About
Location: Toronto, ON (4x onsite a week)
Employment Type: Contract
Pay Rate: CAD$45 - $55/HR INC
Interview Type: Face 2 Face (Onsite Interview Only)
Job Description
We are seeking an experienced Mainframe TSA / Development Lead to play a critical role in a focused migration program, transitioning legacy FOCUS-based reporting and data processing workloads to COBOL, JCL (SORT/ICETOOL) on the mainframe.
The role combines technical leadership, hands-on development, and migration ownership, working closely with application teams, business stakeholders, and modernization leads.
This position requires strong mainframe fundamentals, sound design judgment, and the ability to guide teams through structured legacy transformation.
Key Responsibilities
Technical & Delivery Leadership
Act as technical lead and TSA for the migration of FOCUS applications to COBOL / JCL (SORT, ICETOOL) solutions
Own end-to-end design decisions, ensuring functional parity, performance efficiency, and operational stability
Review and approve technical designs, migration approaches, and coding standards
Provide hands-on guidance and mentoring to development teams during build and testing phases
Migration & Modernization
Analyze existing FOCUS programs, reports, and data flows to define migration strategies
Map FOCUS logic to optimized COBOL batch processing and SORT/ICETOOL utilities
Identify opportunities to simplify, consolidate, or optimize legacy logic during migration
Support data validation, reconciliation, and parallel run activities to ensure migration accuracy
Development & Support
Perform or review COBOL, JCL, DB2, and VSAM development as needed
Ensure efficient use of SORT and ICETOOL for data transformation and reporting logic
Partner with QA and operations teams to support system testing, performance tuning, and production readiness
Assist with post-migration stabilization and defect resolution
Stakeholder Collaboration
Work closely with application owners, business analysts, and platform teams
Communicate technical risks, dependencies, and progress clearly to program leadership
Support knowledge transfer and documentation for long-term supportability
Required Skills & Experience (Must Have)
Strong experience in Mainframe Application Development and Technical Solution Architecture
Expert-level skills in:
COBOL
JCL, including SORT and ICETOOL
DB2 (SQL, batch integration, performance considerations)
VSAM (KSDS, ESDS, RRDS as applicable)
Proven experience working on legacy application migration or modernization programs
Ability to interpret and re-engineer complex legacy logic into maintainable batch solutions
Strong problem-solving, analytical, and documentation skills
Good to Have / Nice to Have
Working knowledge of FOCUS and/or SAS, particularly in reporting or data extraction contexts
Prior experience migrating FOCUS applications to COBOL/SORT/ICETOOL or similar transformations
Exposure to mainframe performance tuning, scheduling, and batch optimization
Experience working in Financial Services environments
Disclaimer: AI tools may assist in the recruitment process; however, all hiring decisions are made by the recruitment team based on a comprehensive evaluation of candidates.
Languages
- English
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