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 23 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 45 68
Rank change year-on-year +3 +23 -29
Contract jobs citing Java 145 48 44
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 5.06% 3.56% 2.23%
As % of the Programming Languages category 20.54% 14.68% 9.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 29 34
10th Percentile £418 £401 £316
25th Percentile £429 £425 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £469 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.99% -10.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £562 £519 £614
90th Percentile £638 £575 £675
England median daily rate £518 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.54% +1.74% -7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 4
10th Percentile - - £40.15
25th Percentile - - £40.38
Median hourly rate - - £48.38
75th Percentile - - £56.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.64% -6.00% -3.85%

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 706 327 442
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.63% 24.24% 22.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 519 202 320
10th Percentile £350 £282 £260
25th Percentile £413 £406 £354
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £476 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.89% +5.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £625 £689 £650
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.90% -2.33% -5.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 11 14
10th Percentile £35.33 £16.75 £17.90
25th Percentile £48.94 £17.00 £32.78
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -64.02% +91.86%
75th Percentile £64.00 £28.47 £58.75
90th Percentile £72.10 £28.75 £68.38
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -5.51%

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 23 March 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 23 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
Shropshire -5 75 £467 -0.39% 4
Birmingham -3 31 £500 - 8
Solihull -4 12 £450 +7.14% 2
Warwickshire -12 7 £514 +14.32% 4
Coventry -20 7 £670 +34.00% 2
Herefordshire -10 6 £575 +9.52%
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 16 (11.03%) WebLogic
2 14 (9.66%) Apache
3 13 (8.97%) Confluence
4 5 (3.45%) Apache Spark
5 4 (2.76%) JBoss
5 4 (2.76%) SAS
6 2 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (1.38%) Drupal
6 2 (1.38%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.69%) Apache Geronimo
7 1 (0.69%) Apache ServiceMix
7 1 (0.69%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.69%) nginx
7 1 (0.69%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.69%) Red Hat Fuse
7 1 (0.69%) SAP EP
7 1 (0.69%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.69%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (1.38%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.69%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.69%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 65 (44.83%) AWS
2 26 (17.93%) Azure
3 17 (11.72%) Amazon S3
4 13 (8.97%) Amazon EC2
5 12 (8.28%) GCP
6 10 (6.90%) Amazon SQS
7 9 (6.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 9 (6.21%) AWS KMS
7 9 (6.21%) Route 53
8 7 (4.83%) Serverless
9 5 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (3.45%) Entra ID
9 5 (3.45%) GitHub
9 5 (3.45%) Tricentis Tosca
10 4 (2.76%) Cloud Computing
10 4 (2.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 4 (2.76%) OpenShift
10 4 (2.76%) Power Platform
11 3 (2.07%) Cloud Composer
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.76%) Network Security
2 1 (0.69%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (16.55%) MongoDB
2 20 (13.79%) PostgreSQL
3 18 (12.41%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (8.28%) Relational Database
5 10 (6.90%) MySQL
6 9 (6.21%) Amazon Aurora
6 9 (6.21%) DynamoDB
7 6 (4.14%) Pentaho
8 5 (3.45%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (3.45%) Hadoop
8 5 (3.45%) Oracle Database
9 4 (2.76%) BigQuery
9 4 (2.76%) InfluxDB
9 4 (2.76%) NoSQL
9 4 (2.76%) Power BI
10 3 (2.07%) Apache Hive
10 3 (2.07%) BusinessObjects
10 3 (2.07%) Impala
11 2 (1.38%) Ingres
11 2 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 36 (24.83%) Git
2 29 (20.00%) JUnit
3 23 (15.86%) Jenkins
4 22 (15.17%) JIRA
5 18 (12.41%) GitLab
5 18 (12.41%) Maven
5 18 (12.41%) Mockito
6 17 (11.72%) Selenium
7 12 (8.28%) Cucumber
8 11 (7.59%) SonarQube
9 7 (4.83%) DbUnit
9 7 (4.83%) jMock
10 6 (4.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 5 (3.45%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (3.45%) Gatling
12 4 (2.76%) Eclipse
12 4 (2.76%) IntelliJ
12 4 (2.76%) JMeter
12 4 (2.76%) Toad
13 3 (2.07%) REST Assured
General
1 39 (26.90%) Social Skills
2 33 (22.76%) Public Sector
