Job Title: Senior Lead COBOL Developer

Experience: 14+ Years
Job Type: Contract
Work Location: New Jersey / New York
Work Mode: Onsite
Visa Requirements: any visa is fine except CPT and OPT f need 18 years

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Lead COBOL Developer with 14+ years of expertise in mainframe application development, legacy system modernization, production support, and enterprise-level application maintenance. The ideal candidate will possess strong hands-on experience with COBOL, JCL, DB2, CICS, VSAM, and IBM mainframe technologies, along with proven technical leadership, solution design, code review, and team coordination skills.

The candidate will lead complex development initiatives, drive application enhancements, troubleshoot critical production issues, optimize batch and online processing, and collaborate with business stakeholders, architects, QA teams, and infrastructure teams to deliver reliable, scalable, and high-performance mainframe solutions.

Required Technical Skills

• COBOL: Advanced hands-on experience with COBOL development, debugging, maintenance, and performance tuning.

• IBM Mainframe: Strong knowledge of z/OS environments and mainframe application architecture.

• JCL: Job Control Language, procedures, batch scheduling, job monitoring, and troubleshooting.

• DB2: SQL, embedded SQL, cursors, query optimization, and database performance tuning.

• CICS: Online transaction processing, CICS programs, transaction management, and troubleshooting.

• VSAM: KSDS, ESDS, RRDS, file access methods, and dataset management.

• Mainframe Utilities: IDCAMS, SORT/DFSORT, IEBGENER, and other standard utilities.

• Debugging and Testing: Mainframe debugging, unit testing, integration testing, abend analysis, and defect resolution.

• Version Control and Change Management: Experience with enterprise source code management and mainframe change management tools, such as Endevor, Changeman, or equivalent.

• Production Support: Incident management, root cause analysis, batch monitoring, and service restoration.

• Technical Leadership: Code reviews, mentoring, technical design, estimation, and delivery coordination.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in banking, financial services, insurance, healthcare, retail, or other enterprise domains.

• Familiarity with mainframe modernization, API integration, distributed systems, and hybrid architectures.

• Experience with tools such as File-AID, Abend-AID, IBM Fault Analyzer, Control-M, or equivalent, depending on the project environment.

• Knowledge of Agile/Scrum, SDLC methodologies, ITIL-based support processes, and enterprise release management.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives while remaining hands-on with development and troubleshooting.

Education

Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technical leader with 14+ years of mainframe development experience, deep expertise in COBOL-based enterprise systems, strong problem-solving capabilities, and the ability to lead development teams while managing complex application enhancements, production support, performance optimization, and modernization initiatives.