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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 35 64
Rank change year-on-year +6 +29 +3
Contract jobs citing Java 244 103 49
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.88% 5.58% 2.58%
As % of the Programming Languages category 30.42% 22.99% 11.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 65 37
10th Percentile £413 £401 £425
25th Percentile £450 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -9.09% -6.38%
75th Percentile £610 £514 £711
90th Percentile £661 £550 £765
England median daily rate £525 £520 £600
% change year-on-year +0.96% -13.33% -
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 802 448 439
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.61% 24.26% 23.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 567 281 266
10th Percentile £398 £325 £313
25th Percentile £425 £420 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.41% +2.79%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £575
90th Percentile £671 £638 £649
England median daily rate £525 £515 £543
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 21 5
10th Percentile £19.45 - £34.36
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £35.00
Median hourly rate £39.15 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -21.70% -13.04% +210.81%
75th Percentile £61.77 - £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 5 October 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 5 October 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 +11 152 £525 +1.16% 38
Birmingham -4 50 £470 -3.69% 53
Solihull +5 26 - - 6
Coventry - 4 £575 - 9
Warwickshire -38 2 £550 -6.38% 26
Herefordshire - 2 - - 6
Staffordshire -13 1 £725 - 23
Worcestershire - 1 £450 - 15
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 (6.15%) WebLogic
2 13 (5.33%) Confluence
3 8 (3.28%) SAS
4 4 (1.64%) NetWeaver
4 4 (1.64%) SAP EP
5 3 (1.23%) Apache
5 3 (1.23%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.82%) OpenROAD
7 1 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.41%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 4 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (2.05%) SAP PSCD
2 4 (1.64%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.41%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.41%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 114 (46.72%) AWS
2 33 (13.52%) GitHub
3 28 (11.48%) Azure
4 22 (9.02%) Amazon S3
5 18 (7.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 18 (7.38%) Amazon EC2
6 14 (5.74%) Power Platform
7 13 (5.33%) Amazon ECS
7 13 (5.33%) Amazon EKS
7 13 (5.33%) Serverless
8 12 (4.92%) AWS Lambda
8 12 (4.92%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (3.69%) GitHub Copilot
10 7 (2.87%) Amazon SQS
11 6 (2.46%) AWS KMS
11 6 (2.46%) GCP
11 6 (2.46%) Route 53
12 5 (2.05%) Tricentis Tosca
13 4 (1.64%) Azure Monitor
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (16.39%) MongoDB
2 20 (8.20%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (5.74%) NoSQL
3 14 (5.74%) Relational Database
4 12 (4.92%) Power BI
5 10 (4.10%) Data Lake
5 10 (4.10%) Metadata
6 9 (3.69%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (3.69%) Pentaho
7 8 (3.28%) MySQL
8 6 (2.46%) Amazon Aurora
8 6 (2.46%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (2.46%) DynamoDB
9 3 (1.23%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.82%) Ingres
10 2 (0.82%) ZAP BI
11 1 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
11 1 (0.41%) IDMS
11 1 (0.41%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 69 (28.28%) Git
2 61 (25.00%) JUnit
3 58 (23.77%) GitLab
4 48 (19.67%) Maven
5 37 (15.16%) Jenkins
6 36 (14.75%) SonarQube
7 34 (13.93%) Selenium
8 33 (13.52%) Mockito
9 29 (11.89%) Gatling
10 28 (11.48%) Cucumber
11 20 (8.20%) JIRA
12 10 (4.10%) Team Foundation Server
12 10 (4.10%) Visual Studio
13 6 (2.46%) REST Assured
14 5 (2.05%) Toad
15 4 (1.64%) Bitbucket Server
15 4 (1.64%) DbUnit
15 4 (1.64%) jMock
15 4 (1.64%) Serenity BDD
16 2 (0.82%) Cypress.io
General
1 82 (33.61%) Social Skills
2 61 (25.00%) Public Sector
3 19 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (5.74%) Finance
5 12 (4.92%) Influencing Skills
6 8 (3.28%) Banking
