Mainframe Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Mainframes
UK > UK excluding London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in permanent job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe over the 6 months leading up to 25 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 592 506 573
Rank change year-on-year -86 +67 -137
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 77 31 66
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.090% 0.090% 0.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.37% 0.23% 0.41%
Number of salaries quoted 48 16 22
10th Percentile £40,000 £49,375 -
25th Percentile £46,000 £50,000 £42,139
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £78,250 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -26.52% +42.27% -15.84%
75th Percentile £73,750 £88,438 £72,474
90th Percentile £80,000 £91,250 £89,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £80,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -25.00% +60.00% -23.49%

All Generic Skills
UK excluding London

Mainframe falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 20,693 13,374 16,068
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 24.10% 38.85% 29.46%
Number of salaries quoted 13,152 6,183 7,377
10th Percentile £29,750 £26,625 £29,071
25th Percentile £36,750 £32,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,000 £47,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.47% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £70,000 £64,125 £67,500
90th Percentile £87,500 £77,500 £81,350
UK median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% -8.33% -4.00%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Mainframe relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Mainframe job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Mainframe
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Mainframe.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Mainframe

Mainframe
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing Mainframe in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 25 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Mainframe in the UK excluding London

Mainframe
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Mainframe within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 25 September 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Midlands -20 28 £55,000 +10.00% 2
Wales - 25 £72,500 - 3
Yorkshire -21 18 £45,000 -43.75% 13
North of England -61 18 £45,000 -42.49% 22
East Midlands -19 14 £55,000 - 2
West Midlands -35 14 - -
South East -54 4 £29,564 -66.21% 8
Scotland +3 1 - - 8
East of England -21 1 - - 10
Mainframe
UK

Mainframe
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 7 (9.09%) CICS
2 3 (3.90%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (2.60%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (2.60%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (2.60%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (7.79%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 25 (32.47%) GitHub
1 25 (32.47%) GitHub Actions
2 24 (31.17%) AWS
3 23 (29.87%) Azure
3 23 (29.87%) Serverless
4 21 (27.27%) AWS Lambda
5 19 (24.68%) Azure DevOps
6 13 (16.88%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (11.69%) Amazon S3
8 6 (7.79%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (7.79%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (7.79%) Amazon EventBridge
8 6 (7.79%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (7.79%) CloudFront
9 3 (3.90%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (1.30%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (11.69%) Relational Database
2 6 (7.79%) Amazon RDS
2 6 (7.79%) Db2
3 3 (3.90%) DynamoDB
4 2 (2.60%) Adabas
5 1 (1.30%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 25 (32.47%) Jenkins
2 6 (7.79%) JIRA
2 6 (7.79%) JUnit
2 6 (7.79%) Selenium
3 5 (6.49%) Cypress.io
4 3 (3.90%) Git
4 3 (3.90%) GitLab
4 3 (3.90%) Newman
4 3 (3.90%) Postman
4 3 (3.90%) REST Assured
4 3 (3.90%) TestRail
4 3 (3.90%) Zephyr
General
1 28 (36.36%) Public Sector
2 26 (33.77%) Social Skills
3 19 (24.68%) Finance
4 16 (20.78%) Retail
5 14 (18.18%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (3.90%) Banking
6 3 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (2.60%) Local Government
7 2 (2.60%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.30%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 19 (24.68%) Developer
2 14 (18.18%) Applications Consultant
2 14 (18.18%) Consultant
2 14 (18.18%) Mainframe Consultant
2 14 (18.18%) Senior
3 12 (15.58%) Senior Developer
4 10 (12.99%) Mainframe Developer
5 9 (11.69%) Analyst
5 9 (11.69%) Automation Analyst
5 9 (11.69%) Lead
6 8 (10.39%) Architect
6 8 (10.39%) Solutions Architect
7 7 (9.09%) Senior Mainframe Developer
8 6 (7.79%) Mainframe Software Engineer
8 6 (7.79%) Software Engineer
9 5 (6.49%) COBOL Consultant
9 5 (6.49%) Java Consultant
10 4 (5.19%) Mainframe Analyst
11 3 (3.90%) Full-Stack Developer
11 3 (3.90%) Senior Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (45.45%) Spring Boot
2 29 (37.66%) Spring
3 21 (27.27%) ISPF
3 21 (27.27%) Ruby on Rails
4 19 (24.68%) Node.js
5 16 (20.78%) Terraform
6 15 (19.48%) React
7 14 (18.18%) .NET
8 12 (15.58%) AWS CDK
9 9 (11.69%) REST
10 7 (9.09%) Serverless Framework
11 6 (7.79%) AWS SAM
11 6 (7.79%) GraphQL
11 6 (7.79%) Kafka
12 5 (6.49%) Jest
12 5 (6.49%) Playwright
13 3 (3.90%) CSS
13 3 (3.90%) CSS3
13 3 (3.90%) HTML
13 3 (3.90%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 28 (36.36%) Cloud Native
2 17 (22.08%) Legacy Systems
3 15 (19.48%) Enterprise Software
3 15 (19.48%) Legacy Applications
4 8 (10.39%) Digital Wallet
4 8 (10.39%) Product Ownership
5 2 (2.60%) Social Media
6 1 (1.30%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (1.30%) Manufacturing Execution System
6 1 (1.30%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.30%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 8 (10.39%) zOS
2 6 (7.79%) AIX
3 4 (5.19%) Windows
4 3 (3.90%) Mac OS
5 1 (1.30%) Linux
5 1 (1.30%) OpenVMS
5 1 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (48.05%) CI/CD
2 25 (32.47%) Batch Processing
2 25 (32.47%) DevOps
3 24 (31.17%) Agile
4 23 (29.87%) Technical Leadership
4 23 (29.87%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
5 20 (25.97%) Software Engineering
6 19 (24.68%) Microservices
6 19 (24.68%) Problem-Solving
7 17 (22.08%) Collaborative Culture
7 17 (22.08%) Roadmaps
8 16 (20.78%) Infrastructure as Code
8 16 (20.78%) Migration
9 15 (19.48%) Re-Platforming
10 14 (18.18%) Kanban
10 14 (18.18%) Scrum
11 13 (16.88%) Observability
12 12 (15.58%) Continuous Improvement
12 12 (15.58%) Event-Driven
12 12 (15.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 35 (45.45%) Java
2 22 (28.57%) JCL
3 21 (27.27%) COBOL
3 21 (27.27%) Ruby
4 7 (9.09%) CLIST
4 7 (9.09%) REXX
5 2 (2.60%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.60%) Natural
5 2 (2.60%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.30%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.30%) Python
6 1 (1.30%) SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (9.09%) AWS Certification
1 7 (9.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
2 6 (7.79%) SC Cleared
2 6 (7.79%) Security Cleared
2 6 (7.79%) TOGAF Certification
3 3 (3.90%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (3.90%) ISTQB
3 3 (3.90%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
4 1 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
4 1 (1.30%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (18.18%) WCAG
2 11 (14.29%) Accessibility
3 6 (7.79%) Government Security Classifications
3 6 (7.79%) NCSC
4 2 (2.60%) QA
System Software
1 7 (9.09%) Time Sharing Option
2 3 (3.90%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (3.90%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.30%) Ansible
Vendors
1 9 (11.69%) Broadcom
2 7 (9.09%) IBM
3 6 (7.79%) OneLogin
3 6 (7.79%) Oracle
4 5 (6.49%) Microsoft
5 3 (3.90%) ServiceNow
6 2 (2.60%) Unisys
7 1 (1.30%) Red Hat