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

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 497 541 390
Rank change year-on-year +44 -151 +333
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 26 55 169
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.070% 0.12% 0.56%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.21% 0.39% 1.52%
Number of salaries quoted 14 9 118
10th Percentile £50,000 £31,250 £28,800
25th Percentile £54,875 £35,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,500 £85,253 £65,351
Median % change year-on-year -17.30% +30.45% +10.27%
75th Percentile £80,000 £93,778 £84,056
90th Percentile £84,075 - £92,854
UK median annual salary £76,000 £50,000 £65,351
% change year-on-year +52.00% -23.49% -9.24%

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 12,131 14,182 11,113
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 32.84% 29.89% 36.90%
Number of salaries quoted 6,615 6,208 8,030
10th Percentile £26,250 £30,000 £30,000
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% -
75th Percentile £63,750 £68,750 £69,550
90th Percentile £78,750 £82,500 £84,056
UK median annual salary £54,143 £60,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -9.76% -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 21 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 21 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 +28 10 £80,000 -6.16% 7
Midlands +54 6 £50,000 +53.85% 4
North West +30 6 £76,500 +25.12% 6
West Midlands +51 4 £50,000 +53.85% 1
Yorkshire +13 4 £80,000 -6.16% 1
Scotland -5 4 £60,000 -29.62% 1
South East - 3 £80,000 - 7
East Midlands +22 2 £54,000 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 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 (19.23%) CICS
2 3 (11.54%) WebSphere
3 2 (7.69%) Apache Spark
4 1 (3.85%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 3 (11.54%) AWS
2 2 (7.69%) Azure
3 1 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 1 (3.85%) Amazon EMR
3 1 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
3 1 (3.85%) AWS Step Functions
3 1 (3.85%) GCP
3 1 (3.85%) Serverless
3 1 (3.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (3.85%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (26.92%) DB2
2 1 (3.85%) Adabas
2 1 (3.85%) DynamoDB
2 1 (3.85%) Hadoop
2 1 (3.85%) MariaDB
2 1 (3.85%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (7.69%) JIRA
2 1 (3.85%) Cucumber
2 1 (3.85%) Gradle
2 1 (3.85%) Jenkins
General
1 16 (61.54%) Finance
2 7 (26.92%) Banking
2 7 (26.92%) Marketing
3 4 (15.38%) Investment Banking
3 4 (15.38%) Retail
4 3 (11.54%) Back Office
4 3 (11.54%) Social Skills
5 2 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (7.69%) Legal
6 1 (3.85%) Automotive
6 1 (3.85%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 5 (19.23%) Applications Manager
1 5 (19.23%) Design Engineer
2 4 (15.38%) Application Development Manager
2 4 (15.38%) Applications Development Manager
2 4 (15.38%) Development Manager
2 4 (15.38%) Lead
3 3 (11.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 3 (11.54%) Senior
4 2 (7.69%) Developer
4 2 (7.69%) Digital Product Manager
4 2 (7.69%) Mainframe Developer
4 2 (7.69%) Product Manager
5 1 (3.85%) Analyst
5 1 (3.85%) Applications Support
5 1 (3.85%) Data Engineer
5 1 (3.85%) Data Integration Engineer
5 1 (3.85%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 1 (3.85%) Senior Developer
5 1 (3.85%) Senior Manager
5 1 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (3.85%) Drools
1 1 (3.85%) JSON
1 1 (3.85%) Middleware
1 1 (3.85%) RESTful
1 1 (3.85%) Spring
1 1 (3.85%) WebSphere MQ
1 1 (3.85%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 5 (19.23%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (15.38%) Enterprise Software
2 4 (15.38%) Legacy Applications
3 3 (11.54%) IBM Mainframe
4 2 (7.69%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (7.69%) Public Cloud
4 2 (7.69%) VSAM
5 1 (3.85%) Cloud Native
5 1 (3.85%) Data Structures
5 1 (3.85%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (3.85%) Management Information System
5 1 (3.85%) Product Ownership
5 1 (3.85%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 4 (15.38%) zOS
2 1 (3.85%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (38.46%) Agile
2 5 (19.23%) Service Delivery
2 5 (19.23%) Service Management
3 4 (15.38%) Coaching
3 4 (15.38%) Customer Experience
3 4 (15.38%) DevOps
3 4 (15.38%) ITIL
3 4 (15.38%) ITSM
3 4 (15.38%) Logistics
3 4 (15.38%) PRINCE2
3 4 (15.38%) Project Delivery
3 4 (15.38%) Project Management
3 4 (15.38%) Resource Management
4 3 (11.54%) CI/CD
4 3 (11.54%) Decision-Making
4 3 (11.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 3 (11.54%) Performance Tuning
4 3 (11.54%) Roadmaps
4 3 (11.54%) Stakeholder Management
4 3 (11.54%) Strategic Management
Programming Languages
1 8 (30.77%) COBOL
2 3 (11.54%) JCL
2 3 (11.54%) Python
3 2 (7.69%) SQL
4 1 (3.85%) Java
4 1 (3.85%) Natural
4 1 (3.85%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 2 (7.69%) Computer Science Degree
1 2 (7.69%) Degree
2 1 (3.85%) Azure Certification
2 1 (3.85%) CCNA
2 1 (3.85%) CCNP
2 1 (3.85%) Cisco Certification
2 1 (3.85%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.85%) Data Quality
1 1 (3.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 5 (19.23%) RACF
Systems Management
1 2 (7.69%) Ansible
1 2 (7.69%) Grafana
1 2 (7.69%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
1 2 (7.69%) Terraform
2 1 (3.85%) CA Endevor
2 1 (3.85%) Kubernetes
2 1 (3.85%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 5 (19.23%) IBM
2 2 (7.69%) Broadcom
2 2 (7.69%) Splunk
3 1 (3.85%) Cisco
3 1 (3.85%) Fortinet
3 1 (3.85%) Oracle
3 1 (3.85%) ServiceNow