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 July 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 341 303
Rank change year-on-year -7 -38 +166
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 345 218 313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.67% 0.74%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.73% 0.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 216 158 218
10th Percentile £358 £400 £423
25th Percentile £425 £487 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £649 £638
Median % change year-on-year -19.11% +1.80% +3.03%
75th Percentile £613 £825 £850
90th Percentile £670 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +4.50% - +0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 8 29
10th Percentile £61.33 £40.25 £66.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £59.38 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% -1.79% +7.28%
75th Percentile - £81.88 -
90th Percentile £76.90 £89.00 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +3.70% -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 49,017 30,047 39,139
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.68% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,642 19,138 25,289
10th Percentile £325 £285 £290
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,291 1,424 2,548
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £17.72
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.63% +1.90%

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 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 19 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 19 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 -29 304 £525 -30.00% 69
UK excluding London +1 162 £523 +4.50% 41
London -72 158 £530 -29.33% 48
Work from Home -54 112 £525 -30.00% 38
North of England -22 59 £523 +33.97% 8
South East -45 33 £500 -23.08% 17
South West -19 25 £505 -6.05% 5
North West -33 24 £550 - 6
Yorkshire - 19 £500 - 2
Midlands -39 18 £477 -9.24% 4
North East -20 17 £533 +36.54%
West Midlands -50 16 £483 -8.87% 3
East of England -9 13 £538 -10.42%
Scotland -13 13 £600 +26.32% 5
Wales - 6 £388 -
East Midlands -13 2 £400 +26.98% 1
Northern Ireland 0 1 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 19 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.

1 345 (100.00%) Java
2 189 (54.78%) Software Engineering
3 134 (38.84%) Spring
4 124 (35.94%) Spring Boot
5 112 (32.46%) CI/CD
6 102 (29.57%) AWS
7 101 (29.28%) Agile
8 99 (28.70%) Microservices
9 94 (27.25%) Kubernetes
10 81 (23.48%) Docker
10 81 (23.48%) Security Cleared
11 75 (21.74%) Kafka
12 73 (21.16%) SC Cleared
13 67 (19.42%) DevOps
14 61 (17.68%) SQL
15 56 (16.23%) Full-Stack Development
16 50 (14.49%) Azure
16 50 (14.49%) Test Automation
17 44 (12.75%) React
18 43 (12.46%) Containerisation
19 42 (12.17%) TDD
20 40 (11.59%) Event-Driven
20 40 (11.59%) PostgreSQL
20 40 (11.59%) Python
21 39 (11.30%) Problem-Solving
22 35 (10.14%) QA
22 35 (10.14%) REST
23 34 (9.86%) JUnit
24 33 (9.57%) Git
24 33 (9.57%) Jenkins

