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 10 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 594 503 583
Rank change year-on-year -91 +80 -141
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 52 47 84
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.068% 0.14% 0.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.29% 0.34% 0.46%
Number of salaries quoted 29 27 49
10th Percentile £43,558 £25,313 -
25th Percentile £46,250 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £70,000 £45,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +55.56% -31.14%
75th Percentile £75,000 £83,625 £73,886
90th Percentile £80,000 £91,250 £111,250
UK median annual salary £72,500 £68,184 £50,000
% change year-on-year +6.33% +36.37% -23.49%

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 18,025 13,699 18,164
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 23.44% 39.56% 30.53%
Number of salaries quoted 11,725 6,352 10,127
10th Percentile £30,000 £26,500 £27,598
25th Percentile £36,750 £33,000 £37,101
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,130 £47,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.75% -5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70,000 £65,000 £65,603
90th Percentile £86,500 £78,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +4.55% -4.35% -11.20%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 - 23 £72,500 - 7
Midlands -21 16 £60,000 +20.00% 2
East Midlands -14 10 £60,000 +41.18%
North of England -54 10 £44,447 -15.34% 12
Yorkshire -43 7 £42,224 +8.09% 9
West Midlands -23 6 - - 2
North West -15 3 £44,447 -41.90%
South East -35 2 - - 3
East of England -29 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 6 (11.54%) CICS
2 3 (5.77%) Confluence
3 1 (1.92%) PegaRULES
Business Applications
1 6 (11.54%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 24 (46.15%) AWS
2 22 (42.31%) Serverless
3 20 (38.46%) AWS Lambda
4 16 (30.77%) Azure
4 16 (30.77%) GitHub
4 16 (30.77%) GitHub Actions
5 13 (25.00%) AWS CloudFormation
6 12 (23.08%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (17.31%) Amazon S3
8 6 (11.54%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (11.54%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (11.54%) Amazon EventBridge
8 6 (11.54%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (11.54%) CloudFront
9 2 (3.85%) GCP
9 2 (3.85%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (1.92%) Azure Event Grid
10 1 (1.92%) Azure Logic Apps
10 1 (1.92%) Azure Service Bus
10 1 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (13.46%) Db2
2 6 (11.54%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (9.62%) Relational Database
4 3 (5.77%) DynamoDB
5 2 (3.85%) Easytrieve
5 2 (3.85%) Hazelcast
6 1 (1.92%) Adabas
6 1 (1.92%) RDBMS
6 1 (1.92%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (34.62%) Jenkins
2 7 (13.46%) Git
3 6 (11.54%) JIRA
3 6 (11.54%) JUnit
3 6 (11.54%) Selenium
4 4 (7.69%) Cypress.io
5 3 (5.77%) GitLab
5 3 (5.77%) Newman
5 3 (5.77%) Postman
5 3 (5.77%) REST Assured
5 3 (5.77%) TestRail
5 3 (5.77%) Zephyr
6 2 (3.85%) Eclipse
6 2 (3.85%) IntelliJ
General
1 28 (53.85%) Public Sector
2 19 (36.54%) Social Skills
3 11 (21.15%) Finance
4 6 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (7.69%) Retail
6 3 (5.77%) Banking
6 3 (5.77%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.92%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 9 (17.31%) Architect
1 9 (17.31%) Lead
1 9 (17.31%) Mainframe Software Engineer
