Mainframe MQ Engineer

We are seeking an experienced Mainframe IBM MQ Engineer to support highly available, business-critical mainframe environments in Phoenix, Arizona on a 12+ month contract basis. 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, working 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.
• 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 issues, message delivery problems, messages remaining on queues, connectivity issues, security/authorization failures, and 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.
• Partner with RACF/security teams to implement and maintain MQ security.
• Support channel authentication, connection authentication, TLS, and MQ access controls.
• 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.

Qualifications

Required

• Strong hands-on experience with IBM MQ for z/OS
• Strong knowledge of Queue Managers
• Strong knowledge of Local and Remote Queues
• Strong knowledge of Transmission Queues
• Strong knowledge of MQ Channels
• Strong knowledge of Channel Initiators
• Strong knowledge of Listeners
• Strong knowledge of Dead Letter Queues
• Strong knowledge of Distributed Queuing
• Strong knowledge of MQ Clustering
• Strong knowledge of MQ security
• Strong knowledge of MQ logging and recovery
• Strong knowledge of 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

• 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