Java Engineer Contract Job Trends

Java Engineer
UK

The median Java Engineer daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 March 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 366 387 459
Rank change year-on-year +21 +72 -62
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 257 140 140
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 0.47% 0.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.67% 0.51% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 96 92
10th Percentile £362 £323 £400
25th Percentile £416 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £585 £542
Median % change year-on-year -5.98% +7.93% -9.67%
75th Percentile £625 £813 £678
90th Percentile £800 £875 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £480 £475
% change year-on-year +3.65% +1.05% -18.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 9 4
10th Percentile £51.25 £37.95 £61.38
25th Percentile £52.50 £57.50 £65.31
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -7.14% +6.70%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% +0.98%

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 38,312 27,714 41,419
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.84% 92.81% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,044 17,552 27,221
10th Percentile £310 £290 £275
25th Percentile £409 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £487
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.46% -2.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,352 838 2,415
10th Percentile £14.83 £16.25 £13.05
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £34.31 £34.08
Median % change year-on-year -2.35% +0.66% -15.85%
75th Percentile £64.03 £64.74 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.33 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year - -7.14% -9.68%

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 3 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 3 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Java Engineer in the UK

Java Engineer
Top 15 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 3 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 +6 221 £540 -10.00% 120
UK excluding London +12 131 £498 +3.65% 86
London -26 112 £558 -7.08% 51
Work from Home -1 75 £525 -32.26% 42
North of England -31 36 £500 +9.29% 18
Midlands -28 28 £469 -10.67% 8
West Midlands -26 26 £469 -10.67% 2
Scotland +29 23 £600 +26.32% 6
North West -17 22 £475 - 8
South West -9 21 £550 -1.35% 16
South East -10 21 £370 -43.08% 30
North East -5 8 £575 +47.44% 3
Yorkshire -60 6 £523 -0.48% 7
Wales -4 2 £388 +96.20% 2
East Midlands - 2 £313 - 6

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

For the 6 months to 3 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.

1 257 (100.00%) Java
2 119 (46.30%) Software Engineering
3 112 (43.58%) Spring
4 97 (37.74%) Spring Boot
5 85 (33.07%) AWS
6 84 (32.68%) Microservices
7 81 (31.52%) CI/CD
8 78 (30.35%) Kubernetes
9 70 (27.24%) Agile
10 48 (18.68%) Kafka
11 47 (18.29%) Azure
12 46 (17.90%) DevOps
13 45 (17.51%) Docker
14 40 (15.56%) Full-Stack Development
15 39 (15.18%) TDD
16 36 (14.01%) Security Cleared
17 35 (13.62%) SQL
18 34 (13.23%) Containerisation
19 33 (12.84%) SC Cleared
20 32 (12.45%) Test Automation
21 31 (12.06%) Python
22 29 (11.28%) Jenkins
22 29 (11.28%) Problem-Solving
22 29 (11.28%) QA
23 28 (10.89%) React
24 26 (10.12%) Event-Driven
24 26 (10.12%) Git
24 26 (10.12%) GitLab
24 26 (10.12%) Gradle
24 26 (10.12%) RESTful

