Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 March 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 355 391 448
Rank change year-on-year +36 +57 -36
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 277 142 148
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.48% 0.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.52% 0.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 100 93
10th Percentile £365 £325 £403
25th Percentile £420 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £580 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +5.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £813 £700
90th Percentile £700 £875 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £485
% change year-on-year +6.38% -3.09% -16.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 9 4
10th Percentile £52.00 £37.95 £61.38
25th Percentile £52.50 £57.50 £65.31
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -7.14% +6.70%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £73.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% +0.98%

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 39,357 27,378 41,374
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.90% 92.92% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,580 17,687 27,135
10th Percentile £313 £296 £270
25th Percentile £410 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,451 863 2,500
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.47 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.24 £16.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £33.40 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.79% +2.77% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.44
90th Percentile £75.79 £77.44 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -19.90%

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 13 March 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 13 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Top 16 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 13 March 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 +14 234 £539 -10.25% 61
UK excluding London +12 144 £500 +6.38% 40
London -31 113 £550 -8.33% 33
Work from Home +8 76 £513 -33.87% 37
North of England -29 42 £523 +14.21% 16
Midlands -38 28 £469 -10.67% 4
West Midlands -35 27 £469 -10.67% 1
Scotland +27 25 £600 +26.32% 4
North West -10 25 £476 - 3
South East -32 24 £370 -43.08% 11
South West -15 22 £488 -12.56% 5
North East -4 10 £575 +47.44% 5
Yorkshire -52 8 £523 -0.48% 8
Wales -6 2 £388 +96.20%
East of England -26 1 £500 +11.11% 1
East Midlands - 1 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 13 March 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.

1 277 (100.00%) Java
2 136 (49.10%) Software Engineering
3 119 (42.96%) Spring
4 106 (38.27%) Spring Boot
5 89 (32.13%) AWS
6 84 (30.32%) CI/CD
6 84 (30.32%) Kubernetes
6 84 (30.32%) Microservices
7 72 (25.99%) Agile
8 51 (18.41%) DevOps
9 50 (18.05%) Azure
9 50 (18.05%) Kafka
10 49 (17.69%) Docker
11 44 (15.88%) Full-Stack Development
12 43 (15.52%) TDD
13 40 (14.44%) Security Cleared
14 39 (14.08%) SQL
15 37 (13.36%) Python
16 36 (13.00%) SC Cleared
17 35 (12.64%) Containerisation
18 32 (11.55%) QA
18 32 (11.55%) Test Automation
19 31 (11.19%) Problem-Solving
20 30 (10.83%) Jenkins
20 30 (10.83%) React
21 29 (10.47%) Git
22 28 (10.11%) GitLab
23 27 (9.75%) Gradle
24 26 (9.39%) Event-Driven
24 26 (9.39%) JUnit

