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 19 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 506 576 440
Rank change year-on-year +70 -136 +284
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 33 67 153
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.096% 0.12% 0.44%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.25% 0.41% 1.11%
Number of salaries quoted 18 25 92
10th Percentile £49,625 - £35,000
25th Percentile £51,875 £42,139 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,685 £55,000 £65,351
Median % change year-on-year +37.61% -15.84% +15.75%
75th Percentile £86,813 £73,299 £84,056
90th Percentile £91,250 £86,000 -
UK median annual salary £75,685 £50,000 £65,351
% change year-on-year +51.37% -23.49% +5.83%

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 13,373 16,319 13,799
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 38.88% 29.42% 39.98%
Number of salaries quoted 6,188 7,712 9,312
10th Percentile £26,625 £29,000 £31,000
25th Percentile £32,500 £38,718 £40,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £52,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £67,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £77,500 £81,250 £84,056
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% -

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Mainframe as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Mainframe 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 19 September 2025.

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 19 September 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
North of England +23 13 £76,500 +27.50% 9
Scotland +35 8 £60,000 -17.24%
North West -2 8 £76,500 +27.50% 7
South East +43 6 £87,500 +59.09% 7
Midlands +42 5 £50,000 +16.08% 6
Yorkshire +16 5 £75,000 +76.47% 2
West Midlands +48 4 £50,000 +16.08%
East Midlands +17 1 - - 6
East of England - 1 - -
Mainframe
UK

Mainframe
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 4 (12.12%) SharePoint
2 3 (9.09%) CICS
2 3 (9.09%) WebSphere
3 1 (3.03%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 6 (18.18%) Azure
2 4 (12.12%) Microsoft 365
2 4 (12.12%) Power Platform
3 3 (9.09%) AWS
4 1 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (3.03%) Amazon EMR
4 1 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (3.03%) AWS Step Functions
4 1 (3.03%) GCP
4 1 (3.03%) Serverless
4 1 (3.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.03%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (24.24%) DB2
2 4 (12.12%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (3.03%) DynamoDB
3 1 (3.03%) MariaDB
3 1 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (9.09%) JIRA
2 1 (3.03%) Cucumber
2 1 (3.03%) Gradle
2 1 (3.03%) Jenkins
General
1 13 (39.39%) Finance
2 8 (24.24%) Banking
3 7 (21.21%) Social Skills
4 5 (15.15%) Investment Banking
5 3 (9.09%) Back Office
5 3 (9.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 3 (9.09%) Marketing
6 2 (6.06%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (6.06%) Retail
7 1 (3.03%) Automotive
7 1 (3.03%) Financial Institution
7 1 (3.03%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (21.21%) Design Engineer
2 5 (15.15%) Lead
3 4 (12.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 3 (9.09%) Applications Manager
5 2 (6.06%) Administrator
5 2 (6.06%) Application Development Manager
5 2 (6.06%) Applications Development Manager
5 2 (6.06%) Data Integration Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Development Manager
5 2 (6.06%) Head of IT
5 2 (6.06%) Head of Technology
5 2 (6.06%) Integration Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Middleware Engineer
5 2 (6.06%) Programmer
5 2 (6.06%) Senior
5 2 (6.06%) Systems Programmer
6 1 (3.03%) Applications Support
6 1 (3.03%) Architect
6 1 (3.03%) Infrastructure Analyst
6 1 (3.03%) Lead Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (9.09%) Middleware
2 2 (6.06%) ISPF
3 1 (3.03%) Drools
3 1 (3.03%) RESTful
3 1 (3.03%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4 (12.12%) AS400
1 4 (12.12%) iSeries
2 3 (9.09%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (6.06%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (6.06%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (6.06%) Legacy Applications
3 2 (6.06%) Management Information System
3 2 (6.06%) Product Ownership
3 2 (6.06%) Public Cloud
4 1 (3.03%) Cloud Native
4 1 (3.03%) Data Centre
4 1 (3.03%) IBM Mainframe
4 1 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (9.09%) zOS
2 1 (3.03%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (24.24%) Roadmaps
1 8 (24.24%) Service Delivery
2 7 (21.21%) Agile
3 6 (18.18%) Service Management
4 5 (15.15%) DevOps
4 5 (15.15%) Technology Roadmap
5 4 (12.12%) CI/CD
5 4 (12.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 4 (12.12%) IT Strategy
5 4 (12.12%) Stakeholder Management
5 4 (12.12%) Technology Strategy
6 3 (9.09%) Kanban
6 3 (9.09%) Observability
6 3 (9.09%) Planning and Forecasting
6 3 (9.09%) Product Roadmap
6 3 (9.09%) Project Delivery
6 3 (9.09%) Scrum
6 3 (9.09%) Strategic Management
6 3 (9.09%) Strategic Planning
6 3 (9.09%) Tech Ops
Programming Languages
1 4 (12.12%) COBOL
1 4 (12.12%) RPG
2 3 (9.09%) Python
3 2 (6.06%) JCL
3 2 (6.06%) PowerShell
4 1 (3.03%) Java
Qualifications
1 1 (3.03%) Azure Certification
1 1 (3.03%) CCNA
1 1 (3.03%) CCNP
1 1 (3.03%) CISA
1 1 (3.03%) Cisco Certification
1 1 (3.03%) CISSP
1 1 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (3.03%) Degree
1 1 (3.03%) HNC
1 1 (3.03%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 4 (12.12%) RACF
2 2 (6.06%) Time Sharing Option
3 1 (3.03%) PowerHA
Systems Management
1 3 (9.09%) Ansible
1 3 (9.09%) Grafana
1 3 (9.09%) Terraform
2 1 (3.03%) CA Endevor
2 1 (3.03%) Kubernetes
2 1 (3.03%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (21.21%) IBM
2 4 (12.12%) Microsoft
3 3 (9.09%) Broadcom
3 3 (9.09%) Splunk
4 2 (6.06%) ServiceNow
5 1 (3.03%) Cisco
5 1 (3.03%) Fortinet
5 1 (3.03%) Oracle