Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £586, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 November 2025.

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

6 months to
1 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 375 340 480
Rank change year-on-year -35 +140 -124
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 195 220 147
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.60% 0.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.62% 0.65% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 157 116
10th Percentile £361 £450 £400
25th Percentile £469 £520 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £586 £700 £595
Median % change year-on-year -16.29% +17.65% -4.80%
75th Percentile £825 £850 £713
90th Percentile - £888 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £519 £475
% change year-on-year -8.43% +9.21% -20.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 20 3
10th Percentile £43.70 £60.10 £55.75
25th Percentile £57.25 £69.06 £56.88
Median hourly rate £80.00 £70.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% +12.00% -4.58%
75th Percentile £87.50 - £71.88
90th Percentile - - £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.00 £70.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -15.71% +12.00% -4.58%

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 31,208 33,969 44,256
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.91% 92.87% 93.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,768 20,497 30,170
10th Percentile £279 £300 £300
25th Percentile £401 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,754 1,295 1,536
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.08 £14.89
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.27 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £38.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.82% -15.56% +62.28%
75th Percentile £51.02 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.13 £37.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -32.99% -15.73% +89.36%

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 1 November 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 1 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Top 14 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 1 November 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 -58 164 £590 -26.25% 99
London -16 131 £625 -21.88% 51
Work from Home +12 106 £750 -6.25% 56
UK excluding London -23 48 £475 -8.43% 86
Scotland +9 17 £513 +28.13% 9
North of England -34 13 £575 +4.55% 11
Midlands -12 11 £430 -32.55% 8
West Midlands -19 8 £485 -37.42% 4
South East +10 5 £370 -26.00% 45
Yorkshire -25 5 £350 +25.00% 3
North West -21 4 £305 -44.55% 6
North East - 4 £575 - 2
East Midlands -13 3 £315 -41.40% 4
South West -19 2 £550 +2.33% 11

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

For the 6 months to 1 November 2025, 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.

1 195 (100.00%) Java
2 123 (63.08%) AWS
3 119 (61.03%) Software Engineering
4 99 (50.77%) Agile
5 73 (37.44%) TypeScript
6 71 (36.41%) Python
7 68 (34.87%) CI/CD
8 64 (32.82%) JavaScript
9 60 (30.77%) Spring
10 54 (27.69%) Microservices
11 48 (24.62%) Investment Management
12 45 (23.08%) Apache Airflow
13 44 (22.56%) Amazon Athena
13 44 (22.56%) Apache Arrow
13 44 (22.56%) Apache Iceberg
13 44 (22.56%) Asset Management
13 44 (22.56%) dbt
13 44 (22.56%) Dremio
13 44 (22.56%) NumPy
13 44 (22.56%) Pandas
13 44 (22.56%) SciPy
14 43 (22.05%) Azure
15 42 (21.54%) Apache
16 41 (21.03%) Data Lake
17 39 (20.00%) gRPC
17 39 (20.00%) Snowflake
18 38 (19.49%) Apache Ignite
18 38 (19.49%) DevOps
18 38 (19.49%) Protocol Buffers
19 37 (18.97%) Spring Boot

