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 27 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 575 503 605
Rank change year-on-year -72 +102 -162
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 46 51 88
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.063% 0.15% 0.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.27% 0.38% 0.44%
Number of salaries quoted 27 31 56
10th Percentile £44,447 £25,313 £40,625
25th Percentile £46,250 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £70,000 £43,072
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +62.52% -33.80%
75th Percentile £75,000 £81,250 £70,825
90th Percentile £80,000 £91,250 £104,862
UK median annual salary £72,500 £68,184 £50,000
% change year-on-year +6.33% +36.37% -23.15%

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 16,917 13,477 19,797
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 23.05% 39.44% 31.17%
Number of salaries quoted 11,118 6,217 11,526
10th Percentile £29,750 £26,575 £27,400
25th Percentile £36,500 £33,250 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £49,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £86,250 £78,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £58,500 £57,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +2.63% +3.64% -14.06%

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 27 July 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 27 July 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
Wales - 22 £72,500 -
Midlands -22 12 £60,000 +20.00% 2
East Midlands -19 10 £60,000 +41.18%
North of England -43 9 £44,447 -27.43% 1
Yorkshire -41 6 £44,447 -15.34% 1
North West -11 3 £44,447 -41.90%
West Midlands -25 2 - - 2
East of England -14 1 - -
South East -29 1 - - 3
South West - 1 - - 2
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 (8.70%) CICS
2 3 (6.52%) Confluence
3 1 (2.17%) PegaRULES
Business Applications
1 6 (13.04%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 23 (50.00%) AWS
2 22 (47.83%) Serverless
3 20 (43.48%) AWS Lambda
4 13 (28.26%) AWS CloudFormation
5 12 (26.09%) GitHub
5 12 (26.09%) GitHub Actions
6 10 (21.74%) Azure
7 9 (19.57%) Amazon S3
8 7 (15.22%) Azure DevOps
9 6 (13.04%) Amazon ECS
9 6 (13.04%) Amazon EKS
9 6 (13.04%) Amazon EventBridge
9 6 (13.04%) Amazon SQS
9 6 (13.04%) CloudFront
10 2 (4.35%) GCP
11 1 (2.17%) Azure Event Grid
11 1 (2.17%) Azure Logic Apps
11 1 (2.17%) Azure Service Bus
11 1 (2.17%) Dynamics 365
11 1 (2.17%) Microsoft 365
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (13.04%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (10.87%) Db2
3 3 (6.52%) DynamoDB
3 3 (6.52%) Relational Database
4 2 (4.35%) Easytrieve
4 2 (4.35%) Hazelcast
5 1 (2.17%) Adabas
5 1 (2.17%) NonStop SQL
5 1 (2.17%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 14 (30.43%) Jenkins
2 7 (15.22%) Git
2 7 (15.22%) JIRA
3 6 (13.04%) JUnit
3 6 (13.04%) Selenium
4 4 (8.70%) Cypress.io
5 3 (6.52%) GitLab
5 3 (6.52%) Newman
5 3 (6.52%) Postman
5 3 (6.52%) REST Assured
5 3 (6.52%) TestRail
5 3 (6.52%) Zephyr
6 2 (4.35%) Eclipse
6 2 (4.35%) IntelliJ
General
1 26 (56.52%) Public Sector
2 17 (36.96%) Social Skills
3 6 (13.04%) Finance
4 4 (8.70%) Retail
5 3 (6.52%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (6.52%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (2.17%) Banking
6 1 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (2.17%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 9 (19.57%) Lead
