Mainframe Application Support Manager

Mainframe Application Support Manager – IBM z/OS (COBOL / AFRS / CAMS)

India Remote

We are seeking a Mainframe Application Support Manager to lead the maintenance, operational support, and transition planning for a mission-critical IBM mainframe application portfolio supporting the State of Washington's Office of Financial Management (OFM).

This role will oversee the ongoing support of the Agency Financial Reporting System (AFRS) and Capital Asset Management System (CAMS), which operate within an IBM z/OS environment built primarily on COBOL applications running under CICS with batch processing managed through JCL.

The selected candidate will serve as the technical and operational lead, responsible for ensuring system reliability, performance, security, and alignment with business requirements while building and managing a support team consisting of Level 2 and Level 3 mainframe engineers. The team will support production operations, perform enhancements and defect remediation, and ensure continuity of service as the platform transitions to a future ERP solution.

Key Responsibilities:

• Technical Leadership
• Serve as the primary technical lead for the IBM mainframe COBOL application portfolio supporting AFRS and CAMS.
• Provide oversight for system stability, reliability, performance, and security across the mainframe environment.
• Lead the design and implementation of support processes for legacy COBOL applications.

Team Leadership & Managed Services Delivery

• Build and manage a support team consisting of Level 2 and Level 3 mainframe engineers.
• Define operational procedures, escalation paths, and service delivery standards.
• Coordinate with internal IT teams, infrastructure providers, and business stakeholders.
• Provide leadership during incident response, root cause analysis, and problem management.

Application Support & Maintenance

• Oversee Level 2 and Level 3 support for COBOL-based applications including both batch and online systems.
• Ensure proper monitoring of application health, system performance, and batch processing cycles.
• Manage troubleshooting of production incidents including batch failures, data integrity issues, and system outages.
• Ensure resolution of application defects affecting CICS, DB2, VSAM, and JCL-based workloads.

Change Management & Development

• Manage the implementation of approved change requests and enhancements.
• Oversee modification of COBOL programs, JCL jobs, and database objects.
• Ensure adherence to development standards, code review practices, and production release processes.

Testing & Quality Assurance

• Ensure appropriate unit, integration, and regression testing practices are followed.
• Oversee QA validation using internal testing frameworks and batch validation tools.
• Coordinate support for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and cross-agency testing activities.

Production Operations

• Lead operational support for batch processing cycles and production workloads.
• Ensure resolution of batch job failures, data anomalies, and runtime exceptions.
• Provide oversight for emergency fixes and production break/fix situations.

Documentation & Knowledge Management

Ensure development and maintenance of technical documentation including:

• File structures and data flows
• DB2 table relationships and SQL logic
• COBOL copybooks and record layouts
• Restart and recovery procedures

Transition & System Modernization

• Support transition planning for the eventual migration from the legacy mainframe platform to a modern ERP platform.
• Lead knowledge transfer activities from incumbent providers and retiring staff.
• Document system dependencies and technical architecture to support long-term modernization initiatives.

Required Technical Skills

Candidates should have strong expertise in the following:

Mainframe Technologies

• IBM z/OS
• Enterprise COBOL
• CICS transaction processing
• JCL (Job Control Language)

Data & Storage

• DB2
• VSAM datasets
• Sequential files

Operations & Utilities

• Batch processing frameworks
• SORT utilities
• IDCAMS
• File transfer utilities
• Scheduling tools

Production Support

• Incident management
• Root cause analysis
• Batch job troubleshooting
• Performance monitoring