Mainframe Contracts

Mainframes
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Mainframe over the 6 months to 30 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period over the previous 2 years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 386 524 612
Rank change year-on-year +138 +88 -93
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 198 194 249
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.45% 0.33% 0.28%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.50% 0.98% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 134 106 123
10th Percentile £361 £328 £350
25th Percentile £430 £500 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £558 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.31% +6.19% +10.53%
75th Percentile £588 £650 £663
90th Percentile £700 £681 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £553 £489
% change year-on-year -18.55% +12.99% +5.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - £11.84
25th Percentile - - £12.57
Median hourly rate - - £13.79
75th Percentile - - £15.01
90th Percentile - - £15.74
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £13.79
% change year-on-year - - +2.38%

All Generic Skills
UK

Mainframe is in the General and Transferable Skills category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 13,237 19,870 29,297
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.39% 33.29% 33.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,495 13,665 20,453
10th Percentile £263 £308 £313
25th Percentile £413 £450 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% - +10.00%
75th Percentile £660 £680 £656
90th Percentile £788 £800 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 909 640 726
10th Percentile £12.25 £9.80 £14.25
25th Percentile £15.17 £10.63 £17.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £22.49 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.42% -18.24% +3.19%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.13 £22.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +27.84% +10.00% -16.67%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Mainframe in the UK

Mainframe
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Mainframe in the UK

Mainframe
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Mainframe over the 6 months to 30 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Mainframe in the UK

Mainframe
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Mainframe in the UK

Mainframe
Top 17 Contract Locations

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 over the 6 months to 30 April 2024. 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 +125 154 £475 -14.80% 21
UK excluding London +115 105 £450 -18.55% 11
Work from Home +122 99 £460 -16.36% 13
North of England +67 57 £448 -19.00% 2
London +76 54 £593 +5.33% 11
Yorkshire +57 48 £430 -29.57% 1
Midlands +47 18 £378 -8.92% 2
West Midlands +41 14 £364 -27.20%
South East +27 14 £358 -42.72% 2
Scotland +39 12 £500 -4.76% 4
North West +21 8 £450 +38.46% 1
East Midlands +20 4 £445 - 2
Northern Ireland - 4 £500 -
South West +7 3 £644 -3.74% 1
East of England +8 1 £400 -23.81%
Wales - 1 £450 -
North East - 1 - -

