ECS is seeking a Senior Application Modernization & Migration Architect to work remotely.
The Senior Application Modernization & Migration Engineer leads enterprise initiatives to transform legacy COBOL, PL/I, CICS, DB2, IMS, VSAM, and JCL-based applications to modern distributed or cloud-ready platforms -based mainframe applications into modern, cloud-native or cloud-enabled solutions using AI where applicable. This role combines expertise in legacy technologies, cloud engineering, AI-assisted software development, and automation to accelerate modernization while reducing risk, cost, and delivery timelines.
The role serves both strategic leadership and hands-on technical guidance throughout all phases of modernization, partnering with enterprise architects, engineering teams, cloud platform teams, mainframe application owners, DevSecOps, Testing teams, and business stakeholders to deliver end-to-end migration strategies that reduce technical debt, improve agility, and ensure business continuity.
Core Responsibilities
Modernization Strategy & Technical Leadership:
- Lead end-to-end application modernization and cloud migration initiatives.
- Assess legacy application portfolios, dependencies, and infrastructure to define target-state architectures.
- Leverage AI and automation to accelerate code analysis, dependency discovery, code transformation, documentation, testing, and migration activities.
- Define and drive migration strategies (e.g., rehost, replatform, refactor, rearchitect, replace).
- Design cloud-native and on-prem, cloud-ready solutions using microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures, containers, and serverless technologies.
- Build and implement automated CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and testing frameworks to support modernization efforts.
- Modernize batch processing, transaction processing, and data integration while ensuring business continuity and ensuring optimization of application performance.
- Collaborate with architects, developers, business stakeholders, and infrastructure teams to deliver modernization programs.
- Establish and align engineering standards, governance, and best practices for AI-enabled software development and cloud migration with customer-mandated architecture standards and governance guidelines.
- Mentor engineering teams and provide technical leadership throughout the modernization lifecycle.
- Develop comprehensive migration planning to include dependency mapping, cutover strategies, and rollback procedures
Application & Architecture Transformation:
- Analyze COBOL and other mainframe application-based applications, batch workloads, and business logic.
- Design modern architectures using cloud-native services, APIs, microservices, and event-driven patterns.
- Decompose monolithic systems into modular, scalable components.
- Identify and eliminate technical debt while improving maintainability and extensibility.
- Architect design to ensure application and system performance, including load testing, capacity planning, and optimization of user-response time for extremely large data sets.
- Lead technical assessments of: COBOL applications, PL/I applications, CICS transactions, Batch processing, JCL, DB2 databases, IMS databases, VSAM files, MQ messaging
Cloud Engineering & Platform Enablement:
- Support the design and implementation of secure, scalable cloud-based solutions.
- Collaborate with platform teams on infrastructure, networking, identity, security, and observability.
- Enable containerization, orchestration, and serverless architectures where appropriate.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code automation.
- Develop cloud-ready on-prem solutions that require minimal re-design utilizing cloud-compatible and cloud-agnostic architecture principles.
Data Modernization & Migration:
- Lead migration of legacy databases and file-based systems to modern data platforms.
- Ensure data integrity through validation, reconciliation, and quality controls.
- Develop automated data migration, transformation, and conversion processes.
Integration Modernization:
- Design APIs and integration layers to connect modern and legacy systems during transition phases.
- Transform batch processes into event-driven or service-based workflows.
- Support enterprise messaging and integration frameworks.
Quality Engineering & Validation:
- Define testing strategies across functional, integration, regression, performance, and UAT phases.
- Validate application behavior, performance, and stability post-migration.
- Troubleshoot and resolve migration-related defects and performance issues.
Governance, Risk & Documentation:
- Identify technical and operational risks and define mitigation strategies.
- Ensure compliance with enterprise architecture, security, and governance standards.
- Produce migration runbooks, architecture documentation, and operational procedures.
Salary Range: $240,000 - $260,000
General Description of Benefits
Preferred Qualifications- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent experience.
- US Citizenship
- 15+ years of enterprise application development or engineering experience.
- 7+ years working with COBOL, other mainframe-based languages, and legacy enterprise systems.
- 5+ years leading large-scale application modernization or cloud migration programs.
- Proven experience delivering complex, enterprise-wide transformation initiatives.
- Technical leadership and architectural thinking
- Strategic planning and systems analysis
- Problem-solving in complex environments
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Executive-level communication
- Risk identification and mitigation
- Mentoring and team development
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent experience
- US Citizenship
- 15+ years enterprise application development or engineering experience
- 7+ years working with COBOL, PL/I, CICS, DB2, IMS, VSAM, and JCL
- 5+ years leading large-scale application modernization or cloud migration programs
- Experience designing cloud-native architectures using microservices, APIs, containers, and serverless technologies
- Experience building CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, automation, and testing frameworks
- Experience migrating legacy databases and file-based systems, including data validation and transformation
- Experience with integration modernization, enterprise messaging (e.g., MQ), and API design
- Demonstrated technical leadership, strategic planning, risk identification/mitigation, cross-functional collaboration, executive-level communication, and mentoring
ECS Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about ECS and has not been reviewed or approved by ECS.
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Healthcare Strength — ECS advertises multiple national-network medical plan options with HSA eligibility alongside dental and vision coverage. Coverage generally begins quickly and is paired with company-paid short- and long-term disability, adding stability to the health package.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with Safe Harbor and immediate vesting on employer contributions is emphasized, with an employer match available. Access to an employee stock purchase plan via the parent company provides an additional savings avenue.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave up to 30 days, adoption assistance, and other family-oriented leaves are highlighted. Feedback suggests these offerings add meaningful value beyond base pay for many roles.
ECS Insights
What We Do
ECS, a segment of ASGN (NYSE: ASGN), delivers advanced solutions and services in cloud, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), application and IT modernization, and science and engineering. The company solves critical, complex challenges for customers across the U.S. public sector, defense, intelligence and commercial industries. ECS maintains partnerships with leading cloud, cybersecurity, and AI/ML providers and holds specialized certifications in their technologies. Headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, ECS has more than 3,400 employees throughout the U.S. and has been recognized as a Top Workplace by The Washington Post for the last five years.
