COBOL Contracts

COBOL
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring COBOL skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited COBOL 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 471 545 622
Rank change year-on-year +74 +77 +157
Contract jobs citing COBOL 48 55 91
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.16% 0.13% 0.15%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.48% 0.43% 0.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 26 38 57
10th Percentile £313 £325 £331
25th Percentile £380 £360 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £419 £525
Median % change year-on-year +6.75% -20.24% +5.00%
75th Percentile £569 £484 £550
90th Percentile £675 £500 £648
UK excluding London median daily rate £449 £370 £537
% change year-on-year +21.22% -31.07% +12.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £53.00 - -
25th Percentile £55.63 - -
Median hourly rate £62.50 - -
75th Percentile £70.63 - -
90th Percentile £74.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 - -

All Programming Languages
UK

COBOL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 9,942 12,854 20,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.01% 29.49% 35.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,743 9,130 15,092
10th Percentile £360 £350 £400
25th Percentile £419 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £769 £760 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £500
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 485 471
10th Percentile £22.49 £31.25 £26.25
25th Percentile £33.91 £46.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.50 £60.70
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -0.33% +21.40%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.87 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.20% - +26.21%

COBOL
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing COBOL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing COBOL.

Daily rate trend for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing COBOL over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing COBOL.

Hourly rate trend for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing COBOL over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Top 13 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing COBOL within the UK 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
England +71 44 £436 +5.70% 14
UK excluding London +66 32 £449 +21.22% 10
Work from Home +30 14 £402 -5.41% 16
Midlands +26 13 £507 +41.75% 1
North of England - 13 £425 - 3
West Midlands +17 12 £604 +68.64% 1
London +28 11 £325 -30.11% 3
North West - 7 £402 -
Yorkshire - 6 £450 - 3
South West +47 4 £500 -18.20% 5
South East +39 1 - -
Scotland +8 1 £550 +37.50% 1
East Midlands - 1 £358 -

