Legacy Applications Job Trends

Legacy Application
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Legacy Applications in permanent job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered in vacancies that cited Legacy Applications over the 6 months leading up to 6 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 715 635 690
Rank change year-on-year -80 +55 -63
Permanent jobs citing Legacy Applications 103 31 79
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.087% 0.063% 0.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.33% 0.15% 0.34%
Number of salaries quoted 57 22 51
10th Percentile £45,500 £50,250 £43,449
25th Percentile £50,000 £56,563 £57,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £70,000 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.71% -17.65% +20.50%
75th Percentile £74,985 £80,000 £130,223
90th Percentile £85,500 £89,000 £130,446
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £70,000 £63,099
% change year-on-year -14.29% +10.94% -3.44%

All Generic Skills
UK

Legacy Applications 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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 31,542 20,279 23,513
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 26.66% 40.93% 32.07%
Number of salaries quoted 19,376 10,163 11,791
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,250 £32,000
25th Percentile £40,819 £36,250 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% -8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £83,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,000 £45,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.56% -14.29% -4.55%

Legacy Applications
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Legacy Applications relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Legacy Applications job vacancy trend in the UK

Legacy Applications
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Legacy Applications.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Legacy Applications

Legacy Applications
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Legacy Applications over the 6 months to 6 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Legacy Applications in the UK

Legacy Applications
Top 14 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Legacy Applications within the UK over the 6 months to 6 October 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
England -55 98 £61,300 -12.43% 121
UK excluding London -101 64 £60,000 -14.29% 87
London -40 34 £80,000 +5.96% 58
North of England -40 30 £55,000 -31.25% 20
Work from Home -21 26 £69,305 +10.89% 83
Midlands -36 24 £60,000 -7.69% 13
West Midlands -18 21 £60,000 -7.69% 8
North West -18 13 £50,000 -50.00% 9
Yorkshire -27 10 £52,500 -30.00% 7
North East - 7 £70,000 - 4
East of England - 6 £60,100 - 4
South West -76 3 £57,500 -13.21% 6
East Midlands - 3 £52,500 - 5
Wales -66 1 £80,000 +60.00% 8

