JOB DESCRIPTION
AIX Principal Engineer
Location: Remote
Duration: 12+ months contract
Work Expectations
- Participate in weekend on-call support as required for urgent escalations and critical production issues.
- Remain flexible to work any shift, including day, evening, night, or rotational shifts, according to business and client requirements.
- Take ownership of critical technical escalations through resolution and communicate progress clearly to clients and management.
- Experience :15+ years is a suggested target for this principal-level position.
Position Overview
We are seeking an experienced AIX Principal Engineer to lead the design, implementation, administration, optimization, and support of enterprise-scale IBM AIX/UNIX environments. The ideal candidate will bring strong hands-on expertise in IBM Power Systems, AIX administration, PowerHA/HACMP, Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), LPAR/DLPAR, PowerVM virtualization, storage, disaster recovery, and high-availability solutions. This role combines deep technical expertise with project management, team leadership, client communication, and ownership of critical escalations in mission-critical infrastructure environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the architecture, implementation, administration, and support of IBM AIX/UNIX environments across enterprise datacenters and cloud platforms.
- Design, configure, and manage IBM Power Systems, including PowerVM, LPAR/DLPAR, VIOS, NPIV, virtual SCSI, and Live Partition Mobility (LPM).
- Implement, administer, and troubleshoot high-availability and disaster recovery solutions using PowerHA/HACMP.
- Manage AIX installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, firmware updates, performance tuning, capacity planning, and troubleshooting.
- Lead datacenter consolidation, server migration, and infrastructure modernization initiatives, including on-premises-to-cloud migrations.
- Configure and manage enterprise storage solutions, including SAN, zoning, masking, multipathing, replication, backup, and recovery.
- Manage enterprise virtualization environments using IBM PowerVC, HMC, VMware vSphere, and related technologies.
- Implement security hardening, vulnerability remediation, access controls, audit requirements, and controlled change-management procedures.
- Troubleshoot complex system, network, storage, and performance issues in mission-critical production environments and lead root cause analysis.
- Develop and maintain automation scripts using Shell, Bash, Python, or other relevant scripting languages.
- Collaborate with application, database, middleware, network, security, storage, and infrastructure teams to deliver reliable enterprise solutions.
- Lead infrastructure projects from initiation through completion, including planning, timelines, resource coordination, risk management, status reporting, and delivery.
- Lead, mentor, and coordinate technical teams; assign responsibilities, monitor progress, support knowledge sharing, and ensure timely completion of project deliverables.
- Communicate directly with clients, stakeholders, and senior management regarding project status, technical issues, risks, incident impact, and resolution plans.
- Serve as the final technical escalation point for critical AIX/UNIX infrastructure issues, major production incidents, and complex system failures; drive resolution and keep stakeholders informed.
- Coordinate cross-functional teams during critical incidents to minimize business impact and restore services within agreed timelines.
- Prepare and maintain architecture documents, operational procedures, project plans, incident reports, root cause analyses, and knowledge-transfer materials.
- Provide on-call support during weekends when urgent escalations, critical incidents, or production issues occur.
- Be flexible and comfortable working in any shift, including day, evening, night, or rotational shifts, based on business requirements.
Required Technical Skills
- Extensive experience in IBM AIX administration, preferably AIX 6.x and 7.x.
- Strong knowledge of IBM Power Systems and PowerVM virtualization.
- Hands-on experience with LPAR/DLPAR, VIOS, NPIV, virtual SCSI, and Live Partition Mobility.
- Expertise in PowerHA/HACMP configuration, administration, and troubleshooting.
- Strong knowledge of Linux/UNIX operating systems and enterprise server administration.
- Experience with IBM PowerVC, Hardware Management Console (HMC), and IBM Power infrastructure.
- Knowledge of SAN storage, zoning, masking, replication, multipathing, backup, and disaster recovery.
- Experience with enterprise backup solutions such as IBM Spectrum Protect/TSM, Commvault, or Veritas NetBackup.
- Strong troubleshooting, performance tuning, capacity planning, and root cause analysis skills.
- Experience with Shell scripting, Bash, or Python automation.
- Knowledge of TCP/IP, DNS, NFS, SAN, and enterprise networking fundamentals.
- Experience with security hardening, vulnerability remediation, monitoring, audit compliance, incident management, and change management.
- Strong project coordination, team leadership, client communication, documentation, and stakeholder-management skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with large-scale enterprise datacenter environments and infrastructure consolidation.
- Exposure to IBM Cloud, AWS, or Azure infrastructure and migration projects.
- Experience with VMware ESXi and vCenter.
- Knowledge of enterprise monitoring tools such as Splunk, Zabbix, IBM Cloud Monitoring, or Xymon.
- Familiarity with ITIL processes and tools such as ServiceNow.
- Relevant IBM AIX, Power Systems, cloud, or infrastructure certifications.
- Experience supporting mission-critical banking, financial services, healthcare, or government environments.
Education
Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
