z/OS Mainframe Operator (IPL / POR Required)

Location: Fully Remote
Schedule: 2nd or 3rd Shift (no differential)
Openings: 4 6 contractors

What this role is:

We are building a 24x7 mainframe operations team supporting a large-scale z/OS environment across 30+ LPARs on 10+ physical systems.

This role combines L1 monitoring + L2 system operations, with a strong focus on IPL execution, POR activities, and system-level control of the environment.

• Hands-on experience performing:

  • IPLs (Initial Program Loads)

  • POR (Power-On Reset) activities across mainframe systems and/or coupling facilities

What you ll do (Day-to-Day)

System Monitoring & Operations (40%)

• Perform daily health checks across all LPARs (QA + Production)

• Monitor system activity (CPU, job queues, spool utilization)

• Resolve alerts via monitoring tools and manual intervention

Batch & Workload Control (20%)

• Manage JES queues, batch jobs, and initiators

• Cancel, restart, and prioritize jobs based on system demand

• Support workload teams with execution and recovery

IPL / System Control (20%)

• Execute IPLs across test and production environments

• Support Sunday change windows and planned system restarts

• Perform POR activities for mainframes and coupling facilities

• Maintain runbooks / IPL documentation and sequencing

Infrastructure & HMC Operations (10%)

• Perform system-level changes via HMC

• Support LPAR configuration updates and capacity adjustments

• Assist with failover and hardware-related activities

Incident Response (10%)

• Respond to system issues, outages, and job failures

• Perform dumps and restart critical services

• Stabilize systems and escalate when needed

Environment

• ~30 35 active LPARs across ~10 12 mainframe systems

• Automated monitoring + manual system intervention

• High-availability, enterprise-scale infrastructure

What you need

Must-Have (Required)

• z/OS operations experience (2 8+ years)

• Hands-on IPL execution (test and/or production systems)

• POR experience (mainframe or coupling facility level)

• Strong knowledge of:

  • JES2/JES3

  • Batch processing

  • LPAR environments

Core Operational Skills

• Job control (cancel, restart, prioritize)

• Spool and queue management

• System monitoring and issue resolution

• Comfortable working 2nd or 3rd shift and ideally flexibility to switch between

Nice to Have

• HMC operations experience

• Exposure to MQ, DB2, CICS environments

• Experience supporting change windows / release cycles

• Basic diagnostics (logs, SMF, system messages)

What makes this role different

• Requires true system-level control (IPL + POR); not just monitoring

• Blend of operations + infrastructure responsibilities

• Exposure to an enterprise-scale mainframe environment

• Team is being built from scratch (4 6 hires)