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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 46 31 72
Rank change year-on-year -15 +41 -23
Contract jobs citing Java 156 92 44
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.56% 5.71% 2.15%
As % of the Programming Languages category 20.26% 22.66% 10.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 59 32
10th Percentile £415 £355 £365
25th Percentile £425 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% -9.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £551 £538 £589
90th Percentile £663 £575 £673
England median daily rate £525 £534 £600
% change year-on-year -1.59% -11.08% -
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 £67.50 £50.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +35.00% -25.93% +2.89%

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 770 406 435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.52% 25.19% 21.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 567 253 305
10th Percentile £358 £251 £260
25th Percentile £413 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +2.22% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £575
90th Percentile £625 £647 £638
England median daily rate £520 £520 £540
% change year-on-year - -3.70% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 22 15
10th Percentile £46.25 £28.18 £36.36
25th Percentile £56.50 £33.91 £47.75
Median hourly rate £59.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.00% -13.04% +133.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.75
90th Percentile £69.77 - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +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 13 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 13 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 -10 75 £490 +0.51% 21
Birmingham -15 41 £475 -5.00% 11
Solihull -3 21 £450 +7.14% 1
Warwickshire -36 6 £539 +7.89%
Coventry - 5 £575 - 3
Herefordshire -1 4 £625 +19.05%
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 (8.33%) Confluence
2 11 (7.05%) WebLogic
3 6 (3.85%) Apache
4 5 (3.21%) SAS
5 2 (1.28%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.64%) Apache Geronimo
6 1 (0.64%) Apache ServiceMix
6 1 (0.64%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.64%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.64%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.64%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.64%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.64%) Red Hat Fuse
6 1 (0.64%) SAP EP
6 1 (0.64%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.64%) WebSphere
Applications
1 7 (4.49%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (3.21%) SAP PSCD
2 1 (0.64%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.64%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.64%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 56 (35.90%) AWS
2 26 (16.67%) Azure
3 22 (14.10%) Amazon S3
4 20 (12.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 20 (12.82%) Amazon EC2
5 18 (11.54%) Amazon SQS
6 17 (10.90%) AWS KMS
6 17 (10.90%) Route 53
7 12 (7.69%) GitHub
8 10 (6.41%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (5.77%) Power Platform
10 7 (4.49%) GCP
11 5 (3.21%) Serverless
12 4 (2.56%) Amazon ECS
12 4 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (2.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 3 (1.92%) Azure Monitor
13 3 (1.92%) Cloud Composer
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.64%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (16.03%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (11.54%) MongoDB
3 17 (10.90%) Amazon Aurora
3 17 (10.90%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (10.90%) DynamoDB
4 12 (7.69%) Relational Database
5 9 (5.77%) Power BI
6 8 (5.13%) Pentaho
7 7 (4.49%) MySQL
8 4 (2.56%) BigQuery
8 4 (2.56%) Metadata
8 4 (2.56%) Oracle Database
9 3 (1.92%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (1.92%) Apache Hive
9 3 (1.92%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (1.92%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.92%) Impala
9 3 (1.92%) NoSQL
10 2 (1.28%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (1.28%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 34 (21.79%) Git
2 33 (21.15%) Jenkins
3 30 (19.23%) JUnit
4 26 (16.67%) Maven
5 23 (14.74%) Mockito
6 21 (13.46%) SonarQube
7 18 (11.54%) GitLab
8 16 (10.26%) JIRA
9 14 (8.97%) Selenium
10 13 (8.33%) DbUnit
10 13 (8.33%) jMock
11 11 (7.05%) Bitbucket Server
12 8 (5.13%) Gatling
12 8 (5.13%) REST Assured
13 7 (4.49%) Cucumber
14 6 (3.85%) Serenity BDD
15 5 (3.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 5 (3.21%) JMeter
15 5 (3.21%) Team Foundation Server
16 4 (2.56%) Visual Studio
General
1 45 (28.85%) Public Sector
2 34 (21.79%) Social Skills
3 21 (13.46%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (6.41%) Finance
5 8 (5.13%) Banking
6 5 (3.21%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.92%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.92%) Retail
8 2 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.64%) Advertising
