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

6 months to
3 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 236 244 362
Rank change year-on-year +8 +118 +128
Contract jobs citing Mainframe 65 100 110
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 0.66% 0.66% 0.43%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.98% 2.29% 1.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 70 51
10th Percentile £380 £360 £425
25th Percentile £415 £430 £522
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £460 £550
Median % change year-on-year +14.13% -16.36% +3.77%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £634
90th Percentile £666 £700 £664
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £563
% change year-on-year - -11.11% +6.64%
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 3,281 4,366 8,071
As % of all contract jobs with a WFH option 33.15% 28.62% 31.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,235 2,959 5,676
10th Percentile £350 £325 £363
25th Percentile £425 £431 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £545 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.91% - +2.14%
75th Percentile £688 £675 £688
90th Percentile £825 £800 £800
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 197 153
10th Percentile £18.80 £15.47 £19.00
25th Percentile £26.25 £25.50 £30.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.00% -13.04% +29.21%
75th Percentile £64.52 £65.03 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £72.50 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £32.05 £30.16 £22.49
% change year-on-year +6.27% +34.13% -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 3 May 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%) 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%) Xcode
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%) Automation Engineer
6 2 (3.08%) Java Developer
6 2 (3.08%) Project Manager
6 2 (3.08%) Software Consultant
6 2 (3.08%) Splunk Engineer
6 2 (3.08%) Systems Engineer
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%) Change Management
8 3 (4.62%) Disaster Recovery
8 3 (4.62%) High Availability
8 3 (4.62%) MVC
8 3 (4.62%) Project Management
8 3 (4.62%) Service Delivery
8 3 (4.62%) Test Automation
8 3 (4.62%) Validation
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