IBM MQ Engineer / Architect

Hi,

Position: IBM MQ Engineer / Architect

Location: Plano, TX

Duration: 12+ Months

Role Summary

Seeking an experienced IBM MQ Engineer / Architect with strong containerization and Kubernetes knowledge to lead the migration of IBM MQ workloads from Amazon EC2 to Amazon EKS. The role will own assessment, target-state design, migration planning, build, testing, cutover, and post-migration stabilization for a secure, highly available, and observable IBM MQ platform running on Kubernetes.

Key Objective

Migrate IBM MQ from EC2-based deployment models to EKS-based containerized deployment, while improving scalability, resiliency, automation, security, and operational efficiency.

Responsibilities

• Assess the current IBM MQ estate running on EC2, including queue managers, channels, clustering, HA/DR setup, storage, security, monitoring, and dependencies.
• Define the target architecture for IBM MQ on EKS, including container strategy, namespace design, networking, persistent storage, secrets handling, and high availability.
• Design and implement IBM MQ containerization patterns using Docker/OCI images and Kubernetes-native deployment approaches.
• Build and manage deployment automation for IBM MQ on EKS using Helm, Kubernetes manifests, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code where applicable.
• Plan and execute migration from EC2 to EKS with minimal disruption, including environment setup, data persistence strategy, queue manager migration, rollback planning, and cutover support.
• Configure persistent volumes, storage classes, backup, restore, and disaster recovery for stateful IBM MQ workloads on Kubernetes.
• Implement security controls including TLS, certificate management, IAM integration, secrets management, encryption, and platform hardening.
• Partner with application, middleware, infrastructure, cloud, and security teams to validate connectivity, performance, and production readiness.
• Establish monitoring, alerting, logging, and observability for IBM MQ on EKS using enterprise tooling.
• Tune performance, capacity, and resilience characteristics for containerized MQ workloads.
• Produce architecture documents, runbooks, SOPs, migration plans, and operational handover materials.
• Support hypercare and post-production stabilization after migration.

Required Skills

• 7+ years of hands-on experience with IBM MQ administration and engineering.
• Strong experience with IBM MQ queue managers, channels, listeners, clustering, client connectivity, SSL/TLS, and troubleshooting.
• Hands-on experience containerizing middleware platforms, ideally IBM MQ.
• Strong knowledge of Kubernetes and Amazon EKS, including pods, StatefulSets, services, ingress/network policies, volumes, config maps, secrets, and RBAC.
• Experience migrating stateful enterprise workloads from virtual machines or EC2 to Kubernetes.
• Strong understanding of AWS infrastructure, including EC2, EKS, VPC, IAM, EBS/EFS, load balancing, Route 53, CloudWatch, and security controls.
• Experience with CI/CD and automation tools such as Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Terraform, Ansible, or similar.
• Knowledge of Linux administration, shell scripting, and container runtime concepts.
• Experience with monitoring and logging platforms such as Splunk, ELK, Prometheus, Grafana, Dynatrace, or AppDynamics.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across middleware, OS, networking, storage, and cloud layers.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with IBM MQ Operator or similar Kubernetes-native operational models.
• Prior experience designing HA/DR for IBM MQ on Kubernetes.
• Experience with service mesh, certificate automation, and secrets platforms such as HashiCorp Vault.
• Familiarity with enterprise integration patterns involving IBM MQ, APIs, microservices, and event-driven systems.
• Exposure to regulated environments with strong audit, security, and resiliency requirements.
• Experience with OpenShift is a plus.

Deliverables / Success Criteria

• Current-state assessment and migration roadmap.
• Target-state architecture for IBM MQ on EKS.
• Containerized IBM MQ deployment patterns and automation artifacts.
• Non-production and production migration execution plans.
• Successful migration of MQ from EC2 to EKS with validated HA, security, observability, and performance.
• Operational documentation and support transition to run teams.

Sample Technical Interview Focus Areas

• IBM MQ architecture, clustering, HA, and DR design.
• Migration strategy for stateful middleware from EC2 to EKS.
• Persistent storage design for IBM MQ on Kubernetes.
• Security design: TLS, certificates, IAM, secrets, and network controls.
• Automation approach using Helm, Terraform, and CI/CD.
• Observability and production support model for MQ on EKS.