9 1 (0.64%) Electronics
9 1 (0.64%) Front Office
9 1 (0.64%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.64%) Local Government
9 1 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.64%) Publishing
9 1 (0.64%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 60 (38.46%) Developer
2 48 (30.77%) Java Developer
3 25 (16.03%) Lead
4 16 (10.26%) Java Engineer
5 15 (9.62%) Senior
6 14 (8.97%) Architect
7 12 (7.69%) Data Engineer
8 11 (7.05%) Senior Developer
9 10 (6.41%) Senior Java Developer
10 9 (5.77%) SC Cleared Java Developer
11 8 (5.13%) Software Engineer
12 6 (3.85%) Technical Architect
12 6 (3.85%) Test Engineer
13 5 (3.21%) Consultant
13 5 (3.21%) Lead Data Engineer
13 5 (3.21%) Lead Developer
13 5 (3.21%) Lead Java Developer
13 5 (3.21%) Lead Java Engineer
13 5 (3.21%) SAP Consultant
13 5 (3.21%) SAP PI Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (39.10%) Spring
2 50 (32.05%) Spring Boot
3 37 (23.72%) REST
4 31 (19.87%) SOAP
5 23 (14.74%) JPA
6 21 (13.46%) Web Services
7 20 (12.82%) Hibernate
8 19 (12.18%) ActiveMQ
8 19 (12.18%) Spring Batch
8 19 (12.18%) Spring Cloud
8 19 (12.18%) Spring Integration
9 18 (11.54%) AngularJS
9 18 (11.54%) RESTful
10 16 (10.26%) Node.js
11 13 (8.33%) PowerMock
12 12 (7.69%) Kafka
12 12 (7.69%) Playwright
13 11 (7.05%) Bootstrap
14 10 (6.41%) React
15 8 (5.13%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 22 (14.10%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (9.62%) Cloud Native
3 7 (4.49%) Product Ownership
4 4 (2.56%) Clustering
4 4 (2.56%) Data Centre
4 4 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (1.92%) Blog
5 3 (1.92%) Linux Command Line
6 2 (1.28%) Autonomous Agent
6 2 (1.28%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.28%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.64%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.64%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.64%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.64%) Equities
7 1 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.64%) Legacy Code
7 1 (0.64%) Mobile Banking
7 1 (0.64%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 28 (17.95%) Linux
2 16 (10.26%) Unix
3 5 (3.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.92%) Android
5 1 (0.64%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.64%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (38.46%) Agile
2 54 (34.62%) CI/CD
3 50 (32.05%) Microservices
4 46 (29.49%) DevOps
5 42 (26.92%) Scrum
6 36 (23.08%) TDD
7 33 (21.15%) Containerisation
8 31 (19.87%) Problem-Solving
9 26 (16.67%) BDD
9 26 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
10 24 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
11 23 (14.74%) Test Automation
12 22 (14.10%) Kanban
13 21 (13.46%) Software Engineering
13 21 (13.46%) Technical Leadership
14 17 (10.90%) Test Strategy
15 13 (8.33%) Analytics
15 13 (8.33%) Continuous Integration
15 13 (8.33%) Decision-Making
15 13 (8.33%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 64 (41.03%) SQL
2 22 (14.10%) Python
3 21 (13.46%) PL/SQL
4 14 (8.97%) Shell Script
5 10 (6.41%) JavaScript
6 7 (4.49%) VB
7 6 (3.85%) ABAP
7 6 (3.85%) Kotlin
8 5 (3.21%) C#
8 5 (3.21%) Perl
8 5 (3.21%) VB6
9 4 (2.56%) VBA
10 3 (1.92%) HiveQL
10 3 (1.92%) TypeScript
11 2 (1.28%) C
11 2 (1.28%) C++
11 2 (1.28%) Groovy
12 1 (0.64%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.64%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.64%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 91 (58.33%) Security Cleared
2 82 (52.56%) SC Cleared
3 16 (10.26%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (4.49%) AWS Certification
5 6 (3.85%) Azure Certification
5 6 (3.85%) Degree
6 4 (2.56%) DV Cleared
7 3 (1.92%) ISTQB
7 3 (1.92%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (1.28%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 1 (0.64%) CISM
9 1 (0.64%) CISSP
9 1 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.64%) Six Sigma Black Belt
9 1 (0.64%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (10.90%) QA
2 8 (5.13%) Accessibility
3 7 (4.49%) Data Quality
4 4 (2.56%) WCAG
5 3 (1.92%) FATCA
6 2 (1.28%) SLA
7 1 (0.64%) ISO 14001
7 1 (0.64%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 37 (23.72%) Docker
2 11 (7.05%) Postfix
3 3 (1.92%) HDFS
4 1 (0.64%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.64%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 30 (19.23%) Kubernetes
2 23 (14.74%) Grafana
3 7 (4.49%) Prometheus
3 7 (4.49%) Terraform
4 4 (2.56%) Kibana
4 4 (2.56%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (1.92%) Ansible
5 3 (1.92%) HP ALM
6 2 (1.28%) HP Quality Center
6 2 (1.28%) Podman
Vendors
1 22 (14.10%) Oracle
2 17 (10.90%) Jaspersoft
3 16 (10.26%) Microsoft
4 13 (8.33%) Atlassian
5 10 (6.41%) SAP
6 9 (5.77%) ServiceNow
7 7 (4.49%) Google
8 6 (3.85%) Denodo
8 6 (3.85%) Talend
9 5 (3.21%) Red Hat
9 5 (3.21%) webMethods
10 4 (2.56%) Splunk
11 3 (1.92%) HP
11 3 (1.92%) Informatica
12 2 (1.28%) Actian
12 2 (1.28%) Sonatype
13 1 (0.64%) Ariba
13 1 (0.64%) MuleSoft
13 1 (0.64%) Workday
13 1 (0.64%) Zscaler