Mainframe Contract Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Mainframes
South East > Thames Valley

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in contract job vacancies in the Thames Valley. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe over the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 155 108 120
Rank change year-on-year -47 +12 +24
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 2 2 2
As % of all contract jobs in the Thames Valley 0.065% 0.12% 0.089%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.19% 0.34% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £339 - -
25th Percentile £359 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 - -
75th Percentile £459 - -
90th Percentile £476 - -
South East median daily rate £606 - £358
% change year-on-year - - -34.91%

All Generic Skills
Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 1,048 583 653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 33.92% 35.46% 29.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 647 362 367
10th Percentile £325 £250 £246
25th Percentile £425 £381 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £611 £575 £608
90th Percentile £716 £661 £675
South East median daily rate £525 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +7.14% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 132 29 29
10th Percentile £12.84 £14.75 £15.84
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.13 £20.75
Median hourly rate £47.52 £40.44 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.52% -4.86% -29.90%
75th Percentile £82.52 £63.75 £60.60
90th Percentile £99.25 £87.77 £69.79
South East median hourly rate £38.72 £33.05 £57.35
% change year-on-year +17.16% -42.37% +4.27%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

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

Mainframe job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Mainframe
Daily Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Mainframe.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Mainframe

Mainframe
Hourly Rate Trend in the Thames Valley

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Mainframe.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Mainframe

Mainframe
Contract Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Mainframe within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 18 September 2026. 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
Berkshire -20 1 £475 - 2
Buckinghamshire - 1 £350 -
Mainframe
South East

Mainframe
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 1 (50.00%) CICS
1 1 (50.00%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 1 (50.00%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (50.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (50.00%) DataStage
1 1 (50.00%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
1 1 (50.00%) IBM InfoSphere
1 1 (50.00%) Power BI
1 1 (50.00%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 1 (50.00%) Git
1 1 (50.00%) IBM UrbanCode
1 1 (50.00%) Jenkins
General
1 2 (100.00%) Finance
2 1 (50.00%) Banking
2 1 (50.00%) Documentation Skills
2 1 (50.00%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (50.00%) ISPF
Miscellaneous
1 1 (50.00%) Hybrid Cloud
1 1 (50.00%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 1 (50.00%) Linux
1 1 (50.00%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (100.00%) Performance Tuning
2 1 (50.00%) Agile
2 1 (50.00%) API Integration
2 1 (50.00%) Batch Processing
2 1 (50.00%) Business Continuity
2 1 (50.00%) Business Intelligence
2 1 (50.00%) Capacity Management
2 1 (50.00%) Capacity Planning
2 1 (50.00%) Change Management
2 1 (50.00%) CI/CD
2 1 (50.00%) Data Modelling
2 1 (50.00%) Database Security
2 1 (50.00%) DevOps
2 1 (50.00%) Disaster Recovery
2 1 (50.00%) Kimball Methodology
2 1 (50.00%) Performance Optimisation
2 1 (50.00%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (50.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 1 (50.00%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 2 (100.00%) JCL
2 1 (50.00%) COBOL
2 1 (50.00%) SQL
System Software
1 1 (50.00%) RACF
1 1 (50.00%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 1 (50.00%) Ansible
Vendors
1 2 (100.00%) IBM
2 1 (50.00%) Broadcom
2 1 (50.00%) Teradata