Mainframe Contracts with Hybrid/Remote/WFH Options

Mainframes
UK > Work from Home

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in remote or hybrid contract work. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe 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 237 256 361
Rank change year-on-year +19 +105 +139
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 65 96 109
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 0.66% 0.62% 0.42%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.99% 2.18% 1.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 66 50
10th Percentile £380 £360 £425
25th Percentile £415 £430 £520
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £480 £550
Median % change year-on-year +9.38% -12.73% +3.77%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £636
90th Percentile £666 £700 £665
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £558
% change year-on-year - -10.31% +6.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £20.45 - -
Median hourly rate £22.04 - -
75th Percentile £23.63 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £22.04 - -

All Generic Skills
Work from Home

Mainframe falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with remote or hybrid options requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 3,265 4,404 8,140
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 32.94% 28.64% 31.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,221 2,973 5,727
10th Percentile £350 £325 £363
25th Percentile £425 £431 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.91% - +2.33%
75th Percentile £681 £675 £688
90th Percentile £825 £800 £800
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 195 151
10th Percentile £18.75 £15.45 £19.00
25th Percentile £26.25 £25.50 £31.38
Median hourly rate £41.75 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.50% -13.04% +29.21%
75th Percentile £64.57 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.13 £72.50 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £32.05 £30.00 £22.49
% change year-on-year +6.83% +33.42% -18.24%

Mainframe
Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

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

Mainframe trend for jobs with Hybrid/Remote/WFH options

Mainframe
Daily Rate Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

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

Mainframe daily rate for jobs with a WFH option

Mainframe
Daily Rate Histogram for Jobs with a WFH Option

Daily rate distribution for jobs with remote working options citing Mainframe over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Mainframe daily rate histogram for jobs with a WFH option

