Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £585, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 26 November 2025.

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

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 392 359 494
Rank change year-on-year -33 +135 -145
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 199 197 126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.54% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.61% 0.58% 0.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 155 143 98
10th Percentile £361 £437 £392
25th Percentile £475 £520 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £585 £675 £595
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +13.45% -0.83%
75th Percentile £825 £850 £722
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 9 13 3
10th Percentile £42.00 £43.30 £55.75
25th Percentile £44.50 £66.25 £56.88
Median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year - +12.00% -4.66%
75th Percentile £87.50 - £71.88
90th Percentile - - £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.50 £70.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -26.43% +12.00% -4.73%

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 32,789 33,852 42,781
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.97% 92.81% 93.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,761 20,450 28,928
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 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.75% -1.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,925 1,256 1,520
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.22 £15.24
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.69 £19.17
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.75
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.79% +49.17%
75th Percentile £56.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.16 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +82.00%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -40 164 £586 -19.17% 102
London -20 125 £625 -21.88% 35
Work from Home +26 95 £750 -6.25% 73
UK excluding London -21 60 £513 -4.65% 87
Scotland +15 23 £600 +50.00% 3
North of England -40 14 £488 -11.36% 14
Midlands -22 12 £435 -31.76% 16
West Midlands -11 11 £440 -43.23% 11
South East +3 9 £365 -27.00% 31
North West -19 5 £353 -35.91% 7
Yorkshire -33 5 £350 -32.04% 6
North East - 4 £575 - 1
South West -22 2 £550 -2.44% 13
East Midlands -13 1 £313 -41.86% 4

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

For the 6 months to 26 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.

1 199 (100.00%) Java
2 116 (58.29%) AWS
3 111 (55.78%) Software Engineering
4 97 (48.74%) Agile
5 81 (40.70%) CI/CD
6 70 (35.18%) Spring
7 65 (32.66%) Python
8 61 (30.65%) Microservices
8 61 (30.65%) TypeScript
9 55 (27.64%) JavaScript
10 48 (24.12%) Azure
11 47 (23.62%) Spring Boot
12 42 (21.11%) DevOps
13 39 (19.60%) Investment Management
14 38 (19.10%) Kubernetes
15 36 (18.09%) Apache
15 36 (18.09%) Apache Airflow
16 35 (17.59%) Amazon Athena
16 35 (17.59%) Apache Arrow
16 35 (17.59%) Apache Iceberg
16 35 (17.59%) Asset Management
16 35 (17.59%) Data Lake
16 35 (17.59%) dbt
16 35 (17.59%) Dremio
16 35 (17.59%) NumPy
16 35 (17.59%) Pandas
16 35 (17.59%) SciPy
17 34 (17.09%) Docker
18 33 (16.58%) Git
18 33 (16.58%) gRPC

