Mainframe Technical Specialist

About the role

We are looking for an experienced Mainframe Technical Specialist to design, develop, maintain, and support enterprise mainframe applications and infrastructure. The role requires strong expertise in COBOL, JCL, DB2, CICS, and z/OS, along with excellent troubleshooting and production support capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, enhance, and maintain mainframe applications on IBM z/OS platforms.
• Develop and support applications using COBOL, JCL, DB2, CICS, and related technologies.
• Analyze business and technical requirements and translate them into technical solutions.
• Perform application development, debugging, testing, and deployment.
• Troubleshoot production incidents and perform root-cause analysis.
• Monitor application performance and identify opportunities for optimization.
• Develop and maintain JCL procedures, batch jobs, utilities, and scheduling processes.
• Work with DB2 databases, including SQL development, performance tuning, and data analysis.
• Support CICS online transactions and troubleshoot transaction-related issues.
• Perform code reviews and ensure adherence to development and coding standards.
• Participate in application upgrades, migrations, modernization, and release activities.
• Prepare technical documentation, application specifications, and operational procedures.
• Collaborate with application developers, infrastructure teams, database administrators, business analysts, and production support teams.
• Participate in on-call and production support activities when required.
• Monitor and resolve batch and online application failures.
• Analyze job abends, CICS errors, DB2 errors, and system/application issues.
• Perform impact analysis and coordinate resolution of critical incidents.
• Conduct root-cause analysis and implement permanent fixes.
• Support batch scheduling, job dependencies, and production deployments.
• Coordinate with infrastructure and database teams for system-level issues.
• Maintain incident, problem, and change-management documentation.

Skills

• Strong experience with IBM z/OS mainframe environments (Required)
• Hands-on experience with COBOL, JCL, DB2, CICS, VSAM (Required)
• Good understanding of mainframe batch and online processing (Required)
• Strong knowledge of SQL and DB2 database concepts (Required)
• Experience with ISPF/PDF, TSO, SDSF, and standard mainframe utilities (Required)
• Knowledge of IDCAMS, SORT/ICETOOL, IEBGENER, IEBCOPY, and other common utilities (Required)
• Experience with source-code management and deployment tools such as Endevor, Changeman, Git, or equivalent (Required)
• Strong debugging and production incident-management skills (Required)
• Experience with IMS/DB, IMS/DC, or MQ (Preferred)
• Knowledge of Rexx, Assembler, or Easytrieve (Preferred)
• Experience with CA 7, Control-M, or other enterprise schedulers (Preferred)
• Familiarity with Mainframe DevOps and CI/CD practices (Preferred)
• Experience with Git, Jenkins, SonarQube, or similar tools (Preferred)
• Knowledge of mainframe modernization and cloud migration initiatives (Preferred)
• Experience with API integration, Java, distributed systems, or microservices is an advantage (Preferred)
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum development methodologies (Preferred)