Legacy Applications
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 8 (7.77%) SharePoint Server
2 6 (5.83%) CICS
3 3 (2.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.94%) CMS
4 2 (1.94%) Umbraco
5 1 (0.97%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.97%) nginx
5 1 (0.97%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 1 (0.97%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 3 (2.91%) Elite 3E
2 2 (1.94%) Sage 200
3 1 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 47 (45.63%) Azure
2 33 (32.04%) Azure DevOps
3 23 (22.33%) GitHub
4 21 (20.39%) AWS
4 21 (20.39%) GitHub Actions
5 10 (9.71%) Azure Cosmos DB
5 10 (9.71%) Serverless
6 8 (7.77%) Amazon ECS
6 8 (7.77%) AWS CloudFormation
7 7 (6.80%) Cloud Computing
7 7 (6.80%) SaaS
8 6 (5.83%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (5.83%) PaaS
9 5 (4.85%) Azure AKS
10 4 (3.88%) IaaS
10 4 (3.88%) Power Platform
11 3 (2.91%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (2.91%) GCP
11 3 (2.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 3 (2.91%) NetDocuments
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.94%) DNS
1 2 (1.94%) Firewall
1 2 (1.94%) Network Security
1 2 (1.94%) VPN
2 1 (0.97%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (22.33%) SQL Server
2 14 (13.59%) Relational Database
3 10 (9.71%) Azure SQL Database
4 8 (7.77%) Db2
4 8 (7.77%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.97%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.97%) GIS
Development Applications
1 20 (19.42%) Jenkins
2 15 (14.56%) Git
3 2 (1.94%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.97%) GitLab
4 1 (0.97%) Visual Studio
General
1 38 (36.89%) Social Skills
2 26 (25.24%) Finance
3 21 (20.39%) Public Sector
4 16 (15.53%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (8.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 9 (8.74%) Law
6 8 (7.77%) Manufacturing
7 7 (6.80%) Banking
7 7 (6.80%) Legal
8 6 (5.83%) Back Office
9 5 (4.85%) Legal Technology
10 3 (2.91%) Front Office
10 3 (2.91%) Police
11 2 (1.94%) Advertising
11 2 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.97%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.97%) Retail
Job Titles
1 25 (24.27%) Consultant
1 25 (24.27%) Senior
2 22 (21.36%) Developer
3 20 (19.42%) Software Engineer
4 19 (18.45%) Architect
5 16 (15.53%) Applications Consultant
5 16 (15.53%) Mainframe Consultant
6 15 (14.56%) Lead
7 11 (10.68%) Senior Software Engineer
8 10 (9.71%) Lead Software Engineer
9 8 (7.77%) Solutions Architect
10 7 (6.80%) Senior Architect
11 6 (5.83%) COBOL Consultant
11 6 (5.83%) Java Consultant
11 6 (5.83%) Professional Services Consultant
11 6 (5.83%) Senior Consultant
11 6 (5.83%) Senior Professional Services Consultant
12 5 (4.85%) Database Developer
12 5 (4.85%) SQL Developer
12 5 (4.85%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (45.63%) .NET
2 17 (16.50%) Spring
2 17 (16.50%) Spring Boot
3 16 (15.53%) ISPF
4 13 (12.62%) ASP.NET
5 11 (10.68%) Terraform
6 9 (8.74%) Middleware
7 8 (7.77%) .NET Framework
7 8 (7.77%) REST
8 6 (5.83%) .NET Core
9 5 (4.85%) ASP.NET Core
10 4 (3.88%) AngularJS
10 4 (3.88%) CSS
10 4 (3.88%) HTML
11 3 (2.91%) EDI
11 3 (2.91%) React
12 2 (1.94%) Blazor
12 2 (1.94%) Flutter
12 2 (1.94%) Playwright
12 2 (1.94%) WinForms
Miscellaneous
1 32 (31.07%) Cloud Native
2 31 (30.10%) Enterprise Software
3 16 (15.53%) Mainframe
4 15 (14.56%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (8.74%) AI Agents
5 9 (8.74%) Distributed Systems
5 9 (8.74%) Enterprise Cloud
5 9 (8.74%) Onboarding
6 8 (7.77%) Data Centre
7 6 (5.83%) Management Information System
7 6 (5.83%) Market Risk
8 5 (4.85%) Product Ownership
9 3 (2.91%) Equities
10 2 (1.94%) AS400
10 2 (1.94%) Cloud Security Posture
10 2 (1.94%) Low-Code
10 2 (1.94%) Mobile App
10 2 (1.94%) Security Posture
10 2 (1.94%) Tandem
11 1 (0.97%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 4 (3.88%) Linux
2 3 (2.91%) Windows
3 1 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.97%) Solaris
3 1 (0.97%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (54.37%) CI/CD
2 49 (47.57%) DevOps
3 39 (37.86%) Migration
4 32 (31.07%) Technical Leadership
5 30 (29.13%) Software Engineering
6 27 (26.21%) Collaborative Culture
7 26 (25.24%) Mentoring
8 25 (24.27%) Re-Platforming
9 23 (22.33%) Containerisation
9 23 (22.33%) Problem-Solving
10 22 (21.36%) Microservices
11 20 (19.42%) Agile
12 19 (18.45%) Continuous Improvement
13 18 (17.48%) Event-Driven
13 18 (17.48%) Event-Driven Architecture
13 18 (17.48%) Roadmaps
14 17 (16.50%) AI
15 16 (15.53%) Batch Processing
15 16 (15.53%) Infrastructure as Code
16 15 (14.56%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 30 (29.13%) SQL
2 28 (27.18%) C#
3 27 (26.21%) Java
4 16 (15.53%) COBOL
4 16 (15.53%) JCL
5 15 (14.56%) JavaScript
6 13 (12.62%) Python
7 8 (7.77%) C++
8 5 (4.85%) TypeScript
8 5 (4.85%) VB.NET
9 3 (2.91%) Bash
10 2 (1.94%) Bicep
10 2 (1.94%) C
10 2 (1.94%) Dart
10 2 (1.94%) Delphi
10 2 (1.94%) PowerShell
10 2 (1.94%) RPG
10 2 (1.94%) RPG III
10 2 (1.94%) RPG IV
10 2 (1.94%) VBA
Qualifications
1 16 (15.53%) Security Cleared
2 8 (7.77%) SC Cleared
3 7 (6.80%) Degree
4 5 (4.85%) DBS Check
5 4 (3.88%) Azure Certification
6 3 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.94%) TOGAF Certification
8 1 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.91%) GDPR
2 2 (1.94%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.94%) QA
System Software
1 12 (11.65%) Docker
2 2 (1.94%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.97%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 15 (14.56%) Kubernetes
2 6 (5.83%) Progress Chef
2 6 (5.83%) Puppet
3 3 (2.91%) Istio
4 2 (1.94%) Ansible
4 2 (1.94%) Grafana
5 1 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 23 (22.33%) Microsoft
2 10 (9.71%) Broadcom
3 4 (3.88%) IFS
4 3 (2.91%) Aderant
4 3 (2.91%) Google
4 3 (2.91%) iManage
4 3 (2.91%) Intapp
5 2 (1.94%) CrowdStrike
5 2 (1.94%) DevExpress
5 2 (1.94%) Dynatrace
5 2 (1.94%) IBM
5 2 (1.94%) Oracle
5 2 (1.94%) Sage
5 2 (1.94%) SAP
5 2 (1.94%) SGI
5 2 (1.94%) Veracode
6 1 (0.97%) Guidewire
6 1 (0.97%) Red Hat
6 1 (0.97%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.97%) VMware