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 22 February 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 369 392 459
Rank change year-on-year +23 +67 -81
Contract jobs requiring a Java Engineer 246 141 142
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.46% 0.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.66% 0.49% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 161 95 94
10th Percentile £360 £335 £397
25th Percentile £413 £472 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £586 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% +6.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £813 £684
90th Percentile £700 £883 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £480 £475
% change year-on-year +1.56% +1.05% -18.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 9 4
10th Percentile £50.25 £37.95 £61.38
25th Percentile £52.50 £57.50 £65.31
Median hourly rate £60.00 £65.00 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% -7.14% +6.70%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £66.25
% change year-on-year -15.38% -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 37,410 28,560 41,523
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.75% 92.90% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,490 17,819 27,326
10th Percentile £306 £290 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,280 830 2,340
10th Percentile £14.63 £16.25 £13.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.50 £16.45
Median hourly rate £31.76 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.27% - -10.26%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.31 £60.06
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.95
% change year-on-year -7.69% -9.60% +0.84%

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 +5 208 £525 -12.50% 72
UK excluding London +5 124 £488 +1.56% 55
London -25 108 £558 -7.08% 35
Work from Home +8 74 £500 -35.48% 37
North of England -35 35 £489 +6.83% 7
Midlands -23 28 £469 -10.67% 7
West Midlands -35 26 £469 -10.67% 4
Scotland +19 25 £600 +26.32% 6
North West -7 22 £475 - 2
South East -10 19 £365 -43.85% 22
South West -23 15 £425 -23.77% 13
North East -13 8 £575 +47.44% 2
Yorkshire -60 5 £511 -2.62% 3
Wales -3 2 £388 +96.20%
East Midlands - 2 £313 - 3

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

For the 6 months to 22 February 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.

