Systems Operations Engineer-Mainframe support

In this role, you will:

• Participate in complex technical issues and initiatives related to large scale applications, systems, databases, or other technical products and services

• Identify opportunity for process improvements within technical support strategies and plans

• Review and analyze technical queries to extract data, create standard databases, or perform limited programming to fine tune systems supporting low to medium risk technical deliverables

• Present recommendations for resolving complex technical queries

• Exercise some independent judgment to analyze performance trends and recommend process improvements while developing understanding of technical process controls or standards

• Work as an internal consultant regarding use of tools and processes

• Provide information related to supported system area to functional colleagues, internal partners and stakeholders, including internal customers

Required Qualifications:

• 2+ years of Systems Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education.

Desired Qualifications:

• Identify and recommend opportunities for technology operations process improvement and development.

• Leverage enterprise tools to digitize workflows as appropriate, asset and configuration management, metrics and measurement of services including availability SLAs, OLAs, mean time to recovery, repeat incidents and issues.

• Work with IT risk management, compliance, and all lines of defense, including Audit, to ensure platform risks are proactively managed.

• Make decisions and resolve issues regarding resources, objectives, and operations of technology to meet business objectives.

• Collaborate with and consult with peers, colleagues, and multiple levels of management/leadership.

• Drive recovery efforts during incident calls. Gather essential information for root cause analysis and stability improvement.

• Inform leadership on ongoing issues through formal communications in alignment with ITIL best practices.

• Ensure the stability, availability, and performance of critical production systems, while driving automation, monitoring, and reliability improvements.

• Participate in complex technical issues and initiatives related to large scale applications, systems, databases, or other technical products and services

• Exercise some independent judgment to analyze performance trends and recommend process improvements while developing understanding of technical process controls or standards

• Provide information related to supported system area to functional colleagues, internal partners and stakeholders, including internal customers

• 2+ years of Systems Engineering, Technology Architecture experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, education.

• 2+ years Incident management/sending communications/expediting recovery

• 3+ years of hands-on experience in IT by doing the mainframe applications support work.

• In-depth knowledge of production support processes, including incident management, change management, and root cause analysis.

• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work under pressure to resolve critical issues.

• Strong communication and Interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.

• Familiarity with ITIL or other IT service management frameworks is preferred.

• Experience developing monitoring scripts, alerting logic, and automation workflows.  This includes automation of monitoring and alerting workflows.

• Solid understanding of SQL with the ability to write complex queries for data analysis and reporting.

• Mainframe technologies support/operations experience or exposure.

• Technical experience/exposure working with Mainframe technologies, etc. and basic IBM utilities.

• Understanding of payment processing on a large scale.

• Experience/Exposure using monitoring tools (example: Splunk, AppDynamics, Grafana, Geneos ITRS etc.)

• Familiarity with ServiceNow for incident, problem, and change management (opening incidents, reviewing changes, documenting records).

• Excellent leadership, verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills.

• Experience with change management.

• Understanding of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, with hands-on experience applying them

Job Expectations:

• Forward thinking and innovative to identify and implement best practices/procedures.

• Ability to independently run incident recovery calls (incident management) and review changes to mitigate risk.

• Coordination with Vertical Application Support Teams:

  • Partner with application owners and support teams to understand system architecture, performance baselines, and critical business transactions.

• Process improvement:

  • Optimize alerts, incident reductions, and reports to provide actionable insights.

• Automation and Scripting: This includes scripting using REXX.

  • Develop automation scripts using REXX to avoid manual work.

• SQL and Data Analysis

  • Use SQL to extract, analyze, and correlate data from monitoring platforms and application databases.

  • Support root cause analysis and performance tuning through data-driven insights.

• Incident Response and Continuous Improvement: This includes managing incidents and changes effectively.

  • Participate in incident triage and post-mortem analysis to identify observability gaps. This includes managing incidents and changes effectively

  • Continuously refine monitoring strategies based on feedback and evolving application landscapes.

• Documentation and Knowledge Sharing:

  • Maintain clear documentation of observability configurations, standards, and best practices.

• Conduct knowledge-sharing sessions with support teams to promote observability and maturity.