Mainframe Jobs

Mainframes
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Mainframe in permanent job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered in vacancies that cited Mainframe over the 6 months leading up to 6 March 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Mar 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 644 718 796
Rank change year-on-year +74 +78 +132
Permanent jobs citing Mainframe 87 119 240
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 0.15% 0.15% 0.22%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.43% 0.41% 0.50%
Number of salaries quoted 49 97 117
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £41,250
25th Percentile - £41,250 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £50,000 £55,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -15.38% -3.35%
75th Percentile £90,822 £96,539 £85,000
90th Percentile £93,778 £100,064 £89,852
UK excluding London median annual salary £85,000 £55,000 £59,000
% change year-on-year +54.55% -6.78% -3.08%

All Generic Skills
UK

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.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 20,271 29,149 48,128
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 35.89% 35.63% 43.28%
Number of salaries quoted 9,144 20,603 25,513
10th Percentile £33,750 £28,750 £35,267
25th Percentile £46,250 £39,087 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,206 £55,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.28% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £82,500 £77,500 £87,500
90th Percentile £111,250 £98,750 £107,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% +4.76%

Mainframe
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Mainframe in the UK

Mainframe
Salary Trend

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

Salary trend for Mainframe in the UK

Mainframe
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Mainframe over the 6 months to 6 March 2025.

Salary histogram for Mainframe in the UK

Mainframe
Top 12 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Mainframe within the UK over the 6 months to 6 March 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 +62 58 £50,000 -9.09% 23
UK excluding London +55 49 £85,000 +54.55% 14
Work from Home +102 28 £85,253 +55.00% 18
North of England +32 28 £80,061 +45.57% 4
London +60 25 £50,000 -9.09% 13
North West +22 18 £87,283 -5.92% 2
Scotland +64 16 £85,253 -10.26% 4
Yorkshire +44 10 £74,870 +76.16% 2
Midlands +17 3 £32,500 -31.58% 1
South East +28 2 £75,000 +36.36% 1
West Midlands +15 2 £32,500 -31.58%
East Midlands +37 1 - - 1

