Java Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Java
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Java skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 31 65
Rank change year-on-year -12 +34 -12
Contract jobs citing Java 160 92 44
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.70% 5.71% 2.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 20.73% 22.77% 10.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 60 32
10th Percentile £416 £356 £365
25th Percentile £428 £444 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £493 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.93% -10.45% +1.85%
75th Percentile £551 £523 £589
90th Percentile £659 £553 £649
England median daily rate £525 £530 £600
% change year-on-year -0.94% -11.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 17 5
10th Percentile - - £40.20
25th Percentile - £33.91 £40.50
Median hourly rate - £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +197.30%
75th Percentile - - £56.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £69.75 £50.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +39.50% -28.57% +6.70%

All Programming Languages
West Midlands

Java falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 772 404 424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.70% 25.09% 21.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 570 251 300
10th Percentile £358 £250 £260
25th Percentile £413 £388 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £455 £460
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% -1.09% -8.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £575
90th Percentile £625 £645 £638
England median daily rate £520 £520 £540
% change year-on-year +0.05% -3.75% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 22 15
10th Percentile £21.25 £28.18 £36.36
25th Percentile £38.75 £33.91 £47.75
Median hourly rate £58.00 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% -13.04% +133.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.75
90th Percentile - - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +5.69% -5.38% +4.00%

Java
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

Java job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Java
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Java.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Java

Java
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Java in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 17 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Java in the West Midlands

Java
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Java.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Java

Java
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 within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 17 July 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 -11 75 £490 +0.51% 23
Birmingham -15 43 £475 -5.00% 4
Solihull -7 22 £450 +7.14% 2
Coventry - 6 £575 - 3
Warwickshire -35 5 £539 +7.89% 1
Herefordshire -1 4 £625 +19.05%
Worcestershire - 1 £450 -
Java
England

