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 29 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 533 460 586
Rank change year-on-year -73 +126 +20
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 23 43 120
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.041% 0.17% 0.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.15% 0.47% 0.55%
Number of salaries quoted 7 33 102
10th Percentile - £25,313 £28,530
25th Percentile £44,447 £41,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £74,870 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -27.87% +36.13% -6.78%
75th Percentile £70,500 £90,822 £97,260
90th Percentile £77,600 £93,778 £100,064
UK median annual salary £65,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +13.04% +4.55% -15.38%

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 15,592 9,203 21,987
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 27.70% 35.37% 34.95%
Number of salaries quoted 7,464 5,145 14,687
10th Percentile £27,500 £30,000 £26,250
25th Percentile £33,500 £39,250 £35,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £66,250 £68,750 £65,000
90th Percentile £80,000 £81,250 £80,000
UK median annual salary £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -15.38%

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 29 March 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 29 March 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
North of England -59 8 £44,447 -40.63% 6
Midlands -23 5 £54,000 +66.15% 9
East Midlands -35 5 £54,000 +27.06% 6
Scotland -44 5 - - 6
Yorkshire -60 5 £60,224 +25.96% 4
North West -25 3 £44,447 -49.08% 1
Northern Ireland - 2 - -
South East -29 1 £65,000 -23.53% 5
South West - 1 - -
East of England - 1 - -
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 5 (21.74%) CICS
2 1 (4.35%) Apache Spark
2 1 (4.35%) PegaRULES
2 1 (4.35%) SAS
2 1 (4.35%) WebSphere
Cloud Services
1 4 (17.39%) Azure
2 2 (8.70%) AWS
2 2 (8.70%) Azure DevOps
2 2 (8.70%) GCP
3 1 (4.35%) Azure API Management
3 1 (4.35%) Azure Event Grid
3 1 (4.35%) Azure Logic Apps
3 1 (4.35%) Azure Service Bus
3 1 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (52.17%) DB2
2 2 (8.70%) Easytrieve
2 2 (8.70%) Hazelcast
2 2 (8.70%) Relational Database
3 1 (4.35%) Adabas
3 1 (4.35%) Hadoop
3 1 (4.35%) NonStop SQL
3 1 (4.35%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 4 (17.39%) Git
2 2 (8.70%) Eclipse
2 2 (8.70%) IntelliJ
2 2 (8.70%) Jenkins
3 1 (4.35%) JIRA
General
1 9 (39.13%) Finance
2 4 (17.39%) Marketing
2 4 (17.39%) Retail
2 4 (17.39%) Social Skills
3 3 (13.04%) Public Sector
4 2 (8.70%) Banking
4 2 (8.70%) Legal
5 1 (4.35%) Analytical Skills
Job Titles
1 5 (21.74%) DB2 Specialist
1 5 (21.74%) Mainframe Specialist
1 5 (21.74%) Mainframe Systems Specialist
2 4 (17.39%) Mainframe Software Engineer
2 4 (17.39%) Software Engineer
3 3 (13.04%) Developer
3 3 (13.04%) QA Tester
3 3 (13.04%) Tester
4 2 (8.70%) Application Development Manager
4 2 (8.70%) Applications Development Manager
4 2 (8.70%) Applications Manager
4 2 (8.70%) Development Manager
4 2 (8.70%) Digital Product Manager
4 2 (8.70%) Java Developer
4 2 (8.70%) Pega Developer
4 2 (8.70%) Product Manager
5 1 (4.35%) Dynamics 365 Architect
5 1 (4.35%) Dynamics 365 Solution Architect
5 1 (4.35%) Full-Stack Java Developer
5 1 (4.35%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (8.70%) AngularJS
1 2 (8.70%) CSS
1 2 (8.70%) CSS3
1 2 (8.70%) HTML
1 2 (8.70%) HTML5
1 2 (8.70%) ISPF
1 2 (8.70%) J2EE
1 2 (8.70%) JMS
1 2 (8.70%) Kafka
1 2 (8.70%) Middleware
1 2 (8.70%) React
1 2 (8.70%) REST
1 2 (8.70%) RESTful
1 2 (8.70%) SOAP
2 1 (4.35%) JSON
2 1 (4.35%) WebSphere MQ
2 1 (4.35%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (26.09%) Legacy Applications
2 4 (17.39%) Enterprise Software
2 4 (17.39%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (8.70%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (8.70%) IBM Mainframe
3 2 (8.70%) VSAM
4 1 (4.35%) Data Structures
4 1 (4.35%) Enterprise Cloud
4 1 (4.35%) Management Information System
4 1 (4.35%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 5 (21.74%) zOS
2 3 (13.04%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (26.09%) Agile
2 5 (21.74%) Coaching
2 5 (21.74%) Problem-Solving
3 4 (17.39%) ITIL
3 4 (17.39%) Project Management
3 4 (17.39%) Software Engineering
4 3 (13.04%) Batch Processing
4 3 (13.04%) Data Modelling
4 3 (13.04%) Line Management
4 3 (13.04%) Logistics
4 3 (13.04%) Mentoring
4 3 (13.04%) Performance Tuning
5 2 (8.70%) CI/CD
5 2 (8.70%) Containerisation
5 2 (8.70%) Customer Experience
5 2 (8.70%) Data-Driven Decision Making
5 2 (8.70%) Decision-Making
5 2 (8.70%) DevOps
5 2 (8.70%) Full-Stack Development
5 2 (8.70%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 10 (43.48%) COBOL
2 6 (26.09%) SQL
3 5 (21.74%) JCL
4 2 (8.70%) Assembly Language
4 2 (8.70%) Java
4 2 (8.70%) JavaScript
4 2 (8.70%) PL/SQL
5 1 (4.35%) Natural
5 1 (4.35%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
1 1 (4.35%) Degree
1 1 (4.35%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (13.04%) QA
2 2 (8.70%) Data Quality
System Software
1 2 (8.70%) RACF
1 2 (8.70%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 2 (8.70%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
Vendors
1 4 (17.39%) IBM
2 2 (8.70%) Oracle
2 2 (8.70%) Pega