Senior Mainframe Performance Consultant

Software International (SI) supplies technical talent to a variety of clients ranging from Fortune 100/500/1000 companies to small and mid-sized organizations in Canada/US. 

 We have a  Permanent or 12 month renewable contract as a Senior Mainframe Performance Consultant with our large consulting client, working on a long term project for one of Canada's largest banks. This could be an indefinite contract or a permanent role.

Role: Senior Mainframe Performance Consultant

Type: Permanent or Long Term Contract

Duration: 12 months to start + possible multiple extensions or a permanent role

Salary or Rate: approximately $150,000 - $200,00 as permanent employee or $100 - $130/hr + C2C - depending on overall experience

Location: Remote, Toronto, ON, Canada

What you'll be doing

As a Sr. Mainframe Performance Consultant, you are responsible for providing technical direction and subject matter expertise to ensure stable, reliable environments for complex sharing initiatives in compliance with established controls, standards, policies, and procedures. You will collaborate with and advise senior management, utilizing your solid understanding of business dynamics to analyze and protect test environment integrity and mitigate risks, present alternative solutions, and recommend solutions using available resources for complex initiatives with key dependencies. You will provide technical leadership, interpret complex information, and coordinate client, provider, and vendor relationships to meet and manage service expectations, aligned to best practices. In addition, you will help to develop the team to maximize individual contributions and professional growth, while functioning effectively with your colleagues.

How you'll succeed

• Technical Expertise you will leverage your solid technology expertise to review and analyze mainframe resource and performance data to ensure the most effective use of computing and storage resources; provide oversight into capacity plans, and provide input into mainframe refresh initiatives, and upgrades; provide assessments of mainframe workloads prior to becoming productionized.
• Effective Communication you will work to accomplish organizational goals that are consistent in supporting both IT and Business objectives, communicate effectively and patiently across technology teams to influence teams to adopt solutions to keep critical systems secure and operationally resilient. You will provide and document problem analysis, resolution, and prevention, designing procedures and best practice techniques, using IBM and ISV online tools for opening and managing problem report tracking and resolution. You will actively participate in periodic disaster recovery exercises, maintaining disaster recovery readiness of systems, and monitoring status of systems to proactively prevent issues from occurring.
• Relationship Management You will collaborate with internal business partners in Application Development, Infrastructure, IT Operations, and IT Production Support to accomplish organizational goals that are consistent in supporting both IT and Business objectives. You will work directly with Hardware and Software vendors on solutions, build your network, and deepen existing relationships. You will leverage your verbal, written, and presentation communication skills to build strong partnerships, while influencing participants to mutually beneficial outcomes.

Who you are

• You can demonstrate a minimum of 8 years' experience in Mainframe Performance Analysis. You also have:
  • Experience using and configuring performance management tools including MICS, iZPCA, Intellimagic Vision, Omegamon and APA.
  • Experience interpreting data from SMF, RMF or CMF and building reports from this data.
  • Experience identifying and implementing Workload Manager (WLM) configuration changes.
  • Experience in performing root cause analysis for mainframe resource spikes, and production problems.
  • Strong understanding of z/OS resource sharing (TCBs, SRBs) across multiple mainframe LPARS and subsystems including IMS, DB2, MQ, CICS.
  • Experiencing sharing examples of identifying CPU cost-savings.
  • Good understanding of hardware components and optimization features available in mainframe hardware (zIIPS, IFLs, SSD), and an understanding of mainframe CPU and cost models to identify ideal workload placements. You have a firm understanding of IBM Mainframe CPU concepts including CBUs and OOCoD.
  • Experience migrating between CMF and RMF is an asset.
• Youre a certified professional. You have current accreditation and good standing in IBM Badge/Advanced Certification in Mainframe; Incident, change and problem handling; Participation/contribution to technical projects; and in-depth knowledge and understanding of IBM Mainframes and related product software is preferred.
• You put our clients first. You are Stress resistant in case of Major Incident and emergency situations. You have the self-driven initiative to deal with multi-task issues. You have a methodical and disciplined approach to work. You have excellent analytical skills, communication skills and problem-solving capabilities.
• Your influence makes an impact. You know that relationships and networks are essential to success. You inspire outcomes by making yourself heard.
• You understand that success is in the details. You notice things that others don't. Your critical thinking skills help to inform your decision making.
• You embrace and champion change. You'll continuously evolve your thinking and the way you work in order to deliver your best.
• Values matter to you. You bring your real self to work, and you live our values trust, teamwork, and accountability.