83%) MQTT
4 1 (0.28%) DNS
4 1 (0.28%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.28%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.28%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (10.22%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (4.97%) MongoDB
3 16 (4.42%) Relational Database
4 14 (3.87%) MySQL
5 13 (3.59%) SQL Server
6 12 (3.31%) NoSQL
7 11 (3.04%) DynamoDB
8 10 (2.76%) Apache Cassandra
9 9 (2.49%) Big Data
10 8 (2.21%) Elasticsearch
11 7 (1.93%) Amazon RDS
12 5 (1.38%) Couchbase
13 4 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 3 (0.83%) Data Lake
14 3 (0.83%) Hadoop
14 3 (0.83%) Power BI
15 2 (0.55%) Flink
15 2 (0.55%) HBase
15 2 (0.55%) Oracle Database
15 2 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 35 (9.67%) Jenkins
2 34 (9.39%) JUnit
3 28 (7.73%) Git
4 25 (6.91%) Gradle
5 19 (5.25%) GitLab
6 17 (4.70%) SonarQube
7 12 (3.31%) Maven
7 12 (3.31%) Mockito
8 10 (2.76%) IntelliJ
9 9 (2.49%) JIRA
10 8 (2.21%) Liquibase
11 7 (1.93%) Selenium
12 5 (1.38%) Cucumber
13 3 (0.83%) Flyway
13 3 (0.83%) XCUITest
14 2 (0.55%) Appium
14 2 (0.55%) Artifactory
14 2 (0.55%) Gatling
14 2 (0.55%) Katalon Studio
14 2 (0.55%) Postman
General
1 81 (22.38%) Finance
2 44 (12.15%) Banking
3 33 (9.12%) Social Skills
4 20 (5.52%) Front Office
4 20 (5.52%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.04%) Law
6 10 (2.76%) Financial Institution
7 8 (2.21%) Analytical Skills
7 8 (2.21%) Retail
8 5 (1.38%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.38%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.83%) Automotive
9 3 (0.83%) Back Office
9 3 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.83%) Military
9 3 (0.83%) Retail Banking
10 2 (0.55%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.55%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.28%) French Language
11 1 (0.28%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 146 (40.33%) Spring
2 134 (37.02%) Spring Boot
3 80 (22.10%) Kafka
4 47 (12.98%) React
5 31 (8.56%) REST
6 25 (6.91%) RESTful
7 24 (6.63%) AngularJS
8 18 (4.97%) GraphQL
8 18 (4.97%) Middleware
8 18 (4.97%) Node.js
9 17 (4.70%) Quarkus
10 14 (3.87%) OpenAPI
10 14 (3.87%) Swagger
11 12 (3.31%) Hibernate
12 9 (2.49%) Redux
13 8 (2.21%) Next.js
14 7 (1.93%) AWS CDK
14 7 (1.93%) FIX Protocol
14 7 (1.93%) Micronaut
14 7 (1.93%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 62 (17.13%) Cloud Native
2 42 (11.60%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.76%) Data Protection Act
3 10 (2.76%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (2.49%) Fixed Income
5 7 (1.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 7 (1.93%) Legacy Applications
6 6 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (1.66%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.38%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.38%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 4 (1.10%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.10%) TWAP
8 4 (1.10%) VWAP
9 3 (0.83%) Clustering
9 3 (0.83%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.83%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.55%) AI Agents
10 2 (0.55%) Replication
10 2 (0.55%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 21 (5.80%) Linux
2 10 (2.76%) Unix
3 2 (0.55%) Android
3 2 (0.55%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.28%) Solaris
4 1 (0.28%) SUSE
4 1 (0.28%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 1 (0.28%) VMS
4 1 (0.28%) Windows
4 1 (0.28%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (53.04%) Software Engineering
2 107 (29.56%) CI/CD
3 103 (28.45%) Microservices
4 101 (27.90%) Agile
5 66 (18.23%) DevOps
6 58 (16.02%) Full-Stack Development
7 46 (12.71%) TDD
7 46 (12.71%) Test Automation
8 44 (12.15%) Containerisation
9 43 (11.88%) Event-Driven
10 34 (9.39%) Problem-Solving
11 30 (8.29%) Scrum
12 29 (8.01%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 28 (7.73%) Migration
14 27 (7.46%) SDLC
15 26 (7.18%) Unit Testing
16 24 (6.63%) Clean Code
16 24 (6.63%) Front End Development
16 24 (6.63%) Observability
17 22 (6.08%) AI
Programming Languages
1 362 (100.00%) Java
2 57 (15.75%) SQL
3 40 (11.05%) Python
4 32 (8.84%) TypeScript
5 23 (6.35%) JavaScript
6 21 (5.80%) Kotlin
7 11 (3.04%) Ada
7 11 (3.04%) Go
8 7 (1.93%) PL/SQL
9 5 (1.38%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.83%) C#
10 3 (0.83%) C++
10 3 (0.83%) Groovy
10 3 (0.83%) Scala
11 2 (0.55%) Swift
12 1 (0.28%) Korn
12 1 (0.28%) Rust
12 1 (0.28%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 76 (20.99%) Security Cleared
2 68 (18.78%) SC Cleared
3 11 (3.04%) Degree
4 5 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (1.10%) DV Cleared
6 3 (0.83%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.55%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.28%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.28%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (9.94%) QA
2 11 (3.04%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.04%) IEC 61508
3 8 (2.21%) ISO 20022
4 7 (1.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.66%) GDPR
6 5 (1.38%) SEPA
7 2 (0.55%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.55%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.55%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.28%) PSD2
System Software
1 80 (22.10%) Docker
2 1 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.28%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.28%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 100 (27.62%) Kubernetes
2 21 (5.80%) Terraform
3 15 (4.14%) Argo
4 9 (2.49%) Grafana
5 5 (1.38%) Ansible
6 3 (0.83%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.55%) Kibana
8 1 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.28%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.28%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 18 (4.97%) Oracle
2 15 (4.14%) Red Hat
3 13 (3.59%) Google
4 11 (3.04%) Microsoft
5 6 (1.66%) Splunk
5 6 (1.66%) Spotify
6 5 (1.38%) IBM
7 4 (1.10%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.10%) SAP
8 3 (0.83%) ServiceNow
9 2 (0.55%) Checkmarx
9 2 (0.55%) Confluent
9 2 (0.55%) MKS
9 2 (0.55%) New Relic
9 2 (0.55%) Solace
10 1 (0.28%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.28%) Actian
10 1 (0.28%) Ariba
10 1 (0.28%) Teradata
10 1 (0.28%) VMware