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 23 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 491 519 380
Rank change year-on-year +28 -139 +339
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 22 49 164
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 0.052% 0.13% 0.58%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.16% 0.38% 1.59%
Number of salaries quoted 11 11 116
10th Percentile £50,000 £31,250 £28,800
25th Percentile £52,000 £47,049 £47,725
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £85,253 £76,316
Median % change year-on-year -23.76% +11.71% +27.19%
75th Percentile £78,000 £93,778 £89,546
90th Percentile £82,500 - £100,064
UK median annual salary £65,000 £50,000 £79,632
% change year-on-year +30.00% -37.21% +1.91%

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 13,925 12,879 10,347
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 33.07% 33.97% 36.67%
Number of salaries quoted 6,436 5,717 7,432
10th Percentile £26,250 £30,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £31,500 £41,220 £39,085
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £54,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -1.82% -
75th Percentile £64,785 £67,750 £68,750
90th Percentile £78,500 £82,500 £84,056
UK median annual salary £55,000 £60,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% -3.85%

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 23 December 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 23 December 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
Scotland -7 8 £60,000 -29.62% 3
Midlands +28 6 £50,000 +53.85% 2
West Midlands +38 4 £50,000 +53.85% 2
South East - 3 £80,000 - 2
North of England -4 2 £78,000 -9.58% 2
East Midlands -5 2 £54,000 -
Yorkshire -8 2 £78,000 -8.51%
Northern Ireland - 2 - -
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 (22.73%) CICS
2 3 (13.64%) WebSphere
3 2 (9.09%) Apache Spark
4 1 (4.55%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 2 (9.09%) AWS
2 1 (4.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 1 (4.55%) Amazon EMR
2 1 (4.55%) AWS Lambda
2 1 (4.55%) AWS Step Functions
2 1 (4.55%) Azure
2 1 (4.55%) Serverless
2 1 (4.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 1 (4.55%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (50.00%) DB2
2 1 (4.55%) Adabas
2 1 (4.55%) DynamoDB
2 1 (4.55%) Hadoop
2 1 (4.55%) MariaDB
2 1 (4.55%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (9.09%) JIRA
2 1 (4.55%) Cucumber
2 1 (4.55%) Gradle
2 1 (4.55%) Jenkins
General
1 9 (40.91%) Finance
2 5 (22.73%) Marketing
3 3 (13.64%) Back Office
3 3 (13.64%) Social Skills
4 2 (9.09%) Banking
4 2 (9.09%) Legal
4 2 (9.09%) Retail
5 1 (4.55%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (4.55%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 5 (22.73%) DB2 Specialist
1 5 (22.73%) Mainframe Specialist
1 5 (22.73%) Mainframe Systems Specialist
2 4 (18.18%) Lead
3 3 (13.64%) Applications Manager
3 3 (13.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 3 (13.64%) Senior
4 2 (9.09%) Application Development Manager
4 2 (9.09%) Applications Development Manager
4 2 (9.09%) Developer
4 2 (9.09%) Development Manager
4 2 (9.09%) Digital Product Manager
4 2 (9.09%) Mainframe Developer
4 2 (9.09%) Product Manager
5 1 (4.55%) Applications Support
5 1 (4.55%) Data Engineer
5 1 (4.55%) IBM Mainframe Developer
5 1 (4.55%) Lead Developer
5 1 (4.55%) Senior Developer
5 1 (4.55%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (4.55%) Drools
1 1 (4.55%) JSON
1 1 (4.55%) RESTful
1 1 (4.55%) Spring
1 1 (4.55%) WebSphere MQ
1 1 (4.55%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (9.09%) Data Protection Act
1 2 (9.09%) Distributed Systems
1 2 (9.09%) Enterprise Software
1 2 (9.09%) IBM Mainframe
1 2 (9.09%) Legacy Applications
1 2 (9.09%) VSAM
2 1 (4.55%) Cloud Native
2 1 (4.55%) Data Structures
2 1 (4.55%) Product Ownership
2 1 (4.55%) Public Cloud
2 1 (4.55%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 3 (13.64%) zOS
2 1 (4.55%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (31.82%) Agile
2 3 (13.64%) DevOps
2 3 (13.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 3 (13.64%) Performance Tuning
2 3 (13.64%) Service Delivery
2 3 (13.64%) Service Management
2 3 (13.64%) Strategic Management
3 2 (9.09%) Backlog Management
3 2 (9.09%) Backlog Prioritisation
3 2 (9.09%) CI/CD
3 2 (9.09%) Data-Driven Decision Making
3 2 (9.09%) Decision-Making
3 2 (9.09%) Human-Centred Design
3 2 (9.09%) Observability
3 2 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
3 2 (9.09%) Product Backlog
3 2 (9.09%) Product Roadmap
3 2 (9.09%) Product Strategy
3 2 (9.09%) Project Delivery
3 2 (9.09%) Tech Ops
Programming Languages
1 5 (22.73%) COBOL
2 3 (13.64%) JCL
2 3 (13.64%) Python
3 2 (9.09%) SQL
4 1 (4.55%) Java
4 1 (4.55%) Natural
4 1 (4.55%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 2 (9.09%) Computer Science Degree
1 2 (9.09%) Degree
2 1 (4.55%) Azure Certification
2 1 (4.55%) CCNA
2 1 (4.55%) CCNP
2 1 (4.55%) Cisco Certification
2 1 (4.55%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.55%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (18.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 2 (9.09%) Ansible
1 2 (9.09%) Grafana
1 2 (9.09%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
1 2 (9.09%) Terraform
2 1 (4.55%) CA Endevor
2 1 (4.55%) Kubernetes
2 1 (4.55%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 4 (18.18%) IBM
2 2 (9.09%) Broadcom
2 2 (9.09%) Splunk
3 1 (4.55%) Cisco
3 1 (4.55%) Fortinet
3 1 (4.55%) Oracle
3 1 (4.55%) ServiceNow