Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £546, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 March 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 335 370 442
Rank change year-on-year +35 +72 -6
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 293 152 155
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.52% 0.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.73% 0.56% 0.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 182 107 100
10th Percentile £373 £325 £400
25th Percentile £422 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £546 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.68% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £819 £675
90th Percentile £698 £875 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +5.32% -4.57% -14.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 9 4
10th Percentile - £37.95 £61.38
25th Percentile £52.50 £57.50 £65.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year - -7.14% +6.87%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £73.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.75 £65.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year -1.92% -1.89% +1.15%

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 40,297 27,081 41,111
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.96% 92.96% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,161 17,787 26,923
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £411 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.37%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £724 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,500 900 2,514
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.20 £12.88
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £36.70 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.92% - -24.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £76.34 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +12.94% - -21.53%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 -1 252 £525 -12.50% 65
UK excluding London +15 156 £495 +5.32% 38
London -41 119 £550 -8.33% 34
Work from Home -7 78 £488 -35.00% 34
North of England -32 47 £494 +7.92% 20
Midlands -39 28 £469 -10.67% 2
West Midlands -34 27 £469 -10.67%
North West -13 26 £478 - 10
South West -15 26 £488 -12.56% 5
South East -26 26 £370 -43.08% 7
Scotland +24 25 £600 +26.32% 4
Yorkshire -50 15 £523 -0.48% 7
North East -11 7 £439 +12.50% 3
Wales -7 2 £388 +96.20%
East of England -28 2 £500 +6.95%
East Midlands - 1 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 24 March 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.

1 293 (100.00%) Java
2 147 (50.17%) Software Engineering
3 117 (39.93%) Spring
4 106 (36.18%) Spring Boot
5 90 (30.72%) AWS
6 85 (29.01%) CI/CD
6 85 (29.01%) Microservices
7 84 (28.67%) Kubernetes
8 72 (24.57%) Agile
9 53 (18.09%) DevOps
10 52 (17.75%) Kafka
11 51 (17.41%) Docker
11 51 (17.41%) Full-Stack Development
12 49 (16.72%) Azure
13 43 (14.68%) Security Cleared
14 41 (13.99%) SQL
14 41 (13.99%) TDD
15 39 (13.31%) SC Cleared
16 36 (12.29%) Python
17 35 (11.95%) Containerisation
17 35 (11.95%) Jenkins
18 34 (11.60%) React
19 33 (11.26%) QA
20 31 (10.58%) Problem-Solving
20 31 (10.58%) Test Automation
21 30 (10.24%) PostgreSQL
22 29 (9.90%) Git
22 29 (9.90%) Gradle
23 27 (9.22%) GitLab
24 26 (8.87%) Event-Driven

