Ajesh Racha

Mainframe Architect with 18+ years of experience in insurance and financial services, specializing in mainframe observability, performance engineering, and modernization. Proven expertise in designing end-to-end observability pipelines for z/OS systems using OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Honeycomb, Kafka, and Grafana, and driving reliability improvements through metrics-driven architecture.

Mainframe Architect – Observability & Modernization - Zurich Insurance Group - Switzerland

(2021-02)

• Designed and implemented enterprise-scale mainframe observability platform for z/OS systems using SMF and RMF records
• Implemented real-time telemetry capture and standardized metrics using OpenTelemetry
• Built observability pipelines using Kafka, OTel Gateway, Prometheus, Honeycomb, and Grafana
• Enabled proactive performance detection and achieved ~30% performance improvement
• Led selective modernization migrating COBOL/Assembler components to Python

Technical Lead / SME - Farmers Insurance Group (Zurich Financial Services)

(2016-10 - 2021-01)

• Technical leadership for high-volume CICS and batch systems supporting commercial insurance
• Worked on user stories related to cobol, db2, vsam
• Led bi-monthly releases and production stability initiatives

Senior Software Engineer / Technical Lead - Farmers Insurance Group

(2010-06 - 2016-09)

• Developed and optimized mainframe batch and CICS applications for Home Insurance systems
• Implemented DB2 performance tuning and system monitoring using SMF records
• Led releases, defect resolution, and production support activities

Analyst Programmer - State Farm Insurance - USA

(2006-11 - 2010-05)

• Developed COBOL, CICS, and DB2 modules for enterprise auto policy systems
• Supported enterprise modernization and data integration initiatives
• Performed system monitoring, diagnostics, and performance analysis using Schedulers

Bachelor of Technology - Electronics & Communications Engineering