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 30 December 2025.

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

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 407 385 482
Rank change year-on-year -22 +97 -133
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 186 149 118
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.45% 0.27%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.55% 0.48% 0.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 110 83
10th Percentile £360 £395 £384
25th Percentile £453 £520 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £619 £590
Median % change year-on-year -7.07% +4.87% -1.67%
75th Percentile £663 £850 £700
90th Percentile £825 £888 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -6.00% +5.26% -18.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 7 2
10th Percentile £42.70 £37.40 £60.13
25th Percentile £52.50 £48.00 £62.19
Median hourly rate £55.00 £62.50 £68.75
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -9.09% +4.79%
75th Percentile £61.25 £66.88 £74.69
90th Percentile £87.50 £68.75 £76.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £63.75 £68.75
% change year-on-year -13.73% -7.27% +4.79%

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 33,741 30,870 40,353
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.20% 92.72% 93.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,345 18,959 27,051
10th Percentile £298 £300 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £616 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,972 954 1,548
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.51 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £19.25
Median hourly rate £25.47 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.63% -27.78% +40.82%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.41 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year -22.62% -29.62% +77.62%

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 30 December 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 30 December 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 30 December 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 -23 157 £575 -14.81% 484
London -25 101 £619 -10.00% 113
Work from Home +13 77 £625 -21.88% 373
UK excluding London -18 73 £470 -6.00% 404
North of England -35 25 £475 -13.64% 117
Scotland +19 19 £600 +50.94% 18
Midlands -29 16 £460 -34.29% 61
North West -12 15 £400 -27.27% 65
West Midlands -14 15 £460 -40.65% 33
South East -2 12 £365 -36.52% 102
Yorkshire -43 5 £350 -32.04% 41
North East - 5 £575 - 12
South West -15 1 £550 -2.44% 42
East Midlands -19 1 £313 -45.65% 27

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

For the 6 months to 30 December 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.

