Sr Engineer - COBOL

About this role

As a Sr COBOL Software Engineer, you will be considered a technical expert in one or more phases of application and/or systems engineering. This role supports Thrivent’s Annuity Policy Servicing & Maintenance (APSM) product area and focuses on the design, development, modernization, and support of business-critical annuity policy administration solutions. You will provide technical leadership for COBOL-based enterprise applications and mainframe technologies, partnering with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to deliver stable, scalable, and reliable servicing capabilities. The ideal candidate brings strong experience developing, enhancing, and supporting complex business processing systems, insurance policy administration platforms, and mission-critical production environments. Experience with DXC insurance platforms and products, including wmA, is highly desirable.          

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES: 

Designing Solutions • Apply technical knowledge to drive outcomes for customers  • Ability to work and problem solve independently on initiatives that align to the broader software engineering strategy

Developing Software • Works independently and collaboratively with the team to develop core software solutions that deliver business outcomes • Consistently delivers software that meets or exceeds team expectations for stability, scalability, resilience, and maintainability • Design, develop, maintain, and support COBOL applications that enable annuity servicing, policy maintenance, and policy administration capabilities • Analyze business requirements, system behavior, and production issues to deliver reliable software solutions for complex policy administration processes • Support modernization efforts by helping integrate mainframe applications with APIs, data services, event-driven patterns, and other distributed technologies

Learning and Applying New Techniques • Shares new ideas and techniques with team; Encourages junior engineers to invest in learning as a part of their job

Collaborating within the Team • Participate in team’s collaboration sessions to provide technical expertise to solve a problem/remove technical roadblock for the team • Participate in product planning and implementation. Helps team to understand and decompose work

Defining Engineering Standards and Patterns • Contribute to develop engineering practices, templates and frameworks in collaboration with the team

DevOps • Continuously assessing technology to build more stable, scalable, and resilient software; Use data to measure progress • Promote and expand on the use of the CI/CD pipeline to improve the deployment and build process • Participates in the team support rotation and provides expert knowledge on focus subsystems

Selecting & Managing Technology Vendors • Contribute to define the selection criteria for selecting the right technology vendors • Participate in proof of concept / technology along with the vendor

Coaching Engineers • Provide training, mentoring, technical guidance, and domain expertise to junior engineers to accelerate their growth and effectiveness • Provide technical expertise and help the team to solve technical/software issues • Provide domain expertise on software products in their area to junior engineers to help them learn/grow their skills and contribute as part of the team

Recruiting/Building Talent • Engage in the tech community to build the Thrivent technology brand and position as the employer of choice in the market • Participate in the interview process or be part of the panel to recruit the right talent to the team • Contribute to the recruitment to define the structure of the interview process to hire the right talent to the team. • Models Thrivent’s leadership competencies – courage, collaboration, and commitment by demonstrating resiliency, working together to make the best decisions, and holding yourself and others accountable.  ​ • Supports and/or develops an environment in which Thrivent employees and colleagues are focused on continuous improvement, exceptional employee engagement, and an unwavering commitment to our clients.  Shapes and/or supports a culture that represents the Thrivent purpose, promise and values, ensuring that Thrivent’s trust and reputation remain strong with its clients.  

​ QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:  

 Required: • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience • 7+ years of experience in engineering environments, taking abstract concepts and ideas and formulating a detailed software engineering plan to deliver  • 7+ years of experience developing and supporting COBOL-based applications in enterprise environments • Experience working with mainframe technologies including JCL, CICS, DB2, VSAM, and batch processing • Sound knowledge of industry standard Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) practices  • Sound knowledge of version and revision control practices and procedures   • Sound knowledge of systems design concepts that provide security and stability    • Expertise in debugging code and/or complex log files for troubleshooting and analysis of product defects  • Expert knowledge/experience with querying databases for complex data lookup/update  • Perform code reviews with associate team members  • Ability to analyze business requirements and translate them into technical solutions

 Preferred:  • Financial Services industry experience  • Experience in the life insurance or annuity industry • Experience supporting policy administration systems • Experience with DXC insurance platforms, including wmA or related products • Knowledge of annuity contract servicing, payouts, policy maintenance, and policy administration operations • Experience working with hybrid mainframe and distributed architectures, including APIs, event-driven integration patterns, and cloud-enabled solutions.

• Experience working in Agile and iterative software delivery environments

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