Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £530, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 July 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 350 332 296
Rank change year-on-year -18 -36 +190
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 343 220 313
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.67% 0.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.74% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 212 160 217
10th Percentile £376 £400 £422
25th Percentile £450 £487 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £630 £650
Median % change year-on-year -15.91% -3.04% +6.12%
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% - +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 8 29
10th Percentile £61.33 £40.25 £66.25
25th Percentile £65.31 £59.38 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% -1.79% +7.69%
75th Percentile £73.75 £81.88 -
90th Percentile £77.00 £89.00 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year +3.70% -3.57% +7.28%

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 48,829 29,898 38,441
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 91.63% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,477 19,026 24,867
10th Percentile £325 £283 £295
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,287 1,429 2,436
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.75 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.72% -37.13% -8.57%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £80.52 £73.75 £74.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
% change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +4.53%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -10 303 £525 -30.00% 139
UK excluding London 0 165 £523 +4.50% 54
London -72 154 £540 -28.00% 102
Work from Home -51 112 £525 -30.00% 54
North of England -18 64 £523 +33.97% 10
South East -39 32 £513 -21.15% 18
North West -24 30 £555 - 6
South West -18 24 £505 -6.05% 5
Midlands -42 19 £470 -10.48% 15
Yorkshire - 19 £500 - 1
West Midlands -42 18 £477 -10.09% 11
North East -21 16 £640 +64.10% 3
East of England -13 13 £538 -10.42% 1
Scotland -14 13 £600 +26.32% 4
Wales - 5 £375 -
Northern Ireland +1 1 - - 1
East Midlands -13 1 £400 +26.98% 4

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

For the 6 months to 22 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.

1 343 (100.00%) Java
2 190 (55.39%) Software Engineering
3 137 (39.94%) Spring
4 130 (37.90%) Spring Boot
5 116 (33.82%) CI/CD
6 107 (31.20%) Agile
7 103 (30.03%) AWS
8 101 (29.45%) Microservices
9 97 (28.28%) Kubernetes
10 83 (24.20%) Docker
11 82 (23.91%) Security Cleared
12 78 (22.74%) Kafka
13 74 (21.57%) SC Cleared
14 70 (20.41%) DevOps
15 65 (18.95%) SQL
16 55 (16.03%) Full-Stack Development
17 52 (15.16%) Test Automation
18 48 (13.99%) Azure
19 46 (13.41%) Containerisation
20 45 (13.12%) React
21 42 (12.24%) PostgreSQL
22 41 (11.95%) Event-Driven
23 40 (11.66%) TDD
24 39 (11.37%) Problem-Solving
25 38 (11.08%) Python
26 36 (10.50%) QA
26 36 (10.50%) REST
27 35 (10.20%) Git
28 34 (9.91%) JUnit
29 33 (9.62%) Scrum

