Mainframe Contracts in the UK excluding London

Mainframes
UK > UK excluding London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in contract job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 256 292 410
Rank change year-on-year +36 +118 +35
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 83 101 49
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.65% 0.49% 0.20%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.96% 1.65% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 60 67 31
10th Percentile £376 £351 £325
25th Percentile £411 £400 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £450 £553
Median % change year-on-year +14.17% -18.55% +12.99%
75th Percentile £578 £500 £650
90th Percentile £641 £588 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £558
% change year-on-year - -10.31% +6.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £51.25 - -
Median hourly rate £52.50 - -
75th Percentile £53.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £22.04 - -

All Generic Skills
UK excluding 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 the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 4,235 6,123 7,826
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 33.25% 29.45% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,612 3,658 5,277
10th Percentile £210 £210 £213
25th Percentile £363 £375 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.90% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £588 £598 £619
90th Percentile £665 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 300 720 439
10th Percentile £16.67 £12.15 £9.80
25th Percentile £19.99 £14.06 £10.63
Median hourly rate £30.93 £27.75 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.46% +26.14% +9.64%
75th Percentile £64.52 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £83.22 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.05 £30.00 £22.49
% change year-on-year +6.83% +33.42% -18.24%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Mainframe as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Mainframe in the UK excluding London

Mainframe
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Mainframe in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Mainframe in the UK excluding London

Mainframe
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Mainframe in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Mainframe in the UK excluding London

Mainframe
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Mainframe in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Mainframe in the UK excluding London

Mainframe
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding 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 UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 30 April 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 +11 37 £447 -0.67% 7
Scotland +24 27 £514 +2.75% 3
North West +26 20 £402 -21.56% 2
Yorkshire -16 17 £525 +22.09% 5
South West +51 9 £593 -7.96% 5
Midlands +15 5 £503 +38.05% 2
South East +32 3 £525 +46.65% 6
East Midlands - 3 £403 - 1
West Midlands +4 2 £613 +68.27% 1
Wales +5 1 £525 +16.67%
Northern Ireland -11 1 £525 +5.00%
Mainframe
UK

