COBOL Experts in Switzerland
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Meet FRATCH Experts in Switzerland, who have recently used COBOL
Max R.
Last position:
Senior ICT Solution Architect at ewb, Energy, Water
- Clarifying and discussing technical requirements and coordinating with the team
- Contributing to the objectives of the Digital Transformation Services unit and implementing them
- Analyzing, specifying, updating and delivering architecture models to implement digital solutions in line with business, data infrastructure and requirements
- Selecting suitable technical options for application design, considering interoperability, reversibility, scalability, usability, accessibility and security, and optimizing the cost/quality ratio
- Creating and maintaining concept documents, architecture models and other technical documentation
- Reviewing services to be provided and other documents for solution development
- Collaborating with the IT enterprise architect, business analyst, project manager, developers, testers and process owner on the design and documentation of technical specifications for new developments and enhancements
- Communicating concepts to relevant stakeholders and supporting them
- Participating in enterprise architecture activities and ensuring compliance with principles, standards and guidelines
- Monitoring compliance with defined designs at application, solution and enterprise levels
- Developing and testing existing and new solutions as required
- Supporting and guiding development teams in implementing new projects or maintaining existing products, taking on the product manager role if required
- Establishing and ensuring best practices in implementation, documentation, testing and packaging for distribution
- Contributing to the handling of reported incidents and requests assigned to third-level support, and following up as required
Hanspeter J.
Last position:
Lead Consultant Salesforce DACH at DXC Technology
- Recording, validating and coordinating customer requirements
- Analyzing commercial processes at customers, as well as designing and implementing solution designs in Salesforce
- Designing and developing Salesforce architectures based on Sales and Service Cloud
- Maintaining and expanding own competence in order to know the new functions of Salesforce
- Taking an active role in the pre-sales phase and working closely with the sales and pre-sales teams
- Building and consolidating maturity within the team in new topics
- Actively helping to define and align own role within the DXC Best Practice
- MC Growth implementation
- AI Agentforce Agents Builder
- Agent Designer with elements.cloud
- Salesforce ORG assessments
- Process configuration mining
- Single point of contact for SFDC contacts global
- Project coordination with the EMEA and global head
- Proposal presales work with Salesforce AE and client partners for global accounts
Detlef W.
Last position:
Sourcing Manager at BEDAG Informatik AG
- Solely responsible for managing procurement operations
- WTO tenders in an open procedure
- Invitation process
- Direct call-offs and mini-tenders from framework contracts
- Simap.ch, SuisseOffer.ch, Confluence, Jira, Microsoft 365 applications
Frank G.
Last position:
Project Lead at Flamingo Med Solutions
- Led the founding of a startup for AI-based consulting products for dental practices.
- Developed and launched PraxisScore, a data-driven consulting product for economic analysis and corporate consulting of dental practices.
- Held full responsibility for technical implementation, AI integration, and structured startup setup from product idea to public launch at IDS 2025 in under three months.
Alexander S.
Last position:
IT Manager & Architectural Draftsman at Architektur Jürg Gasser
Design, operation, and further development of a stable IT environment to ensure smooth CAD and planning operations.
Implement structured backup and data protection concepts to reduce operational risks and safeguard business-critical data.
Optimize and secure the web and server infrastructure in a LAMP environment to increase stability, security, and availability.
Ensure reliable operation of Microsoft 365 and Exchange services for daily business operations.
Combine technical infrastructure expertise with domain experience in architecture and CAD.
Stefan L.
Last position:
Senior Manager, Project Manager, Auditor and Consultant at Laager Consulting GmbH
Many years of experience in application development, ICT infrastructures, systems management, hardware and software, telecommunications, ICT strategies, business models, database management, data center consolidations, support and call center setup
Since 1999 independent consultant and project manager: ICT strategies and governance, processes, audits, security, infrastructure (including cloud, DevOps and tools), data and output management, organizational restructurings, business project management and consulting in various industries
Generalist with analytical skills, strong communicator at all hierarchy levels, deployable as manager, coach, project manager or consultant
Michael T.
Last position:
Senior Consultant, Developer, Business Analyst at Swiss Army, Federal Office for Informatics
- Maintained PeopleSoft HCM 9.2/Tools 9.59.08 for batch and interface programs
- Used Application Designer, Application Engine/Packages, PeopleCode
- Developed BI/Excel reporting and proof of concept
- Performed business analysis, SQL reports and documentation
Beat Z.