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 (3.11%) Apache
2 4 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (1.56%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.56%) JBoss
2 4 (1.56%) WebLogic
3 3 (1.17%) Confluence
4 2 (0.78%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.39%) Camunda
5 1 (0.39%) Ethereum
5 1 (0.39%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 1 (0.39%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 85 (33.07%) AWS
2 47 (18.29%) Azure
3 17 (6.61%) AWS Lambda
3 17 (6.61%) Serverless
4 16 (6.23%) Amazon S3
5 15 (5.84%) GCP
5 15 (5.84%) GitHub
6 13 (5.06%) Amazon EC2
6 13 (5.06%) Amazon ECS
7 10 (3.89%) OpenShift
8 9 (3.50%) AWS Step Functions
8 9 (3.50%) GitHub Actions
9 8 (3.11%) Amazon Kinesis
9 8 (3.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (2.33%) Cloud Computing
10 6 (2.33%) Snowflake
11 4 (1.56%) AWS CodePipeline
11 4 (1.56%) dbt
11 4 (1.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.17%) MQTT
2 2 (0.78%) HTTP
3 1 (0.39%) FTP
3 1 (0.39%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.39%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.39%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (9.34%) MongoDB
1 24 (9.34%) PostgreSQL
2 13 (5.06%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (4.67%) MySQL
4 11 (4.28%) Apache Cassandra
5 9 (3.50%) NoSQL
6 8 (3.11%) Big Data
6 8 (3.11%) DynamoDB
6 8 (3.11%) Hadoop
7 4 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
7 4 (1.56%) Apache Arrow
7 4 (1.56%) Apache Iceberg
7 4 (1.56%) Apache Ignite
7 4 (1.56%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.56%) Dremio
7 4 (1.56%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.56%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.17%) BigQuery
8 3 (1.17%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.17%) HBase
Development Applications
1 29 (11.28%) Jenkins
2 26 (10.12%) Git
2 26 (10.12%) GitLab
2 26 (10.12%) Gradle
3 25 (9.73%) JUnit
4 17 (6.61%) Cucumber
5 16 (6.23%) IntelliJ
6 10 (3.89%) Maven
6 10 (3.89%) Selenium
7 7 (2.72%) JIRA
7 7 (2.72%) JMeter
7 7 (2.72%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (1.95%) Eclipse
8 5 (1.95%) Postman
9 4 (1.56%) Mockito
10 3 (1.17%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.17%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.78%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.78%) Gatling
12 1 (0.39%) JBehave
General
1 61 (23.74%) Finance
2 36 (14.01%) Social Skills
3 24 (9.34%) Banking
4 20 (7.78%) Front Office
5 16 (6.23%) Public Sector
6 9 (3.50%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.72%) Analytical Skills
8 4 (1.56%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.17%) Back Office
10 2 (0.78%) Law
10 2 (0.78%) Retail
11 1 (0.39%) Military
11 1 (0.39%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (43.58%) Spring
2 97 (37.74%) Spring Boot
3 48 (18.68%) Kafka
4 28 (10.89%) React
5 26 (10.12%) RESTful
6 19 (7.39%) REST
7 17 (6.61%) GraphQL
8 16 (6.23%) Node.js
9 14 (5.45%) Hibernate
9 14 (5.45%) Middleware
10 12 (4.67%) OpenTelemetry
11 11 (4.28%) Swagger
12 9 (3.50%) AngularJS
12 9 (3.50%) Redux
13 8 (3.11%) JSON
14 7 (2.72%) HTML
14 7 (2.72%) Playwright
15 6 (2.33%) gRPC
15 6 (2.33%) OpenAPI
15 6 (2.33%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 32 (12.45%) Cloud Native
2 26 (10.12%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (5.06%) Fixed Income
4 10 (3.89%) Data Protection Act
5 9 (3.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 8 (3.11%) Derivative
6 8 (3.11%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.33%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.95%) Equities
8 5 (1.95%) Hedge funds
8 5 (1.95%) Legacy Applications
8 5 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.95%) Product Ownership
8 5 (1.95%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (1.56%) Mobile App
9 4 (1.56%) Pricing Data
10 2 (0.78%) Algorithms
10 2 (0.78%) Data Structures
10 2 (0.78%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.78%) Linux
2 10 (3.89%) Unix
3 1 (0.39%) SUSE
3 1 (0.39%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.39%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (46.30%) Software Engineering
2 84 (32.68%) Microservices
3 81 (31.52%) CI/CD
4 70 (27.24%) Agile
5 46 (17.90%) DevOps
6 40 (15.56%) Full-Stack Development
7 39 (15.18%) TDD
8 34 (13.23%) Containerisation
9 32 (12.45%) Test Automation
10 29 (11.28%) Problem-Solving
11 26 (10.12%) Event-Driven
12 20 (7.78%) Software Testing
13 19 (7.39%) Clean Code
13 19 (7.39%) Scrum
14 18 (7.00%) Mentoring
14 18 (7.00%) Observability
15 17 (6.61%) Code Quality
16 16 (6.23%) Fintech
16 16 (6.23%) Migration
17 15 (5.84%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 257 (100.00%) Java
2 35 (13.62%) SQL
3 31 (12.06%) Python
4 20 (7.78%) TypeScript
5 19 (7.39%) JavaScript
6 17 (6.61%) Kotlin
7 12 (4.67%) Go
8 8 (3.11%) Ada
9 5 (1.95%) PL/SQL
9 5 (1.95%) Scala
10 4 (1.56%) C++
11 3 (1.17%) C#
12 2 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.39%) Rust
13 1 (0.39%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 36 (14.01%) Security Cleared
2 33 (12.84%) SC Cleared
3 8 (3.11%) Degree
4 6 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.17%) OCP
6 3 (1.17%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.78%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.78%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.39%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.39%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (11.28%) QA
2 8 (3.11%) Def Stans
2 8 (3.11%) IEC 61508
3 6 (2.33%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.78%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.78%) ISO 15022
4 2 (0.78%) ISO 20022
4 2 (0.78%) WCAG
5 1 (0.39%) GDPR
System Software
1 45 (17.51%) Docker
Systems Management
1 78 (30.35%) Kubernetes
2 22 (8.56%) Terraform
3 18 (7.00%) Grafana
4 8 (3.11%) Ansible
5 4 (1.56%) Argo
5 4 (1.56%) Progress Chef
5 4 (1.56%) Puppet
6 1 (0.39%) Kibana
6 1 (0.39%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (3.50%) Oracle
2 8 (3.11%) Google
3 7 (2.72%) Splunk
4 6 (2.33%) Microsoft
5 5 (1.95%) Databricks
6 4 (1.56%) VMware
6 4 (1.56%) webMethods
7 3 (1.17%) IBM
7 3 (1.17%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.17%) Solace
8 2 (0.78%) Dynatrace
8 2 (0.78%) New Relic
8 2 (0.78%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.39%) Ab Initio
9 1 (0.39%) Actian
9 1 (0.39%) Adobe
9 1 (0.39%) Calypso
9 1 (0.39%) Okta
9 1 (0.39%) Teradata
9 1 (0.39%) Virgin Media