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 45 (23.08%) Apache Airflow
2 42 (21.54%) Apache
3 5 (2.56%) JBoss
4 4 (2.05%) Confluence
4 4 (2.05%) WebLogic
5 3 (1.54%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.51%) Luigi
Applications
1 1 (0.51%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 123 (63.08%) AWS
2 44 (22.56%) dbt
3 43 (22.05%) Azure
4 39 (20.00%) Snowflake
5 22 (11.28%) GCP
6 19 (9.74%) GitHub
7 9 (4.62%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (4.62%) OpenShift
8 8 (4.10%) Amazon EC2
8 8 (4.10%) Amazon Kinesis
9 7 (3.59%) AWS Step Functions
9 7 (3.59%) Cloud Computing
10 5 (2.56%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (2.56%) SaaS
11 4 (2.05%) Entra ID
11 4 (2.05%) Serverless
12 3 (1.54%) AWS Lambda
12 3 (1.54%) Azure DevOps
12 3 (1.54%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.03%) AMQP
2 1 (0.51%) Broadband
2 1 (0.51%) FTP
2 1 (0.51%) SSL
2 1 (0.51%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (22.56%) Amazon Athena
1 44 (22.56%) Apache Arrow
1 44 (22.56%) Apache Iceberg
1 44 (22.56%) Dremio
2 41 (21.03%) Data Lake
3 38 (19.49%) Apache Ignite
4 19 (9.74%) PostgreSQL
5 18 (9.23%) MySQL
6 15 (7.69%) MongoDB
7 13 (6.67%) Apache Cassandra
8 10 (5.13%) NoSQL
9 9 (4.62%) Big Data
10 8 (4.10%) Amazon RDS
10 8 (4.10%) Hadoop
10 8 (4.10%) Relational Database
11 5 (2.56%) HPCC
12 4 (2.05%) RDBMS
13 3 (1.54%) BigQuery
13 3 (1.54%) DynamoDB
13 3 (1.54%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 30 (15.38%) Git
2 22 (11.28%) JUnit
3 17 (8.72%) Jenkins
4 14 (7.18%) GitLab
5 12 (6.15%) Cucumber
6 9 (4.62%) Gradle
6 9 (4.62%) Maven
7 7 (3.59%) IntelliJ
7 7 (3.59%) JMeter
7 7 (3.59%) Selenium
8 5 (2.56%) Bitbucket
8 5 (2.56%) JIRA
8 5 (2.56%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (2.05%) Cypress.io
9 4 (2.05%) Eclipse
9 4 (2.05%) Mockito
10 3 (1.54%) Gatling
10 3 (1.54%) SonarQube
11 2 (1.03%) PyCharm
11 2 (1.03%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 97 (49.74%) Finance
2 55 (28.21%) Banking
3 51 (26.15%) Front Office
4 43 (22.05%) Investment Banking
5 33 (16.92%) Social Skills
6 7 (3.59%) Analytical Skills
7 6 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (2.05%) Public Sector
9 3 (1.54%) Back Office
9 3 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.51%) Law
10 1 (0.51%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (30.77%) Spring
2 44 (22.56%) NumPy
2 44 (22.56%) Pandas
2 44 (22.56%) SciPy
3 39 (20.00%) gRPC
4 38 (19.49%) Protocol Buffers
5 37 (18.97%) Spring Boot
6 32 (16.41%) React
7 29 (14.87%) Kafka
8 28 (14.36%) AngularJS
9 24 (12.31%) Node.js
10 21 (10.77%) REST
11 18 (9.23%) RESTful
12 15 (7.69%) Hibernate
13 13 (6.67%) HTML
14 11 (5.64%) JSON
14 11 (5.64%) OAuth
15 10 (5.13%) GraphQL
15 10 (5.13%) XML
16 7 (3.59%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 48 (24.62%) Fixed Income
1 48 (24.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 46 (23.59%) Equities
3 39 (20.00%) Derivative
4 38 (19.49%) Hedge funds
4 38 (19.49%) Pricing Data
5 23 (11.79%) Distributed Systems
6 15 (7.69%) Cloud Native
7 8 (4.10%) Product Ownership
8 7 (3.59%) Mobile App
8 7 (3.59%) Onboarding
8 7 (3.59%) Virtual Team
9 6 (3.08%) Public Cloud
10 4 (2.05%) Algorithms
10 4 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (1.54%) Blockchain
11 3 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
12 2 (1.03%) AI Agents
12 2 (1.03%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 17 (8.72%) Linux
2 14 (7.18%) Unix
3 9 (4.62%) Windows
4 2 (1.03%) CentOS
4 2 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (61.03%) Software Engineering
2 99 (50.77%) Agile
3 68 (34.87%) CI/CD
4 54 (27.69%) Microservices
5 48 (24.62%) Investment Management
6 44 (22.56%) Asset Management
7 38 (19.49%) DevOps
8 31 (15.90%) Full-Stack Development
9 28 (14.36%) Test Automation
10 26 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
11 25 (12.82%) Fintech
12 23 (11.79%) TDD
13 19 (9.74%) Containerisation
13 19 (9.74%) Observability
14 18 (9.23%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (9.23%) SDLC
15 15 (7.69%) API Development
15 15 (7.69%) Clean Code
16 14 (7.18%) BDD
16 14 (7.18%) Front End Development
Programming Languages
1 195 (100.00%) Java
2 73 (37.44%) TypeScript
3 71 (36.41%) Python
4 64 (32.82%) JavaScript
5 27 (13.85%) SQL
6 11 (5.64%) Kotlin
7 10 (5.13%) C++
8 9 (4.62%) C
9 6 (3.08%) Go
9 6 (3.08%) Scala
10 4 (2.05%) Ruby
11 3 (1.54%) C#
11 3 (1.54%) DAML
11 3 (1.54%) Groovy
11 3 (1.54%) PHP
12 2 (1.03%) Bash
12 2 (1.03%) Rust
13 1 (0.51%) Ada
13 1 (0.51%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 15 (7.69%) Security Cleared
2 13 (6.67%) SC Cleared
3 11 (5.64%) Degree
4 6 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.54%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.03%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.03%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.03%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.03%) PhD
7 1 (0.51%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.51%) OCP
7 1 (0.51%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (15.38%) QA
2 9 (4.62%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.03%) Data Quality
3 2 (1.03%) WCAG
System Software
1 30 (15.38%) Docker
2 2 (1.03%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 32 (16.41%) Kubernetes
2 14 (7.18%) Terraform
3 13 (6.67%) Ansible
4 9 (4.62%) Grafana
5 5 (2.56%) Puppet
5 5 (2.56%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (2.05%) Progress Chef
7 2 (1.03%) Tivoli Identity Manager
8 1 (0.51%) Argo
8 1 (0.51%) Kibana
8 1 (0.51%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 13 (6.67%) Microsoft
2 9 (4.62%) Google
3 8 (4.10%) Oracle
4 5 (2.56%) Databricks
4 5 (2.56%) Splunk
5 4 (2.05%) Dynatrace
5 4 (2.05%) VMware
5 4 (2.05%) webMethods
6 3 (1.54%) IBM
7 2 (1.03%) ForgeRock
7 2 (1.03%) Ping Identity
7 2 (1.03%) TIBCO
8 1 (0.51%) CA Agile Central
8 1 (0.51%) Confluent
8 1 (0.51%) Guidewire
8 1 (0.51%) Okta
8 1 (0.51%) SnapLogic
8 1 (0.51%) Solace
8 1 (0.51%) YouTube
8 1 (0.51%) Zoomdata