Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £602, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 355 297 476
Rank change year-on-year -58 +179 -112
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 218 285 177
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.66% 0.74% 0.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.73% 0.80% 0.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 209 142
10th Percentile £396 £450 £400
25th Percentile £503 £520 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £602 £750 £600
Median % change year-on-year -19.73% +25.00% -4.00%
75th Percentile £825 £850 £713
90th Percentile £850 £888 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £513 £495
% change year-on-year -3.90% +3.54% -17.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 26 3
10th Percentile £39.50 £66.25 £43.76
25th Percentile £56.25 - £47.98
Median hourly rate £80.00 £70.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% +27.27% -16.03%
75th Percentile £87.50 - £66.25
90th Percentile £89.50 - £73.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - +7.69% -0.76%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 30,003 35,798 46,379
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.06% 92.95% 94.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,960 22,064 31,748
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,577 1,684 1,483
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% +4.65% +95.45%

Java Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Java Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Java Engineer 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Top 15 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 18 September 2025. 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 -46 185 £675 -15.63% 39
London -18 148 £750 -6.25% 18
Work from Home +16 123 £750 -6.25% 38
UK excluding London -24 51 £493 -3.90% 36
Scotland +4 15 £469 +7.76% 6
South East +21 9 - - 12
Midlands -11 9 £525 -17.65% 2
North of England -13 8 £312 -43.31% 7
West Midlands -6 6 £528 -31.94% 2
North West -15 6 £305 -44.55% 5
East of England - 5 £600 -
East Midlands -1 3 £315 -41.40%
South West -8 3 £550 +10.00% 4
Northern Ireland -4 2 £470 -21.67% 1
Yorkshire -14 2 £319 - 1

Java Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 September 2025, Java Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Java Engineer in the job title.

1 218 (100.00%) Java
2 137 (62.84%) AWS
3 135 (61.93%) Software Engineering
4 122 (55.96%) Finance
5 120 (55.05%) Agile
6 96 (44.04%) TypeScript
7 83 (38.07%) JavaScript
8 81 (37.16%) Python
9 70 (32.11%) Banking
10 66 (30.28%) Front Office
11 65 (29.82%) Fixed Income
12 64 (29.36%) Investment Management
13 62 (28.44%) Spring
14 61 (27.98%) Equities
14 61 (27.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 61 (27.98%) Apache Airflow
15 60 (27.52%) Pandas
15 60 (27.52%) Amazon Athena
15 60 (27.52%) Dremio
15 60 (27.52%) dbt
15 60 (27.52%) CI/CD
15 60 (27.52%) Apache Arrow
15 60 (27.52%) Asset Management
15 60 (27.52%) SciPy
15 60 (27.52%) NumPy
15 60 (27.52%) Apache Iceberg
16 56 (25.69%) Investment Banking
17 53 (24.31%) DevOps
18 51 (23.39%) Microservices
18 51 (23.39%) Data Lake

