Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 381 344 302
Rank change year-on-year -37 -42 +169
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 327 219 282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.67% 0.74%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.65% 0.74% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 158 207
10th Percentile £328 £394 £450
25th Percentile £425 £508 £520
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £607 £750
Median % change year-on-year -13.54% -19.03% +26.05%
75th Percentile £600 £825 £850
90th Percentile £653 £850 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.50% - +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 7 26
10th Percentile £63.88 £39.50 £66.25
25th Percentile - £56.25 -
Median hourly rate £70.00 £80.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +14.29% +27.27%
75th Percentile £76.00 £87.50 -
90th Percentile £77.00 £89.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year - - +7.69%

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 50,255 29,550 35,480
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 91.04% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,827 18,649 21,961
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,770 1,552 1,702
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.15 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.59% -41.51% -1.96%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +6.95%

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 15 September 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 15 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Top 17 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 15 September 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 -29 302 £523 -22.59% 623
UK excluding London -8 157 £513 +2.50% 365
London -81 149 £525 -30.00% 375
Work from Home -85 98 £475 -36.67% 223
North of England -7 73 £500 +60.36% 87
North West -16 37 £530 +73.77% 51
Midlands -16 36 £575 +9.52% 29
West Midlands -26 30 £585 +10.38% 18
Yorkshire -11 23 £488 +53.01% 26
South East -50 23 £500 - 27
East of England -18 16 £585 -2.50% 6
North East - 13 £640 - 10
South West -42 10 £484 -12.05% 65
East Midlands -8 6 £400 +26.98% 11
Wales - 4 - - 3
Northern Ireland +5 3 £275 -41.49% 23
Scotland -30 2 £550 +17.33% 126

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

For the 6 months to 15 September 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.

1 327 (100.00%) Java
2 184 (56.27%) Software Engineering
3 144 (44.04%) Spring
4 139 (42.51%) CI/CD
5 133 (40.67%) Spring Boot
6 112 (34.25%) Agile
7 109 (33.33%) AWS
7 109 (33.33%) Microservices
8 106 (32.42%) Kubernetes
9 81 (24.77%) Docker
10 78 (23.85%) Security Cleared
11 75 (22.94%) DevOps
12 72 (22.02%) SQL
13 71 (21.71%) SC Cleared
14 70 (21.41%) Kafka
15 67 (20.49%) Test Automation
16 53 (16.21%) Event-Driven
17 52 (15.90%) REST
18 43 (13.15%) TDD
19 42 (12.84%) Containerisation
20 41 (12.54%) PostgreSQL
20 41 (12.54%) QA
20 41 (12.54%) SDLC
21 40 (12.23%) Azure
21 40 (12.23%) Git
21 40 (12.23%) Python
22 39 (11.93%) Event-Driven Architecture
22 39 (11.93%) Full-Stack Development
23 38 (11.62%) AI
23 38 (11.62%) Problem-Solving