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 (2.04%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.46%) Apache
2 5 (1.46%) WebLogic
3 3 (0.87%) Confluence
3 3 (0.87%) Oracle SOA Suite
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
1 103 (30.03%) AWS
2 48 (13.99%) Azure
3 30 (8.75%) GCP
4 27 (7.87%) GitHub
5 23 (6.71%) GitHub Actions
6 20 (5.83%) OpenShift
7 17 (4.96%) Serverless
8 16 (4.66%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (2.62%) Amazon S3
10 8 (2.33%) Amazon ECS
10 8 (2.33%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 6 (1.75%) Amazon SQS
11 6 (1.75%) Cloud Run
12 5 (1.46%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 4 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (1.17%) AWS Fargate
14 3 (0.87%) AWS Step Functions
14 3 (0.87%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.04%) Firewall
1 7 (2.04%) VPN
2 5 (1.46%) HTTP
3 4 (1.17%) Internet
4 3 (0.87%) MQTT
5 1 (0.29%) DNS
5 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (12.24%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (6.12%) Relational Database
3 17 (4.96%) NoSQL
4 16 (4.66%) MongoDB
5 14 (4.08%) DynamoDB
5 14 (4.08%) SQL Server
6 11 (3.21%) MySQL
7 10 (2.92%) Elasticsearch
8 7 (2.04%) Apache Cassandra
8 7 (2.04%) Big Data
9 6 (1.75%) Couchbase
10 5 (1.46%) Redis
11 4 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (1.17%) 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 35 (10.20%) Git
2 34 (9.91%) JUnit
3 32 (9.33%) Jenkins
4 18 (5.25%) SonarQube
5 16 (4.66%) GitLab
5 16 (4.66%) Gradle
6 13 (3.79%) Maven
6 13 (3.79%) Mockito
7 10 (2.92%) JIRA
8 8 (2.33%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.75%) Selenium
10 4 (1.17%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.17%) Cucumber
10 4 (1.17%) 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 90 (26.24%) Finance
2 49 (14.29%) Banking
3 32 (9.33%) Social Skills
4 19 (5.54%) Front Office
5 18 (5.25%) Public Sector
6 11 (3.21%) Financial Institution
7 10 (2.92%) Law
7 10 (2.92%) Retail
8 9 (2.62%) Manufacturing
9 7 (2.04%) Analytical Skills
10 4 (1.17%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.17%) Military
11 3 (0.87%) Automotive
11 3 (0.87%) Back Office
11 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.87%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.58%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.58%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.29%) Documentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 137 (39.94%) Spring
2 130 (37.90%) Spring Boot
3 78 (22.74%) Kafka
4 45 (13.12%) React
5 36 (10.50%) REST
6 29 (8.45%) RESTful
7 25 (7.29%) AngularJS
8 18 (5.25%) Quarkus
9 17 (4.96%) Node.js
10 15 (4.37%) GraphQL
11 12 (3.50%) Middleware
12 10 (2.92%) OpenAPI
12 10 (2.92%) Swagger
13 9 (2.62%) Hibernate
14 8 (2.33%) Next.js
14 8 (2.33%) Redux
14 8 (2.33%) Web Services
15 7 (2.04%) AWS CDK
15 7 (2.04%) FIX Protocol
15 7 (2.04%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 66 (19.24%) Cloud Native
2 48 (13.99%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (3.50%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (2.62%) Fixed Income
5 7 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 7 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (1.46%) Legacy Applications
6 5 (1.46%) Public Cloud
6 5 (1.46%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 4 (1.17%) Data Structures
7 4 (1.17%) Low-Code
7 4 (1.17%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.17%) Product Ownership
7 4 (1.17%) TWAP
7 4 (1.17%) VWAP
8 3 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
8 3 (0.87%) Linux Command Line
8 3 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (0.87%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (5.83%) Linux
2 10 (2.92%) 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
1 190 (55.39%) Software Engineering
2 116 (33.82%) CI/CD
3 107 (31.20%) Agile
4 101 (29.45%) Microservices
5 70 (20.41%) DevOps
6 55 (16.03%) Full-Stack Development
7 52 (15.16%) Test Automation
8 46 (13.41%) Containerisation
9 41 (11.95%) Event-Driven
10 40 (11.66%) TDD
11 39 (11.37%) Problem-Solving
12 33 (9.62%) Scrum
13 32 (9.33%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 30 (8.75%) SDLC
15 29 (8.45%) Migration
15 29 (8.45%) Unit Testing
16 27 (7.87%) Code Quality
17 25 (7.29%) Front End Development
17 25 (7.29%) Observability
18 23 (6.71%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 343 (100.00%) Java
2 65 (18.95%) SQL
3 38 (11.08%) Python
4 33 (9.62%) TypeScript
5 22 (6.41%) JavaScript
6 19 (5.54%) Kotlin
7 9 (2.62%) Go
8 8 (2.33%) Shell Script
9 7 (2.04%) Ada
9 7 (2.04%) PL/SQL
10 4 (1.17%) Groovy
11 3 (0.87%) C#
11 3 (0.87%) C++
12 2 (0.58%) Scala
12 2 (0.58%) Swift
13 1 (0.29%) Korn
13 1 (0.29%) Rust
13 1 (0.29%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 82 (23.91%) Security Cleared
2 74 (21.57%) SC Cleared
3 12 (3.50%) Degree
4 5 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (1.17%) DV Cleared
5 4 (1.17%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.58%) AWS Certification
6 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.29%) Numerate Degree
7 1 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (10.50%) QA
2 9 (2.62%) ISO 20022
3 7 (2.04%) Def Stans
3 7 (2.04%) IEC 61508
3 7 (2.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 6 (1.75%) GDPR
5 5 (1.46%) SEPA
6 3 (0.87%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.58%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.29%) PSD2
System Software
1 83 (24.20%) 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 97 (28.28%) Kubernetes
2 21 (6.12%) Terraform
3 16 (4.66%) Argo
4 4 (1.17%) 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 23 (6.71%) Oracle
2 16 (4.66%) Red Hat
3 12 (3.50%) Google
4 11 (3.21%) Microsoft
5 6 (1.75%) Splunk
5 6 (1.75%) Spotify
6 5 (1.46%) IBM
7 4 (1.17%) SAP
8 3 (0.87%) Checkmarx
8 3 (0.87%) ServiceNow
9 2 (0.58%) Confluent
9 2 (0.58%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.58%) MKS
9 2 (0.58%) Solace
10 1 (0.29%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.29%) Concur
10 1 (0.29%) Sonatype
10 1 (0.29%) Teradata
10 1 (0.29%) Veracode
10 1 (0.29%) VMware