Last position:
SAP Test Manager at E.ON Grid Solutions GmbH
- Responsible for IT integration test and user acceptance test for SAP S/4 Hana and BDO BO Customer Financials Management
- Led the test team (business testers and IT testers)
- Resource planning and control within the test team
- Created test concepts and test plans
- Performed test risk analysis
- Coordinated test execution and defect tracking
- Ensured test progress
- Generated and visualized reports
- Summarized test reports and reported to management
- Prepared and conducted user acceptance tests
- Managed SIGMA and JIRA/Confluence at project level
Christoph W.
Last position:
System Architect / System Engineer / Programmer at Deutsche Vermögensberatung (DVAG)
- Create requirements for the modularization of the promotion forecast.
- Set up and expand the various competitions for 2024.
- Customize and test the CICS dialog.
- Create various reports for the department using SQL.
- Implement and test new requirements in batch processes with IWS.
- Update documentation for the new requirements.
- Provide on-call support for daily and monthly production.
- Technologies used: SCRUM, Jira, Confluence, Windows 11, Unix, Enterprise Developer, z/OS, GIT, Mineral, Moped, IWS/TWS, JES, COBOL, CICS, DB2, SQL, Rocket, FortiClient, Citrix.
Karl E.
Last position:
incl. CI/CD, automation at AALS Software AG
- Designed and delivered a practical real-time course on Flink and Hadoop with MapReduce, HDFS, Spark, Flink, Hive, HBase, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Kafka
- Gained extensive DevOps and CI/CD experience
- Created ETL/ELT pipelines with Apache tools and Pentaho
- Led projects in municipal software, financial services, and big data with Kafka
- Developed AI/NLP models and chatbots with RASA, Chatter, and Dialogflow
- Built and managed a TypeDB knowledge database
- Worked with OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Podman
Richard W.
Last position:
Freelance Developer at Freelance Developer
- Refactoring and bug fixing for Vibe Code
Discover over 15,000 top freelancers
Statistics of experts using COBOL
Aggregated from the professional profiles of matched freelancers.
Experience
32 years
Position duration
4.3 years
Positions per freelancer
16
Top business areas
Information Technology, Product Development, Business Intelligence
Top industries
Information Technology, Banking and Finance, Manufacturing
Certification focus areas
Information Technology, Project Management, Quality Assurance
Bachelor's degree or higher
43%
Master's degree or higher
29%
Certifications per freelancer
4
Most common languages
German, English, French
Speak two or more languages
82%
Based on our profile pool as of 29 Oct 2026.
Daily rate distribution
The chart shows how the daily rates of experts in this technology in Switzerland are distributed, based on recent contracts on our platform. Each bar covers a rate range — its height shows the share of experts charging within that range.
Average rates of experts in Switzerland using COBOL
Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.
The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.
The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.
Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 29 Oct 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
COBOL experts industry focus
See which industries our matched freelancers work in most often — every figure is calculated live from the freelancers on FRATCH.
- Information Technology (100%)
- Banking and Finance (82%)
- Manufacturing (73%)
- Government and Administration (73%)
- Professional Services (64%)
- Retail (55%)
- Energy (45%)
- Healthcare (45%)
Please note that freelancers can work across multiple industries, so percentages overlap.
About the technology
Core role
COBOL is a compiled programming language built for dependable business processing. It remains central to mainframe applications that handle high-volume transactions, records and scheduled workloads. Companies rely on it for systems where consistency, auditability and long operational life matter.
Where it runs
COBOL is strongly associated with IBM z/OS and mainframe environments, but it also runs on platforms such as Unix, Linux and Windows through commercial and open-source implementations. Common work includes batch jobs, online transaction processing, file handling, database access and integration with enterprise middleware.
Ecosystem and tooling
Professionals work with JCL, CICS, IMS, DB2 and VSAM, depending on the host environment. They may use ISPF, TSO, change-management tools and automated testing suites. Modern delivery often adds Git-based workflows, CI pipelines, APIs, Java services and secure data interfaces around established COBOL code.
