Java Developer Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Java Developer
England > West Midlands

The median Java Developer daily rate in the West Midlands is £522, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 January 2026.

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

 6 months to
12 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 80 105
Rank change year-on-year -44 +25 +41
Contract jobs requiring a Java Developer 16 26 9
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.71% 1.66% 0.51%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.80% 1.79% 0.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 16 8
10th Percentile £500 £438 £409
25th Percentile £500 £488 £581
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £550 £650
Median % change year-on-year -5.09% -15.38% +16.59%
75th Percentile £563 £675 £700
90th Percentile £575 £764 -
England median daily rate £525 £585 £625
% change year-on-year -10.26% -6.40% -7.41%

All Contract IT Job Roles
West Midlands

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the West Midlands. 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 West Midlands with a recognized job title 1,991 1,455 1,650
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 88.10% 92.85% 93.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,273 920 1,098
10th Percentile £261 £206 £220
25th Percentile £400 £381 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £588
90th Percentile £688 £714 £675
England median daily rate £503 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.24% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 56 78
10th Percentile £13.25 £13.95 £15.66
25th Percentile £15.73 £17.00 £17.75
Median hourly rate £25.00 £23.82 £25.48
Median % change year-on-year +4.95% -6.51% +43.78%
75th Percentile £30.00 £30.83 £43.75
90th Percentile £50.00 £48.13 £67.50
England median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £43.42
% change year-on-year -21.43% -19.38% +24.04%

Java Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Java Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Java Developer job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Java Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands

Java Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Java Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands

Java Developer
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Java Developer within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 12 January 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
Shropshire - 9 £522 - 2
Birmingham -25 7 £520 -5.45% 3
Java Developer
England

Java Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands

For the 6 months to 12 January 2026, Java Developer 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 across the West Midlands region featuring Java Developer in the job title.

1 16 (100.00%) Java
2 11 (68.75%) Microservices
3 9 (56.25%) AWS
3 9 (56.25%) JUnit
3 9 (56.25%) Spring
4 7 (43.75%) Agile
4 7 (43.75%) Scrum
5 6 (37.50%) Gherkin
5 6 (37.50%) JSON
5 6 (37.50%) MongoDB
5 6 (37.50%) Spring Boot
6 5 (31.25%) Git
6 5 (31.25%) GitLab
6 5 (31.25%) HTML
6 5 (31.25%) SDLC
6 5 (31.25%) Selenium
6 5 (31.25%) Software Engineering
7 4 (25.00%) Apache
7 4 (25.00%) CI/CD
7 4 (25.00%) JPA
7 4 (25.00%) Kafka
7 4 (25.00%) Kibana
7 4 (25.00%) Kubernetes
7 4 (25.00%) Maven
7 4 (25.00%) Mockito
7 4 (25.00%) Playwright
7 4 (25.00%) React
7 4 (25.00%) SQL
8 3 (18.75%) Coaching
8 3 (18.75%) Continuous Integration

Java Developer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 4 (25.00%) Apache
2 2 (12.50%) Apache Spark
2 2 (12.50%) JBoss
2 2 (12.50%) WebLogic
Cloud Services
1 9 (56.25%) AWS
2 2 (12.50%) Cloud Computing
2 2 (12.50%) Snowflake
3 1 (6.25%) Amazon EC2
3 1 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (6.25%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (37.50%) MongoDB
2 2 (12.50%) NoSQL
2 2 (12.50%) Oracle Database
3 1 (6.25%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (6.25%) Relational Database
3 1 (6.25%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 9 (56.25%) JUnit
2 5 (31.25%) Git
2 5 (31.25%) GitLab
2 5 (31.25%) Selenium
3 4 (25.00%) Maven
3 4 (25.00%) Mockito
4 3 (18.75%) Cucumber
5 2 (12.50%) Eclipse
5 2 (12.50%) IntelliJ
General
1 7 (43.75%) Social Skills
2 5 (31.25%) Banking
3 3 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (18.75%) Finance
4 2 (12.50%) Influencing Skills
4 2 (12.50%) Investment Banking
5 1 (6.25%) Public Sector
5 1 (6.25%) Retail Banking
5 1 (6.25%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (56.25%) Spring
2 6 (37.50%) Gherkin
2 6 (37.50%) JSON
2 6 (37.50%) Spring Boot
3 5 (31.25%) HTML
4 4 (25.00%) JPA
4 4 (25.00%) Kafka
4 4 (25.00%) Playwright
4 4 (25.00%) React
5 3 (18.75%) GraalVM
5 3 (18.75%) Hibernate
5 3 (18.75%) JDBC
5 3 (18.75%) OAuth
5 3 (18.75%) OAuth2
5 3 (18.75%) OpenID
5 3 (18.75%) REST
6 2 (12.50%) EJB
6 2 (12.50%) J2SE
6 2 (12.50%) SOAP
6 2 (12.50%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (12.50%) Distributed Systems
1 2 (12.50%) Legacy Systems
1 2 (12.50%) Self-Motivation
2 1 (6.25%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 2 (12.50%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (68.75%) Microservices
2 7 (43.75%) Agile
2 7 (43.75%) Scrum
3 5 (31.25%) SDLC
3 5 (31.25%) Software Engineering
4 4 (25.00%) CI/CD
5 3 (18.75%) Coaching
5 3 (18.75%) Continuous Integration
5 3 (18.75%) Mentoring
5 3 (18.75%) OO
5 3 (18.75%) OOD
5 3 (18.75%) Open Source
5 3 (18.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 3 (18.75%) TDD
5 3 (18.75%) Test Automation
6 2 (12.50%) Containerisation
6 2 (12.50%) Continuous Improvement
6 2 (12.50%) DevOps
6 2 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
6 2 (12.50%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 16 (100.00%) Java
2 4 (25.00%) SQL
3 2 (12.50%) Scala
4 1 (6.25%) JavaScript
4 1 (6.25%) Shell Script
4 1 (6.25%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 3 (18.75%) SC Cleared
1 3 (18.75%) Security Cleared
2 2 (12.50%) Degree
3 1 (6.25%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (18.75%) WCAG
2 1 (6.25%) QA
System Software
1 3 (18.75%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (25.00%) Kibana
1 4 (25.00%) Kubernetes
2 3 (18.75%) Grafana
3 2 (12.50%) Puppet
Vendors
1 3 (18.75%) Oracle
2 2 (12.50%) webMethods
Java Developer jobs