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 12 September 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 368 348 300
Rank change year-on-year -20 -48 +171
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 331 223 288
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.68% 0.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.66% 0.74% 0.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 208 162 212
10th Percentile £332 £382 £450
25th Percentile £434 £502 £520
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £738
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% -18.64% +25.00%
75th Percentile £600 £825 £850
90th Percentile £653 £849 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +4.06% -1.50% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 7 26
10th Percentile £65.00 £39.50 £66.25
25th Percentile £68.13 £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 50,382 30,069 35,903
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.09% 93.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,936 18,968 22,276
10th Percentile £325 £280 £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 £621 £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 3,746 1,571 1,738
10th Percentile £14.58 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.04 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.33 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.59
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.83% +12.32%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -28 306 £525 -22.22% 368
UK excluding London +1 160 £513 +4.06% 211
London -74 150 £525 -30.00% 219
Work from Home -86 98 £475 -36.67% 194
North of England -10 72 £500 +60.36% 57
North West -18 36 £540 +77.05% 32
Midlands -22 36 £575 +9.52% 21
West Midlands -24 30 £585 +10.38% 14
South East -43 24 £500 - 17
Yorkshire -23 23 £488 +53.01% 19
East of England -8 18 £570 -5.00% 5
North East - 13 £640 - 6
South West -34 11 £484 -12.05% 31
East Midlands -14 6 £400 +26.98% 7
Wales - 4 - - 1
Northern Ireland +3 3 £275 -41.49% 12
Scotland -37 2 £550 +17.33% 68

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 331 (100.00%) Java
2 188 (56.80%) Software Engineering
3 145 (43.81%) Spring
4 139 (41.99%) CI/CD
5 134 (40.48%) Spring Boot
6 113 (34.14%) Agile
7 111 (33.53%) AWS
8 110 (33.23%) Microservices
9 106 (32.02%) Kubernetes
10 81 (24.47%) Docker
11 78 (23.56%) Security Cleared
12 77 (23.26%) DevOps
13 72 (21.75%) SC Cleared
13 72 (21.75%) SQL
14 71 (21.45%) Kafka
15 66 (19.94%) Test Automation
16 53 (16.01%) Event-Driven
17 50 (15.11%) REST
18 45 (13.60%) TDD
19 42 (12.69%) Containerisation
19 42 (12.69%) SDLC
20 41 (12.39%) Full-Stack Development
20 41 (12.39%) PostgreSQL
20 41 (12.39%) Python
20 41 (12.39%) QA
21 40 (12.08%) Azure
21 40 (12.08%) Git
22 39 (11.78%) AI
22 39 (11.78%) Event-Driven Architecture
23 38 (11.48%) 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 (2.11%) WebLogic
2 6 (1.81%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.51%) Apache
4 3 (0.91%) Confluence
4 3 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.60%) MQSeries
6 1 (0.30%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.30%) nginx
6 1 (0.30%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.30%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.60%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 111 (33.53%) AWS
2 40 (12.08%) Azure
3 31 (9.37%) GCP
4 29 (8.76%) GitHub
5 22 (6.65%) GitHub Actions
6 16 (4.83%) OpenShift
6 16 (4.83%) Serverless
7 15 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (2.42%) Amazon ECS
8 8 (2.42%) Amazon SQS
9 7 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
10 6 (1.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (1.81%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (1.81%) Amazon S3
10 6 (1.81%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 5 (1.51%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 5 (1.51%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.21%) Cloud Run
12 4 (1.21%) GitHub Copilot
12 4 (1.21%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 10 (3.02%) Firewall
1 10 (3.02%) VPN
2 5 (1.51%) HTTP
3 4 (1.21%) Internet
4 1 (0.30%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (12.39%) PostgreSQL
2 25 (7.55%) Relational Database
3 18 (5.44%) NoSQL
4 14 (4.23%) MySQL
5 12 (3.63%) MongoDB
6 11 (3.32%) SQL Server
7 9 (2.72%) DynamoDB
7 9 (2.72%) Elasticsearch
8 8 (2.42%) Couchbase
9 7 (2.11%) Redis
10 6 (1.81%) Apache Cassandra
11 4 (1.21%) Flink
12 3 (0.91%) Big Data
12 3 (0.91%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.91%) Power BI
13 2 (0.60%) HBase
13 2 (0.60%) Oracle Database
13 2 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
13 2 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 1 (0.30%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 40 (12.08%) Git
2 37 (11.18%) JUnit
3 29 (8.76%) GitLab
4 24 (7.25%) Jenkins
5 23 (6.95%) Maven
6 16 (4.83%) Mockito
6 16 (4.83%) SonarQube
7 15 (4.53%) Gradle
