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 25 May 2026.

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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 318 343 336
Rank change year-on-year +25 -7 +126
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 342 182 245
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.63% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.77% 0.68% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 122 164
10th Percentile £382 £380 £419
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £594
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +1.05% -1.04%
75th Percentile £619 £825 £850
90th Percentile £670 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +7.45% -6.00% -7.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 9 18
10th Percentile £52.50 £53.00 £67.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £61.25 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 -
90th Percentile £76.00 £73.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - -7.14% +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 44,687 26,578 39,544
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.29% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,302 17,300 25,745
10th Percentile £325 £289 £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 £618 £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 2,943 1,012 2,737
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.98% -23.38% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.13 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £26.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.90% -34.16% -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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +2 299 £525 -25.00% 61
UK excluding London -8 165 £505 +7.45% 45
London -38 149 £548 -27.00% 34
Work from Home -15 102 £525 -30.00% 21
North of England -29 61 £523 +14.21% 16
South West -12 30 £505 -2.65% 5
North West -20 30 £528 - 8
South East -40 30 £500 -23.08% 14
Midlands -46 21 £470 -10.57% 1
West Midlands -46 20 £470 -10.57% 1
Yorkshire -45 17 £523 -0.48% 8
Scotland +8 15 £600 +28.69% 2
North East -11 15 £478 +22.44%
East of England -31 7 £505 -15.83% 1
Wales - 3 £388 - 2
Northern Ireland -5 1 - - 4
East Midlands -25 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 25 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.

1 342 (100.00%) Java
2 172 (50.29%) Software Engineering
3 138 (40.35%) Spring
4 128 (37.43%) Spring Boot
5 98 (28.65%) Kubernetes
6 97 (28.36%) AWS
7 92 (26.90%) Microservices
8 87 (25.44%) CI/CD
9 81 (23.68%) Agile
10 71 (20.76%) Docker
11 69 (20.18%) Security Cleared
12 65 (19.01%) Kafka
13 62 (18.13%) SC Cleared
14 56 (16.37%) DevOps
14 56 (16.37%) Full-Stack Development
15 51 (14.91%) SQL
16 44 (12.87%) React
17 43 (12.57%) Azure
18 41 (11.99%) Containerisation
19 38 (11.11%) TDD
19 38 (11.11%) Test Automation
20 37 (10.82%) Python
21 35 (10.23%) PostgreSQL
22 34 (9.94%) Event-Driven
23 33 (9.65%) Problem-Solving
24 32 (9.36%) QA
25 29 (8.48%) Gradle
26 28 (8.19%) Jenkins
26 28 (8.19%) TypeScript
27 26 (7.60%) RESTful

