Job Title: Mainframe zTPF Developer – Senior
Location: Quarterly travel required for PI Planning (Washington, D.C. or Wilmington, DE) (Need Local to NEC candidates only)
Skillset Summary
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
(Other duties may be assigned)
- Design, develop, maintain, and support complex IBM z/TPF applications written in High-Level Assembler (HLASM/ASM).
- Analyze, debug, and resolve complex production issues across multiple assembler modules, macros, utilities, and transaction-processing flows.
- Perform deep root-cause analysis of application, inventory, availability, reservation, and ticketing system issues.
- Troubleshoot z/TPF applications using IBM z/TPF Toolkit, debugger, and diagnostic utilities.
- Debug ECB (Entry Control Block) processing, registers, storage management, work areas, control blocks, masks, flags, and transaction execution flows.
- Analyze and maintain TPFDF record structures, ordinals, file retrieval/update logic, chain records, and database access paths.
- Investigate application behavior across multiple processing paths and identify functional differences within assembler-based business logic.
- Analyze assembler macros and trace underlying execution flows generated by macro expansion.
- Perform impact analysis and implement production-safe fixes for mission-critical applications.
- Conduct code reviews and provide technical guidance to development teams.
- Collaborate with architects, business analysts, and development teams to understand requirements and implement solutions.
- Create and maintain technical documentation, design specifications, debugging findings, and root-cause analysis reports.
- Support testing, deployment, production releases, and post-implementation validation activities.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 8+ years of hands-on experience with IBM z/TPF application development.
- 8+ years of High-Level Assembler (HLASM/ASM) programming experience.
- Strong experience developing, maintaining, and supporting enterprise transaction-processing applications in z/TPF environments.
- Expert-level debugging and troubleshooting experience in complex assembler applications.
- Hands-on experience with IBM z/TPF Toolkit, debugger, dump analysis, and diagnostic utilities.
- Strong experience with ECB (Entry Control Block) processing, ECB work areas, registers, storage management, and transaction execution flows.
- Strong experience analyzing and debugging assembler macros and tracing generated execution paths.
- Experience performing root-cause analysis across multiple assembler modules, utilities, services, and transaction-processing flows.
- Experience investigating and resolving complex production issues in mission-critical systems.
- Strong knowledge of inventory, reservation, availability, ticketing, transportation, airline, railroad, or similar transaction-processing applications.
- Experience working with z/TPF transaction-processing architecture and system internals.
- Experience analyzing application performance and implementing production-safe solutions.
- Proficiency with source-control and change-management tools such as Git, Jira, and related enterprise development tools.
- Experience supporting production releases, application deployments, and post-implementation validation.
- Strong analytical, troubleshooting, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills.
- Ability to independently investigate, trace, debug, and resolve complex issues spanning multiple assembler modules and processing paths.
- Experience working in Agile/Scrum development environments.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with transportation, logistics, reservation, inventory, availability, ticketing, or other transaction-processing systems.
- Knowledge of z/OS, TSO/ISPF, JCL, and related mainframe development tools.
- Experience with IBM z/TPF Toolkit, dump analysis, debugging utilities, and performance analysis tools.
- Experience working with TPFDF record structures, ordinals, file addressing, and chain record processing.
- Working knowledge of C programming language and C/Assembler integration in z/TPF environments.
- Experience analyzing and modernizing large legacy assembler code bases.
- Experience designing, troubleshooting, and optimizing high-volume transaction-processing applications.
