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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 50 87
Rank change year-on-year +10 +37 -52
Contract jobs citing Java 139 47 27
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 5.28% 3.25% 1.44%
As % of the Programming Languages category 21.48% 12.88% 6.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 100 27 19
10th Percentile £420 £407 £293
25th Percentile £448 £430 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.25% -4.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £555 £538 £675
90th Percentile £626 £575 -
England median daily rate £515 £585 £570
% change year-on-year -11.97% +2.63% -8.80%
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 £63.75
% change year-on-year +4.00% -1.96% -1.92%

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 647 365 416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.57% 25.22% 22.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 457 218 299
10th Percentile £365 £341 £260
25th Percentile £429 £409 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% +8.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £700 £665
England median daily rate £507 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.52% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 12
10th Percentile - £16.95 £17.50
25th Percentile £50.00 £17.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -62.34% +144.32%
75th Percentile £59.50 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £70.30 £54.00 £71.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £61.05
% change year-on-year +3.17% +3.19% -6.08%

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 19 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 19 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 0 74 £469 +7.82% 13
Birmingham +4 35 £500 - 14
Warwickshire -10 9 £514 - 5
Coventry -16 6 £670 +34.00% 3
Solihull -5 5 £450 +18.11% 8
Herefordshire -11 5 £550 +4.76% 1
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 20 (14.39%) WebLogic
2 18 (12.95%) Apache
3 11 (7.91%) Confluence
4 8 (5.76%) JBoss
5 5 (3.60%) Apache Spark
6 2 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (1.44%) Apache Pig
6 2 (1.44%) Drupal
7 1 (0.72%) Apache Geronimo
7 1 (0.72%) Apache ServiceMix
7 1 (0.72%) nginx
7 1 (0.72%) Red Hat Fuse
7 1 (0.72%) SAS
7 1 (0.72%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.72%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.72%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (1.44%) Maya
1 2 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.44%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 2 (1.44%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.72%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 65 (46.76%) AWS
2 23 (16.55%) Azure
3 14 (10.07%) Amazon S3
4 12 (8.63%) GCP
5 11 (7.91%) Amazon EC2
6 8 (5.76%) Cloud Computing
7 7 (5.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 7 (5.04%) AWS KMS
8 6 (4.32%) Serverless
9 5 (3.60%) Amazon SQS
9 5 (3.60%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (3.60%) GitHub
9 5 (3.60%) Route 53
9 5 (3.60%) Tricentis Tosca
10 4 (2.88%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (2.88%) Entra ID
10 4 (2.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 4 (2.88%) OpenShift
11 3 (2.16%) Cloud Composer
11 3 (2.16%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.88%) Network Security
2 2 (1.44%) DNS
2 2 (1.44%) Firewall
2 2 (1.44%) FTP
2 2 (1.44%) HTTP
2 2 (1.44%) SMTP
2 2 (1.44%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (22.30%) MongoDB
2 16 (11.51%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (7.91%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (7.91%) Relational Database
4 7 (5.04%) MySQL
5 5 (3.60%) Amazon Aurora
5 5 (3.60%) DynamoDB
5 5 (3.60%) Hadoop
5 5 (3.60%) NoSQL
5 5 (3.60%) Oracle Database
6 4 (2.88%) BigQuery
6 4 (2.88%) InfluxDB
7 3 (2.16%) Apache Hive
7 3 (2.16%) Data Mining
7 3 (2.16%) Pentaho
7 3 (2.16%) Power BI
8 2 (1.44%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (1.44%) Ingres
8 2 (1.44%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.72%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 38 (27.34%) Git
2 32 (23.02%) JUnit
3 22 (15.83%) Selenium
4 21 (15.11%) JIRA
5 18 (12.95%) GitLab
6 17 (12.23%) Jenkins
7 14 (10.07%) Maven
7 14 (10.07%) Mockito
8 13 (9.35%) Cucumber
9 8 (5.76%) Eclipse
9 8 (5.76%) IntelliJ
10 7 (5.04%) SonarQube
11 6 (4.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 6 (4.32%) Gatling
12 4 (2.88%) DbUnit
12 4 (2.88%) JMeter
12 4 (2.88%) jMock
12 4 (2.88%) Toad
13 3 (2.16%) Postman
13 3 (2.16%) REST Assured
General
1 41 (29.50%) Social Skills
2 25 (17.99%) Public Sector
3 23 (16.55%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (10.79%) Finance
5 10 (7.19%) Influencing Skills
6 8 (5.76%) Banking
7 4 (2.88%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.44%) Automotive
8 2 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.44%) Games
