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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 38 42
Rank change year-on-year -6 +4 +17
Contract jobs citing Java 167 90 65
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.81% 5.26% 3.47%
As % of the Programming Languages category 21.38% 21.28% 16.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 61 49
10th Percentile £413 £400 £412
25th Percentile £425 £455 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% -9.09% +0.92%
75th Percentile £588 £519 £650
90th Percentile £663 £549 £733
England median daily rate £525 £525 £600
% change year-on-year - -12.50% -
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 £67.00 £50.00 £68.75
% change year-on-year +34.00% -27.27% +5.36%

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 781 423 399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.49% 24.72% 21.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 570 262 275
10th Percentile £363 £276 £313
25th Percentile £413 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £492
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% -3.36% -1.70%
75th Percentile £538 £537 £575
90th Percentile £626 £612 £645
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 23 10
10th Percentile £21.25 £28.18 £33.57
25th Percentile £26.25 £33.91 £40.13
Median hourly rate £58.00 £50.00 £55.63
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% -10.11% +125.89%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.13
90th Percentile - - £60.38
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 14 August 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 14 August 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 92 £490 -4.99% 25
Birmingham -19 30 £463 -2.63% 44
Solihull -2 25 £450 +7.14% 2
Coventry - 5 £650 - 4
Warwickshire -29 4 £550 +4.76% 6
Herefordshire - 3 £625 -
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 15 (8.98%) WebLogic
2 9 (5.39%) Confluence
2 9 (5.39%) SAS
3 2 (1.20%) OpenROAD
3 2 (1.20%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.60%) Apache
4 1 (0.60%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.60%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.60%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.60%) SAP EP
4 1 (0.60%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (2.99%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (2.99%) SAP PSCD
2 1 (0.60%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.60%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 65 (38.92%) AWS
2 28 (16.77%) Azure
3 25 (14.97%) Amazon S3
4 22 (13.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 22 (13.17%) Amazon EC2
5 17 (10.18%) GitHub
6 16 (9.58%) Power Platform
7 15 (8.98%) Amazon SQS
8 13 (7.78%) AWS KMS
8 13 (7.78%) Route 53
9 12 (7.19%) Serverless
10 11 (6.59%) Amazon ECS
10 11 (6.59%) Amazon EKS
11 10 (5.99%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (5.99%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (5.39%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (2.40%) Azure Monitor
13 4 (2.40%) GCP
14 3 (1.80%) GitHub Copilot
14 3 (1.80%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.60%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (13.17%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (8.98%) MongoDB
3 14 (8.38%) Power BI
4 13 (7.78%) Amazon Aurora
4 13 (7.78%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (7.78%) DynamoDB
5 10 (5.99%) MySQL
5 10 (5.99%) Pentaho
6 9 (5.39%) Metadata
7 7 (4.19%) Data Warehouse
8 6 (3.59%) Data Lake
8 6 (3.59%) NoSQL
8 6 (3.59%) Relational Database
9 3 (1.80%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (1.80%) Apache Hive
9 3 (1.80%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (1.80%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.80%) Impala
10 2 (1.20%) Ingres
10 2 (1.20%) ZAP BI
Development Applications
1 37 (22.16%) Git
1 37 (22.16%) Jenkins
2 29 (17.37%) Maven
3 27 (16.17%) JUnit
4 22 (13.17%) SonarQube
5 20 (11.98%) GitLab
5 20 (11.98%) Mockito
6 14 (8.38%) JIRA
7 13 (7.78%) Selenium
8 11 (6.59%) Gatling
9 10 (5.99%) Bitbucket Server
9 10 (5.99%) DbUnit
9 10 (5.99%) jMock
10 9 (5.39%) Team Foundation Server
10 9 (5.39%) Visual Studio
11 8 (4.79%) Cucumber
12 6 (3.59%) REST Assured
13 4 (2.40%) Serenity BDD
14 3 (1.80%) Bitbucket
14 3 (1.80%) Toad
General
1 47 (28.14%) Public Sector
2 36 (21.56%) Social Skills
3 19 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (5.99%) Finance
5 7 (4.19%) Banking
5 7 (4.19%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.20%) Publishing
8 1 (0.60%) Advertising
8 1 (0.60%) Electronics
