Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £585, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 November 2025.

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

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 378 354 493
Rank change year-on-year -24 +139 -147
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 198 204 129
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.56% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.61% 0.60% 0.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 148 100
10th Percentile £363 £431 £395
25th Percentile £475 £520 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £585 £675 £595
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +13.45% -0.83%
75th Percentile £825 £850 £716
90th Percentile - £888 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £475
% change year-on-year -2.33% +13.16% -18.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 15 3
10th Percentile £42.00 £48.10 £55.75
25th Percentile £44.50 £66.25 £56.88
Median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +12.00% -4.73%
75th Percentile £87.50 - £71.88
90th Percentile - - £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.50 £70.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -26.43% +12.00% -4.73%

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 32,680 34,083 43,648
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.96% 92.77% 93.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,712 20,554 29,563
10th Percentile £281 £300 £292
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £647
90th Percentile £725 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,932 1,297 1,552
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.21 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +50.00%
75th Percentile £56.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.92 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £34.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -26.03% -24.44% +83.97%

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 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 22 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 22 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 -48 163 £586 -21.87% 173
London -17 125 £625 -21.88% 109
Work from Home +12 96 £750 -6.25% 108
UK excluding London -28 59 £525 -2.33% 81
Scotland +17 23 £600 +50.00% 4
North of England -29 14 £488 -11.36% 26
Midlands -27 12 £435 -31.76% 11
West Midlands -16 11 £440 -43.23% 8
South East +5 8 £370 -26.00% 27
North West -22 5 £353 -35.91% 20
Yorkshire -38 5 £350 -32.04% 5
North East - 4 £575 - 1
South West -23 2 £550 -2.44% 12
East Midlands -13 1 £313 -41.86% 3

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

For the 6 months to 22 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.

1 198 (100.00%) Java
2 115 (58.08%) AWS
3 112 (56.57%) Software Engineering
4 96 (48.48%) Agile
5 79 (39.90%) CI/CD
6 68 (34.34%) Spring
7 66 (33.33%) Python
8 63 (31.82%) TypeScript
9 59 (29.80%) Microservices
10 56 (28.28%) JavaScript
11 48 (24.24%) Azure
12 45 (22.73%) Spring Boot
13 40 (20.20%) DevOps
13 40 (20.20%) Investment Management
14 37 (18.69%) Apache Airflow
15 36 (18.18%) Amazon Athena
15 36 (18.18%) Apache
15 36 (18.18%) Apache Arrow
15 36 (18.18%) Apache Iceberg
15 36 (18.18%) Asset Management
15 36 (18.18%) dbt
15 36 (18.18%) Dremio
15 36 (18.18%) Kubernetes
15 36 (18.18%) NumPy
15 36 (18.18%) Pandas
15 36 (18.18%) SciPy
16 35 (17.68%) Data Lake
17 33 (16.67%) Docker
17 33 (16.67%) gRPC
17 33 (16.67%) Snowflake

