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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 37 67
Rank change year-on-year -2 +30 -12
Contract jobs citing Java 180 90 44
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 5.22% 5.48% 2.29%
As % of the Programming Languages category 23.05% 22.17% 11.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 58 32
10th Percentile £409 £354 £365
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £488 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.13% -11.36% +1.85%
75th Percentile £570 £514 £612
90th Percentile £667 £558 £649
England median daily rate £525 £530 £600
% change year-on-year -0.94% -11.67% -
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 £67.50 £50.00 £68.75
% change year-on-year +35.00% -27.27% +5.36%

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 781 406 391
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.67% 24.73% 20.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 574 252 278
10th Percentile £358 £250 £307
25th Percentile £413 £384 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £454 £460
Median % change year-on-year +2.35% -1.23% -8.00%
75th Percentile £538 £524 £575
90th Percentile £626 £613 £638
England median daily rate £520 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +0.97% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 22 12
10th Percentile £22.25 £28.18 £34.54
25th Percentile £38.75 £33.91 £40.38
Median hourly rate £58.00 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% -11.11% +128.43%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.75
90th Percentile - - £71.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 -8 93 £483 -0.92% 37
Birmingham -8 42 £475 -5.00% 12
Solihull -5 24 £450 +7.14% 1
Coventry - 6 £575 - 4
Warwickshire -38 5 £539 +2.75% 2
Herefordshire - 4 £625 -
Worcestershire - 1 £450 -
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 19 (10.56%) WebLogic
2 13 (7.22%) Confluence
3 7 (3.89%) SAS
4 6 (3.33%) Apache
5 2 (1.11%) OpenROAD
5 2 (1.11%) OpenStack
5 2 (1.11%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.56%) Apache Geronimo
6 1 (0.56%) Apache ServiceMix
6 1 (0.56%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.56%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.56%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.56%) Red Hat Fuse
6 1 (0.56%) SAP EP
6 1 (0.56%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.56%) WebSphere
Applications
1 6 (3.33%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (2.78%) SAP PSCD
2 1 (0.56%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.56%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 64 (35.56%) AWS
2 32 (17.78%) Azure
3 26 (14.44%) Amazon S3
4 23 (12.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 23 (12.78%) Amazon EC2
5 19 (10.56%) Amazon SQS
6 17 (9.44%) AWS KMS
6 17 (9.44%) Route 53
7 15 (8.33%) GitHub
8 14 (7.78%) Power Platform
9 12 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (5.00%) Serverless
11 8 (4.44%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (4.44%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (4.44%) GCP
12 7 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
13 6 (3.33%) GitHub Actions
14 4 (2.22%) Azure Monitor
14 4 (2.22%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 3 (1.67%) Cloud Composer
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.56%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (14.44%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (9.44%) Amazon Aurora
2 17 (9.44%) Amazon RDS
2 17 (9.44%) DynamoDB
3 16 (8.89%) MongoDB
4 12 (6.67%) Power BI
5 11 (6.11%) MySQL
5 11 (6.11%) Relational Database
6 10 (5.56%) Pentaho
7 6 (3.33%) Metadata
8 5 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
8 5 (2.78%) Oracle Database
9 4 (2.22%) BigQuery
9 4 (2.22%) Data Lake
9 4 (2.22%) NoSQL
10 3 (1.67%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.67%) Apache Hive
10 3 (1.67%) Hadoop
10 3 (1.67%) Impala
10 3 (1.67%) Ingres
Development Applications
1 39 (21.67%) Git
2 38 (21.11%) Jenkins
3 30 (16.67%) Maven
4 29 (16.11%) JUnit
5 22 (12.22%) Mockito
5 22 (12.22%) SonarQube
6 20 (11.11%) JIRA
7 16 (8.89%) GitLab
8 13 (7.22%) DbUnit
8 13 (7.22%) jMock
8 13 (7.22%) Selenium
9 11 (6.11%) Bitbucket Server
10 9 (5.00%) Team Foundation Server
10 9 (5.00%) Visual Studio
11 8 (4.44%) Gatling
11 8 (4.44%) REST Assured
12 6 (3.33%) Cucumber
12 6 (3.33%) Serenity BDD
13 4 (2.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 3 (1.67%) JMeter
General
1 48 (26.67%) Public Sector
2 37 (20.56%) Social Skills
3 21 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (7.22%) Finance
5 8 (4.44%) Banking
6 7 (3.89%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.67%) Retail
8 2 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.56%) Advertising
9 1 (0.56%) Electronics
9 1 (0.56%) Front Office
9 1 (0.56%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.56%) Local Government
