Senior Mainframe CICS 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 CICS 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 CICS Consultant

Type: Permanent or Long Term Contract

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

Salary or Rate: approximately $150,000 - $175,00 + bonus as permanent employee or $80 - $100/hr + C2C - depending on overall experience

Location: Remote, Toronto, ON, Canada

As a Senior Mainframe CICS 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.

You will be the primary escalation point for CICS related incidents works closely with internal and external vendors for support. The role is the liaison for all CICS system architecture design, implementation, and testing. The role leads all CICS problem identification, analysis and resolution issues. Works closely with application development teams for current, future design and operational requirements. The role plans and participates in annual mainframe systems disaster recovery exercises, and provides on-call support.

How you'll succeed

• Technical Expertise you will leverage your solid technology expertise to review and analyze current client software and requirements to determine the most effective solution to include in business proposals; install, upgrade and customize ISV software tools in a multi-system z/OS mainframe environment, and help to ensure software and hardware remains current to avoid End of Support costs.
• 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 5-years' experience in Mainframe technology operating systems and specifically zOS Systems programming with CICS. You also have
  • Strong experience in z/OS CICS Systems programing within a multi-LPAR CICSplex environment.
  • In-depth working knowledge of SMP/E software installation and maintenance management.
  • Strong programming skills with Assembler, COBOL, CLIST, REXX and knowledge of User Exits.
  • Working knowledge of Web application, CICS REST Services and WebSphere MQ.
  • Experience with CICS internal control parameters and SysView or other monitoring tools.
  • Strong problem diagnostic and dump reading skills using a variety of vendor tools.
  • Extensive experience with CICS performance tuning concepts in a Parallel Sysplex environment and experience with RACF security protocols and related encryption technologies.
  • Good working knowledge of CICS SMF record structure and performance analyzer software.