1 9 (19.57%) Mainframe Software Engineer
1 9 (19.57%) Software Engineer
2 8 (17.39%) Architect
2 8 (17.39%) Solutions Architect
3 7 (15.22%) Developer
4 6 (13.04%) Senior
5 4 (8.70%) Full-Stack Developer
5 4 (8.70%) Senior Developer
6 3 (6.52%) QA Tester
6 3 (6.52%) Senior Full-Stack Developer
6 3 (6.52%) Senior Software Developer
6 3 (6.52%) Software Developer
6 3 (6.52%) Test Leader
6 3 (6.52%) Tester
7 2 (4.35%) Analyst
7 2 (4.35%) Consultant
7 2 (4.35%) Delivery Manager
7 2 (4.35%) Java Developer
7 2 (4.35%) Mainframe Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (47.83%) Spring Boot
2 20 (43.48%) Ruby on Rails
3 19 (41.30%) Node.js
4 16 (34.78%) React
4 16 (34.78%) Spring
5 12 (26.09%) AWS CDK
6 11 (23.91%) REST
7 8 (17.39%) Kafka
8 7 (15.22%) Serverless Framework
9 6 (13.04%) AWS SAM
9 6 (13.04%) GraphQL
9 6 (13.04%) ISPF
10 5 (10.87%) CSS
10 5 (10.87%) CSS3
10 5 (10.87%) HTML
10 5 (10.87%) HTML5
11 4 (8.70%) Jest
11 4 (8.70%) Playwright
12 3 (6.52%) RESTful
13 2 (4.35%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 23 (50.00%) Cloud Native
2 19 (41.30%) Legacy Systems
3 7 (15.22%) Digital Wallet
4 6 (13.04%) Legacy Applications
4 6 (13.04%) Product Ownership
5 4 (8.70%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (2.17%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (2.17%) Management Information System
6 1 (2.17%) Manufacturing Execution System
6 1 (2.17%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 5 (10.87%) AIX
2 4 (8.70%) zOS
3 3 (6.52%) VME
4 1 (2.17%) Linux
4 1 (2.17%) Mac OS
4 1 (2.17%) OpenVMS
4 1 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (2.17%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (54.35%) CI/CD
2 24 (52.17%) Agile
3 22 (47.83%) Software Engineering
3 22 (47.83%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
4 17 (36.96%) Microservices
5 16 (34.78%) Scrum
6 14 (30.43%) Infrastructure as Code
6 14 (30.43%) Kanban
6 14 (30.43%) Technical Leadership
7 13 (28.26%) Event-Driven
7 13 (28.26%) Event-Driven Architecture
7 13 (28.26%) Migration
8 11 (23.91%) DevOps
8 11 (23.91%) Full-Stack Development
8 11 (23.91%) Observability
8 11 (23.91%) Roadmaps
9 9 (19.57%) Community of Practice
9 9 (19.57%) OWASP
10 8 (17.39%) Digital Transformation Programme
10 8 (17.39%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 24 (52.17%) Java
2 20 (43.48%) Ruby
3 13 (28.26%) COBOL
4 6 (13.04%) JCL
5 4 (8.70%) SQL
6 3 (6.52%) JavaScript
7 2 (4.35%) Assembly Language
7 2 (4.35%) CLIST
7 2 (4.35%) PL/SQL
7 2 (4.35%) REXX
8 1 (2.17%) Natural
8 1 (2.17%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 7 (15.22%) AWS Certification
1 7 (15.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
2 6 (13.04%) TOGAF Certification
3 5 (10.87%) SC Cleared
3 5 (10.87%) Security Cleared
4 3 (6.52%) ISTQB
4 3 (6.52%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
5 2 (4.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (2.17%) CompTIA Security+
6 1 (2.17%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (28.26%) WCAG
2 10 (21.74%) Accessibility
3 6 (13.04%) Government Security Classifications
3 6 (13.04%) NCSC
4 4 (8.70%) QA
5 1 (2.17%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (8.70%) Time Sharing Option
2 3 (6.52%) Docker
Systems Management
1 16 (34.78%) Terraform
2 3 (6.52%) Kubernetes
3 1 (2.17%) Ansible
Vendors
1 7 (15.22%) Oracle
2 5 (10.87%) OneLogin
3 3 (6.52%) IBM
4 2 (4.35%) Pega
5 1 (2.17%) Broadcom
5 1 (2.17%) Microsoft
5 1 (2.17%) Red Hat
5 1 (2.17%) ServiceNow