Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £546, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 January 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 386 394 477
Rank change year-on-year +8 +83 -114
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 203 140 121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.44% 0.27%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.59% 0.48% 0.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 99 86
10th Percentile £354 £344 £381
25th Percentile £412 £490 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £546 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.96% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £625 £819 £688
90th Percentile £825 £888 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £484 £475
% change year-on-year -3.05% +1.84% -18.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 8 1
10th Percentile £47.80 £37.68 -
25th Percentile £52.50 £52.75 £58.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £63.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.73% +2.00% -4.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £66.25
90th Percentile £77.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £66.25 £62.50
% change year-on-year -16.98% +6.00% -4.73%

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 34,647 29,282 41,206
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.46% 92.85% 93.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,895 17,892 27,296
10th Percentile £300 £291 £275
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £480 £498
% change year-on-year -0.42% -3.62% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,062 868 2,070
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.40
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.24 £17.54
Median hourly rate £28.50 £32.50 £37.88
Median % change year-on-year -12.31% -14.19% +11.40%
75th Percentile £61.18 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.13 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £31.08 £40.00
% change year-on-year -12.45% -22.30% +35.59%

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 25 January 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 25 January 2026.

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 25 January 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 -15 173 £531 -13.31% 114
London -18 99 £585 -5.45% 28
UK excluding London -15 91 £469 -3.05% 110
Work from Home +5 71 £590 -23.87% 34
North of England -32 31 £478 -9.05% 17
Scotland +25 19 £600 +26.32% 9
North West -11 18 £438 - 7
Midlands -28 16 £450 -14.29% 11
South East -8 15 £365 -43.85% 32
West Midlands -31 14 £460 -12.38% 4
South West -21 9 £425 -24.61% 29
North East - 7 £575 - 5
Yorkshire -46 6 £436 -16.90% 6
East Midlands - 2 £313 - 7
Wales -3 1 £400 +102.53% 6

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

For the 6 months to 25 January 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.

1 203 (100.00%) Java
2 96 (47.29%) Software Engineering
2 96 (47.29%) Spring
3 85 (41.87%) AWS
3 85 (41.87%) CI/CD
4 80 (39.41%) Spring Boot
5 78 (38.42%) Microservices
6 66 (32.51%) Kubernetes
7 65 (32.02%) Agile
8 43 (21.18%) Azure
9 41 (20.20%) Docker
10 40 (19.70%) DevOps
11 34 (16.75%) TDD
12 33 (16.26%) Kafka
12 33 (16.26%) SQL
13 31 (15.27%) Containerisation
14 29 (14.29%) Python
15 27 (13.30%) Full-Stack Development
15 27 (13.30%) QA
15 27 (13.30%) RESTful
15 27 (13.30%) Test Automation
16 26 (12.81%) Jenkins
16 26 (12.81%) JUnit
16 26 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
17 25 (12.32%) GitLab
18 24 (11.82%) Event-Driven
18 24 (11.82%) MongoDB
19 23 (11.33%) TypeScript
20 22 (10.84%) Git
20 22 (10.84%) Gradle

