Mainframes may be considered relatively old technology in the cloud computing sector, but they continue to process some of the world’s most important workloads, from banking transactions and insurance claims to tax filings and airline reservations. And organizations are now racing to modernize these systems rather than replace them. This is where mainframe developers and engineers have become essential to extending legacy COBOL applications, integrating cloud services and keeping mission-critical infrastructure running around the clock.
The companies below are among the biggest employers investing in that work.
Companies Hiring Mainframe Developers and Engineers
- IBM
- Kyndryl
- Accenture
- Deloitte
- Broadcom
Top Companies Hiring Mainframe Developers and Engineers
Industry: Semiconductor Manufacturing,Infrastructure Software
What they do: Broadcom became one of the biggest names in enterprise mainframe software after acquiring CA Technologies, whose tools are deeply embedded in IBM Z environments worldwide. Rather than writing customer-facing apps, engineers there build the specialized monitoring, security and automation software that other companies buy to keep their mainframes operational.
Industry: Enterprise Software, Cloud Computing, AI
What they do: Nearly every modern mainframe traces back to IBM, which continues to design the IBM Z hardware and z/OS operating systems that have defined enterprise computing for decades. Engineers there spend their time writing the core software that keeps these massive systems running, while making sure old database code can still talk to modern web and cloud applications.
Industry: IT Services, Consulting
What they do: Cognizant’s modernization practice is executed through proprietary tools Skygrade and Zero Deviation LifeCycle that inventory enterprise applications containing millions of lines of COBOL. Its mainframe developers and engineers use that analysis to map system dependencies, untangle code, identify business logic and plan modernization projects before migration work begins.
Industry: Enterprise Software
What they do: Rocket Software has spent more than three decades building software specifically for IBM mainframes. Its engineers develop the tools that help organizations modernize COBOL applications, adopt Git-based workflows and connect long-running mainframe systems with newer web and cloud applications.
Industry: Payment Processing, Financial Services
What they do: Fiserv processes more than 90 billion financial transactions each year, and up to 25,000 per second at peak times. Its architecture powers banks, credit unions and payment providers around the world. And mainframe developers there build and maintain the software responsible for core banking operations, relying heavily on COBOL, CICS and DB2.
Industry: IT Services, Consulting
What they do: Many companies still depend on mainframes but no longer want to operate them in-house. Ensono runs those environments on their behalf. Managing more than two million MIPS (millions of instructions per second) of processing power for global enterprises, the company’s mainframe engineers are responsible for things like tuning performance, planning capacity and keeping business-critical IBM Z systems up and running.
Industry: IT Consulting
What they do: As one of the world’s largest IT consulting firms, Accenture is hired by global banks and governments to execute massive digital transformations. Mainframe engineers there use Accenture’s automated migration toolkits to refactor legacy COBOL architectures into microservices, which are then deployed across its deep partnerships with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Industry: IT Services, Consulting
What they do: Since spinning out of IBM in 2021, Kyndryl has become the world’s largest IT infrastructure services providers, working across more than 60 countries. Its mainframe engineers keep those IBM Z environments running around the clock, managing everything from z/OS administration and storage to disaster recovery and large-scale modernization projects.
Industry: Consulting
What they do: Deloitte relies on mainframe developers to deliver on multi-million, multi-year government and healthcare modernization contracts. Its engineers directly write and maintain the COBOL, JCL and DB2 code that powers critical state tax engines, DMV and unemployment insurance databases, as well as Medicaid eligibility platforms, processing millions of daily citizens’ records.
Industry: Healthcare
What they do: UnitedHealth Group is the largest healthcare company in the United States and ranked in the top five of the Fortune 500 overall. It processes millions of medical claims every day. Mainframe engineers there maintain the high-volume systems that support claims processing, member eligibility and provider payments, where even small improvements can affect healthcare operations at national scale.