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 36 (18.09%) Apache
1 36 (18.09%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (2.51%) JBoss
3 4 (2.01%) Confluence
3 4 (2.01%) WebLogic
4 2 (1.01%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.50%) Luigi
Applications
1 1 (0.50%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 116 (58.29%) AWS
2 48 (24.12%) Azure
3 35 (17.59%) dbt
4 33 (16.58%) Snowflake
5 21 (10.55%) GitHub
6 17 (8.54%) GCP
7 10 (5.03%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (4.52%) Amazon EC2
8 9 (4.52%) Amazon ECS
8 9 (4.52%) OpenShift
8 9 (4.52%) Serverless
9 8 (4.02%) Amazon Kinesis
9 8 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
10 7 (3.52%) AWS Step Functions
10 7 (3.52%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (3.02%) Amazon S3
12 5 (2.51%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
13 3 (1.51%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (1.51%) BlazeMeter
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.01%) AMQP
2 1 (0.50%) Broadband
2 1 (0.50%) FTP
2 1 (0.50%) SSL
2 1 (0.50%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (17.59%) Amazon Athena
1 35 (17.59%) Apache Arrow
1 35 (17.59%) Apache Iceberg
1 35 (17.59%) Data Lake
1 35 (17.59%) Dremio
2 32 (16.08%) Apache Ignite
3 18 (9.05%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (8.04%) MongoDB
4 16 (8.04%) MySQL
5 13 (6.53%) Apache Cassandra
6 10 (5.03%) NoSQL
7 8 (4.02%) Amazon RDS
7 8 (4.02%) Big Data
7 8 (4.02%) Hadoop
8 7 (3.52%) Relational Database
9 5 (2.51%) HPCC
10 4 (2.01%) RDBMS
11 3 (1.51%) BigQuery
11 3 (1.51%) DynamoDB
11 3 (1.51%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 33 (16.58%) Git
2 24 (12.06%) Jenkins
3 23 (11.56%) JUnit
4 15 (7.54%) Cucumber
5 14 (7.04%) GitLab
6 11 (5.53%) Gradle
7 9 (4.52%) Maven
8 8 (4.02%) Selenium
9 7 (3.52%) IntelliJ
9 7 (3.52%) JMeter
10 6 (3.02%) JIRA
10 6 (3.02%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (2.51%) Bitbucket
12 4 (2.01%) Eclipse
12 4 (2.01%) Mockito
12 4 (2.01%) Postman
13 3 (1.51%) Artifactory
13 3 (1.51%) Cypress.io
13 3 (1.51%) SonarQube
14 2 (1.01%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 87 (43.72%) Finance
2 48 (24.12%) Banking
3 43 (21.61%) Front Office
4 39 (19.60%) Social Skills
5 38 (19.10%) Investment Banking
6 7 (3.52%) Analytical Skills
7 6 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (3.02%) Public Sector
8 4 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.51%) Back Office
9 3 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.50%) Law
10 1 (0.50%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (35.18%) Spring
2 47 (23.62%) Spring Boot
3 35 (17.59%) NumPy
3 35 (17.59%) Pandas
3 35 (17.59%) SciPy
4 33 (16.58%) gRPC
5 32 (16.08%) Protocol Buffers
6 31 (15.58%) Kafka
7 27 (13.57%) React
8 23 (11.56%) AngularJS
8 23 (11.56%) RESTful
9 21 (10.55%) Node.js
10 19 (9.55%) REST
11 13 (6.53%) Hibernate
11 13 (6.53%) HTML
12 11 (5.53%) JSON
13 10 (5.03%) GraphQL
13 10 (5.03%) XML
14 7 (3.52%) CSS
14 7 (3.52%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 40 (20.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 39 (19.60%) Fixed Income
3 37 (18.59%) Equities
4 34 (17.09%) Derivative
5 32 (16.08%) Hedge funds
5 32 (16.08%) Pricing Data
6 22 (11.06%) Distributed Systems
7 19 (9.55%) Cloud Native
8 9 (4.52%) Onboarding
8 9 (4.52%) Product Ownership
9 7 (3.52%) Mobile App
9 7 (3.52%) Virtual Team
10 6 (3.02%) Public Cloud
11 4 (2.01%) Algorithms
11 4 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (1.51%) Blockchain
12 3 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
13 2 (1.01%) Data Centre
13 2 (1.01%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 17 (8.54%) Linux
2 14 (7.04%) Unix
3 9 (4.52%) Windows
4 2 (1.01%) CentOS
4 2 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 111 (55.78%) Software Engineering
2 97 (48.74%) Agile
3 81 (40.70%) CI/CD
4 61 (30.65%) Microservices
5 42 (21.11%) DevOps
6 39 (19.60%) Investment Management
7 35 (17.59%) Asset Management
8 31 (15.58%) TDD
9 30 (15.08%) Full-Stack Development
10 28 (14.07%) Test Automation
11 26 (13.07%) Problem-Solving
12 23 (11.56%) Containerisation
13 20 (10.05%) Fintech
13 20 (10.05%) Infrastructure as Code
14 19 (9.55%) Clean Code
14 19 (9.55%) Observability
15 18 (9.05%) SDLC
16 16 (8.04%) API Development
17 14 (7.04%) BDD
18 12 (6.03%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 199 (100.00%) Java
2 65 (32.66%) Python
3 61 (30.65%) TypeScript
4 55 (27.64%) JavaScript
5 29 (14.57%) SQL
6 10 (5.03%) C++
7 9 (4.52%) Kotlin
8 8 (4.02%) Go
9 7 (3.52%) C
10 6 (3.02%) Scala
11 4 (2.01%) Ruby
12 3 (1.51%) C#
12 3 (1.51%) DAML
12 3 (1.51%) Groovy
12 3 (1.51%) PHP
13 2 (1.01%) Bash
13 2 (1.01%) PL/SQL
13 2 (1.01%) Rust
13 2 (1.01%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.50%) Perl
Qualifications
1 20 (10.05%) Security Cleared
2 18 (9.05%) SC Cleared
3 9 (4.52%) Degree
4 6 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (1.01%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.01%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.01%) OCP
5 2 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
6 1 (0.50%) ISTQB
6 1 (0.50%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (16.08%) QA
2 8 (4.02%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.01%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.50%) WCAG
System Software
1 34 (17.09%) Docker
Systems Management
1 38 (19.10%) Kubernetes
2 19 (9.55%) Terraform
3 14 (7.04%) Ansible
4 9 (4.52%) Grafana
5 5 (2.51%) Puppet
6 4 (2.01%) Progress Chef
7 3 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.50%) Argo
8 1 (0.50%) Kibana
8 1 (0.50%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (4.52%) Microsoft
2 8 (4.02%) Google
2 8 (4.02%) Oracle
3 5 (2.51%) Splunk
4 4 (2.01%) Databricks
4 4 (2.01%) Dynatrace
4 4 (2.01%) VMware
4 4 (2.01%) webMethods
5 2 (1.01%) ForgeRock
5 2 (1.01%) TIBCO
6 1 (0.50%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.50%) Calypso
6 1 (0.50%) Cisco
6 1 (0.50%) Guidewire
6 1 (0.50%) IBM
6 1 (0.50%) Informatica
6 1 (0.50%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.50%) ServiceNow
6 1 (0.50%) SnapLogic
6 1 (0.50%) Solace