Mainframe
Hourly Rate Trend for Jobs with a WFH Option

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

Mainframe hourly rate for jobs with a WFH option

Mainframe
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 12 (18.46%) CICS
2 4 (6.15%) Confluence
3 2 (3.08%) CMS
4 1 (1.54%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.54%) WebSphere
Applications
1 3 (4.62%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (4.62%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (1.54%) BASE24
Cloud Services
1 8 (12.31%) AWS
2 2 (3.08%) Azure
2 2 (3.08%) GCP
3 1 (1.54%) Apigee
3 1 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
3 1 (1.54%) IaaS
3 1 (1.54%) OpenShift
3 1 (1.54%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.15%) SNA
1 4 (6.15%) TCP/IP
2 1 (1.54%) ATM
2 1 (1.54%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (7.69%) DB2
2 2 (3.08%) NoSQL
2 2 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.54%) Adabas
3 1 (1.54%) Big Data
3 1 (1.54%) Easytrieve
3 1 (1.54%) NonStop SQL
3 1 (1.54%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.54%) Redis
Development Applications
1 6 (9.23%) JIRA
2 4 (6.15%) Jenkins
3 3 (4.62%) Git
3 3 (4.62%) GitLab
3 3 (4.62%) JUnit
3 3 (4.62%) Maven
3 3 (4.62%) Selenium
3 3 (4.62%) Subversion
4 2 (3.08%) CA Release Automation
4 2 (3.08%) Gradle
4 2 (3.08%) HP UFT
4 2 (3.08%) IntelliJ
4 2 (3.08%) NetBeans
5 1 (1.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 1 (1.54%) Mockito
5 1 (1.54%) Postman
5 1 (1.54%) REST Assured
5 1 (1.54%) SoapUI
5 1 (1.54%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.54%) XCTest
General
1 23 (35.38%) Finance
2 14 (21.54%) Banking
3 8 (12.31%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (9.23%) Social Skills
5 3 (4.62%) General Ledger
5 3 (4.62%) Local Government
5 3 (4.62%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.54%) Dutch Language
6 1 (1.54%) Electronics
6 1 (1.54%) French Language
6 1 (1.54%) Investment Banking
6 1 (1.54%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.54%) Marketing
6 1 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
6 1 (1.54%) Retail
6 1 (1.54%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 18 (27.69%) Consultant
2 14 (21.54%) Mainframe Consultant
2 14 (21.54%) Storage Consultant
3 6 (9.23%) Developer
4 4 (6.15%) Administrator
4 4 (6.15%) Architect
4 4 (6.15%) COBOL Developer
4 4 (6.15%) DevOps Engineer
4 4 (6.15%) Security Administrator
5 3 (4.62%) CICS Engineer
5 3 (4.62%) Mainframe Developer
5 3 (4.62%) Programmer
5 3 (4.62%) Support Officer
6 2 (3.08%) Enterprise Architect
6 2 (3.08%) Java Developer
6 2 (3.08%) Project Manager
6 2 (3.08%) Software Consultant
6 2 (3.08%) Systems Engineer
6 2 (3.08%) Systems Programmer
6 2 (3.08%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (9.23%) Middleware
2 5 (7.69%) Web Services
3 4 (6.15%) Kafka
3 4 (6.15%) Spring Boot
4 3 (4.62%) AngularJS
4 3 (4.62%) Bootstrap
4 3 (4.62%) CSS
4 3 (4.62%) Hibernate
4 3 (4.62%) HTML
4 3 (4.62%) HTML5
4 3 (4.62%) J2EE
4 3 (4.62%) Spring
4 3 (4.62%) Spring MVC
5 2 (3.08%) Ajax
5 2 (3.08%) EntireX
5 2 (3.08%) ISPF
5 2 (3.08%) jQuery
5 2 (3.08%) Node.js
5 2 (3.08%) REST
5 2 (3.08%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 7 (10.77%) IBM Mainframe
2 6 (9.23%) VSAM
3 4 (6.15%) Management Information System
4 3 (4.62%) Clustering
4 3 (4.62%) Product Ownership
5 2 (3.08%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (3.08%) Data Structures
5 2 (3.08%) DataPower
5 2 (3.08%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.54%) Client/Server
6 1 (1.54%) Cloud Native
6 1 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.54%) EMV
6 1 (1.54%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (1.54%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.54%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 13 (20.00%) zOS
2 4 (6.15%) Unix
3 3 (4.62%) MVS
4 2 (3.08%) Linux
4 2 (3.08%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (30.77%) Migration
2 14 (21.54%) Data Migration
3 12 (18.46%) Problem-Solving
4 10 (15.38%) DevOps
5 9 (13.85%) Agile
5 9 (13.85%) CI/CD
6 6 (9.23%) Microservices
6 6 (9.23%) Task Automation
7 4 (6.15%) Containerisation
7 4 (6.15%) Incident Response
7 4 (6.15%) Security Auditing
7 4 (6.15%) Security Management
8 3 (4.62%) Accounts Payable
8 3 (4.62%) Budget Management
8 3 (4.62%) Change Management
8 3 (4.62%) Deployment Automation
8 3 (4.62%) Disaster Recovery
8 3 (4.62%) Integration Patterns
8 3 (4.62%) Project Delivery
8 3 (4.62%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 13 (20.00%) JCL
2 11 (16.92%) COBOL
3 9 (13.85%) REXX
4 5 (7.69%) Assembly Language
4 5 (7.69%) Java
5 4 (6.15%) JavaScript
6 3 (4.62%) C
6 3 (4.62%) Natural
6 3 (4.62%) Python
7 2 (3.08%) SQL
7 2 (3.08%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.54%) C#
8 1 (1.54%) C++
8 1 (1.54%) CLIST
8 1 (1.54%) Groovy
8 1 (1.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 5 (7.69%) Security Cleared
2 4 (6.15%) CISSP
2 4 (6.15%) IBM Certification
2 4 (6.15%) SC Cleared
3 1 (1.54%) ISTQB
3 1 (1.54%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.54%) Data Quality
1 1 (1.54%) ISO 8583
1 1 (1.54%) PCI DSS
1 1 (1.54%) QA
1 1 (1.54%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (9.23%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (7.69%) RACF
3 4 (6.15%) Docker
4 2 (3.08%) ACF2
4 2 (3.08%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 3 (4.62%) CA Endevor
1 3 (4.62%) Kubernetes
1 3 (4.62%) OMEGAMON
2 2 (3.08%) Control-M
2 2 (3.08%) Progress Chef
2 2 (3.08%) Puppet
2 2 (3.08%) Terraform
2 2 (3.08%) Tivoli
2 2 (3.08%) Tivoli NetView
Vendors
1 24 (36.92%) IBM
2 13 (20.00%) BMC
3 7 (10.77%) Broadcom
4 3 (4.62%) CA Agile Central
4 3 (4.62%) Dynatrace
4 3 (4.62%) Fujitsu
4 3 (4.62%) Splunk
5 2 (3.08%) Software AG
6 1 (1.54%) Google
6 1 (1.54%) HP
6 1 (1.54%) ICL
6 1 (1.54%) MuleSoft
6 1 (1.54%) Oracle
6 1 (1.54%) SAP
6 1 (1.54%) webMethods