What are the responsibilities and job description for the Consulting Manager, Mainframe Engineer position at Cognizant?
The Mainframe Legacy Modernization Engineer will play a key role in transforming large, complex mainframe applications into modern, scalable, and cloud‑ready architectures. The engineer will work across assessment, reverse engineering, migration, refactoring, and re‑architecture initiatives, collaborating with architects, business SMEs, and cloud teams to modernize COBOL‑based systems into microservices, APIs, and distributed platforms.
This role requires strong hands‑on mainframe expertise combined with modern application, integration, data transformation and cloud engineering skills.
Key Responsibilities
We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role’s business requirements, this is a position that requires 4 days a week in a client office in Jersey City, New Jersey. Regardless of our working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance though our various wellbeing programs.
The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based on the project you’re engaged in, as well as business and client requirements. Rest assured; we will always be clear about role expectations.
various wellbeing programs.
What You Will Need To Have To Be Considered
Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship now or in the future.
Compensation (Pay Transparency)
Base salary range (good-faith estimate): $81,400 - $129,500 annually.
Eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program, subject to applicable plan terms.
Benefits
Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance.
401(k) plan with company contributions.
Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
Employee Assistance Program.
15 Paid holidays plus PTO.
Paid parental leave and fertility assistance.
Learning and development programs and certifications.
This role requires strong hands‑on mainframe expertise combined with modern application, integration, data transformation and cloud engineering skills.
Key Responsibilities
- Analyze complex mainframe applications (COBOL, CICS, JCL, DB2, VSAM, MQ) to understand business rules, data flows, batch cycles, and system interdependencies.
- Experienced in Mainframe transformation design patterns
- Hands-on transformation knowledge
- Mainframe Data migration experience
- Perform inventory analysis, call‑chain analysis, and functional decomposition of monolithic applications.
- Extract and document technical and business rules using automated discovery or reverse‑engineering tools.
- Design and implement modernization strategies including re‑host, re‑platform, re‑factor, re‑architect, replace, or retire approaches
- Convert or refactor legacy COBOL logic into modern languages such as Java using automated tools or manual re‑engineering techniques.
- Apply incremental modernization patterns such as strangler‑fig and coexistence models to reduce migration risk.
- Modernize JCL‑based batch processes into cloud‑native batch frameworks (e.g., Spring Batch, workflow orchestration).
- Support migration or re‑engineering of scheduling, file transfer, and output management components.
- Ensure functional parity and data integrity between legacy and modernized systems.
We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role’s business requirements, this is a position that requires 4 days a week in a client office in Jersey City, New Jersey. Regardless of our working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance though our various wellbeing programs.
The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based on the project you’re engaged in, as well as business and client requirements. Rest assured; we will always be clear about role expectations.
various wellbeing programs.
What You Will Need To Have To Be Considered
- Bachelor’s degree in business administration, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field (Required)
- 7-10 years of proven experience in managing large-scale or enterprise level initiatives.
- Experience with AI‑based transformation accelerators (AI‑assisted code conversion, rule extraction, pattern detection).
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid architectures.
- Experience modernizing batch workloads into cloud‑native orchestration tools (Airflow, Step Functions, Argo, etc.).
- Background in mainframe‑heavy industries such as banking, insurance, or government.
- Certifications such as IBM z/OS Administrator/Developer, cloud certifications, ITIL, PMP, or Scrum Master.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- 7 – 10 years of mainframe engineering experience
- Demonstrated success leading modernization or transformation programs.
Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship now or in the future.
Compensation (Pay Transparency)
Base salary range (good-faith estimate): $81,400 - $129,500 annually.
Eligible for Cognizant’s discretionary annual incentive program, subject to applicable plan terms.
Benefits
Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance.
401(k) plan with company contributions.
Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
Employee Assistance Program.
15 Paid holidays plus PTO.
Paid parental leave and fertility assistance.
Learning and development programs and certifications.
Salary : $81,400 - $129,500