K

Kyndryl

Managed IT infrastructure and cloud services

Mainframe Reverse Engineer

IT OperationsPosted on Nov 13
Full-timeNo salary listedHybrid

About the Job

Requirements

  • Proven experience analyzing mainframe applications, systems, and supporting infrastructure, including portfolio assessments across business processes, technical architecture, interfaces, batch jobs, data stores, and operational dependencies, and evaluating complexity, criticality, and migration readiness.
  • Strong background reverse engineering legacy applications by analyzing source code, online transactions, batch processes, databases, and interfaces to extract business logic, processing rules, workflows, and end-to-end functionality.
  • Demonstrated ability to document application architecture, transaction flows, data flows, integration points, and operational processes to create detailed current-state artifacts for target-state design.
  • Deep expertise identifying hidden dependencies across applications, databases, middleware, schedulers, and external systems, including transaction tracing, data-flow analysis, and batch-chain analysis.
  • Experience evaluating technical debt, architectural constraints, and operational risks associated with mainframe modernization and collaborating with architects on disposition and transformation planning.
  • Hands-on experience investigating production issues across application functionality, data processing, and operational workflows, including analyzing code paths and runtime behavior.
  • Proven track record providing subject matter expertise during migration testing, parallel runs, cutover activities, and program-wide risk mitigation.
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related discipline.
  • At least 10 years of hands-on mainframe application development, support, or architecture experience.
  • Deep expertise in COBOL-based enterprise applications and related mainframe ecosystems, with a strong understanding of online, batch, database, and messaging architectures within mainframe environments.
  • Proven experience performing source code analysis, troubleshooting, and dependency analysis, and creating application documentation from legacy systems with limited documentation.
  • Experience with COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, JCL, CICS, IMS, DB2, VSAM, and IBM MQ.
  • Experience with source code analysis, production troubleshooting, dependency analysis, batch processing analysis, scheduler technologies such as Control-M, CA-7, TWS/IWS, or Autosys or equivalent, application impact analysis, and system documentation and discovery.
  • Experience with application discovery, reverse engineering, current-state assessment, technical debt identification, modernization readiness analysis, and legacy system documentation.
  • Strong communication skills to partner effectively with Modernization Architects, application teams, and business stakeholders to translate legacy capabilities for cloud-native or distributed platforms.

Responsibilities

  • Lead end-to-end mainframe application discovery, portfolio assessments, and reverse engineering across code, batch, online transactions, databases, and middleware to extract business rules, workflows, and dependencies.
  • Evaluate modernization readiness, technical debt, and operational risks to produce current-state architecture and flow documentation that guides transformation planning.
  • Partner with FDE and Agentic AI Engineers to validate KAF and AI-assisted discovery outputs.
  • Provide hands-on subject matter expertise for production troubleshooting, migration testing, parallel runs, and cutover.

Desired Qualifications

  • Experience validating and refining outputs from KAF (Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework) and AI-assisted discovery tools, including AI-generated business-rule extraction, dependency maps, and system analysis artifacts.
  • Experience partnering with Forward Deployed Engineers and Agentic AI Engineers to enhance automated discovery and reverse-engineering capabilities.
  • Familiarity with translating legacy mainframe capabilities into target cloud-native or distributed architectures to ensure functional parity before migration planning begins.
  • A master's degree.
  • Experience supporting large-scale mainframe modernization initiatives, with exposure to cloud migration and transformation programs.
  • Experience working with AI-assisted discovery and code analysis tools, and familiarity with banking, insurance, retail, healthcare, or other highly regulated industries.
  • Experience with business rule extraction, batch chain analysis, transaction flow tracing, data flow analysis, KAF output validation, mainframe application inventory and rationalization, modernization assessment frameworks, enterprise application dependency mapping, reverse engineering methodologies, and cloud migration assessment.

About the Company

Kyndryl

Managed IT infrastructure and cloud services

Kyndryl provides managed IT infrastructure services for large enterprises, helping them run and modernize their technology environments. Its offerings cover cloud adoption, cybersecurity, security operations, and digital workplace services, all delivered under long-term managed-service contracts. The company works by partnering with major technology providers (including Microsoft) to offer integrated, end-to-end solutions, often complemented by a new security operations center (SOC) and other security capabilities. This focus sets it apart from competitors through scale, enterprise-grade governance, and a history rooted in IBM’s infrastructure services, now independent but aligned with large technology partners. The goal is to support digital transformation by providing reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure management that enables enterprises to operate efficiently and securely in a cloud-enabled world.

Company size
10,001+
Company stage
IPO
Headquarters
New York City, New York
Founded
2021

Recently Posted Jobs

Explore more opportunities at Kyndryl

See more jobs