Mainframe Contract Job Trends in Central London

Mainframes
London > Central London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in contract job vacancies in Central London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe over the 6 months leading up to 16 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 131 131 146
Rank change year-on-year 0 +15 +56
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 4 7 3
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 0.21% 0.30% 0.10%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.54% 0.96% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 3 4 2
10th Percentile £517 - £468
25th Percentile £595 £474 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £750 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +58.06% -5.10% -28.57%
75th Percentile £775 £494 £525
90th Percentile - £528 £533
London median daily rate £513 £483 £575
% change year-on-year +6.22% -16.09% -11.54%

All Generic Skills
Central London

Mainframe falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in Central London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 742 732 968
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 38.73% 30.99% 32.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 552 471 644
10th Percentile £351 £363 £313
25th Percentile £435 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £588 £600
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% -2.08% +2.13%
75th Percentile £678 £710 £725
90th Percentile £775 £838 £836
London median daily rate £550 £575 £595
% change year-on-year -4.35% -3.28% -0.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 3 13
10th Percentile £16.96 £25.72 £17.00
25th Percentile £19.79 £26.20 £18.93
Median hourly rate £27.50 £27.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% -46.08%
75th Percentile £36.00 £59.75 £46.75
90th Percentile £70.21 £79.40 £65.60
London median hourly rate £25.15 £34.75 £30.00
% change year-on-year -27.63% +15.83% +16.69%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend in Central London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Mainframe relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London.

Mainframe job vacancy trend in Central London

Mainframe
Daily Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Mainframe.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Mainframe

Mainframe
Daily Rate Histogram in Central London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Mainframe in Central London over the 6 months to 16 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Mainframe in Central London

Mainframe
Hourly Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Mainframe.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Mainframe

Mainframe
Contract Job Locations in Central London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Mainframe within the Central London region over the 6 months to 16 November 2025. 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
City of London -5 4 £750 +58.06% 5
Mainframe
London

Mainframe
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Central London 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 (50.00%) CICS
Cloud Services
1 1 (25.00%) Amazon EC2
1 1 (25.00%) Amazon ECS
1 1 (25.00%) Amazon EKS
1 1 (25.00%) Amazon S3
1 1 (25.00%) AWS
1 1 (25.00%) AWS Lambda
1 1 (25.00%) Azure
1 1 (25.00%) IaaS
1 1 (25.00%) PaaS
1 1 (25.00%) SaaS
1 1 (25.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (25.00%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (25.00%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (25.00%) Azure SQL Database
1 1 (25.00%) Relational Database
1 1 (25.00%) SQL Server
General
1 2 (50.00%) Analytical Skills
1 2 (50.00%) Finance
2 1 (25.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 1 (25.00%) Architect
1 1 (25.00%) Automation Engineer
1 1 (25.00%) CICS Programmer
1 1 (25.00%) CICS Systems Programmer
1 1 (25.00%) Infrastructure Architect
1 1 (25.00%) Mainframe Programmer
1 1 (25.00%) Mainframe Support
1 1 (25.00%) Mainframe Systems Engineer
1 1 (25.00%) Mainframe Systems Programmer
1 1 (25.00%) Programmer
1 1 (25.00%) Systems Engineer
1 1 (25.00%) Systems Programmer
1 1 (25.00%) Systems Support
1 1 (25.00%) z/OS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (25.00%) ISPF
1 1 (25.00%) Kafka
1 1 (25.00%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 1 (25.00%) Cloud Native
1 1 (25.00%) Data Centre
1 1 (25.00%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 3 (75.00%) zOS
2 1 (25.00%) AIX
2 1 (25.00%) Linux
2 1 (25.00%) Solaris
2 1 (25.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (50.00%) High Availability
2 1 (25.00%) Containerisation
2 1 (25.00%) Cost Reduction
2 1 (25.00%) Creative Problem-Solving
2 1 (25.00%) Data Sharing
2 1 (25.00%) ITIL
2 1 (25.00%) Migration
2 1 (25.00%) Problem Management
2 1 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (25.00%) Re-Platforming
2 1 (25.00%) Runbook
2 1 (25.00%) Software Testing
2 1 (25.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
2 1 (25.00%) Technical Analysis
2 1 (25.00%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 2 (50.00%) REXX
2 1 (25.00%) Assembly Language
2 1 (25.00%) COBOL
2 1 (25.00%) JCL
2 1 (25.00%) Python
2 1 (25.00%) SQL
System Software
1 1 (25.00%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1 (25.00%) Ansible
1 1 (25.00%) OMEGAMON
Vendors
1 1 (25.00%) NetApp
1 1 (25.00%) Splunk