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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 51 62
Rank change year-on-year +4 +11 -21
Contract jobs citing Java 134 49 47
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.30% 3.61% 2.44%
As % of the Programming Languages category 19.25% 14.29% 11.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 99 29 35
10th Percentile £420 £401 £309
25th Percentile £439 £425 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.40% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £539 £578
90th Percentile £670 £575 £675
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 5
10th Percentile - - £40.20
25th Percentile - - £40.50
Median hourly rate - £33.91 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -38.35% +197.30%
75th Percentile - - £56.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -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 696 343 424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.33% 25.26% 22.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 520 212 308
10th Percentile £350 £237 £260
25th Percentile £412 £401 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £456
Median % change year-on-year - +4.11% -13.10%
75th Percentile £538 £580 £575
90th Percentile £619 £689 £638
England median daily rate £505 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -4.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 15 13
10th Percentile £48.75 £16.85 £40.10
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.87 £55.00
Median hourly rate £61.32 £27.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +122.97% -52.17% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 £31.33 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £33.91 £69.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.07%

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 April 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 April 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 65 £468 -9.73%
Birmingham -6 29 £500 -4.76% 14
Solihull -6 16 £450 +7.14%
Coventry -15 7 £670 - 1
Herefordshire -8 6 £575 +9.52%
Warwickshire -18 5 £529 +17.52% 2
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 (9.70%) Confluence
2 12 (8.96%) WebLogic
3 9 (6.72%) Apache
4 5 (3.73%) SAS
5 3 (2.24%) Apache Spark
6 2 (1.49%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.75%) Apache Geronimo
7 1 (0.75%) Apache ServiceMix
7 1 (0.75%) JBoss
7 1 (0.75%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.75%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.75%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.75%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.75%) Red Hat Fuse
7 1 (0.75%) SAP EP
7 1 (0.75%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.75%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.75%) SAP CRM
1 1 (0.75%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.75%) Teamcenter
1 1 (0.75%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 53 (39.55%) AWS
2 22 (16.42%) Amazon S3
3 20 (14.93%) Azure
4 18 (13.43%) Amazon EC2
5 15 (11.19%) Amazon SQS
6 14 (10.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 14 (10.45%) AWS KMS
6 14 (10.45%) Route 53
7 7 (5.22%) GCP
8 6 (4.48%) Power Platform
8 6 (4.48%) Serverless
9 5 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (3.73%) Entra ID
9 5 (3.73%) GitHub
10 4 (2.99%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 4 (2.99%) OpenShift
11 3 (2.24%) Cloud Composer
11 3 (2.24%) Snowflake
12 2 (1.49%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.99%) Network Security
2 1 (0.75%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (17.16%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (15.67%) Amazon RDS
3 15 (11.19%) MongoDB
4 14 (10.45%) Amazon Aurora
4 14 (10.45%) DynamoDB
5 13 (9.70%) Relational Database
6 8 (5.97%) MySQL
7 7 (5.22%) Pentaho
8 6 (4.48%) Power BI
9 5 (3.73%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (2.99%) BigQuery
10 4 (2.99%) InfluxDB
10 4 (2.99%) Metadata
11 3 (2.24%) Apache Hive
11 3 (2.24%) BusinessObjects
11 3 (2.24%) Hadoop
11 3 (2.24%) Impala
11 3 (2.24%) NoSQL
11 3 (2.24%) Oracle Database
12 2 (1.49%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 29 (21.64%) Git
2 27 (20.15%) Jenkins
3 24 (17.91%) JUnit
4 19 (14.18%) Maven
5 18 (13.43%) JIRA
6 17 (12.69%) Mockito
6 17 (12.69%) SonarQube
7 12 (8.96%) GitLab
8 11 (8.21%) DbUnit
8 11 (8.21%) jMock
9 9 (6.72%) Bitbucket Server
10 8 (5.97%) Selenium
11 6 (4.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 5 (3.73%) Cucumber
13 4 (2.99%) Gatling
13 4 (2.99%) JMeter
14 3 (2.24%) Bitbucket
15 2 (1.49%) Postman
15 2 (1.49%) REST Assured
15 2 (1.49%) Serenity BDD
General
1 36 (26.87%) Public Sector
2 26 (19.40%) Social Skills
3 24 (17.91%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (9.70%) Finance
5 6 (4.48%) Influencing Skills
6 4 (2.99%) Banking
6 4 (2.99%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.49%) Legal
