Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 November 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 389 369 496
Rank change year-on-year -20 +127 -150
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 196 197 126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.54% 0.27%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.60% 0.58% 0.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 153 145 99
10th Percentile £361 £440 £393
25th Percentile £475 £520 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £675 £600
Median % change year-on-year -14.81% +12.50% -
75th Percentile £825 £850 £725
90th Percentile - £888 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £538 £475
% change year-on-year -4.65% +13.16% -18.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 13 2
10th Percentile £41.75 £43.30 £60.13
25th Percentile £44.00 £66.25 £62.19
Median hourly rate £67.50 £70.00 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% +1.82% +4.79%
75th Percentile £87.50 - £74.69
90th Percentile - - £76.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.00 £70.00 £68.75
% change year-on-year -31.43% +1.82% +4.79%

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 32,783 33,839 42,964
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.95% 92.83% 93.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,795 20,464 29,004
10th Percentile £281 £300 £290
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 £649
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 1,905 1,235 1,530
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.22 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.89 £20.63 £19.08
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +48.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -23.79% -25.84% +78.00%

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 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 29 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 29 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 -44 162 £586 -21.93% 39
London -2 124 £625 -21.88% 24
Work from Home +20 93 £750 -6.25% 20
UK excluding London -13 59 £513 -4.65% 35
Scotland +21 23 £600 +50.00% 4
North of England -37 13 £488 -11.36% 2
Midlands -24 12 £435 -31.76% 1
West Midlands -15 11 £440 -43.23% 1
South East +11 9 £365 -27.00% 21
Yorkshire -27 5 £350 -32.04% 1
North West -25 4 £353 -35.91% 1
North East - 4 £575 -
South West -11 2 £550 -2.44% 7
East Midlands -13 1 £313 -41.86%

