COBOL Technical Lead - Platform Owner for Enterprise Mainframe Systems

We're recruiting a Technical Lead / Platform Owner for an enterprise mainframe estate supporting high-volume, business-critical processes. This is a leadership role for someone who wants real ownership: platform reliability, technical direction, engineering standards, and delivery outcomes, while keeping a mission-critical service stable.

The organisation runs complex operational workflows at scale, with a core stack built around COBOL, CICS, JCL, and DB2. Investment is focused on pragmatic modernisation: improved automation, better observability, API enablement, controlled refactoring, and safer releases, without the risk of a "rip and replace".

If you've been the go-to person for mainframe delivery and want a role where you can set standards, lead change, and mentor teams, this is it., * Architecture & standards: patterns for batch and online processing, error handling, resiliency, and upgrade-safe change

• Release governance: change control, deployment runbooks, rollback strategies, and quality gates
• Performance & reliability: capacity planning, batch window optimisation, CICS performance, and DB2 tuning
• Security & auditability: access controls, segregation of duties, evidence trails, and compliance-ready documentation
• Modernisation roadmap: API enablement, tooling upgrades, automation, technical debt reduction
• Team enablement: mentoring, code review discipline, engineering culture, onboarding and capability uplift

What you'll be doing

This is a hands-on lead role. You'll still get into the detail, but your main value is direction, governance, and outcomes., * Lead design and delivery across COBOL change and platform improvement workstreams, balancing speed with operational safety.

• Own development standards and quality: structured coding, reusable copybooks, naming conventions, error handling, and documentation discipline.
• Oversee batch and online workloads: JCL scheduling, restart/recovery patterns, batch window optimisation, and operational resilience.
• Drive performance initiatives across DB2 and CICS: query tuning, program efficiency, transaction response times, and contention hotspots.
• Establish and enforce testing strategy: integration coverage, regression approach, performance checks, and production readiness criteria.
• Coordinate incident/problem management: major incident leadership, root cause analysis, permanent fixes, and prevention programmes.
• Partner with architecture and integration teams to expose mainframe capabilities via APIs, services, and controlled data feeds.
• Manage stakeholder relationships across business operations and technology-translating priorities into an actionable technical roadmap.

Tech stack (what you'll be working with)

This role is ideal for a strong mainframe engineer who also understands modern delivery discipline., You'll own systems that underpin large-scale operational workflows, such as:

• Customer and account servicing
• High-volume transaction processing
• Billing, reconciliation, and settlement-style processes
• Regulatory or audit-driven reporting and evidence trails
• Data feeds and integrations to modern platforms

What success looks like (first 90-180 days)

• You'll baseline platform health: known risks, performance bottlenecks, batch window constraints, and recurring incidents.
• You'll implement practical governance: standards, quality gates, release/runbooks, and clear escalation pathways.
• You'll stabilise at least one critical process (batch or online) and reduce repeat incidents through root-cause fixes.
• You'll define a pragmatic modernisation roadmap: automation, integration strategy, and technical debt reduction-without operational disruption.
• You'll uplift the team: improved code quality, stronger review habits, and better documentation.

• Deep experience with COBOL in enterprise production environments
• Strong DB2 skills (SQL, performance awareness, indexing strategy, locking/contension basics)
• CICS online transaction processing (design, support, performance troubleshooting)
• JCL and batch processing patterns (restartability, scheduling, operational controls)
• Mainframe tooling and diagnostics (e.g. dumps, logs, performance traces, job monitoring)
• Proven leadership: code standards, governance, mentoring, and technical ownership, * DevOps/automation exposure in mainframe estates (build pipelines, automated testing, scripted deployments)
• API enablement (z/OS Connect, MQ-based services, file and event-driven integration patterns)
• Scheduling tools (Control-M or equivalent), workload automation, and batch optimisation
• Security tooling and audit frameworks (RACF concepts, access governance, traceability)
• Experience modernising monoliths safely: refactoring strategies, strangler patterns, service wrappers, * Proven experience owning and leading delivery for COBOL mainframe systems
• Strong stakeholder management and the ability to influence priorities
• A pragmatic mindset: improve reliability and delivery confidence while modernising safely
• Comfortable acting as escalation point for high-impact incidents and complex technical decisions
• Hands-on enough to dive into code, data, and operations when needed

• Salary: £83,000 - £92,000 (depending on experience)
• Bonus: 15-20% (performance-related)
• Working pattern: Hybrid or Remote (depending on location and business needs)
• Time off: Generous annual leave + company shutdown days (site dependent)
• Pension / Retirement: Employer contribution 8% + employee match up to 4% (total up to 12%)
• Healthcare: Private medical (with dependent options) + dental/vision (plan dependent)
• Life cover: 4x salary life assurance + income protection
• Learning: annual training budget (mainframe tooling, modern integration patterns, cloud fundamentals)
• Extras: wellbeing allowance, employee assistance programme, paid volunteering days
• Support model: paid on-call escalation only when required (defined rota and SLAs)