Senior Mainframe Service Manager - COBOL / z/OS

Cognizant; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 70,000 - 131,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision, and Life

Parental Leave

Disability Coverage

Paid Holidays and PTO

401k

Wellbeing Programs

Tuition Reimbursement

Career Development

Job summary

Cognizant in Chicago is seeking a Mainframe Service Manager to lead development, enhancement, and production support of critical banking applications on IBM z/OS. You will collaborate with client stakeholders, onsite and offshore delivery teams, and technical partners to deliver reliable, compliant solutions.

The role emphasizes COBOL/JCL/DB2/VSAM skills, leadership, and hands-on delivery across analysis, design, coding, testing, and production support.

Qualifications

• 9+ years of hands-on mainframe application development and support experience.
• Strong COBOL, JCL, DB2, and VSAM experience on IBM z/OS.
• Experience across analysis, design, coding, testing, documentation, implementation, and production support.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technically or as a team lead.
• Experience analyzing job failures and implementing corrective actions.
• Banking or financial services domain knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Review, interpret, and clarify requirements and project standards.
• Analyse functional specs, assess downstream impacts, raise questions, coordinate resolutions.
• Design, develop, test, and maintain mainframe solutions using COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM, and interfaces.
• Lead work from requirements gathering through production implementation with quality, security, and compliance.
• Coordinate onsite and offshore activities, review deliverables, support changes.
• Investigate production job failures and abends, implement durable fixes, and improve operations.
• Identify risks and collaborate with managers to resolve them.
• Provide technical and team leadership while remaining hands-on.

Skills

Mainframe development

COBOL

JCL

DB2

VSAM

Team leadership

Banking domain knowledge

Problem solving

Communication

Tools

CICS

IBM MQ

Job description

Cognizant in Chicago is seeking a Mainframe Service Manager to lead development, enhancement, and production support of critical banking applications on IBM z/OS. You will collaborate with client stakeholders, onsite and offshore delivery teams, and technical partners to deliver reliable, compliant solutions.

The role emphasizes COBOL/JCL/DB2/VSAM skills, leadership, and hands-on delivery across analysis, design, coding, testing, and production support.