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 16 (7.88%) Apache
2 13 (6.40%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (1.97%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.97%) JBoss
3 4 (1.97%) WebLogic
4 2 (0.99%) Confluence
5 1 (0.49%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.49%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.49%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.49%) Luigi
5 1 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 1 (0.49%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.99%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 85 (41.87%) AWS
2 43 (21.18%) Azure
3 16 (7.88%) GCP
3 16 (7.88%) GitHub
4 13 (6.40%) Snowflake
5 12 (5.91%) AWS Lambda
5 12 (5.91%) dbt
5 12 (5.91%) Serverless
6 11 (5.42%) Amazon EC2
6 11 (5.42%) Amazon ECS
6 11 (5.42%) Amazon S3
7 9 (4.43%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (4.43%) AWS Step Functions
8 8 (3.94%) Amazon Kinesis
8 8 (3.94%) Cloud Computing
8 8 (3.94%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (3.94%) OpenShift
9 5 (2.46%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.97%) Azure Monitor
11 3 (1.48%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.99%) HTTP
2 1 (0.49%) Broadband
2 1 (0.49%) FTP
2 1 (0.49%) Kerberos
2 1 (0.49%) SSL
2 1 (0.49%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (11.82%) MongoDB
2 22 (10.84%) PostgreSQL
3 16 (7.88%) MySQL
4 12 (5.91%) Amazon Athena
4 12 (5.91%) Apache Arrow
4 12 (5.91%) Apache Cassandra
4 12 (5.91%) Apache Iceberg
4 12 (5.91%) Apache Ignite
4 12 (5.91%) Data Lake
4 12 (5.91%) Dremio
5 10 (4.93%) NoSQL
6 9 (4.43%) Amazon RDS
6 9 (4.43%) Hadoop
7 6 (2.96%) Big Data
8 5 (2.46%) Relational Database
8 5 (2.46%) SQL Server
9 3 (1.48%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.48%) HBase
10 2 (0.99%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.99%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 26 (12.81%) Jenkins
1 26 (12.81%) JUnit
2 25 (12.32%) GitLab
3 22 (10.84%) Git
3 22 (10.84%) Gradle
4 16 (7.88%) Cucumber
4 16 (7.88%) IntelliJ
5 10 (4.93%) Selenium
6 8 (3.94%) Maven
7 7 (3.45%) JMeter
7 7 (3.45%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (2.46%) JIRA
8 5 (2.46%) Mockito
9 4 (1.97%) Eclipse
9 4 (1.97%) Postman
10 3 (1.48%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.48%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.99%) Gatling
11 2 (0.99%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.99%) TestNG
General
1 54 (26.60%) Finance
2 43 (21.18%) Social Skills
3 29 (14.29%) Banking
4 18 (8.87%) Front Office
5 16 (7.88%) Investment Banking
6 11 (5.42%) Public Sector
7 4 (1.97%) Analytical Skills
7 4 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.99%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.49%) Law
9 1 (0.49%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (47.29%) Spring
2 80 (39.41%) Spring Boot
3 33 (16.26%) Kafka
4 27 (13.30%) RESTful
5 15 (7.39%) Hibernate
5 15 (7.39%) REST
6 14 (6.90%) gRPC
7 13 (6.40%) AngularJS
8 12 (5.91%) NumPy
8 12 (5.91%) OpenTelemetry
8 12 (5.91%) Pandas
8 12 (5.91%) Protocol Buffers
8 12 (5.91%) React
8 12 (5.91%) SciPy
9 10 (4.93%) Swagger
10 9 (4.43%) Middleware
11 8 (3.94%) HTML
12 7 (3.45%) JSON
12 7 (3.45%) Node.js
12 7 (3.45%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 25 (12.32%) Distributed Systems
2 22 (10.84%) Cloud Native
3 16 (7.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 15 (7.39%) Derivative
5 13 (6.40%) Equities
5 13 (6.40%) Fixed Income
5 13 (6.40%) Hedge funds
6 12 (5.91%) Pricing Data
7 8 (3.94%) Onboarding
7 8 (3.94%) Virtual Team
8 6 (2.96%) Data Protection Act
8 6 (2.96%) Product Ownership
9 5 (2.46%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.48%) Data Structures
10 3 (1.48%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.99%) Algorithms
11 2 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
12 1 (0.49%) Distributed Architecture
12 1 (0.49%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 17 (8.37%) Linux
2 10 (4.93%) Unix
3 2 (0.99%) Windows
4 1 (0.49%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (47.29%) Software Engineering
2 85 (41.87%) CI/CD
3 78 (38.42%) Microservices
4 65 (32.02%) Agile
5 40 (19.70%) DevOps
6 34 (16.75%) TDD
7 31 (15.27%) Containerisation
8 27 (13.30%) Full-Stack Development
8 27 (13.30%) Test Automation
9 26 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
10 24 (11.82%) Event-Driven
11 21 (10.34%) Clean Code
12 20 (9.85%) Observability
13 18 (8.87%) Infrastructure as Code
13 18 (8.87%) Software Testing
14 17 (8.37%) Fintech
15 16 (7.88%) API Development
16 14 (6.90%) High Availability
17 13 (6.40%) Mentoring
17 13 (6.40%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 203 (100.00%) Java
2 33 (16.26%) SQL
3 29 (14.29%) Python
4 23 (11.33%) TypeScript
5 22 (10.84%) JavaScript
6 16 (7.88%) Kotlin
7 7 (3.45%) Scala
8 5 (2.46%) C++
8 5 (2.46%) Go
9 4 (1.97%) Ada
10 2 (0.99%) Bash
10 2 (0.99%) C#
10 2 (0.99%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.99%) Rust
10 2 (0.99%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.49%) Groovy
11 1 (0.49%) Ruby
11 1 (0.49%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 22 (10.84%) Security Cleared
2 21 (10.34%) SC Cleared
3 6 (2.96%) Degree
4 5 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.48%) OCP
6 3 (1.48%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.49%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.49%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.49%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (13.30%) QA
2 7 (3.45%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.97%) Def Stans
3 4 (1.97%) IEC 61508
4 3 (1.48%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.99%) WCAG
6 1 (0.49%) GDPR
6 1 (0.49%) ISO 15022
6 1 (0.49%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 41 (20.20%) Docker
Systems Management
1 66 (32.51%) Kubernetes
2 21 (10.34%) Terraform
3 17 (8.37%) Grafana
4 12 (5.91%) Ansible
5 5 (2.46%) Puppet
6 4 (1.97%) Progress Chef
7 3 (1.48%) Argo
8 2 (0.99%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.49%) Kibana
Vendors
1 9 (4.43%) Google
2 8 (3.94%) Oracle
3 6 (2.96%) Microsoft
4 5 (2.46%) Databricks
4 5 (2.46%) Splunk
5 4 (1.97%) VMware
5 4 (1.97%) webMethods
6 3 (1.48%) Dynatrace
6 3 (1.48%) IBM
7 2 (0.99%) New Relic
7 2 (0.99%) Red Hat
7 2 (0.99%) Solace
8 1 (0.49%) Adobe
8 1 (0.49%) Calypso
8 1 (0.49%) Cisco
8 1 (0.49%) Guidewire
8 1 (0.49%) Informatica
8 1 (0.49%) ServiceNow
8 1 (0.49%) SnapLogic
8 1 (0.49%) Zoomdata