1 246 (100.00%) Java
2 112 (45.53%) Software Engineering
3 111 (45.12%) Spring
4 96 (39.02%) Spring Boot
5 83 (33.74%) CI/CD
6 82 (33.33%) Microservices
7 80 (32.52%) AWS
8 79 (32.11%) Kubernetes
9 68 (27.64%) Agile
10 46 (18.70%) Azure
11 44 (17.89%) DevOps
11 44 (17.89%) Docker
12 40 (16.26%) Kafka
13 39 (15.85%) TDD
14 37 (15.04%) Full-Stack Development
15 35 (14.23%) SQL
16 33 (13.41%) Containerisation
17 32 (13.01%) Security Cleared
17 32 (13.01%) Test Automation
18 30 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
19 29 (11.79%) QA
19 29 (11.79%) SC Cleared
20 28 (11.38%) Jenkins
20 28 (11.38%) Python
21 27 (10.98%) Git
22 25 (10.16%) Event-Driven
22 25 (10.16%) GitLab
22 25 (10.16%) Gradle
22 25 (10.16%) JUnit
22 25 (10.16%) 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 9 (3.66%) Apache
2 5 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (1.63%) Apache Spark
3 4 (1.63%) JBoss
3 4 (1.63%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.22%) Confluence
5 2 (0.81%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.41%) Camunda
6 1 (0.41%) Ethereum
6 1 (0.41%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 1 (0.41%) Notion
Business Applications
1 2 (0.81%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 80 (32.52%) AWS
2 46 (18.70%) Azure
3 17 (6.91%) AWS Lambda
3 17 (6.91%) Serverless
4 16 (6.50%) GCP
5 15 (6.10%) Amazon S3
6 14 (5.69%) GitHub
7 13 (5.28%) Amazon EC2
7 13 (5.28%) Amazon ECS
8 10 (4.07%) OpenShift
9 9 (3.66%) AWS CloudFormation
9 9 (3.66%) AWS Step Functions
10 8 (3.25%) Amazon Kinesis
11 7 (2.85%) Cloud Computing
11 7 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (2.85%) Snowflake
12 5 (2.03%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.03%) dbt
13 4 (1.63%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 3 (1.22%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.22%) MQTT
2 2 (0.81%) HTTP
3 1 (0.41%) FTP
3 1 (0.41%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.41%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.41%) SSL
3 1 (0.41%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.41%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.94%) MongoDB
1 22 (8.94%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (5.69%) MySQL
3 13 (5.28%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (4.07%) Apache Cassandra
5 8 (3.25%) Big Data
5 8 (3.25%) Hadoop
5 8 (3.25%) NoSQL
6 7 (2.85%) DynamoDB
7 5 (2.03%) Amazon Athena
7 5 (2.03%) Apache Arrow
7 5 (2.03%) Apache Iceberg
7 5 (2.03%) Apache Ignite
7 5 (2.03%) Data Lake
7 5 (2.03%) Dremio
7 5 (2.03%) Relational Database
8 3 (1.22%) BigQuery
8 3 (1.22%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (1.22%) HBase
8 3 (1.22%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 28 (11.38%) Jenkins
2 27 (10.98%) Git
3 25 (10.16%) GitLab
3 25 (10.16%) Gradle
3 25 (10.16%) JUnit
4 16 (6.50%) Cucumber
4 16 (6.50%) IntelliJ
5 10 (4.07%) Maven
5 10 (4.07%) Selenium
6 7 (2.85%) JIRA
6 7 (2.85%) JMeter
6 7 (2.85%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (2.03%) Eclipse
7 5 (2.03%) Postman
8 4 (1.63%) Mockito
9 3 (1.22%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.22%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.81%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.81%) Gatling
11 1 (0.41%) CircleCI
General
1 55 (22.36%) Finance
2 37 (15.04%) Social Skills
3 22 (8.94%) Banking
4 17 (6.91%) Front Office
5 14 (5.69%) Public Sector
6 10 (4.07%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.85%) Analytical Skills
8 4 (1.63%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.22%) Back Office
10 2 (0.81%) Retail
11 1 (0.41%) Law
11 1 (0.41%) Military
11 1 (0.41%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (45.12%) Spring
2 96 (39.02%) Spring Boot
3 40 (16.26%) Kafka
4 25 (10.16%) RESTful
5 22 (8.94%) React
6 18 (7.32%) REST
7 14 (5.69%) Hibernate
8 12 (4.88%) Node.js
8 12 (4.88%) OpenTelemetry
9 11 (4.47%) GraphQL
9 11 (4.47%) Swagger
10 10 (4.07%) AngularJS
10 10 (4.07%) Middleware
11 8 (3.25%) JSON
12 7 (2.85%) gRPC
12 7 (2.85%) HTML
12 7 (2.85%) Playwright
13 6 (2.44%) OpenAPI
14 5 (2.03%) Pandas
14 5 (2.03%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 30 (12.20%) Cloud Native
2 25 (10.16%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (4.07%) Fixed Income
3 10 (4.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 9 (3.66%) Derivative
5 8 (3.25%) Data Protection Act
5 8 (3.25%) Onboarding
6 7 (2.85%) Virtual Team
7 6 (2.44%) Equities
7 6 (2.44%) Hedge funds
8 5 (2.03%) Legacy Applications
8 5 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (2.03%) Pricing Data
8 5 (2.03%) Product Ownership
8 5 (2.03%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.22%) Data Structures
9 3 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.22%) Mobile App
10 2 (0.81%) Algorithms
10 2 (0.81%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 20 (8.13%) Linux
2 10 (4.07%) Unix
3 1 (0.41%) SUSE
3 1 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
3 1 (0.41%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (45.53%) Software Engineering
2 83 (33.74%) CI/CD
3 82 (33.33%) Microservices
4 68 (27.64%) Agile
5 44 (17.89%) DevOps
6 39 (15.85%) TDD
7 37 (15.04%) Full-Stack Development
8 33 (13.41%) Containerisation
9 32 (13.01%) Test Automation
10 30 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
11 25 (10.16%) Event-Driven
12 20 (8.13%) Software Testing
13 19 (7.72%) Clean Code
14 18 (7.32%) Observability
14 18 (7.32%) Scrum
15 17 (6.91%) Mentoring
15 17 (6.91%) Migration
16 16 (6.50%) Fintech
17 15 (6.10%) BDD
18 14 (5.69%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 246 (100.00%) Java
2 35 (14.23%) SQL
3 28 (11.38%) Python
4 19 (7.72%) TypeScript
5 18 (7.32%) JavaScript
6 17 (6.91%) Kotlin
7 9 (3.66%) Go
8 5 (2.03%) PL/SQL
8 5 (2.03%) Scala
9 4 (1.63%) Ada
9 4 (1.63%) C++
10 3 (1.22%) C#
11 2 (0.81%) Rust
11 2 (0.81%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.41%) Ruby
12 1 (0.41%) Solidity
Qualifications
1 32 (13.01%) Security Cleared
2 29 (11.79%) SC Cleared
3 7 (2.85%) Degree
4 6 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.22%) OCP
6 3 (1.22%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.81%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.81%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.41%) AWS Certification
8 1 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.41%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (11.79%) QA
2 6 (2.44%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.63%) Def Stans
3 4 (1.63%) IEC 61508
4 2 (0.81%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.81%) ISO 15022
4 2 (0.81%) ISO 20022
4 2 (0.81%) WCAG
5 1 (0.41%) GDPR
System Software
1 44 (17.89%) Docker
Systems Management
1 79 (32.11%) Kubernetes
2 22 (8.94%) Terraform
3 18 (7.32%) Grafana
4 8 (3.25%) Ansible
5 4 (1.63%) Argo
5 4 (1.63%) Progress Chef
5 4 (1.63%) Puppet
6 1 (0.41%) Kibana
6 1 (0.41%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 9 (3.66%) Google
1 9 (3.66%) Oracle
2 7 (2.85%) Splunk
3 6 (2.44%) Microsoft
4 5 (2.03%) Databricks
5 4 (1.63%) IBM
5 4 (1.63%) VMware
5 4 (1.63%) webMethods
6 3 (1.22%) Red Hat
6 3 (1.22%) Solace
7 2 (0.81%) Dynatrace
7 2 (0.81%) New Relic
7 2 (0.81%) ServiceNow
8 1 (0.41%) Ab Initio
8 1 (0.41%) Actian
8 1 (0.41%) Adobe
8 1 (0.41%) Calypso
8 1 (0.41%) Cisco
8 1 (0.41%) Teradata
8 1 (0.41%) Virgin Media