Mainframe MQ Consultant - Contract - W2 - AZ|TX|NC|NJ

Mainframe MQ Engineer

Contract

AZ|NJ|NC|TX - Hybrid 

Long term 

The Role:

We are seeking an experienced Mainframe IBM MQ Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in IBM MQ for z/OS to support highly available, business-critical mainframe environments.

The successful candidate will be responsible for the administration, configuration, monitoring, performance, security, maintenance, troubleshooting, and lifecycle management of IBM MQ infrastructure on z/OS. The engineer will work closely with application, CICS, IMS, network, security, operations, and other mainframe infrastructure teams.

Responsibilities:

• Install, configure, administer, and support IBM MQ for z/OS environments.
• Configure and maintain MQ queue managers, queues, channels, listeners, transmission queues, and other MQ objects.
• Perform day-to-day administration and monitoring of MQ environments.
• Configure and support distributed queuing and communication between queue managers. IBM identifies communication between queue managers and distributed queuing as part of MQ for z/OS configuration.
• Configure, administer, and troubleshoot IBM MQ clusters.
• Monitor queue depths, channel status, queue manager availability, message flow, and overall MQ infrastructure health.
• Troubleshoot production problems including:

• Channel failures
• Queue manager problems
• Message delivery issues
• Messages remaining on queues
• Connectivity problems
• Security/authorization failures
• Application-to-MQ connectivity issues

• Perform problem determination and root cause analysis for MQ-related production incidents.
• Support MQ recovery and restart activities.
• Support MQ upgrades, migrations, maintenance, patching, and lifecycle management.
• Support high-availability and disaster-recovery requirements for MQ environments.
• Configure and support MQ connectivity with mainframe applications, including CICS and IMS. IBM documents dedicated MQ adapters/bridges for interaction with both CICS and IMS.
• Partner with RACF/security teams to implement and maintain MQ security.
• Support channel authentication, connection authentication, TLS, and MQ access controls, where applicable. IBM documents channel authentication, TLS, security exits, and RACF access considerations for MQ for z/OS.
• Analyze MQ performance and implement tuning recommendations.
• Develop and maintain JCL, operational procedures, automation, and technical documentation.
• Participate in production changes, implementations, incident management, and problem management.
• Provide on-call and after-hours support for critical production issues when required. 

Required Qualifications:

• Strong hands-on experience with IBM MQ for z/OS
• Strong knowledge of:

• Queue Managers
• Local and Remote Queues
• Transmission Queues
• MQ Channels
• Channel Initiators
• Listeners
• Dead Letter Queues
• Distributed Queuing
• MQ Clustering
• MQ security
• MQ logging and recovery
• MQ monitoring and troubleshooting

• Strong experience with z/OS
• Experience with JCL
• Good understanding of TCP/IP and network connectivity
• Experience with MQ problem determination and production support.
• Experience supporting high-volume, business-critical mainframe environments.
• Understanding of change, incident, and problem management processes.

Preferred Experience:

• CICS / MQ integration
• IMS / MQ integration
• RACF
• TCP/IP
• REXX
• TSO/ISPF
• SDSF
• SMP/E
• Sysplex environments
• MQ Queue Sharing Groups
• Automation/monitoring tools
• Enterprise scheduling tools such as CA7 or TWS
• Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
• Performance monitoring and capacity management
• Managed File Transfer (MFT)