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 13 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 38 56
Rank change year-on-year +2 +18 +1
Contract jobs citing Java 189 100 55
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 5.40% 5.49% 2.88%
As % of the Programming Languages category 25.03% 21.93% 12.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 125 67 42
10th Percentile £413 £400 £425
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -9.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £620 £520 £675
90th Percentile £663 £571 £765
England median daily rate £525 £525 £600
% change year-on-year - -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 19 1
Median hourly rate - £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +197.30%
England median hourly rate £69.50 £50.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +39.00% -28.57% +7.69%

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 755 456 427
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.58% 25.03% 22.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 533 286 273
10th Percentile £369 £314 £313
25th Percentile £416 £413 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £549 £575
90th Percentile £656 £625 £650
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 23 6
10th Percentile £19.65 £30.25 £34.47
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £40.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -11.11% +142.25%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £59.69
90th Percentile - - £67.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 13 September 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 13 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
Shropshire +1 111 £525 +0.96% 22
Birmingham -8 37 £460 -5.64% 46
Solihull +2 29 £475 -5.00% 1
Warwickshire -39 4 £550 - 3
Coventry - 4 £575 - 4
Herefordshire - 2 - -
Worcestershire - 1 £450 - 1
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 (6.88%) Confluence
2 10 (5.29%) WebLogic
3 7 (3.70%) SAS
4 2 (1.06%) NetWeaver
4 2 (1.06%) OpenROAD
4 2 (1.06%) SAP EP
5 1 (0.53%) Apache
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.53%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (2.65%) SAP PSCD
2 2 (1.06%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.53%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 87 (46.03%) AWS
2 26 (13.76%) Azure
3 25 (13.23%) GitHub
4 21 (11.11%) Amazon S3
5 20 (10.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 20 (10.58%) Amazon EC2
6 13 (6.88%) Amazon ECS
6 13 (6.88%) Amazon EKS
6 13 (6.88%) Power Platform
6 13 (6.88%) Serverless
7 12 (6.35%) AWS Lambda
7 12 (6.35%) GitHub Actions
8 9 (4.76%) Amazon SQS
8 9 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (4.23%) AWS KMS
9 8 (4.23%) Route 53
10 6 (3.17%) GitHub Copilot
11 5 (2.65%) GCP
12 4 (2.12%) Azure Monitor
13 3 (1.59%) Amazon OpenSearch
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (13.76%) MongoDB
2 22 (11.64%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (7.41%) Relational Database
4 12 (6.35%) NoSQL
5 11 (5.82%) Power BI
6 10 (5.29%) Metadata
7 8 (4.23%) Amazon Aurora
7 8 (4.23%) Amazon RDS
7 8 (4.23%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (4.23%) DynamoDB
7 8 (4.23%) Pentaho
8 7 (3.70%) Data Lake
8 7 (3.70%) MySQL
9 2 (1.06%) Ingres
9 2 (1.06%) Oracle Database
9 2 (1.06%) ZAP BI
10 1 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
10 1 (0.53%) IDMS
10 1 (0.53%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.53%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 50 (26.46%) Git
2 46 (24.34%) JUnit
3 42 (22.22%) Maven
4 40 (21.16%) Jenkins
5 33 (17.46%) GitLab
6 30 (15.87%) Mockito
6 30 (15.87%) SonarQube
7 22 (11.64%) Selenium
8 19 (10.05%) JIRA
9 17 (8.99%) Gatling
10 16 (8.47%) Cucumber
11 9 (4.76%) Team Foundation Server
11 9 (4.76%) Visual Studio
12 6 (3.17%) Bitbucket Server
12 6 (3.17%) DbUnit
12 6 (3.17%) jMock
12 6 (3.17%) REST Assured
13 4 (2.12%) Serenity BDD
14 3 (1.59%) Toad
15 2 (1.06%) Cypress.io
General
1 57 (30.16%) Social Skills
2 52 (27.51%) Public Sector
3 19 (10.05%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (4.76%) Finance
4 9 (4.76%) Influencing Skills
5 8 (4.23%) Banking
5 8 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.06%) Publishing
7 1 (0.53%) Electronics
7 1 (0.53%) Front Office
7 1 (0.53%) Investment Banking
7 1 (0.53%) Local Government
