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Senior Mainframe Developer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Senior Manager, SW Engineering

Foster City, CA · On-site

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Life

  • Retirement

  • PTO

... Mainframe type systems.It is built as a modern distributed architecture based on micro services ... Senior DevOps leaders with significant experience in building cloud-based platforms either in ...

Technical Consulting Senior Project Manager

Irvine, CA · On-site

$118K - $162K/yr

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Retirement

  • PTO

The Senior Project Manager (SPM) drives and facilitates the successful planning, execution ... Mainframe Division, including Technical Consulting, Engineering, and Support or Development.

Technical Consulting Senior Project Manager

San Jose, CA · On-site

$129K - $177K/yr

  • Medical

  • Dental

  • Vision

  • Retirement

  • PTO

The Senior Project Manager (SPM) drives and facilitates the successful planning, execution ... Mainframe Division, including Technical Consulting, Engineering, and Support or Development.

Quality Specialist

Burbank, CA · On-site

$47K/yr

  • Retirement

  • PTO

Senior plc is an international, market-leading, engineering solutions provider with 19 operating ... Maintains and updates document release and configuration management system on mainframe computer.

Quality Specialist

Burbank, CA · On-site

$47K/yr

  • Retirement

  • PTO

Senior plc is an international, market-leading, engineering solutions provider with 19 operating ... Maintains and updates document release and configuration management system on mainframe computer.

IT Analyst

Palo Alto, CA · On-site

$80K - $100K/yr

A strong fit for an experienced developer or systems analyst who wants their code to have real ... software across mainframe, network, and client-server environments. * Senior-level scope ...

Showing results 41-60

Senior Mainframe Developer information

See California salary details

$37

$56

$65

How much do senior mainframe developer jobs pay per hour?

As of Aug 19, 2026, the average hourly pay for senior mainframe developer in California is $56.90, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $53.37 and $62.16 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a senior mainframe developer?

Senior Mainframe Developers are experienced professionals who design, develop, and maintain mainframe systems—large-scale computers used by organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing, and enterprise resource planning. They are proficient in languages like COBOL, JCL, and Assembler, and often work with databases and transaction processing systems. Their responsibilities include troubleshooting system issues, optimizing performance, mentoring junior developers, and ensuring the reliability and security of mainframe operations.

What are some common challenges faced by senior mainframe developers when integrating legacy systems with modern technologies?

Senior Mainframe Developers often encounter challenges when integrating legacy mainframe systems with newer technologies such as cloud platforms, APIs, or microservices. These challenges include ensuring data consistency, maintaining system security, and minimizing downtime during migrations. Collaboration with cross-functional teams, such as infrastructure engineers and application developers, is key to developing seamless integration solutions. Staying up-to-date with modernization tools and best practices can help address these complexities and support the organization's digital transformation goals.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a senior mainframe developer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Senior Mainframe Developer, you need deep expertise in mainframe programming languages (like COBOL, JCL, and PL/I), systems analysis, and a strong understanding of legacy application architectures, typically supported by a degree in computer science or related experience. Familiarity with tools such as IBM z/OS, DB2, CICS, and version control systems is essential, along with relevant certifications like IBM Certified System Programmer. Excellent problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills help you collaborate effectively and mentor junior developers. These skills are crucial for maintaining mission-critical systems, ensuring reliability, and guiding modernization efforts in complex enterprise environments.

What are the most commonly searched types of Mainframe Developer jobs in California?

The most popular types of Mainframe Developer jobs in California are:

What are popular job titles related to Senior Mainframe Developer jobs in California?

For Senior Mainframe Developer jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What job categories do people searching Senior Mainframe Developer jobs in California look for?

The top searched job categories for Senior Mainframe Developer jobs in California are:

What cities in California are hiring for Senior Mainframe Developer jobs?

Cities in California with the most Senior Mainframe Developer job openings:

Infographic showing various Senior Mainframe Developer job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 85% Full Time, 2% Part Time, and 13% Contract. Highlights an 80% Physical, 6% Hybrid, and 14% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $118,346 per year, or $56.9 per hour.

Senior Manager, SW Engineering

Visa

Foster City, CA • On-site

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Retirement, PTO

Re-posted 7 days ago


Visa rating

8.6

Company rating: 8.6 out of 10

Based on 20 frontline employees who took The Breakroom Quiz

5th of 21 rated payment service providers


Job description

About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale - tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters - to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Visa will accept applications for this role until at least 02-28-2027

Job Description

Open VisaNet, is the Next Generation VisaNet, will push the envelope of building highly scalable, secure, cost effective and distributed application on commodity hardware using best-in-class technology components. Open VisaNet is one of Visas Key initiatives that will help Visa support in-country processing solutions and provide Visa an opportunity to move away from Proprietary Mainframe type systems.It is built as a modern distributed architecture based on micro services with goals of five 9s availability, fault tolerance, horizontal scalability and real time latency for largest scale transaction processing. Open VisaNet leverages state of the art Open Software technologies to achieve these goals on commodity hardware, such as Go, Scala, Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, Docker, Kubernetes, Aerospike, Elasticsearch etc. and involves collaboration with exceptional group of software engineers, systems performance engineers, security specialists, DevOps engineers, payment experts, infrastructure and solution architects.

