Senior Software Engineer – Mainframe COBOL, z/OS, CICS, JCL

This role is four days onsite, with the flexibility to work from home one day per week M&T Work Model - 4 Days In-Office | 1 Day Work From Home Overview Senior-level owner of design, development, modernization, and production support for business-critical IBM z/OS applications. Individual-contributor technical leader combining deep COBOL batch and online expertise with modern Git-based engineering, test automation, and CI/CD. Primary Responsibilities: Technical Leadership & Engineering Delivery - Lead technical design, development, enhancement, and support of mainframe applications, owning technical decisions and delivery quality for assigned domains under SDLC governance. - Partner with business and technology stakeholders to align delivery with priorities, requirements, risk controls, and enterprise standards. Software Engineering Excellence - Deliver secure, efficient, maintainable, and resilient mainframe code; lead design, troubleshooting, and performance tuning across batch and online processing. - Establish coding standards and quality expectations for maintainability, performance, security, and resiliency. SDLC, DevOps & Quality Engineering - Review and approve solution designs, code changes, peer reviews, and deployment readiness. - Define test strategy for mainframe changes, covering batch validation, automated regression and reconciliation testing, performance checks, and implementation verification. - Build and maintain Git-based CI/CD workflows with dependency-aware builds, static analysis and security quality gates, controlled promotion, and rollback readiness to improve productivity and reduce manual effort. Technical Requirements & Solution Design - Ensure requirements, solution designs, and implementation plans are complete, feasible, scalable, secure, and aligned with standards. - Guide architecture, integration patterns, and modernization across mainframe and connected platforms, translating mainframe constraints into business, delivery, risk, and operational impacts. Operational Excellence & Modernization - Lead incremental modernization through API enablement (e.g., z/OS Connect), modularization, and secure integration with distributed and cloud platforms while preserving transactional integrity. - Own technical health by improving resiliency, reducing defects and technical debt, and guiding remediation plans. - Ensure production readiness for batch schedules, online transactions, restart/recovery, monitoring, and support documentation; lead incident root-cause analysis and post-incident reviews. - Apply AI-assisted engineering and automation responsibly where appropriate. Communication & Collaboration - Communicate architecture, decisions, progress, and risks clearly to technical and business stakeholders. - Influence technical decisions across teams without direct authority, presenting in architecture reviews and knowledge-sharing forums. - Maintain documentation and partner across business, architecture, infrastructure, security, operations, risk, and audit teams. - Ensure changes comply with risk, regulatory, policy, change management, security, data protection, and access control standards, with auditable evidence; escalate risks and address audit and regulatory items on time. - Support a culture of belonging, reflect the M&T Bank brand, maintain internal controls, and complete other assigned duties. Scope of Responsibilities - Serve as an individual-contributor technical lead accountable for technical direction, design quality, code review, modernization, and production stability; no direct people management. - Own technical outcomes for assigned applications, platforms, or domains, including design, delivery quality, operational readiness, and risk remediation, influencing engineers, architects, and partners through expertise and standards. Education & Experience Required: - Associate’s degree and a minimum of 5 years’ systems analysis and/ or application development work experience or Bachelor's degree and a minimum of 3 years’ systems analysis and/ or application development work experience. In lieu of degree, a combined minimum of 7 years’ education and/or relevant work experience, including a minimum of 3 years’ systems analysis and/or application development work experience. Required Technical Skills - Strong hands-on experience with IBM z/OS application engineering using COBOL, JCL, CICS, VSAM, and batch and online transaction processing. - Experience diagnosing abends, data, transaction, and performance issues using z/OS debugging, file-analysis, and JES/SDSF tools. - Experience with Git-based source control, peer review, and CI/CD for enterprise applications. - Working knowledge of mainframe security, access control, auditability, change management, and resiliency. - Experience integrating mainframe applications through MQ, APIs, files, or events. Required Leadership & Delivery Experience - Expert analytical and software engineering skills, with strong understanding of SDLC, testing, deployment, resiliency, security, and change management. - Experience leading technical initiatives or engineering workstreams as an individual-contributor technical lead. - Experience reviewing solution designs, technical requirements, and code changes. Education & Experience Preferred: - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a minimum of 5 years of systems analysis and/or application development experience. Preferred Technical Skills - z/OS Connect, ZDIH, API design, and integration with distributed or cloud platforms in support of modernization and platform resiliency. - Mainframe DevOps and test automation (e.g., IBM DBB/zBuilder, Test Accelerator for Z, SonarQube, Ansible) and modern IDE workflows (IDz, VS Code, Zowe, USS); responsible use of approved AI-assisted tools. - Easytrieve+, CA7/Control-M, File-AID, Abend-AID, Xpediter, InterTest, or equivalent tools. Preferred Delivery & Collaboration Experience - Experience improving production stability, defect reduction, and engineering productivity. - Experience influencing technical decisions and presenting to technology and business stakeholders in Agile delivery environments. We support our team members with generous benefits. - Competitive compensation - Health, welfare, and retirement benefits - 401(k) match at 5% - Work-life balance and flexible work arrangements - Banking Officers start with 25 days PTO plus 12 paid holidays - 40 hours paid volunteer hours per year - Much more. For details, see: M&T Benefits Overview #Mainframe #zOS #COBOL #CICS #JCL #VSAM #SeniorSoftwareEngineer #SoftwareEngineering #DevOps #CICD #Modernization #APIs #ZOSConnect #MandTBank #Hiring #NowHiring #TechJobs #TechnicalLead M&T Bank is committed to fair, competitive, and market-informed pay for our employees. The pay range for this position is $97,100.00 - $161,800.00 Annual (USD). The successful candidate’s particular combination of knowledge, skills, and experience will inform their specific compensation. Location Buffalo, New York, United States of America