ThoughtWorks

The Service Specialist for Mainframe Modernization in Germany is a senior subject matter expert responsible for technical excellence, solution integrity, and asset development within the service line. This hands-on role supports high-impact client engagements, contributes to pre-sales and solution design, and ensures the regional adoption and evolution of service-specific delivery frameworks, tools, and best practices. The Service Specialist brings deep expertise in Legacy Modernization as well as Mainframe Modernization, serving as a trusted technical advisor to both clients and internal teams. This role is key to ensuring delivery quality, enabling service adoption, and evolving the technical maturity of the offering.

Job responsibilities

• Contribute technical leadership in solution shaping, proposals, and pursuit support.
• Validate delivery feasibility, architecture, tooling, and resourcing during pre-sales.
• Work with Solution Strategists, Service leads to ensure technical alignment with the offering’s value proposition.
• Act as a bridge between delivery teams and global service development to improve service assets and positioning.
• Capture real-world challenges and innovations from engagements to shape the evolution of the offering.
• Stay current with emerging tools, methods, and trends relevant to the Mainframe Modernization domain.
• Mentor engineers, architects, and consultants within the service domain.
• Support training, onboarding, and hands-on skill development to deepen regional capability.
• Share knowledge through internal enablement sessions, demos, and thought leadership.
• Provide deep technical guidance across strategic Mainframe Modernization engagements.

Job qualifications

Technical Skills

• Mainframe technologies such as COBOL, JCL, CICS, Eztrieve, DB2 for z/OS, Assembler, PL/I, IMS, Rexx, GDGs, and VSAM, common utilities, schedulers.
• Balanced by experience in modern technologies [and mapping of mainframe paradigms tp] likeOO languages [java or c#], Document stores, distributed service architectures, streaming, awareness of cloud native architectures, IaC.
• Experience being a technical lead executing phase wise mainframe migration efforts from conception to delivery.
• Experience with 2-3 Rs to migrate mainframe workloads with 2-3 Rs.
• Engineering Rigor – Strong grasp of software or platform design principles, architecture patterns, and toolchains.
• Advisory Communication – Able to translate technical insight into business impact and actionable delivery decisions.
• Collaboration & Mentorship – Experienced in guiding teams, mentoring peers, and supporting cross-functional initiatives.
• Solution Orientation – Skilled at framing problems, proposing fit-for-purpose solutions, and adapting accelerators to client context.
• Asset Contribution – Committed to building and improving the service’s reusable IP and delivery accelerators.
• Contribute to the development and refinement of service accelerators, reference architectures, and delivery playbooks.

Professional Skills

• 10+ years in software engineering, platform delivery, or technical consulting roles, Most experience in complex legacy modernization.
• 2-3 years in a subject matter expert or senior technical advisory role within Mainframe Modernization.
• Experience supporting solution design and technical delivery in complex enterprise environments.
• Proven ability to build, extend, and support delivery tools, frameworks, and reusable assets.
• Promote and support the reuse of service-specific assets across the region.
• Identify opportunities to modularize and codify reusable components from client work.
• Support delivery teams in solving complex client problems using service-aligned approaches.
• Ensure that service-specific delivery frameworks, methods, and tools are applied consistently and effectively.
• Technical quality and consistency across service-led engagements.
• Adoption and reuse of service-specific tools, frameworks, and accelerators.

Other things to know

Learning & Development

There is no one-size-fits-all career path at Thoughtworks: however you want to develop your career is entirely up to you. But we also balance autonomy with the strength of our cultivation culture. This means your career is supported by interactive tools, numerous development programs and teammates who want to help you grow. We see value in helping each other be our best and that extends to empowering our employees in their career journeys.

About Thoughtworks

Thoughtworks is a dynamic and inclusive community of bright and supportive colleagues who are revolutionizing tech. As a leading technology consultancy, we’re pushing boundaries through our purposeful and impactful work. For 30+ years, we’ve delivered extraordinary impact together with our clients by helping them solve complex business problems with technology as the differentiator. Bring your brilliant expertise and commitment for continuous learning to Thoughtworks. Together, let’s be extraordinary.

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