6 8 (3.28%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (0.82%) 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 87 (35.66%) Developer
2 67 (27.46%) Java Developer
3 48 (19.67%) Senior
4 42 (17.21%) Java Engineer
5 30 (12.30%) Architect
6 26 (10.66%) Lead
6 26 (10.66%) Quality Engineer
7 25 (10.25%) Senior Developer
8 22 (9.02%) Senior Java Developer
9 14 (5.74%) Scrum Master
10 10 (4.10%) SC Cleared Java Developer
10 10 (4.10%) Software Developer
11 9 (3.69%) Technical Architect
12 8 (3.28%) Data Architect
12 8 (3.28%) Lead Developer
12 8 (3.28%) Lead Java Developer
12 8 (3.28%) Senior Java Engineer
12 8 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
13 7 (2.87%) Java Scrum Master
13 7 (2.87%) Java Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (43.03%) Spring
2 73 (29.92%) Spring Boot
3 42 (17.21%) REST
4 37 (15.16%) Playwright
5 34 (13.93%) SOAP
6 32 (13.11%) JPA
7 30 (12.30%) RESTful
8 24 (9.84%) React
9 23 (9.43%) OpenAPI
10 21 (8.61%) AngularJS
11 19 (7.79%) Gherkin
12 18 (7.38%) ActiveMQ
12 18 (7.38%) Hibernate
13 17 (6.97%) Spring Cloud
14 16 (6.56%) JSON
14 16 (6.56%) Web Services
14 16 (6.56%) WireMock
15 15 (6.15%) Kafka
15 15 (6.15%) RabbitMQ
15 15 (6.15%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 47 (19.26%) Cloud Native
2 23 (9.43%) Product Ownership
3 15 (6.15%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (4.51%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (3.28%) Autonomous Agent
5 8 (3.28%) Self-Motivation
6 7 (2.87%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (2.05%) Public Cloud
9 4 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.64%) Private Cloud
10 3 (1.23%) Blog
11 2 (0.82%) Low-Code
11 2 (0.82%) Onboarding
12 1 (0.41%) Analytical Mindset
12 1 (0.41%) Cyber Defence
12 1 (0.41%) Distributed Architecture
12 1 (0.41%) Greenfield Project
12 1 (0.41%) Legacy Applications
12 1 (0.41%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 19 (7.79%) Linux
2 10 (4.10%) Unix
3 5 (2.05%) Windows
4 1 (0.41%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (52.46%) Agile
2 92 (37.70%) CI/CD
2 92 (37.70%) Microservices
3 89 (36.48%) Scrum
4 80 (32.79%) Test Automation
5 60 (24.59%) Stakeholder Management
6 58 (23.77%) Continuous Improvement
6 58 (23.77%) TDD
7 55 (22.54%) DevOps
8 53 (21.72%) Containerisation
9 42 (17.21%) Problem-Solving
9 42 (17.21%) Technical Leadership
10 39 (15.98%) Software Testing
11 38 (15.57%) Test Strategy
12 37 (15.16%) Coaching
13 36 (14.75%) Software Engineering
14 32 (13.11%) BDD
15 31 (12.70%) Code Quality
16 28 (11.48%) OWASP
17 24 (9.84%) Pair Programming
Programming Languages
1 54 (22.13%) SQL
2 30 (12.30%) JavaScript
3 23 (9.43%) TypeScript
4 20 (8.20%) Python
4 20 (8.20%) Shell Script
5 12 (4.92%) VB
5 12 (4.92%) VB6
6 10 (4.10%) VBA
7 9 (3.69%) ABAP
7 9 (3.69%) Kotlin
7 9 (3.69%) PL/SQL
8 6 (2.46%) C#
9 5 (2.05%) COBOL
10 3 (1.23%) Scala
11 2 (0.82%) C++
11 2 (0.82%) Groovy
11 2 (0.82%) R
12 1 (0.41%) C
12 1 (0.41%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.41%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 106 (43.44%) Security Cleared
2 97 (39.75%) SC Cleared
3 84 (34.43%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (5.33%) AWS Certification
5 6 (2.46%) ISTQB
6 4 (1.64%) ISEB
6 4 (1.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (0.82%) Azure Certification
7 2 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.82%) Degree
7 2 (0.82%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (14.34%) QA
2 33 (13.52%) Accessibility
3 26 (10.66%) WCAG
4 10 (4.10%) Data Quality
System Software
1 69 (28.28%) Docker
2 3 (1.23%) Postfix
3 1 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 79 (32.38%) Kubernetes
2 22 (9.02%) Grafana
3 16 (6.56%) Prometheus
4 15 (6.15%) Kibana
5 9 (3.69%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.41%) Ansible
6 1 (0.41%) Control-M
Vendors
1 39 (15.98%) Oracle
2 16 (6.56%) Microsoft
3 15 (6.15%) SAP
4 9 (3.69%) Denodo
4 9 (3.69%) webMethods
5 6 (2.46%) Jaspersoft
6 4 (1.64%) Atlassian
6 4 (1.64%) Dynatrace
7 3 (1.23%) Databricks
7 3 (1.23%) Google
8 2 (0.82%) Actian
8 2 (0.82%) Sonatype
8 2 (0.82%) Splunk
9 1 (0.41%) Ariba
9 1 (0.41%) IBM
9 1 (0.41%) Pega
9 1 (0.41%) Talend