Mainframe
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 40 (20.20%) SAS
2 35 (17.68%) CICS
3 4 (2.02%) Confluence
3 4 (2.02%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 32 (16.16%) Azure
2 31 (15.66%) AWS
3 16 (8.08%) GCP
4 7 (3.54%) SaaS
5 4 (2.02%) PaaS
6 2 (1.01%) IaaS
7 1 (0.51%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (0.51%) Azure AKS
7 1 (0.51%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (0.51%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (0.51%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 1 (0.51%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 9 (4.55%) DWDM
2 5 (2.53%) SSL
3 2 (1.01%) SAN
3 2 (1.01%) SNA
3 2 (1.01%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.51%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (25.76%) DB2
2 25 (12.63%) IDMS
3 8 (4.04%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.53%) OLTP
5 4 (2.02%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (2.02%) Big Data
6 3 (1.52%) Adabas
7 1 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.51%) NewSQL
7 1 (0.51%) NonStop SQL
7 1 (0.51%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.51%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 14 (7.07%) Git
2 10 (5.05%) JIRA
3 1 (0.51%) CA Gen
3 1 (0.51%) Jenkins
General
1 68 (34.34%) Social Skills
2 41 (20.71%) Finance
3 26 (13.13%) Banking
4 10 (5.05%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
5 9 (4.55%) Public Sector
6 6 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.51%) German Language
8 1 (0.51%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 41 (20.71%) Architect
2 25 (12.63%) Programmer
3 24 (12.12%) Systems Programmer
4 23 (11.62%) Developer
5 21 (10.61%) Consultant
5 21 (10.61%) Solutions Architect
5 21 (10.61%) z/OS Systems Programmer
6 19 (9.60%) Mainframe Developer
7 15 (7.58%) z/OS Specialist
8 14 (7.07%) IBM Mainframe Developer
9 13 (6.57%) Mainframe Architect
9 13 (6.57%) Mainframe Consultant
9 13 (6.57%) SailPoint Architect
10 10 (5.05%) z/OS Engineer
11 8 (4.04%) Analyst
11 8 (4.04%) Project Manager
12 6 (3.03%) Data Consultant
12 6 (3.03%) EMC Consultant
12 6 (3.03%) Systems Engineer
13 5 (2.53%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (26.26%) ISPF
2 13 (6.57%) HTML
2 13 (6.57%) JSP
2 13 (6.57%) LDAP
2 13 (6.57%) SailPoint
2 13 (6.57%) Servlets
2 13 (6.57%) SOAP
2 13 (6.57%) SPML
2 13 (6.57%) XML
3 5 (2.53%) .NET
3 5 (2.53%) React
4 2 (1.01%) Middleware
4 2 (1.01%) WebSphere MQ
5 1 (0.51%) Ajax
5 1 (0.51%) EntireX
5 1 (0.51%) RESTful
5 1 (0.51%) Spring
5 1 (0.51%) Spring Boot
5 1 (0.51%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 29 (14.65%) IBM Mainframe
2 15 (7.58%) LPAR
3 8 (4.04%) Management Information System
4 5 (2.53%) Data Structures
4 5 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
4 5 (2.53%) Public Cloud
4 5 (2.53%) VSAM
5 4 (2.02%) Credit Risk
6 3 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
7 2 (1.01%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.51%) Distributed Applications
8 1 (0.51%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.51%) PKI
8 1 (0.51%) PMI
8 1 (0.51%) Replication
8 1 (0.51%) Team-Oriented Environment
8 1 (0.51%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 86 (43.43%) zOS
2 11 (5.56%) MVS
3 6 (3.03%) Windows
4 5 (2.53%) Android
4 5 (2.53%) Apple iOS
4 5 (2.53%) Unix
5 4 (2.02%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (20.20%) Agile
2 39 (19.70%) Risk Management
3 25 (12.63%) Performance Monitoring
4 19 (9.60%) Problem-Solving
4 19 (9.60%) Scrum
5 17 (8.59%) Requirements Gathering
5 17 (8.59%) Stakeholder Management
6 16 (8.08%) Migration
6 16 (8.08%) Project Management
7 15 (7.58%) Architectural Design
7 15 (7.58%) Microservices
7 15 (7.58%) Secrets Management
8 13 (6.57%) Change Management
8 13 (6.57%) RBAC
8 13 (6.57%) Technical Architecture
8 13 (6.57%) Waterfall
9 11 (5.56%) Disaster Recovery
10 10 (5.05%) Roadmaps
11 9 (4.55%) Project Delivery
12 8 (4.04%) Capacity Planning
Programming Languages
1 61 (30.81%) REXX
2 55 (27.78%) JCL
3 34 (17.17%) COBOL
4 28 (14.14%) CLIST
5 27 (13.64%) Assembly Language
6 25 (12.63%) SQL
7 22 (11.11%) Java
8 13 (6.57%) JavaScript
8 13 (6.57%) SELCOPY
9 10 (5.05%) Python
10 5 (2.53%) C
11 3 (1.52%) Perl
12 2 (1.01%) Natural
13 1 (0.51%) Bash
13 1 (0.51%) Groovy
13 1 (0.51%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 40 (20.20%) Security Cleared
2 37 (18.69%) SC Cleared
3 5 (2.53%) Degree
4 4 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (1.52%) PMP
6 2 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.01%) ISTQB
6 2 (1.01%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
7 1 (0.51%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.51%) Six Sigma Black Belt
7 1 (0.51%) Six Sigma Green Belt
7 1 (0.51%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.03%) GDPR
2 3 (1.52%) QA
3 1 (0.51%) ISO 22301
3 1 (0.51%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 48 (24.24%) Time Sharing Option
2 40 (20.20%) RACF
3 34 (17.17%) ACF2
4 16 (8.08%) Active Directory
5 13 (6.57%) IAG
5 13 (6.57%) Job Entry Subsystem
5 13 (6.57%) Microcode
6 2 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 28 (14.14%) OMEGAMON
2 5 (2.53%) CA Endevor
3 4 (2.02%) zSecure
4 1 (0.51%) Ansible
4 1 (0.51%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.51%) Terraform
Vendors
1 87 (43.94%) IBM
2 27 (13.64%) Broadcom
3 19 (9.60%) CyberArk
3 19 (9.60%) Splunk
4 14 (7.07%) ServiceNow
4 14 (7.07%) Syncsort
5 13 (6.57%) BeyondTrust
5 13 (6.57%) Microsoft
6 12 (6.06%) CA
7 7 (3.54%) BMC
8 6 (3.03%) EMC
9 3 (1.52%) Dell
10 2 (1.01%) Salesforce
10 2 (1.01%) Software AG
10 2 (1.01%) SunGard
11 1 (0.51%) HP
11 1 (0.51%) IBM Sterling
11 1 (0.51%) Oracle
11 1 (0.51%) Teradata
11 1 (0.51%) VMware