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 7 (2.14%) WebLogic
2 6 (1.83%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.53%) Apache
4 3 (0.92%) Confluence
4 3 (0.92%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.61%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.31%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.31%) nginx
6 1 (0.31%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.31%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (0.92%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.61%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 109 (33.33%) AWS
2 40 (12.23%) Azure
3 30 (9.17%) GCP
4 28 (8.56%) GitHub
5 22 (6.73%) GitHub Actions
6 16 (4.89%) OpenShift
6 16 (4.89%) Serverless
7 15 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (2.45%) Amazon ECS
8 8 (2.45%) Amazon SQS
9 7 (2.14%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (1.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (1.83%) Amazon S3
10 6 (1.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 5 (1.53%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 5 (1.53%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.22%) Cloud Run
12 4 (1.22%) GitHub Copilot
12 4 (1.22%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.06%) Firewall
1 10 (3.06%) VPN
2 5 (1.53%) HTTP
3 4 (1.22%) Internet
4 1 (0.31%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (12.54%) PostgreSQL
2 26 (7.95%) Relational Database
3 18 (5.50%) NoSQL
4 14 (4.28%) MySQL
5 12 (3.67%) MongoDB
6 11 (3.36%) SQL Server
7 9 (2.75%) DynamoDB
7 9 (2.75%) Elasticsearch
8 8 (2.45%) Couchbase
9 7 (2.14%) Redis
10 6 (1.83%) Apache Cassandra
11 4 (1.22%) Flink
12 3 (0.92%) Big Data
12 3 (0.92%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.92%) Power BI
13 2 (0.61%) HBase
13 2 (0.61%) Oracle Database
13 2 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
13 2 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 40 (12.23%) Git
2 35 (10.70%) JUnit
3 29 (8.87%) GitLab
4 24 (7.34%) Maven
5 23 (7.03%) Jenkins
6 15 (4.59%) Gradle
6 15 (4.59%) Mockito
6 15 (4.59%) SonarQube
7 9 (2.75%) JIRA
8 6 (1.83%) Bitbucket
8 6 (1.83%) Cucumber
8 6 (1.83%) Liquibase
8 6 (1.83%) Selenium
9 5 (1.53%) TeamCity
10 3 (0.92%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.92%) Flyway
10 3 (0.92%) Gatling
10 3 (0.92%) XCUITest
11 2 (0.61%) Claude Code
11 2 (0.61%) Katalon Studio
General
1 85 (25.99%) Finance
2 56 (17.13%) Social Skills
3 55 (16.82%) Banking
4 17 (5.20%) Public Sector
5 12 (3.67%) Front Office
5 12 (3.67%) Manufacturing
6 9 (2.75%) Retail
7 8 (2.45%) Analytical Skills
8 7 (2.14%) Law
9 6 (1.83%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.83%) Military
10 4 (1.22%) iGaming
10 4 (1.22%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.92%) Automotive
11 3 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.92%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.61%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.61%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.31%) Back Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 144 (44.04%) Spring
2 133 (40.67%) Spring Boot
3 70 (21.41%) Kafka
4 52 (15.90%) REST
5 28 (8.56%) React
5 28 (8.56%) RESTful
6 24 (7.34%) AngularJS
7 20 (6.12%) Terraform
8 15 (4.59%) OpenAPI
8 15 (4.59%) Quarkus
9 11 (3.36%) JPA
9 11 (3.36%) Swagger
10 9 (2.75%) OAuth
11 8 (2.45%) Node.js
12 7 (2.14%) CSS
12 7 (2.14%) Hibernate
12 7 (2.14%) JSON
12 7 (2.14%) RabbitMQ
12 7 (2.14%) Spring MVC
12 7 (2.14%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 67 (20.49%) Cloud Native
2 51 (15.60%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (4.28%) Greenfield Project
4 11 (3.36%) Enterprise Software
4 11 (3.36%) Product Ownership
5 8 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
6 7 (2.14%) AI Agents
6 7 (2.14%) Data Structures
6 7 (2.14%) Onboarding
7 6 (1.83%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 5 (1.53%) Legacy Applications
8 5 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (1.22%) Client/Server
9 4 (1.22%) Low-Code
9 4 (1.22%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.22%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 4 (1.22%) TWAP
9 4 (1.22%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 20 (6.12%) Linux
2 12 (3.67%) Unix
3 2 (0.61%) Android
3 2 (0.61%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.31%) Solaris
4 1 (0.31%) Windows
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (56.27%) Software Engineering
2 139 (42.51%) CI/CD
3 112 (34.25%) Agile
4 109 (33.33%) Microservices
5 75 (22.94%) DevOps
6 67 (20.49%) Test Automation
7 53 (16.21%) Event-Driven
8 43 (13.15%) TDD
9 42 (12.84%) Containerisation
10 41 (12.54%) SDLC
11 39 (11.93%) Event-Driven Architecture
11 39 (11.93%) Full-Stack Development
12 38 (11.62%) AI
12 38 (11.62%) Problem-Solving
13 35 (10.70%) Observability
13 35 (10.70%) Scrum
14 32 (9.79%) Unit Testing
15 31 (9.48%) Front End Development
16 30 (9.17%) Clean Code
17 25 (7.65%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 327 (100.00%) Java
2 72 (22.02%) SQL
3 40 (12.23%) Python
4 25 (7.65%) Kotlin
5 24 (7.34%) JavaScript
5 24 (7.34%) TypeScript
6 14 (4.28%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.53%) C#
7 5 (1.53%) C++
8 4 (1.22%) Bash
8 4 (1.22%) Groovy
8 4 (1.22%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.22%) PowerShell
8 4 (1.22%) Ruby
9 3 (0.92%) Go
10 2 (0.61%) Ada
10 2 (0.61%) Scala
10 2 (0.61%) Swift
11 1 (0.31%) Korn
11 1 (0.31%) Perl
Qualifications
1 78 (23.85%) Security Cleared
2 71 (21.71%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (4.28%) Degree
5 9 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.92%) DV Cleared
6 3 (0.92%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.31%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.31%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (12.54%) QA
2 9 (2.75%) ISO 20022
3 5 (1.53%) SEPA
4 4 (1.22%) GDPR
4 4 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.92%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.92%) Data Quality
5 3 (0.92%) ISO 15022
5 3 (0.92%) SLA
6 2 (0.61%) Def Stans
6 2 (0.61%) IEC 61508
7 1 (0.31%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.31%) PSD2
7 1 (0.31%) WCAG
System Software
1 81 (24.77%) 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
1 106 (32.42%) Kubernetes
2 15 (4.59%) Argo
3 7 (2.14%) Kibana
4 6 (1.83%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.53%) Ansible
6 3 (0.92%) Grafana
6 3 (0.92%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.31%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 25 (7.65%) Oracle
2 13 (3.98%) Red Hat
3 11 (3.36%) Microsoft
4 7 (2.14%) Google
5 5 (1.53%) Confluent
5 5 (1.53%) IBM
5 5 (1.53%) Splunk
6 4 (1.22%) Databricks
6 4 (1.22%) Dynatrace
6 4 (1.22%) SAP
7 3 (0.92%) FIS
7 3 (0.92%) Spotify
8 2 (0.61%) Checkmarx
8 2 (0.61%) MKS
8 2 (0.61%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.61%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.31%) Ariba
9 1 (0.31%) Concur
9 1 (0.31%) Solace
9 1 (0.31%) VMware