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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 50 67
Rank change year-on-year 0 +17 -24
Contract jobs citing Java 129 48 46
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.07% 3.54% 2.39%
As % of the Programming Languages category 18.32% 13.79% 10.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 29 34
10th Percentile £420 £401 £316
25th Percentile £450 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £539 £580
90th Percentile £671 £575 £675
England median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.21%
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 £63.75
% change year-on-year +18.18% -13.73% -2.30%

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 704 348 426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.19% 25.64% 22.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 216 309
10th Percentile £350 £244 £260
25th Percentile £413 £401 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £619 £689 £638
England median daily rate £506 £525 £541
% change year-on-year -3.62% -2.91% -3.92%
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% - +4.17%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 -9 61 £469 -9.59% 1
Birmingham -6 29 £500 -4.76% 17
Solihull -7 16 £450 +7.14%
Herefordshire -4 6 £575 +9.52%
Coventry - 6 £670 - 3
Warwickshire -21 5 £529 +17.52% 3
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 12 (9.30%) Confluence
2 9 (6.98%) WebLogic
3 8 (6.20%) Apache
4 5 (3.88%) SAS
5 3 (2.33%) Apache Spark
6 2 (1.55%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.78%) Apache Geronimo
7 1 (0.78%) Apache ServiceMix
7 1 (0.78%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.78%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.78%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.78%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.78%) Red Hat Fuse
7 1 (0.78%) SAP EP
7 1 (0.78%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.78%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.78%) SAP CRM
1 1 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.78%) Teamcenter
1 1 (0.78%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 50 (38.76%) AWS
2 22 (17.05%) Amazon S3
3 20 (15.50%) Azure
4 18 (13.95%) Amazon EC2
5 15 (11.63%) Amazon SQS
6 14 (10.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 14 (10.85%) AWS KMS
6 14 (10.85%) Route 53
7 7 (5.43%) GCP
8 6 (4.65%) Power Platform
8 6 (4.65%) Serverless
9 5 (3.88%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (3.88%) GitHub
10 4 (3.10%) Entra ID
10 4 (3.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 4 (3.10%) OpenShift
11 3 (2.33%) Cloud Composer
11 3 (2.33%) Snowflake
12 2 (1.55%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.10%) Network Security
2 1 (0.78%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (17.83%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (16.28%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (10.85%) Amazon Aurora
3 14 (10.85%) DynamoDB
4 13 (10.08%) MongoDB
4 13 (10.08%) Relational Database
5 8 (6.20%) MySQL
6 7 (5.43%) Pentaho
7 6 (4.65%) Power BI
8 5 (3.88%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (3.10%) BigQuery
9 4 (3.10%) InfluxDB
9 4 (3.10%) Metadata
10 3 (2.33%) Apache Hive
10 3 (2.33%) BusinessObjects
10 3 (2.33%) Hadoop
10 3 (2.33%) Impala
10 3 (2.33%) NoSQL
10 3 (2.33%) Oracle Database
11 2 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 27 (20.93%) Git
1 27 (20.93%) Jenkins
2 23 (17.83%) JUnit
3 19 (14.73%) Maven
4 17 (13.18%) Mockito
4 17 (13.18%) SonarQube
5 16 (12.40%) JIRA
6 12 (9.30%) GitLab
7 11 (8.53%) DbUnit
7 11 (8.53%) jMock
8 9 (6.98%) Bitbucket Server
9 7 (5.43%) Selenium
10 5 (3.88%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (3.88%) Cucumber
11 4 (3.10%) Gatling
11 4 (3.10%) JMeter
12 3 (2.33%) Bitbucket
13 2 (1.55%) Postman
13 2 (1.55%) REST Assured
13 2 (1.55%) Serenity BDD
General
1 34 (26.36%) Public Sector
2 24 (18.60%) Analytical Skills
2 24 (18.60%) Social Skills
3 12 (9.30%) Finance
4 5 (3.88%) Influencing Skills
5 4 (3.10%) Banking
5 4 (3.10%) Presentation Skills
6 2 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (1.55%) Legal
6 2 (1.55%) Retail
6 2 (1.55%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.78%) Advertising
7 1 (0.78%) Electronics
7 1 (0.78%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 43 (33.33%) Developer
