Modernization Architect

About the role

As a Senior Principal at Slalom, you will help clients accelerate large scale technology transformation by turning decades-old mainframe code into agile, cloud-native systems. This role blends deep systems understanding of z/OS with modern cloud, DevOps, and AI-assisted engineering practices. You’ll work across multiple domains, from code analysis and business-logic extraction to automated refactoring and re-platforming helping enterprises transition mission-critical workloads to hyperscaler infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Understand, extract and document business logic from mainframe applications.
• Modernize and refactor legacy code using automated transformation tools and AI coding agents.
• Reimagine monolithic systems into cloud-native microservices and event-driven architectures.
• Build, containerize, and deploy workloads to AWS (or other hyper scaler platforms).
• Prototype modernization accelerators and proof-of-concepts using LLMs, code analysis tools, and custom pipelines.
• Collaborate with architects, operators, and data engineers to ensure secure and efficient modernization patterns.

Requirements

• Hands-on experience developing or operating on IBM mainframes (z/OS).
• Proficiency in one or more mainframe languages: COBOL, PL/I, HLASM, JCL, etc.
• Knowledge of z/OS fundamentals: CICS, DB2, VSAM, batch scheduling, system utilities.
• Experience deploying workloads to a major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Experience leveraging LLMs and coding agents in software development workflows.
• Strong prototyping and POC development capability in dynamic environments.
• Thrives in fast-moving, collaborative, and entrepreneurial teams.

Qualifications

• Familiarity with Code-as-Data and structured intermediate representation (IR) concepts.
• Experience parsing or analyzing source grammars (ANTLR4, Tree-Sitter, recursive descent, etc.).
• Experience with modernization frameworks such as AWS Blu Age or AWS Mainframe Modernization (Transform for z/OS).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, IaC (CloudFormation/Terraform), and container orchestration (Kubernetes/OpenShift).
• Understanding of legacy data integration (DB2, VSAM, IMS) with modern cloud data stores.
• Experience designing automated test harnesses for workload equivalence validation.
• Understanding of enterprise security and IAM frameworks (RACF, IAM roles, encryption-at-rest/in-transit).
• Experience fine-tuning or prompting code-centric LLMs (e.g., Amazon Q Developer, Bedrock, Claude) for code translation, documentation, or rule extraction.
• Understanding of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) patterns, vector databases, and agentic orchestration for code analysis pipelines.
• Consulting or systems-integration experience.

Benefits

Slalom is committed to helping team members thrive in their work and life. As a result, Slalom is proud to invest in benefits that include meaningful time off and paid holidays, parental leave, 401(k) with a match, a range of choices for highly subsidized health, dental, & vision coverage, adoption and fertility assistance, and short/long-term disability. We also offer yearly $350 reimbursement account for any well-being-related expenses, as well as discounted home, auto, and pet insurance.

Pay

Slalom prides itself on helping team members thrive in their work and life. As a result, Slalom is proud to invest in benefits that include meaningful time off and paid holidays, parental leave, 401(k) with a match, a range of choices for highly subsidized health, dental, & vision coverage, adoption and fertility assistance, and short/long-term disability. We also offer yearly $350 reimbursement account for any well-being-related expenses, as well as discounted home, auto, and pet insurance.

Schedule

Slalom is committed to attracting, developing and retaining highly qualified talent who empower our innovative teams through unique perspectives and experiences. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Slalom will also consider qualified applications with criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Slalom welcomes and encourages applications from individuals with disabilities. Reasonable accommodations are available for candidates during all aspects of the selection process. Please advise the talent acquisition team or contact accomodationrequest@slalom.com if you require accommodations during the interview process.