Mainframe Developer

Career Area: Information Technology

Occupation Group: Software Development

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Mainframe Developer earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $95,128

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $93,127

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Designs or improves computer software and applications that run on a unique operating system or mainframe computer used by a large company or organization. Oversees the entire software development process. Analyzes company user or customer needs, designs programs, writes code or instructs computer programmers, tests design, and documents programs. May assist with upgrades or maintenance.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Mainframe Developer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting or dpanneuring is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
• Writing: Experience expressing business messages effectively in written form. This may include planning drafting and revising as necessary.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Mainframe:
• COBOL: COBOL (, an acronym for common business-oriented language) is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use.
• Job Control Language (JCL): Job Control Language (JCL) is a name for scripting languages used on IBM mainframe operating systems to instruct the system on how to run a batch job or start a subsystem.
• Customer Information Control System (CICS): Customer Information Control System (CICS) is a family of mixed language application servers that provide online transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM Mainframe systems under z/OS and z/VSE. CICS is middleware designed to support rapid, high-volume online transaction processing.
• Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM): Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) is an IBM DASD file storage access method, first used in the OS/VS1, OS/VS2 Release 1 (SVS) and Release 2 (MVS) operating systems, later used throughout the Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) architecture and now in z/OS. Originally a record-oriented filesystem., VSAM comprises four data set organizations: Key Sequenced Data Set (KSDS), Relative Record Data Set (RRDS), Entry Sequenced Data Set (ESDS) and Linear Data Set (LDS).

Distinguishing Skills

Any Mainframe Developer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• CA-7: Working experience of CA-7, which is a job scheduling / workflow automation software package sold by CA Technologies. It is commonly used by banks and other large enterprises with IBM mainframe IT computing platforms.
• IMS DB: Working experience of IMS DB. IMS stands for Information Management System. IMS database is used by high-level programming languages like COBOL to store data in hierarchical arrangement and access it.
• Syncsort: Syncsort Incorporated is a global software company specializing in Big Data, high speed sorting products, and data integration software and services, for Hadoop, Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux, and mainframe systems.
• SPUFI: SQL Processing Using File Input is a database facility invented by IBM for interfacing with their DB2 system.
• IBM MQSeries: Working experience of IBM MQSeries. IBM MQ is a family of network software products that IBM launched for the first time as an IBM product in December 1993. It was originally called MQSeries, and was renamed WebSphere MQ in 2002 to join the suite of WebSphere products. In April 2014, it was renamed IBM MQ.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Mainframe Developer
• Mainframe Programmer
• Senior Mainframe Developer
• Mainframe Programmer/Analyst
• Mainframe Developer - Csi-It

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Java Developer / Engineer
• Application Developer / Engineer
• .NET Developer / Engineer
• PL / SQL Developer
• Computer Programmer