Lead Software Engineer - Mainframe (Banking)

Location: Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Salary: $116,400.00–$194,000.00 annual, USD

Company

M&T Bank is a banking organization focused on stable, resilient, secure, and modern technology platforms.

What you will do

• Lead technical design, development, enhancement, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and production support for critical mainframe applications across batch and online processing.
• Own technical decisions, delivery quality, operational readiness, production stability, and risk remediation for assigned mainframe platforms, applications, and workstreams.
• Review solution designs, requirements, code changes, testing approaches, deployment readiness, source control practices, and change management execution.
• Drive modernization through API enablement, data integration, DevOps adoption, technical debt reduction, incremental refactoring, resiliency improvements, and automation.
• Partner with business, product, architecture, infrastructure, security, operations, risk, audit, and technology teams to resolve technical blockers and improve engineering processes.
• Coach engineers, document technical decisions and operational procedures, and communicate architecture, risks, progress, and production challenges to stakeholders.

Requirements

• Associate’s degree with at least 7 years of systems analysis or application development experience, or bachelor’s degree with at least 5 years of relevant experience; equivalent experience may be considered.
• Expert mainframe software engineering and application development experience, including IBM z/OS, COBOL, CICS, JCL, VSAM, DB2 for z/OS, TSO/ISPF, SDSF, and Easytrieve+.
• Expert proficiency in at least one relevant programming language and professional proficiency in at least one additional relevant programming language.
• Experience with GitLab or similar tools, source control, change management, CI/CD pipelines, mainframe debugging, batch scheduling, and enterprise integration.
• Experience leading technical initiatives or engineering workstreams, reviewing designs and implementation plans, and influencing decisions without direct authority.
• Strong knowledge of SDLC, testing, deployment, resiliency, security, production support, regulatory controls, and operational risk practices.

Nice to have

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• Experience with z/OS Connect, ZDIH, API enablement, event or data integration, mainframe modernization, and technical debt reduction.
• Experience with automated testing, CI/CD, mainframe DevOps, AI-assisted engineering tools, and production stability improvements.
• Experience working in Agile delivery frameworks and presenting to technology and business stakeholders.

Culture & Benefits

• Work is governed by banking technology standards, SDLC processes, security controls, risk policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Focus on belonging, continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and collaboration across organizational boundaries.
• Market-informed compensation is based on the candidate’s knowledge, skills, and experience.