9 1 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.56%) Publishing
9 1 (0.56%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 66 (36.67%) Developer
2 48 (26.67%) Java Developer
3 23 (12.78%) Lead
4 21 (11.67%) Architect
5 19 (10.56%) Java Engineer
6 16 (8.89%) Senior
7 13 (7.22%) Data Engineer
8 11 (6.11%) Senior Developer
9 10 (5.56%) Senior Java Developer
10 9 (5.00%) SC Cleared Java Developer
10 9 (5.00%) Scrum Master
11 8 (4.44%) Software Engineer
12 6 (3.33%) Solutions Architect
12 6 (3.33%) Technical Architect
12 6 (3.33%) Test Engineer
13 5 (2.78%) Analyst
13 5 (2.78%) Consultant
13 5 (2.78%) Lead Data Engineer
13 5 (2.78%) SAP Consultant
13 5 (2.78%) SAP PI Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 63 (35.00%) Spring
2 52 (28.89%) Spring Boot
3 40 (22.22%) REST
4 37 (20.56%) SOAP
5 22 (12.22%) JPA
5 22 (12.22%) Web Services
6 21 (11.67%) Hibernate
7 20 (11.11%) ActiveMQ
7 20 (11.11%) AngularJS
7 20 (11.11%) RESTful
7 20 (11.11%) Spring Cloud
8 19 (10.56%) Spring Batch
8 19 (10.56%) Spring Integration
9 17 (9.44%) Node.js
10 15 (8.33%) XML
11 13 (7.22%) Kafka
11 13 (7.22%) PowerMock
12 12 (6.67%) Playwright
12 12 (6.67%) React
13 11 (6.11%) Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 24 (13.33%) Distributed Systems
2 20 (11.11%) Cloud Native
3 13 (7.22%) Product Ownership
4 7 (3.89%) Linux Command Line
5 5 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (2.22%) Autonomous Agent
6 4 (2.22%) Clustering
6 4 (2.22%) Data Centre
6 4 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (2.22%) Private Cloud
6 4 (2.22%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.67%) Blog
8 2 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.11%) Low-Code
8 2 (1.11%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.11%) Onboarding
9 1 (0.56%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (0.56%) Equities
9 1 (0.56%) Legacy Code
9 1 (0.56%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 31 (17.22%) Linux
2 16 (8.89%) Unix
3 4 (2.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.67%) Android
4 3 (1.67%) Windows
5 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.56%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (40.00%) Agile
2 60 (33.33%) CI/CD
3 55 (30.56%) DevOps
4 54 (30.00%) Microservices
5 45 (25.00%) Scrum
6 38 (21.11%) Containerisation
7 35 (19.44%) TDD
8 34 (18.89%) Continuous Improvement
9 33 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
10 29 (16.11%) Test Automation
11 26 (14.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 24 (13.33%) BDD
12 24 (13.33%) Technical Leadership
13 22 (12.22%) Software Engineering
14 21 (11.67%) Kanban
15 19 (10.56%) Test Strategy
16 17 (9.44%) Migration
17 16 (8.89%) Analytics
18 15 (8.33%) Decision-Making
18 15 (8.33%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 66 (36.67%) SQL
2 24 (13.33%) Python
3 19 (10.56%) PL/SQL
4 15 (8.33%) JavaScript
4 15 (8.33%) Shell Script
5 13 (7.22%) VB
6 12 (6.67%) VB6
7 9 (5.00%) VBA
8 6 (3.33%) ABAP
8 6 (3.33%) C#
8 6 (3.33%) Kotlin
9 4 (2.22%) Perl
9 4 (2.22%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.67%) HiveQL
11 2 (1.11%) C
11 2 (1.11%) C++
11 2 (1.11%) Groovy
12 1 (0.56%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.56%) PowerShell
12 1 (0.56%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 103 (57.22%) Security Cleared
2 94 (52.22%) SC Cleared
3 25 (13.89%) BPSS Clearance
4 10 (5.56%) AWS Certification
5 7 (3.89%) ISTQB
6 6 (3.33%) Azure Certification
6 6 (3.33%) Degree
7 5 (2.78%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 4 (2.22%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.67%) ISEB
10 2 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (0.56%) CISM
11 1 (0.56%) CISSP
11 1 (0.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 1 (0.56%) Six Sigma Black Belt
11 1 (0.56%) Six Sigma Green Belt
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (8.89%) QA
2 9 (5.00%) Data Quality
3 8 (4.44%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.22%) WCAG
5 3 (1.67%) FATCA
6 1 (0.56%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.56%) ISO 9001
6 1 (0.56%) SLA
System Software
1 43 (23.89%) Docker
2 11 (6.11%) Postfix
3 3 (1.67%) HDFS
4 1 (0.56%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.56%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 40 (22.22%) Kubernetes
2 24 (13.33%) Grafana
3 8 (4.44%) Prometheus
3 8 (4.44%) Single Sign-On
4 7 (3.89%) Terraform
5 3 (1.67%) Ansible
6 2 (1.11%) Kibana
6 2 (1.11%) Podman
7 1 (0.56%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.56%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 31 (17.22%) Oracle
2 20 (11.11%) Microsoft
3 17 (9.44%) Jaspersoft
4 13 (7.22%) Atlassian
5 11 (6.11%) SAP
6 8 (4.44%) Denodo
6 8 (4.44%) Google
6 8 (4.44%) ServiceNow
6 8 (4.44%) webMethods
7 6 (3.33%) Talend
8 4 (2.22%) Red Hat
8 4 (2.22%) Splunk
9 3 (1.67%) Actian
9 3 (1.67%) Informatica
10 2 (1.11%) Sonatype
11 1 (0.56%) Ariba
11 1 (0.56%) HP
11 1 (0.56%) MuleSoft
11 1 (0.56%) Sage
11 1 (0.56%) Zscaler