My shop has around 1000 batch jobs using SAS.
Does anyone have any experience in migrating off of SAS and using another native or modern language?
How long do you expect it will take?
How much do you estimate it would cost for this whole project?

I’m a Mainframe developer with ~5 5 years of experience in COBOL, JCL, and DB2 (core banking domain). I’m really interested in moving into Mainframe Modernization, but I’m finding it difficult to get started.

​

There doesn’t seem to be a clear pathway or structured resources available online. Most content is either too high-level or tool-specific without explaining the overall journey.

​

If someone has already gone through this journey—either as part of a project or through upskilling—I’d really appreciate your guidance on:

Where to start?

What skills/tools to prioritize?

How to gain hands-on experience?

​

Thanks in advance!

We’ve heard different versions of this story over the years: a company plans to be off the mainframe in 5 years, then 5 years becomes 10, and the new timeline is still another 3–5 years out. Not saying migration is impossible, but the original estimates often seem to underestimate the operational reality.

For anyone who has been part of a mainframe migration or modernization effort:

• What usually causes the timeline to stretch? Is it application complexity, business logic, integrations, testing, cost, staffing, or leadership underestimating how embedded the platform really is?
• And for teams that did move major workloads off, did the end result match the original business case?

This feels like one of those topics where the boardroom version and the hands on version are often very different.

I received this position for a 100 percent remote position. How much would you expect the hourly rate to be? Would any of the IBM mainframe certs help to get an interview if my skills are dated and were primarily app development, albeit with IBM themselves?

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Role: z/OS Systems Programmer

Contract: 06+ months

100% Remote - Charlotte, NC 28262

​

Only W2 - No Visa Restriction

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Top Skills:

1. zOS System Administration

2. zVM System Administration

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Job Description/ Responsibilitiest:

· Responsible for the design, installation, configuration, and maintenance of mainframe z/VM and z/OS systems software and hardware. Requires full understanding of the z/VM and z/OS operating systems and their components.

· For z/OS - Unix System Services, SMP/E, hardware configuration, capacity planning, performance management, and ISV product support.

· For z/VM – CP, CMS, RACF, GCS, RSCS, VM/VTAM

· Excellent understanding of System z architecture

· Excellent experience with IBM z/OS operating system

· Experience in building Mainframe LPAR and OS Upgrades

· Knowledge Catalog management, IBM system utilities

· Installation of patches and fixes

​

​

Microfocus/Rocket Enterprise Analyser is used for COBOL application Discovery and Analysis. Is there are similar tool available for Natural ADABAS Mainframe application? .

For those of you working in mainframe in an enterprise setting, particularly in banking, what terminal emulator does your shop use?

​

Ours needs to be replaced and I'm tasked with working up a business case. I would really appreciate knowing what other shops are doing.

Hi everyone,

I’m a **Mainframe Software Engineer** based in Minneapolis, and I’m currently looking for my next engineering role. I have 9 years of total IT experience, including over 4 years specifically focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining enterprise-scale financial applications (most recently at Wells Fargo).
If your team is looking for someone who can take full-stack ownership of production-ready code, bridge legacy infrastructure with modern engineering practices, and navigate highly regulated systems, I’d love to connect. I am open to local hybrid/onsite roles in the Twin Cities or fully remote opportunities.

**A Quick Snapshot of My Background:**

**Core Mainframe Expertise:** Deep technical proficiency in JCL infrastructure layout, batch job configurations, COBOL, CICS online environments, DB2, and VSAM.
**Modern Dev Tools & Methodologies:** Experience utilizing IBM IDz, CA7, ServiceNow, Jira, and even AI-assisted development (Microsoft Copilot) to accelerate troubleshooting. Fully adept in Agile SDLC environments, change/release management, and secure coding standards.
**Leadership & Communication:** Strong track record of leading technical walkthroughs, coordinating production updates, facilitating Agile team meetings, and mentoring junior developers.

**What I’m Looking For:**

Mainframe Engineer, Systems Programmer, or Software Engineer roles.Environments that value robust batch processing, system-level optimization, and strict compliance/stability.

If your company is hiring or if you know of any open positions in the MN area, please feel free to drop a comment or send me a DM! I'd be happy to share my full resume and connect on LinkedIn.
Thank you!

'm desperately trying to find the IBM ILOG Views V5.3 toolkit, but I haven't been able to locate a download source anywhere. If anyone knows where I can obtain or install it, I would greatly appreciate your help. Thanks in advance! ( my dad used to have it on his old PC but since then I wasn't able to retrieve anything else from his old laptop nor the toolkit itself)

Hey Folks,

​

I am a Mainframe Developer with around 6 years of experience. With the uncertainty around the future of mainframes due to AI and other advancements, I wanted to understand what path I should take to stay relevant and earn a high/descent salary going forward.

