Mainframe Architect - Remote

About HCLTech

HCLTech is a global technology company, spread across 60 countries, delivering industry-leading capabilities centered around digital, engineering, cloud and AI, powered by a broad portfolio of technology services and products. We work with clients across all major verticals, providing industry solutions for Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Technology and Services, Telecom and Media, Retail and CPG, and Public Services. We re powered by our people a global, diverse, multi-generational talent - representing 161 nationalities whose unique spark, perspective and boundless passion drive our culture of proactive value creation and problem-solving.

Role Purpose:

Provide end-to-end technical leadership for enterprise solutions on the mainframe platform: translating business and non-functional requirements into scalable, secure and resilient architectures, and guiding engineering teams through implementation, modernization and operational readiness.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architecture & Design

• Own high-level and detailed architecture for complex mainframe applications, APIs, integrations and modernization initiatives.

• Convert functional and non-functional requirements into blueprints, component designs, interface contracts and implementation guidance.

• Select appropriate architecture patterns and assess trade-offs across scalability, performance, security, cost and maintainability.

• Ensure alignment with enterprise standards, approved platforms, reusable patterns and target-state roadmaps.

• Technical Leadership & Governance

• Give hands-on architectural direction to development, QA, DevOps, security and support teams.

• Set coding, API, integration, logging, configuration, testing and deployment standards.

• Run architecture reviews, design walkthroughs, technical risk assessments and PoC evaluations.

• Security, Reliability & Performance

• Embed secure-by-design across identity, authorization, secrets, data protection and interface security.

• Define resiliency patterns — retry, timeout, failover, HA and DR — plus performance and capacity targets.
• Ensure observability through structured logging, metrics, tracing, dashboards and alerting.

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Facilitate technical discovery with business, product, security, infrastructure and vendor stakeholders.

• Communicate complex decisions clearly to engineering and leadership audiences.

• Maintain architecture artifacts, decision records, risk logs and technical roadmaps.

Technology Focus — Mainframe

• Design, develop and support COBOL/CICS/DB2 batch and online components within agreed standards.
• Optimize batch windows, DB2 access paths and resource consumption to protect service levels.
• Support mainframe modernization, API exposure and integration with distributed and cloud platforms.

Required Technical Competencies:

• COBOL, JCL, CICS, VSAM, DB2 and z/OS utilities; batch and online program design and optimization.

• Design & Architecture Mainframe application architecture, modularization, API enablement and modernization/coexistence patterns.

• Data & Integration DB2 and VSAM data design, SQL tuning, file handling, data conversion, integrity and reconciliation.

• Platform & DevOps z/OS operations, scheduling, change management, environment promotion and mainframe-to-distributed integration.

• Quality & Operations Unit and regression testing, batch cycle validation, performance and MIPS optimization, defect RCA.