Job Description & Details
This is a heavy-duty legacy modernization contract centered around New Jersey Treasury systems like STAY NJ and ANCHOR. You will be knee-deep in COBOL, NATURAL, and JCL, keeping critical state tax systems running while helping bridge the gap to modern architectures.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
You will spend your days dissecting aging codebases, writing batch and online programs, and fixing production abends before they cascade. Much of the role involves legacy support, digging through ADABAS databases, and documenting existing workflows so modernization teams can safely migrate or integrate data without breaking state operations.
The Core Tech Stack
Absolute mastery of COBOL, JCL, and NATURAL/ADABAS is non-negotiable here. You need solid experience with TSO/ISPF and mainframe utilities to navigate and debug batch jobs, plus familiarity with AFP and related print/formatting tools since you're working directly on high-volume government output systems.
Interview Expectations
Expect the hiring manager to hand you a broken JCL job or a gnarly COBOL snippet and ask you to trace the abend or root cause on the spot. They want to see how methodically you reason through legacy logic and data access methods without modern IDE safety nets.
Application Advice
Make sure your resume screams enterprise mainframe experience with explicit numbers matching their requirements—highlighting your exact years working with COBOL, JCL, and NATURAL. Don't hide your location; since this requires a hybrid setup in Trenton, clearly state your current city and state right at the top to clear the initial screening hurdle.