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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 31 73
Rank change year-on-year -21 +42 -31
Contract jobs citing Java 133 87 42
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.99% 5.93% 2.05%
As % of the Programming Languages category 18.32% 22.72% 9.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 52 31
10th Percentile £414 £402 £360
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.40% -9.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £568 £538 £578
90th Percentile £668 £573 £675
England median daily rate £525 £533 £600
% change year-on-year -1.46% -11.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 17 5
10th Percentile - - £40.20
25th Percentile - £33.91 £40.50
Median hourly rate - £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +197.30%
75th Percentile - - £56.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £50.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -25.93% +3.05%

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 726 383 435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.78% 26.09% 21.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 540 235 306
10th Percentile £356 £277 £260
25th Percentile £413 £400 £346
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +2.22% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £550
90th Percentile £623 £642 £638
England median daily rate £518 £520 £540
% change year-on-year -0.48% -3.70% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 22 15
10th Percentile £46.25 £28.18 £36.36
25th Percentile £56.50 £33.91 £47.75
Median hourly rate £59.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.00% -13.04% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.75
90th Percentile £69.77 - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £64.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -14.06% +2.40%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 -24 58 £483 -5.76% 12
Birmingham -15 41 £488 -2.50% 10
Solihull -7 19 £450 +7.14%
Warwickshire -32 5 £539 +19.87% 1
Coventry - 4 £500 - 2
Herefordshire -4 2 £625 +19.05%
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 (9.02%) Confluence
2 9 (6.77%) WebLogic
3 8 (6.02%) Apache
4 5 (3.76%) SAS
5 3 (2.26%) Apache Spark
6 2 (1.50%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.75%) Apache Geronimo
7 1 (0.75%) Apache ServiceMix
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 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.50%) 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 (39.85%) AWS
2 22 (16.54%) Azure
3 20 (15.04%) Amazon S3
4 18 (13.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 18 (13.53%) Amazon EC2
4 18 (13.53%) Amazon SQS
5 17 (12.78%) AWS KMS
5 17 (12.78%) Route 53
6 10 (7.52%) GitHub
7 9 (6.77%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (6.77%) Power Platform
8 7 (5.26%) GCP
9 4 (3.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 3 (2.26%) Azure Monitor
10 3 (2.26%) Cloud Composer
10 3 (2.26%) Serverless
10 3 (2.26%) Snowflake
11 2 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (1.50%) GitHub Actions
11 2 (1.50%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.75%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (18.80%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (12.78%) Amazon Aurora
2 17 (12.78%) Amazon RDS
2 17 (12.78%) DynamoDB
3 14 (10.53%) MongoDB
4 12 (9.02%) Relational Database
5 9 (6.77%) Power BI
6 8 (6.02%) Pentaho
7 7 (5.26%) MySQL
8 4 (3.01%) BigQuery
8 4 (3.01%) Metadata
8 4 (3.01%) Oracle Database
9 3 (2.26%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (2.26%) Apache Hive
9 3 (2.26%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (2.26%) Hadoop
9 3 (2.26%) Impala
9 3 (2.26%) NoSQL
10 2 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (1.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 31 (23.31%) Jenkins
2 29 (21.80%) Git
2 29 (21.80%) JUnit
3 24 (18.05%) Maven
4 21 (15.79%) Mockito
4 21 (15.79%) SonarQube
5 15 (11.28%) GitLab
5 15 (11.28%) JIRA
6 13 (9.77%) DbUnit
6 13 (9.77%) jMock
6 13 (9.77%) Selenium
7 11 (8.27%) Bitbucket Server
8 8 (6.02%) REST Assured
9 6 (4.51%) Cucumber
9 6 (4.51%) Gatling
9 6 (4.51%) Serenity BDD
10 5 (3.76%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (3.76%) JMeter
10 5 (3.76%) Team Foundation Server
11 4 (3.01%) Visual Studio
General
1 39 (29.32%) Public Sector
2 26 (19.55%) Social Skills
3 20 (15.04%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (6.77%) Finance
5 7 (5.26%) Banking
6 5 (3.76%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (2.26%) Retail
8 2 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.75%) Advertising
9 1 (0.75%) Electronics
9 1 (0.75%) Front Office
9 1 (0.75%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.75%) Publishing
