Mainframe Contract Job Trends in London

Mainframes
England > London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in contract job vacancies in London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe over the 6 months leading up to 3 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 332 320 378
Rank change year-on-year -12 +58 +111
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 40 75 57
As % of all contract jobs in London 0.30% 0.46% 0.27%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.76% 1.37% 0.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 17 46 29
10th Percentile £320 £400 £463
25th Percentile £413 £463 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £507 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.08% -11.83% -11.54%
75th Percentile £775 £601 £650
90th Percentile £788 £750 £688
England median daily rate £413 £488 £575
% change year-on-year -15.38% -15.22% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £68.75
Median hourly rate - - £72.50
75th Percentile - - £76.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate - - £72.50
% change year-on-year - - +45.00%

All Generic Skills
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 London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 5,237 5,475 7,454
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 38.82% 33.77% 35.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,375 3,551 5,377
10th Percentile £350 £325 £350
25th Percentile £447 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.61% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £700 £731 £725
90th Percentile £825 £850 £825
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 71 93
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.25 £17.44
25th Percentile £23.98 £23.80 £19.99
Median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £28.75
Median % change year-on-year -18.46% +13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £46.88 £55.50 £52.00
90th Percentile £76.50 £71.88 £73.42
England median hourly rate £30.00 £57.35 £46.18
% change year-on-year -47.69% +24.19% +79.62%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend in London

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

Mainframe job vacancy trend in London

Mainframe
Daily Rate Trend in London

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Mainframe

Mainframe
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Mainframe in London over the 6 months to 3 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Mainframe in London

Mainframe
Hourly Rate Trend in London

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing Mainframe

Mainframe
Contract Job Locations in 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 London region over the 6 months to 3 October 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
Central London +2 5 £750 +46.34% 1
Mainframe
England

Mainframe
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:

Application Platforms
1 9 (22.50%) CICS
2 2 (5.00%) CMS
2 2 (5.00%) SAS
3 1 (2.50%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (2.50%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (5.00%) VisionPLUS
2 1 (2.50%) BASE24
Cloud Services
1 6 (15.00%) Azure
2 5 (12.50%) AWS
3 3 (7.50%) SaaS
4 2 (5.00%) GCP
4 2 (5.00%) IaaS
4 2 (5.00%) PaaS
5 1 (2.50%) Amazon EC2
5 1 (2.50%) Amazon ECS
5 1 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
5 1 (2.50%) Amazon S3
5 1 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (2.50%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.50%) ATM
1 1 (2.50%) NAS
1 1 (2.50%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (22.50%) DB2
2 2 (5.00%) Data Lake
2 2 (5.00%) Delta Lake
2 2 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (2.50%) NonStop SQL
3 1 (2.50%) Oracle Database
3 1 (2.50%) Redis
3 1 (2.50%) Relational Database
3 1 (2.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (5.00%) ChangeMan
1 2 (5.00%) JIRA
1 2 (5.00%) JUnit
2 1 (2.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
2 1 (2.50%) Cucumber
2 1 (2.50%) Git
2 1 (2.50%) GitLab
2 1 (2.50%) Jenkins
2 1 (2.50%) Maven
2 1 (2.50%) Mockito
2 1 (2.50%) Postman
2 1 (2.50%) REST Assured
2 1 (2.50%) Selenium
2 1 (2.50%) SoapUI
2 1 (2.50%) SonarQube
2 1 (2.50%) SpecFlow
2 1 (2.50%) Subversion
2 1 (2.50%) Xcode
2 1 (2.50%) XCTest
General
1 13 (32.50%) Finance
2 11 (27.50%) Social Skills
3 10 (25.00%) Banking
4 8 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (5.00%) Public Sector
6 1 (2.50%) Billing
6 1 (2.50%) Investment Banking
6 1 (2.50%) Retail
Job Titles
1 9 (22.50%) Programmer
2 8 (20.00%) Systems Programmer
3 6 (15.00%) Architect
3 6 (15.00%) Mainframe Programmer
4 5 (12.50%) Mainframe Systems Programmer
4 5 (12.50%) Senior
5 4 (10.00%) CICS Programmer
6 3 (7.50%) Administrator
6 3 (7.50%) CICS Systems Programmer
6 3 (7.50%) DB2 Programmer
6 3 (7.50%) Project Manager
6 3 (7.50%) Solutions Architect
6 3 (7.50%) z/OS Systems Programmer
7 2 (5.00%) Automation Engineer
7 2 (5.00%) Consultant
7 2 (5.00%) DB2 Systems Programmer
7 2 (5.00%) Infrastructure Manager
7 2 (5.00%) Infrastructure Project Manager
7 2 (5.00%) Optimisation Engineer
7 2 (5.00%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (7.50%) Kafka
2 2 (5.00%) ISPF
2 2 (5.00%) REST
2 2 (5.00%) Spring
2 2 (5.00%) Spring Boot
3 1 (2.50%) .NET
3 1 (2.50%) CSS
3 1 (2.50%) CSS3
3 1 (2.50%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (2.50%) EntireX
3 1 (2.50%) HTML
3 1 (2.50%) HTML5
3 1 (2.50%) J2EE
3 1 (2.50%) JPA
3 1 (2.50%) Material-UI
3 1 (2.50%) SOAP
3 1 (2.50%) Spring Cloud
3 1 (2.50%) Spring MVC
3 1 (2.50%) Swagger
3 1 (2.50%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 5 (12.50%) Data Protection Act
2 4 (10.00%) Onboarding
3 3 (7.50%) IBM Mainframe
3 3 (7.50%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (7.50%) Product Ownership
3 3 (7.50%) Replication
4 2 (5.00%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (5.00%) AS400
4 2 (5.00%) Cloud Native
4 2 (5.00%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (5.00%) Video\Live Streaming
4 2 (5.00%) VSAM
5 1 (2.50%) Data Centre
5 1 (2.50%) DataPower
5 1 (2.50%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (2.50%) Private Cloud
5 1 (2.50%) Public Cloud
5 1 (2.50%) Security Posture
5 1 (2.50%) Tandem
5 1 (2.50%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 12 (30.00%) zOS
2 5 (12.50%) Linux
3 3 (7.50%) Windows
4 1 (2.50%) AIX
4 1 (2.50%) Solaris
4 1 (2.50%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (27.50%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (20.00%) High Availability
3 6 (15.00%) Agile
3 6 (15.00%) Data Sharing
3 6 (15.00%) Migration
4 5 (12.50%) Data Protection
4 5 (12.50%) Disaster Recovery
4 5 (12.50%) Performance Tuning
4 5 (12.50%) Re-Platforming
5 4 (10.00%) Cost Reduction
5 4 (10.00%) DevOps
5 4 (10.00%) Performance Optimisation
5 4 (10.00%) Root Cause Analysis
5 4 (10.00%) Runbook
5 4 (10.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 3 (7.50%) Change Management
6 3 (7.50%) Data Pipeline
6 3 (7.50%) ITIL
6 3 (7.50%) Observability
6 3 (7.50%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 9 (22.50%) COBOL
2 8 (20.00%) REXX
3 7 (17.50%) JCL
4 5 (12.50%) Assembly Language
5 4 (10.00%) Python
6 3 (7.50%) CLIST
6 3 (7.50%) Java
6 3 (7.50%) SQL
7 2 (5.00%) C
7 2 (5.00%) PL/1
8 1 (2.50%) Bash
8 1 (2.50%) C#
8 1 (2.50%) C++
8 1 (2.50%) Groovy
8 1 (2.50%) JavaScript
8 1 (2.50%) Natural
8 1 (2.50%) PowerShell
8 1 (2.50%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (2.50%) Degree
1 1 (2.50%) ISTQB
1 1 (2.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
1 1 (2.50%) SC Cleared
1 1 (2.50%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.50%) Data Quality
1 1 (2.50%) ISO 8583
1 1 (2.50%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (10.00%) RACF
2 2 (5.00%) Docker
2 2 (5.00%) Job Entry Subsystem
2 2 (5.00%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 5 (12.50%) OMEGAMON
2 3 (7.50%) Tivoli NetView
3 2 (5.00%) CA Endevor
3 2 (5.00%) Kubernetes
4 1 (2.50%) Ansible
4 1 (2.50%) Control-M
4 1 (2.50%) Terraform
Vendors
1 10 (25.00%) IBM
2 2 (5.00%) Databricks
3 1 (2.50%) BMC
3 1 (2.50%) Broadcom
3 1 (2.50%) CA Agile Central
3 1 (2.50%) CyberArk
3 1 (2.50%) Dynatrace
3 1 (2.50%) Fujitsu
3 1 (2.50%) HP
3 1 (2.50%) Microsoft
3 1 (2.50%) NetApp
3 1 (2.50%) Oracle
3 1 (2.50%) Qualys
3 1 (2.50%) Software AG
3 1 (2.50%) Splunk
3 1 (2.50%) Syncsort