8 1 (0.60%) Front Office
8 1 (0.60%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.60%) Local Government
8 1 (0.60%) Retail
Job Titles
1 63 (37.72%) Developer
2 47 (28.14%) Java Developer
3 24 (14.37%) Architect
4 18 (10.78%) Senior
5 17 (10.18%) Java Engineer
6 15 (8.98%) Lead
7 12 (7.19%) Senior Developer
8 11 (6.59%) Scrum Master
8 11 (6.59%) Senior Java Developer
9 9 (5.39%) SC Cleared Java Developer
10 8 (4.79%) Quality Engineer
10 8 (4.79%) Solutions Architect
11 6 (3.59%) Data Architect
11 6 (3.59%) Data Engineer
11 6 (3.59%) Software Engineer
11 6 (3.59%) Technical Architect
12 5 (2.99%) Analyst
12 5 (2.99%) Consultant
12 5 (2.99%) SAP PI Consultant
12 5 (2.99%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (32.93%) Spring
2 45 (26.95%) Spring Boot
3 34 (20.36%) REST
4 33 (19.76%) SOAP
5 22 (13.17%) RESTful
6 19 (11.38%) JPA
7 17 (10.18%) ActiveMQ
7 17 (10.18%) AngularJS
7 17 (10.18%) Web Services
8 16 (9.58%) Hibernate
8 16 (9.58%) Spring Cloud
9 15 (8.98%) Playwright
10 14 (8.38%) Node.js
10 14 (8.38%) Spring Batch
10 14 (8.38%) Spring Integration
11 12 (7.19%) React
11 12 (7.19%) XML
12 10 (5.99%) Bootstrap
12 10 (5.99%) PowerMock
13 9 (5.39%) ActiveX
Miscellaneous
1 26 (15.57%) Cloud Native
2 18 (10.78%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (9.58%) Product Ownership
4 7 (4.19%) Linux Command Line
5 6 (3.59%) Autonomous Agent
5 6 (3.59%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (3.59%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (2.99%) Public Cloud
7 4 (2.40%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.80%) Blog
8 3 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (1.20%) Low-Code
9 2 (1.20%) Onboarding
10 1 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (0.60%) Cyber Defence
10 1 (0.60%) Distributed Architecture
10 1 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
10 1 (0.60%) Legacy Applications
10 1 (0.60%) Legacy Code
10 1 (0.60%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 23 (13.77%) Linux
2 13 (7.78%) Unix
3 3 (1.80%) Windows
4 1 (0.60%) Android
4 1 (0.60%) Mac OS X
4 1 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (46.11%) Agile
2 59 (35.33%) CI/CD
3 53 (31.74%) DevOps
4 51 (30.54%) Microservices
5 47 (28.14%) Scrum
6 37 (22.16%) Containerisation
7 35 (20.96%) Test Automation
8 34 (20.36%) Continuous Improvement
9 31 (18.56%) TDD
10 29 (17.37%) Problem-Solving
10 29 (17.37%) Stakeholder Management
11 28 (16.77%) Technical Leadership
12 22 (13.17%) BDD
12 22 (13.17%) Test Strategy
13 20 (11.98%) Migration
14 17 (10.18%) Decision-Making
14 17 (10.18%) Kanban
14 17 (10.18%) Software Engineering
15 15 (8.98%) Analytics
15 15 (8.98%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 51 (30.54%) SQL
2 20 (11.98%) JavaScript
3 19 (11.38%) Python
4 18 (10.78%) PL/SQL
5 11 (6.59%) VB
5 11 (6.59%) VB6
6 10 (5.99%) Shell Script
7 9 (5.39%) VBA
8 6 (3.59%) ABAP
8 6 (3.59%) C#
9 5 (2.99%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.80%) Groovy
10 3 (1.80%) HiveQL
10 3 (1.80%) Kotlin
11 2 (1.20%) C
11 2 (1.20%) C++
11 2 (1.20%) COBOL
11 2 (1.20%) R
12 1 (0.60%) Perl
12 1 (0.60%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 97 (58.08%) Security Cleared
2 90 (53.89%) SC Cleared
3 34 (20.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (6.59%) AWS Certification
5 5 (2.99%) Degree
5 5 (2.99%) ISTQB
6 3 (1.80%) Azure Certification
6 3 (1.80%) DV Cleared
6 3 (1.80%) ISEB
6 3 (1.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.60%) CISM
8 1 (0.60%) CISSP
8 1 (0.60%) Six Sigma Black Belt
8 1 (0.60%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (7.78%) QA
2 11 (6.59%) Accessibility
3 8 (4.79%) Data Quality
4 7 (4.19%) WCAG
5 1 (0.60%) ISO 14001
5 1 (0.60%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 47 (28.14%) Docker
2 8 (4.79%) Postfix
3 3 (1.80%) HDFS
4 1 (0.60%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.60%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 42 (25.15%) Kubernetes
2 19 (11.38%) Grafana
3 8 (4.79%) Prometheus
3 8 (4.79%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (2.40%) Terraform
5 3 (1.80%) Ansible
5 3 (1.80%) Kibana
6 1 (0.60%) Podman
Vendors
1 28 (16.77%) Oracle
2 16 (9.58%) Microsoft
3 13 (7.78%) Jaspersoft
4 10 (5.99%) Atlassian
4 10 (5.99%) Denodo
4 10 (5.99%) SAP
5 8 (4.79%) webMethods
6 5 (2.99%) ServiceNow
7 4 (2.40%) Talend
8 3 (1.80%) Informatica
8 3 (1.80%) Sonatype
9 2 (1.20%) Actian
9 2 (1.20%) Google
9 2 (1.20%) Splunk
10 1 (0.60%) Ariba
10 1 (0.60%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.60%) Red Hat
10 1 (0.60%) Salesforce
10 1 (0.60%) Zscaler