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 (2.03%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.45%) Apache
3 3 (0.87%) Confluence
3 3 (0.87%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 3 (0.87%) WebLogic
4 2 (0.58%) MQSeries
5 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.29%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
5 1 (0.29%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.29%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.29%) nginx
5 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.29%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (0.58%) Trello
2 1 (0.29%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.58%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 102 (29.57%) AWS
2 50 (14.49%) Azure
3 31 (8.99%) GCP
4 30 (8.70%) GitHub
5 24 (6.96%) GitHub Actions
6 21 (6.09%) OpenShift
7 14 (4.06%) Serverless
8 13 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (2.61%) Amazon S3
10 8 (2.32%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 6 (1.74%) Cloud Run
12 5 (1.45%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (1.45%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (1.16%) AWS Fargate
14 3 (0.87%) Amazon EKS
14 3 (0.87%) Amazon SQS
14 3 (0.87%) AWS Step Functions
14 3 (0.87%) Power Platform
14 3 (0.87%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.03%) Firewall
1 7 (2.03%) VPN
2 6 (1.74%) HTTP
3 4 (1.16%) Internet
4 3 (0.87%) MQTT
5 1 (0.29%) DNS
5 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.29%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (11.59%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (5.80%) Relational Database
3 17 (4.93%) MongoDB
4 14 (4.06%) NoSQL
4 14 (4.06%) SQL Server
5 11 (3.19%) DynamoDB
6 10 (2.90%) Elasticsearch
6 10 (2.90%) MySQL
7 8 (2.32%) Big Data
8 7 (2.03%) Apache Cassandra
9 6 (1.74%) Couchbase
10 5 (1.45%) Redis
11 4 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.87%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.87%) Flink
12 3 (0.87%) Power BI
13 2 (0.58%) HBase
13 2 (0.58%) Oracle Database
13 2 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 34 (9.86%) JUnit
2 33 (9.57%) Git
2 33 (9.57%) Jenkins
3 18 (5.22%) SonarQube
4 17 (4.93%) Gradle
5 13 (3.77%) GitLab
6 12 (3.48%) Maven
6 12 (3.48%) Mockito
7 11 (3.19%) JIRA
8 8 (2.32%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.74%) Selenium
10 4 (1.16%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.16%) Cucumber
10 4 (1.16%) IntelliJ
11 3 (0.87%) Flyway
11 3 (0.87%) XCUITest
12 2 (0.58%) Gatling
12 2 (0.58%) Katalon Studio
12 2 (0.58%) Postman
12 2 (0.58%) TeamCity
General
1 88 (25.51%) Finance
2 51 (14.78%) Banking
3 33 (9.57%) Social Skills
4 20 (5.80%) Front Office
5 19 (5.51%) Public Sector
6 11 (3.19%) Financial Institution
7 10 (2.90%) Law
8 9 (2.61%) Manufacturing
8 9 (2.61%) Retail
9 8 (2.32%) Analytical Skills
10 5 (1.45%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.16%) Military
12 3 (0.87%) Automotive
12 3 (0.87%) Back Office
12 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.87%) Retail Banking
13 2 (0.58%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.58%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.29%) International Banking
14 1 (0.29%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (38.84%) Spring
2 124 (35.94%) Spring Boot
3 75 (21.74%) Kafka
4 44 (12.75%) React
5 35 (10.14%) REST
6 26 (7.54%) RESTful
7 25 (7.25%) AngularJS
8 18 (5.22%) Node.js
8 18 (5.22%) Quarkus
9 16 (4.64%) GraphQL
10 13 (3.77%) Middleware
11 10 (2.90%) Hibernate
11 10 (2.90%) OpenAPI
11 10 (2.90%) Swagger
12 8 (2.32%) Next.js
12 8 (2.32%) Redux
12 8 (2.32%) Web Services
13 7 (2.03%) AWS CDK
13 7 (2.03%) FIX Protocol
13 7 (2.03%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 61 (17.68%) Cloud Native
2 43 (12.46%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (3.48%) Greenfield Project
4 10 (2.90%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (2.61%) Fixed Income
6 8 (2.32%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 7 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.45%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.45%) Legacy Applications
8 5 (1.45%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 4 (1.16%) Low-Code
9 4 (1.16%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.16%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.16%) TWAP
9 4 (1.16%) VWAP
10 3 (0.87%) Algorithms
10 3 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
10 3 (0.87%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.87%) Product Ownership
10 3 (0.87%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 21 (6.09%) Linux
2 8 (2.32%) Unix
3 2 (0.58%) Android
3 2 (0.58%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Solaris
4 1 (0.29%) SUSE
4 1 (0.29%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 1 (0.29%) Windows
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (54.78%) Software Engineering
2 112 (32.46%) CI/CD
3 101 (29.28%) Agile
4 99 (28.70%) Microservices
5 67 (19.42%) DevOps
6 56 (16.23%) Full-Stack Development
7 50 (14.49%) Test Automation
8 43 (12.46%) Containerisation
9 42 (12.17%) TDD
10 40 (11.59%) Event-Driven
11 39 (11.30%) Problem-Solving
12 33 (9.57%) Scrum
13 30 (8.70%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 30 (8.70%) SDLC
14 28 (8.12%) Migration
14 28 (8.12%) Unit Testing
15 24 (6.96%) Code Quality
15 24 (6.96%) Front End Development
16 23 (6.67%) AI
16 23 (6.67%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 345 (100.00%) Java
2 61 (17.68%) SQL
3 40 (11.59%) Python
4 33 (9.57%) TypeScript
5 21 (6.09%) JavaScript
6 19 (5.51%) Kotlin
7 10 (2.90%) Go
8 7 (2.03%) Ada
8 7 (2.03%) PL/SQL
8 7 (2.03%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.16%) C#
9 4 (1.16%) Groovy
10 3 (0.87%) C++
11 2 (0.58%) Scala
11 2 (0.58%) Swift
12 1 (0.29%) Korn
12 1 (0.29%) Rust
12 1 (0.29%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 81 (23.48%) Security Cleared
2 73 (21.16%) SC Cleared
3 12 (3.48%) Degree
4 6 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (1.16%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.16%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.58%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.29%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (10.14%) QA
2 8 (2.32%) ISO 20022
3 7 (2.03%) Def Stans
3 7 (2.03%) IEC 61508
3 7 (2.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 6 (1.74%) GDPR
5 5 (1.45%) SEPA
6 2 (0.58%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.58%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.29%) PSD2
System Software
1 81 (23.48%) Docker
2 1 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.29%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 94 (27.25%) Kubernetes
2 19 (5.51%) Terraform
3 16 (4.64%) Argo
4 4 (1.16%) Ansible
5 3 (0.87%) Grafana
5 3 (0.87%) HAProxy
5 3 (0.87%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.58%) Kibana
7 1 (0.29%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.29%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 21 (6.09%) Oracle
2 16 (4.64%) Red Hat
3 12 (3.48%) Google
3 12 (3.48%) Microsoft
4 6 (1.74%) Splunk
4 6 (1.74%) Spotify
5 5 (1.45%) IBM
6 4 (1.16%) SAP
7 3 (0.87%) Checkmarx
7 3 (0.87%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.58%) Confluent
8 2 (0.58%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.58%) MKS
8 2 (0.58%) Solace
9 1 (0.29%) Concur
9 1 (0.29%) Databricks
9 1 (0.29%) Netlify
9 1 (0.29%) Okta
9 1 (0.29%) Sonatype
9 1 (0.29%) Veracode