1 9 (17.31%) Software Engineer
1 9 (17.31%) Solutions Architect
2 7 (13.46%) Developer
3 6 (11.54%) Applications Consultant
3 6 (11.54%) Consultant
3 6 (11.54%) Mainframe Consultant
3 6 (11.54%) Senior
4 4 (7.69%) Full-Stack Developer
4 4 (7.69%) Senior Developer
5 3 (5.77%) COBOL Consultant
5 3 (5.77%) Java Consultant
5 3 (5.77%) QA Tester
5 3 (5.77%) Senior Full-Stack Developer
5 3 (5.77%) Senior Software Developer
5 3 (5.77%) Software Developer
5 3 (5.77%) Test Leader
5 3 (5.77%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (50.00%) Spring Boot
2 20 (38.46%) Ruby on Rails
2 20 (38.46%) Spring
3 19 (36.54%) Node.js
4 16 (30.77%) React
5 12 (23.08%) AWS CDK
6 11 (21.15%) REST
7 10 (19.23%) ISPF
8 8 (15.38%) Kafka
9 7 (13.46%) Serverless Framework
10 6 (11.54%) .NET
10 6 (11.54%) AWS SAM
10 6 (11.54%) GraphQL
11 5 (9.62%) CSS
11 5 (9.62%) CSS3
11 5 (9.62%) HTML
11 5 (9.62%) HTML5
12 4 (7.69%) Jest
12 4 (7.69%) Playwright
13 3 (5.77%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 25 (48.08%) Cloud Native
2 19 (36.54%) Legacy Systems
3 10 (19.23%) Legacy Applications
4 8 (15.38%) Enterprise Software
5 7 (13.46%) Digital Wallet
6 6 (11.54%) Product Ownership
7 2 (3.85%) Social Media
8 1 (1.92%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (1.92%) Management Information System
8 1 (1.92%) Manufacturing Execution System
Operating Systems
1 5 (9.62%) AIX
2 4 (7.69%) zOS
3 3 (5.77%) VME
3 3 (5.77%) Windows
4 2 (3.85%) Mac OS
5 1 (1.92%) Linux
5 1 (1.92%) OpenVMS
5 1 (1.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (57.69%) CI/CD
2 24 (46.15%) Agile
3 22 (42.31%) Software Engineering
3 22 (42.31%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
4 18 (34.62%) Microservices
5 17 (32.69%) DevOps
5 17 (32.69%) Technical Leadership
6 16 (30.77%) Scrum
7 15 (28.85%) Migration
8 14 (26.92%) Infrastructure as Code
8 14 (26.92%) Kanban
8 14 (26.92%) Roadmaps
9 13 (25.00%) Batch Processing
9 13 (25.00%) Event-Driven
9 13 (25.00%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 12 (23.08%) Problem-Solving
11 11 (21.15%) Full-Stack Development
11 11 (21.15%) Observability
12 9 (17.31%) Community of Practice
12 9 (17.31%) OWASP
Programming Languages
1 28 (53.85%) Java
2 20 (38.46%) Ruby
3 17 (32.69%) COBOL
4 10 (19.23%) JCL
5 4 (7.69%) SQL
6 3 (5.77%) JavaScript
7 2 (3.85%) Assembly Language
7 2 (3.85%) CLIST
7 2 (3.85%) PL/SQL
7 2 (3.85%) REXX
8 1 (1.92%) Natural
8 1 (1.92%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.92%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 7 (13.46%) AWS Certification
1 7 (13.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
2 6 (11.54%) TOGAF Certification
3 5 (9.62%) SC Cleared
3 5 (9.62%) Security Cleared
4 3 (5.77%) ISTQB
4 3 (5.77%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
5 2 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.92%) CompTIA Security+
6 1 (1.92%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (25.00%) WCAG
2 10 (19.23%) Accessibility
3 6 (11.54%) Government Security Classifications
3 6 (11.54%) NCSC
4 4 (7.69%) QA
5 1 (1.92%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (7.69%) Time Sharing Option
2 3 (5.77%) Docker
Systems Management
1 16 (30.77%) Terraform
2 3 (5.77%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.92%) Ansible
Vendors
1 7 (13.46%) Oracle
2 5 (9.62%) OneLogin
3 3 (5.77%) Broadcom
3 3 (5.77%) IBM
4 2 (3.85%) Microsoft
4 2 (3.85%) Pega
4 2 (3.85%) ServiceNow
5 1 (1.92%) Red Hat
5 1 (1.92%) Unisys