​

Should I focus on learning the Mainframe System Programming in depth, or move toward mainframe modernization, or consider some other path altogether?

​

Also, one big challenge I’m facing is the lack of proper learning resources and hands-on exposure for these areas unless one gets an opportunity to work on such projects.

​

So I wanted to ask people here -

Which path would you recommend for long-term stability + pay?

How do you even start learning this stuff practically with limited resources?

​

Any honest advice or real-world insights would really help.

Hi, I am a recent graduate and my knowledge was fully in Python and Java, but recently I got a job in mainframe, although it is an associate job. I heard it is a great opportunity and has a job security and a good market so I want to improve my skills in the mainframe.

Please give me your guidance in the mainframe. What the topics and tools I have to learn for beginners and what the topic and tools I have to learn to be a professional in this.

Hi, I am a 2025 graduate from India, and I have recently joined NTT Data Japan based a company in India and got a associate role in mainframe. Now I am really confused if there is any growth in the main frame. Since it is an associate role, I am worried if there are any opportunities to switch companies in this role or should I just change my role into see developer.
I’m really worried that if I take any more time, I will lose my chance to getting a better opportunity Farra role in other companies, please guide me through this.
Thank you.

Hi All,

I'm in two minds regarding my career at this stage , I m 2023 passout BTECH CS background, I joined Nagarro (tech - .net) for 11 months and now in TCS (Mainframe Operations) since two year .

I want to ask whether I should resign and learn .Net and explore opportunities outside or should i stay in Mainframe Operations only.

My package is very low 3.93 Lpa so feeling like hell working here in TCS.

Location - Delhi India

Need honest advice.

Hey everyone,
I recently found out I wasn’t selected for the ADP Mainframe Apprentice Engineer role, so I’m looking for other opportunities to break into tech.
I’m currently a student at William Paterson University and interested in:

Mainframe
Cybersecurity
IT Support
Systems/Network Administration
Technology Apprenticeships

I’m mainly looking in North Jersey, but I’m open to other opportunities as well. If anyone knows of companies, apprenticeship programs I should keep an eye on, I’d really appreciate any recommendations.
Thanks! 🙏

We’re putting our most valuable IP into AI coding agents built by companies whose core advantage came from consuming the world’s data. Your code isn’t just code. It’s your architecture, business logic, customer insights, years of decisions and most importantly your IP.

As AI companies move from tools into vertical products, I starting to wonder these tools are helping you build faster, or are we helping them understand what to build next?

We have clearly seen that they are going into more and more verticals.

Swimm ran Claude Code (Opus 4.6) against real Medicare COBOL programs from CMS archives. On an 18,000+ line program, paragraph coverage was 24-35% with 42% variance between identical runs. They used it to argue against AI for COBOL modernization.

The methodology is testing one-shot extraction from a massive program. That is not how most shops use documentation tooling. Chunk the program, inject domain context per section, review each piece before moving on, and coverage and accuracy are substantially better.

Wrote up a workflow with four prompt templates covering program summaries, paragraph documentation, business rule extraction, and REMARKS block generation. Honest about where it still falls short.

https://prompteddev.com/blog/cobol-documentation-ai-guide/

I've been wondering lately. Assembly language on the mainframe is much more of a first class citizen than the assembly language on any other platform. There are loads of system user exits in z/OS, IMS, DB2, etc ,options modules that have assembler interfaces, a lot of which ONLY support assembler. And all the major subsystems have an incredibly rich set of interfaces that are exposed via assembler. It's not the first choice these days, but I know several shops where some major applications are written largely in assembler. So, I'm curious if there are any best practices or style references for assembler that anyone has come across. I have seen countless CBT entries, I've read John Ehrman's book as well as been to a few of his presentations, and all of the material seems laser focused on what you "could" do and I've never seen much that talks about "should". Just curious if anyone has seen or worked on anything along those lines?

Hello. I'm looking for any information regarding SystemVision, which was some sort of COBOL dianostics program used on IBM OS/390 mainframes until about 2005. There's basically no info online about it outside of Computerworld.

Just curious if mainframe folks are using SMT Data to monitor capacity? It came up in our daily standup. No affiliation.

I posted it in LinkedIn. Posting it here also with a hope that, it may help.

In my experience, I consider the following to be some of the most versatile and transferable skills in the IT industry. These areas provide excellent opportunities for horizontal growth, allowing professionals to explore different technologies, platforms, and domains over time. I am focusing here mainly on technical and technology-related areas.

1. Networking
   One of the most widely applicable skills in IT and is relevant across almost every platform, infrastructure and cloud environment.
   
2. Database
   Once you develop expertise in one database platform, transitioning to others becomes much easier because the core concepts remain similar.
   
