COBOL Contracts in England

COBOL
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England requiring COBOL skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited COBOL over the 6 months leading up to 31 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 436 504 570
Rank change year-on-year +68 +66 +150
Contract jobs citing COBOL 50 32 68
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.21% 0.087% 0.14%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.61% 0.29% 0.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 20 31
10th Percentile £326 £323 £330
25th Percentile £380 £348 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £389 £525
Median % change year-on-year +14.91% -25.90% +6.06%
75th Percentile £569 £488 £540
90th Percentile £756 £641 £594
UK median daily rate £447 £400 £540
% change year-on-year +11.75% -25.93% +8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £53.00 - -
25th Percentile £55.63 - -
Median hourly rate £62.50 - -
75th Percentile £70.63 - -
90th Percentile £74.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £62.50 - -

All Programming Languages
England

COBOL 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 England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 8,245 11,090 16,384
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.03% 30.17% 34.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,719 8,016 11,989
10th Percentile £360 £350 £381
25th Percentile £413 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £543 £565
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -3.98% +2.73%
75th Percentile £644 £650 £694
90th Percentile £775 £775 £800
UK median daily rate £514 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.10% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 467 397
10th Percentile £28.27 £35.52 £26.25
25th Percentile £35.50 £49.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £62.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% - +19.05%
75th Percentile £68.75 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.75 £79.19
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £62.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -7.26% -0.80% +22.11%

COBOL
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing COBOL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for COBOL in England

COBOL
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing COBOL in England.

Daily rate trend for COBOL in England

COBOL
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing COBOL in England over the 6 months to 31 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for COBOL in England

COBOL
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing COBOL in England.

Hourly rate trend for COBOL in England

COBOL
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing COBOL in England over the 6 months to 31 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for COBOL in England

COBOL
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing COBOL within the England region over the 6 months to 31 May 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
North of England +34 17 £425 +25.00% 3
London +48 13 £470 +1.08% 20
Midlands +15 13 £500 +39.66% 3
West Midlands +13 11 £700 +95.53%
Yorkshire +22 9 £450 +32.35%
North West - 8 £402 - 3
South West +48 4 £500 -40.30% 2
East Midlands - 2 £349 - 3
South East +41 1 - - 1
COBOL
UK

