Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £536, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 April 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 323 348 399
Rank change year-on-year +25 +51 +49
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 324 183 197
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.63% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.75% 0.68% 0.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 196 119 135
10th Percentile £375 £380 £413
25th Percentile £450 £473 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -10.67% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £625 £825 £750
90th Percentile £673 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £511 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +6.51% -4.00% -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 9 9
10th Percentile £52.50 £53.00 £67.25
25th Percentile £53.13 £61.25 £67.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile - £73.50 -
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 43,468 27,008 40,187
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.57% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,813 17,658 26,169
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £491
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.27% -1.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,818 1,032 2,646
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.43 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.69 £29.15 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year +49.88% -18.93% -20.10%
75th Percentile £65.88 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.23 £28.75 £37.75
% change year-on-year +57.32% -23.84% -11.18%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 +19 277 £525 -22.22% 66
UK excluding London +7 160 £511 +6.51% 42
London -50 136 £550 -26.67% 39
Work from Home -22 89 £513 -31.67% 38
North of England -31 54 £500 -4.76% 14
South East -40 29 £469 -27.88% 17
South West -17 28 £488 -6.02% 5
North West -16 25 £501 - 12
Midlands -41 25 £469 -10.67% 2
West Midlands -37 24 £469 -10.67% 1
Scotland +15 21 £600 +28.69% 1
Yorkshire -46 17 £523 -18.04%
North East -3 13 £425 +8.97% 2
East of England -39 3 £535 -10.83%
Wales - 2 £388 -
East Midlands - 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 29 April 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.

1 324 (100.00%) Java
2 156 (48.15%) Software Engineering
3 128 (39.51%) Spring
4 116 (35.80%) Spring Boot
5 91 (28.09%) Kubernetes
6 86 (26.54%) AWS
7 85 (26.23%) Microservices
8 84 (25.93%) CI/CD
9 76 (23.46%) Agile
10 64 (19.75%) Docker
11 62 (19.14%) Security Cleared
12 56 (17.28%) Kafka
12 56 (17.28%) SC Cleared
13 55 (16.98%) Full-Stack Development
14 52 (16.05%) DevOps
15 49 (15.12%) Azure
16 45 (13.89%) SQL
17 42 (12.96%) TDD
18 39 (12.04%) Containerisation
19 37 (11.42%) React
19 37 (11.42%) Test Automation
20 36 (11.11%) Python
21 34 (10.49%) QA
22 33 (10.19%) Event-Driven
23 32 (9.88%) PostgreSQL
24 31 (9.57%) Jenkins
24 31 (9.57%) Problem-Solving
25 28 (8.64%) Gradle
26 26 (8.02%) Scrum
27 25 (7.72%) Git

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 8 (2.47%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.23%) Apache
3 3 (0.93%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.62%) Confluence
4 2 (0.62%) MQSeries
4 2 (0.62%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.31%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.31%) Camunda
5 1 (0.31%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.31%) Hyperledger
5 1 (0.31%) JBoss
5 1 (0.31%) nginx
5 1 (0.31%) Tomcat
Applications
1 1 (0.31%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.62%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 86 (26.54%) AWS
2 49 (15.12%) Azure
3 21 (6.48%) Serverless
4 20 (6.17%) AWS Lambda
5 17 (5.25%) GitHub
6 16 (4.94%) GCP
7 15 (4.63%) Amazon S3
7 15 (4.63%) OpenShift
8 14 (4.32%) Amazon ECS
9 10 (3.09%) GitHub Actions
10 8 (2.47%) Amazon EC2
10 8 (2.47%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.85%) AWS Step Functions
12 4 (1.23%) Azure Service Bus
13 3 (0.93%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.93%) Amazon Kinesis
13 3 (0.93%) AWS CodePipeline
13 3 (0.93%) AWS Fargate
13 3 (0.93%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 2 (0.62%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.23%) HTTP
2 3 (0.93%) MQTT
3 1 (0.31%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.31%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.31%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (9.88%) PostgreSQL
2 23 (7.10%) MongoDB
3 11 (3.40%) SQL Server
4 9 (2.78%) Big Data
4 9 (2.78%) DynamoDB
5 8 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (2.47%) MySQL
5 8 (2.47%) Relational Database
6 6 (1.85%) Apache Cassandra
6 6 (1.85%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.93%) Hadoop
9 2 (0.62%) HBase
9 2 (0.62%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.62%) Redis
9 2 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.31%) Azure SQL Database
10 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.31%) Bigtable
10 1 (0.31%) Flink
Development Applications
1 31 (9.57%) Jenkins
2 28 (8.64%) Gradle
3 25 (7.72%) Git
4 23 (7.10%) GitLab
5 21 (6.48%) JUnit
