zOS Contracts

IBM z/OS
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring zOS skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited zOS 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 479 464 647
Rank change year-on-year -15 +183 +118
Contract jobs citing zOS 40 136 66
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.14% 0.31% 0.11%
As % of the Operating Systems category 0.98% 2.34% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 25 90 23
10th Percentile £340 £367 £463
25th Percentile £385 £415 £497
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £459 £585
Median % change year-on-year +11.66% -21.54% +23.16%
75th Percentile £600 £573 £650
90th Percentile £638 £625 £661
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £430 £488
% change year-on-year +19.19% -11.79% +43.59%

All Operating Systems
UK

zOS falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,075 5,812 9,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.94% 13.33% 16.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,687 3,913 6,831
10th Percentile £200 £183 £190
25th Percentile £319 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £468 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% -7.33% +1.00%
75th Percentile £594 £588 £638
90th Percentile £699 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 397 416
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.75 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £15.50 £17.75
Median hourly rate £24.18 £22.00 £39.30
Median % change year-on-year +9.91% -44.02% +74.67%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £22.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +4.55% -29.60% +56.25%

zOS
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for zOS in the UK

zOS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for zOS in the UK

zOS
Daily Rate Histogram

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

Daily rate histogram for zOS in the UK

zOS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for zOS in the UK

zOS
Top 9 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing zOS 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 -18 31 £454 -1.14% 18
UK excluding London -8 22 £513 +19.19% 6
Work from Home -4 15 £565 +23.09% 35
London +21 12 £410 -13.68% 11
North of England -23 11 £405 -5.81% 3
Yorkshire -34 8 £531 +23.55% 3
South West - 6 £600 - 2
Scotland +8 5 £513 +2.50%
North West +10 3 £402 -46.40%

zOS
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 (32.50%) CICS
2 7 (17.50%) SAS
3 5 (12.50%) Confluence
4 1 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (5.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 2 (5.00%) GitHub
2 1 (2.50%) Apigee
2 1 (2.50%) AWS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (17.50%) SNA
1 7 (17.50%) TCP/IP
2 1 (2.50%) DWDM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (15.00%) DB2
2 3 (7.50%) Easytrieve
Development Applications
1 6 (15.00%) JIRA
2 3 (7.50%) Jenkins
3 1 (2.50%) GitLab
3 1 (2.50%) Visual Studio
General
1 14 (35.00%) Finance
1 14 (35.00%) Social Skills
2 10 (25.00%) Banking
3 7 (17.50%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (5.00%) Retail
5 1 (2.50%) Financial Institution
5 1 (2.50%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (2.50%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 10 (25.00%) Programmer
1 10 (25.00%) Systems Programmer
1 10 (25.00%) z/OS Systems Programmer
2 6 (15.00%) Administrator
2 6 (15.00%) Security Administrator
3 3 (7.50%) Consultant
3 3 (7.50%) Developer
3 3 (7.50%) Mainframe Developer
3 3 (7.50%) z/OS Engineer
4 2 (5.00%) Assembler Developer
4 2 (5.00%) Designer
4 2 (5.00%) Mainframe Assembler Developer
4 2 (5.00%) Mainframe Consultant
4 2 (5.00%) Mainframe Designer
4 2 (5.00%) Mainframe Specialist
4 2 (5.00%) Network Engineer
4 2 (5.00%) z/OS Specialist
5 1 (2.50%) Analyst
5 1 (2.50%) Network Consultant
5 1 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (37.50%) ISPF
2 3 (7.50%) Web Services
3 2 (5.00%) Middleware
3 2 (5.00%) REST
3 2 (5.00%) RESTful
3 2 (5.00%) Spring Boot
3 2 (5.00%) YAML
4 1 (2.50%) JSON
4 1 (2.50%) JWT
4 1 (2.50%) Kafka
4 1 (2.50%) OAuth
4 1 (2.50%) SOAP
4 1 (2.50%) Spring
4 1 (2.50%) WSDL
4 1 (2.50%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 37 (92.50%) Mainframe
2 10 (25.00%) IBM Mainframe
3 6 (15.00%) Management Information System
4 3 (7.50%) VSAM
5 2 (5.00%) Clustering
5 2 (5.00%) Data Centre
6 1 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (2.50%) DataPower
6 1 (2.50%) Distributed Applications
6 1 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (2.50%) LPAR
6 1 (2.50%) Product Ownership
6 1 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (2.50%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 1 (2.50%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 4 (10.00%) Linux
2 3 (7.50%) Unix
3 1 (2.50%) MVS
3 1 (2.50%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (42.50%) Problem-Solving
2 9 (22.50%) Agile
3 7 (17.50%) Performance Monitoring
3 7 (17.50%) Risk Management
4 6 (15.00%) DevOps
4 6 (15.00%) Security Auditing
4 6 (15.00%) Security Management
5 5 (12.50%) Incident Response
5 5 (12.50%) Migration
5 5 (12.50%) Project Delivery
6 4 (10.00%) Change Management
6 4 (10.00%) Disaster Recovery
6 4 (10.00%) ITIL
6 4 (10.00%) Network Monitoring
6 4 (10.00%) Roadmaps
6 4 (10.00%) SDLC
6 4 (10.00%) Technology Roadmap
7 3 (7.50%) API Integration
7 3 (7.50%) Performance Optimisation
7 3 (7.50%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 27 (67.50%) JCL
2 19 (47.50%) REXX
3 11 (27.50%) Assembly Language
4 9 (22.50%) CLIST
5 8 (20.00%) COBOL
6 3 (7.50%) Java
7 2 (5.00%) HLASM
7 2 (5.00%) Python
7 2 (5.00%) SQL
8 1 (2.50%) XPath
Qualifications
1 6 (15.00%) CISSP
1 6 (15.00%) IBM Certification
2 3 (7.50%) Security Cleared
3 2 (5.00%) SC Cleared
4 1 (2.50%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (12.50%) QA
2 1 (2.50%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (40.00%) Time Sharing Option
2 7 (17.50%) RACF
3 5 (12.50%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (5.00%) ACF2
4 2 (5.00%) Job Entry Subsystem
4 2 (5.00%) Microcode
4 2 (5.00%) NFS
Systems Management
1 7 (17.50%) OMEGAMON
2 5 (12.50%) Tivoli NetView
3 3 (7.50%) Ansible
4 2 (5.00%) CA Endevor
4 2 (5.00%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 1 (2.50%) Control-M
Vendors
1 36 (90.00%) IBM
2 3 (7.50%) Microsoft
3 2 (5.00%) Broadcom
3 2 (5.00%) Brocade
3 2 (5.00%) Dell
3 2 (5.00%) Dynatrace
4 1 (2.50%) Oracle
4 1 (2.50%) Syncsort