Senior Software Engineer (Cobol)

Nava is a consultancy and public benefit corporation that helps government agencies modernize legacy technology and deliver secure, reliable digital services. The Senior Software Engineer will lead COBOL mainframe modernization efforts, define technical strategy, make architectural decisions, and coordinate with clients, stakeholders, and delivery teams.

Responsibilities:

• Define the technical vision and modernization strategy in collaboration with clients and the delivery team
• Ensure that the modernized system maintains parity with essential legacy functions while introducing improvements
• Make key architectural decisions that balance long-term program goals with short-term delivery needs
• Prioritize technical tasks and manage trade-offs to align with client goals
• Coordinate with clients and stakeholders to capture critical business rules and constraints
• Serve as a technical counterpart to client engineering and IT teams, supporting alignment and trust-building
• Facilitate cross-functional and cross-delivery-team coordination to unlock dependencies and ensure steady progress across the modernization effort

Requirements:

• At least 10 years of experience working in COBOL Mainframe applications
• Significant experience in IMS, DB2, VSAM, CICS, MQ, Jes2, JCL, TSO
• Working experience in IBM and CA utility programs
• Tenacity to dive into problems and iterate in working code
• Familiarity of how mainframe systems interact with other unconnected systems through messaging platforms
• Understanding of the overall process of CICS processing and flow
• Excellent attention to detail around user experience and code cleanliness
• Excellent written and real-time communication
• Interest in researching and uncovering answers to complex technical problems
• Comfort with ambiguity in project direction and interest in supporting a growing team
• Working with other vendors and multiple government agencies
• Legal authorization to work in the United States
• Ability to meet any other requirements for government contracts for which candidates are hired
• Work authorization that doesn't require visa sponsorship, now or in the future