Mainframe
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 16 (19.28%) CICS
2 9 (10.84%) Confluence
3 5 (6.02%) CMS
4 3 (3.61%) SAS
4 3 (3.61%) WebSphere
5 1 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (1.20%) BASE24
Cloud Services
1 7 (8.43%) AWS
2 1 (1.20%) OpenShift
2 1 (1.20%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 5 (6.02%) SNA
1 5 (6.02%) TCP/IP
2 4 (4.82%) Network Security
2 4 (4.82%) VPN
3 1 (1.20%) ATM
3 1 (1.20%) DWDM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (10.84%) DB2
2 3 (3.61%) Easytrieve
2 3 (3.61%) NoSQL
3 2 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (2.41%) Hadoop
4 1 (1.20%) NonStop SQL
4 1 (1.20%) Power BI
4 1 (1.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (12.05%) JIRA
2 6 (7.23%) Jenkins
3 5 (6.02%) Selenium
4 3 (3.61%) CA Release Automation
4 3 (3.61%) Gradle
4 3 (3.61%) HP UFT
4 3 (3.61%) IntelliJ
4 3 (3.61%) JUnit
4 3 (3.61%) Maven
4 3 (3.61%) NetBeans
4 3 (3.61%) Subversion
5 2 (2.41%) SOAtest
General
1 23 (27.71%) Banking
1 23 (27.71%) Finance
2 22 (26.51%) Analytical Skills
3 18 (21.69%) Social Skills
4 5 (6.02%) Organisational Skills
5 3 (3.61%) Public Sector
5 3 (3.61%) Retail Banking
6 2 (2.41%) General Ledger
6 2 (2.41%) Retail
7 1 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.20%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 21 (25.30%) Consultant
2 17 (20.48%) Mainframe Consultant
3 11 (13.25%) Storage Consultant
4 10 (12.05%) Architect
5 7 (8.43%) Administrator
5 7 (8.43%) Infrastructure Architect
5 7 (8.43%) Security Administrator
6 6 (7.23%) Developer
7 5 (6.02%) Infrastructure Solutions Architect
7 5 (6.02%) Solutions Architect
8 4 (4.82%) Programmer
8 4 (4.82%) Python Engineer
9 3 (3.61%) CICS Engineer
9 3 (3.61%) Mainframe Developer
9 3 (3.61%) Project Manager
9 3 (3.61%) Systems Programmer
9 3 (3.61%) z/OS Engineer
9 3 (3.61%) z/OS Systems Programmer
10 2 (2.41%) Software Manager
10 2 (2.41%) Test Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (10.84%) Middleware
2 8 (9.64%) Web Services
3 5 (6.02%) ISPF
3 5 (6.02%) J2EE
4 3 (3.61%) Ajax
4 3 (3.61%) AngularJS
4 3 (3.61%) Bootstrap
4 3 (3.61%) CSS
4 3 (3.61%) Hibernate
4 3 (3.61%) HTML
4 3 (3.61%) HTML5
4 3 (3.61%) jQuery
4 3 (3.61%) Kafka
4 3 (3.61%) Node.js
4 3 (3.61%) Spring
4 3 (3.61%) Spring Boot
4 3 (3.61%) Spring Integration
4 3 (3.61%) Spring MVC
5 2 (2.41%) JSON
5 2 (2.41%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 11 (13.25%) VSAM
2 9 (10.84%) IBM Mainframe
3 8 (9.64%) Product Ownership
4 7 (8.43%) Data Centre
4 7 (8.43%) Replication
5 6 (7.23%) Clustering
6 5 (6.02%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (6.02%) Management Information System
7 4 (4.82%) Algorithms
7 4 (4.82%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (4.82%) Linux Command Line
8 3 (3.61%) Data Structures
8 3 (3.61%) Onboarding
9 2 (2.41%) Mobile Payment
10 1 (1.20%) AS400
10 1 (1.20%) EMV
10 1 (1.20%) iSeries
10 1 (1.20%) LPAR
10 1 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (1.20%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 22 (26.51%) zOS
2 14 (16.87%) Windows
3 12 (14.46%) Linux
4 9 (10.84%) Unix
5 7 (8.43%) HPUX
5 7 (8.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (8.43%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (26.51%) Problem-Solving
2 19 (22.89%) Migration
3 17 (20.48%) Agile
4 14 (16.87%) DevOps
5 12 (14.46%) Disaster Recovery
6 11 (13.25%) Data Migration
6 11 (13.25%) High Availability
7 8 (9.64%) CI/CD
8 7 (8.43%) Capacity Planning
8 7 (8.43%) Task Automation
8 7 (8.43%) Test Automation
8 7 (8.43%) Validation
9 6 (7.23%) ITIL
9 6 (7.23%) Project Delivery
9 6 (7.23%) Roadmaps
9 6 (7.23%) Security Auditing
9 6 (7.23%) Service Management
10 5 (6.02%) Analytical Thinking
10 5 (6.02%) Incident Response
10 5 (6.02%) Planning and Forecasting
Programming Languages
1 20 (24.10%) JCL
2 18 (21.69%) REXX
3 13 (15.66%) COBOL
4 6 (7.23%) Java
5 4 (4.82%) CLIST
5 4 (4.82%) Python
5 4 (4.82%) SQL
6 3 (3.61%) Assembly Language
6 3 (3.61%) JavaScript
6 3 (3.61%) TypeScript
7 1 (1.20%) C
7 1 (1.20%) C++
Qualifications
1 6 (7.23%) CISSP
1 6 (7.23%) IBM Certification
2 3 (3.61%) Security Cleared
3 2 (2.41%) Degree
4 1 (1.20%) CTC Cleared
4 1 (1.20%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (8.43%) QA
2 1 (1.20%) ISO 8583
2 1 (1.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 11 (13.25%) Virtual Machines
2 7 (8.43%) RACF
3 5 (6.02%) Time Sharing Option
4 4 (4.82%) Docker
5 1 (1.20%) ACF2
5 1 (1.20%) Job Entry Subsystem
5 1 (1.20%) Microcode
Systems Management
1 5 (6.02%) Tivoli NetView
2 4 (4.82%) Kubernetes
3 3 (3.61%) Progress Chef
3 3 (3.61%) Puppet
4 2 (2.41%) Ansible
4 2 (2.41%) CA Endevor
4 2 (2.41%) Control-M
4 2 (2.41%) OMEGAMON
5 1 (1.20%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 38 (45.78%) IBM
2 10 (12.05%) BMC
3 7 (8.43%) Sun
3 7 (8.43%) Unisys
4 4 (4.82%) HP
5 3 (3.61%) CA Agile Central
5 3 (3.61%) Oracle
6 2 (2.41%) Ab Initio
6 2 (2.41%) Dynatrace
6 2 (2.41%) Informatica
6 2 (2.41%) Microsoft
6 2 (2.41%) Parasoft
6 2 (2.41%) Splunk
7 1 (1.20%) Broadcom
7 1 (1.20%) Dell
7 1 (1.20%) Fujitsu
7 1 (1.20%) ICL
7 1 (1.20%) Infor
7 1 (1.20%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.20%) Pega