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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 31 37 62
Rank change year-on-year +6 +25 +2
Contract jobs citing Java 241 101 50
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.73% 5.54% 2.66%
As % of the Programming Languages category 29.57% 22.30% 11.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 64 38
10th Percentile £413 £404 £425
25th Percentile £450 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.75% -9.09% -3.30%
75th Percentile £618 £515 £702
90th Percentile £663 £550 £765
England median daily rate £525 £525 £600
% change year-on-year - -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 19 0
Median hourly rate - £50.00 -
England median hourly rate £70.00 £50.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +40.00% -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 815 453 435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.75% 24.84% 23.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 576 285 265
10th Percentile £394 £325 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £490
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% +3.16%
75th Percentile £582 £569 £575
90th Percentile £668 £630 £648
England median daily rate £525 £515 £545
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.50% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 21 5
10th Percentile £19.25 - £34.36
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £35.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% -13.04% +210.81%
75th Percentile £63.79 - £60.00
90th Percentile £67.84 - £69.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +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 29 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 29 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 +11 148 £525 +1.16% 29
Birmingham -7 50 £470 -4.86% 52
Solihull +7 27 - - 5
Coventry - 4 £575 - 5
Warwickshire -34 3 £638 +8.51% 5
Herefordshire - 2 - - 2
Staffordshire -12 1 £725 - 3
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 (5.39%) Confluence
1 13 (5.39%) WebLogic
2 8 (3.32%) SAS
3 4 (1.66%) NetWeaver
3 4 (1.66%) SAP EP
4 2 (0.83%) Apache
4 2 (0.83%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.83%) OpenROAD
5 1 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 4 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (2.07%) SAP PSCD
2 4 (1.66%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.41%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 114 (47.30%) AWS
2 33 (13.69%) GitHub
3 28 (11.62%) Azure
4 22 (9.13%) Amazon S3
5 19 (7.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 19 (7.88%) Amazon EC2
6 14 (5.81%) Power Platform
7 13 (5.39%) Amazon ECS
7 13 (5.39%) Amazon EKS
7 13 (5.39%) Serverless
8 12 (4.98%) AWS Lambda
8 12 (4.98%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (3.73%) GitHub Copilot
10 8 (3.32%) Amazon SQS
11 7 (2.90%) AWS KMS
11 7 (2.90%) Route 53
12 6 (2.49%) GCP
13 4 (1.66%) Azure Monitor
14 3 (1.24%) Amazon OpenSearch
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (16.60%) MongoDB
2 21 (8.71%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (6.22%) Relational Database
4 14 (5.81%) NoSQL
5 12 (4.98%) Power BI
6 11 (4.56%) Metadata
7 9 (3.73%) Data Lake
7 9 (3.73%) Data Warehouse
7 9 (3.73%) Pentaho
8 8 (3.32%) MySQL
9 7 (2.90%) Amazon Aurora
9 7 (2.90%) Amazon RDS
9 7 (2.90%) DynamoDB
10 3 (1.24%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.83%) Ingres
11 2 (0.83%) ZAP BI
12 1 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
12 1 (0.41%) IDMS
12 1 (0.41%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 69 (28.63%) Git
2 62 (25.73%) JUnit
3 58 (24.07%) GitLab
4 49 (20.33%) Maven
5 39 (16.18%) Jenkins
6 38 (15.77%) SonarQube
7 34 (14.11%) Mockito
7 34 (14.11%) Selenium
8 29 (12.03%) Gatling
9 28 (11.62%) Cucumber
10 18 (7.47%) JIRA
11 9 (3.73%) Team Foundation Server
11 9 (3.73%) Visual Studio
12 6 (2.49%) REST Assured
13 5 (2.07%) Bitbucket Server
13 5 (2.07%) DbUnit
13 5 (2.07%) jMock
14 4 (1.66%) Serenity BDD
15 3 (1.24%) Toad
16 2 (0.83%) Cypress.io
General
1 82 (34.02%) Social Skills
2 60 (24.90%) Public Sector
3 20 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (4.98%) Finance
4 12 (4.98%) Influencing Skills
5 9 (3.73%) Banking