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 (2.73%) Apache
1 8 (2.73%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.02%) JBoss
2 3 (1.02%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.68%) Confluence
3 2 (0.68%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.34%) Adobe Experience Manager
4 1 (0.34%) Camunda
4 1 (0.34%) Ethereum
4 1 (0.34%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 1 (0.34%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 90 (30.72%) AWS
2 49 (16.72%) Azure
3 18 (6.14%) GCP
4 17 (5.80%) AWS Lambda
4 17 (5.80%) GitHub
4 17 (5.80%) Serverless
5 16 (5.46%) Amazon S3
6 13 (4.44%) Amazon ECS
7 11 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
8 10 (3.41%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (3.41%) OpenShift
9 8 (2.73%) AWS CloudFormation
10 7 (2.39%) AWS Step Functions
11 6 (2.05%) Amazon Kinesis
11 6 (2.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 4 (1.37%) AWS CodePipeline
12 4 (1.37%) Cloud Computing
12 4 (1.37%) Snowflake
13 3 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (1.02%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.02%) MQTT
2 2 (0.68%) HTTP
3 1 (0.34%) FTP
3 1 (0.34%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.34%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.34%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.24%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (8.53%) MongoDB
3 11 (3.75%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (3.41%) Big Data
4 10 (3.41%) MySQL
5 9 (3.07%) Apache Cassandra
5 9 (3.07%) NoSQL
5 9 (3.07%) SQL Server
6 8 (2.73%) DynamoDB
7 6 (2.05%) Hadoop
8 5 (1.71%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.37%) BigQuery
10 3 (1.02%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.02%) HBase
11 2 (0.68%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.68%) Apache Arrow
11 2 (0.68%) Apache Ignite
11 2 (0.68%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.68%) Dremio
11 2 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 35 (11.95%) Jenkins
2 29 (9.90%) Git
2 29 (9.90%) Gradle
3 27 (9.22%) GitLab
4 26 (8.87%) JUnit
5 17 (5.80%) IntelliJ
6 14 (4.78%) Cucumber
7 12 (4.10%) Maven
8 8 (2.73%) Selenium
9 7 (2.39%) JIRA
9 7 (2.39%) Mockito
10 6 (2.05%) SonarQube
10 6 (2.05%) Sonatype Nexus
11 4 (1.37%) Artifactory
11 4 (1.37%) Eclipse
11 4 (1.37%) JMeter
11 4 (1.37%) Postman
12 3 (1.02%) Gatling
12 3 (1.02%) Liquibase
13 2 (0.68%) XCUITest
General
1 64 (21.84%) Finance
2 37 (12.63%) Social Skills
3 25 (8.53%) Banking
4 16 (5.46%) Front Office
4 16 (5.46%) Public Sector
5 7 (2.39%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (2.39%) Investment Banking
5 7 (2.39%) Law
6 5 (1.71%) Financial Institution
7 3 (1.02%) Back Office
7 3 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.68%) Retail
9 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.34%) Legal
9 1 (0.34%) Military
9 1 (0.34%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 117 (39.93%) Spring
2 106 (36.18%) Spring Boot
3 52 (17.75%) Kafka
4 34 (11.60%) React
5 26 (8.87%) RESTful
6 20 (6.83%) Node.js
7 19 (6.48%) REST
8 17 (5.80%) GraphQL
8 17 (5.80%) Middleware
9 14 (4.78%) Swagger
10 12 (4.10%) AngularJS
10 12 (4.10%) OpenTelemetry
11 11 (3.75%) Hibernate
12 9 (3.07%) OpenAPI
12 9 (3.07%) Redux
13 7 (2.39%) JSON
13 7 (2.39%) Playwright
14 6 (2.05%) AWS CDK
14 6 (2.05%) HTML
14 6 (2.05%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 39 (13.31%) Cloud Native
2 25 (8.53%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (3.75%) Data Protection Act
3 11 (3.75%) Fixed Income
4 9 (3.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 7 (2.39%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.71%) Derivative
6 5 (1.71%) Legacy Applications
6 5 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (1.71%) Product Ownership
6 5 (1.71%) Public Cloud
6 5 (1.71%) Virtual Team
7 4 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.37%) Mobile App
8 3 (1.02%) Hedge funds
8 3 (1.02%) Pricing Data
9 2 (0.68%) Algorithms
9 2 (0.68%) Data Structures
9 2 (0.68%) Equities
9 2 (0.68%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 20 (6.83%) Linux
2 9 (3.07%) Unix
3 1 (0.34%) SUSE
3 1 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.34%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (50.17%) Software Engineering
2 85 (29.01%) CI/CD
2 85 (29.01%) Microservices
3 72 (24.57%) Agile
4 53 (18.09%) DevOps
5 51 (17.41%) Full-Stack Development
6 41 (13.99%) TDD
7 35 (11.95%) Containerisation
8 31 (10.58%) Problem-Solving
8 31 (10.58%) Test Automation
9 26 (8.87%) Event-Driven
10 23 (7.85%) Scrum
11 20 (6.83%) Migration
12 19 (6.48%) Clean Code
13 18 (6.14%) Mentoring
13 18 (6.14%) Observability
13 18 (6.14%) Software Testing
14 17 (5.80%) Code Quality
15 16 (5.46%) Unit Testing
16 15 (5.12%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 293 (100.00%) Java
2 41 (13.99%) SQL
3 36 (12.29%) Python
4 24 (8.19%) TypeScript
5 17 (5.80%) Kotlin
6 16 (5.46%) JavaScript
7 13 (4.44%) Go
8 11 (3.75%) Ada
9 5 (1.71%) C++
9 5 (1.71%) PL/SQL
9 5 (1.71%) Scala
10 3 (1.02%) C#
11 2 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.34%) Rust
12 1 (0.34%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 43 (14.68%) Security Cleared
2 39 (13.31%) SC Cleared
3 11 (3.75%) Degree
4 6 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.02%) Master's Degree
6 3 (1.02%) OCP
6 3 (1.02%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.68%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.34%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (11.26%) QA
2 11 (3.75%) Def Stans
2 11 (3.75%) IEC 61508
3 6 (2.05%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.02%) GDPR
4 3 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.68%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.68%) ISO 15022
5 2 (0.68%) ISO 20022
5 2 (0.68%) WCAG
System Software
1 51 (17.41%) Docker
2 1 (0.34%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 84 (28.67%) Kubernetes
2 24 (8.19%) Terraform
3 19 (6.48%) Grafana
4 7 (2.39%) Ansible
5 6 (2.05%) Argo
6 3 (1.02%) Puppet
7 2 (0.68%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.68%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.68%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.34%) Kibana
8 1 (0.34%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 11 (3.75%) Google
2 10 (3.41%) Microsoft
3 9 (3.07%) Oracle
4 7 (2.39%) Splunk
5 5 (1.71%) Red Hat
6 4 (1.37%) Databricks
6 4 (1.37%) IBM
7 3 (1.02%) Solace
7 3 (1.02%) Spotify
7 3 (1.02%) webMethods
8 2 (0.68%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.68%) New Relic
8 2 (0.68%) ServiceNow
8 2 (0.68%) VMware
9 1 (0.34%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.34%) Actian
9 1 (0.34%) Adobe
9 1 (0.34%) Calypso
9 1 (0.34%) SAP
9 1 (0.34%) Teradata