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 37 (18.69%) Apache Airflow
2 36 (18.18%) Apache
3 5 (2.53%) JBoss
4 4 (2.02%) Confluence
4 4 (2.02%) WebLogic
5 2 (1.01%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.51%) Luigi
Applications
1 1 (0.51%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 115 (58.08%) AWS
2 48 (24.24%) Azure
3 36 (18.18%) dbt
4 33 (16.67%) Snowflake
5 20 (10.10%) GitHub
6 18 (9.09%) GCP
7 9 (4.55%) Amazon EC2
7 9 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
7 9 (4.55%) OpenShift
8 8 (4.04%) Amazon ECS
8 8 (4.04%) Amazon Kinesis
8 8 (4.04%) Serverless
9 7 (3.54%) AWS Lambda
9 7 (3.54%) AWS Step Functions
9 7 (3.54%) Cloud Computing
10 5 (2.53%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (2.53%) Amazon S3
11 4 (2.02%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (1.52%) Azure DevOps
12 3 (1.52%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.01%) 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 36 (18.18%) Amazon Athena
1 36 (18.18%) Apache Arrow
1 36 (18.18%) Apache Iceberg
1 36 (18.18%) Dremio
2 35 (17.68%) Data Lake
3 32 (16.16%) Apache Ignite
4 18 (9.09%) PostgreSQL
5 16 (8.08%) MongoDB
5 16 (8.08%) MySQL
6 13 (6.57%) Apache Cassandra
7 10 (5.05%) NoSQL
8 8 (4.04%) Amazon RDS
8 8 (4.04%) Big Data
8 8 (4.04%) Hadoop
9 7 (3.54%) Relational Database
10 5 (2.53%) HPCC
11 4 (2.02%) RDBMS
12 3 (1.52%) BigQuery
12 3 (1.52%) DynamoDB
12 3 (1.52%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 32 (16.16%) Git
2 24 (12.12%) JUnit
3 23 (11.62%) Jenkins
4 15 (7.58%) Cucumber
5 14 (7.07%) GitLab
6 11 (5.56%) Gradle
7 10 (5.05%) Maven
8 8 (4.04%) Selenium
9 7 (3.54%) IntelliJ
9 7 (3.54%) JMeter
10 6 (3.03%) JIRA
10 6 (3.03%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (2.53%) Bitbucket
11 5 (2.53%) Postman
12 4 (2.02%) Cypress.io
12 4 (2.02%) Eclipse
12 4 (2.02%) Mockito
13 3 (1.52%) Artifactory
13 3 (1.52%) Gatling
13 3 (1.52%) SonarQube
General
1 88 (44.44%) Finance
2 47 (23.74%) Banking
3 43 (21.72%) Front Office
4 37 (18.69%) Investment Banking
4 37 (18.69%) Social Skills
5 8 (4.04%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (3.03%) Public Sector
7 4 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.52%) Back Office
8 3 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.51%) Law
9 1 (0.51%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (34.34%) Spring
2 45 (22.73%) Spring Boot
3 36 (18.18%) NumPy
3 36 (18.18%) Pandas
3 36 (18.18%) SciPy
4 33 (16.67%) gRPC
5 32 (16.16%) Protocol Buffers
6 31 (15.66%) Kafka
7 28 (14.14%) React
8 24 (12.12%) AngularJS
9 22 (11.11%) Node.js
9 22 (11.11%) RESTful
10 19 (9.60%) REST
11 13 (6.57%) Hibernate
11 13 (6.57%) HTML
12 11 (5.56%) JSON
13 10 (5.05%) GraphQL
13 10 (5.05%) XML
14 7 (3.54%) CSS
14 7 (3.54%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 40 (20.20%) Fixed Income
1 40 (20.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 38 (19.19%) Equities
3 34 (17.17%) Derivative
4 32 (16.16%) Hedge funds
4 32 (16.16%) Pricing Data
5 22 (11.11%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (9.09%) Cloud Native
7 10 (5.05%) Product Ownership
8 9 (4.55%) Onboarding
9 7 (3.54%) Mobile App
9 7 (3.54%) Virtual Team
10 6 (3.03%) Public Cloud
11 4 (2.02%) Algorithms
11 4 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (1.52%) Blockchain
12 3 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
13 2 (1.01%) Data Centre
13 2 (1.01%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 17 (8.59%) Linux
2 14 (7.07%) Unix
3 9 (4.55%) Windows
4 2 (1.01%) CentOS
4 2 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (56.57%) Software Engineering
2 96 (48.48%) Agile
3 79 (39.90%) CI/CD
4 59 (29.80%) Microservices
5 40 (20.20%) DevOps
5 40 (20.20%) Investment Management
6 36 (18.18%) Asset Management
7 30 (15.15%) Full-Stack Development
7 30 (15.15%) TDD
8 29 (14.65%) Test Automation
9 26 (13.13%) Problem-Solving
10 21 (10.61%) Containerisation
10 21 (10.61%) Fintech
11 19 (9.60%) Infrastructure as Code
11 19 (9.60%) Observability
12 18 (9.09%) Clean Code
12 18 (9.09%) SDLC
13 16 (8.08%) API Development
14 14 (7.07%) BDD
15 12 (6.06%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 198 (100.00%) Java
2 66 (33.33%) Python
3 63 (31.82%) TypeScript
4 56 (28.28%) JavaScript
5 28 (14.14%) SQL
6 10 (5.05%) C++
6 10 (5.05%) Kotlin
7 8 (4.04%) Go
8 7 (3.54%) C
9 6 (3.03%) Scala
10 4 (2.02%) Ruby
11 3 (1.52%) C#
11 3 (1.52%) DAML
11 3 (1.52%) Groovy
11 3 (1.52%) PHP
12 2 (1.01%) Bash
12 2 (1.01%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.01%) Rust
12 2 (1.01%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.51%) Ada
Qualifications
1 20 (10.10%) Security Cleared
2 18 (9.09%) SC Cleared
3 8 (4.04%) Degree
4 6 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (1.01%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.01%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.01%) OCP
6 2 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.51%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.51%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (16.16%) QA
2 9 (4.55%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.01%) Data Quality
3 2 (1.01%) WCAG
System Software
1 33 (16.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 36 (18.18%) Kubernetes
2 18 (9.09%) Terraform
3 13 (6.57%) Ansible
4 9 (4.55%) Grafana
5 5 (2.53%) Puppet
6 4 (2.02%) Progress Chef
7 3 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.51%) Argo
8 1 (0.51%) Kibana
8 1 (0.51%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (4.55%) Microsoft
2 8 (4.04%) Google
2 8 (4.04%) Oracle
3 5 (2.53%) Splunk
4 4 (2.02%) Databricks
4 4 (2.02%) Dynatrace
4 4 (2.02%) VMware
4 4 (2.02%) webMethods
5 2 (1.01%) ForgeRock
5 2 (1.01%) TIBCO
6 1 (0.51%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.51%) Calypso
6 1 (0.51%) Cisco
6 1 (0.51%) Guidewire
6 1 (0.51%) IBM
6 1 (0.51%) Informatica
6 1 (0.51%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.51%) ServiceNow
6 1 (0.51%) SnapLogic
6 1 (0.51%) Solace