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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 46 78
Rank change year-on-year -4 +32 -51
Contract jobs citing Java 98 61 30
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 4.21% 3.90% 1.68%
As % of the Programming Languages category 17.10% 15.89% 7.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 41 20
10th Percentile £414 £425 £296
25th Percentile £455 £450 £322
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% +1.85%
75th Percentile £560 £663 £675
90th Percentile £623 £765 £700
England median daily rate £518 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -13.75% +4.35% -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 £57.50 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year - -8.00% -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 573 384 397
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.63% 24.52% 22.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 386 223 283
10th Percentile £366 £353 £277
25th Percentile £451 £413 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £597 £575
90th Percentile £633 £700 £675
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 10 7
10th Percentile £40.20 £16.98 £17.35
25th Percentile £46.50 £17.81 £17.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £23.87 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year +109.47% +29.03% -15.91%
75th Percentile £56.88 £33.44 £19.25
90th Percentile £69.25 £53.25 £31.55
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.92
% change year-on-year +4.00% +0.94% -4.74%

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 January 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 January 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 -10 50 £465 +2.77% 12
Birmingham -20 24 £500 -13.04% 9
Warwickshire - 11 £625 - 3
Coventry -13 5 £670 +34.00% 5
Herefordshire -18 4 £550 -10.13%
Solihull 0 1 £625 -
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 13 (13.27%) Apache
2 11 (11.22%) WebLogic
3 8 (8.16%) JBoss
4 6 (6.12%) Confluence
5 4 (4.08%) Apache Spark
6 3 (3.06%) Apache Pig
6 3 (3.06%) nginx
7 2 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (2.04%) Drupal
8 1 (1.02%) FileNet
8 1 (1.02%) IIS
8 1 (1.02%) NetWeaver
8 1 (1.02%) SAP EP
8 1 (1.02%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (2.04%) Maya
1 2 (2.04%) NUKE
2 1 (1.02%) Adobe After Effects
2 1 (1.02%) Blender
2 1 (1.02%) CINEMA 4D
Business Applications
1 2 (2.04%) SAP FI
2 1 (1.02%) SAP CRM
2 1 (1.02%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 49 (50.00%) AWS
2 16 (16.33%) Azure
3 11 (11.22%) Amazon S3
4 9 (9.18%) Amazon EC2
5 8 (8.16%) Cloud Computing
6 7 (7.14%) Serverless
7 6 (6.12%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (6.12%) Power Platform
8 5 (5.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 5 (5.10%) Amazon ELB
8 5 (5.10%) Amazon Glacier
8 5 (5.10%) AWS KMS
8 5 (5.10%) GCP
8 5 (5.10%) Tricentis Tosca
8 5 (5.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 4 (4.08%) Entra ID
9 4 (4.08%) OpenShift
10 3 (3.06%) GitHub
11 2 (2.04%) Amazon SQS
11 2 (2.04%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 5 (5.10%) DNS
1 5 (5.10%) Firewall
1 5 (5.10%) FTP
1 5 (5.10%) HTTP
1 5 (5.10%) SMTP
1 5 (5.10%) SSH
2 4 (4.08%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (24.49%) MongoDB
2 14 (14.29%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (6.12%) Hadoop
3 6 (6.12%) Relational Database
4 5 (5.10%) Data Mining
4 5 (5.10%) Power BI
5 4 (4.08%) Apache Hive
5 4 (4.08%) InfluxDB
5 4 (4.08%) MySQL
5 4 (4.08%) NoSQL
5 4 (4.08%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (2.04%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (2.04%) Oracle Database
6 2 (2.04%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (1.02%) Big Data
7 1 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.02%) OLTP
7 1 (1.02%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 27 (27.55%) Git
2 21 (21.43%) JUnit
3 17 (17.35%) Selenium
4 16 (16.33%) JIRA
5 15 (15.31%) GitLab
6 12 (12.24%) Jenkins
7 9 (9.18%) Cucumber
7 9 (9.18%) Mockito
8 8 (8.16%) Eclipse
8 8 (8.16%) IntelliJ
8 8 (8.16%) Maven
9 5 (5.10%) Vagrant
10 4 (4.08%) Toad
11 3 (3.06%) Gatling
12 2 (2.04%) Postman
13 1 (1.02%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 1 (1.02%) GoCD
13 1 (1.02%) JMeter
13 1 (1.02%) REST Assured
13 1 (1.02%) WebDriver
General
1 33 (33.67%) Social Skills
2 19 (19.39%) Public Sector
3 13 (13.27%) Analytical Skills
4 12 (12.24%) Finance
5 10 (10.20%) Influencing Skills
6 7 (7.14%) Banking
7 4 (4.08%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (2.04%) Automotive
8 2 (2.04%) Games
