Mainframe Architect

Mainframe Architect - Remote

Contract position

Job Description:

• Architectural Design and Strategy: Lead the architectural design and strategy for complex mainframe systems, including core components like z/OS, Db2, CICS, Storage, Security, and MQ. This involves creating conceptual, logical, and physical architectural views.
• System Performance and Optimization: Monitor and analyze system performance to identify bottlenecks and perform tuning for optimal efficiency and capacity.
• Availability and Security: Ensuring system scalability, high availability, security, and the implementation of backup and recovery plans.
• Modernization and Integration: Develop and implement strategies to modernize legacy applications and integrate mainframe environments with modern technologies such as cloud platforms, microservices, and APIs. This often includes migrating workloads and data across platforms.
• Technical Leadership and Guidance: Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance to development and infrastructure teams, ensuring best practices and coding standards are followed.
• Troubleshooting and Support: Diagnose and resolve complex technical issues and provide high-level (L3) support for middleware and other system components.
• Documentation and Governance: Write technical documentation, including design specifications, processes, procedures, and system configurations. They also develop and enforce architecture governance procedures.
• Collaboration and Communication: Work closely with internal teams, external vendors, and business stakeholders to understand requirements, communicate technical decisions, and ensure solutions meet business needs

Key Skill Areas

• Technical Expertise: Deep knowledge of mainframe languages and technologies (COBOL, JCL, CICS, DB2, VSAM, REXX,PL/I, Assembler) and operating systems (z/OS).
• Utilities & Tools: Proficiency with JCL utilities (SORT, IEBGENER), testing/debugging tools (IBM DEBUG tool, Xpeditor), and change management tools (Endeavor, SCLM).
• Modern Technologies: Familiarity with modern IT concepts like cloud computing (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform), containers (Docker, Kubernetes), DevOps toolchains (Jenkins, GitHub), and Agile methodologies.
• Problem-Solving: Strong analytical mindset and problem-solving abilities to troubleshoot complex issues and design effective solutions.
• Strategic Planning: Ability to assess business impact of specific technologies/strategies and create long-term roadmaps for IT optimization and transformation.