Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Bachelor's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
Must possess at time of hire and have the ability to maintain a Secret Clearance
Provide methods, tools, techniques expertise related to mainframe modernization. Lead hands-on technical delivery of legacy mainframe-to-cloud migration projects including COBOL/JCL inventory analysis, cloud-native microservices development, relational database schema design, Kubernetes deployment, and CI/CD pipeline engineering.
Ability to read, analyze, and decompose production COBOL programs, JCL jobs, VSAM datasets, copybooks (COPY/COPYLIB), and embedded SQL. Understand mainframe batch processing patterns including sequential file I/O (QSAM), KSDS/ESDS/RRDS VSAM operations, SORT/MERGE utilities, IDCAMS, IEBGENER, and conditional step execution via return codes and COND parameters. Map legacy data structures (PIC clauses, COMP-3 packed decimal, EBCDIC encoding, implied decimals, overpunch signs, binary COMP fields) to modern equivalents. Understand JCL PROC parameterization, GDG management, and JES job scheduling.
Design and implement microservices using modern frameworks (Spring Boot, Spring Batch, or equivalent). Build batch processing jobs that replicate mainframe batch pipelines including chunk-oriented processing, database-driven paging readers, step-scoped components, and job parameterization. Implement ORM entity mappings with correct schema qualification, data type precision/scale for financial numeric types, and JSON column mappings. Build REST APIs for job triggering and operational status.
Design and maintain relational schemas across multiple database schemas. Write and debug complex SQL including multi-table JOINs, window functions, aggregations, and conditional filtering. Manage database initialization scripts, ALTER TABLE migrations for running databases, and schema drift detection by comparing ORM entity definitions against actual database DDL dumps. Handle UUID primary keys, generated columns, partial indexes, sequence management, and schema-level isolation for batch vs. transactional data.
Deploy containerized microservices to Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE, or OpenShift). Build Helm charts with ConfigMaps, Secrets, Ingress, and service definitions. Configure managed relational database services, object storage, and container registries. Understand government cloud constraints including hardened base images, service account authentication, and restricted registry access. Troubleshoot pod failures, resource limits, and cross-service connectivity.
Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or equivalent) with multi-stage builds. Automate container image builds, database schema setup, multi-service builds (10+ services), and Helm deployments. Handle air-gapped and restricted environments requiring image mirroring and alternative build tooling (BuildKit, Kaniko).
Translate mainframe batch job flows (JCL PROC chains with COND parameters, multi-step jobs) into modern batch processing pipelines with steps, tasklets, and chunk processing. Implement data converters for packed decimal (COMP-3), signed numeric (overpunch), implied decimal, and EBCDIC-to-ASCII translation. Build fixed-width file readers/writers that map COBOL copybook field layouts to modern data structures. Design staging table patterns for transaction processing pipelines. Replace mainframe utilities (IDCAMS, DFSORT, IEBGENER) with programmatic equivalents.
Diagnose and fix runtime errors across the full modernization stack: SQL grammar errors from column/table mismatches, ORM entity mapping failures, data type truncation errors, missing column errors from schema drift, and ambiguous column references in JOINs. Compare production database DDL dumps against application code (entity definitions and native SQL queries) to identify and resolve discrepancies. Generate targeted database migrations for running systems without downtime.
Decompose monolithic mainframe applications into bounded-context microservices. Design service boundaries based on mainframe program groupings and functional domains. Implement shared libraries with COBOL data converters, VSAM-equivalent database readers, mainframe utility replacements, and report writers that replicate mainframe print output (SYSPRINT/SYSOUT). Manage cross-service dependencies and shared schema access patterns.
Experience with containerization (Docker/Podman), container orchestration (Kubernetes), object storage (S3/MinIO), message brokers (Kafka), caching (Redis), API gateways, monitoring and observability (Prometheus/Grafana), distributed tracing (Jaeger), workflow orchestration (Airflow), and identity management (Keycloak/OAuth2). Understand infrastructure-as-code for cloud-native deployments. Assist the Tech Lead coordinate tasks
Proficiency using AI coding assistants (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent) to accelerate mainframe modernization tasks including legacy code analysis, schema reconciliation, test generation, and bulk code migration. Ability to effectively direct AI tools for complex multi-file refactoring, cross-service debugging, and documentation generation.
Preferred technical and professional experience
• Experience with government mortgage-backed securities or similar federal financial systems (3+ years)
• Experience with IBM mainframe z/OS, TSO/ISPF, JES2/JES3 (3+ years)
• Knowledge of financial industry file formats and electronic payment processing (2+ years)
• Frontend development (React/TypeScript) for admin dashboards or terminal emulators (2+ years)
• Experience with API mocking frameworks for service virtualization during migration
• Knowledge of FedRAMP/FISMA compliance requirements for government cloud deployments