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 10 (3.61%) Apache
2 7 (2.53%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.44%) JBoss
3 4 (1.44%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.72%) Confluence
5 2 (0.72%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.36%) Camunda
6 1 (0.36%) Ethereum
6 1 (0.36%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 89 (32.13%) AWS
2 50 (18.05%) Azure
3 17 (6.14%) AWS Lambda
3 17 (6.14%) Serverless
4 16 (5.78%) Amazon S3
4 16 (5.78%) GCP
5 15 (5.42%) GitHub
6 13 (4.69%) Amazon ECS
7 11 (3.97%) Amazon EC2
7 11 (3.97%) OpenShift
8 8 (2.89%) AWS CloudFormation
8 8 (2.89%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.53%) AWS Step Functions
10 6 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (2.17%) Amazon Kinesis
11 5 (1.81%) Cloud Computing
11 5 (1.81%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 5 (1.81%) Snowflake
12 4 (1.44%) AWS CodePipeline
13 3 (1.08%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.08%) MQTT
2 2 (0.72%) HTTP
3 1 (0.36%) FTP
3 1 (0.36%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.36%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.36%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (9.39%) MongoDB
2 25 (9.03%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (3.97%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (3.61%) MySQL
5 9 (3.25%) Apache Cassandra
5 9 (3.25%) Big Data
5 9 (3.25%) NoSQL
6 8 (2.89%) DynamoDB
7 6 (2.17%) Hadoop
7 6 (2.17%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.44%) Relational Database
9 3 (1.08%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (1.08%) Apache Arrow
9 3 (1.08%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (1.08%) Apache Ignite
9 3 (1.08%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.08%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.08%) Dremio
9 3 (1.08%) Elasticsearch
9 3 (1.08%) HBase
Development Applications
1 30 (10.83%) Jenkins
2 29 (10.47%) Git
3 28 (10.11%) GitLab
4 27 (9.75%) Gradle
5 26 (9.39%) JUnit
6 18 (6.50%) IntelliJ
7 15 (5.42%) Cucumber
8 10 (3.61%) Maven
9 9 (3.25%) Selenium
10 6 (2.17%) JIRA
10 6 (2.17%) SonarQube
10 6 (2.17%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (1.81%) Eclipse
11 5 (1.81%) JMeter
11 5 (1.81%) Mockito
12 4 (1.44%) Postman
13 3 (1.08%) Artifactory
14 2 (0.72%) Cypress.io
14 2 (0.72%) Gatling
15 1 (0.36%) CircleCI
General
1 65 (23.47%) Finance
2 37 (13.36%) Social Skills
3 24 (8.66%) Banking
4 19 (6.86%) Front Office
5 16 (5.78%) Public Sector
6 8 (2.89%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.53%) Analytical Skills
8 5 (1.81%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.08%) Back Office
10 3 (1.08%) Law
11 2 (0.72%) Retail
12 1 (0.36%) Military
12 1 (0.36%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (42.96%) Spring
2 106 (38.27%) Spring Boot
3 50 (18.05%) Kafka
4 30 (10.83%) React
5 26 (9.39%) RESTful
6 20 (7.22%) Node.js
7 19 (6.86%) REST
8 17 (6.14%) GraphQL
9 14 (5.05%) Middleware
10 13 (4.69%) Hibernate
11 12 (4.33%) OpenTelemetry
11 12 (4.33%) Swagger
12 11 (3.97%) AngularJS
13 9 (3.25%) Redux
14 8 (2.89%) JSON
15 7 (2.53%) HTML
15 7 (2.53%) OpenAPI
16 6 (2.17%) AWS CDK
16 6 (2.17%) Playwright
16 6 (2.17%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 34 (12.27%) Cloud Native
2 25 (9.03%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (4.33%) Fixed Income
4 11 (3.97%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (3.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 7 (2.53%) Derivative
6 7 (2.53%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.81%) Greenfield Project
7 5 (1.81%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.81%) Product Ownership
7 5 (1.81%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.81%) Virtual Team
8 4 (1.44%) Equities
8 4 (1.44%) Hedge funds
8 4 (1.44%) Mobile App
9 3 (1.08%) Distributed Architecture
9 3 (1.08%) Pricing Data
10 2 (0.72%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.72%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.22%) Linux
2 10 (3.61%) Unix
3 1 (0.36%) SUSE
3 1 (0.36%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.36%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (49.10%) Software Engineering
2 84 (30.32%) CI/CD
2 84 (30.32%) Microservices
3 72 (25.99%) Agile
4 51 (18.41%) DevOps
5 44 (15.88%) Full-Stack Development
6 43 (15.52%) TDD
7 35 (12.64%) Containerisation
8 32 (11.55%) Test Automation
9 31 (11.19%) Problem-Solving
10 26 (9.39%) Event-Driven
11 21 (7.58%) Mentoring
11 21 (7.58%) Scrum
12 19 (6.86%) Clean Code
12 19 (6.86%) Software Testing
13 18 (6.50%) Migration
13 18 (6.50%) Observability
14 17 (6.14%) Code Quality
14 17 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code
15 16 (5.78%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 277 (100.00%) Java
2 39 (14.08%) SQL
3 37 (13.36%) Python
4 24 (8.66%) TypeScript
5 18 (6.50%) JavaScript
5 18 (6.50%) Kotlin
6 13 (4.69%) Go
7 8 (2.89%) Ada
8 5 (1.81%) PL/SQL
8 5 (1.81%) Scala
9 4 (1.44%) C++
10 3 (1.08%) C#
11 2 (0.72%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.36%) Rust
12 1 (0.36%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 40 (14.44%) Security Cleared
2 36 (13.00%) SC Cleared
3 9 (3.25%) Degree
4 6 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.08%) OCP
6 3 (1.08%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.72%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.72%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.36%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (11.55%) QA
2 8 (2.89%) Def Stans
2 8 (2.89%) IEC 61508
3 6 (2.17%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.08%) GDPR
4 3 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.72%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.72%) ISO 15022
5 2 (0.72%) ISO 20022
5 2 (0.72%) WCAG
System Software
1 49 (17.69%) Docker
Systems Management
1 84 (30.32%) Kubernetes
2 23 (8.30%) Terraform
3 18 (6.50%) Grafana
4 7 (2.53%) Ansible
5 6 (2.17%) Argo
6 4 (1.44%) Puppet
7 3 (1.08%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.36%) Kibana
8 1 (0.36%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (3.25%) Google
1 9 (3.25%) Oracle
2 7 (2.53%) Microsoft
2 7 (2.53%) Splunk
3 5 (1.81%) Databricks
3 5 (1.81%) Red Hat
4 4 (1.44%) webMethods
5 3 (1.08%) IBM
5 3 (1.08%) Solace
5 3 (1.08%) Spotify
5 3 (1.08%) VMware
6 2 (0.72%) Dynatrace
6 2 (0.72%) New Relic
6 2 (0.72%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.36%) Ab Initio
7 1 (0.36%) Actian
7 1 (0.36%) Netlify
7 1 (0.36%) Okta
7 1 (0.36%) Teradata
7 1 (0.36%) Virgin Media