Visa is looking for a passionate Devops Engineering leader to lead engineers who are part of Open VisaNet, Visas Next generation payment processing platform developed on Open Systems, that would fuel growth in electronic payments globally and drive financial inclusion in many parts of the world.

Senior DevOps leaders with significant experience in building cloud-based platforms either in public or private cloud domains are preferred. We are looking for candidates who have strong technology foundation and previous hands-on design/coding skills for this role.

Responsibilities include:

  • Provide leadership and oversight to a team of software engineers building solutions and capabilities at scale and high engineering, quality standards & shift left security mindset.
  • Partner with internal and external stakeholders to understand business problems and then design and develop required solutions.
  • Provide technical thought leadership towards solving problems for the team.
  • Drive the adoption of key engineering best practices to improve quality and reliability of teams deliverables.
  • Responsible for keeping the team engaged, motivated and operating with a high execution velocity.
  • Responsible for coaching, managing & mentoring of direct reports.
  • Develop and nurture team of developers by motivating, mentoring, and assist in hiring critical talent.
  • Design, develop and evolve highly scalable and fault-tolerant distributed components and solutions using core DevSecOps principles.
  • Promote / evangelize GenAI adoption for developer productivity improvements across teams with relevant metrics. Develop all automation rails, as required, for measuring productivity.
  • Improve DevSecOps maturity in tools and processes and measure them using relevant metrics.
  • Design and build automated code deployment systems that simplify development work and make our work more consistent and predictable which includes CI/CD practices, pipelines and workflows, leveraging best-in-class CI/CD tools.
  • Lead developer productivity projects in the areas of automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery / deployment, continuous observabilityand release engineering.
  • Championing & driving application, infrastructure security efforts. Understand and own component security analysis, including code and data flow review. Collaborate with security team to implement and verify secure coding techniques. Championing & driving application, infrastructure & enterprise security efforts, certificate management etc.
  • Work closely with Operations & Infrastructure teams, developers and other stakeholders for cross-functional development activities.
  • Responsible for the stability and high availability of both production and lower environments.
  • Design and implement APIs, abstractions and integration patterns to solve Continuous integration, continuous testing, continuous deployment problems
  • Responsible for deploying code and other proactive maintenance activities to keep the services up and running.

Visa requires at least 3 days in office, expectations of these days will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

  • 8 or more years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor Degree or at least 5 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 2 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications:

  • 9 or more years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor Degree or 7 or more relevant years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 3 or more years of experience with a PhD
  • 12 years IT experience with 3 years people management in the area of DevSecOps.
  • Experience in implementing DevOps practices and tools to drive environment automation
  • Hands-on experience in managing enterprise class production systems in public or private cloud environments with Docker and Kubernetes required
  • Strong knowledge of working with DevOps design patterns, processes and best practices
  • Working familiarity with the entire software development lifecycle including version control, build process, testing, and code release.
  • Demonstrated hands-on experience with DevOps techniques building continuous integration solutions using Jenkins, Docker, Git, Maven
  • Understanding of self-healing/immutable microservice based architectures, cloud platforms, clustering models, networking technologies required.
  • Experience with distributed database, distributed computing and high frequency transactions is a big plus.
  • Hands on, deep expertise in at least one programming language required, Java or Golang preferred
  • Must be proficient in one or more scripting languages: Unix Shell (bash, ksh), Python, Jenkins/Groovy, Go or similar.
  • Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills. A demonstrated ability to effectively communicate technical and business issues and solutions to multiple organizational levels internally and externally.
  • Working experience in cloud computing, PaaS, IaaS, and related areas are highly desirable
  • Hands-on experience in Splunk, Sysdig, Elasticsearch, Prometheus, Grafana etc. is a big plus.
  • Experience with operating system internals, file systems, disk/storage and networking protocols.
  • Previous experience with financial services or payments processing domain is an advantage


    Information for US Applicants

    For roles located in the US, the estimated salary range for this position is $180,600.00 to $ 289,300.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity.Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.

    Work Hours

    Varies upon the needs of the department.

    Travel Requirements

    This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

    Mental/Physical Requirements

    This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

    Visa is an EEO Employer

    Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protect veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

    What Visa employees say

    Pay

    Benefits

    Hours and flexibility

    Workplace

    Get the full story on Breakroom


    Visa logo

    About Visa

    Sourced by ZipRecruiter

    Visa is a global leader in digital payments, facilitating over 215 billion transactions annually across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through an innovative, reliable, and secure payments network, empowering individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive. When you become a part of Visa, you join a purpose-driven culture that values growth, embraces diversity, and recognizes the significance of your contributions. We believe in creating inclusive economies that uplift everyone, everywhere. Your work at Visa will directly impact billions of people worldwide, enabling access to financial services and shaping the future of money movement.

    Industry

    Finance and insurance

    Company size

    10,000+ Employees

    Headquarters location

    San Francisco, CA, US

    Year founded

    1958