7 2 (1.49%) Retail
7 2 (1.49%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.75%) Advertising
8 1 (0.75%) Electronics
8 1 (0.75%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 43 (32.09%) Developer
2 39 (29.10%) Java Developer
3 29 (21.64%) Lead
4 24 (17.91%) Java Engineer
5 12 (8.96%) Senior
6 11 (8.21%) Data Engineer
7 9 (6.72%) Lead Java Engineer
7 9 (6.72%) Software Engineer
8 7 (5.22%) Architect
8 7 (5.22%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 7 (5.22%) Senior Developer
9 6 (4.48%) SailPoint Engineer
9 6 (4.48%) Senior Java Developer
10 5 (3.73%) Lead Data Engineer
11 4 (2.99%) Cloud Engineer
11 4 (2.99%) Java Software Engineer
11 4 (2.99%) Lead Cloud Engineer
11 4 (2.99%) Security Engineer
11 4 (2.99%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 4 (2.99%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (38.81%) Spring
2 45 (33.58%) Spring Boot
3 30 (22.39%) REST
4 23 (17.16%) SOAP
5 19 (14.18%) Hibernate
5 19 (14.18%) JPA
6 18 (13.43%) Web Services
7 17 (12.69%) Spring Batch
8 16 (11.94%) RESTful
8 16 (11.94%) Spring Integration
9 15 (11.19%) Spring Cloud
10 14 (10.45%) ActiveMQ
10 14 (10.45%) AngularJS
10 14 (10.45%) Node.js
11 11 (8.21%) PowerMock
12 9 (6.72%) Bootstrap
13 8 (5.97%) JSON
14 6 (4.48%) Kafka
14 6 (4.48%) SailPoint
14 6 (4.48%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 16 (11.94%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (3.73%) Cloud Native
3 4 (2.99%) Clustering
3 4 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 3 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.49%) Autonomous Agent
5 2 (1.49%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.75%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.75%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (0.75%) Mobile App
6 1 (0.75%) Mobile Banking
6 1 (0.75%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 26 (19.40%) Linux
2 9 (6.72%) Unix
3 6 (4.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.24%) Android
5 1 (0.75%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.75%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (37.31%) Agile
2 44 (32.84%) CI/CD
3 39 (29.10%) Microservices
4 33 (24.63%) Scrum
5 31 (23.13%) DevOps
6 30 (22.39%) Problem-Solving
7 27 (20.15%) TDD
8 26 (19.40%) Software Engineering
9 24 (17.91%) Containerisation
10 19 (14.18%) Continuous Improvement
10 19 (14.18%) Kanban
11 17 (12.69%) Mentoring
12 16 (11.94%) Stakeholder Management
13 15 (11.19%) BDD
14 14 (10.45%) Test Automation
15 13 (9.70%) Analytics
15 13 (9.70%) Continuous Integration
15 13 (9.70%) Performance Tuning
15 13 (9.70%) Technical Leadership
16 12 (8.96%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 73 (54.48%) SQL
2 23 (17.16%) PL/SQL
3 21 (15.67%) Python
4 17 (12.69%) Shell Script
5 6 (4.48%) Kotlin
5 6 (4.48%) Perl
6 5 (3.73%) BeanShell
6 5 (3.73%) PowerShell
7 4 (2.99%) Go
7 4 (2.99%) JavaScript
8 3 (2.24%) HiveQL
8 3 (2.24%) VB
9 2 (1.49%) C
9 2 (1.49%) C++
9 2 (1.49%) Groovy
10 1 (0.75%) ABAP
10 1 (0.75%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.75%) C#
10 1 (0.75%) Scala
10 1 (0.75%) VB6
Qualifications
1 77 (57.46%) Security Cleared
2 72 (53.73%) SC Cleared
3 10 (7.46%) Degree
4 7 (5.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (4.48%) AWS Certification
6 5 (3.73%) Azure Certification
6 5 (3.73%) CISM
6 5 (3.73%) CISSP
6 5 (3.73%) DV Cleared
7 4 (2.99%) ISTQB
7 4 (2.99%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 2 (1.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 1 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.75%) ISEB
9 1 (0.75%) Six Sigma Black Belt
9 1 (0.75%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (9.70%) QA
2 7 (5.22%) Data Quality
3 4 (2.99%) Accessibility
4 3 (2.24%) FATCA
5 2 (1.49%) SLA
5 2 (1.49%) WCAG
6 1 (0.75%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.75%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 24 (17.91%) Docker
2 10 (7.46%) Postfix
3 5 (3.73%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.24%) HDFS
5 1 (0.75%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 27 (20.15%) Kubernetes
2 24 (17.91%) Grafana
3 10 (7.46%) Terraform
4 9 (6.72%) Prometheus
5 7 (5.22%) Ansible
6 4 (2.99%) Kibana
6 4 (2.99%) Progress Chef
7 3 (2.24%) HP ALM
7 3 (2.24%) Puppet
8 2 (1.49%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (1.49%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (1.49%) Podman
9 1 (0.75%) Argo
Vendors
1 19 (14.18%) Oracle
2 17 (12.69%) ServiceNow
3 14 (10.45%) Jaspersoft
4 11 (8.21%) Atlassian
5 9 (6.72%) Microsoft
6 6 (4.48%) Google
6 6 (4.48%) Red Hat
6 6 (4.48%) SAP
7 5 (3.73%) Denodo
7 5 (3.73%) Talend
8 3 (2.24%) HP
8 3 (2.24%) Informatica
8 3 (2.24%) Splunk
9 2 (1.49%) Actian
9 2 (1.49%) Sonatype
9 2 (1.49%) webMethods
10 1 (0.75%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.75%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.75%) PagerDuty
10 1 (0.75%) Workday