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 15 June 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 320 332 327
Rank change year-on-year +12 -5 +140
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 358 199 282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.67% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.77% 0.73% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 140 187
10th Percentile £385 £380 £413
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £586 £600
Median % change year-on-year -9.48% -2.42% -4.00%
75th Percentile £613 £825 £850
90th Percentile £664 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +8.85% -4.00% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 8 26
10th Percentile £52.50 £56.00 £67.50
25th Percentile £64.25 £65.94 -
Median hourly rate £67.50 £67.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -3.57% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £72.50 -
90th Percentile £76.00 £83.75 £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 46,354 27,333 40,601
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.39% 92.29% 92.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,205 17,581 26,034
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £623 £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 3,093 1,154 2,952
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.52 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.48% -26.63% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +11 313 £525 -22.22% 68
UK excluding London -10 166 £523 +8.85% 49
London -40 162 £550 -26.67% 34
Work from Home -33 110 £525 -30.00% 39
North of England -25 61 £523 +14.21% 12
South East -37 33 £500 -23.08% 11
South West -1 32 £484 -6.75% 9
North West -21 28 £540 - 9
North East -17 17 £478 +22.44%
Yorkshire -36 17 £523 -0.48% 3
Midlands -46 16 £542 +3.14% 6
Scotland -12 15 £600 +26.98% 6
West Midlands -52 14 £600 +14.29% 4
East of England -27 9 £505 -15.83% 1
Wales - 4 £388 -
East Midlands -22 2 £400 +26.98% 2
Northern Ireland -4 1 - - 4

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

For the 6 months to 15 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.