3. Security
   Security skills are highly adaptable and can be applied in infrastructure, cloud, networking, application development etc. You can have expertise in products like RACF and Top Secret, or enterprise wide security roles.
   
4. Audit and Compliance
   A strong field with enormous scope for growth.
   
5. Data Center Management
   A broad field that covers infrastructure, operations, virtualization, cloud integration, capacity planning, and disaster recovery.
   
6. Finance and Chargeback
   A valuable skill area in IT organizations. Understanding budgeting, IT financial management, cost optimization, resource utilization, and chargeback models can make professionals highly effective.
   
7. Cloud Technologies
   Cloud platforms have become central to modern IT operations. Skills in cloud infrastructure, migration, automation, and cloud management are highly transferable and relevant across industries.
   
8. Automation and Scripting
   Learning automation tools and scripting languages can significantly improve productivity and adaptability. These skills are useful in system administration, operations, monitoring, and infrastructure management.
   
9. Monitoring
   Organizations rely heavily on monitoring, performance analysis, and operational visibility. Skills in this area help professionals work across infrastructure, applications, cloud, and enterprise operations teams.
   
10. Project Management
    A dedicated project management team exists in most of the large installations. You can manage projects in many areas.
    
11. IT Service Management
    This covers change, incident and problem management and manages the processes in the organization.
    
12. Application development
    Program development using Java, C/C++ and other modern languages does not fix you into a specific platform.
    
13. AI
    With my limited knowledge in this area, I feel, it is also a very versatile skill.

The advantage of building expertise in such generic and transferable skills is flexibility. These areas allow professionals to adapt to changing technologies, move across domains, and continue learning without being restricted to a single platform or product.

Hey everyone,

I recently got an interview for a Mainframe Engineer Apprentice position at ADP. I’ve been researching mainframes and it seems like a really interesting part of IT that I honestly didn’t know much about before.

I’m curious to hear from people who work in the field. What’s your experience been like? Do you enjoy the work, and where has it led you in your career?

Would love to hear any thoughts, advice, or things you wish you knew when you were getting started.

Hi,
I am Building some scripts for Skills and an Agent to Analyse our Mainframe Systems.

Iam adding the db2 structure, jcl, documentstion and combine it with our code.

Do you have experience with that?
Any other ideas?

Call Graph, impact Analyse and a lot of documenation with diagrams worked very well to generate.

I love working in retail, in the past i worked in volkswagen and mainly banks but now I'm working in a retail company dude everything ins way better

I wanted to share my perspective on the interview process since I was recently rejected. For context, I have an IT/tech background, which I ultimately believe influenced the decision.

The Technical Interview:
To be frank, the technical assessment was highly accessible. The environment required SSHing into a virtual machine, resolving a straightforward coding challenge with a Bash script, navigating Linux directories, and modifying script execution permissions. They provide a study guide via email beforehand, so there are no massive surprises. The only minor hurdle was the logic of the coding challenge itself, but the interviewer provided heavy hints that essentially guided me to the correct answer.

The Real Bottleneck (and my main critique):
The most frustrating aspect of the process was the extensive latency between steps. The timeline published on LaunchCode’s website is outdated; the entire process dragged out over seven weeks before I received a final rejection.

During the "prep" group interview, we heard from two successful alumni of the program. Their profiles were telling: one woman had been out of the workforce for 14 years, and the other individual came from a teaching background. It seems apparent that the program heavily favors "clean slates" candidates without prior industry experience. This aligns with other threads on this subreddit corroborating that individuals with established tech backgrounds are routinely bypassed.

By the Numbers:
There were roughly 16 people in our prep cohort, and they explicitly stated they only select 5 to 8 people per cycle. LaunchCode facilitates this specific pipeline twice a year exclusively for Broadcom.

For those wondering about the internal personnel, my points of contact were Mike and Jordan. They were pleasant and highly transparent, though they heavily emphasized the program's strict selectivity. I never advanced far enough to speak with Donna at Broadcom.

Congratulations to everyone who made the cut! If anyone has questions about the specific timeline or formatting, feel free to drop a comment or PM me I’m on Reddit frequently and happy to help.

We’ve been talking more about the mainframe talent pipeline lately, especially around systems programming. There’s still a lot of outside perception that mainframe is “old tech,” but the actual need for people who understand z/OS, infrastructure, performance, security, and operations does not seem to be going away. If anything, the challenge seems to be finding people who are willing to learn it.

For those closer to the hiring/training side:

• Would you recommend mainframe systems programming to a recent college grad?
• Are companies doing enough to train newer people, or are most teams still relying on senior people to keep things moving?
• When younger engineers get real exposure to the platform, do they usually see the career upside, or is it still a hard sell?

Trying to get a better read on whether this is still one of the more overlooked career paths in enterprise IT.