7 1 (0.53%) Military
7 1 (0.53%) Retail
Job Titles
1 66 (34.92%) Developer
2 48 (25.40%) Java Developer
3 31 (16.40%) Senior
4 30 (15.87%) Java Engineer
5 27 (14.29%) Architect
6 25 (13.23%) Lead
7 20 (10.58%) Senior Developer
8 17 (8.99%) Senior Java Developer
9 14 (7.41%) Quality Engineer
9 14 (7.41%) Scrum Master
10 8 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
11 7 (3.70%) Data Architect
11 7 (3.70%) Java Scrum Master
11 7 (3.70%) Lead Developer
11 7 (3.70%) Lead Java Developer
11 7 (3.70%) Technical Architect
12 6 (3.17%) Lead Java Engineer
12 6 (3.17%) Software Developer
13 5 (2.65%) Analyst
13 5 (2.65%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (43.92%) Spring
2 64 (33.86%) Spring Boot
3 41 (21.69%) REST
4 36 (19.05%) SOAP
5 30 (15.87%) RESTful
6 29 (15.34%) JPA
7 24 (12.70%) Playwright
8 21 (11.11%) AngularJS
9 20 (10.58%) ActiveMQ
9 20 (10.58%) Hibernate
10 19 (10.05%) Spring Cloud
10 19 (10.05%) Web Services
11 18 (9.52%) React
12 13 (6.88%) OpenAPI
13 12 (6.35%) Kafka
13 12 (6.35%) XML
14 11 (5.82%) .NET
15 10 (5.29%) Gherkin
15 10 (5.29%) Node.js
15 10 (5.29%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 41 (21.69%) Cloud Native
2 23 (12.17%) Product Ownership
3 14 (7.41%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (4.23%) Self-Motivation
5 7 (3.70%) Autonomous Agent
5 7 (3.70%) Linux Command Line
6 6 (3.17%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (3.17%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (2.65%) Public Cloud
8 4 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (2.12%) Private Cloud
9 3 (1.59%) Blog
10 2 (1.06%) Low-Code
11 1 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
11 1 (0.53%) Data Structures
11 1 (0.53%) Distributed Architecture
11 1 (0.53%) Legacy Applications
11 1 (0.53%) Legacy Code
11 1 (0.53%) Mobile App
11 1 (0.53%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 17 (8.99%) Linux
2 10 (5.29%) Unix
3 3 (1.59%) Windows
4 1 (0.53%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (53.44%) Agile
2 77 (40.74%) CI/CD
3 75 (39.68%) Microservices
4 70 (37.04%) Scrum
5 60 (31.75%) Test Automation
6 56 (29.63%) DevOps
7 48 (25.40%) Continuous Improvement
8 46 (24.34%) Containerisation
9 44 (23.28%) TDD
10 40 (21.16%) Stakeholder Management
11 38 (20.11%) Technical Leadership
12 34 (17.99%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (16.40%) Test Strategy
14 27 (14.29%) Code Quality
14 27 (14.29%) Software Engineering
15 25 (13.23%) Software Testing
16 24 (12.70%) BDD
16 24 (12.70%) Sprint Planning
17 22 (11.64%) Coaching
17 22 (11.64%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 43 (22.75%) SQL
2 24 (12.70%) JavaScript
3 18 (9.52%) TypeScript
4 16 (8.47%) Python
5 12 (6.35%) Shell Script
6 11 (5.82%) VB
6 11 (5.82%) VB6
7 9 (4.76%) VBA
8 8 (4.23%) PL/SQL
9 7 (3.70%) ABAP
10 6 (3.17%) C#
11 5 (2.65%) Kotlin
12 4 (2.12%) COBOL
13 3 (1.59%) Groovy
14 2 (1.06%) C
14 2 (1.06%) C++
14 2 (1.06%) R
15 1 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.53%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 92 (48.68%) Security Cleared
2 85 (44.97%) SC Cleared
3 55 (29.10%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (6.88%) AWS Certification
5 5 (2.65%) ISTQB
6 3 (1.59%) Degree
6 3 (1.59%) ISEB
6 3 (1.59%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.06%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (1.06%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.53%) Six Sigma Black Belt
8 1 (0.53%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (12.70%) QA
2 18 (9.52%) Accessibility
3 15 (7.94%) WCAG
4 8 (4.23%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.53%) ISO 14001
5 1 (0.53%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 57 (30.16%) Docker
2 5 (2.65%) Postfix
3 1 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 58 (30.69%) Kubernetes
2 24 (12.70%) Grafana
3 18 (9.52%) Prometheus
4 10 (5.29%) Kibana
5 8 (4.23%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.53%) Ansible
6 1 (0.53%) Control-M
Vendors
1 26 (13.76%) Oracle
2 16 (8.47%) Microsoft
3 11 (5.82%) SAP
4 8 (4.23%) Denodo
4 8 (4.23%) Jaspersoft
4 8 (4.23%) webMethods
5 6 (3.17%) Atlassian
6 4 (2.12%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.59%) Sonatype
8 2 (1.06%) Actian
8 2 (1.06%) Google
8 2 (1.06%) Splunk
9 1 (0.53%) Ariba
9 1 (0.53%) IBM
9 1 (0.53%) MuleSoft
9 1 (0.53%) Pega
9 1 (0.53%) Salesforce
9 1 (0.53%) Talend