Lead Software Engineer - Mainframe

MainframeMaster; Buffalo, Northern (NY, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

M&T Bank in Buffalo, NY seeks an expert-level mainframe software engineer who acts as an individual-contributor technical lead. You will own design, delivery, and requirements for critical mainframe applications within banking standards, focusing on stability, resiliency, modernization, and operational excellence across the SDLC.

You will coach others, review designs and code, guide architecture decisions, and partner with product, security, and operations teams to reduce risk and improve

Qualifications

• Expert-level mainframe software engineering experience.
• Experience delivering within banking technology SDLC standards.
• Ability to coach and mentor other engineers while delivering independently.

Responsibilities

• Develop and coach team members while working independently on mainframe applications within approved SDLC processes.
• Lead design, development, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and support across batch and online processing.
• Own technical decisions and delivery quality for assigned mainframe platforms and initiatives.
• Review designs, pull requests, and deployment readiness; ensure change management execution.
• Design peer review processes and coach on code quality, secure development, and maintainability.

Skills

Mainframe

Technical leadership

SDLC governance

Code review

Tools

GitLab

CI/CD

Job description

Overview:

Responsible at the expert level for mainframe software engineering, technical solution delivery, and technical requirements gathering. Serves as an individual-contributor technical lead for critical mainframe applications and platforms, completing work in alignment with banking technology standards and contributing to the overall stability, resiliency, modernization, and operational excellence of banking technology within the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) while also coaching others.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Develop and coach other team members while also working independently on mainframe applications within the boundaries of approved Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) processes, including identification and recommendation of metrics to solve business needs and minimize risks to the Bank through clean, secure, maintainable, and resilient code.
• Lead technical design, development, enhancement, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and support of mainframe applications across batch and online processing while ensuring SDLC governance and enterprise standards are followed.
• Own technical decisions and delivery quality for assigned mainframe platforms, workstreams, application domains, or technical initiatives.
• Review and approve the designs and proposals of pull requests, code changes, peer reviews, source control practices, deployment readiness, and change management execution.
• Design processes for peer review and coach others on code reviews, code quality, secure development practices, maintainability, performance, resiliency, and continuous improvement.
• Author organized, clean, efficient, and secure source code at the expert level in mainframe technologies while coaching team members on appropriate data structures, algorithms, and engineering approaches to solve business problems.
• Oversee source control management activities, including code merges into the production deployment path, GitLab practices, change management, and CI/CD pipeline management where applicable.
• Review testing methodology, code coverage, batch validation, regression testing, data reconciliation, performance checks, implementation verification, and automation opportunities to ensure comprehensive testing is accomplished.
• Drive implementation adherence with patterns and practices for performance testing, resiliency, restart/recovery, optimization, monitoring, and production readiness within the assigned domain.
• Review and approve requirement plans on behalf of the team in alignment with delivery partners and ensure requirements, solution designs, and implementation plans are complete, accurate, feasible, scalable, secure, and aligned with business and technical standards.
• Serve as a key partner with business, product, architecture, infrastructure, security, operations, risk, audit, and other technology groups; suggest continuous process improvement spanning organizational boundaries where technical or architectural concerns require it.
• Contribute technical requirements where appropriate in support of delivery, maintenance, modernization, integration, resiliency, and operational solutions within the assigned domain.
• Guide architecture, integration patterns, modernization efforts, engineering processes, and technical decision-making across mainframe and connected platforms.
• Drive mainframe modernization through API enablement, data integration, DevOps adoption, technical debt reduction, incremental refactoring, platform resiliency, and responsible use of AI-assisted engineering and automation where appropriate.
• Own technical health by improving resiliency, reducing defects, addressing technical debt, and guiding remediation plans for assigned applications or platforms.
• Understand and effectively communicate architecture, technical decisions, progress, risks, blockers, and challenges to business and technical stakeholders and teams.
• Translate complex mainframe constraints into business, delivery, risk, and operational impacts while helping resolve technical blockers.
• Contribute ideas and recommendations to application architectural design work, engineering practices, modernization opportunities, and pattern changes, and present at architecture peer group and architecture review board meetings within the assigned domain.
• Present team work at internal meetings with peers, architecture forums, knowledge-sharing sessions, and other stakeholder discussions as needed.
• Influence technical decisions across teams without direct authority through technical expertise, documentation, standards, collaboration, and clear communication.
• Maintain documentation supporting design decisions, operational readiness, support procedures, technical standards, production stability, and risk remediation.
• Understand and adhere to the Company's risk and regulatory standards, policies, and controls in accordance with the Company's Risk Appetite. Identify and escalien risk-related issues as needed.
• Ensure technical changes comply with company risk, regulatory, policy, change management, security, data protection, access control, and operational risk standards.
• Promote an environment that supports a culture of belonging and reflects the M&T Bank brand.
• Maintain M&T internal control standards, including timely implementation of internal and external audit points together with any issues raised by external regulators, as applicable.
• Complete other related duties as assigned.

Scope of Responsibilities:

Serves as an individual-contributor technical lead accountable for technical direction, design quality, code review, modernization guidance, delivery quality, operational readiness, risk remediation, and production stability for assigned mainframe applications, platforms, workstreams, or domains. Influences engineers, architects, product, operations, security, infrastructure, risk, audit, and business partners through technical expertise, documentation, standards, and collaboration.

Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities:

No supervisory responsibilities.