zOS Contract Job Trends

IBM z/OS
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring zOS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 542 478 447
Rank change year-on-year -64 -31 +182
Contract jobs citing zOS 85 41 139
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.18% 0.14% 0.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 1.81% 1.00% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 55 25 92
10th Percentile £350 £340 £368
25th Percentile £413 £385 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £513 £459
Median % change year-on-year -3.90% +11.66% -21.54%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £578
90th Percentile £575 £638 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £430
% change year-on-year -2.44% +19.19% -11.79%

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 4,698 4,086 5,730
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.84% 14.01% 13.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,045 2,680 3,871
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £468
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.50% -8.24%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £652 £694 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £430 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -4.44% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 182 393
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.87 £15.50
Median hourly rate £47.50 £23.40 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +102.99% +6.36% -42.86%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.16 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +111.11% - -23.21%

zOS
Job Vacancy Trend

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

zOS job vacancy trend in the UK

zOS
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

zOS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing zOS over the 6 months to 9 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for zOS in the UK

zOS
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

zOS
Top 11 Contract Job 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 9 May 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 -77 63 £478 +5.23% 7
Work from Home -6 39 £496 -12.17% 7
London -44 37 £440 +7.32% 2
UK excluding London -97 27 £500 -2.44% 6
Yorkshire -48 12 £514 -3.25% 2
North of England -61 12 £514 +26.91% 2
Scotland +6 10 £525 +2.44% 1
Midlands - 3 £497 - 1
East Midlands - 2 £498 - 1
East of England - 2 £475 - 1
West Midlands - 1 £475 -