COBOL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 (27.08%) CICS
2 4 (8.33%) Confluence
3 3 (6.25%) WebSphere
4 2 (4.17%) Tuxedo
5 1 (2.08%) SAS
Applications
1 1 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 8 (16.67%) BASE24
2 2 (4.17%) SAP ERP
2 2 (4.17%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 2 (4.17%) AWS
2 1 (2.08%) Apple Pay
2 1 (2.08%) Azure
2 1 (2.08%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 8 (16.67%) ATM
2 2 (4.17%) SAN
2 2 (4.17%) SNA
2 2 (4.17%) TCP/IP
3 1 (2.08%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (25.00%) DB2
2 7 (14.58%) NonStop SQL
3 3 (6.25%) Easytrieve
4 2 (4.17%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (4.17%) Hadoop
4 2 (4.17%) IDMS
4 2 (4.17%) Oracle Database
5 1 (2.08%) Adabas
5 1 (2.08%) Oracle9i Database
5 1 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (2.08%) Redis
5 1 (2.08%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 8 (16.67%) Postman
2 4 (8.33%) Jenkins
2 4 (8.33%) Oracle Forms
3 3 (6.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 3 (6.25%) JIRA
4 2 (4.17%) Bitbucket
4 2 (4.17%) CA Gen
4 2 (4.17%) Selenium
4 2 (4.17%) SOAtest
4 2 (4.17%) VersaTest
5 1 (2.08%) Eclipse
5 1 (2.08%) JUnit
5 1 (2.08%) Maven
5 1 (2.08%) Mockito
5 1 (2.08%) REST Assured
5 1 (2.08%) SoapUI
5 1 (2.08%) SonarQube
5 1 (2.08%) Subversion
5 1 (2.08%) Xcode
5 1 (2.08%) XCTest
General
1 16 (33.33%) Finance
2 13 (27.08%) Banking
3 11 (22.92%) Social Skills
4 5 (10.42%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (6.25%) Retail Banking
6 2 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (4.17%) General Ledger
6 2 (4.17%) Influencing Skills
6 2 (4.17%) Public Sector
7 1 (2.08%) Financial Institution
7 1 (2.08%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 20 (41.67%) Developer
2 8 (16.67%) Architect
2 8 (16.67%) Mainframe Developer
3 7 (14.58%) COBOL Developer
4 5 (10.42%) Lead
5 4 (8.33%) BASE24 Developer
5 4 (8.33%) SAP Architect
5 4 (8.33%) SAP Developer
6 3 (6.25%) Development Engineer
6 3 (6.25%) Lead Developer
6 3 (6.25%) Software Development Engineer
6 3 (6.25%) Software Engineer
7 2 (4.17%) Administrator
7 2 (4.17%) Assembler Developer
7 2 (4.17%) Designer
7 2 (4.17%) Full-Stack Developer
7 2 (4.17%) Mainframe Assembler Developer
7 2 (4.17%) Mainframe Designer
7 2 (4.17%) QA Leader
7 2 (4.17%) Test Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (18.75%) Web Services
2 6 (12.50%) CSS
2 6 (12.50%) CSS3
2 6 (12.50%) HTML
2 6 (12.50%) HTML5
2 6 (12.50%) REST
3 5 (10.42%) jQuery
3 5 (10.42%) SAP Fiori
3 5 (10.42%) SAPUI5
4 4 (8.33%) J2EE
4 4 (8.33%) SOAP
4 4 (8.33%) XML
5 3 (6.25%) IDoc
5 3 (6.25%) JSON
6 2 (4.17%) BAPI
6 2 (4.17%) ISPF
6 2 (4.17%) RESTful
6 2 (4.17%) SAP Smart Forms
7 1 (2.08%) Hibernate
7 1 (2.08%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 24 (50.00%) Mainframe
2 9 (18.75%) VSAM
3 6 (12.50%) EMV
4 5 (10.42%) IBM Mainframe
5 4 (8.33%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (6.25%) Product Ownership
6 3 (6.25%) Tandem
7 2 (4.17%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (4.17%) Mobile Payment
8 1 (2.08%) APACS
8 1 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (2.08%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 8 (16.67%) Unix
1 8 (16.67%) zOS
2 2 (4.17%) OpenVMS
2 2 (4.17%) VMS
3 1 (2.08%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (20.83%) Problem-Solving
2 9 (18.75%) Digital Transformation Programme
3 8 (16.67%) Agile
3 8 (16.67%) Migration
4 7 (14.58%) Code Quality
5 6 (12.50%) MVC
5 6 (12.50%) SDLC
6 5 (10.42%) Data Modelling
6 5 (10.42%) Full-Stack Development
6 5 (10.42%) Impact Analysis
6 5 (10.42%) Mentoring
6 5 (10.42%) User Experience
6 5 (10.42%) Validation
6 5 (10.42%) Workflow
7 4 (8.33%) API Integration
7 4 (8.33%) Data Protection
7 4 (8.33%) Microservices
7 4 (8.33%) Test Automation
8 3 (6.25%) Regulatory Change
8 3 (6.25%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 13 (27.08%) JCL
2 11 (22.92%) SQL
3 8 (16.67%) ABAP
3 8 (16.67%) Java
3 8 (16.67%) JavaScript
4 5 (10.42%) C
4 5 (10.42%) REXX
5 4 (8.33%) C++
5 4 (8.33%) PL/SQL
6 3 (6.25%) Assembly Language
7 2 (4.17%) C#
7 2 (4.17%) Groovy
7 2 (4.17%) HLASM
7 2 (4.17%) Shell Script
8 1 (2.08%) CLIST
8 1 (2.08%) Natural
Qualifications
1 4 (8.33%) Degree
2 3 (6.25%) Computer Science Degree
2 3 (6.25%) Security Cleared
3 2 (4.17%) ISEB
3 2 (4.17%) ISTQB
3 2 (4.17%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
3 2 (4.17%) SC Cleared
4 1 (2.08%) CTC Cleared
4 1 (2.08%) SAP Certification
4 1 (2.08%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (16.67%) QA
2 3 (6.25%) ISO 8583
3 2 (4.17%) PCI DSS
4 1 (2.08%) Accessibility
4 1 (2.08%) PSD2
System Software
1 1 (2.08%) Docker
1 1 (2.08%) Time Sharing Option
1 1 (2.08%) XYGATE
Systems Management
1 2 (4.17%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 9 (18.75%) Oracle
2 8 (16.67%) SAP
3 7 (14.58%) HP
3 7 (14.58%) IBM
4 3 (6.25%) Perforce
5 2 (4.17%) Ab Initio
5 2 (4.17%) Adobe
5 2 (4.17%) Informatica
5 2 (4.17%) Parasoft
6 1 (2.08%) CA Agile Central
6 1 (2.08%) Dynatrace
6 1 (2.08%) Fujitsu
6 1 (2.08%) ICL
6 1 (2.08%) Microsoft
6 1 (2.08%) MuleSoft
6 1 (2.08%) Splunk