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

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 49 47 83
Rank change year-on-year -2 +36 -52
Contract jobs citing Java 114 53 28
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.56% 3.58% 1.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 18.97% 14.10% 6.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 77 32 19
10th Percentile £414 £414 £293
25th Percentile £440 £432 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -8.68%
75th Percentile £553 £556 £675
90th Percentile £598 £575 -
England median daily rate £515 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -11.97% +1.74% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 2
10th Percentile - - £17.16
25th Percentile - - £17.22
Median hourly rate £50.00 - £17.38
75th Percentile - - £17.47
90th Percentile - - £17.49
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -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 601 376 422
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.04% 25.41% 21.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 409 214 301
10th Percentile £365 £344 £260
25th Percentile £449 £413 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £450
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% +10.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £633 £698 £675
England median daily rate £512 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.51% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 10 12
10th Percentile - £16.98 £17.50
25th Percentile - £17.81 £17.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £23.87 £34.25
Median % change year-on-year +109.47% -30.31% +55.68%
75th Percentile £63.75 £33.44 £58.75
90th Percentile £72.00 £53.25 £71.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -7.69%

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 9 February 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 9 February 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 -2 59 £468 +7.47% 12
Birmingham -6 33 £500 - 11
Warwickshire - 9 £563 - 4
Coventry -10 5 £670 +34.00% 3
Herefordshire -17 4 £550 +4.76% 1
Solihull -3 3 £625 +82.75% 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 18 (15.79%) Apache
2 12 (10.53%) WebLogic
3 8 (7.02%) Confluence
3 8 (7.02%) JBoss
4 4 (3.51%) Apache Spark
5 3 (2.63%) Apache Pig
6 2 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (1.75%) Drupal
7 1 (0.88%) Apache Geronimo
7 1 (0.88%) Apache ServiceMix
7 1 (0.88%) IIS
7 1 (0.88%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.88%) nginx
7 1 (0.88%) Red Hat Fuse
7 1 (0.88%) SAP EP
7 1 (0.88%) SAS
7 1 (0.88%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.88%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.88%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (1.75%) Maya
1 2 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.75%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 2 (1.75%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.88%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.88%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 55 (48.25%) AWS
2 24 (21.05%) Azure
3 11 (9.65%) GCP
4 10 (8.77%) Amazon S3
5 8 (7.02%) Amazon EC2
5 8 (7.02%) Cloud Computing
6 5 (4.39%) Power Platform
6 5 (4.39%) Serverless
6 5 (4.39%) Tricentis Tosca
7 4 (3.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 4 (3.51%) AWS KMS
7 4 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
7 4 (3.51%) Entra ID
7 4 (3.51%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 4 (3.51%) OpenShift
8 3 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (2.63%) Cloud Composer
8 3 (2.63%) GitHub
9 2 (1.75%) Route 53
9 2 (1.75%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.51%) Network Security
2 2 (1.75%) DNS
2 2 (1.75%) Firewall
2 2 (1.75%) FTP
2 2 (1.75%) HTTP
2 2 (1.75%) SMTP
2 2 (1.75%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (24.56%) MongoDB
2 13 (11.40%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (9.65%) Relational Database
4 7 (6.14%) MySQL
4 7 (6.14%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (5.26%) Hadoop
6 5 (4.39%) Data Mining
6 5 (4.39%) NoSQL
6 5 (4.39%) Oracle Database
6 5 (4.39%) Power BI
7 4 (3.51%) Apache Hive
7 4 (3.51%) BigQuery
7 4 (3.51%) InfluxDB
8 3 (2.63%) Pentaho
9 2 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (1.75%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (1.75%) DynamoDB
9 2 (1.75%) Ingres
9 2 (1.75%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.88%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 29 (25.44%) Git
2 25 (21.93%) JUnit
3 20 (17.54%) Selenium
4 17 (14.91%) JIRA
5 16 (14.04%) GitLab
6 14 (12.28%) Jenkins
7 11 (9.65%) Cucumber
7 11 (9.65%) Maven
7 11 (9.65%) Mockito
8 8 (7.02%) Eclipse
8 8 (7.02%) IntelliJ
9 5 (4.39%) Gatling
10 4 (3.51%) JMeter
10 4 (3.51%) Toad
11 3 (2.63%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (2.63%) Postman
11 3 (2.63%) REST Assured
11 3 (2.63%) SonarQube
12 2 (1.75%) Serenity BDD
12 2 (1.75%) Vagrant
General
1 37 (32.46%) Social Skills
2 20 (17.54%) Public Sector
