Senior Java Engineer Job Trends

Senior Java Engineer
UK

The median Senior Java Engineer salary in the UK is £97,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 May 2026.

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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 599 520 651
Rank change year-on-year -79 +131 +83
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Java Engineer 113 139 237
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.32% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.13% 0.35% 0.26%
Number of salaries quoted 76 106 141
10th Percentile £65,000 £66,875 -
25th Percentile £70,000 £103,750 £58,938
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £97,500 £125,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -22.00% +66.67% -18.92%
75th Percentile £120,000 £137,500 £110,000
90th Percentile £132,500 £140,000 £148,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £85,000 £66,250 £65,465
% change year-on-year +28.30% +1.20% -1.19%

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 85,551 39,541 91,790
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.32% 89.78% 94.62%
Number of salaries quoted 56,475 22,949 67,336
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £71,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -5.66%

Senior Java Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Senior Java Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Java Engineer
Salary Trend

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

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

Senior Java Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Java Engineer over the 6 months to 17 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Java Engineer in the UK

Senior Java Engineer
Top 10 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Java Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 17 May 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 -72 112 £97,500 -11.36% 25
London -49 70 £100,000 -13.04% 19
Work from Home -2 42 £100,000 -23.08% 8
UK excluding London -45 42 £85,000 +28.30% 12
North West +27 27 £90,000 +38.46% 1
North of England -18 27 £90,000 +38.46% 3
South East -10 10 £90,000 +33.33% 7
South West -70 3 £80,000 - 1
Midlands -31 2 £68,750 - 1
West Midlands -30 1 £80,000 -

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

For the 6 months to 17 May 2026, Senior Java 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 Senior Java Engineer in the job title.

1 113 (100.00%) Java
2 77 (68.14%) Software Engineering
3 46 (40.71%) Microservices
4 44 (38.94%) Spring
5 41 (36.28%) Spring Boot
6 39 (34.51%) AWS
7 32 (28.32%) Agile
8 28 (24.78%) Test Automation
9 27 (23.89%) Kubernetes
10 26 (23.01%) CI/CD
11 25 (22.12%) SQL
12 23 (20.35%) Full-Stack Development
13 19 (16.81%) AI
13 19 (16.81%) Anthropic Claude
13 19 (16.81%) Claude Code
13 19 (16.81%) Docker
13 19 (16.81%) Kafka
13 19 (16.81%) SaaS
14 17 (15.04%) BDD
15 14 (12.39%) Continuous Improvement
15 14 (12.39%) Python
15 14 (12.39%) TDD
16 13 (11.50%) GCP
17 12 (10.62%) Terraform
18 11 (9.73%) Clean Code
18 11 (9.73%) Fintech
18 11 (9.73%) Grafana
18 11 (9.73%) Infrastructure as Code
18 11 (9.73%) Investment Management
18 11 (9.73%) Kotlin

Senior Java 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 4 (3.54%) Apache Airflow
1 4 (3.54%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.88%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 39 (34.51%) AWS
2 19 (16.81%) Anthropic Claude
2 19 (16.81%) SaaS
3 13 (11.50%) GCP
4 7 (6.19%) Amazon EKS
5 6 (5.31%) AWS CloudFormation
6 5 (4.42%) Azure
7 4 (3.54%) dbt
7 4 (3.54%) Snowflake
8 2 (1.77%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.88%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (8.85%) NoSQL
2 8 (7.08%) MongoDB
3 5 (4.42%) Relational Database
4 2 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.88%) DB2
5 1 (0.88%) MySQL
5 1 (0.88%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 19 (16.81%) Claude Code
2 7 (6.19%) TeamCity
3 6 (5.31%) Cucumber
4 4 (3.54%) GitLab
5 1 (0.88%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.88%) JIRA
5 1 (0.88%) Maven
5 1 (0.88%) Selenium
General
1 39 (34.51%) Finance
2 14 (12.39%) Banking
3 12 (10.62%) Financial Institution
4 7 (6.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 7 (6.19%) Law
4 7 (6.19%) Retail
5 6 (5.31%) Back Office
6 5 (4.42%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (4.42%) Social Skills
7 4 (3.54%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.77%) Games
9 1 (0.88%) Automotive
9 1 (0.88%) Aviation
9 1 (0.88%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.88%) Tech for Good
9 1 (0.88%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (38.94%) Spring
2 41 (36.28%) Spring Boot
3 19 (16.81%) Kafka
4 8 (7.08%) Akka
5 7 (6.19%) Node.js
5 7 (6.19%) React
5 7 (6.19%) RESTful
6 6 (5.31%) Model Context Protocol
7 3 (2.65%) OAuth
7 3 (2.65%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.88%) CSS
8 1 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.88%) Gherkin
8 1 (0.88%) HTML
8 1 (0.88%) Playwright
8 1 (0.88%) RabbitMQ
8 1 (0.88%) REST
8 1 (0.88%) RxJava
8 1 (0.88%) Spring MVC
8 1 (0.88%) Spring WebFlux
Miscellaneous
1 15 (13.27%) Cloud Native
2 11 (9.73%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (3.54%) Blog
3 4 (3.54%) e-Learning
3 4 (3.54%) Public Cloud
4 3 (2.65%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 3 (2.65%) Mobile App
5 1 (0.88%) Credit Risk
5 1 (0.88%) Derivative
5 1 (0.88%) Grid Computing
5 1 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.88%) Market Risk
5 1 (0.88%) NHS
5 1 (0.88%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.77%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (68.14%) Software Engineering
2 46 (40.71%) Microservices
3 32 (28.32%) Agile
4 28 (24.78%) Test Automation
5 26 (23.01%) CI/CD
6 23 (20.35%) Full-Stack Development
7 19 (16.81%) AI
8 17 (15.04%) BDD
9 14 (12.39%) Continuous Improvement
9 14 (12.39%) TDD
10 11 (9.73%) Clean Code
10 11 (9.73%) Fintech
10 11 (9.73%) Infrastructure as Code
10 11 (9.73%) Investment Management
10 11 (9.73%) Mentoring
11 8 (7.08%) Design Thinking
11 8 (7.08%) Thought Leadership
12 7 (6.19%) Continuous Deployment
12 7 (6.19%) Deployment Automation
12 7 (6.19%) Event-Driven Architecture
Programming Languages
1 113 (100.00%) Java
2 25 (22.12%) SQL
3 14 (12.39%) Python
4 11 (9.73%) Kotlin
5 6 (5.31%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.77%) Go
7 1 (0.88%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 6 (5.31%) SC Cleared
1 6 (5.31%) Security Cleared
2 4 (3.54%) AWS Certification
2 4 (3.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 3 (2.65%) Degree
3 3 (2.65%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (3.54%) Data Quality
2 3 (2.65%) QA
System Software
1 19 (16.81%) Docker
Systems Management
1 27 (23.89%) Kubernetes
2 12 (10.62%) Terraform
3 11 (9.73%) Grafana
4 4 (3.54%) Prometheus