Mainframe Developer Contracts

Mainframe Developer
UK

The median Mainframe Developer daily rate in the UK is £384, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

 6 months to
30 Apr 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 511 581 707
Rank change year-on-year +70 +126 +139
Contract jobs requiring a Mainframe Developer 8 19 6
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.027% 0.044% 0.010%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.030% 0.047% 0.011%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 12 4
10th Percentile £330 £326 £308
25th Percentile £361 £347 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £384 £359 £398
Median % change year-on-year +6.96% -9.69% -37.52%
75th Percentile £397 £376 £500
90th Percentile £400 £488 £523
UK excluding London median daily rate £390 £358 -
% change year-on-year +8.94% - -
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 excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,050 40,453 56,471
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.79% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,687 26,352 39,474
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.55% -1.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 2,658 1,569
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.51 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.07 £36.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.25% -20.00% +91.86%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.75 £38.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -25.32% -9.41% +117.95%

Mainframe Developer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Mainframe Developer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Mainframe Developer in the UK

Mainframe Developer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Mainframe Developer in the UK

Mainframe Developer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Mainframe Developer in the UK

Mainframe Developer
Top 7 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Mainframe Developer 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 +53 7 £390 +8.94% 1
UK excluding London +44 3 £390 +8.94%
Work from Home +43 3 £378 +5.59% 2
London +34 3 £390 -41.79%
North West - 2 £390 -
North of England - 2 £390 -
South East +40 1 - -

Mainframe Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 30 April 2025, Mainframe Developer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Mainframe Developer in the job title.

1 8 (100.00%) COBOL
1 8 (100.00%) Mainframe
2 6 (75.00%) DB2
2 6 (75.00%) CICS
2 6 (75.00%) JCL
3 4 (50.00%) Finance
3 4 (50.00%) Banking
4 3 (37.50%) VSAM
4 3 (37.50%) zOS
4 3 (37.50%) Assembly Language
4 3 (37.50%) IBM
4 3 (37.50%) SQL
4 3 (37.50%) Problem-Solving
4 3 (37.50%) Social Skills
5 2 (25.00%) ISPF
5 2 (25.00%) QA
5 2 (25.00%) SDLC
5 2 (25.00%) HLASM
5 2 (25.00%) Unit Testing
5 2 (25.00%) Unix
5 2 (25.00%) Oracle
5 2 (25.00%) Java
5 2 (25.00%) Agile
5 2 (25.00%) IBM Mainframe
6 1 (12.50%) Time Management
6 1 (12.50%) Groovy
6 1 (12.50%) CTC Cleared
6 1 (12.50%) Security Cleared
6 1 (12.50%) JPA
6 1 (12.50%) Git

Mainframe Developer Skill Set
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 6 (75.00%) CICS
Cloud Services
1 1 (12.50%) Azure
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (75.00%) DB2
2 1 (12.50%) Adabas
2 1 (12.50%) Oracle Database
2 1 (12.50%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (12.50%) Redis
2 1 (12.50%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 1 (12.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
1 1 (12.50%) Git
1 1 (12.50%) Jenkins
1 1 (12.50%) JIRA
1 1 (12.50%) JUnit
1 1 (12.50%) Maven
1 1 (12.50%) Mockito
1 1 (12.50%) Postman
1 1 (12.50%) REST Assured
1 1 (12.50%) SoapUI
1 1 (12.50%) SonarQube
1 1 (12.50%) Subversion
1 1 (12.50%) Xcode
1 1 (12.50%) XCTest
General
1 4 (50.00%) Banking
1 4 (50.00%) Finance
2 3 (37.50%) Social Skills
3 1 (12.50%) Financial Institution
3 1 (12.50%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (25.00%) ISPF
2 1 (12.50%) AngularJS
2 1 (12.50%) Bootstrap
2 1 (12.50%) CSS
2 1 (12.50%) CSS3
2 1 (12.50%) Hibernate
2 1 (12.50%) HTML
2 1 (12.50%) HTML5
2 1 (12.50%) J2EE
2 1 (12.50%) JPA
2 1 (12.50%) Kafka
2 1 (12.50%) Material-UI
2 1 (12.50%) REST
2 1 (12.50%) SOAP
2 1 (12.50%) Spring
2 1 (12.50%) Spring Boot
2 1 (12.50%) Spring Cloud
2 1 (12.50%) Spring MVC
2 1 (12.50%) Swagger
2 1 (12.50%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 8 (100.00%) Mainframe
2 3 (37.50%) VSAM
3 2 (25.00%) IBM Mainframe
4 1 (12.50%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (12.50%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (37.50%) zOS
2 2 (25.00%) Unix
3 1 (12.50%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (37.50%) Problem-Solving
2 2 (25.00%) Agile
2 2 (25.00%) SDLC
2 2 (25.00%) Unit Testing
3 1 (12.50%) API Integration
3 1 (12.50%) Incident Management
3 1 (12.50%) Migration
3 1 (12.50%) Multithreading
3 1 (12.50%) MVC
3 1 (12.50%) Software Architecture
3 1 (12.50%) Software Delivery
3 1 (12.50%) Software Testing
3 1 (12.50%) Static Code Analysis
3 1 (12.50%) TDD
3 1 (12.50%) Technical Architecture
3 1 (12.50%) Test Automation
3 1 (12.50%) Time Management
3 1 (12.50%) Use Case
3 1 (12.50%) User Acceptance Testing
3 1 (12.50%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 8 (100.00%) COBOL
2 6 (75.00%) JCL
3 3 (37.50%) Assembly Language
3 3 (37.50%) SQL
4 2 (25.00%) HLASM
4 2 (25.00%) Java
5 1 (12.50%) Groovy
5 1 (12.50%) JavaScript
5 1 (12.50%) Natural
5 1 (12.50%) REXX
5 1 (12.50%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1 (12.50%) CTC Cleared
1 1 (12.50%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (25.00%) QA
System Software
1 1 (12.50%) Docker
1 1 (12.50%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 1 (12.50%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 3 (37.50%) IBM
2 2 (25.00%) Oracle
3 1 (12.50%) CA Agile Central
3 1 (12.50%) Dynatrace
3 1 (12.50%) Splunk
1 Mainframe Developer jobs Nationwide