Senior Manager, Mainframe Infrastructure

Charles Schwab Inc.•Southlake, TX

1d•$180,000 - $230,300

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Mainframe Infrastructure is a people leader responsible for a team of Mainframe Engineers and Infrastructure Specialists who support Schwab’s critical enterprise mainframe platforms. The role focuses on building an engaged, capable, and resilient team; setting priorities; removing barriers; and ensuring work is delivered safely, reliably, and in alignment with business needs. A working knowledge of enterprise mainframe environments is needed to understand team work, ask effective questions, recognize risk, and support sound decisions; deep hands-on engineering expertise is not required. The leader promotes accountability, inclusion, collaboration, continuous learning, and continuous improvement. They partner with engineering leaders, Architecture, Security, Application Development, Enterprise Operations, Audit, Risk, business stakeholders, and external service providers to maintain platform stability while strengthening workforce capability and readiness. Responsibilities span people and talent development, operational execution, platform oversight, risk and compliance, financial and vendor management, and stakeholder communication. The role is also eligible for bonus or incentive opportunities.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
8+ years of experience in technology, infrastructure, operations, engineering, or a related enterprise environment.
5+ years of direct people-leadership experience, including coaching, performance management, talent development, hiring, and organizational planning.
Demonstrated success leading teams responsible for critical, highly available technology services.
Working knowledge of enterprise mainframe environments and operational practices; deep hands-on engineering expertise is not required.
Experience leading through incidents, organizational change, competing priorities, and complex cross-functional dependencies.
Experience with workforce planning, succession planning, knowledge-transfer risk, and employee development.
Experience managing vendors, service providers, budgets, or technology investments.
Strong understanding of risk management, controls, audit, security, and operational resiliency in a regulated enterprise environment.
Excellent written, verbal, and executive communication skills, including the ability to translate technical and operational issues into business impact and decisions.
Ability to influence outcomes, build trust, and create accountability across multiple organizations and levels.

Nice To Haves

People-leadership experience in financial services, another regulated industry, or a large-scale enterprise technology organization.
General familiarity with IBM zSystems, z/OS, mainframe storage, networking, capacity, resiliency, or infrastructure lifecycle concepts.
Experience leading distributed, remote, hybrid, or multi-location teams.
Experience with outsourced services, managed service providers, staff augmentation, or strategic sourcing models.
Experience sponsoring modernization, automation, process improvement, or operating-model transformation initiatives.
Leadership, ITIL, PMP, Agile, or other relevant professional training or certification.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, mentor, and develop Mainframe Engineers and Infrastructure Specialists, supporting engagement, accountability, teamwork, and professional growth.
Create an inclusive team environment and establish goals, roles, priorities, and performance expectations; provide timely feedback and regular career-development conversations.
Build individual development plans and lead talent acquisition, onboarding, workforce planning, succession planning, knowledge transfer, and retention strategies.
Identify skill and capacity risks and develop plans using internal development, hiring, contractors, vendors, or managed services as appropriate.
Address performance, behavior, workload, and team-health concerns promptly, fairly, and consistently.
Translate business and technology priorities into team objectives, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.
Ensure appropriate ownership, staffing, escalation paths, and management attention for reliable and secure mainframe operations.
Lead coordination during significant incidents, production events, recovery exercises, and critical business processing periods.
Promote disciplined incident, problem, change, capacity, and service-management practices; use metrics, risk indicators, employee feedback, and service outcomes to drive improvement.
Ensure commitments, decisions, dependencies, and corrective actions are documented, owned, and completed.
Maintain working knowledge of IBM zSystems and related infrastructure to understand responsibilities, evaluate business impact, recognize risks, and engage subject-matter experts.
Set decision frameworks, priorities, escalations, and accountability while relying on technical leads and engineers for deep technical analysis.
Sponsor platform lifecycle, resiliency, automation, capacity, modernization, and operational-improvement initiatives.
Promote technical knowledge sharing and reduce dependency on individual experts through documentation, cross-training, and succession planning.
Ensure the team meets security, risk, audit, regulatory, and control expectations; oversee follow-through for audit requests, controls, risk remediation, access governance, resiliency, and disaster recovery readiness.
Escalate material risks and resource constraints with business context, impacts, options, and recommendations, and partner with control functions to resolve issues.
Manage budgets, workforce investments, vendor relationships, software renewals, hardware maintenance, and service-provider engagements within established governance.
Participate in business-case development, investment planning, sourcing decisions, and contract discussions; hold vendors accountable for outcomes, service quality, transparency, and issue resolution.
Build partnerships across technical, operational, control, business, finance, procurement, and executive groups.
Communicate priorities, progress, operational health, workforce risks, and investment needs in clear business language.
Facilitate cross-team decisions and ensure alignment on ownership, timing, risk, and expected outcomes; represent the team with senior leaders and create visibility and development opportunities for employees and technical leads.