Mainframe Modernization SME/ Secret Clearance

Role Overview

A career in IBM Consulting involves working with leading companies across industries to help them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. You will work with strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. Our culture values curiosity, long-term career development, and unique skills and experiences.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate technologies or design patterns and oversee their implementation from concept to working product.
• Hands-on technical delivery of mainframe modernization engagements including legacy code analysis, cloud-native microservices architecture, database migration, batch processing migration, Kubernetes deployment, and CI/CD automation.
• Independently analyze legacy COBOL/JCL/VSAM systems, design and implement modern Java/Spring Boot replacements, build and manage relational database schemas, deploy to cloud Kubernetes environments, and troubleshoot end-to-end across the full modernization stack.
• Support marketing activities for related offerings.
• Assist with technical write-ups for proposal responses.
• Participate in weekly and monthly team meetings.
• Other similar professional duties may be assigned as needed.
• Support delivery of mainframe modernization engagements.

Education and Technical Expertise

• Preferred Education: Bachelor's Degree Required
• Technical and Professional Expertise:
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Build 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.
  • 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 Experience

• Experience with government mortgage-backed securities or similar federal financial systems (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.
• Experience with FedRAMP/FISMA compliance requirements for government cloud deployments.