Mainframe Contracts in the North West

Mainframes
England > North West

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in contract job vacancies in the North West. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe over the 6 months leading up to 23 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 108 122 150
Rank change year-on-year +14 +28 +23
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 19 8 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.95% 0.28% 0.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.30% 1.13% 0.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 7 5
10th Percentile £318 £445 £321
25th Percentile £345 - £322
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £381 £445 £400
Median % change year-on-year -14.38% +11.25% -18.20%
75th Percentile £404 £450 £438
90th Percentile £455 £452 £610
England median daily rate £420 £488 £563
% change year-on-year -13.85% -13.33% +7.14%

All Generic Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 575 708 970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 28.71% 25.08% 32.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 407 441 632
10th Percentile £269 £297 £288
25th Percentile £363 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -8.72% -1.40% +5.26%
75th Percentile £554 £585 £602
90th Percentile £650 £688 £675
England median daily rate £525 £550 £563
% change year-on-year -4.55% -2.22% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 76 37
10th Percentile £23.96 £13.00 £16.76
25th Percentile £26.88 £15.00 £20.22
Median hourly rate £40.59 £25.63 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.40% -6.82% +44.74%
75th Percentile £68.75 £43.75 £53.35
90th Percentile £80.33 £57.50 £68.20
England median hourly rate £33.05 £36.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year -9.45% +62.26% -15.11%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Mainframe as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Mainframe in the North West

Mainframe
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Mainframe in the North West.

Daily rate trend for Mainframe in the North West

Mainframe
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Mainframe in the North West over the 6 months to 23 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Mainframe in the North West

Mainframe
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Mainframe in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for Mainframe in the North West

Mainframe
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Mainframe within the North West region over the 6 months to 23 June 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
Cheshire +1 13 £402 -9.66% 11
Manchester +19 6 £320 -28.89% 20
Mainframe
England

Mainframe
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West 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 13 (68.42%) CICS
2 3 (15.79%) WebSphere
3 2 (10.53%) Confluence
4 1 (5.26%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (5.26%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (31.58%) AWS
2 1 (5.26%) OpenShift
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (42.11%) DB2
2 2 (10.53%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (10.53%) Easytrieve
2 2 (10.53%) Hadoop
2 2 (10.53%) Oracle Database
2 2 (10.53%) Relational Database
2 2 (10.53%) SQL Server
3 1 (5.26%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (31.58%) Jenkins
2 5 (26.32%) Selenium
3 3 (15.79%) IntelliJ
3 3 (15.79%) JIRA
3 3 (15.79%) Maven
4 2 (10.53%) Cucumber
4 2 (10.53%) Eclipse
4 2 (10.53%) Git
4 2 (10.53%) REST Assured
4 2 (10.53%) SOAtest
5 1 (5.26%) CA Release Automation
5 1 (5.26%) Gradle
5 1 (5.26%) HP UFT
5 1 (5.26%) JUnit
5 1 (5.26%) NetBeans
5 1 (5.26%) Subversion
General
1 10 (52.63%) Banking
2 5 (26.32%) Analytical Skills
2 5 (26.32%) Finance
3 4 (21.05%) Social Skills
4 2 (10.53%) General Ledger
4 2 (10.53%) Retail Banking
5 1 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (5.26%) Financial Institution
5 1 (5.26%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (5.26%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 3 (15.79%) Architect
1 3 (15.79%) Tester
2 2 (10.53%) Automation Tester
2 2 (10.53%) Designer
2 2 (10.53%) Developer
2 2 (10.53%) Mainframe Designer
2 2 (10.53%) Mainframe Developer
2 2 (10.53%) Platform Engineer
2 2 (10.53%) Test Architect
3 1 (5.26%) Analyst
3 1 (5.26%) Consultant
3 1 (5.26%) Incident Manager
3 1 (5.26%) Mainframe Architect
3 1 (5.26%) Mainframe Tester
3 1 (5.26%) Major Incident Manager
3 1 (5.26%) Management Consultant
3 1 (5.26%) Project Manager
3 1 (5.26%) Senior
3 1 (5.26%) Software Consultant
3 1 (5.26%) Software Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (31.58%) Web Services
2 3 (15.79%) ISPF
2 3 (15.79%) J2EE
3 2 (10.53%) JSON
3 2 (10.53%) REST
3 2 (10.53%) XML
4 1 (5.26%) Ajax
4 1 (5.26%) AngularJS
4 1 (5.26%) Bootstrap
4 1 (5.26%) CSS
4 1 (5.26%) Hibernate
4 1 (5.26%) HTML
4 1 (5.26%) HTML5
4 1 (5.26%) jQuery
4 1 (5.26%) Kafka
4 1 (5.26%) Node.js
4 1 (5.26%) Spring
4 1 (5.26%) Spring Boot
4 1 (5.26%) Spring Integration
4 1 (5.26%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 11 (57.89%) VSAM
2 4 (21.05%) Product Ownership
3 2 (10.53%) IBM Mainframe
3 2 (10.53%) Mobile Payment
4 1 (5.26%) Data Centre
4 1 (5.26%) Data Structures
4 1 (5.26%) Distributed Applications
4 1 (5.26%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 5 (26.32%) zOS
2 3 (15.79%) Unix
3 1 (5.26%) HPUX
3 1 (5.26%) Linux
3 1 (5.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (5.26%) Solaris
3 1 (5.26%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (31.58%) Agile
1 6 (31.58%) DevOps
2 5 (26.32%) Continuous Improvement
2 5 (26.32%) Problem-Solving
2 5 (26.32%) SDLC
2 5 (26.32%) Test Automation
2 5 (26.32%) Test Strategy
3 4 (21.05%) CI/CD
3 4 (21.05%) Migration
3 4 (21.05%) Scenario Testing
3 4 (21.05%) Validation
4 3 (15.79%) Code Quality
4 3 (15.79%) Incident Management
4 3 (15.79%) Root Cause Analysis
5 2 (10.53%) Performance Management
5 2 (10.53%) Problem Management
5 2 (10.53%) Release Management
5 2 (10.53%) Software Testing
5 2 (10.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 2 (10.53%) Test Scripting
Programming Languages
1 12 (63.16%) JCL
2 9 (47.37%) COBOL
3 6 (31.58%) Java
3 6 (31.58%) REXX
4 2 (10.53%) CLIST
4 2 (10.53%) SQL
5 1 (5.26%) Assembly Language
5 1 (5.26%) JavaScript
5 1 (5.26%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 1 (5.26%) Degree
1 1 (5.26%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (26.32%) QA
System Software
1 3 (15.79%) Time Sharing Option
1 3 (15.79%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 3 (15.79%) CA Endevor
2 2 (10.53%) OMEGAMON
3 1 (5.26%) NetBackup
3 1 (5.26%) Progress Chef
3 1 (5.26%) Puppet
Vendors
1 7 (36.84%) IBM
2 4 (21.05%) Oracle
3 2 (10.53%) Ab Initio
3 2 (10.53%) Informatica
3 2 (10.53%) Parasoft
4 1 (5.26%) CA Agile Central
4 1 (5.26%) Dell
4 1 (5.26%) Microsoft
4 1 (5.26%) Sun
4 1 (5.26%) Unisys