8 9 (2.72%) JIRA
9 7 (2.11%) Liquibase
10 6 (1.81%) Bitbucket
10 6 (1.81%) Cucumber
10 6 (1.81%) Selenium
11 5 (1.51%) TeamCity
12 3 (0.91%) Cypress.io
12 3 (0.91%) Flyway
12 3 (0.91%) Gatling
12 3 (0.91%) IntelliJ
12 3 (0.91%) XCUITest
13 2 (0.60%) Artifactory
General
1 84 (25.38%) Finance
2 55 (16.62%) Banking
2 55 (16.62%) Social Skills
3 17 (5.14%) Public Sector
4 12 (3.63%) Front Office
4 12 (3.63%) Manufacturing
5 9 (2.72%) Retail
6 8 (2.42%) Analytical Skills
6 8 (2.42%) Law
7 6 (1.81%) Financial Institution
7 6 (1.81%) Military
8 4 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.21%) Retail Banking
9 3 (0.91%) Automotive
9 3 (0.91%) iGaming
9 3 (0.91%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.60%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.60%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.30%) International Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (43.81%) Spring
2 134 (40.48%) Spring Boot
3 71 (21.45%) Kafka
4 50 (15.11%) REST
5 30 (9.06%) React
6 28 (8.46%) RESTful
7 24 (7.25%) AngularJS
8 20 (6.04%) Terraform
9 16 (4.83%) OpenAPI
10 15 (4.53%) Quarkus
11 12 (3.63%) Swagger
12 11 (3.32%) JPA
13 9 (2.72%) Node.js
13 9 (2.72%) OAuth
14 7 (2.11%) CSS
14 7 (2.11%) Hibernate
14 7 (2.11%) JSON
14 7 (2.11%) Middleware
14 7 (2.11%) RabbitMQ
14 7 (2.11%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 70 (21.15%) Cloud Native
2 50 (15.11%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (4.23%) Greenfield Project
4 11 (3.32%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (3.02%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.11%) AI Agents
7 7 (2.11%) Data Structures
7 7 (2.11%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.81%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 5 (1.51%) Legacy Applications
9 5 (1.51%) Linux Command Line
10 4 (1.21%) Algorithms
10 4 (1.21%) Low-Code
10 4 (1.21%) Public Cloud
10 4 (1.21%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 4 (1.21%) TWAP
10 4 (1.21%) VWAP
Operating Systems
1 19 (5.74%) Linux
2 11 (3.32%) Unix
3 2 (0.60%) Android
3 2 (0.60%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.30%) Solaris
4 1 (0.30%) Windows
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (56.80%) Software Engineering
2 139 (41.99%) CI/CD
3 113 (34.14%) Agile
4 110 (33.23%) Microservices
5 77 (23.26%) DevOps
6 66 (19.94%) Test Automation
7 53 (16.01%) Event-Driven
8 45 (13.60%) TDD
9 42 (12.69%) Containerisation
9 42 (12.69%) SDLC
10 41 (12.39%) Full-Stack Development
11 39 (11.78%) AI
11 39 (11.78%) Event-Driven Architecture
12 38 (11.48%) Problem-Solving
13 36 (10.88%) Scrum
14 35 (10.57%) Observability
15 31 (9.37%) Unit Testing
16 30 (9.06%) Front End Development
17 29 (8.76%) Clean Code
18 26 (7.85%) Code Quality
Programming Languages
1 331 (100.00%) Java
2 72 (21.75%) SQL
3 41 (12.39%) Python
4 25 (7.55%) Kotlin
4 25 (7.55%) TypeScript
5 24 (7.25%) JavaScript
6 14 (4.23%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.51%) C#
7 5 (1.51%) C++
8 4 (1.21%) Bash
8 4 (1.21%) Go
8 4 (1.21%) Groovy
8 4 (1.21%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.21%) PowerShell
8 4 (1.21%) Ruby
9 3 (0.91%) Ada
10 2 (0.60%) Scala
10 2 (0.60%) Swift
11 1 (0.30%) Korn
11 1 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 78 (23.56%) Security Cleared
2 72 (21.75%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.04%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (3.93%) Degree
5 9 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.91%) DV Cleared
6 3 (0.91%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.30%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (12.39%) QA
2 9 (2.72%) ISO 20022
3 5 (1.51%) SEPA
4 4 (1.21%) GDPR
4 4 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.91%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.91%) Data Quality
5 3 (0.91%) Def Stans
5 3 (0.91%) IEC 61508
5 3 (0.91%) ISO 15022
5 3 (0.91%) SLA
6 1 (0.30%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.30%) PSD2
6 1 (0.30%) WCAG
System Software
1 81 (24.47%) Docker
2 1 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (0.30%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
2 1 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
2 1 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 106 (32.02%) Kubernetes
2 15 (4.53%) Argo
3 7 (2.11%) Kibana
4 6 (1.81%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.51%) Ansible
6 3 (0.91%) Grafana
6 3 (0.91%) HAProxy
7 1 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.30%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 25 (7.55%) Oracle
2 13 (3.93%) Red Hat
3 11 (3.32%) Microsoft
4 8 (2.42%) Google
5 5 (1.51%) Confluent
5 5 (1.51%) IBM
5 5 (1.51%) Splunk
6 4 (1.21%) Databricks
6 4 (1.21%) Dynatrace
6 4 (1.21%) SAP
7 3 (0.91%) Checkmarx
7 3 (0.91%) FIS
7 3 (0.91%) Spotify
8 2 (0.60%) MKS
8 2 (0.60%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.60%) ServiceNow
9 1 (0.30%) Ariba
9 1 (0.30%) Concur
9 1 (0.30%) Solace
9 1 (0.30%) VMware