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

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 51 84
Rank change year-on-year +11 +33 -52
Contract jobs citing Java 126 49 29
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.92% 3.38% 1.53%
As % of the Programming Languages category 20.39% 13.21% 6.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 28 20
10th Percentile £419 £407 £296
25th Percentile £454 £432 £322
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.82% -4.60% -9.09%
75th Percentile £563 £538 £675
90th Percentile £646 £575 -
England median daily rate £514 £585 £575
% change year-on-year -12.14% +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 618 371 423
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.12% 25.57% 22.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 427 217 303
10th Percentile £364 £341 £260
25th Percentile £447 £409 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% +8.89% -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £640 £700 £673
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 9 12
10th Percentile - £16.95 £17.50
25th Percentile £50.00 £17.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £54.00 £20.24 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +166.80% -62.34% +144.32%
75th Percentile £64.00 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £72.10 £54.00 £71.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.14
% change year-on-year +3.17% +4.76% -7.48%

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 16 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 16 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 -3 67 £470 +7.93% 17
Birmingham +2 35 £500 - 15
Warwickshire -4 9 £514 - 1
Coventry -13 6 £670 +34.00% 2
Herefordshire -14 5 £550 +4.76% 1
Solihull -5 3 - - 6
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 (14.29%) Apache
2 15 (11.90%) WebLogic
3 10 (7.94%) Confluence
4 8 (6.35%) JBoss
5 4 (3.17%) Apache Spark
6 3 (2.38%) Apache Pig
7 2 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (1.59%) Drupal
8 1 (0.79%) Apache Geronimo
8 1 (0.79%) Apache ServiceMix
8 1 (0.79%) IIS
8 1 (0.79%) nginx
8 1 (0.79%) Red Hat Fuse
8 1 (0.79%) SAS
8 1 (0.79%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.79%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.79%) WebSphere
Applications
1 2 (1.59%) Maya
1 2 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (1.59%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 2 (1.59%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.79%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 61 (48.41%) AWS
2 23 (18.25%) Azure
3 12 (9.52%) Amazon S3
3 12 (9.52%) GCP
4 10 (7.94%) Amazon EC2
5 8 (6.35%) Cloud Computing
6 6 (4.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 6 (4.76%) AWS KMS
7 5 (3.97%) GitHub
7 5 (3.97%) Serverless
7 5 (3.97%) Tricentis Tosca
8 4 (3.17%) Amazon SQS
8 4 (3.17%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (3.17%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (3.17%) Entra ID
8 4 (3.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 4 (3.17%) OpenShift
8 4 (3.17%) Power Platform
8 4 (3.17%) Route 53
9 3 (2.38%) Cloud Composer
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.17%) Network Security
2 2 (1.59%) DNS
2 2 (1.59%) Firewall
2 2 (1.59%) FTP
2 2 (1.59%) HTTP
2 2 (1.59%) SMTP
2 2 (1.59%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (23.81%) MongoDB
2 15 (11.90%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (8.73%) Relational Database
4 10 (7.94%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (5.56%) MySQL
6 6 (4.76%) Hadoop
7 5 (3.97%) Data Mining
7 5 (3.97%) NoSQL
7 5 (3.97%) Oracle Database
8 4 (3.17%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (3.17%) Apache Hive
8 4 (3.17%) BigQuery
8 4 (3.17%) DynamoDB
8 4 (3.17%) InfluxDB
8 4 (3.17%) Power BI
9 3 (2.38%) Pentaho
10 2 (1.59%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (1.59%) Ingres
10 2 (1.59%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.79%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 36 (28.57%) Git
2 31 (24.60%) JUnit
3 22 (17.46%) Selenium
4 20 (15.87%) JIRA
5 18 (14.29%) GitLab
6 16 (12.70%) Jenkins
7 13 (10.32%) Cucumber
7 13 (10.32%) Maven
7 13 (10.32%) Mockito
8 8 (6.35%) Eclipse
8 8 (6.35%) IntelliJ
9 6 (4.76%) Gatling
9 6 (4.76%) SonarQube
10 5 (3.97%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 4 (3.17%) JMeter
11 4 (3.17%) Toad
12 3 (2.38%) DbUnit
12 3 (2.38%) jMock
12 3 (2.38%) Postman
12 3 (2.38%) REST Assured
General
1 39 (30.95%) Social Skills
2 20 (15.87%) Public Sector
3 17 (13.49%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (11.11%) Finance
5 10 (7.94%) Influencing Skills
6 8 (6.35%) Banking
7 4 (3.17%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.59%) Automotive
8 2 (1.59%) Games
