Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £530, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 August 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 364 324 303
Rank change year-on-year -40 -21 +181
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 337 230 295
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.69% 0.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.68% 0.76% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 169 213
10th Percentile £376 £400 £450
25th Percentile £455 £493 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £625 £700
Median % change year-on-year -15.20% -10.71% +16.67%
75th Percentile £613 £825 £850
90th Percentile £670 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £524 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +6.35% -1.50% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 6 27
10th Percentile £61.25 £38.75 £66.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £49.38 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £75.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +7.14% +9.38%
75th Percentile - £85.63 -
90th Percentile £76.40 £90.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - - +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 49,618 30,282 36,100
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 91.38% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,853 19,212 23,341
10th Percentile £329 £283 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,461 1,511 2,024
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.28 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.65 £25.13 £45.00
% change year-on-year +69.72% -44.16% +23.29%

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 9 August 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 9 August 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 9 August 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 -33 306 £525 -30.00% 303
UK excluding London +16 158 £524 +6.35% 118
London -94 155 £540 -28.00% 229
Work from Home -73 105 £525 -30.00% 96
North of England -13 61 £523 +64.00% 23
South East -46 30 £513 - 14
North West -25 28 £560 - 17
Midlands -32 27 £477 -9.24% 19
West Midlands -31 24 £483 -8.87% 15
South West -27 20 £563 +4.65% 19
Yorkshire -20 19 £500 +56.94% 3
North East - 15 £640 - 3
East of England -11 14 £510 -15.00% 4
Scotland -14 7 £575 +24.32% 30
Wales - 4 - - 3
East Midlands -9 3 £400 +26.98% 4
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 9 August 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.

1 337 (100.00%) Java
2 190 (56.38%) Software Engineering
3 134 (39.76%) Spring
4 126 (37.39%) Spring Boot
5 125 (37.09%) CI/CD
6 108 (32.05%) Agile
7 103 (30.56%) AWS
8 102 (30.27%) Microservices
9 101 (29.97%) Kubernetes
10 85 (25.22%) Security Cleared
11 83 (24.63%) Docker
12 77 (22.85%) SC Cleared
13 76 (22.55%) Kafka
14 73 (21.66%) DevOps
15 66 (19.58%) SQL
16 56 (16.62%) Test Automation
17 48 (14.24%) Azure
18 47 (13.95%) Containerisation
19 46 (13.65%) Full-Stack Development
20 42 (12.46%) PostgreSQL
21 41 (12.17%) Event-Driven
21 41 (12.17%) REST
22 40 (11.87%) Python
23 39 (11.57%) React
24 38 (11.28%) QA
24 38 (11.28%) TDD
25 37 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
26 36 (10.68%) Git
27 33 (9.79%) JUnit
28 32 (9.50%) Event-Driven Architecture