COBOL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 14 (28.00%) CICS
2 4 (8.00%) CMS
3 3 (6.00%) Confluence
3 3 (6.00%) WebSphere
4 2 (4.00%) Tuxedo
5 1 (2.00%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (2.00%) SAS
Applications
1 1 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 7 (14.00%) BASE24
2 6 (12.00%) VisionPLUS
3 2 (4.00%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 5 (10.00%) AWS
2 3 (6.00%) Azure
2 3 (6.00%) OpenShift
3 1 (2.00%) GCP
3 1 (2.00%) SAP Commerce Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 7 (14.00%) ATM
2 2 (4.00%) SAN
3 1 (2.00%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (26.00%) DB2
2 8 (16.00%) NonStop SQL
3 4 (8.00%) Easytrieve
4 3 (6.00%) Oracle Database
4 3 (6.00%) SQL Server
5 2 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (4.00%) Hadoop
5 2 (4.00%) Relational Database
6 1 (2.00%) IDMS
6 1 (2.00%) Oracle9i Database
6 1 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (2.00%) Redis
Development Applications
1 8 (16.00%) Postman
2 5 (10.00%) Jenkins
3 4 (8.00%) Oracle Forms
4 3 (6.00%) Selenium
5 2 (4.00%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 2 (4.00%) Eclipse
5 2 (4.00%) Git
5 2 (4.00%) JIRA
5 2 (4.00%) Maven
5 2 (4.00%) REST Assured
5 2 (4.00%) SOAtest
5 2 (4.00%) VersaTest
6 1 (2.00%) CA Gen
6 1 (2.00%) IntelliJ
6 1 (2.00%) JUnit
6 1 (2.00%) PROIV
6 1 (2.00%) SonarQube
6 1 (2.00%) Subversion
6 1 (2.00%) Xcode
6 1 (2.00%) XCTest
General
1 17 (34.00%) Finance
2 16 (32.00%) Banking
3 15 (30.00%) Social Skills
4 6 (12.00%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (8.00%) Retail Banking
6 3 (6.00%) Legal
6 3 (6.00%) Public Sector
7 2 (4.00%) General Ledger
7 2 (4.00%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (2.00%) Billing
8 1 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (2.00%) Financial Institution
8 1 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 21 (42.00%) Developer
2 11 (22.00%) Architect
3 6 (12.00%) Mainframe Developer
4 5 (10.00%) COBOL Developer
5 4 (8.00%) BASE24 Developer
5 4 (8.00%) Lead
5 4 (8.00%) SAP Architect
5 4 (8.00%) SAP Developer
5 4 (8.00%) Solutions Architect
6 3 (6.00%) Development Engineer
6 3 (6.00%) Lead Developer
6 3 (6.00%) Software Development Engineer
6 3 (6.00%) Software Engineer
7 2 (4.00%) ABAP Developer
7 2 (4.00%) Administrator
7 2 (4.00%) Assembler Developer
7 2 (4.00%) Full-Stack Developer
7 2 (4.00%) OpenVMS Administrator
7 2 (4.00%) Test Architect
7 2 (4.00%) VMS Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (16.00%) Web Services
2 6 (12.00%) CSS
2 6 (12.00%) CSS3
2 6 (12.00%) HTML
2 6 (12.00%) HTML5
2 6 (12.00%) REST
3 5 (10.00%) jQuery
3 5 (10.00%) SAP Fiori
3 5 (10.00%) SAPUI5
4 4 (8.00%) J2EE
4 4 (8.00%) SOAP
5 3 (6.00%) IDoc
5 3 (6.00%) JSON
5 3 (6.00%) Kafka
5 3 (6.00%) XML
6 2 (4.00%) AngularJS
6 2 (4.00%) BAPI
6 2 (4.00%) ISPF
6 2 (4.00%) RESTful
6 2 (4.00%) SAP Smart Forms
Miscellaneous
1 25 (50.00%) Mainframe
2 14 (28.00%) VSAM
3 6 (12.00%) EMV
3 6 (12.00%) Legacy Systems
4 4 (8.00%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (8.00%) Tandem
5 3 (6.00%) Product Ownership
6 2 (4.00%) IBM Mainframe
6 2 (4.00%) Mobile Payment
7 1 (2.00%) APACS
7 1 (2.00%) AS400
7 1 (2.00%) Cloud Native
7 1 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
7 1 (2.00%) iSeries
7 1 (2.00%) Legacy Applications
7 1 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 6 (12.00%) Unix
1 6 (12.00%) zOS
2 2 (4.00%) OpenVMS
2 2 (4.00%) VMS
3 1 (2.00%) Linux
3 1 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (22.00%) Migration
2 10 (20.00%) Agile
2 10 (20.00%) SDLC
3 9 (18.00%) Digital Transformation Programme
3 9 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
4 8 (16.00%) Code Quality
5 7 (14.00%) DevOps
6 6 (12.00%) Mentoring
6 6 (12.00%) MVC
6 6 (12.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 6 (12.00%) User Experience
7 5 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 5 (10.00%) Data Modelling
7 5 (10.00%) Full-Stack Development
7 5 (10.00%) Impact Analysis
7 5 (10.00%) Microservices
7 5 (10.00%) Validation
7 5 (10.00%) Workflow
8 4 (8.00%) Data Protection
8 4 (8.00%) OO
Programming Languages
1 18 (36.00%) JCL
2 9 (18.00%) Java
2 9 (18.00%) SQL
3 8 (16.00%) ABAP
3 8 (16.00%) JavaScript
4 5 (10.00%) REXX
5 4 (8.00%) C
5 4 (8.00%) PL/SQL
6 3 (6.00%) Assembly Language
6 3 (6.00%) C++
7 2 (4.00%) C#
7 2 (4.00%) Groovy
7 2 (4.00%) HLASM
7 2 (4.00%) Shell Script
8 1 (2.00%) CLIST
8 1 (2.00%) RPG
Qualifications
1 4 (8.00%) Degree
2 3 (6.00%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (2.00%) CFA
3 1 (2.00%) CTC Cleared
3 1 (2.00%) ISEB
3 1 (2.00%) ISTQB
3 1 (2.00%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
3 1 (2.00%) SAP Certification
3 1 (2.00%) Security Cleared
3 1 (2.00%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (12.00%) QA
2 2 (4.00%) ISO 15022
2 2 (4.00%) ISO 20022
2 2 (4.00%) ISO 8583
2 2 (4.00%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 1 (2.00%) Docker
1 1 (2.00%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 2 (4.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 11 (22.00%) Oracle
2 8 (16.00%) SAP
3 7 (14.00%) HP
3 7 (14.00%) IBM
4 3 (6.00%) Perforce
5 2 (4.00%) Ab Initio
5 2 (4.00%) Adobe
5 2 (4.00%) Informatica
5 2 (4.00%) Microsoft
5 2 (4.00%) Parasoft
6 1 (2.00%) Avaloq
6 1 (2.00%) CA Agile Central
6 1 (2.00%) Dynatrace
6 1 (2.00%) FNZ
6 1 (2.00%) MuleSoft
6 1 (2.00%) Red Hat
6 1 (2.00%) Splunk