8 2 (1.59%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.59%) Legal
8 2 (1.59%) Manufacturing
8 2 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.59%) Retail
8 2 (1.59%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.79%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.79%) Publishing
9 1 (0.79%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 30 (23.81%) Developer
2 28 (22.22%) Lead
3 23 (18.25%) Java Engineer
4 22 (17.46%) Java Developer
5 15 (11.90%) Data Engineer
6 13 (10.32%) Senior
7 9 (7.14%) Lead Java Engineer
8 6 (4.76%) Analyst
9 5 (3.97%) Lead Data Engineer
9 5 (3.97%) SailPoint Engineer
9 5 (3.97%) Site Engineer
9 5 (3.97%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 5 (3.97%) Software Engineer
10 4 (3.17%) Cloud Engineer
10 4 (3.17%) Data Scientist
10 4 (3.17%) DevOps Engineer
10 4 (3.17%) Lead Cloud Engineer
10 4 (3.17%) Operations Engineer
10 4 (3.17%) SAP Analyst
10 4 (3.17%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (41.27%) Spring
2 34 (26.98%) Spring Boot
3 21 (16.67%) JSON
3 21 (16.67%) REST
4 18 (14.29%) SOAP
5 16 (12.70%) XML
6 15 (11.90%) Hibernate
6 15 (11.90%) HTML
7 13 (10.32%) Gherkin
7 13 (10.32%) JPA
8 12 (9.52%) RESTful
9 11 (8.73%) Playwright
10 10 (7.94%) React
11 9 (7.14%) Kafka
11 9 (7.14%) Web Services
12 8 (6.35%) EJB
12 8 (6.35%) HTML5
12 8 (6.35%) J2EE
12 8 (6.35%) J2SE
12 8 (6.35%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 8 (6.35%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (3.97%) Algorithms
3 4 (3.17%) Cloud Native
3 4 (3.17%) Clustering
3 4 (3.17%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (2.38%) Data Centre
4 3 (2.38%) Onboarding
4 3 (2.38%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.59%) Animation
5 2 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (1.59%) Data Structures
5 2 (1.59%) Derivative
5 2 (1.59%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (1.59%) Mobile App
5 2 (1.59%) Replication
5 2 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.79%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 21 (16.67%) Linux
2 11 (8.73%) Unix
3 6 (4.76%) Windows
4 5 (3.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.59%) Amazon Linux
5 2 (1.59%) Android
5 2 (1.59%) VMS
6 1 (0.79%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (37.30%) Agile
2 44 (34.92%) CI/CD
3 43 (34.13%) Microservices
4 34 (26.98%) Scrum
5 30 (23.81%) Software Engineering
6 29 (23.02%) Problem-Solving
7 24 (19.05%) DevOps
8 23 (18.25%) Test Automation
9 22 (17.46%) Mentoring
10 21 (16.67%) Continuous Improvement
11 19 (15.08%) TDD
12 17 (13.49%) Containerisation
13 13 (10.32%) Software Testing
13 13 (10.32%) Stakeholder Management
14 12 (9.52%) Analytics
14 12 (9.52%) Continuous Integration
15 11 (8.73%) Coaching
15 11 (8.73%) Infrastructure as Code
16 10 (7.94%) BDD
16 10 (7.94%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 69 (54.76%) SQL
2 27 (21.43%) Python
3 17 (13.49%) Shell Script
4 16 (12.70%) Scala
5 11 (8.73%) PL/SQL
6 7 (5.56%) Perl
7 6 (4.76%) PowerShell
8 5 (3.97%) Groovy
8 5 (3.97%) JavaScript
9 4 (3.17%) BeanShell
9 4 (3.17%) Go
10 3 (2.38%) Kotlin
10 3 (2.38%) VB
11 2 (1.59%) C++
11 2 (1.59%) PHP
11 2 (1.59%) Ruby
11 2 (1.59%) Tcl
12 1 (0.79%) COBOL
12 1 (0.79%) Swift
12 1 (0.79%) VB6
Qualifications
1 48 (38.10%) Security Cleared
2 43 (34.13%) SC Cleared
3 9 (7.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (4.76%) AWS Certification
4 6 (4.76%) Degree
5 5 (3.97%) ISTQB
5 5 (3.97%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 4 (3.17%) CISM
6 4 (3.17%) CISSP
6 4 (3.17%) DV Cleared
7 3 (2.38%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.59%) ISEB
8 2 (1.59%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (9.52%) QA
2 8 (6.35%) WCAG
3 7 (5.56%) Accessibility
4 5 (3.97%) Data Quality
5 3 (2.38%) FATCA
6 2 (1.59%) SLA
System Software
1 25 (19.84%) Docker
2 7 (5.56%) Active Directory
3 3 (2.38%) Postfix
4 2 (1.59%) DFS Replication
5 1 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 37 (29.37%) Kubernetes
2 19 (15.08%) Grafana
3 12 (9.52%) Terraform
4 10 (7.94%) Kibana
4 10 (7.94%) Puppet
5 8 (6.35%) Prometheus
6 7 (5.56%) Ansible
7 4 (3.17%) Progress Chef
8 3 (2.38%) HP ALM
9 2 (1.59%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (1.59%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.79%) Argo
10 1 (0.79%) Podman
10 1 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.79%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 24 (19.05%) Oracle
2 14 (11.11%) ServiceNow
3 10 (7.94%) webMethods
4 9 (7.14%) Google
4 9 (7.14%) Microsoft
5 8 (6.35%) Splunk
6 7 (5.56%) SAP
7 5 (3.97%) Red Hat
8 4 (3.17%) Jaspersoft
9 3 (2.38%) Atlassian
9 3 (2.38%) HP
9 3 (2.38%) Talend
10 2 (1.59%) Actian
10 2 (1.59%) Ariba
10 2 (1.59%) Calypso
10 2 (1.59%) Dynatrace
10 2 (1.59%) PagerDuty
11 1 (0.79%) ForgeRock
11 1 (0.79%) Sonatype
11 1 (0.79%) Workday