Andre Schreiber grew up believing he'd be an IT professional, working on Windows Server and "stuff like that."

At 27, he is now a CICS mainframe programmer on System z.

Schreiber and his friends all knew about Microsoft Windows, but the mainframe was completely new to him and the first time he used a mainframe "it was clear I wanted to do something with the mainframe," he said.

Schreiber, a system programmer at Sparda-Datenverarbeitung, the IT service provider for Sparda Bank Group in Nuremberg, Germany, is the type of IT pro that IBM, maker of System z, wants to get interested in mainframes as one generation retires and the next generation takes over -- slowly.

"We saw this coming about 10 to 12 years ago," said Christy-Joy Schroeder, IBM worldwide z systems client skills leader. The company has implemented what she called an "academic initiative" to support development of z skills, by hosting hands-on labs and workshops, becoming partners with colleges and universities to establish curriculum around z skills and steering users to global training providers, among other things.

Part of IBM's efforts to encourage z skills has been the "Master the Mainframe" contest that attracts 11,000 participants from 70 countries, ranging from middle- and high-school students to Girl Scouts and 4-H members. No mainframe programmer experience or skills are needed to enter the three-stage contest, with winners welcomed to Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to tour the System z test floor and manufacturing facility and talk to IBM executives.

"It is about getting an awareness that the mainframe exists and building those skills," Schroeder said.

IBM has a vested interest in the survival of the mainframe and mainframe programmer, of course -- but some of the country's largest businesses run critical applications on mainframes, and without IBM's help the search for young talent would likely be difficult.

"A lot of the schools we work with have 100% placement before the students have even graduated," Schroeder said. "These kids get picked up by major clients because they know they are talented."

Getting a job is an accomplishment on its own for many college graduates, but here they can take home a hefty paycheck too -- salaries generally start at $70,000 per year.

In fact, some companies may not even be looking for new hires specifically with z skills but rather graduates with a computer science degree and an eagerness to learn and solve problems.

Clients know their companies have people retiring but have not started the process to replace them, Schroeder said. "You really need to start building that pipeline now, working with universities."

The search for mainframe talent Darren Morris sees firsthand the lack of young mainframe programmer talent. At 47, he is a senior design analyst at National Australia Bank -- and the second youngest in his 23-person team. "I don't think anyone realizes what is happening yet," he said. "Once one retires, the rest will follow." Incorporating new tools, such as DevOps, into the mainframe environment is one way to get younger IT pros interested, Morris suggested. National Australia Bank also has an Institute of Management Studies training. "These programs will bring in a bit of life," he said. "Some of the older guys struggle with some of the newer tools. It would be good to populate some of that enthusiasm around the older guys -- that's what I am looking for." Hiring managers at his company are now willing to hire a computer science graduate with no mainframe programmer experience to fill the role. That's one of the major points for the younger folks to recognize is that you don't have to learn COBOL [to be a mainframe programmer]. It is cool to know COBOL, but you don't have to know it. Andre Schreibersystem programmer, Sparda-Datenverarbeitung In 2009, Schreiber began an apprenticeship in the IT department at the bank, and was part of a project to migrate an old z10 mainframe to the newer z196. That was his first contact with the mainframe, and his manager asked him if he could imagine working on it as a career. "I said yes, of course, it was very interesting," he said. "I accepted that and I took the challenge." He encountered some new, unfamiliar words which led him to ask some "silly questions," as he put it. Schreiber's older colleagues have more knowledge about "classic stuff" while he is focused on new workloads inside CICS, especially Java; he specializes in Liberty, OSGi, and Axis2 Java-based application server in CICS. Liberty in CICS is Schreiber's latest challenge -- he sees it as the future for CICS for uses such as online banking apps. "We can bring one of our major applications into this new technology," he said. Schreiber suggests letting younger people know there are plenty of job opportunities in mainframes and the pay is good but also, telling them they can use the Java language, something young IT pros likely know. "That's something really cool because it combines the two worlds right now," he said.