Mainframe engineer

Responsibilities

Performance Management and Capacity Planning:

• Monitor real-time z/OS system health and performance across CPU, memory, DASD, and WLM-managed workloads, using tools including RMF, SmartIS, MICS, and other internal tools. Analyze performance data to identify trends, bottlenecks, and potential issues.
• Detect, troubleshoot, and resolve resource anomalies, workload misbehaviors, and degradation risks in production systems. Partner with incident response teams to resolve performance issues quickly and accurately.
• Develop and implement performance tuning strategies by recommending changes to service definitions, dispatching priorities, and workload placement.
• Contribute to capacity planning by forecasting and modeling workload resource demand & capacity requirements.
• Support cost modeling, vendor reporting (SCRT), infrastructure sizing and resource optimization efforts.

Data Analysis:

• Collect and analyze system performance data to generate reports and dashboards.
• Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) and develop metrics to track system performance.
• Visualize, summarize and present data findings, recommendations, and methodology to senior leadership, department leadership and enterprise stakeholders (technical and non-technical stakeholders)

Collaboration and Communication:

• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including operations, development, and infrastructure teams.
• Provide technical support and guidance to team members and stakeholders.
• Participate in on-call rotations and provide timely responses to performance and observability issues.
• Participate in migration of performance/capacity tooling to Git change management and DevOps deployment pipelines.

Experience:

• Bachelor s degree in information systems, Mathematics, Finance or another quantitative or related subject
• 10+ years of mainframe systems experience with proficiency in performance management for large, multi-processor, multi-LPAR, Parallel Sysplex environments utilizing z/OS
• Proven experience in mainframe performance monitoring, observability, capacity management, and data analysis.
• Proven experience resolving systems performance problems in real-time via adjustments to WLM and batch initiators.
• Basic understanding of PR/SM.
• Proficiency in Job Control Language (JCL) & DB2
• Proficiency in REXX/Python (plus)
• Advanced user of MS Excel (Charts, Pivot tables, Vlookups, PowerPivot) and PowerPoint for data visualization.
• Experience with mainframe monitoring tools and performance tuning techniques.
• Experience working with large highly transactional datasets to draw insights and create organizational value.
• Experience with DevOps is a plus

Qualifications:

• Strong analytical, problem solving and strategic thinking skills including the ability to prioritize.
• Proficiency in data analysis and creation of dashboards and various visualizations that will provide actionable insights for operations, engineering and management decision making.
• Working knowledge of MS Office suite for management reporting using both PowerPoint and Excel analytical functions
• Comfortable taking information from disparate systems to bring data elements together for meaningful insights
• Analyze and solve business problems at their root, stepping back to understand the broader context.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Detail-oriented with strong organizational skills.
• Deep expertise with SMF/RMF data, WLM service definitions, and z/OS workload behavior.
• IBM SCRT Reporting (plus)
• MICS Product & Reporting experience (plus)
• Exhibit good time management skills, independent thinking and decision-making capabilities.
• High sense of urgency and ability to prioritize competing requirements in a fast-paced environment.