Can You Code in COBOL? US Banks Are Looking For You

As US banks struggle to maintain vast, decades-old financial systems still running on COBOL, a 65-year-old programming language that underpins trillions of dollars in daily transactions, institutions across Wall Street and beyond are quietly turning to a shrinking pool of specialists who can read, maintain, and repair it. With veteran programmers retiring and universities largely abandoning the language, demand has surged for anyone still fluent in the code that powers core banking, payments, and government infrastructure, turning what was once considered obsolete into one of the most unexpectedly valuable technical skills in modern finance.

A programming language designed in 1959 is still quietly powering modern finance, and US banks are now actively looking to hire COBOL talent as a shortage of experienced engineers threatens the stability of critical financial systems.

That language is COBOL, short for Common Business-Oriented Language. It was created in 1959 to help businesses process large volumes of financial and administrative data in a consistent and reliable way. Although it is rarely taught today, it remains deeply embedded in the core systems of global banking and government infrastructure.

COBOL’s longevity is not about preference but dependence. Over decades, financial institutions built vast systems around it, layering new features, regulations and compliance rules onto code that already processed trillions of dollars in transactions. Replacing it would require rebuilding critical banking infrastructure from the ground up while ensuring uninterrupted daily operations.

“COBOL-based systems handle around $3 trillion in commerce daily,” the report notes, highlighting how extensively the language is still used behind the scenes of global finance.

One of its most visible but least understood roles is in ATM networks. When a customer withdraws cash, checks a balance, or transfers funds, the ATM is not independently calculating anything. Instead, it acts as a front-end terminal that sends requests to central banking systems, many of which are still running COBOL-based transaction engines. These backend systems verify account data, update balances in real time, apply fraud checks, and confirm transactions across interconnected bank databases before the ATM completes the operation. In effect, COBOL systems form the transactional backbone that makes ATM withdrawals and deposits possible.

It also continues to support key public sector systems in the United States, including the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs. These systems are often mission-critical, meaning even small errors during migration could have major consequences.

The challenge now facing banks and governments is not the technology itself, but the workforce. Many of the original COBOL programmers are reaching retirement, while newer generations of developers are trained almost entirely in modern languages such as Python, Java and JavaScript.

As a result, US banks are actively seeking to hire COBOL engineers, but are struggling to replace highly specialised knowledge that accumulated over decades of incremental system upgrades. Universities have largely phased out COBOL, making the talent pipeline even thinner.

This shortage has created an unusual labour market dynamic. Developers who do know COBOL are increasingly valuable, not because it is cutting-edge, but because it is rare and essential. Banks, insurers and government agencies are willing to pay premium salaries to maintain and stabilise legacy systems that cannot simply be switched off.

In some cases, organisations are even rehiring retired engineers on short-term consulting contracts because they possess institutional knowledge of systems built long before modern documentation standards existed.

At the same time, artificial intelligence is being explored as a partial solution. Banks are testing AI tools that can read, document and translate COBOL code into modern systems. However, because these systems process critical financial transactions, full automation is still considered risky and requires human oversight.

In effect, COBOL has become a paradox of modern finance: an “obsolete” technology that remains essential to daily global commerce. As long as financial institutions continue running it, demand for the rare engineers who understand the language is likely to remain strong, even in an era dominated by artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

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