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 9 (2.63%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.17%) Confluence
3 3 (0.88%) Apache
3 3 (0.88%) 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 97 (28.36%) AWS
2 43 (12.57%) Azure
3 20 (5.85%) GitHub
4 19 (5.56%) GCP
5 18 (5.26%) Serverless
6 17 (4.97%) AWS Lambda
7 15 (4.39%) OpenShift
8 13 (3.80%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (3.51%) Amazon S3
10 10 (2.92%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (2.34%) Amazon EC2
12 6 (1.75%) AWS Step Functions
13 4 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (1.17%) Azure DevOps
13 4 (1.17%) Azure Service Bus
13 4 (1.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 3 (0.88%) Amazon EKS
14 3 (0.88%) Amazon Kinesis
14 3 (0.88%) Amazon SQS
14 3 (0.88%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.46%) HTTP
2 3 (0.88%) Firewall
2 3 (0.88%) MQTT
2 3 (0.88%) 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 35 (10.23%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (6.43%) MongoDB
3 13 (3.80%) SQL Server
4 12 (3.51%) Relational Database
5 11 (3.22%) DynamoDB
6 10 (2.92%) Big Data
7 9 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 8 (2.34%) Amazon RDS
8 8 (2.34%) MySQL
9 7 (2.05%) Apache Cassandra
10 5 (1.46%) Elasticsearch
11 3 (0.88%) Hadoop
11 3 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (0.58%) HBase
12 2 (0.58%) Oracle Database
12 2 (0.58%) Redis
13 1 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
13 1 (0.29%) BigQuery
13 1 (0.29%) Bigtable
13 1 (0.29%) Flink
Development Applications
1 29 (8.48%) Gradle
2 28 (8.19%) Jenkins
3 25 (7.31%) Git
4 24 (7.02%) GitLab
5 23 (6.73%) JUnit
6 15 (4.39%) IntelliJ
7 14 (4.09%) SonarQube
8 12 (3.51%) Maven
9 10 (2.92%) Mockito
10 9 (2.63%) JIRA
11 6 (1.75%) Liquibase
11 6 (1.75%) Selenium
12 5 (1.46%) Cucumber
13 3 (0.88%) Artifactory
13 3 (0.88%) XCUITest
14 2 (0.58%) Appium
14 2 (0.58%) Flyway
14 2 (0.58%) Gatling
14 2 (0.58%) Katalon Studio
14 2 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 72 (21.05%) Finance
2 37 (10.82%) Banking
3 29 (8.48%) Social Skills
4 20 (5.85%) Front Office
4 20 (5.85%) Public Sector
5 10 (2.92%) Law
6 9 (2.63%) Financial Institution
7 8 (2.34%) Analytical Skills
8 6 (1.75%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.46%) Retail
10 3 (0.88%) Automotive
10 3 (0.88%) Back Office
10 3 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.88%) 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%) Health Technology
12 1 (0.29%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (40.35%) Spring
2 128 (37.43%) Spring Boot
3 65 (19.01%) Kafka
4 44 (12.87%) React
5 26 (7.60%) RESTful
6 25 (7.31%) REST
7 18 (5.26%) AngularJS
7 18 (5.26%) GraphQL
7 18 (5.26%) Node.js
8 17 (4.97%) Middleware
8 17 (4.97%) Swagger
9 14 (4.09%) Quarkus
10 13 (3.80%) OpenAPI
10 13 (3.80%) OpenTelemetry
11 9 (2.63%) Next.js
11 9 (2.63%) Redux
12 8 (2.34%) FIX Protocol
12 8 (2.34%) Hibernate
13 6 (1.75%) AWS CDK
13 6 (1.75%) Micronaut
Miscellaneous
1 49 (14.33%) Cloud Native
2 28 (8.19%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.92%) Data Protection Act
3 10 (2.92%) Greenfield Project
4 9 (2.63%) Fixed Income
5 7 (2.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 6 (1.75%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.46%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.46%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 4 (1.17%) Low-Code
8 4 (1.17%) TWAP
8 4 (1.17%) VWAP
9 3 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (0.88%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.88%) Onboarding
9 3 (0.88%) Product Ownership
9 3 (0.88%) Virtual Team
10 2 (0.58%) Algorithms
10 2 (0.58%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.58%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 19 (5.56%) Linux
2 6 (1.75%) 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
1 172 (50.29%) Software Engineering
2 92 (26.90%) Microservices
3 87 (25.44%) CI/CD
4 81 (23.68%) Agile
5 56 (16.37%) DevOps
5 56 (16.37%) Full-Stack Development
6 41 (11.99%) Containerisation
7 38 (11.11%) TDD
7 38 (11.11%) Test Automation
8 34 (9.94%) Event-Driven
9 33 (9.65%) Problem-Solving
10 26 (7.60%) Scrum
11 23 (6.73%) Unit Testing
12 22 (6.43%) Migration
13 21 (6.14%) Clean Code
13 21 (6.14%) Code Quality
13 21 (6.14%) SDLC
14 20 (5.85%) Front End Development
15 19 (5.56%) Event-Driven Architecture
15 19 (5.56%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 342 (100.00%) Java
2 51 (14.91%) SQL
3 37 (10.82%) Python
4 28 (8.19%) TypeScript
5 20 (5.85%) JavaScript
6 19 (5.56%) Kotlin
7 11 (3.22%) Ada
7 11 (3.22%) Go
8 4 (1.17%) C++
8 4 (1.17%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.88%) C#
9 3 (0.88%) Scala
10 2 (0.58%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.58%) Swift
11 1 (0.29%) Groovy
11 1 (0.29%) Korn
11 1 (0.29%) Rust
11 1 (0.29%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 69 (20.18%) Security Cleared
2 62 (18.13%) SC Cleared
3 11 (3.22%) Degree
4 5 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (1.17%) DV Cleared
5 4 (1.17%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.29%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.29%) Numerate Degree
6 1 (0.29%) OCP
6 1 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
6 1 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (9.36%) QA
2 11 (3.22%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.22%) IEC 61508
3 8 (2.34%) ISO 20022
4 7 (2.05%) GDPR
4 7 (2.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.75%) Accessibility
6 5 (1.46%) SEPA
7 3 (0.88%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.58%) ISO 15022
9 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 71 (20.76%) 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 (28.65%) Kubernetes
2 20 (5.85%) Terraform
3 16 (4.68%) Grafana
4 13 (3.80%) Argo
5 6 (1.75%) Ansible
6 3 (0.88%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.58%) Kibana
7 2 (0.58%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.29%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (3.51%) Red Hat
2 11 (3.22%) Google
2 11 (3.22%) Microsoft
2 11 (3.22%) Oracle
3 6 (1.75%) Splunk
3 6 (1.75%) Spotify
4 5 (1.46%) IBM
5 4 (1.17%) Dynatrace
5 4 (1.17%) SAP
6 3 (0.88%) Databricks
6 3 (0.88%) ServiceNow
6 3 (0.88%) Solace
7 2 (0.58%) Checkmarx
7 2 (0.58%) Confluent
7 2 (0.58%) MKS
7 2 (0.58%) New Relic
8 1 (0.29%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.29%) Adobe
8 1 (0.29%) Teradata
8 1 (0.29%) VMware