8 2 (1.44%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.44%) Legal
8 2 (1.44%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.44%) Retail
8 2 (1.44%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.72%) Advertising
9 1 (0.72%) Publishing
9 1 (0.72%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 38 (27.34%) Developer
2 30 (21.58%) Java Developer
3 29 (20.86%) Lead
4 26 (18.71%) Java Engineer
5 14 (10.07%) Data Engineer
6 13 (9.35%) Senior
7 9 (6.47%) Lead Java Engineer
8 7 (5.04%) Software Engineer
9 6 (4.32%) Analyst
9 6 (4.32%) Lead Data Engineer
10 5 (3.60%) SailPoint Engineer
10 5 (3.60%) Site Engineer
10 5 (3.60%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 4 (2.88%) Cloud Engineer
11 4 (2.88%) DevOps Engineer
11 4 (2.88%) Lead Cloud Engineer
11 4 (2.88%) Operations Engineer
11 4 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
11 4 (2.88%) SAP Analyst
11 4 (2.88%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (42.45%) Spring
2 42 (30.22%) Spring Boot
3 22 (15.83%) REST
4 21 (15.11%) JSON
5 19 (13.67%) SOAP
6 16 (11.51%) Hibernate
6 16 (11.51%) XML
7 15 (10.79%) HTML
8 14 (10.07%) JPA
9 13 (9.35%) Gherkin
9 13 (9.35%) RESTful
10 11 (7.91%) Playwright
11 10 (7.19%) React
11 10 (7.19%) Web Services
12 9 (6.47%) J2EE
12 9 (6.47%) Kafka
12 9 (6.47%) Node.js
13 8 (5.76%) HTML5
13 8 (5.76%) Play Framework
13 8 (5.76%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 9 (6.47%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (2.88%) Cloud Native
2 4 (2.88%) Clustering
2 4 (2.88%) Data Centre
2 4 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (2.16%) Algorithms
3 3 (2.16%) Onboarding
3 3 (2.16%) Product Ownership
4 2 (1.44%) Animation
4 2 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (1.44%) Data Structures
4 2 (1.44%) Derivative
4 2 (1.44%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (1.44%) Mobile App
4 2 (1.44%) Replication
4 2 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (0.72%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (0.72%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 23 (16.55%) Linux
2 11 (7.91%) Unix
3 6 (4.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 6 (4.32%) Windows
4 2 (1.44%) Amazon Linux
4 2 (1.44%) Android
4 2 (1.44%) VMS
5 1 (0.72%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (35.97%) Agile
2 45 (32.37%) CI/CD
2 45 (32.37%) Microservices
3 37 (26.62%) Problem-Solving
4 36 (25.90%) Scrum
5 33 (23.74%) Software Engineering
6 25 (17.99%) Continuous Improvement
7 24 (17.27%) DevOps
8 23 (16.55%) Test Automation
9 22 (15.83%) Mentoring
10 21 (15.11%) TDD
11 18 (12.95%) Containerisation
12 13 (9.35%) Continuous Integration
12 13 (9.35%) Software Testing
12 13 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
13 11 (7.91%) BDD
13 11 (7.91%) Collaborative Working
13 11 (7.91%) Infrastructure as Code
13 11 (7.91%) Kanban
13 11 (7.91%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 80 (57.55%) SQL
2 25 (17.99%) Python
3 20 (14.39%) PL/SQL
4 18 (12.95%) Shell Script
5 14 (10.07%) Scala
6 8 (5.76%) Perl
7 6 (4.32%) PowerShell
8 5 (3.60%) Groovy
8 5 (3.60%) JavaScript
9 4 (2.88%) BeanShell
9 4 (2.88%) Go
10 3 (2.16%) Kotlin
10 3 (2.16%) VB
11 2 (1.44%) C++
11 2 (1.44%) PHP
11 2 (1.44%) Ruby
11 2 (1.44%) Tcl
12 1 (0.72%) COBOL
12 1 (0.72%) Swift
12 1 (0.72%) VB6
Qualifications
1 61 (43.88%) Security Cleared
2 56 (40.29%) SC Cleared
3 9 (6.47%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (4.32%) AWS Certification
4 6 (4.32%) Degree
5 5 (3.60%) ISTQB
5 5 (3.60%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 4 (2.88%) CISM
6 4 (2.88%) CISSP
6 4 (2.88%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.16%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.44%) ISEB
8 2 (1.44%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (8.63%) QA
2 8 (5.76%) WCAG
3 7 (5.04%) Accessibility
4 5 (3.60%) Data Quality
5 3 (2.16%) FATCA
6 2 (1.44%) SLA
System Software
1 27 (19.42%) Docker
2 7 (5.04%) Active Directory
3 3 (2.16%) Postfix
4 2 (1.44%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 38 (27.34%) Kubernetes
2 20 (14.39%) Grafana
3 12 (8.63%) Terraform
4 10 (7.19%) Kibana
4 10 (7.19%) Puppet
5 8 (5.76%) Prometheus
6 7 (5.04%) Ansible
7 4 (2.88%) Progress Chef
8 3 (2.16%) HP ALM
9 2 (1.44%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (1.44%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.72%) Argo
10 1 (0.72%) Podman
10 1 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.72%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 25 (17.99%) Oracle
2 18 (12.95%) ServiceNow
3 10 (7.19%) webMethods
4 9 (6.47%) Google
5 8 (5.76%) Microsoft
6 7 (5.04%) SAP
6 7 (5.04%) Splunk
7 6 (4.32%) Red Hat
8 5 (3.60%) Jaspersoft
9 4 (2.88%) Atlassian
10 3 (2.16%) HP
10 3 (2.16%) Talend
11 2 (1.44%) Actian
11 2 (1.44%) Ariba
11 2 (1.44%) Calypso
11 2 (1.44%) Dynatrace
11 2 (1.44%) PagerDuty
12 1 (0.72%) CheckPoint
12 1 (0.72%) Sage
12 1 (0.72%) TIBCO