zOS
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 18 (21.18%) CICS
2 5 (5.88%) SAS
3 3 (3.53%) Confluence
4 2 (2.35%) WebSphere
5 1 (1.18%) Documentum
5 1 (1.18%) FileNet
5 1 (1.18%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 1 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 7 (8.24%) AWS
2 6 (7.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 4 (4.71%) AWS Lambda
3 4 (4.71%) Serverless
4 2 (2.35%) Amazon MSK
4 2 (2.35%) Amazon S3
5 1 (1.18%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 7 (8.24%) TCP/IP
2 6 (7.06%) APPN
2 6 (7.06%) SNA
3 1 (1.18%) HTTP
3 1 (1.18%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (42.35%) DB2
2 4 (4.71%) Amazon Aurora
2 4 (4.71%) DynamoDB
2 4 (4.71%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (2.35%) Amazon Athena
3 2 (2.35%) Amazon Redshift
3 2 (2.35%) Relational Database
4 1 (1.18%) Data Vault
4 1 (1.18%) OLTP
4 1 (1.18%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 7 (8.24%) GitLab
2 4 (4.71%) IBM UrbanCode
3 3 (3.53%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.53%) JIRA
4 1 (1.18%) Burp Suite
4 1 (1.18%) ChangeMan
4 1 (1.18%) Git
4 1 (1.18%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.18%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.18%) XPEDITER
General
1 29 (34.12%) Finance
2 26 (30.59%) Banking
3 13 (15.29%) Social Skills
4 7 (8.24%) Retail
5 5 (5.88%) Legal
6 4 (4.71%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (4.71%) Financial Institution
7 2 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.18%) Advertising
8 1 (1.18%) German Language
Job Titles
1 12 (14.12%) z/OS Engineer
2 11 (12.94%) Architect
3 9 (10.59%) Data Architect
4 8 (9.41%) Administrator
5 7 (8.24%) Developer
5 7 (8.24%) Mainframe Developer
6 6 (7.06%) Programmer
6 6 (7.06%) Storage Manager
6 6 (7.06%) Systems Administrator
6 6 (7.06%) Systems Programmer
7 5 (5.88%) Automation Engineer
7 5 (5.88%) Mainframe Systems Engineer
7 5 (5.88%) Systems Engineer
7 5 (5.88%) z/OS Systems Programmer
8 4 (4.71%) CICS Engineer
8 4 (4.71%) Consultant
8 4 (4.71%) Network Engineer
9 3 (3.53%) Analyst
9 3 (3.53%) Mainframe Architect
9 3 (3.53%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (16.47%) ISPF
2 9 (10.59%) REST
2 9 (10.59%) Web Services
3 7 (8.24%) Middleware
3 7 (8.24%) ZeroMQ
4 5 (5.88%) JSON
4 5 (5.88%) RESTful
4 5 (5.88%) SOAP
4 5 (5.88%) WSDL
5 3 (3.53%) J2EE
5 3 (3.53%) JSP
5 3 (3.53%) Kafka
6 2 (2.35%) JWT
6 2 (2.35%) OAuth
6 2 (2.35%) Spring
6 2 (2.35%) Spring Boot
6 2 (2.35%) XSLT
7 1 (1.18%) OAuth2
7 1 (1.18%) XML
7 1 (1.18%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 73 (85.88%) Mainframe
2 8 (9.41%) Data Protection Act
2 8 (9.41%) VSAM
3 7 (8.24%) Clustering
4 6 (7.06%) DataPower
4 6 (7.06%) IBM Mainframe
5 5 (5.88%) Online Banking
6 3 (3.53%) Management Information System
7 2 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (2.35%) Security Posture
8 1 (1.18%) Data Centre
8 1 (1.18%) Data Structures
8 1 (1.18%) Legacy Applications
8 1 (1.18%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 6 (7.06%) Linux
1 6 (7.06%) Windows
2 4 (4.71%) Windows Server
3 3 (3.53%) MVS
4 1 (1.18%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (18.82%) Migration
2 15 (17.65%) Performance Tuning
3 14 (16.47%) Agile
4 12 (14.12%) ITIL
5 11 (12.94%) High Availability
6 9 (10.59%) Batch Processing
6 9 (10.59%) Data Protection
6 9 (10.59%) Problem Management
6 9 (10.59%) Problem-Solving
6 9 (10.59%) Project Delivery
7 8 (9.41%) CI/CD
7 8 (9.41%) Integration Patterns
8 7 (8.24%) Data Migration
8 7 (8.24%) Storage Management
9 6 (7.06%) Network Management
9 6 (7.06%) Roadmaps
9 6 (7.06%) Root Cause Analysis
9 6 (7.06%) Technology Roadmap
9 6 (7.06%) Validation
10 5 (5.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 35 (41.18%) JCL
2 24 (28.24%) REXX
3 10 (11.76%) COBOL
3 10 (11.76%) Python
4 8 (9.41%) Assembly Language
5 7 (8.24%) CLIST
5 7 (8.24%) SQL
6 6 (7.06%) Java
7 5 (5.88%) Shell Script
8 4 (4.71%) HLASM
9 3 (3.53%) RPG
10 1 (1.18%) Bash
10 1 (1.18%) Go
10 1 (1.18%) XPath
Qualifications
1 2 (2.35%) Degree
2 1 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (1.18%) CSSLP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (2.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
2 1 (1.18%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.18%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 11 (12.94%) RACF
2 9 (10.59%) Job Entry Subsystem
3 7 (8.24%) Time Sharing Option
4 4 (4.71%) NFS
5 3 (3.53%) ACF2
Systems Management
1 6 (7.06%) Ansible
1 6 (7.06%) Tivoli NetView
2 5 (5.88%) Control-M
2 5 (5.88%) OMEGAMON
2 5 (5.88%) Tivoli Storage Manager
3 3 (3.53%) zSecure
4 2 (2.35%) CA Endevor
4 2 (2.35%) Grafana
4 2 (2.35%) Terraform
5 1 (1.18%) HP Fortify
5 1 (1.18%) MAINVIEW
5 1 (1.18%) Nagios
5 1 (1.18%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 52 (61.18%) IBM
2 20 (23.53%) Broadcom
3 10 (11.76%) BMC
4 8 (9.41%) ServiceNow
4 8 (9.41%) Splunk
5 4 (4.71%) Brocade
5 4 (4.71%) Dell
6 2 (2.35%) CyberArk
6 2 (2.35%) Microsoft
7 1 (1.18%) Acunetix
7 1 (1.18%) Checkmarx
7 1 (1.18%) Dynatrace
7 1 (1.18%) GoldenSource
7 1 (1.18%) Netsparker
7 1 (1.18%) Veracode