9 1 (0.75%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 56 (42.11%) Developer
2 46 (34.59%) Java Developer
3 23 (17.29%) Lead
4 14 (10.53%) Java Engineer
5 12 (9.02%) Senior
6 11 (8.27%) Data Engineer
7 9 (6.77%) Architect
7 9 (6.77%) SC Cleared Java Developer
7 9 (6.77%) Senior Developer
8 8 (6.02%) Senior Java Developer
8 8 (6.02%) Software Engineer
9 6 (4.51%) Test Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Lead Data Engineer
10 5 (3.76%) Lead Developer
10 5 (3.76%) Lead Java Developer
10 5 (3.76%) Lead Java Engineer
11 4 (3.01%) Java Software Engineer
11 4 (3.01%) Lead Test Engineer
11 4 (3.01%) Technical Architect
12 3 (2.26%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (39.10%) Spring
2 45 (33.83%) Spring Boot
3 31 (23.31%) REST
4 26 (19.55%) SOAP
5 23 (17.29%) JPA
6 21 (15.79%) Web Services
7 20 (15.04%) Hibernate
8 19 (14.29%) Spring Batch
8 19 (14.29%) Spring Cloud
8 19 (14.29%) Spring Integration
9 18 (13.53%) AngularJS
10 17 (12.78%) ActiveMQ
11 16 (12.03%) Node.js
12 15 (11.28%) RESTful
13 13 (9.77%) PowerMock
14 11 (8.27%) Bootstrap
15 10 (7.52%) Kafka
15 10 (7.52%) Playwright
16 9 (6.77%) React
17 7 (5.26%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 18 (13.53%) Distributed Systems
2 6 (4.51%) Cloud Native
3 4 (3.01%) Clustering
3 4 (3.01%) Data Centre
4 3 (2.26%) Blog
5 2 (1.50%) Autonomous Agent
5 2 (1.50%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (1.50%) Mobile App
5 2 (1.50%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.75%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.75%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.75%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.75%) Equities
6 1 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (0.75%) Legacy Code
6 1 (0.75%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (0.75%) Mobile Banking
6 1 (0.75%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 23 (17.29%) Linux
2 8 (6.02%) Unix
3 5 (3.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.26%) Android
5 1 (0.75%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (39.10%) Agile
2 48 (36.09%) CI/CD
3 40 (30.08%) DevOps
3 40 (30.08%) Microservices
4 38 (28.57%) Scrum
5 33 (24.81%) TDD
6 26 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
7 24 (18.05%) Containerisation
8 23 (17.29%) BDD
9 22 (16.54%) Stakeholder Management
10 21 (15.79%) Kanban
11 20 (15.04%) Continuous Improvement
12 19 (14.29%) Software Engineering
12 19 (14.29%) Test Automation
13 17 (12.78%) Technical Leadership
14 14 (10.53%) Test Strategy
15 13 (9.77%) Analytics
15 13 (9.77%) Continuous Integration
15 13 (9.77%) Decision-Making
15 13 (9.77%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 60 (45.11%) SQL
2 20 (15.04%) Python
3 19 (14.29%) PL/SQL
4 12 (9.02%) Shell Script
5 9 (6.77%) JavaScript
6 7 (5.26%) VB
7 6 (4.51%) Kotlin
8 5 (3.76%) C#
8 5 (3.76%) Perl
8 5 (3.76%) VB6
9 4 (3.01%) VBA
10 3 (2.26%) HiveQL
10 3 (2.26%) TypeScript
11 2 (1.50%) C
11 2 (1.50%) C++
11 2 (1.50%) Groovy
12 1 (0.75%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.75%) BeanShell
12 1 (0.75%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.75%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 74 (55.64%) Security Cleared
2 67 (50.38%) SC Cleared
3 11 (8.27%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (4.51%) Azure Certification
4 6 (4.51%) Degree
5 5 (3.76%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.26%) ISTQB
6 3 (2.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.50%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.50%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 1 (0.75%) CISM
8 1 (0.75%) CISSP
8 1 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.75%) Six Sigma Black Belt
8 1 (0.75%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (11.28%) QA
2 7 (5.26%) Accessibility
2 7 (5.26%) Data Quality
3 3 (2.26%) FATCA
3 3 (2.26%) WCAG
4 2 (1.50%) SLA
5 1 (0.75%) ISO 14001
5 1 (0.75%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 29 (21.80%) Docker
2 11 (8.27%) Postfix
3 3 (2.26%) HDFS
4 1 (0.75%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.75%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 23 (17.29%) Grafana
2 19 (14.29%) Kubernetes
3 7 (5.26%) Prometheus
4 6 (4.51%) Terraform
5 4 (3.01%) Kibana
5 4 (3.01%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (2.26%) Ansible
6 3 (2.26%) HP ALM
7 2 (1.50%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (1.50%) Podman
Vendors
1 19 (14.29%) Oracle
2 17 (12.78%) Jaspersoft
3 13 (9.77%) Atlassian
4 11 (8.27%) Microsoft
5 9 (6.77%) ServiceNow
6 7 (5.26%) Google
7 6 (4.51%) Denodo
7 6 (4.51%) Talend
8 5 (3.76%) Red Hat
8 5 (3.76%) SAP
9 4 (3.01%) Splunk
10 3 (2.26%) HP
10 3 (2.26%) Informatica
11 2 (1.50%) Actian
11 2 (1.50%) Sonatype
12 1 (0.75%) Ariba
12 1 (0.75%) MuleSoft
12 1 (0.75%) Sage
12 1 (0.75%) Workday
12 1 (0.75%) Zscaler