Typical assignments
- Maintain and extend financial, insurance and public-sector systems
- Analyse legacy code, batch flows and data dependencies
- Convert file-based interfaces into service or API integrations
- Refactor workloads while protecting transaction behaviour
- Support migrations, upgrades and mainframe releases
In Switzerland, COBOL expertise is relevant to organisations operating long-lived banking, insurance and administration systems. Remote collaboration can work well for code analysis and delivery, while access-controlled environments or release coordination may require on-site work.
When specialists help
- A key system depends on undocumented code or scarce internal knowledge
- A release needs careful impact analysis across jobs and interfaces
- A platform migration must preserve data and processing rules
- A team needs support during a maintenance or modernisation programme
Freelance specialists add focused capacity without disrupting the team responsible for daily operations. They can document behaviour, isolate risk, improve test coverage and transfer practical knowledge to permanent staff.
What strong experts bring
Strong COBOL experts read unfamiliar programs systematically and understand how source code, copybooks, JCL, databases and transaction monitors interact. They protect business rules before changing structure, test edge cases and explain technical risk in clear terms. Experience with production support, debugging and controlled releases is as important as writing new code.
The best fit also depends on the surrounding stack. Look for familiarity with the relevant mainframe operating system, data stores, security controls, scheduling tools and integration patterns. A specialist who can connect legacy constraints with modern delivery practices is well placed to improve a critical system without treating replacement as the only answer.
Frequently asked questions
Everything clients usually want to know about COBOL, in one place.
COBOL is mainly used for transaction processing, batch workloads and record management in banking, insurance, government and other data-intensive environments. It supports systems that calculate balances, process claims, manage accounts and produce regulated reports.
COBOL is less commonly chosen for new general-purpose applications than Java, C# or Python, but it remains valuable where established mainframe systems carry complex business rules. Replacing it can introduce migration risk, so many companies modernize interfaces and workflows around the existing core.
A strong COBOL specialist often knows JCL, CICS, DB2, IMS, VSAM and the relevant mainframe operating system. API integration, batch scheduling, Git workflows, automated testing and secure data handling are also useful for modernization work.
The right COBOL experience depends on the system's complexity, release risk and documentation quality. Maintenance of a contained batch process may need a different profile from a specialist changing transaction logic across CICS, DB2 and several connected applications.
COBOL work can often be completed remotely when secure access, documentation and release procedures are in place. On-site collaboration may still be useful for controlled mainframe environments, workshops with Swiss stakeholders or handover of operational knowledge.
A COBOL system may be a good candidate for incremental modernization when its business rules are reliable but its interfaces, testing or documentation limit change. Specialists can assess dependencies and expose services before a company decides whether deeper refactoring or replacement is justified.
Ask a COBOL freelancer to explain how they trace a business rule through source programs, copybooks, JCL and data stores. Review their approach to regression testing, production debugging, documentation and controlled releases rather than judging only by familiarity with syntax.
COBOL assignments often involve long-lived code, limited documentation, strict change controls and dependencies outside the source program. Successful freelancers communicate carefully, learn the host environment quickly and preserve existing behaviour while making improvements that can be verified.
The average hourly rate of freelancers in Switzerland who have used COBOL in their recent projects is 110 €, which corresponds to a daily rate of about 880 € based on an 8-hour working day.
Of the freelancers in Switzerland who have used COBOL in their recent projects, 43% hold at least a Bachelor's degree and 29% hold at least a Master's degree.
On average, freelancers in Switzerland who have used COBOL in their recent projects have 32 years of professional experience, with a single engagement typically lasting around 4.3 years.
The most common languages among freelancers in Switzerland who have used COBOL in their recent projects are German (100%), English (82%), and French (45%).
The most common industries among freelancers in Switzerland who have used COBOL in their recent projects are Information Technology (100%), Banking and Finance (82%), and Manufacturing (73%).
The most common business areas among freelancers in Switzerland who have used COBOL in their recent projects are Information Technology (100%), Product Development (91%), and Business Intelligence (73%).
Main locations of FRATCH Experts, who have recently used COBOL
Our freelancers and interim experts are at home across the DACH region — available on-site in the major business hubs or fully remote. Choose a location to discover matched specialists, local market insights and up-to-date availability.
Countries:
Zurich Geneva Basel Bern Request a free demo
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Philipp Thomaschewski
FRATCH CEO
