COBOL
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies requiring COBOL skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the annual salaries offered in vacancies that cited COBOL over the 6 months leading up to 14 June 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 691 804 870
Rank change year-on-year +113 +66 +327
Permanent jobs citing COBOL 16 113 57
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.029% 0.10% 0.062%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.096% 0.33% 0.15%
Number of salaries quoted 5 96 25
10th Percentile - £52,500 £46,860
25th Percentile £66,250 £56,809 £56,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £73,805 £63,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% +17.15% -6.32%
75th Percentile £83,750 £84,964 £77,715
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median annual salary £82,500 £73,805 £66,750
% change year-on-year +11.78% +10.57% -1.11%

All Programming Languages
UK

COBOL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 16,658 34,738 38,813
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 29.73% 31.52% 42.15%
Number of salaries quoted 10,575 25,693 26,126
10th Percentile £37,100 £35,000 £38,750
25th Percentile £47,683 £45,000 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £60,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year - -7.69% +4.00%
75th Percentile £80,250 £77,500 £85,000
90th Percentile £107,500 £98,474 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £54,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +1.85% -1.82% +4.76%

COBOL
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing COBOL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Salary Trend

3-month moving average salary quoted in jobs citing COBOL.

Salary trend for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing COBOL over the 6 months to 14 June 2025.

Salary histogram for COBOL in the UK

COBOL
Top 8 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing COBOL within the UK over the 6 months to 14 June 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
England +94 15 £75,000 +1.62% 39
London +112 11 £67,500 +22.73% 18
Work from Home +64 6 £75,000 +1.62% 17
UK excluding London +82 5 £82,500 +11.78% 26
North West +2 2 - - 5
North of England -5 2 - - 11
South West - 2 £82,500 - 3
Scotland +102 1 - -

COBOL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 6 (37.50%) CICS
2 2 (12.50%) Confluence
3 1 (6.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
Business Applications
1 2 (12.50%) BASE24
Cloud Services
1 3 (18.75%) AWS
1 3 (18.75%) Azure
1 3 (18.75%) GCP
2 1 (6.25%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (12.50%) ATM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (62.50%) DB2
2 4 (25.00%) NonStop SQL
3 2 (12.50%) Relational Database
4 1 (6.25%) Adabas
4 1 (6.25%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (18.75%) Git
1 3 (18.75%) Jenkins
2 2 (12.50%) Bitbucket
2 2 (12.50%) GitLab
2 2 (12.50%) IntelliJ
2 2 (12.50%) JIRA
2 2 (12.50%) VersaTest
General
1 5 (31.25%) Finance
1 5 (31.25%) Social Skills
2 4 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
2 4 (25.00%) Banking
3 3 (18.75%) Advertising
4 2 (12.50%) Financial Institution
4 2 (12.50%) Public Sector
5 1 (6.25%) Electronics
5 1 (6.25%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 5 (31.25%) Lead
2 4 (25.00%) Architect
2 4 (25.00%) Senior
2 4 (25.00%) Software Engineer
3 3 (18.75%) Mainframe Architect
4 2 (12.50%) COBOL Programmer
4 2 (12.50%) Consultant
4 2 (12.50%) Data Integration Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Design Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Developer
4 2 (12.50%) Integration Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Lead Programmer
4 2 (12.50%) Mainframe Consultant
4 2 (12.50%) Mainframe Developer
4 2 (12.50%) Middleware Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Programmer
4 2 (12.50%) Senior COBOL Programmer
4 2 (12.50%) Senior Programmer
5 1 (6.25%) Java Solutions Architect
5 1 (6.25%) SOA Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (18.75%) JSON
2 2 (12.50%) Middleware
2 2 (12.50%) RESTful
2 2 (12.50%) SOAP
2 2 (12.50%) Web Services
2 2 (12.50%) WSDL
3 1 (6.25%) AngularJS
3 1 (6.25%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 8 (50.00%) Mainframe
2 4 (25.00%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (12.50%) Cloud Native
3 2 (12.50%) EMV
3 2 (12.50%) Management Information System
3 2 (12.50%) Tandem
3 2 (12.50%) VAX
4 1 (6.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 1 (6.25%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (6.25%) Low-Code
4 1 (6.25%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (6.25%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 7 (43.75%) zOS
2 2 (12.50%) Linux
3 1 (6.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (6.25%) Unix
3 1 (6.25%) VMS
3 1 (6.25%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (56.25%) Agile
2 5 (31.25%) Migration
2 5 (31.25%) Problem-Solving
3 4 (25.00%) Software Engineering
4 3 (18.75%) CI/CD
4 3 (18.75%) DevOps
4 3 (18.75%) Microservices
4 3 (18.75%) Requirements Analysis
4 3 (18.75%) SOA
4 3 (18.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 2 (12.50%) Customer-Centricity
5 2 (12.50%) Data Integration
5 2 (12.50%) Mentoring
5 2 (12.50%) Refactoring
5 2 (12.50%) Re-Platforming
5 2 (12.50%) Scrum
5 2 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 2 (12.50%) Technical Leadership
5 2 (12.50%) Test Automation
5 2 (12.50%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 5 (31.25%) JCL
2 3 (18.75%) Java
2 3 (18.75%) SQL
3 2 (12.50%) Bash
3 2 (12.50%) REXX
4 1 (6.25%) Assembly Language
4 1 (6.25%) Natural
4 1 (6.25%) PL/1
4 1 (6.25%) Python
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (6.25%) ISO 15022
1 1 (6.25%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 1 (6.25%) ACF2
1 1 (6.25%) Job Entry Subsystem
1 1 (6.25%) RACF
Systems Management
1 2 (12.50%) CA Endevor
2 1 (6.25%) Ansible
Vendors
1 6 (37.50%) IBM
2 3 (18.75%) HP
3 1 (6.25%) Cincom
3 1 (6.25%) Oracle
3 1 (6.25%) Red Hat