1 358 (100.00%) Java
2 190 (53.07%) Software Engineering
3 141 (39.39%) Spring
4 129 (36.03%) Spring Boot
5 106 (29.61%) AWS
6 101 (28.21%) CI/CD
6 101 (28.21%) Microservices
7 99 (27.65%) Agile
8 98 (27.37%) Kubernetes
9 78 (21.79%) Docker
9 78 (21.79%) Kafka
10 77 (21.51%) Security Cleared
11 68 (18.99%) SC Cleared
12 63 (17.60%) DevOps
13 58 (16.20%) Full-Stack Development
14 57 (15.92%) SQL
15 49 (13.69%) Azure
16 48 (13.41%) TDD
17 46 (12.85%) React
18 44 (12.29%) Containerisation
18 44 (12.29%) Test Automation
19 40 (11.17%) Python
20 39 (10.89%) Event-Driven
21 38 (10.61%) PostgreSQL
22 35 (9.78%) Problem-Solving
22 35 (9.78%) QA
23 34 (9.50%) Jenkins
24 33 (9.22%) TypeScript
25 31 (8.66%) JUnit
25 31 (8.66%) 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 8 (2.23%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.12%) Apache
2 4 (1.12%) Confluence
3 3 (0.84%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.56%) MQSeries
5 1 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
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 (0.56%) Payment Gateway
1 2 (0.56%) Shopify
2 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 106 (29.61%) AWS
2 49 (13.69%) Azure
3 24 (6.70%) GitHub
4 23 (6.42%) GCP
5 20 (5.59%) OpenShift
6 18 (5.03%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (5.03%) Serverless
7 17 (4.75%) AWS Lambda
8 12 (3.35%) Amazon S3
9 9 (2.51%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (1.96%) Amazon EC2
11 6 (1.68%) AWS Step Functions
12 5 (1.40%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (1.40%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 4 (1.12%) Amazon SQS
13 4 (1.12%) AWS Fargate
13 4 (1.12%) Cloud Run
14 3 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
14 3 (0.84%) Azure Service Bus
14 3 (0.84%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.68%) HTTP
2 4 (1.12%) Firewall
2 4 (1.12%) VPN
3 3 (0.84%) Internet
3 3 (0.84%) 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 38 (10.61%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (5.31%) MongoDB
3 15 (4.19%) Relational Database
4 14 (3.91%) SQL Server
5 13 (3.63%) MySQL
5 13 (3.63%) NoSQL
6 12 (3.35%) DynamoDB
7 10 (2.79%) Apache Cassandra
8 9 (2.51%) Big Data
9 8 (2.23%) Amazon RDS
9 8 (2.23%) Elasticsearch
10 5 (1.40%) Couchbase
11 4 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.84%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.84%) Hadoop
12 3 (0.84%) Power BI
13 2 (0.56%) Flink
13 2 (0.56%) HBase
13 2 (0.56%) Oracle Database
13 2 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 34 (9.50%) Jenkins
2 31 (8.66%) JUnit
3 29 (8.10%) Git
4 25 (6.98%) Gradle
5 19 (5.31%) GitLab
6 17 (4.75%) SonarQube
7 12 (3.35%) Maven
7 12 (3.35%) Mockito
8 10 (2.79%) IntelliJ
8 10 (2.79%) JIRA
9 8 (2.23%) Liquibase
10 7 (1.96%) Selenium
11 4 (1.12%) Cucumber
12 3 (0.84%) Flyway
12 3 (0.84%) XCUITest
13 2 (0.56%) Appium
13 2 (0.56%) Artifactory
13 2 (0.56%) Bitbucket
13 2 (0.56%) Gatling
13 2 (0.56%) Katalon Studio
General
1 78 (21.79%) Finance
2 44 (12.29%) Banking
3 31 (8.66%) Social Skills
4 20 (5.59%) Front Office
4 20 (5.59%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.07%) Law
6 10 (2.79%) Financial Institution
7 8 (2.23%) Analytical Skills
7 8 (2.23%) Retail
8 6 (1.68%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.40%) Manufacturing
10 3 (0.84%) Automotive
10 3 (0.84%) Back Office
10 3 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.84%) Military
11 2 (0.56%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.56%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.56%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.28%) French Language
12 1 (0.28%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (39.39%) Spring
2 129 (36.03%) Spring Boot
3 78 (21.79%) Kafka
4 46 (12.85%) React
5 29 (8.10%) REST
6 25 (6.98%) RESTful
7 24 (6.70%) AngularJS
8 19 (5.31%) Node.js
9 18 (5.03%) GraphQL
9 18 (5.03%) Middleware
10 17 (4.75%) Quarkus
11 15 (4.19%) OpenAPI
11 15 (4.19%) Swagger
12 12 (3.35%) Hibernate
13 9 (2.51%) Redux
14 8 (2.23%) Next.js
14 8 (2.23%) OpenTelemetry
15 7 (1.96%) AWS CDK
15 7 (1.96%) FIX Protocol
15 7 (1.96%) Micronaut
Miscellaneous
1 60 (16.76%) Cloud Native
2 38 (10.61%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.79%) Data Protection Act
3 10 (2.79%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (2.51%) Fixed Income
5 7 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 7 (1.96%) Legacy Applications
6 6 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (1.68%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.40%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 4 (1.12%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.12%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.12%) TWAP
8 4 (1.12%) VWAP
9 3 (0.84%) Clustering
9 3 (0.84%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.84%) Product Ownership
9 3 (0.84%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.56%) Derivative
10 2 (0.56%) Exotic Derivative
Operating Systems
1 21 (5.87%) Linux
2 10 (2.79%) Unix
3 2 (0.56%) Android
3 2 (0.56%) 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
1 190 (53.07%) Software Engineering
2 101 (28.21%) CI/CD
2 101 (28.21%) Microservices
3 99 (27.65%) Agile
4 63 (17.60%) DevOps
5 58 (16.20%) Full-Stack Development
6 48 (13.41%) TDD
7 44 (12.29%) Containerisation
7 44 (12.29%) Test Automation
8 39 (10.89%) Event-Driven
9 35 (9.78%) Problem-Solving
10 31 (8.66%) Scrum
11 29 (8.10%) Migration
12 27 (7.54%) SDLC
13 25 (6.98%) Event-Driven Architecture
14 24 (6.70%) Clean Code
14 24 (6.70%) Front End Development
14 24 (6.70%) Observability
14 24 (6.70%) Unit Testing
15 22 (6.15%) AI
Programming Languages
1 358 (100.00%) Java
2 57 (15.92%) SQL
3 40 (11.17%) Python
4 33 (9.22%) TypeScript
5 22 (6.15%) JavaScript
6 18 (5.03%) Kotlin
7 11 (3.07%) Ada
7 11 (3.07%) Go
8 7 (1.96%) PL/SQL
9 5 (1.40%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.84%) C#
10 3 (0.84%) C++
10 3 (0.84%) Groovy
10 3 (0.84%) Scala
11 2 (0.56%) Swift
12 1 (0.28%) Korn
12 1 (0.28%) Rust
12 1 (0.28%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 77 (21.51%) Security Cleared
2 68 (18.99%) SC Cleared
3 11 (3.07%) Degree
4 5 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (1.40%) DV Cleared
5 3 (0.84%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.56%) AWS Certification
6 2 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.28%) Numerate Degree
7 1 (0.28%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (9.78%) QA
2 11 (3.07%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.07%) IEC 61508
3 8 (2.23%) ISO 20022
4 7 (1.96%) GDPR
4 7 (1.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (1.40%) SEPA
6 3 (0.84%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.56%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.56%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.28%) PSD2
8 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 78 (21.79%) 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 98 (27.37%) Kubernetes
2 22 (6.15%) Terraform
3 16 (4.47%) Argo
4 10 (2.79%) Grafana
5 6 (1.68%) Ansible
6 3 (0.84%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.56%) Kibana
7 2 (0.56%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.28%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.28%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 18 (5.03%) Oracle
2 15 (4.19%) Red Hat
3 13 (3.63%) Google
4 9 (2.51%) Microsoft
5 6 (1.68%) Splunk
5 6 (1.68%) Spotify
6 5 (1.40%) IBM
7 4 (1.12%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.12%) SAP
8 3 (0.84%) ServiceNow
9 2 (0.56%) Checkmarx
9 2 (0.56%) Confluent
9 2 (0.56%) MKS
9 2 (0.56%) New Relic
9 2 (0.56%) Solace
10 1 (0.28%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.28%) Adobe
10 1 (0.28%) Ariba
10 1 (0.28%) Teradata
10 1 (0.28%) VMware