Java Software Engineer Job Trends

Java Software Engineer
UK

The median Java Software Engineer salary in the UK is £76,250 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 18 August 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 629 327 255
Rank change year-on-year -302 -72 +318
Permanent jobs requiring a Java Software Engineer 158 420 889
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.84% 1.07%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.16% 0.93% 1.13%
Number of salaries quoted 132 220 340
10th Percentile £55,000 £58,625 £51,750
25th Percentile £60,000 £78,750 £67,344
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £76,250 £110,000 £105,000
Median % change year-on-year -30.68% +4.76% +20.00%
75th Percentile £100,000 £135,000 £142,500
90th Percentile £130,000 £137,625 £148,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £65,000 £65,465
% change year-on-year - -0.71% +2.69%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 100,980 44,926 78,729
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.00% 89.92% 95.05%
Number of salaries quoted 69,058 26,577 52,385
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,950 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £72,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +9.38% -4.00% -6.54%

Java Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Java Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Java Software Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Java Software Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Java Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Java Software Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Java Software Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Java Software Engineer over the 6 months to 18 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Java Software Engineer in the UK

Java Software Engineer
Top 15 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Java Software Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 18 August 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -222 144 £80,000 -27.27% 24
UK excluding London -169 81 £65,000 - 22
Work from Home -111 77 £100,000 -9.09% 16
London -184 73 £100,000 -9.09% 7
North of England -24 34 £70,000 +7.69% 5
North West +16 32 £70,000 -20.45% 3
South West -65 24 £60,000 +26.32% 7
South East -26 8 £90,000 +28.57% 5
Scotland -76 8 £45,000 -
Midlands -40 4 £52,500 -12.50% 2
Yorkshire -30 2 £55,000 +57.14% 2
West Midlands -33 2 £40,000 -33.33% 1
Wales - 2 £60,750 - 1
East Midlands - 2 £60,000 - 1
East of England - 1 £72,500 - 4

Java Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 August 2026, Java Software Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Java Software Engineer in the job title.

1 158 (100.00%) Java
2 156 (98.73%) Software Engineering
3 54 (34.18%) AWS
4 48 (30.38%) Full-Stack Development
5 47 (29.75%) Spring
6 43 (27.22%) Spring Boot
7 35 (22.15%) Microservices
8 29 (18.35%) Agile
9 27 (17.09%) AI
10 25 (15.82%) CI/CD
11 21 (13.29%) Kubernetes
11 21 (13.29%) Test Automation
12 19 (12.03%) Clean Code
12 19 (12.03%) Python
13 18 (11.39%) React
14 17 (10.76%) SaaS
15 15 (9.49%) SQL
16 14 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
16 14 (8.86%) DevOps
16 14 (8.86%) TypeScript
17 13 (8.23%) GCP
17 13 (8.23%) JavaScript
17 13 (8.23%) Terraform
18 12 (7.59%) Amazon EKS
18 12 (7.59%) Claude Code
18 12 (7.59%) Computer Science
18 12 (7.59%) Kafka
18 12 (7.59%) Security Cleared
19 11 (6.96%) Anthropic Claude
19 11 (6.96%) Continuous Deployment

