CICS Contract Job Trends

IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring CICS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 602 485 559
Rank change year-on-year -117 +74 +78
Contract jobs citing CICS 39 32 31
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.079% 0.11% 0.071%
As % of the Application Platforms category 0.91% 0.98% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 26 19
10th Percentile £363 £325 £333
25th Percentile £387 £352 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £436 £422 £370
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% +14.12% -31.16%
75th Percentile £516 £472 £471
90th Percentile £575 £479 £488
UK excluding London median daily rate £448 £404 £358
% change year-on-year +10.90% +12.71% +8.48%

All Application Platform Skills
UK

CICS falls under the Application Platforms category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring application platform skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for application platform skills 4,273 3,258 4,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 8.63% 11.15% 9.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,874 2,150 3,026
10th Percentile £313 £281 £262
25th Percentile £403 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -2.75% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £619
90th Percentile £675 £707 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +2.78% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 64 162
10th Percentile £16.01 £17.33 £13.28
25th Percentile £19.25 £26.42 £15.54
Median hourly rate £32.50 £52.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year -38.10% +74.07% -41.15%
75th Percentile £63.38 £70.63 £48.11
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £53.61 £30.00
% change year-on-year -34.71% +78.70% -33.33%

CICS
Job Vacancy Trend

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

CICS job vacancy trend in the UK

CICS
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CICS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CICS

CICS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing CICS over the 6 months to 7 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for CICS in the UK

CICS
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CICS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing CICS

CICS
Top 8 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing CICS within the UK over the 6 months to 7 June 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
England -107 32 £430 +6.57% 5
Work from Home -45 22 £525 +24.78% 2
London -63 19 £425 +4.36% 1
UK excluding London -99 15 £448 +10.90% 3
North of England -75 13 £448 +11.32% 1
North West -46 9 £448 +11.32%
Yorkshire -54 4 - - 1
Scotland -7 2 - -

CICS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 3 (7.69%) Confluence
2 2 (5.13%) WebSphere
3 1 (2.56%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 12 (30.77%) AWS
2 6 (15.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 6 (15.38%) AWS Lambda
2 6 (15.38%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (25.64%) Firewall
2 2 (5.13%) HTTP
2 2 (5.13%) TCP/IP
3 1 (2.56%) MIMO
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (61.54%) Db2
2 10 (25.64%) DataStage
3 6 (15.38%) DynamoDB
4 1 (2.56%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 7 (17.95%) GitLab
2 3 (7.69%) JIRA
3 2 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 1 (2.56%) ChangeMan
4 1 (2.56%) Visual Studio
4 1 (2.56%) XPEDITER
General
1 19 (48.72%) Finance
1 19 (48.72%) Social Skills
2 14 (35.90%) Banking
3 11 (28.21%) Influencing Skills
4 3 (7.69%) Public Sector
5 2 (5.13%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (5.13%) Financial Institution
5 2 (5.13%) Retail
6 1 (2.56%) Advertising
6 1 (2.56%) Corporate Banking
6 1 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (2.56%) Investment Banking
6 1 (2.56%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (2.56%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 10 (25.64%) Designer
1 10 (25.64%) Infrastructure Designer
2 8 (20.51%) Developer
2 8 (20.51%) Mainframe Developer
3 6 (15.38%) Mainframe Specialist
4 2 (5.13%) z/OS Engineer
5 1 (2.56%) Administrator
5 1 (2.56%) Analyst
5 1 (2.56%) Applications Support
5 1 (2.56%) Applications Support Analyst
5 1 (2.56%) CICS Engineer
5 1 (2.56%) CICS Specialist
5 1 (2.56%) DB2 Specialist
5 1 (2.56%) DB2 Support
5 1 (2.56%) Information Specialist
5 1 (2.56%) Mainframe Analyst
5 1 (2.56%) Middleware Engineer
5 1 (2.56%) Support Analyst
5 1 (2.56%) Support Specialist
5 1 (2.56%) z/OS Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (28.21%) Middleware
1 11 (28.21%) Web Services
2 7 (17.95%) JSON
2 7 (17.95%) RESTful
2 7 (17.95%) SOAP
2 7 (17.95%) WSDL
3 6 (15.38%) REST
4 2 (5.13%) XML
5 1 (2.56%) ISPF
5 1 (2.56%) JWT
5 1 (2.56%) Kafka
5 1 (2.56%) OAuth
5 1 (2.56%) Spring
5 1 (2.56%) Spring Boot
5 1 (2.56%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 36 (92.31%) Mainframe
2 19 (48.72%) VSAM
3 11 (28.21%) Data Centre
4 10 (25.64%) BYOD
5 7 (17.95%) DataPower
5 7 (17.95%) Online Banking
6 4 (10.26%) IBM Mainframe
7 1 (2.56%) Management Information System
7 1 (2.56%) Onboarding
7 1 (2.56%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 18 (46.15%) zOS
2 11 (28.21%) Linux
3 10 (25.64%) AIX
3 10 (25.64%) Solaris
3 10 (25.64%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (28.21%) Problem-Solving
1 11 (28.21%) Roadmaps
2 10 (25.64%) Business Case
2 10 (25.64%) Design Patterns
2 10 (25.64%) Process Improvement
3 9 (23.08%) Integration Patterns
3 9 (23.08%) Performance Tuning
4 8 (20.51%) Batch Processing
4 8 (20.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 7 (17.95%) SOA
6 6 (15.38%) Migration
7 5 (12.82%) DevOps
8 4 (10.26%) AI
8 4 (10.26%) Change Management
9 3 (7.69%) Agile
9 3 (7.69%) Capacity Planning
9 3 (7.69%) Disaster Recovery
9 3 (7.69%) Project Delivery
10 2 (5.13%) CI/CD
10 2 (5.13%) Systems Engineering
Programming Languages
1 23 (58.97%) COBOL
2 17 (43.59%) JCL
3 7 (17.95%) Python
3 7 (17.95%) SQL
4 6 (15.38%) Shell Script
5 4 (10.26%) Java
6 2 (5.13%) REXX
7 1 (2.56%) Assembly Language
7 1 (2.56%) Micro Focus COBOL
7 1 (2.56%) Perl
7 1 (2.56%) PowerShell
7 1 (2.56%) XPath
Qualifications
1 3 (7.69%) BPSS Clearance
1 3 (7.69%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.56%) GDPR
1 1 (2.56%) QA
System Software
1 4 (10.26%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (7.69%) RACF
3 1 (2.56%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 3 (7.69%) CA Endevor
2 1 (2.56%) Ansible
2 1 (2.56%) MAINVIEW
2 1 (2.56%) OMEGAMON
Vendors
1 18 (46.15%) IBM
2 10 (25.64%) VMware
3 2 (5.13%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.56%) BMC
4 1 (2.56%) Micro Focus
4 1 (2.56%) Pega
4 1 (2.56%) StreamSets