Mainframe Modernization SME/ Secret Clearance

IBM Consulting offers a career built on long-term client relationships and global collaboration. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from strategic partners, IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. Our culture values curiosity, growth, and empathy, focusing on your long-term career development while leveraging your unique skills and experiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead 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 and assist with technical write-ups for proposal responses.
• Participate in weekly and monthly team meetings and perform other similar professional duties as assigned.
• Provide expertise in methods, tools, and techniques related to mainframe modernization.
• 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), VSAM operations (KSDS/ESDS/RRDS), 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) and build batch processing jobs that replicate mainframe batch pipelines.
• 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, writing and debugging complex SQL including multi-table JOINs, window functions, aggregations, and conditional filtering.
• Manage database initialization scripts, ALTER TABLE migrations, and schema drift detection.
• Deploy containerized microservices to Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE, or OpenShift) and build Helm charts with ConfigMaps, Secrets, Ingress, and service definitions.
• Configure managed relational database services, object storage, and container registries, understanding government cloud constraints.
• 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, automating container image builds, database schema setup, and Helm deployments.
• Translate mainframe batch job flows into modern batch processing pipelines, implementing data converters for packed decimal, signed numeric, implied decimal, and EBCDIC-to-ASCII translation.
• Diagnose and fix runtime errors across the full modernization stack, including SQL grammar errors, ORM entity mapping failures, data type truncation errors, and schema drift issues.
• Decompose monolithic mainframe applications into bounded-context microservices, designing 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.
• Coordinate tasks with the Tech Lead and utilize AI coding assistants (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent) to accelerate modernization tasks.

Requirements

• Must currently play a leadership or decision-maker role on one or more technical teams, evaluating technologies or design patterns and overseeing their implementation from concept to working product.
• Must possess at time of hire and maintain a Secret Clearance.
• Proficiency in reading, analyzing, and decomposing production COBOL programs, JCL jobs, VSAM datasets, copybooks, and embedded SQL.
• 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).
• Understanding of infrastructure-as-code for cloud-native deployments.
• Ability to effectively direct AI tools for complex multi-file refactoring, cross-service debugging, and documentation generation.

Preferred Qualifications

• 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.