Java
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 13 (8.13%) Confluence
2 11 (6.88%) WebLogic
3 6 (3.75%) Apache
4 5 (3.13%) SAS
5 2 (1.25%) OpenROAD
5 2 (1.25%) OpenStack
5 2 (1.25%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.63%) Apache Geronimo
6 1 (0.63%) Apache ServiceMix
6 1 (0.63%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.63%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.63%) Red Hat Fuse
6 1 (0.63%) SAP EP
6 1 (0.63%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.63%) WebSphere
Applications
1 7 (4.38%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (3.13%) SAP PSCD
2 1 (0.63%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.63%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 59 (36.88%) AWS
2 29 (18.13%) Azure
3 25 (15.63%) Amazon S3
4 22 (13.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 22 (13.75%) Amazon EC2
5 19 (11.88%) Amazon SQS
6 17 (10.63%) AWS KMS
6 17 (10.63%) Route 53
7 14 (8.75%) GitHub
8 12 (7.50%) Azure DevOps
9 11 (6.88%) Power Platform
10 8 (5.00%) GCP
10 8 (5.00%) Serverless
11 7 (4.38%) Amazon ECS
11 7 (4.38%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
14 4 (2.50%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 3 (1.88%) Azure Monitor
15 3 (1.88%) Cloud Composer
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.63%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (16.25%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (11.25%) MongoDB
3 17 (10.63%) Amazon Aurora
3 17 (10.63%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (10.63%) DynamoDB
4 13 (8.13%) Relational Database
5 9 (5.63%) Power BI
6 8 (5.00%) Pentaho
7 7 (4.38%) MySQL
8 4 (2.50%) BigQuery
8 4 (2.50%) Ingres
8 4 (2.50%) Metadata
8 4 (2.50%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.88%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (1.88%) Apache Hive
9 3 (1.88%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (1.88%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.88%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.88%) Impala
9 3 (1.88%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 36 (22.50%) Jenkins
2 35 (21.88%) Git
3 28 (17.50%) JUnit
4 24 (15.00%) Maven
5 21 (13.13%) Mockito
5 21 (13.13%) SonarQube
6 17 (10.63%) JIRA
7 16 (10.00%) GitLab
8 13 (8.13%) DbUnit
8 13 (8.13%) jMock
8 13 (8.13%) Selenium
9 11 (6.88%) Bitbucket Server
10 8 (5.00%) Gatling
10 8 (5.00%) REST Assured
11 6 (3.75%) Cucumber
11 6 (3.75%) Serenity BDD
12 5 (3.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 5 (3.13%) Team Foundation Server
13 4 (2.50%) JMeter
13 4 (2.50%) Visual Studio
General
1 46 (28.75%) Public Sector
2 35 (21.88%) Social Skills
3 21 (13.13%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (5.63%) Finance
5 8 (5.00%) Banking
6 5 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.88%) Retail
8 2 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.63%) Advertising
9 1 (0.63%) Electronics
9 1 (0.63%) Front Office
9 1 (0.63%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.63%) Local Government
9 1 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.63%) Publishing
9 1 (0.63%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 60 (37.50%) Developer
2 47 (29.38%) Java Developer
3 24 (15.00%) Lead
4 16 (10.00%) Java Engineer
5 15 (9.38%) Senior
6 14 (8.75%) Architect
7 13 (8.13%) Data Engineer
8 11 (6.88%) Senior Developer
9 10 (6.25%) Senior Java Developer
10 9 (5.63%) SC Cleared Java Developer
11 8 (5.00%) Software Engineer
12 7 (4.38%) Scrum Master
13 6 (3.75%) Technical Architect
13 6 (3.75%) Test Engineer
14 5 (3.13%) Consultant
14 5 (3.13%) Lead Data Engineer
14 5 (3.13%) Lead Java Engineer
14 5 (3.13%) SAP Consultant
14 5 (3.13%) SAP PI Consultant
15 4 (2.50%) Lead Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (38.75%) Spring
2 51 (31.88%) Spring Boot
3 38 (23.75%) REST
4 31 (19.38%) SOAP
5 22 (13.75%) Web Services
6 21 (13.13%) JPA
7 20 (12.50%) Hibernate
7 20 (12.50%) RESTful
8 19 (11.88%) ActiveMQ
8 19 (11.88%) AngularJS
8 19 (11.88%) Spring Batch
8 19 (11.88%) Spring Cloud
8 19 (11.88%) Spring Integration
9 17 (10.63%) Node.js
10 13 (8.13%) Kafka
10 13 (8.13%) PowerMock
11 12 (7.50%) Playwright
11 12 (7.50%) React
12 11 (6.88%) Bootstrap
13 8 (5.00%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 23 (14.38%) Distributed Systems
2 16 (10.00%) Cloud Native
3 10 (6.25%) Product Ownership
4 6 (3.75%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (2.50%) Clustering
5 4 (2.50%) Data Centre
6 3 (1.88%) Blog
6 3 (1.88%) Linux Command Line
7 2 (1.25%) Autonomous Agent
7 2 (1.25%) Low-Code
7 2 (1.25%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.25%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.63%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.63%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.63%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (0.63%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.63%) Legacy Code
8 1 (0.63%) Mobile Banking
8 1 (0.63%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 28 (17.50%) Linux
2 16 (10.00%) Unix
3 5 (3.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.88%) Android
5 1 (0.63%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.63%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (40.00%) Agile
2 56 (35.00%) CI/CD
3 53 (33.13%) Microservices
4 51 (31.88%) DevOps
5 44 (27.50%) Scrum
6 37 (23.13%) TDD
7 31 (19.38%) Containerisation
7 31 (19.38%) Problem-Solving
8 30 (18.75%) Continuous Improvement
9 26 (16.25%) Stakeholder Management
10 25 (15.63%) BDD
11 24 (15.00%) Test Automation
12 22 (13.75%) Kanban
12 22 (13.75%) Software Engineering
12 22 (13.75%) Technical Leadership
13 19 (11.88%) Test Strategy
14 14 (8.75%) Analytics
15 13 (8.13%) Continuous Integration
15 13 (8.13%) Decision-Making
15 13 (8.13%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 62 (38.75%) SQL
2 23 (14.38%) Python
3 20 (12.50%) PL/SQL
4 12 (7.50%) JavaScript
4 12 (7.50%) Shell Script
5 9 (5.63%) VB
6 7 (4.38%) VB6
7 6 (3.75%) ABAP
7 6 (3.75%) Kotlin
8 5 (3.13%) C#
8 5 (3.13%) Perl
9 4 (2.50%) VBA
10 3 (1.88%) HiveQL
10 3 (1.88%) TypeScript
11 2 (1.25%) C
11 2 (1.25%) C++
11 2 (1.25%) Groovy
12 1 (0.63%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.63%) BeanShell
12 1 (0.63%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 92 (57.50%) Security Cleared
2 83 (51.88%) SC Cleared
3 16 (10.00%) BPSS Clearance
4 9 (5.63%) AWS Certification
5 6 (3.75%) Azure Certification
5 6 (3.75%) Degree
6 5 (3.13%) ISTQB
7 4 (2.50%) DV Cleared
8 3 (1.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (1.25%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 1 (0.63%) CISM
10 1 (0.63%) CISSP
10 1 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.63%) Six Sigma Black Belt
10 1 (0.63%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (10.00%) QA
2 8 (5.00%) Accessibility
3 7 (4.38%) Data Quality
4 4 (2.50%) WCAG
5 3 (1.88%) FATCA
6 2 (1.25%) SLA
7 1 (0.63%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.63%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 40 (25.00%) Docker
2 11 (6.88%) Postfix
3 3 (1.88%) HDFS
4 1 (0.63%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.63%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 30 (18.75%) Kubernetes
2 23 (14.38%) Grafana
3 7 (4.38%) Prometheus
3 7 (4.38%) Terraform
4 4 (2.50%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (1.88%) Ansible
6 2 (1.25%) HP ALM
6 2 (1.25%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (1.25%) Kibana
6 2 (1.25%) Podman
Vendors
1 22 (13.75%) Oracle
2 17 (10.63%) Jaspersoft
3 16 (10.00%) Microsoft
4 13 (8.13%) Atlassian
5 9 (5.63%) SAP
6 8 (5.00%) Google
6 8 (5.00%) ServiceNow
7 6 (3.75%) Denodo
7 6 (3.75%) Talend
8 5 (3.13%) Red Hat
8 5 (3.13%) webMethods
9 4 (2.50%) Actian
9 4 (2.50%) Splunk
10 3 (1.88%) Informatica
11 2 (1.25%) HP
11 2 (1.25%) Sonatype
12 1 (0.63%) Ariba
12 1 (0.63%) MuleSoft
12 1 (0.63%) Sage
12 1 (0.63%) Zscaler