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 196 (100.00%) Java
2 114 (58.16%) AWS
3 106 (54.08%) Software Engineering
4 93 (47.45%) Agile
5 80 (40.82%) CI/CD
6 69 (35.20%) Spring
7 63 (32.14%) Python
8 62 (31.63%) Microservices
9 59 (30.10%) TypeScript
10 54 (27.55%) JavaScript
11 49 (25.00%) Spring Boot
12 47 (23.98%) Azure
13 42 (21.43%) DevOps
14 40 (20.41%) Kubernetes
15 37 (18.88%) Investment Management
16 34 (17.35%) Apache
16 34 (17.35%) Apache Airflow
16 34 (17.35%) Docker
17 33 (16.84%) Amazon Athena
17 33 (16.84%) Apache Arrow
17 33 (16.84%) Apache Iceberg
17 33 (16.84%) Asset Management
17 33 (16.84%) Data Lake
17 33 (16.84%) dbt
17 33 (16.84%) Dremio
17 33 (16.84%) NumPy
17 33 (16.84%) Pandas
17 33 (16.84%) SciPy
18 32 (16.33%) QA
19 31 (15.82%) 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 34 (17.35%) Apache
1 34 (17.35%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (2.04%) JBoss
2 4 (2.04%) WebLogic
3 2 (1.02%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.02%) Confluence
4 1 (0.51%) Luigi
Applications
1 1 (0.51%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 114 (58.16%) AWS
2 47 (23.98%) Azure
3 33 (16.84%) dbt
4 31 (15.82%) Snowflake
5 20 (10.20%) GitHub
6 18 (9.18%) GCP
7 10 (5.10%) Amazon ECS
7 10 (5.10%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (4.59%) Amazon EC2
8 9 (4.59%) Serverless
9 8 (4.08%) Amazon Kinesis
9 8 (4.08%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (4.08%) OpenShift
10 7 (3.57%) Amazon S3
10 7 (3.57%) AWS Step Functions
10 7 (3.57%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (3.06%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (2.55%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (1.53%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (1.53%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.02%) 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 33 (16.84%) Amazon Athena
1 33 (16.84%) Apache Arrow
1 33 (16.84%) Apache Iceberg
1 33 (16.84%) Data Lake
1 33 (16.84%) Dremio
2 30 (15.31%) Apache Ignite
3 19 (9.69%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (8.16%) MongoDB
4 16 (8.16%) MySQL
5 13 (6.63%) Apache Cassandra
6 10 (5.10%) NoSQL
7 8 (4.08%) Amazon RDS
7 8 (4.08%) Big Data
7 8 (4.08%) Hadoop
8 7 (3.57%) Relational Database
9 5 (2.55%) HPCC
10 4 (2.04%) RDBMS
11 3 (1.53%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.53%) SQL Server
12 2 (1.02%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 31 (15.82%) Git
2 23 (11.73%) Jenkins
3 22 (11.22%) JUnit
4 15 (7.65%) Cucumber
5 14 (7.14%) GitLab
6 10 (5.10%) Gradle
7 8 (4.08%) Maven
7 8 (4.08%) Selenium
8 7 (3.57%) IntelliJ
8 7 (3.57%) JMeter
9 6 (3.06%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (2.55%) JIRA
11 4 (2.04%) Bitbucket
11 4 (2.04%) Eclipse
11 4 (2.04%) Mockito
11 4 (2.04%) Postman
12 3 (1.53%) Cypress.io
13 2 (1.02%) Storybook
13 2 (1.02%) TestNG
13 2 (1.02%) Visual Studio
General
1 83 (42.35%) Finance
2 45 (22.96%) Banking
3 41 (20.92%) Front Office
4 38 (19.39%) Social Skills
5 36 (18.37%) Investment Banking
6 7 (3.57%) Analytical Skills
7 6 (3.06%) Public Sector
8 4 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.53%) Back Office
9 3 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.51%) Law
10 1 (0.51%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (35.20%) Spring
2 49 (25.00%) Spring Boot
3 33 (16.84%) NumPy
3 33 (16.84%) Pandas
3 33 (16.84%) SciPy
4 31 (15.82%) gRPC
4 31 (15.82%) Kafka
5 30 (15.31%) Protocol Buffers
6 27 (13.78%) React
7 23 (11.73%) AngularJS
7 23 (11.73%) RESTful
8 20 (10.20%) Node.js
9 19 (9.69%) REST
10 13 (6.63%) Hibernate
10 13 (6.63%) HTML
11 11 (5.61%) JSON
12 9 (4.59%) GraphQL
12 9 (4.59%) XML
13 8 (4.08%) OAuth
14 6 (3.06%) JPA
Miscellaneous
1 38 (19.39%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 37 (18.88%) Fixed Income
3 35 (17.86%) Equities
4 32 (16.33%) Derivative
5 30 (15.31%) Hedge funds
5 30 (15.31%) Pricing Data
6 22 (11.22%) Distributed Systems
7 19 (9.69%) Cloud Native
8 9 (4.59%) Onboarding
9 8 (4.08%) Product Ownership
10 7 (3.57%) Mobile App
10 7 (3.57%) Virtual Team
11 6 (3.06%) Public Cloud
12 4 (2.04%) Algorithms
12 4 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
13 3 (1.53%) Blockchain
13 3 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
14 2 (1.02%) Data Centre
14 2 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 16 (8.16%) Linux
2 14 (7.14%) Unix
3 9 (4.59%) Windows
4 2 (1.02%) CentOS
4 2 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (54.08%) Software Engineering
2 93 (47.45%) Agile
3 80 (40.82%) CI/CD
4 62 (31.63%) Microservices
5 42 (21.43%) DevOps
6 37 (18.88%) Investment Management
7 33 (16.84%) Asset Management
8 31 (15.82%) TDD
9 30 (15.31%) Full-Stack Development
10 28 (14.29%) Test Automation
11 24 (12.24%) Problem-Solving
12 23 (11.73%) Containerisation
13 20 (10.20%) Infrastructure as Code
14 19 (9.69%) Fintech
14 19 (9.69%) Observability
15 18 (9.18%) Clean Code
15 18 (9.18%) SDLC
16 15 (7.65%) API Development
17 13 (6.63%) BDD
17 13 (6.63%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 196 (100.00%) Java
2 63 (32.14%) Python
3 59 (30.10%) TypeScript
4 54 (27.55%) JavaScript
5 29 (14.80%) SQL
6 11 (5.61%) C++
7 8 (4.08%) Go
7 8 (4.08%) Kotlin
8 7 (3.57%) C
9 6 (3.06%) Scala
10 4 (2.04%) Ruby
11 3 (1.53%) C#
11 3 (1.53%) DAML
11 3 (1.53%) Groovy
11 3 (1.53%) PHP
12 2 (1.02%) Bash
12 2 (1.02%) PL/SQL
12 2 (1.02%) Rust
12 2 (1.02%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.51%) Perl
Qualifications
1 19 (9.69%) Security Cleared
2 17 (8.67%) SC Cleared
3 9 (4.59%) Degree
4 6 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.02%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.02%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.02%) OCP
6 2 (1.02%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.51%) ISTQB
7 1 (0.51%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (16.33%) QA
2 7 (3.57%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.02%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.51%) WCAG
System Software
1 34 (17.35%) Docker
Systems Management
1 40 (20.41%) Kubernetes
2 20 (10.20%) Terraform
3 14 (7.14%) Ansible
4 9 (4.59%) Grafana
5 5 (2.55%) Puppet
6 4 (2.04%) Progress Chef
7 2 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.51%) Argo
8 1 (0.51%) Kibana
8 1 (0.51%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (4.59%) Google
1 9 (4.59%) Microsoft
2 7 (3.57%) Oracle
3 5 (2.55%) Splunk
4 4 (2.04%) Databricks
4 4 (2.04%) Dynatrace
4 4 (2.04%) VMware
4 4 (2.04%) webMethods
5 2 (1.02%) ForgeRock
5 2 (1.02%) TIBCO
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
6 1 (0.51%) Zoomdata