1 186 (100.00%) Java
2 93 (50.00%) Software Engineering
3 89 (47.85%) AWS
4 80 (43.01%) CI/CD
5 78 (41.94%) Spring
6 76 (40.86%) Agile
7 66 (35.48%) Spring Boot
8 63 (33.87%) Microservices
9 58 (31.18%) Kubernetes
10 46 (24.73%) Azure
10 46 (24.73%) Python
11 41 (22.04%) DevOps
12 37 (19.89%) Docker
12 37 (19.89%) TypeScript
13 36 (19.35%) JavaScript
14 34 (18.28%) Kafka
15 32 (17.20%) TDD
16 30 (16.13%) SQL
17 28 (15.05%) QA
17 28 (15.05%) Test Automation
18 26 (13.98%) Apache
18 26 (13.98%) Problem-Solving
19 24 (12.90%) Containerisation
19 24 (12.90%) Git
19 24 (12.90%) Investment Management
19 24 (12.90%) RESTful
20 23 (12.37%) Apache Airflow
20 23 (12.37%) Data Lake
20 23 (12.37%) Full-Stack Development
20 23 (12.37%) 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 26 (13.98%) Apache
2 23 (12.37%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (2.15%) Apache Spark
3 4 (2.15%) JBoss
3 4 (2.15%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.61%) Confluence
5 1 (0.54%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.54%) Luigi
5 1 (0.54%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 1 (0.54%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.54%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 89 (47.85%) AWS
2 46 (24.73%) Azure
3 23 (12.37%) Snowflake
4 22 (11.83%) dbt
5 16 (8.60%) GCP
5 16 (8.60%) GitHub
6 9 (4.84%) Amazon EC2
6 9 (4.84%) Amazon ECS
6 9 (4.84%) GitHub Actions
6 9 (4.84%) Serverless
7 8 (4.30%) AWS Lambda
7 8 (4.30%) OpenShift
8 7 (3.76%) Amazon S3
8 7 (3.76%) Cloud Computing
9 6 (3.23%) Amazon Kinesis
9 6 (3.23%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (3.23%) AWS Step Functions
10 5 (2.69%) Amazon EKS
11 3 (1.61%) Azure Monitor
11 3 (1.61%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.54%) AMQP
1 1 (0.54%) Broadband
1 1 (0.54%) FTP
1 1 (0.54%) SSL
1 1 (0.54%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (12.37%) Data Lake
2 22 (11.83%) Amazon Athena
2 22 (11.83%) Apache Arrow
2 22 (11.83%) Apache Iceberg
2 22 (11.83%) Apache Ignite
2 22 (11.83%) Dremio
3 20 (10.75%) MongoDB
4 18 (9.68%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (6.99%) MySQL
6 12 (6.45%) Apache Cassandra
7 9 (4.84%) NoSQL
8 8 (4.30%) Hadoop
9 7 (3.76%) Amazon RDS
10 6 (3.23%) Big Data
10 6 (3.23%) Relational Database
11 4 (2.15%) SQL Server
12 3 (1.61%) BigQuery
12 3 (1.61%) HBase
12 3 (1.61%) RDBMS
13 2 (1.08%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 24 (12.90%) Git
2 22 (11.83%) GitLab
2 22 (11.83%) Jenkins
3 21 (11.29%) JUnit
4 17 (9.14%) Gradle
5 15 (8.06%) Cucumber
5 15 (8.06%) IntelliJ
6 9 (4.84%) Selenium
7 7 (3.76%) JMeter
7 7 (3.76%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (2.69%) JIRA
8 5 (2.69%) Maven
9 4 (2.15%) Eclipse
9 4 (2.15%) Postman
10 3 (1.61%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.61%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.61%) Cypress.io
10 3 (1.61%) Mockito
11 2 (1.08%) Gatling
11 2 (1.08%) SonarQube
General
1 62 (33.33%) Finance
2 38 (20.43%) Banking
3 37 (19.89%) Social Skills
4 28 (15.05%) Front Office
5 27 (14.52%) Investment Banking
6 8 (4.30%) Public Sector
7 6 (3.23%) Analytical Skills
8 4 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (1.08%) Back Office
11 1 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.54%) Law
11 1 (0.54%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (41.94%) Spring
2 66 (35.48%) Spring Boot
3 34 (18.28%) Kafka
4 24 (12.90%) RESTful
5 23 (12.37%) gRPC
6 22 (11.83%) NumPy
6 22 (11.83%) Pandas
6 22 (11.83%) Protocol Buffers
6 22 (11.83%) SciPy
7 15 (8.06%) AngularJS
7 15 (8.06%) React
7 15 (8.06%) REST
8 12 (6.45%) Hibernate
9 11 (5.91%) Node.js
10 10 (5.38%) OpenTelemetry
11 9 (4.84%) HTML
11 9 (4.84%) JSON
12 7 (3.76%) Swagger
13 6 (3.23%) GraphQL
13 6 (3.23%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 25 (13.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 24 (12.90%) Derivative
2 24 (12.90%) Equities
2 24 (12.90%) Fixed Income
3 22 (11.83%) Hedge funds
3 22 (11.83%) Pricing Data
4 21 (11.29%) Distributed Systems
5 17 (9.14%) Cloud Native
6 8 (4.30%) Onboarding
6 8 (4.30%) Product Ownership
7 7 (3.76%) Public Cloud
7 7 (3.76%) Virtual Team
8 4 (2.15%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (1.08%) Algorithms
10 2 (1.08%) Blockchain
10 2 (1.08%) Data Structures
10 2 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
10 2 (1.08%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 16 (8.60%) Linux
2 12 (6.45%) Unix
3 4 (2.15%) Windows
4 1 (0.54%) CentOS
4 1 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.54%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (50.00%) Software Engineering
2 80 (43.01%) CI/CD
3 76 (40.86%) Agile
4 63 (33.87%) Microservices
5 41 (22.04%) DevOps
6 32 (17.20%) TDD
7 28 (15.05%) Test Automation
8 26 (13.98%) Problem-Solving
9 24 (12.90%) Containerisation
9 24 (12.90%) Investment Management
10 23 (12.37%) Full-Stack Development
11 22 (11.83%) Asset Management
12 20 (10.75%) Observability
13 19 (10.22%) Infrastructure as Code
14 17 (9.14%) Clean Code
15 16 (8.60%) API Development
15 16 (8.60%) Event-Driven
16 15 (8.06%) Fintech
17 14 (7.53%) BDD
18 13 (6.99%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 186 (100.00%) Java
2 46 (24.73%) Python
3 37 (19.89%) TypeScript
4 36 (19.35%) JavaScript
5 30 (16.13%) SQL
6 14 (7.53%) Kotlin
7 6 (3.23%) Go
7 6 (3.23%) Scala
8 5 (2.69%) C++
9 2 (1.08%) Bash
9 2 (1.08%) C
9 2 (1.08%) C#
9 2 (1.08%) DAML
9 2 (1.08%) PL/SQL
9 2 (1.08%) Rust
9 2 (1.08%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.54%) Groovy
10 1 (0.54%) Perl
10 1 (0.54%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 23 (12.37%) Security Cleared
2 21 (11.29%) SC Cleared
3 7 (3.76%) Degree
4 5 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 4 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.61%) OCP
6 3 (1.61%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (1.08%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.54%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (15.05%) QA
2 10 (5.38%) Accessibility
3 3 (1.61%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.08%) WCAG
5 1 (0.54%) GDPR
5 1 (0.54%) ISO 15022
5 1 (0.54%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 37 (19.89%) Docker
Systems Management
1 58 (31.18%) Kubernetes
2 20 (10.75%) Terraform
3 17 (9.14%) Grafana
4 14 (7.53%) Ansible
5 5 (2.69%) Puppet
6 4 (2.15%) Progress Chef
7 3 (1.61%) Argo
8 2 (1.08%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.54%) Kibana
Vendors
1 10 (5.38%) Google
2 7 (3.76%) Microsoft
2 7 (3.76%) Oracle
3 5 (2.69%) Databricks
4 4 (2.15%) Splunk
4 4 (2.15%) VMware
4 4 (2.15%) webMethods
5 3 (1.61%) Dynatrace
6 2 (1.08%) IBM
6 2 (1.08%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.08%) Solace
6 2 (1.08%) TIBCO
7 1 (0.54%) Adobe
7 1 (0.54%) Calypso
7 1 (0.54%) Cisco
7 1 (0.54%) Guidewire
7 1 (0.54%) Informatica
7 1 (0.54%) New Relic
7 1 (0.54%) ServiceNow
7 1 (0.54%) SnapLogic