3 22 (15.17%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (11.03%) Finance
5 7 (4.83%) Influencing Skills
6 5 (3.45%) Banking
6 5 (3.45%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.38%) Legal
8 2 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.38%) Retail
8 2 (1.38%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.69%) Advertising
9 1 (0.69%) Publishing
9 1 (0.69%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 45 (31.03%) Developer
2 38 (26.21%) Java Developer
3 31 (21.38%) Lead
4 27 (18.62%) Java Engineer
5 16 (11.03%) Data Engineer
6 12 (8.28%) Senior
7 9 (6.21%) Lead Java Engineer
7 9 (6.21%) Software Engineer
8 7 (4.83%) SC Cleared Java Developer
9 6 (4.14%) Analyst
9 6 (4.14%) Lead Data Engineer
9 6 (4.14%) SailPoint Engineer
10 5 (3.45%) Architect
10 5 (3.45%) Senior Developer
10 5 (3.45%) Senior Java Developer
10 5 (3.45%) Site Engineer
10 5 (3.45%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 4 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
11 4 (2.76%) Lead Cloud Engineer
11 4 (2.76%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (40.00%) Spring
2 46 (31.72%) Spring Boot
3 26 (17.93%) REST
4 21 (14.48%) SOAP
5 19 (13.10%) JPA
6 17 (11.72%) Hibernate
7 16 (11.03%) JSON
7 16 (11.03%) RESTful
7 16 (11.03%) Web Services
8 13 (8.97%) Node.js
8 13 (8.97%) Spring Batch
9 12 (8.28%) XML
10 11 (7.59%) Gherkin
10 11 (7.59%) Spring Integration
11 10 (6.90%) Playwright
11 10 (6.90%) React
11 10 (6.90%) Spring Cloud
12 9 (6.21%) ActiveMQ
12 9 (6.21%) AngularJS
12 9 (6.21%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (8.28%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (2.76%) Cloud Native
2 4 (2.76%) Clustering
2 4 (2.76%) Data Centre
2 4 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
2 4 (2.76%) Onboarding
3 3 (2.07%) Product Ownership
4 2 (1.38%) Data Structures
4 2 (1.38%) Derivative
4 2 (1.38%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (1.38%) Mobile App
4 2 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (0.69%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (0.69%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (0.69%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 25 (17.24%) Linux
2 10 (6.90%) Unix
3 6 (4.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (2.76%) Windows
5 3 (2.07%) Android
6 1 (0.69%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (37.93%) Agile
2 46 (31.72%) CI/CD
2 46 (31.72%) Microservices
3 39 (26.90%) Scrum
4 34 (23.45%) Software Engineering
5 32 (22.07%) Problem-Solving
6 26 (17.93%) DevOps
7 24 (16.55%) TDD
8 22 (15.17%) Containerisation
9 21 (14.48%) Continuous Improvement
10 20 (13.79%) Test Automation
11 19 (13.10%) Mentoring
12 17 (11.72%) Stakeholder Management
13 14 (9.66%) Kanban
14 13 (8.97%) Analytics
15 12 (8.28%) BDD
15 12 (8.28%) Collaborative Working
15 12 (8.28%) Continuous Integration
15 12 (8.28%) Roadmaps
16 11 (7.59%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 79 (54.48%) SQL
2 23 (15.86%) PL/SQL
3 22 (15.17%) Python
4 18 (12.41%) Shell Script
5 7 (4.83%) Scala
6 6 (4.14%) Perl
7 5 (3.45%) BeanShell
7 5 (3.45%) JavaScript
7 5 (3.45%) Kotlin
7 5 (3.45%) PowerShell
8 4 (2.76%) Go
9 3 (2.07%) Groovy
9 3 (2.07%) HiveQL
9 3 (2.07%) VB
10 2 (1.38%) PHP
10 2 (1.38%) Ruby
11 1 (0.69%) ABAP
11 1 (0.69%) COBOL
11 1 (0.69%) Swift
11 1 (0.69%) VB6
Qualifications
1 76 (52.41%) Security Cleared
2 70 (48.28%) SC Cleared
3 8 (5.52%) BPSS Clearance
3 8 (5.52%) Degree
4 7 (4.83%) AWS Certification
5 5 (3.45%) CISM
5 5 (3.45%) CISSP
5 5 (3.45%) DV Cleared
5 5 (3.45%) ISTQB
5 5 (3.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 4 (2.76%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.38%) ISEB
7 2 (1.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (8.28%) QA
2 7 (4.83%) WCAG
3 6 (4.14%) Accessibility
3 6 (4.14%) Data Quality
4 3 (2.07%) FATCA
5 2 (1.38%) SLA
System Software
1 25 (17.24%) Docker
2 6 (4.14%) Active Directory
2 6 (4.14%) Postfix
3 3 (2.07%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 37 (25.52%) Kubernetes
2 25 (17.24%) Grafana
3 10 (6.90%) Ansible
3 10 (6.90%) Kibana
3 10 (6.90%) Terraform
4 7 (4.83%) Prometheus
5 6 (4.14%) Puppet
6 4 (2.76%) Progress Chef
7 3 (2.07%) HP ALM
8 2 (1.38%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (1.38%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (1.38%) Podman
9 1 (0.69%) Argo
9 1 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.69%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 27 (18.62%) Oracle
2 17 (11.72%) ServiceNow
3 9 (6.21%) Google
3 9 (6.21%) Jaspersoft
4 8 (5.52%) SAP
5 7 (4.83%) Atlassian
5 7 (4.83%) Microsoft
6 6 (4.14%) Red Hat
6 6 (4.14%) Talend
6 6 (4.14%) webMethods
7 4 (2.76%) Denodo
7 4 (2.76%) Splunk
8 3 (2.07%) Ariba
8 3 (2.07%) HP
8 3 (2.07%) Informatica
9 2 (1.38%) Actian
9 2 (1.38%) Calypso
9 2 (1.38%) Dynatrace
9 2 (1.38%) PagerDuty
10 1 (0.69%) MuleSoft