Mainframe MQ Engineer

MF MQ Support zSystem and IBMi MQ Software Engineer

About the Role

This role involves supporting and engineering IBM MQ software on z/OS and IBMi systems. You will be responsible for maintaining MQ environments, troubleshooting issues, and implementing changes. The position requires strong technical skills in Mainframe MQ and related technologies, as well as excellent problem-solving and communication abilities.

Responsibilities

• Support Disaster Recovery exercises as required.
• Create and maintain technical and procedural documentation for the team and others as required.
• Design, create and maintain messaging flows with diagrams, as required.
• Work well with teammates, other teams, and management.
• Provide excellent and timely customer service.
• Participation in periodic oncall rotations for technical and warroom support.
• Experience implementing changes with documentation and approval during prescribed change windows.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in IBM MQ support.
• Hands-on experience with MQ on z/OS; creating and maintaining QMGRs and objects (queues, channels, etc.).
• Understanding of how applications work with MQ (API's).
• Proficiency with z/OS, ISPF, JCL, SDSF, JES, PDSE, VSAM, and related utilities.
• Understanding of/experience with SMP/E DB2, CICS, IMS, Network/TCPIP, MF Automations - OPS/MVS, as they relate to MQ.
• Experience with MQ Monitoring solutions for real-time and historical perspectives on status, troubleshooting, tuning, and trending.
• Experience with MQ dashboarding tools (Prometheus/Grafana, Ironstream/Splunk).
• Experience with IBM SMF data for statistical analysis.
• Experience with MQ alerting implications and configurations; thresholds, traps, flows and notifications, including auto-ticketing.
• Experience with Automations for MQ operations, syslog messages, and other functionality.
• Experience with Capexpry implementations to prevent orphaned/stale messages where appropriate.
• Experience with Queue Streaming, an MQ feature used to replicate messages to a specified secondary queue as must duplicate, or best effort.
• Experience with change, incident, problem, request, configuration item, event, and oncall management.
• Experience with MQ PLM, upgrades, maintenance, testing, implementations, integration.
• Experience with Queue Sharing Groups (QSGs), Coupling facilities, Coupling Facility Structures (CFStructs), Shared Message Data Sets (SMDS), SCM (flash memory); shared queueing.
• Experience with various MQ connectivity methods; Batch, MQ clustering, point to point channels, direct client connections via SVRCONN channels, batch, MQ triggering to CICS/IMS/zOS, IMS Bridge (OTMA), and MQIPT TCPIP/ HTTPS protocol conversion connections between MQ external/ core.
• Experience with MQ logging, active logs, archive logs, dual logging, zHyperwrite, logload/checkpointing frequency.
• Excellent communication (oral and written), interpersonal, and organizational skills are required for teamwork and collaboration.
• Excellent problem-solving skills.
• Experience working with IBM software and other 3rd party vendor support for PLM, documentation, and technical support/troubleshooting.
• Ability to use AI tools to analyze data and provide recommendations and implement solutions.
• Ability to use M365 Copilot AI to recap meetings and draft emails.
• Ability to stay educated in the role of AI for an IMS System Programmer.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience With MQ On IBMi (preferred).
• Experience with/knowledge of MQ and MQIPT on Distributed platforms (preferred).
• Application Development Experience (preferred).
• MF Operations experience (preferred).
• Basic knowledge of containers and IBM CP4I (preferred).
• Experience With IBMi Menus, Help, Commands (preferred).
• Experience with IBMi Integrated File Systems, Jobs, Libs, Logs (preferred).
• Experience with IBMi IASP/Mimix replication for high availability Role Swaps (preferred).
• Experience With IBMi DB2 Mirror Configurations For Redundancy (preferred).
• Experience with IBMi MQ menus, commands, and administration (preferred).
• Experience With IBMi MQ Environment Variables (preferred).
• Experience with IBMi automation controls (preferred).
• Experience with IBMi FISMA enclave (highly secured, isolated environment to support government clients as required). This would include MQ architecture and admin support on IBMi, MQIPT (on Distributed) for TCPIP/ HTTPS protocol conversions between core/FISMA MQ, SAW workbench access, related Firewall, SSL, F5 configurations.