Senior Manager, Mainframe Infrastructure

Charles Schwab; Lone Tree (CO); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Schwab is seeking a Senior Manager, Mainframe Infrastructure to lead a team of Mainframe Engineers and Infrastructure Specialists responsible for enterprise mainframe platforms, ensuring safe, reliable operation and alignment with business needs.

The role emphasizes leadership, coaching, stakeholder collaboration, and disciplined execution, with a focus on accountability, inclusion, continuous learning, and workforce readiness for the future.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, mentor, and develop a team of Mainframe Engineers and Infrastructure Specialists, with a strong focus on engagement, accountability, teamwork, and professional growth.
• Create an inclusive environment where employees feel trusted, supported, and empowered to raise concerns, share ideas, and make decisions within clear boundaries.
• Establish clear goals, roles, priorities, and performance expectations; provide timely feedback and conduct regular coaching and career-development conversations.
• Build individual development plans that strengthen leadership, operational, and technical capabilities across the team.
• Lead talent acquisition, onboarding, workforce planning, succession planning, knowledge transfer, and retention strategies.
• Identify critical skill and capacity risks, then develop practical plans using internal development, hiring, contractors, vendors, or managed services as appropriate.
• Partner with employees to support career mobility while maintaining appropriate continuity and bench strength for critical services.
• Address performance, behavior, workload, and team-health concerns promptly, fairly, and consistently in alignment with Leadership@Schwab principles.
• Translate business and technology priorities into clear team objectives, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.
• Ensure appropriate ownership, staffing, escalation paths, and management attention for reliable and secure operation of the enterprise mainframe environment.
• Provide leadership during significant incidents, production events, recovery exercises, and critical business processing periods by coordinating people, decisions, communications, and follow-through.
• Promote disciplined incident, problem, change, capacity, and service-management practices without requiring the manager to personally perform detailed engineering work.
• Use operational metrics, risk indicators, employee feedback, and service outcomes to identify barriers and drive sustainable improvements.
• Ensure commitments, decisions, dependencies, and corrective actions are clearly documented, owned, and completed.
• Maintain a working knowledge of IBM zSystems and related infrastructure sufficient to understand team responsibilities, evaluate business impact, recognize material risks, and engage the appropriate subject‑matter experts.

Job description

Your opportunity

At Schwab, you're empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us challenge the status quo and transform the financial services industry together.

Schwab Technology Services enables the future of how clients manage their money by delivering innovative, secure, and reliable technology solutions that support our clients, employees, and business partners.

Position Overview

The Senior Manager, Mainframe Infrastructure is first and foremost a people leader. This role leads a team of Mainframe Engineers and Infrastructure Specialists who support Schwab's critical enterprise mainframe platforms. The leader is accountable for building an engaged, capable, and resilient team; setting clear priorities; removing barriers; and ensuring work is delivered safely, reliably, and in alignment with business needs.

The successful candidate does not need to be the team's deepest technical expert. They should bring enough knowledge of enterprise mainframe environments to understand the work, ask effective questions, recognize risk, and support sound decisions. Success will depend more heavily on leadership judgment, coaching, organizational effectiveness, stakeholder partnership, clear communication, and disciplined execution.

This leader will promote a culture of accountability, inclusion, collaboration, continuous learning, and continuous improvement. The role partners with engineering leaders, Architecture, Security, Application Development, Enterprise Operations, Audit, Risk, business stakeholders, and external service providers to maintain platform stability while strengthening workforce capability and readiness for the future.

Key Responsibilities

People Leadership and Talent Development

• Lead, coach, mentor, and develop a team of Mainframe Engineers and Infrastructure Specialists, with a strong focus on engagement, accountability, teamwork, and professional growth.


• Create an inclusive environment where employees feel trusted, supported, and empowered to raise concerns, share ideas, and make decisions within clear boundaries.


• Establish clear goals, roles, priorities, and performance expectations; provide timely feedback and conduct regular coaching and career-development conversations.


• Build individual development plans that strengthen leadership, operational, and technical capabilities across the team.


• Lead talent acquisition, onboarding, workforce planning, succession planning, knowledge transfer, and retention strategies.


• Identify critical skill and capacity risks, then develop practical plans using internal development, hiring, contractors, vendors, or managed services as appropriate.


• Partner with employees to support career mobility while maintaining appropriate continuity and bench strength for critical services.


• Address performance, behavior, workload, and team-health concerns promptly, fairly, and consistently in alignment with Leadership@Schwab principles.

Execution and Operational Leadership

• Translate business and technology priorities into clear team objectives, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.


• Ensure appropriate ownership, staffing, escalation paths, and management attention for reliable and secure operation of the enterprise mainframe environment.


• Provide leadership during significant incidents, production events, recovery exercises, and critical business processing periods by coordinating people, decisions, communications, and follow-through.


• Promote disciplined incident, problem, change, capacity, and service-management practices without requiring the manager to personally perform detailed engineering work.


• Use operational metrics, risk indicators, employee feedback, and service outcomes to identify barriers and drive sustainable improvements.


• Ensure commitments, decisions, dependencies, and corrective actions are clearly documented, owned, and completed.

Platform Oversight and Decision Support

• Maintain a working knowledge of IBM zSystems and related infrastructure sufficient to understand team responsibilities, evaluate business impact, recognize material risks, and engage the appropriate subject‑matter experts.