6 8 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (0.83%) Publishing
8 1 (0.41%) Front Office
8 1 (0.41%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.41%) Local Government
8 1 (0.41%) Military
8 1 (0.41%) Retail
8 1 (0.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 85 (35.27%) Developer
2 66 (27.39%) Java Developer
3 47 (19.50%) Senior
4 42 (17.43%) Java Engineer
5 31 (12.86%) Architect
6 26 (10.79%) Lead
6 26 (10.79%) Quality Engineer
6 26 (10.79%) Senior Developer
7 23 (9.54%) Senior Java Developer
8 14 (5.81%) Scrum Master
9 10 (4.15%) SC Cleared Java Developer
9 10 (4.15%) Software Developer
9 10 (4.15%) Technical Architect
10 8 (3.32%) Data Architect
10 8 (3.32%) Lead Developer
10 8 (3.32%) Lead Java Developer
10 8 (3.32%) Senior Java Engineer
10 8 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
11 7 (2.90%) Java Software Developer
11 7 (2.90%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (43.98%) Spring
2 74 (30.71%) Spring Boot
3 43 (17.84%) REST
4 37 (15.35%) Playwright
5 34 (14.11%) SOAP
6 33 (13.69%) JPA
7 31 (12.86%) RESTful
8 24 (9.96%) React
9 23 (9.54%) OpenAPI
10 22 (9.13%) AngularJS
11 19 (7.88%) ActiveMQ
11 19 (7.88%) Gherkin
11 19 (7.88%) Hibernate
12 18 (7.47%) Spring Cloud
13 17 (7.05%) JSON
13 17 (7.05%) Web Services
14 16 (6.64%) WireMock
15 15 (6.22%) .NET
15 15 (6.22%) Kafka
15 15 (6.22%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 46 (19.09%) Cloud Native
2 23 (9.54%) Product Ownership
3 15 (6.22%) Distributed Systems
4 10 (4.15%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (3.32%) Autonomous Agent
5 8 (3.32%) Self-Motivation
6 7 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (2.07%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.66%) Private Cloud
10 3 (1.24%) Blog
11 2 (0.83%) Low-Code
11 2 (0.83%) Onboarding
12 1 (0.41%) Analytical Mindset
12 1 (0.41%) Data Structures
12 1 (0.41%) Distributed Architecture
12 1 (0.41%) Legacy Applications
12 1 (0.41%) Legacy Code
12 1 (0.41%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.88%) Linux
2 10 (4.15%) Unix
3 3 (1.24%) Windows
4 1 (0.41%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (53.53%) Agile
2 93 (38.59%) CI/CD
3 92 (38.17%) Microservices
4 90 (37.34%) Scrum
5 78 (32.37%) Test Automation
6 61 (25.31%) Stakeholder Management
7 59 (24.48%) TDD
8 58 (24.07%) Continuous Improvement
9 57 (23.65%) DevOps
10 53 (21.99%) Containerisation
11 43 (17.84%) Technical Leadership
12 42 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
13 39 (16.18%) Software Testing
14 38 (15.77%) Test Strategy
15 37 (15.35%) Coaching
16 36 (14.94%) Software Engineering
17 33 (13.69%) BDD
18 31 (12.86%) Code Quality
19 28 (11.62%) OWASP
20 24 (9.96%) Pair Programming
Programming Languages
1 51 (21.16%) SQL
2 30 (12.45%) JavaScript
3 23 (9.54%) TypeScript
4 21 (8.71%) Python
5 19 (7.88%) Shell Script
6 11 (4.56%) VB
6 11 (4.56%) VB6
7 9 (3.73%) ABAP
7 9 (3.73%) Kotlin
7 9 (3.73%) PL/SQL
7 9 (3.73%) VBA
8 6 (2.49%) C#
9 5 (2.07%) COBOL
10 3 (1.24%) Groovy
11 2 (0.83%) C++
11 2 (0.83%) R
11 2 (0.83%) Scala
12 1 (0.41%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.41%) C
12 1 (0.41%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 106 (43.98%) Security Cleared
2 98 (40.66%) SC Cleared
3 82 (34.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (5.39%) AWS Certification
5 5 (2.07%) ISTQB
6 3 (1.24%) ISEB
6 3 (1.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (0.83%) Azure Certification
7 2 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.83%) Degree
7 2 (0.83%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (14.52%) QA
2 33 (13.69%) Accessibility
3 26 (10.79%) WCAG
4 9 (3.73%) Data Quality
System Software
1 70 (29.05%) Docker
2 4 (1.66%) Postfix
3 1 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 78 (32.37%) Kubernetes
2 23 (9.54%) Grafana
3 17 (7.05%) Prometheus
4 15 (6.22%) Kibana
5 8 (3.32%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.41%) Ansible
6 1 (0.41%) Control-M
Vendors
1 36 (14.94%) Oracle
2 16 (6.64%) Microsoft
3 13 (5.39%) SAP
4 9 (3.73%) Denodo
5 8 (3.32%) webMethods
6 7 (2.90%) Jaspersoft
7 5 (2.07%) Atlassian
8 4 (1.66%) Dynatrace
9 3 (1.24%) Google
9 3 (1.24%) Sonatype
10 2 (0.83%) Actian
10 2 (0.83%) Databricks
10 2 (0.83%) Splunk
11 1 (0.41%) IBM
11 1 (0.41%) Pega
11 1 (0.41%) Salesforce
11 1 (0.41%) Talend