Java Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 61 (27.98%) Apache Airflow
2 50 (22.94%) Apache
3 4 (1.83%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.83%) Confluence
4 3 (1.38%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.92%) GemFire
5 2 (0.92%) JBoss
6 1 (0.46%) Luigi
6 1 (0.46%) nginx
Applications
1 1 (0.46%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 137 (62.84%) AWS
2 60 (27.52%) dbt
3 48 (22.02%) Azure
3 48 (22.02%) Snowflake
4 32 (14.68%) GCP
5 16 (7.34%) GitHub
6 6 (2.75%) OpenShift
6 6 (2.75%) SaaS
6 6 (2.75%) Serverless
7 5 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (2.29%) Amazon ECS
7 5 (2.29%) Amazon Kinesis
7 5 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (1.83%) AWS Step Functions
8 4 (1.83%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (1.83%) Cloud Computing
8 4 (1.83%) Entra ID
9 3 (1.38%) Amazon SQS
9 3 (1.38%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.92%) AMQP
2 1 (0.46%) Broadband
2 1 (0.46%) Firewall
2 1 (0.46%) SSH
2 1 (0.46%) SSL
2 1 (0.46%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (27.52%) Amazon Athena
1 60 (27.52%) Apache Arrow
1 60 (27.52%) Apache Iceberg
1 60 (27.52%) Dremio
2 51 (23.39%) Data Lake
3 50 (22.94%) Apache Ignite
4 27 (12.39%) PostgreSQL
5 20 (9.17%) Relational Database
6 17 (7.80%) MySQL
7 10 (4.59%) Apache Cassandra
8 9 (4.13%) Big Data
8 9 (4.13%) MongoDB
9 7 (3.21%) NoSQL
9 7 (3.21%) SQL Server
10 5 (2.29%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (2.29%) Hadoop
10 5 (2.29%) HPCC
11 4 (1.83%) RDBMS
12 3 (1.38%) DynamoDB
13 2 (0.92%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 29 (13.30%) Jenkins
2 26 (11.93%) Git
3 22 (10.09%) JUnit
4 20 (9.17%) GitLab
5 16 (7.34%) Gradle
5 16 (7.34%) JIRA
6 14 (6.42%) Cucumber
7 13 (5.96%) Selenium
8 12 (5.50%) Mockito
9 11 (5.05%) REST Assured
10 10 (4.59%) Maven
11 8 (3.67%) Liquibase
12 7 (3.21%) SonarQube
13 5 (2.29%) Bitbucket
14 3 (1.38%) Cypress.io
14 3 (1.38%) IntelliJ
14 3 (1.38%) JMeter
15 2 (0.92%) Postman
15 2 (0.92%) Visual Studio
15 2 (0.92%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 122 (55.96%) Finance
2 70 (32.11%) Banking
3 66 (30.28%) Front Office
4 56 (25.69%) Investment Banking
5 33 (15.14%) Social Skills
6 14 (6.42%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (5.05%) Public Sector
8 9 (4.13%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.67%) Electronics
9 8 (3.67%) Manufacturing
9 8 (3.67%) Marketing
10 6 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (2.29%) Law
12 4 (1.83%) Police
13 3 (1.38%) Back Office
13 3 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (28.44%) Spring
2 60 (27.52%) NumPy
2 60 (27.52%) Pandas
2 60 (27.52%) SciPy
3 48 (22.02%) gRPC
3 48 (22.02%) Protocol Buffers
4 44 (20.18%) Spring Boot
5 43 (19.72%) React
6 32 (14.68%) AngularJS
6 32 (14.68%) Kafka
6 32 (14.68%) REST
7 29 (13.30%) Node.js
8 16 (7.34%) RESTful
9 13 (5.96%) OAuth
10 12 (5.50%) Vue
11 10 (4.59%) GraphQL
12 9 (4.13%) Hibernate
12 9 (4.13%) HTML
12 9 (4.13%) Java EE
12 9 (4.13%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 65 (29.82%) Fixed Income
2 61 (27.98%) Equities
2 61 (27.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 48 (22.02%) Derivative
3 48 (22.02%) Hedge funds
3 48 (22.02%) Pricing Data
4 17 (7.80%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (5.05%) Cloud Native
6 9 (4.13%) Product Ownership
7 7 (3.21%) Mobile App
8 6 (2.75%) Onboarding
8 6 (2.75%) Public Cloud
9 5 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.83%) Algorithms
10 4 (1.83%) Blockchain
10 4 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.83%) Virtual Team
11 2 (0.92%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.92%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.92%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 16 (7.34%) Linux
2 12 (5.50%) Unix
3 10 (4.59%) Windows
4 2 (0.92%) CentOS
4 2 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (61.93%) Software Engineering
2 120 (55.05%) Agile
3 64 (29.36%) Investment Management
4 60 (27.52%) Asset Management
4 60 (27.52%) CI/CD
5 53 (24.31%) DevOps
6 51 (23.39%) Microservices
7 31 (14.22%) Fintech
8 28 (12.84%) TDD
9 27 (12.39%) Containerisation
9 27 (12.39%) Full-Stack Development
9 27 (12.39%) Test Automation
10 24 (11.01%) Problem-Solving
11 20 (9.17%) Continuous Integration
12 18 (8.26%) Infrastructure as Code
13 17 (7.80%) SDLC
14 16 (7.34%) Order Management
15 15 (6.88%) Migration
16 13 (5.96%) Artificial Intelligence
16 13 (5.96%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 218 (100.00%) Java
2 96 (44.04%) TypeScript
3 83 (38.07%) JavaScript
4 81 (37.16%) Python
5 28 (12.84%) SQL
6 13 (5.96%) Kotlin
7 9 (4.13%) C
8 8 (3.67%) C++
9 6 (2.75%) Go
10 4 (1.83%) DAML
10 4 (1.83%) Ruby
10 4 (1.83%) Scala
11 3 (1.38%) Groovy
11 3 (1.38%) PHP
12 2 (0.92%) Bash
12 2 (0.92%) C#
12 2 (0.92%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.92%) Rust
13 1 (0.46%) Ada
13 1 (0.46%) Perl
Qualifications
1 28 (12.84%) Security Cleared
2 26 (11.93%) SC Cleared
3 13 (5.96%) Degree
4 7 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.38%) AWS Certification
5 3 (1.38%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.92%) Azure Certification
6 2 (0.92%) DV Cleared
6 2 (0.92%) PhD
7 1 (0.46%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (0.46%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (11.47%) QA
2 7 (3.21%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.46%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.46%) GDPR
3 1 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (0.46%) WCAG
System Software
1 35 (16.06%) Docker
2 2 (0.92%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 29 (13.30%) Kubernetes
2 16 (7.34%) Terraform
3 15 (6.88%) Ansible
4 8 (3.67%) Grafana
5 7 (3.21%) Single Sign-On
6 5 (2.29%) Docker Swarm
6 5 (2.29%) Podman
7 2 (0.92%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.92%) Puppet
7 2 (0.92%) Tivoli Identity Manager
8 1 (0.46%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 14 (6.42%) Oracle
2 13 (5.96%) Microsoft
3 12 (5.50%) Google
4 8 (3.67%) SAP
5 4 (1.83%) Databricks
5 4 (1.83%) Dynatrace
5 4 (1.83%) Splunk
6 3 (1.38%) IBM
7 2 (0.92%) CA Agile Central
7 2 (0.92%) ForgeRock
7 2 (0.92%) Ping Identity
7 2 (0.92%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.46%) Confluent
8 1 (0.46%) Guidewire
8 1 (0.46%) Hitachi
8 1 (0.46%) Informatica
8 1 (0.46%) Okta
8 1 (0.46%) SnapLogic
8 1 (0.46%) YouTube
8 1 (0.46%) Zoomdata