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 29 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 487 444 640
Rank change year-on-year -43 +196 +127
Contract jobs citing zOS 38 142 49
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.13% 0.33% 0.087%
As % of the Operating Systems category 0.96% 2.46% 0.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 95 13
10th Percentile £333 £369 £470
25th Percentile £380 £418 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £459 £600
Median % change year-on-year +6.21% -23.50% +18.81%
75th Percentile £581 £581 £649
90th Percentile £600 £633 £661
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £430 £475
% change year-on-year +19.19% -9.47% +21.79%

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 3,977 5,781 9,064
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.80% 13.50% 16.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,625 3,916 6,314
10th Percentile £200 £185 £189
25th Percentile £313 £300 £336
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.68% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £718
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £465
% change year-on-year - -3.12% +9.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 403 388
10th Percentile £15.17 £12.75 £13.61
25th Percentile £17.44 £15.50 £17.74
Median hourly rate £22.00 £22.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.22% -47.06% +93.18%
75th Percentile £54.06 £60.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.14 £22.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -14.96% -40.00% +87.50%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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% 230
UK excluding London -5 22 £513 +19.19% 237
Work from Home -15 13 £513 +11.66% 14
London +38 12 £410 -13.68% 20
North of England -45 11 £405 -5.81% 57
Yorkshire -37 8 £531 +23.55% 25
South West +48 6 £600 - 27
Scotland +7 5 £513 +2.50% 14
North West +3 3 £402 -47.28% 25

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 10 (26.32%) CICS
2 7 (18.42%) SAS
3 5 (13.16%) Confluence
4 1 (2.63%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 2 (5.26%) AWS
1 2 (5.26%) GitHub
2 1 (2.63%) Apigee
2 1 (2.63%) Azure
2 1 (2.63%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 5 (13.16%) SNA
1 5 (13.16%) TCP/IP
2 1 (2.63%) DWDM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (15.79%) DB2
2 3 (7.89%) Easytrieve
Development Applications
1 6 (15.79%) JIRA
2 3 (7.89%) Jenkins
3 1 (2.63%) GitLab
3 1 (2.63%) Visual Studio
General
1 14 (36.84%) Social Skills
2 12 (31.58%) Finance
3 10 (26.32%) Banking
4 7 (18.42%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (5.26%) Public Sector
5 2 (5.26%) Retail
6 1 (2.63%) Financial Institution
6 1 (2.63%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 10 (26.32%) Programmer
1 10 (26.32%) Systems Programmer
1 10 (26.32%) z/OS Systems Programmer
2 6 (15.79%) Administrator
2 6 (15.79%) Security Administrator
3 3 (7.89%) Consultant
3 3 (7.89%) z/OS Engineer
4 2 (5.26%) Architect
4 2 (5.26%) Assembler Developer
4 2 (5.26%) Designer
4 2 (5.26%) Developer
4 2 (5.26%) Mainframe Assembler Developer
4 2 (5.26%) Mainframe Consultant
4 2 (5.26%) Mainframe Designer
4 2 (5.26%) Mainframe Developer
4 2 (5.26%) Mainframe Specialist
4 2 (5.26%) Network Engineer
4 2 (5.26%) Senior
4 2 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
4 2 (5.26%) z/OS Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (39.47%) ISPF
2 3 (7.89%) Web Services
3 2 (5.26%) Middleware
3 2 (5.26%) REST
3 2 (5.26%) RESTful
3 2 (5.26%) Spring Boot
3 2 (5.26%) YAML
4 1 (2.63%) JSON
4 1 (2.63%) JWT
4 1 (2.63%) Kafka
4 1 (2.63%) OAuth
4 1 (2.63%) SOAP
4 1 (2.63%) Spring
4 1 (2.63%) WSDL
4 1 (2.63%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 35 (92.11%) Mainframe
2 8 (21.05%) IBM Mainframe
3 6 (15.79%) Management Information System
4 3 (7.89%) VSAM
5 2 (5.26%) Clustering
5 2 (5.26%) Data Centre
5 2 (5.26%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (2.63%) Cloud Native
6 1 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (2.63%) DataPower
6 1 (2.63%) Distributed Applications
6 1 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (2.63%) LPAR
6 1 (2.63%) Product Ownership
6 1 (2.63%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (2.63%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 1 (2.63%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 3 (7.89%) Linux
2 2 (5.26%) Unix
3 1 (2.63%) MVS
3 1 (2.63%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (47.37%) Problem-Solving
2 9 (23.68%) Agile
3 7 (18.42%) Performance Monitoring
3 7 (18.42%) Risk Management
4 6 (15.79%) DevOps
4 6 (15.79%) Migration
4 6 (15.79%) Security Auditing
4 6 (15.79%) Security Management
5 5 (13.16%) Incident Response
5 5 (13.16%) Project Delivery
6 4 (10.53%) Change Management
6 4 (10.53%) Disaster Recovery
6 4 (10.53%) ITIL
6 4 (10.53%) Network Monitoring
6 4 (10.53%) Roadmaps
6 4 (10.53%) Technology Roadmap
7 3 (7.89%) Network Management
7 3 (7.89%) SDLC
7 3 (7.89%) Service Delivery
7 3 (7.89%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 28 (73.68%) JCL
2 19 (50.00%) REXX
3 11 (28.95%) Assembly Language
4 9 (23.68%) CLIST
5 6 (15.79%) COBOL
6 2 (5.26%) HLASM
6 2 (5.26%) Java
6 2 (5.26%) Python
7 1 (2.63%) SQL
7 1 (2.63%) XPath
Qualifications
1 6 (15.79%) CISSP
1 6 (15.79%) IBM Certification
2 1 (2.63%) Degree
2 1 (2.63%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (10.53%) QA
2 1 (2.63%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (42.11%) Time Sharing Option
2 7 (18.42%) RACF
3 5 (13.16%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (5.26%) ACF2
4 2 (5.26%) Job Entry Subsystem
4 2 (5.26%) Microcode
4 2 (5.26%) NFS
Systems Management
1 7 (18.42%) OMEGAMON
2 5 (13.16%) Tivoli NetView
3 3 (7.89%) Ansible
4 2 (5.26%) CA Endevor
4 2 (5.26%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 1 (2.63%) Control-M
Vendors
1 34 (89.47%) IBM
2 3 (7.89%) Microsoft
3 2 (5.26%) Broadcom
3 2 (5.26%) Brocade
3 2 (5.26%) Dell
3 2 (5.26%) Dynatrace
4 1 (2.63%) Syncsort