8 2 (2.04%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.04%) Legal
8 2 (2.04%) Manufacturing
8 2 (2.04%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (1.02%) Digital Healthcare
9 1 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.02%) Law
9 1 (1.02%) Retail Banking
9 1 (1.02%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 28 (28.57%) Developer
2 17 (17.35%) Java Developer
3 15 (15.31%) Lead
4 14 (14.29%) Java Engineer
5 13 (13.27%) Senior
6 8 (8.16%) Data Engineer
7 6 (6.12%) Analyst
7 6 (6.12%) DevOps Engineer
7 6 (6.12%) Platform Engineer
8 5 (5.10%) AWS DevOps
8 5 (5.10%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 5 (5.10%) AWS Engineer
8 5 (5.10%) Cloud Platform Engineer
8 5 (5.10%) Data Scientist
8 5 (5.10%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
8 5 (5.10%) SailPoint Engineer
8 5 (5.10%) Site Engineer
8 5 (5.10%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 4 (4.08%) Cloud Engineer
9 4 (4.08%) Lead Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (30.61%) Spring
2 19 (19.39%) Spring Boot
3 18 (18.37%) HTML
3 18 (18.37%) JSON
4 16 (16.33%) REST
5 15 (15.31%) SOAP
5 15 (15.31%) XML
6 13 (13.27%) Playwright
7 11 (11.22%) React
8 10 (10.20%) RESTful
9 9 (9.18%) Gherkin
9 9 (9.18%) Hibernate
9 9 (9.18%) OAuth
10 8 (8.16%) EJB
10 8 (8.16%) HTML5
10 8 (8.16%) J2EE
10 8 (8.16%) J2SE
10 8 (8.16%) JPA
10 8 (8.16%) OAuth2
10 8 (8.16%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 6 (6.12%) Algorithms
2 5 (5.10%) Replication
3 4 (4.08%) Cloud Native
4 3 (3.06%) Animation
4 3 (3.06%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (3.06%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (3.06%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.06%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.04%) Data Structures
5 2 (2.04%) Derivative
5 2 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.04%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (2.04%) Product Ownership
6 1 (1.02%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.02%) Mobile App
6 1 (1.02%) Motion Graphics
Operating Systems
1 15 (15.31%) Linux
2 11 (11.22%) Windows
3 8 (8.16%) Unix
4 5 (5.10%) Amazon Linux
4 5 (5.10%) VMS
5 1 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (34.69%) Agile
2 31 (31.63%) Microservices
3 28 (28.57%) CI/CD
4 21 (21.43%) Scrum
5 20 (20.41%) Problem-Solving
6 19 (19.39%) Software Engineering
7 17 (17.35%) DevOps
8 16 (16.33%) Test Automation
9 15 (15.31%) Mentoring
10 14 (14.29%) Containerisation
10 14 (14.29%) Continuous Improvement
11 11 (11.22%) Deployment Automation
11 11 (11.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 10 (10.20%) Migration
13 9 (9.18%) Analytics
13 9 (9.18%) Configuration Management
13 9 (9.18%) Continuous Delivery
13 9 (9.18%) Continuous Integration
13 9 (9.18%) Open Source
13 9 (9.18%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 48 (48.98%) SQL
2 26 (26.53%) Python
3 17 (17.35%) Scala
4 10 (10.20%) Shell Script
5 9 (9.18%) PowerShell
6 7 (7.14%) Groovy
7 6 (6.12%) Perl
7 6 (6.12%) PL/SQL
8 5 (5.10%) TypeScript
9 4 (4.08%) BeanShell
9 4 (4.08%) Go
9 4 (4.08%) JavaScript
10 3 (3.06%) C++
11 2 (2.04%) PHP
11 2 (2.04%) Ruby
11 2 (2.04%) Tcl
12 1 (1.02%) ABAP
12 1 (1.02%) COBOL
12 1 (1.02%) R
Qualifications
1 36 (36.73%) Security Cleared
2 32 (32.65%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.14%) Degree
4 6 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (4.08%) AWS Certification
5 4 (4.08%) CISM
5 4 (4.08%) CISSP
6 3 (3.06%) DV Cleared
7 2 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (2.04%) ISEB
7 2 (2.04%) ISTQB
7 2 (2.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (6.12%) WCAG
2 4 (4.08%) Accessibility
2 4 (4.08%) QA
3 2 (2.04%) Data Quality
System Software
1 23 (23.47%) Docker
2 10 (10.20%) Active Directory
3 5 (5.10%) DFS Replication
4 2 (2.04%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (27.55%) Kubernetes
2 16 (16.33%) Grafana
3 10 (10.20%) Kibana
3 10 (10.20%) Prometheus
3 10 (10.20%) Puppet
3 10 (10.20%) Terraform
4 7 (7.14%) Ansible
5 4 (4.08%) Progress Chef
6 2 (2.04%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (1.02%) Argo
7 1 (1.02%) HP ALM
7 1 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (1.02%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 14 (14.29%) Oracle
1 14 (14.29%) ServiceNow
2 10 (10.20%) webMethods
3 6 (6.12%) Microsoft
3 6 (6.12%) SAP
3 6 (6.12%) Splunk
4 3 (3.06%) Ariba
4 3 (3.06%) Google
5 2 (2.04%) Calypso
5 2 (2.04%) Dynatrace
5 2 (2.04%) PagerDuty
5 2 (2.04%) Pega
6 1 (1.02%) Databricks
6 1 (1.02%) Denodo
6 1 (1.02%) ForgeRock
6 1 (1.02%) Guidewire
6 1 (1.02%) Ping Identity
6 1 (1.02%) Talend
6 1 (1.02%) Virgin Media
6 1 (1.02%) Workday