Java Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 2 (1.27%) SharePoint
1 2 (1.27%) Tomcat
1 2 (1.27%) WebSphere
2 1 (0.63%) Apache Solr
2 1 (0.63%) Camunda
2 1 (0.63%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 54 (34.18%) AWS
2 17 (10.76%) SaaS
3 13 (8.23%) GCP
4 12 (7.59%) Amazon EKS
5 11 (6.96%) Anthropic Claude
6 7 (4.43%) Azure
7 2 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (1.27%) GitHub
8 1 (0.63%) Amazon ECS
8 1 (0.63%) Azure DevOps
8 1 (0.63%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (0.63%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 1 (0.63%) Serverless
8 1 (0.63%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (5.70%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (4.43%) Relational Database
3 4 (2.53%) MySQL
3 4 (2.53%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.63%) Apache Cassandra
4 1 (0.63%) Db2
4 1 (0.63%) Electronic Patient Records
4 1 (0.63%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 12 (7.59%) Claude Code
2 11 (6.96%) TeamCity
3 4 (2.53%) JUnit
4 3 (1.90%) Mockito
4 3 (1.90%) Selenium
5 2 (1.27%) Cucumber
5 2 (1.27%) Cypress.io
5 2 (1.27%) Git
5 2 (1.27%) IntelliJ
5 2 (1.27%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.63%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.63%) JIRA
6 1 (0.63%) Maven
6 1 (0.63%) SonarQube
General
1 32 (20.25%) Finance
2 20 (12.66%) Banking
3 15 (9.49%) Front Office
4 13 (8.23%) Law
5 12 (7.59%) Health Technology
6 11 (6.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 11 (6.96%) Retail
6 11 (6.96%) Social Skills
7 9 (5.70%) Tech for Good
8 7 (4.43%) Back Office
8 7 (4.43%) Financial Institution
9 4 (2.53%) Digital Health
9 4 (2.53%) Public Sector
10 2 (1.27%) Games
11 1 (0.63%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.63%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (29.75%) Spring
2 43 (27.22%) Spring Boot
3 18 (11.39%) React
4 12 (7.59%) Kafka
5 9 (5.70%) RESTful
6 8 (5.06%) Node.js
6 8 (5.06%) REST
7 6 (3.80%) AngularJS
8 5 (3.16%) GraphQL
9 4 (2.53%) Redux
10 3 (1.90%) .NET
10 3 (1.90%) Model Context Protocol
10 3 (1.90%) Next.js
10 3 (1.90%) Vue
11 2 (1.27%) CSS
11 2 (1.27%) HTML
11 2 (1.27%) Playwright
11 2 (1.27%) RabbitMQ
11 2 (1.27%) React Native
11 2 (1.27%) Swing
Miscellaneous
1 23 (14.56%) Cloud Native
2 8 (5.06%) Distributed Systems
3 5 (3.16%) Distributed Architecture
4 4 (2.53%) Blog
4 4 (2.53%) Fixed Income
5 3 (1.90%) Equities
5 3 (1.90%) Greenfield Project
5 3 (1.90%) Onboarding
6 2 (1.27%) Derivative
6 2 (1.27%) Management Information System
6 2 (1.27%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 1 (0.63%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.63%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (0.63%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.63%) IoT
7 1 (0.63%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.63%) NHS
7 1 (0.63%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.90%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 156 (98.73%) Software Engineering
2 48 (30.38%) Full-Stack Development
3 35 (22.15%) Microservices
4 29 (18.35%) Agile
5 27 (17.09%) AI
6 25 (15.82%) CI/CD
7 21 (13.29%) Test Automation
8 19 (12.03%) Clean Code
9 14 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
9 14 (8.86%) DevOps
10 12 (7.59%) Computer Science
11 11 (6.96%) Continuous Deployment
11 11 (6.96%) Deployment Automation
12 10 (6.33%) Fintech
13 8 (5.06%) Design Patterns
13 8 (5.06%) Design Thinking
13 8 (5.06%) Platform Engineering
14 7 (4.43%) Data Science
14 7 (4.43%) Observability
14 7 (4.43%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 158 (100.00%) Java
2 19 (12.03%) Python
3 15 (9.49%) SQL
4 14 (8.86%) TypeScript
5 13 (8.23%) JavaScript
6 10 (6.33%) Kotlin
7 6 (3.80%) Go
8 1 (0.63%) C#
8 1 (0.63%) C++
Qualifications
1 12 (7.59%) Security Cleared
2 10 (6.33%) Degree
3 5 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (1.90%) DV Cleared
5 2 (1.27%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (1.90%) QA
2 2 (1.27%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 8 (5.06%) Docker
2 1 (0.63%) Embedded Firmware
2 1 (0.63%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 21 (13.29%) Kubernetes
2 13 (8.23%) Terraform
3 11 (6.96%) Grafana
Vendors
1 2 (1.27%) IBM
2 1 (0.63%) Google
2 1 (0.63%) Microsoft
2 1 (0.63%) OpenAI