Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 28 May 2026.

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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 317 339 349
Rank change year-on-year +22 +10 +129
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 345 183 246
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.64% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.77% 0.69% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 123 164
10th Percentile £382 £380 £419
25th Percentile £454 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £594
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +1.05% -1.04%
75th Percentile £614 £825 £850
90th Percentile £670 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £514 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +9.31% -6.00% -7.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 10 18
10th Percentile £52.50 £55.25 £67.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £62.19 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £66.25 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -5.36% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 -
90th Percentile £76.00 £72.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £66.25 £70.00
% change year-on-year -1.89% -5.36% +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 45,082 26,443 39,660
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.30% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,504 17,178 25,818
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £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 3,000 1,028 2,760
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.80
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.09 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -23.38% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.63 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.30 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.35% -36.75% -5.88%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -8 301 £525 -24.32% 65
UK excluding London +12 166 £514 +9.31% 50
London -31 151 £545 -27.33% 32
Work from Home -33 102 £525 -30.00% 27
North of England -22 61 £523 +14.21% 16
South West -5 31 £505 -2.65% 8
North West -16 30 £528 - 9
South East -36 29 £500 -23.08% 13
Midlands -45 21 £470 -10.57% 5
West Midlands -43 20 £470 -10.57% 5
Yorkshire -42 17 £523 -0.48% 7
Scotland +6 16 £600 +28.69% 2
North East -14 15 £478 +22.44%
East of England -28 7 £505 -15.83% 1
Wales - 3 £388 - 2
Northern Ireland -4 1 - - 3
East Midlands -27 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 28 May 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.

1 345 (100.00%) Java
2 176 (51.01%) Software Engineering
3 141 (40.87%) Spring
4 129 (37.39%) Spring Boot
5 100 (28.99%) AWS
6 98 (28.41%) Kubernetes
7 93 (26.96%) Microservices
8 89 (25.80%) CI/CD
9 85 (24.64%) Agile
10 73 (21.16%) Docker
11 69 (20.00%) Security Cleared
12 67 (19.42%) Kafka
13 62 (17.97%) SC Cleared
14 57 (16.52%) Full-Stack Development
15 56 (16.23%) DevOps
16 54 (15.65%) SQL
17 45 (13.04%) React
18 43 (12.46%) Azure
19 42 (12.17%) Containerisation
20 40 (11.59%) TDD
21 38 (11.01%) Python
21 38 (11.01%) Test Automation
22 37 (10.72%) PostgreSQL
23 34 (9.86%) Event-Driven
23 34 (9.86%) Problem-Solving
24 32 (9.28%) QA
25 31 (8.99%) TypeScript
26 30 (8.70%) Gradle
26 30 (8.70%) Jenkins
27 28 (8.12%) 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 10 (2.90%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.16%) Apache
2 4 (1.16%) Confluence
3 3 (0.87%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.58%) MQSeries
5 1 (0.29%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.29%) Apache Pulsar
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
5 1 (0.29%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.29%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.29%) nginx
5 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.58%) Shopify
2 1 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 100 (28.99%) AWS
2 43 (12.46%) Azure
3 20 (5.80%) GitHub
4 19 (5.51%) GCP
5 17 (4.93%) Serverless
6 16 (4.64%) AWS Lambda
6 16 (4.64%) OpenShift
7 13 (3.77%) GitHub Actions
8 11 (3.19%) Amazon S3
9 9 (2.61%) Amazon ECS
10 8 (2.32%) Amazon EC2
11 6 (1.74%) AWS Step Functions
12 4 (1.16%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.16%) Azure Service Bus
12 4 (1.16%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 3 (0.87%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.87%) Amazon Kinesis
13 3 (0.87%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (0.87%) AWS Fargate
13 3 (0.87%) Cloud Run
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.45%) HTTP
2 3 (0.87%) Firewall
2 3 (0.87%) MQTT
2 3 (0.87%) VPN
3 1 (0.29%) DNS
3 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.29%) Internet
3 1 (0.29%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (10.72%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (6.38%) MongoDB
3 14 (4.06%) SQL Server
4 12 (3.48%) Relational Database
5 11 (3.19%) Big Data
5 11 (3.19%) DynamoDB
6 10 (2.90%) NoSQL
7 8 (2.32%) Amazon RDS
7 8 (2.32%) Apache Cassandra
7 8 (2.32%) Elasticsearch
7 8 (2.32%) MySQL
8 4 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 3 (0.87%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.87%) HBase
10 2 (0.58%) Flink
10 2 (0.58%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.58%) Redis
11 1 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