Mainframe
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 17 (19.54%) CICS
2 3 (3.45%) Confluence
Applications
1 6 (6.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 21 (24.14%) Postilion
Cloud Services
1 17 (19.54%) Azure
2 10 (11.49%) GCP
3 8 (9.20%) GitHub
4 7 (8.05%) AWS
5 6 (6.90%) Microsoft 365
6 4 (4.60%) Entra ID
7 3 (3.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 1 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 21 (24.14%) ATM
2 2 (2.30%) Firewall
2 2 (2.30%) Network Security
2 2 (2.30%) SD-WAN
2 2 (2.30%) SNA
2 2 (2.30%) TCP/IP
2 2 (2.30%) VPN
2 2 (2.30%) WAN
3 1 (1.15%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (10.34%) DB2
2 3 (3.45%) MongoDB
2 3 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (3.45%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.15%) Adabas
Development Applications
1 12 (13.79%) Jenkins
2 9 (10.34%) IBM UrbanCode
3 7 (8.05%) Selenium
4 5 (5.75%) Git
5 4 (4.60%) Rational Functional Tester
6 3 (3.45%) JIRA
6 3 (3.45%) SonarQube
6 3 (3.45%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (2.30%) Postman
7 2 (2.30%) SoapUI
7 2 (2.30%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (1.15%) GitLab
General
1 60 (68.97%) Finance
2 50 (57.47%) Banking
3 16 (18.39%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (17.24%) Social Skills
5 13 (14.94%) Marketing
6 6 (6.90%) Presentation Skills
7 4 (4.60%) Billing
7 4 (4.60%) Retail Banking
8 3 (3.45%) Retail
9 2 (2.30%) Wholesale Banking
10 1 (1.15%) Automotive
10 1 (1.15%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 23 (26.44%) Architect
1 23 (26.44%) Mainframe Architect
2 22 (25.29%) Solutions Architect
3 21 (24.14%) Payments Architect
3 21 (24.14%) Payments Solutions Architect
4 13 (14.94%) EMEA Sales Director
4 13 (14.94%) Sales Director
4 13 (14.94%) Senior
5 10 (11.49%) Analyst
5 10 (11.49%) Lead
6 6 (6.90%) Developer
6 6 (6.90%) Mainframe Developer
7 5 (5.75%) Software Engineer
8 4 (4.60%) DevOps Engineer
8 4 (4.60%) Mainframe Tester
8 4 (4.60%) Senior DevOps
8 4 (4.60%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 4 (4.60%) Service Analyst
8 4 (4.60%) Service Desk Analyst
8 4 (4.60%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.75%) CSS
1 5 (5.75%) HTML
2 3 (3.45%) Django
2 3 (3.45%) FastAPI
2 3 (3.45%) Flask
2 3 (3.45%) Playwright
3 2 (2.30%) ISPF
3 2 (2.30%) JSON
3 2 (2.30%) SOAP
3 2 (2.30%) Web Services
3 2 (2.30%) XML
4 1 (1.15%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 25 (28.74%) IBM Mainframe
2 6 (6.90%) Product Ownership
3 5 (5.75%) Public Cloud
4 4 (4.60%) Management Information System
4 4 (4.60%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 4 (4.60%) VSAM
5 2 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.15%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.15%) DataPower
6 1 (1.15%) Low-Code
6 1 (1.15%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.15%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 31 (35.63%) zOS
2 8 (9.20%) Windows
3 6 (6.90%) Linux
4 5 (5.75%) Unix
5 4 (4.60%) Windows 10
6 1 (1.15%) AIX
6 1 (1.15%) MVS
6 1 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (1.15%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (24.14%) API Integration
2 16 (18.39%) Agile
3 15 (17.24%) DevOps
4 13 (14.94%) Business Enablement
4 13 (14.94%) Business Forecasting
4 13 (14.94%) Customer Service
4 13 (14.94%) Marketing Strategy
4 13 (14.94%) Matrix Organization
4 13 (14.94%) Technology Enablement
5 10 (11.49%) Fintech
5 10 (11.49%) Problem-Solving
5 10 (11.49%) Software Engineering
6 9 (10.34%) Analytics
6 9 (10.34%) Roadmaps
6 9 (10.34%) System Integration Testing
6 9 (10.34%) Test Automation
7 8 (9.20%) CI/CD
7 8 (9.20%) End-to-End Testing
7 8 (9.20%) Integration Testing
8 7 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 23 (26.44%) JCL
2 15 (17.24%) COBOL
3 9 (10.34%) Python
4 7 (8.05%) SQL
5 5 (5.75%) Assembly Language
5 5 (5.75%) Bash
5 5 (5.75%) Java
5 5 (5.75%) JavaScript
5 5 (5.75%) PowerShell
5 5 (5.75%) Shell Script
6 3 (3.45%) Groovy
7 2 (2.30%) PL/1
8 1 (1.15%) Natural
8 1 (1.15%) REXX
Qualifications
1 9 (10.34%) Degree
2 4 (4.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
2 4 (4.60%) Microsoft Certification
3 3 (3.45%) OCP
3 3 (3.45%) Oracle Certification
4 2 (2.30%) CCNA
4 2 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
5 1 (1.15%) PMI Certification
5 1 (1.15%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.60%) ISO 8583
1 4 (4.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
2 1 (1.15%) QA
System Software
1 4 (4.60%) Active Directory
1 4 (4.60%) Docker
1 4 (4.60%) RACF
2 2 (2.30%) Hyper-V
2 2 (2.30%) VMware ESXi
2 2 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.15%) ACF2
3 1 (1.15%) Job Entry Subsystem
Systems Management
1 7 (8.05%) CA Endevor
2 4 (4.60%) HP Quality Center
2 4 (4.60%) Kubernetes
2 4 (4.60%) Microsoft Intune
3 3 (3.45%) Ansible
3 3 (3.45%) Argo
3 3 (3.45%) Grafana
3 3 (3.45%) Istio
3 3 (3.45%) Progress Chef
3 3 (3.45%) Prometheus
3 3 (3.45%) Terraform
4 2 (2.30%) FortiGate
4 2 (2.30%) MAINVIEW
4 2 (2.30%) Tivoli NetView
5 1 (1.15%) CA Service Virtualization
Vendors
1 39 (44.83%) IBM
2 13 (14.94%) Broadcom
2 13 (14.94%) YouTube
3 6 (6.90%) ServiceNow
4 4 (4.60%) HP
4 4 (4.60%) Microsoft
5 3 (3.45%) Atlassian
5 3 (3.45%) Dynatrace
6 2 (2.30%) BMC
6 2 (2.30%) Fortinet
6 2 (2.30%) VMware
7 1 (1.15%) Cincom
7 1 (1.15%) Hitachi
7 1 (1.15%) Oracle
7 1 (1.15%) Red Hat
7 1 (1.15%) SAP