COBOL Contracts with Hybrid/Remote/WFH Options

COBOL
UK > Work from Home

The table below provides summary statistics for remote or hybrid contract work requiring COBOL skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited COBOL over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 290 311 414
Rank change year-on-year +21 +103 +176
Contract jobs citing COBOL 14 34 63
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 0.14% 0.22% 0.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.38% 0.66% 0.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 11 24 35
10th Percentile £358 £325 £395
25th Percentile £368 £358 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £402 £425 £540
Median % change year-on-year -5.41% -21.30% +8.00%
75th Percentile £625 £469 £611
90th Percentile £675 £496 £658
UK median daily rate £447 £419 £525
% change year-on-year +6.75% -20.24% +5.00%

All Programming Languages
Work from Home

COBOL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with remote or hybrid options requiring coding skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 3,699 5,133 9,659
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 37.34% 33.45% 37.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,627 3,702 7,073
10th Percentile £363 £350 £393
25th Percentile £421 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £640 £650 £656
90th Percentile £800 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 147 213
10th Percentile £24.60 £27.75 £35.00
25th Percentile £35.00 £46.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.73% +26.95%
75th Percentile £68.25 £72.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.50 £86.50 £79.20
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £60.50 £60.70
% change year-on-year +3.31% -0.33% +21.40%

COBOL
Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

Job vacancies with remote working options citing COBOL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

COBOL trend for jobs with Hybrid/Remote/WFH options

COBOL
Daily Rate Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in job vacancies with remote working options citing COBOL.

COBOL daily rate for jobs with a WFH option

COBOL
Daily Rate Histogram for Jobs with a WFH Option

Daily rate distribution for jobs with remote working options citing COBOL over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

COBOL daily rate histogram for jobs with a WFH option

COBOL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities with WFH Options 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 (42.86%) CICS
2 1 (7.14%) WebSphere
Business Applications
1 3 (21.43%) BASE24
Cloud Services
1 1 (7.14%) AWS
1 1 (7.14%) Azure
1 1 (7.14%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 3 (21.43%) ATM
2 2 (14.29%) SNA
2 2 (14.29%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (28.57%) DB2
2 3 (21.43%) NonStop SQL
3 1 (7.14%) Adabas
3 1 (7.14%) Easytrieve
3 1 (7.14%) Oracle Database
3 1 (7.14%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (7.14%) Redis
Development Applications
1 2 (14.29%) Jenkins
1 2 (14.29%) Postman
2 1 (7.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
2 1 (7.14%) Eclipse
2 1 (7.14%) Git
2 1 (7.14%) JIRA
2 1 (7.14%) JUnit
2 1 (7.14%) Maven
2 1 (7.14%) Mockito
2 1 (7.14%) REST Assured
2 1 (7.14%) SoapUI
2 1 (7.14%) SonarQube
2 1 (7.14%) Subversion
2 1 (7.14%) VersaTest
2 1 (7.14%) Xcode
2 1 (7.14%) XCTest
General
1 7 (50.00%) Finance
2 5 (35.71%) Banking
3 3 (21.43%) Social Skills
4 1 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 6 (42.86%) Developer
2 4 (28.57%) COBOL Developer
3 3 (21.43%) Mainframe Developer
4 2 (14.29%) Architect
5 1 (7.14%) Adabas Natural Developer
5 1 (7.14%) BASE24 Developer
5 1 (7.14%) DB2 Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Designer
5 1 (7.14%) Enterprise Architect
5 1 (7.14%) IBM Mainframe Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Java Developer
5 1 (7.14%) Mainframe Designer
5 1 (7.14%) SAP Architect
5 1 (7.14%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (21.43%) Web Services
2 2 (14.29%) CSS
2 2 (14.29%) CSS3
2 2 (14.29%) HTML
2 2 (14.29%) HTML5
2 2 (14.29%) REST
3 1 (7.14%) AngularJS
3 1 (7.14%) Bootstrap
3 1 (7.14%) J2EE
3 1 (7.14%) JPA
3 1 (7.14%) jQuery
3 1 (7.14%) Kafka
3 1 (7.14%) SAP Fiori
3 1 (7.14%) SAPUI5
3 1 (7.14%) SOAP
3 1 (7.14%) Spring Boot
3 1 (7.14%) Spring Cloud
3 1 (7.14%) Spring MVC
3 1 (7.14%) Swagger
3 1 (7.14%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (78.57%) Mainframe
2 4 (28.57%) VSAM
3 3 (21.43%) IBM Mainframe
4 2 (14.29%) EMV
4 2 (14.29%) Tandem
5 1 (7.14%) APACS
5 1 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (7.14%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (7.14%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (7.14%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (21.43%) zOS
2 2 (14.29%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
2 3 (21.43%) Code Quality
2 3 (21.43%) SDLC
3 2 (14.29%) Agile
3 2 (14.29%) Digital Transformation Programme
3 2 (14.29%) Migration
3 2 (14.29%) MVC
3 2 (14.29%) Unit Testing
4 1 (7.14%) Data Modelling
4 1 (7.14%) Data Protection
4 1 (7.14%) Disaster Recovery
4 1 (7.14%) E-Commerce
4 1 (7.14%) Enterprise Architecture
4 1 (7.14%) Multithreading
4 1 (7.14%) Service Delivery
4 1 (7.14%) Software Testing
4 1 (7.14%) TDD
4 1 (7.14%) TOGAF
4 1 (7.14%) Validation
4 1 (7.14%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 6 (42.86%) JCL
2 3 (21.43%) JavaScript
3 2 (14.29%) C++
3 2 (14.29%) Java
3 2 (14.29%) REXX
3 2 (14.29%) SQL
4 1 (7.14%) ABAP
4 1 (7.14%) Assembly Language
4 1 (7.14%) C
4 1 (7.14%) Groovy
4 1 (7.14%) Natural
4 1 (7.14%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 2 (14.29%) SC Cleared
1 2 (14.29%) Security Cleared
2 1 (7.14%) Degree
2 1 (7.14%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (7.14%) ISO 8583
1 1 (7.14%) PCI DSS
1 1 (7.14%) QA
System Software
1 1 (7.14%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (7.14%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 3 (21.43%) HP
1 3 (21.43%) IBM
2 1 (7.14%) CA Agile Central
2 1 (7.14%) Dynatrace
2 1 (7.14%) Fujitsu
2 1 (7.14%) ICL
2 1 (7.14%) MuleSoft
2 1 (7.14%) Oracle
2 1 (7.14%) SAP
2 1 (7.14%) Splunk