11 1 (0.29%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.29%) Bigtable
Development Applications
1 30 (8.70%) Gradle
1 30 (8.70%) Jenkins
2 25 (7.25%) Git
2 25 (7.25%) JUnit
3 24 (6.96%) GitLab
4 15 (4.35%) IntelliJ
5 14 (4.06%) SonarQube
6 12 (3.48%) Maven
7 11 (3.19%) Mockito
8 10 (2.90%) JIRA
9 7 (2.03%) Liquibase
9 7 (2.03%) Selenium
10 5 (1.45%) Cucumber
11 3 (0.87%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.87%) XCUITest
12 2 (0.58%) Appium
12 2 (0.58%) Flyway
12 2 (0.58%) Gatling
12 2 (0.58%) Katalon Studio
12 2 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 73 (21.16%) Finance
2 37 (10.72%) Banking
3 28 (8.12%) Social Skills
4 20 (5.80%) Front Office
4 20 (5.80%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.19%) Law
6 10 (2.90%) Financial Institution
7 8 (2.32%) Analytical Skills
8 6 (1.74%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.45%) Retail
10 3 (0.87%) Automotive
10 3 (0.87%) Back Office
10 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.87%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.58%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.58%) Military
11 2 (0.58%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.29%) French Language
12 1 (0.29%) Legal
12 1 (0.29%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (40.87%) Spring
2 129 (37.39%) Spring Boot
3 67 (19.42%) Kafka
4 45 (13.04%) React
5 27 (7.83%) REST
6 25 (7.25%) RESTful
7 20 (5.80%) AngularJS
8 19 (5.51%) GraphQL
9 18 (5.22%) Middleware
9 18 (5.22%) Node.js
9 18 (5.22%) Swagger
10 14 (4.06%) OpenAPI
10 14 (4.06%) Quarkus
11 13 (3.77%) OpenTelemetry
12 9 (2.61%) Hibernate
12 9 (2.61%) Redux
13 8 (2.32%) FIX Protocol
13 8 (2.32%) Next.js
14 6 (1.74%) Micronaut
14 6 (1.74%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 52 (15.07%) Cloud Native
2 32 (9.28%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.90%) Data Protection Act
3 10 (2.90%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (2.61%) Fixed Income
5 7 (2.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 6 (1.74%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.45%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.45%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 4 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.16%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.16%) TWAP
8 4 (1.16%) VWAP
9 3 (0.87%) Clustering
9 3 (0.87%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.87%) Onboarding
9 3 (0.87%) Product Ownership
9 3 (0.87%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.58%) Derivative
10 2 (0.58%) Exotic Derivative
Operating Systems
1 19 (5.51%) Linux
2 6 (1.74%) Unix
3 2 (0.58%) Android
3 2 (0.58%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Solaris
4 1 (0.29%) SUSE
4 1 (0.29%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 1 (0.29%) VMS
4 1 (0.29%) Windows
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (51.01%) Software Engineering
2 93 (26.96%) Microservices
3 89 (25.80%) CI/CD
4 85 (24.64%) Agile
5 57 (16.52%) Full-Stack Development
6 56 (16.23%) DevOps
7 42 (12.17%) Containerisation
8 40 (11.59%) TDD
9 38 (11.01%) Test Automation
10 34 (9.86%) Event-Driven
10 34 (9.86%) Problem-Solving
11 28 (8.12%) Scrum
12 24 (6.96%) Migration
13 23 (6.67%) SDLC
14 22 (6.38%) Code Quality
14 22 (6.38%) Unit Testing
15 21 (6.09%) Clean Code
16 20 (5.80%) Event-Driven Architecture
16 20 (5.80%) Front End Development
16 20 (5.80%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 345 (100.00%) Java
2 54 (15.65%) SQL
3 38 (11.01%) Python
4 31 (8.99%) TypeScript
5 19 (5.51%) JavaScript
5 19 (5.51%) Kotlin
6 11 (3.19%) Ada
6 11 (3.19%) Go
7 4 (1.16%) PL/SQL
8 3 (0.87%) C#
8 3 (0.87%) C++
8 3 (0.87%) Scala
9 2 (0.58%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.58%) Swift
10 1 (0.29%) Groovy
10 1 (0.29%) Korn
10 1 (0.29%) Rust
10 1 (0.29%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 69 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 62 (17.97%) SC Cleared
3 12 (3.48%) Degree
4 6 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.16%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.16%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.29%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.29%) Numerate Degree
7 1 (0.29%) OCP
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (9.28%) QA
2 11 (3.19%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.19%) IEC 61508
3 8 (2.32%) ISO 20022
4 7 (2.03%) GDPR
4 7 (2.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.74%) Accessibility
6 5 (1.45%) SEPA
7 3 (0.87%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.58%) ISO 15022
9 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 73 (21.16%) Docker
2 1 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.29%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 98 (28.41%) Kubernetes
2 20 (5.80%) Terraform
3 16 (4.64%) Grafana
4 13 (3.77%) Argo
5 5 (1.45%) Ansible
6 3 (0.87%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.58%) Kibana
7 2 (0.58%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.29%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 14 (4.06%) Oracle
2 12 (3.48%) Red Hat
3 11 (3.19%) Microsoft
4 10 (2.90%) Google
5 6 (1.74%) Splunk
5 6 (1.74%) Spotify
6 5 (1.45%) IBM
7 4 (1.16%) Dynatrace
7 4 (1.16%) SAP
8 3 (0.87%) Databricks
8 3 (0.87%) ServiceNow
8 3 (0.87%) Solace
9 2 (0.58%) Checkmarx
9 2 (0.58%) Confluent
9 2 (0.58%) MKS
9 2 (0.58%) New Relic
10 1 (0.29%) Ab Initio
10 1 (0.29%) Adobe
10 1 (0.29%) Teradata
10 1 (0.29%) VMware