3 15 (13.16%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (13.16%) Finance
4 11 (9.65%) Influencing Skills
5 8 (7.02%) Banking
6 4 (3.51%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (1.75%) Automotive
7 2 (1.75%) Games
7 2 (1.75%) Investment Banking
7 2 (1.75%) Legal
7 2 (1.75%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (1.75%) Telecoms
8 1 (0.88%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.88%) Law
8 1 (0.88%) Publishing
8 1 (0.88%) Retail
8 1 (0.88%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 30 (26.32%) Developer
2 22 (19.30%) Lead
3 20 (17.54%) Java Developer
4 16 (14.04%) Java Engineer
5 15 (13.16%) Data Engineer
6 13 (11.40%) Senior
7 6 (5.26%) Analyst
8 5 (4.39%) Data Scientist
8 5 (4.39%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
8 5 (4.39%) Lead Data Engineer
8 5 (4.39%) SailPoint Engineer
8 5 (4.39%) Site Engineer
8 5 (4.39%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 4 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
9 4 (3.51%) DevOps Engineer
9 4 (3.51%) Lead Cloud Engineer
9 4 (3.51%) Lead Java Engineer
9 4 (3.51%) SAP Analyst
9 4 (3.51%) SAP Test Analyst
9 4 (3.51%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (32.46%) Spring
2 25 (21.93%) Spring Boot
3 20 (17.54%) JSON
4 17 (14.91%) REST
5 16 (14.04%) XML
6 15 (13.16%) HTML
6 15 (13.16%) SOAP
7 14 (12.28%) Playwright
8 11 (9.65%) Gherkin
8 11 (9.65%) Hibernate
8 11 (9.65%) React
9 10 (8.77%) JPA
9 10 (8.77%) RESTful
10 9 (7.89%) Kafka
11 8 (7.02%) EJB
11 8 (7.02%) HTML5
11 8 (7.02%) J2EE
11 8 (7.02%) J2SE
11 8 (7.02%) Play Framework
12 7 (6.14%) JDBC
Miscellaneous
1 7 (6.14%) Distributed Systems
2 6 (5.26%) Algorithms
3 4 (3.51%) Cloud Native
3 4 (3.51%) Clustering
3 4 (3.51%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (2.63%) Onboarding
4 3 (2.63%) Product Ownership
4 3 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (1.75%) Animation
5 2 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (1.75%) Data Structures
5 2 (1.75%) Derivative
5 2 (1.75%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (1.75%) Replication
6 1 (0.88%) Data Centre
6 1 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.88%) Mobile App
6 1 (0.88%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 17 (14.91%) Linux
2 11 (9.65%) Unix
3 7 (6.14%) Windows
4 3 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.75%) Amazon Linux
5 2 (1.75%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 43 (37.72%) Agile
2 37 (32.46%) CI/CD
3 36 (31.58%) Microservices
4 27 (23.68%) Scrum
5 26 (22.81%) Software Engineering
6 25 (21.93%) Problem-Solving
7 21 (18.42%) DevOps
7 21 (18.42%) Mentoring
7 21 (18.42%) Test Automation
8 20 (17.54%) Continuous Improvement
9 14 (12.28%) Containerisation
10 13 (11.40%) Analytics
11 12 (10.53%) TDD
12 11 (9.65%) Infrastructure as Code
12 11 (9.65%) Migration
12 11 (9.65%) Software Testing
12 11 (9.65%) Stakeholder Management
13 10 (8.77%) Continuous Integration
13 10 (8.77%) Front End Development
14 9 (7.89%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 62 (54.39%) SQL
2 28 (24.56%) Python
3 17 (14.91%) Scala
4 15 (13.16%) Shell Script
5 8 (7.02%) PL/SQL
6 6 (5.26%) PowerShell
7 5 (4.39%) Groovy
7 5 (4.39%) JavaScript
7 5 (4.39%) Perl
7 5 (4.39%) TypeScript
8 4 (3.51%) BeanShell
8 4 (3.51%) Go
9 3 (2.63%) C++
9 3 (2.63%) VB
10 2 (1.75%) PHP
10 2 (1.75%) Ruby
10 2 (1.75%) Tcl
11 1 (0.88%) ABAP
11 1 (0.88%) COBOL
11 1 (0.88%) VB6
Qualifications
1 42 (36.84%) Security Cleared
2 36 (31.58%) SC Cleared
3 9 (7.89%) BPSS Clearance
4 7 (6.14%) Degree
5 6 (5.26%) AWS Certification
6 5 (4.39%) ISTQB
6 5 (4.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 4 (3.51%) CISM
7 4 (3.51%) CISSP
8 3 (2.63%) Azure Certification
8 3 (2.63%) DV Cleared
9 2 (1.75%) ISEB
9 2 (1.75%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 1 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (6.14%) QA
2 6 (5.26%) Accessibility
2 6 (5.26%) WCAG
3 5 (4.39%) Data Quality
4 3 (2.63%) FATCA
5 2 (1.75%) SLA
System Software
1 21 (18.42%) Docker
2 7 (6.14%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.75%) DFS Replication
3 2 (1.75%) Postfix
3 2 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 29 (25.44%) Kubernetes
2 16 (14.04%) Grafana
3 12 (10.53%) Terraform
4 10 (8.77%) Kibana
4 10 (8.77%) Puppet
5 8 (7.02%) Prometheus
6 7 (6.14%) Ansible
7 4 (3.51%) Progress Chef
8 3 (2.63%) HP ALM
9 2 (1.75%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (1.75%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.88%) Argo
10 1 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.88%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 23 (20.18%) Oracle
2 12 (10.53%) ServiceNow
3 10 (8.77%) webMethods
4 9 (7.89%) Microsoft
5 8 (7.02%) Google
5 8 (7.02%) SAP
6 7 (6.14%) Splunk
7 3 (2.63%) Ariba
7 3 (2.63%) HP
7 3 (2.63%) Red Hat
7 3 (2.63%) Talend
8 2 (1.75%) Actian
8 2 (1.75%) Atlassian
8 2 (1.75%) Calypso
8 2 (1.75%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.75%) Jaspersoft
8 2 (1.75%) PagerDuty
9 1 (0.88%) ForgeRock
9 1 (0.88%) Guidewire
9 1 (0.88%) Workday