2 39 (30.23%) Java Developer
3 27 (20.93%) Lead
4 22 (17.05%) Java Engineer
5 12 (9.30%) Senior
6 11 (8.53%) Data Engineer
7 8 (6.20%) Lead Java Engineer
7 8 (6.20%) Software Engineer
8 7 (5.43%) Architect
8 7 (5.43%) SC Cleared Java Developer
8 7 (5.43%) Senior Developer
9 6 (4.65%) Senior Java Developer
10 5 (3.88%) Lead Data Engineer
10 5 (3.88%) SailPoint Engineer
11 4 (3.10%) Java Software Engineer
11 4 (3.10%) Lead Developer
11 4 (3.10%) Lead Java Developer
11 4 (3.10%) Site Engineer
11 4 (3.10%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 4 (3.10%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (38.76%) Spring
2 44 (34.11%) Spring Boot
3 28 (21.71%) REST
4 21 (16.28%) SOAP
5 19 (14.73%) JPA
6 18 (13.95%) Hibernate
6 18 (13.95%) Web Services
7 17 (13.18%) Spring Batch
8 16 (12.40%) RESTful
8 16 (12.40%) Spring Integration
9 15 (11.63%) Spring Cloud
10 14 (10.85%) ActiveMQ
10 14 (10.85%) AngularJS
10 14 (10.85%) Node.js
11 11 (8.53%) PowerMock
12 9 (6.98%) Bootstrap
13 7 (5.43%) JSON
14 6 (4.65%) Kafka
14 6 (4.65%) Swagger
15 5 (3.88%) React
Miscellaneous
1 16 (12.40%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (3.88%) Cloud Native
3 4 (3.10%) Clustering
3 4 (3.10%) Data Centre
4 3 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.55%) Autonomous Agent
5 2 (1.55%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.78%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.78%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (0.78%) Mobile App
6 1 (0.78%) Mobile Banking
6 1 (0.78%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 25 (19.38%) Linux
2 8 (6.20%) Unix
3 5 (3.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.33%) Android
5 1 (0.78%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (37.21%) Agile
2 42 (32.56%) CI/CD
3 37 (28.68%) Microservices
4 31 (24.03%) Scrum
5 30 (23.26%) DevOps
6 28 (21.71%) Problem-Solving
7 26 (20.16%) TDD
8 24 (18.60%) Containerisation
8 24 (18.60%) Software Engineering
9 18 (13.95%) Kanban
10 17 (13.18%) Continuous Improvement
11 16 (12.40%) Stakeholder Management
12 15 (11.63%) BDD
12 15 (11.63%) Mentoring
13 13 (10.08%) Performance Tuning
13 13 (10.08%) Technical Leadership
13 13 (10.08%) Test Automation
14 12 (9.30%) Analytics
14 12 (9.30%) Continuous Integration
14 12 (9.30%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 70 (54.26%) SQL
2 23 (17.83%) PL/SQL
3 21 (16.28%) Python
4 16 (12.40%) Shell Script
5 6 (4.65%) Kotlin
6 5 (3.88%) Perl
7 4 (3.10%) BeanShell
7 4 (3.10%) Go
7 4 (3.10%) JavaScript
7 4 (3.10%) PowerShell
8 3 (2.33%) HiveQL
8 3 (2.33%) VB
9 2 (1.55%) C
9 2 (1.55%) C++
9 2 (1.55%) Groovy
10 1 (0.78%) ABAP
10 1 (0.78%) Apex Code
10 1 (0.78%) C#
10 1 (0.78%) Swift
10 1 (0.78%) VB6
Qualifications
1 74 (57.36%) Security Cleared
2 70 (54.26%) SC Cleared
3 9 (6.98%) Degree
4 7 (5.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (4.65%) AWS Certification
6 5 (3.88%) Azure Certification
6 5 (3.88%) DV Cleared
7 4 (3.10%) CISM
7 4 (3.10%) CISSP
8 3 (2.33%) ISTQB
8 3 (2.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (1.55%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 1 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.78%) Six Sigma Black Belt
10 1 (0.78%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (10.08%) QA
2 7 (5.43%) Data Quality
3 4 (3.10%) Accessibility
4 3 (2.33%) FATCA
5 2 (1.55%) SLA
5 2 (1.55%) WCAG
6 1 (0.78%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.78%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 23 (17.83%) Docker
2 10 (7.75%) Postfix
3 4 (3.10%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.33%) HDFS
5 1 (0.78%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 26 (20.16%) Kubernetes
2 24 (18.60%) Grafana
3 10 (7.75%) Terraform
4 9 (6.98%) Prometheus
5 7 (5.43%) Ansible
6 4 (3.10%) Kibana
6 4 (3.10%) Progress Chef
7 3 (2.33%) HP ALM
8 2 (1.55%) Docker Swarm
8 2 (1.55%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (1.55%) Podman
8 2 (1.55%) Puppet
9 1 (0.78%) Argo
Vendors
1 17 (13.18%) Oracle
2 16 (12.40%) ServiceNow
3 14 (10.85%) Jaspersoft
4 11 (8.53%) Atlassian
5 9 (6.98%) Microsoft
6 6 (4.65%) Google
7 5 (3.88%) Denodo
7 5 (3.88%) Red Hat
7 5 (3.88%) SAP
7 5 (3.88%) Talend
8 3 (2.33%) HP
8 3 (2.33%) Informatica
8 3 (2.33%) Splunk
9 2 (1.55%) Actian
9 2 (1.55%) Sonatype
10 1 (0.78%) Dynatrace
10 1 (0.78%) MuleSoft
10 1 (0.78%) PagerDuty
10 1 (0.78%) Workday
10 1 (0.78%) Zscaler