Mainframe Architect Contract Job Trends in London

Mainframe Architect
England > London

The median Mainframe Architect daily rate in London is £650, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 391 358 389
Rank change year-on-year -33 +31 -
Contract jobs requiring a Mainframe Architect 3 3 7
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.020% 0.022% 0.038%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.022% 0.023% 0.041%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 1 4
10th Percentile - - £474
25th Percentile £625 - £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £650 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +10.00% -
75th Percentile £675 - £550
90th Percentile - - £640
England median daily rate £650 £550 £538
% change year-on-year +18.18% +2.33% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in London. 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in London with a recognized job title 13,826 12,838 17,199
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 93.58% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,206 8,215 12,451
10th Percentile £350 £338 £325
25th Percentile £425 £443 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -5.17%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £775
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 217 141 335
10th Percentile £18.25 £21.00 £15.97
25th Percentile £23.55 £24.66 £18.97
Median hourly rate £32.50 £36.50 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.96% +28.07% -12.82%
75th Percentile £63.00 £53.75 £49.48
90th Percentile £76.58 £78.75 £65.45
England median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -14.29% - -2.78%

Mainframe Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Mainframe Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

Mainframe Architect job vacancy trend in London

Mainframe Architect
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Mainframe Architect job vacancies in London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Mainframe Architect job vacancies in London

Mainframe Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London

For the 6 months to 6 February 2026, Mainframe Architect contract 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 contract job ads across the London region featuring Mainframe Architect in the job title.

1 3 (100.00%) Amazon Aurora
1 3 (100.00%) Change Data Capture
1 3 (100.00%) Data Modelling
1 3 (100.00%) DB2
1 3 (100.00%) IBM
1 3 (100.00%) Kafka
1 3 (100.00%) Migration
1 3 (100.00%) PostgreSQL
1 3 (100.00%) Python
1 3 (100.00%) SQL
1 3 (100.00%) Validation
1 3 (100.00%) zOS
2 2 (66.67%) Amazon Athena
2 2 (66.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 2 (66.67%) Amazon MSK
2 2 (66.67%) Amazon Redshift
2 2 (66.67%) Amazon S3
2 2 (66.67%) Analytics
2 2 (66.67%) AWS
2 2 (66.67%) CI/CD
2 2 (66.67%) GitLab
2 2 (66.67%) Grafana
2 2 (66.67%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (66.67%) Low Latency
2 2 (66.67%) Observability
2 2 (66.67%) Runbook
2 2 (66.67%) Terraform
2 2 (66.67%) Windows
3 1 (33.33%) COBOL
3 1 (33.33%) CQRS

Mainframe Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (66.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
1 2 (66.67%) Amazon MSK
1 2 (66.67%) Amazon S3
1 2 (66.67%) AWS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (100.00%) Amazon Aurora
1 3 (100.00%) DB2
1 3 (100.00%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (66.67%) Amazon Athena
2 2 (66.67%) Amazon Redshift
3 1 (33.33%) Data Vault
3 1 (33.33%) OLTP
3 1 (33.33%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 2 (66.67%) GitLab
General
1 2 (66.67%) Finance
2 1 (33.33%) Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (100.00%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 3 (100.00%) Mainframe
2 1 (33.33%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (33.33%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 3 (100.00%) zOS
2 2 (66.67%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (100.00%) Change Data Capture
1 3 (100.00%) Data Modelling
1 3 (100.00%) Migration
1 3 (100.00%) Validation
2 2 (66.67%) Analytics
2 2 (66.67%) CI/CD
2 2 (66.67%) Infrastructure as Code
2 2 (66.67%) Low Latency
2 2 (66.67%) Observability
2 2 (66.67%) Runbook
3 1 (33.33%) Dashboard Development
3 1 (33.33%) Data Migration
3 1 (33.33%) Data Pipeline
3 1 (33.33%) Data Transformation
3 1 (33.33%) Event-Driven
3 1 (33.33%) Event-Driven Architecture
3 1 (33.33%) Integration Patterns
3 1 (33.33%) Logical Data Model
3 1 (33.33%) Performance Tuning
3 1 (33.33%) Physical Data Model
Programming Languages
1 3 (100.00%) Python
1 3 (100.00%) SQL
2 1 (33.33%) COBOL
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (33.33%) Data Quality
Systems Management
1 2 (66.67%) Grafana
1 2 (66.67%) Terraform
Vendors
1 3 (100.00%) IBM
2 1 (33.33%) GoldenSource