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 7 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 504 541 399
Rank change year-on-year +37 -142 +312
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 28 52 161
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.080% 0.11% 0.53%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.24% 0.37% 1.43%
Number of salaries quoted 14 6 109
10th Percentile £50,000 £31,250 £28,640
25th Percentile £51,875 £32,188 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,500 £50,599 £65,351
Median % change year-on-year +39.33% -22.57% +12.19%
75th Percentile £81,875 £78,325 £84,056
90th Percentile £89,300 £85,000 -
UK median annual salary £76,250 £50,000 £65,351
% change year-on-year +52.50% -23.49% +0.54%

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 11,897 14,094 11,298
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 33.82% 29.34% 36.97%
Number of salaries quoted 6,551 6,154 8,246
10th Percentile £26,500 £30,000 £30,030
25th Percentile £31,375 £41,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £54,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -1.82% +0.22%
75th Percentile £63,750 £67,750 £69,800
90th Percentile £77,750 £82,500 £84,056
UK median annual salary £53,600 £60,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -10.67% -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 7 November 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 7 November 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 +8 11 £78,250 +25.20% 30
North West +13 8 £76,500 +22.40% 27
Scotland -13 6 £42,510 -
Midlands +42 5 £50,000 +53.85% 3
West Midlands +48 4 £50,000 +53.85% 1
South East +34 4 £83,750 +4.69% 28
Yorkshire +19 3 £80,000 - 3
East Midlands +16 1 - - 2
East of England - 1 - - 6
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 4
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 4 (14.29%) CICS
2 3 (10.71%) WebSphere
3 2 (7.14%) Apache Spark
4 1 (3.57%) SAS
4 1 (3.57%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 3 (10.71%) AWS
1 3 (10.71%) Azure
2 1 (3.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 1 (3.57%) Amazon EMR
2 1 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
2 1 (3.57%) AWS Step Functions
2 1 (3.57%) GCP
2 1 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
2 1 (3.57%) Power Platform
2 1 (3.57%) Serverless
2 1 (3.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.57%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (25.00%) DB2
2 1 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (3.57%) DynamoDB
2 1 (3.57%) Hadoop
2 1 (3.57%) MariaDB
2 1 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (10.71%) JIRA
2 1 (3.57%) Cucumber
2 1 (3.57%) Gradle
2 1 (3.57%) Jenkins
General
1 14 (50.00%) Finance
2 7 (25.00%) Banking
3 5 (17.86%) Investment Banking
3 5 (17.86%) Marketing
3 5 (17.86%) Social Skills
4 3 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (10.71%) Back Office
4 3 (10.71%) Retail
5 1 (3.57%) Automotive
5 1 (3.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (3.57%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (3.57%) Legal
5 1 (3.57%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (25.00%) Design Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) Applications Manager
2 4 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) Lead
3 3 (10.71%) Application Development Manager
3 3 (10.71%) Applications Development Manager
3 3 (10.71%) Development Manager
4 2 (7.14%) Data Integration Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Integration Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Middleware Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Senior
5 1 (3.57%) Data Engineer
5 1 (3.57%) Digital Product Manager
5 1 (3.57%) Head of Technology
5 1 (3.57%) IT Support
5 1 (3.57%) Mainframe Developer
5 1 (3.57%) Product Manager
5 1 (3.57%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (3.57%) Senior Project Manager
5 1 (3.57%) Support Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (7.14%) Middleware
2 1 (3.57%) Drools
2 1 (3.57%) RESTful
2 1 (3.57%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 4 (14.29%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (10.71%) Enterprise Software
2 3 (10.71%) Legacy Applications
3 2 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (7.14%) IBM Mainframe
3 2 (7.14%) Management Information System
3 2 (7.14%) Product Ownership
3 2 (7.14%) Public Cloud
4 1 (3.57%) AS400
4 1 (3.57%) Cloud Native
4 1 (3.57%) Data Structures
4 1 (3.57%) iSeries
4 1 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (3.57%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 1 (3.57%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 2 (7.14%) zOS
2 1 (3.57%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (32.14%) Agile
2 6 (21.43%) Roadmaps
3 5 (17.86%) DevOps
3 5 (17.86%) Service Delivery
3 5 (17.86%) Service Management
4 4 (14.29%) CI/CD
4 4 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 4 (14.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 3 (10.71%) Customer Experience
5 3 (10.71%) ITIL
5 3 (10.71%) ITSM
5 3 (10.71%) Logistics
5 3 (10.71%) Observability
5 3 (10.71%) PRINCE2
5 3 (10.71%) Problem-Solving
5 3 (10.71%) Product Roadmap
5 3 (10.71%) Project Delivery
5 3 (10.71%) Scrum
5 3 (10.71%) Tech Ops
5 3 (10.71%) Technology Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 6 (21.43%) COBOL
2 4 (14.29%) Python
3 2 (7.14%) PowerShell
4 1 (3.57%) Java
4 1 (3.57%) JCL
4 1 (3.57%) RPG
4 1 (3.57%) SQL
Qualifications
1 2 (7.14%) Computer Science Degree
1 2 (7.14%) Degree
2 1 (3.57%) Azure Certification
2 1 (3.57%) CCNA
2 1 (3.57%) CCNP
2 1 (3.57%) Cisco Certification
2 1 (3.57%) HNC
2 1 (3.57%) HND
2 1 (3.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.57%) Data Quality
1 1 (3.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 5 (17.86%) RACF
Systems Management
1 3 (10.71%) Ansible
1 3 (10.71%) Grafana
1 3 (10.71%) Terraform
2 1 (3.57%) CA Endevor
2 1 (3.57%) Kubernetes
2 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
2 1 (3.57%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 5 (17.86%) IBM
2 3 (10.71%) Broadcom
2 3 (10.71%) Splunk
3 2 (7.14%) ServiceNow
4 1 (3.57%) Cisco
4 1 (3.57%) Fortinet
4 1 (3.57%) Microsoft
4 1 (3.57%) Oracle