6 15 (4.63%) IntelliJ
7 14 (4.32%) SonarQube
8 13 (4.01%) Maven
9 8 (2.47%) Cucumber
10 7 (2.16%) JIRA
10 7 (2.16%) Mockito
11 6 (1.85%) Selenium
12 4 (1.23%) Artifactory
12 4 (1.23%) Liquibase
12 4 (1.23%) Postman
13 3 (0.93%) Sonatype Nexus
14 2 (0.62%) Eclipse
14 2 (0.62%) Gatling
14 2 (0.62%) TeamCity
14 2 (0.62%) XCUITest
General
1 59 (18.21%) Finance
2 30 (9.26%) Social Skills
3 26 (8.02%) Banking
4 19 (5.86%) Front Office
5 17 (5.25%) Public Sector
6 9 (2.78%) Law
7 7 (2.16%) Analytical Skills
8 6 (1.85%) Financial Institution
8 6 (1.85%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.93%) Back Office
9 3 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.93%) Retail
10 2 (0.62%) Automotive
11 1 (0.31%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.31%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.31%) French Language
11 1 (0.31%) Legal
11 1 (0.31%) Military
11 1 (0.31%) Police
11 1 (0.31%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (39.51%) Spring
2 116 (35.80%) Spring Boot
3 56 (17.28%) Kafka
4 37 (11.42%) React
5 25 (7.72%) RESTful
6 22 (6.79%) REST
7 18 (5.56%) AngularJS
7 18 (5.56%) GraphQL
8 17 (5.25%) Node.js
9 16 (4.94%) Middleware
9 16 (4.94%) Swagger
10 14 (4.32%) Quarkus
11 13 (4.01%) OpenTelemetry
12 11 (3.40%) OpenAPI
13 9 (2.78%) Redux
14 8 (2.47%) FIX Protocol
14 8 (2.47%) Hibernate
15 6 (1.85%) JSON
15 6 (1.85%) Next.js
16 5 (1.54%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 43 (13.27%) Cloud Native
2 23 (7.10%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (3.09%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (2.78%) Fixed Income
5 8 (2.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 7 (2.16%) Greenfield Project
7 6 (1.85%) Legacy Applications
8 5 (1.54%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.23%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.23%) Product Ownership
9 4 (1.23%) TWAP
9 4 (1.23%) VWAP
10 3 (0.93%) Derivative
10 3 (0.93%) Mobile App
10 3 (0.93%) Virtual Team
11 2 (0.62%) Algorithms
11 2 (0.62%) Data Structures
11 2 (0.62%) Equity Derivative
11 2 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
11 2 (0.62%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 18 (5.56%) Linux
2 6 (1.85%) Unix
3 1 (0.31%) Android
3 1 (0.31%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.31%) Solaris
3 1 (0.31%) SUSE
3 1 (0.31%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.31%) VMS
3 1 (0.31%) Windows
3 1 (0.31%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
3 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
3 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 156 (48.15%) Software Engineering
2 85 (26.23%) Microservices
3 84 (25.93%) CI/CD
4 76 (23.46%) Agile
5 55 (16.98%) Full-Stack Development
6 52 (16.05%) DevOps
7 42 (12.96%) TDD
8 39 (12.04%) Containerisation
9 37 (11.42%) Test Automation
10 33 (10.19%) Event-Driven
11 31 (9.57%) Problem-Solving
12 26 (8.02%) Scrum
13 25 (7.72%) Unit Testing
14 22 (6.79%) Clean Code
15 20 (6.17%) Code Quality
16 19 (5.86%) Front End Development
16 19 (5.86%) SDLC
17 18 (5.56%) Migration
17 18 (5.56%) Software Testing
18 16 (4.94%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 324 (100.00%) Java
2 45 (13.89%) SQL
3 36 (11.11%) Python
4 21 (6.48%) TypeScript
5 16 (4.94%) Kotlin
6 14 (4.32%) JavaScript
7 13 (4.01%) Go
8 11 (3.40%) Ada
9 5 (1.54%) C++
9 5 (1.54%) PL/SQL
10 4 (1.23%) Scala
11 3 (0.93%) C#
12 1 (0.31%) Groovy
12 1 (0.31%) Korn
12 1 (0.31%) Rust
12 1 (0.31%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.31%) Solidity
12 1 (0.31%) Swift
Qualifications
1 62 (19.14%) Security Cleared
2 56 (17.28%) SC Cleared
3 10 (3.09%) Degree
4 4 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (1.23%) DV Cleared
5 3 (0.93%) Master's Degree
6 2 (0.62%) OCP
6 2 (0.62%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.31%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.31%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (10.49%) QA
2 11 (3.40%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.40%) IEC 61508
3 5 (1.54%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.23%) GDPR
4 4 (1.23%) ISO 20022
4 4 (1.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.62%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.62%) ISO 15022
5 2 (0.62%) SEPA
6 1 (0.31%) WCAG
System Software
1 64 (19.75%) Docker
2 1 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.31%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 91 (28.09%) Kubernetes
2 21 (6.48%) Terraform
3 16 (4.94%) Grafana
4 13 (4.01%) Argo
5 6 (1.85%) Ansible
6 3 (0.93%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.62%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.31%) Kibana
8 1 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.31%) Puppet
8 1 (0.31%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (3.70%) Red Hat
2 11 (3.40%) Google
2 11 (3.40%) Microsoft
3 10 (3.09%) Oracle
4 6 (1.85%) Splunk
4 6 (1.85%) Spotify
5 5 (1.54%) IBM
6 3 (0.93%) Databricks
6 3 (0.93%) Dynatrace
6 3 (0.93%) ServiceNow
6 3 (0.93%) Solace
7 2 (0.62%) Checkmarx
7 2 (0.62%) Confluent
7 2 (0.62%) MKS
7 2 (0.62%) New Relic
8 1 (0.31%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.31%) Netlify
8 1 (0.31%) Teradata
8 1 (0.31%) VMware
8 1 (0.31%) webMethods