Gerald W. Ostrander
Programmer, Mainframe Cobol Modernization
Des Moines, IA · (515) 555 0139 · name@example.com · linkedin.com/in/geraldwostrander
Key Qualifications
EXPERIENCE
Nine years of Cobol programming in life insurance, three on a modernization program
INDUSTRIES
Life and annuity insurer with 1.9 million policies and a 3.4 million line Cobol policy system
SPECIALTIES
Batch cycle rewrite, module retirement, web service exposure, nightly cycle support, test data
SYSTEMS
Enterprise Cobol, DB2, indexed files, job control language, Micro Focus, Endevor, Java, Kafka
CREDENTIALS
Mainframe practitioner and Cobol programming badges from the platform vendor
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems, Raccoon River State University
Executive Summary
Mainframe programmer with nine years in life and annuity insurance, working on a policy administration system of about 3.4 million lines of Cobol that serves 1.9 million policies. Spent the last three years on the modernization program, rewriting batch cycles, exposing policy data to web services and retiring modules one at a time without breaking the nightly cycle. One of four people at the company who can read the oldest code.
Signature Achievements
- Cut the nightly policy batch cycle from six hours 40 minutes to three hours 15 minutes by restructuring 22 Cobol programs and their sort steps.
- Retired 310 dead Cobol programs, about 9 percent of the code base, after tracing every job and call path over four months.
- Exposed policy values and beneficiary data to the customer portal through web services, removing a 24 hour data lag.
- Carried the nightly cycle on call for seven years with no cycle missed before the 6 a.m. online start.
- Built a test data generator that gave the modernization team 50,000 masked policies instead of production copies.
- Trained six Java developers to read Cobol well enough to write conversion specifications.
Professional Experience
Senior Programmer, Policy Modernization
Prairie Mutual Life, Des Moines, IA January 2023 to present
Modernization program for a 3.4 million line Cobol policy administration system; team of twelve mainframe and Java developers
- Rewrite batch cycle programs in Enterprise Cobol to remove dead logic, reduce input and output passes and shorten the nightly window.
- Expose policy, premium and beneficiary data to web services so the customer portal and Java services read current values.
- Trace job control language, program calls and file usage to prove a module is dead before retiring it.
- Publish policy change events to Kafka from the mainframe so downstream systems no longer wait for nightly extracts.
- Write conversion specifications and review the Java rewrites of retired Cobol modules.
Programmer Analyst, Policy Administration
Prairie Mutual Life, Des Moines, IA August 2017 to January 2023
Maintenance and enhancement of the Cobol policy system for 1.9 million policies
- Built and fixed Cobol programs for premium billing, policy loans and annuity payouts against DB2 tables and indexed files.
- Carried the nightly batch cycle on call and resolved abends before the morning online start.
- Wrote job control language for new batch jobs and managed promotions through Endevor.
- Delivered the yearly regulatory rate and tax table changes on the required dates.
Certifications and Training
Mainframe practitioner and Cobol programming badges from the platform vendor, earned 2018 and 2019
Micro Focus Enterprise Developer training, completed 2023
Confluent fundamentals for Apache Kafka, completed 2024
Education
Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems, Raccoon River State University, Des Moines, 2017
Core Skills
Enterprise Cobol · Batch cycle optimization · DB2 and indexed files · Job control language · Dead code retirement · Web service exposure · Endevor promotions · Abend resolution · Test data masking · Conversion specifications