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 7 (2.08%) WebLogic
2 6 (1.78%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.48%) Apache
4 3 (0.89%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.59%) Confluence
5 2 (0.59%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.30%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.30%) nginx
6 1 (0.30%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.30%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (0.89%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.59%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 103 (30.56%) AWS
2 48 (14.24%) Azure
3 31 (9.20%) GCP
4 28 (8.31%) GitHub
5 24 (7.12%) GitHub Actions
6 18 (5.34%) OpenShift
7 12 (3.56%) Serverless
8 11 (3.26%) AWS Lambda
9 7 (2.08%) Amazon SQS
9 7 (2.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 6 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (1.78%) Amazon ECS
10 6 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (1.78%) Cloud Run
11 5 (1.48%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.19%) Amazon S3
12 4 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (0.89%) Amazon OpenSearch
13 3 (0.89%) Azure Service Bus
13 3 (0.89%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.37%) Firewall
1 8 (2.37%) VPN
2 4 (1.19%) HTTP
2 4 (1.19%) Internet
3 3 (0.89%) MQTT
4 1 (0.30%) DNS
4 1 (0.30%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (12.46%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (5.34%) Relational Database
3 16 (4.75%) NoSQL
4 15 (4.45%) MongoDB
5 12 (3.56%) SQL Server
6 11 (3.26%) MySQL
7 10 (2.97%) DynamoDB
8 9 (2.67%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (1.78%) Apache Cassandra
9 6 (1.78%) Couchbase
9 6 (1.78%) Redis
10 4 (1.19%) Big Data
10 4 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.89%) Data Lake
11 3 (0.89%) Flink
11 3 (0.89%) Power BI
12 2 (0.59%) HBase
12 2 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
13 1 (0.30%) Bigtable
13 1 (0.30%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 36 (10.68%) Git
2 33 (9.79%) JUnit
3 28 (8.31%) Jenkins
4 23 (6.82%) GitLab
5 17 (5.04%) SonarQube
6 14 (4.15%) Gradle
6 14 (4.15%) Maven
6 14 (4.15%) Mockito
7 9 (2.67%) JIRA
8 8 (2.37%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.78%) Cucumber
9 6 (1.78%) Selenium
10 5 (1.48%) Bitbucket
11 4 (1.19%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.89%) Flyway
12 3 (0.89%) TeamCity
12 3 (0.89%) XCUITest
13 2 (0.59%) Gatling
13 2 (0.59%) Katalon Studio
13 2 (0.59%) REST Assured
General
1 86 (25.52%) Finance
2 52 (15.43%) Banking
3 37 (10.98%) Social Skills
4 19 (5.64%) Public Sector
5 16 (4.75%) Front Office
6 10 (2.97%) Law
6 10 (2.97%) Retail
7 9 (2.67%) Manufacturing
8 8 (2.37%) Analytical Skills
8 8 (2.37%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.48%) Military
10 4 (1.19%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.89%) Automotive
11 3 (0.89%) Back Office
11 3 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.89%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.59%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.59%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.30%) Documentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 134 (39.76%) Spring
2 126 (37.39%) Spring Boot
3 76 (22.55%) Kafka
4 41 (12.17%) REST
5 39 (11.57%) React
6 28 (8.31%) RESTful
7 23 (6.82%) AngularJS
8 17 (5.04%) Quarkus
9 15 (4.45%) Node.js
10 12 (3.56%) GraphQL
11 11 (3.26%) Middleware
12 10 (2.97%) OpenAPI
13 9 (2.67%) Swagger
14 8 (2.37%) Hibernate
14 8 (2.37%) Next.js
14 8 (2.37%) OAuth
15 7 (2.08%) AWS CDK
15 7 (2.08%) OAuth2
15 7 (2.08%) Web Services
16 6 (1.78%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 65 (19.29%) Cloud Native
2 47 (13.95%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (3.56%) Greenfield Project
4 8 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
5 7 (2.08%) Fixed Income
5 7 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (1.78%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 5 (1.48%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.48%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.48%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.48%) Product Ownership
7 5 (1.48%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.19%) AI Agents
8 4 (1.19%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.19%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 4 (1.19%) TWAP
8 4 (1.19%) VWAP
9 3 (0.89%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 20 (5.93%) Linux
2 10 (2.97%) Unix
3 2 (0.59%) Android
3 2 (0.59%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.30%) Solaris
4 1 (0.30%) SUSE
4 1 (0.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
4 1 (0.30%) Windows
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 190 (56.38%) Software Engineering
2 125 (37.09%) CI/CD
3 108 (32.05%) Agile
4 102 (30.27%) Microservices
5 73 (21.66%) DevOps
6 56 (16.62%) Test Automation
7 47 (13.95%) Containerisation
8 46 (13.65%) Full-Stack Development
9 41 (12.17%) Event-Driven
10 38 (11.28%) TDD
11 37 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
12 32 (9.50%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 32 (9.50%) Scrum
12 32 (9.50%) SDLC
13 29 (8.61%) Unit Testing
14 28 (8.31%) AI
15 27 (8.01%) Migration
15 27 (8.01%) Observability
16 26 (7.72%) Front End Development
17 25 (7.42%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 337 (100.00%) Java
2 66 (19.58%) SQL
3 40 (11.87%) Python
4 29 (8.61%) TypeScript
5 23 (6.82%) JavaScript
6 21 (6.23%) Kotlin
7 11 (3.26%) Shell Script
8 7 (2.08%) Ada
8 7 (2.08%) Go
8 7 (2.08%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.19%) C++
9 4 (1.19%) Groovy
10 2 (0.59%) C#
10 2 (0.59%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.59%) Scala
10 2 (0.59%) Swift
11 1 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 85 (25.22%) Security Cleared
2 77 (22.85%) SC Cleared
3 13 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (3.26%) Degree
5 5 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.89%) DV Cleared
6 3 (0.89%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.30%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (11.28%) QA
2 9 (2.67%) ISO 20022
3 7 (2.08%) Def Stans
3 7 (2.08%) IEC 61508
3 7 (2.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 6 (1.78%) GDPR
5 5 (1.48%) SEPA
6 3 (0.89%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.59%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.59%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.30%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.30%) PSD2
8 1 (0.30%) SLA
System Software
1 83 (24.63%) Docker
2 1 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.30%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 101 (29.97%) Kubernetes
2 18 (5.34%) Terraform
3 16 (4.75%) Argo
4 4 (1.19%) Ansible
4 4 (1.19%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.89%) Grafana
5 3 (0.89%) HAProxy
5 3 (0.89%) Kibana
6 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
6 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.30%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 22 (6.53%) Oracle
2 15 (4.45%) Red Hat
3 14 (4.15%) Microsoft
4 12 (3.56%) Google
5 6 (1.78%) Splunk
5 6 (1.78%) Spotify
6 5 (1.48%) Confluent
6 5 (1.48%) IBM
7 4 (1.19%) SAP
8 3 (0.89%) Checkmarx
8 3 (0.89%) FIS
8 3 (0.89%) ServiceNow
9 2 (0.59%) Databricks
9 2 (0.59%) Dynatrace
9 2 (0.59%) MKS
9 2 (0.59%) Solace
10 1 (0.30%) Ariba
10 1 (0.30%) Concur
10 1 (0.30%) Okta
10 1 (0.30%) VMware