Technology Architect

Project Overview

The Government of Ontario mainframe support team is re-acquiring performance and capacity resources to support ongoing operations and modernization of its mainframe environments. This includes planning, configuration, software currency, and capacity upgrades for newly installed Z16 and disaster recovery mainframe hardware following the end of an external DR contract, while maintaining continuity for mission-critical services across OPS clusters and ministries and supporting software optimization under the Datacenter Transformation project.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide performance and capacity operational support to sustain day-to-day operations of mainframe software and program products
• Review and analyze mainframe resource and capacity data to ensure effective use of computing infrastructure and IMS/DB2 subsystems
• Author and update mainframe capacity plans
• Provide project input into mainframe refresh initiatives and upgrades
• Support mainframe vendor billing activities and respond to inquiries from application teams
• Prepare mainframe capacity assessments for application development and infrastructure teams related to project workload changes
• Perform and document incident analysis, resolution, and prevention; design procedures and best practices
• Use IBM and ISV online tools to open, manage, track, and resolve incident reports
• Participate in mainframe disaster recovery hardware installation project activities
• Participate in periodic disaster recovery exercises and maintain disaster recovery readiness
• Monitor system status to proactively prevent incidents
• Plan, configure, and support installation of new mainframe hardware platform
• Collaborate with IT operations, application development, infrastructure, and production support teams to meet organizational goals
• Work directly with hardware and software vendors on solutions
• Provide migration support for mainframe software and networking components
• Provide decommissioning support for mainframe software and program products
• Execute daily operational changes and incident/problem management activities
• Provide on-call/standby support when required
• Close tickets in a timely manner and keep clients/management updated on ticket status
• Adhere to SLA metrics and perform device maintenance
• Produce technical methods of procedure (MOP) for changes
• Acquire system captures and document/articulate findings including point or root cause

Qualifications & Requirements

REQUIRED

• Must be able to work 5 days onsite per week
• Minimum 7 years of experience in mainframe performance/capacity management roles
• Experience with interactive capacity management tools including MICS, RMF, and other ISV tools
• Strong understanding and experience working with SMF data
• Experience performing capacity requirement assessments for CPU upgrades and refreshes, including ‘what-if’ impact models
• Experience reconciling mainframe billing for ISV workloads
• Experience performing complex calculations to estimate workload impacts in MIPS and/or MSUs across a multi-partitioned environment
• Understanding of zIIP utilization
• Experience with SAS programming
• Understanding of IBM mainframe CPU concepts including CBUs and CoD
• Ability to configure mainframe tools such as MICS and RMF to build reports and view data

EVALUATION CRITERIA

Enterprise Tier 4 Mainframe Infrastructure experience - 30%

• 10+ years experience providing oversight to support mainframe infrastructure.
• Demonstrated experience overseeing Mainframe Performance and Capacity for refresh and transition activities, as well as team resources associated with the migration.
• Demonstrated experience with replacement of large enterprise complex services and hardware at large critical locations.
• Demonstrated experience and in-depth knowledge of modern Data Centre service models combined with a solid background in contemporary Data Centre approaches.

Recent Experience - 10%

• Within 3 years.

Documentation and Skills Communication - 15%

• Demonstrated experience with assisting transition and refresh.
• Demonstrated experience in change management activities.
• Demonstrated ability for strong documentation and writing skills.

demonstrated knowledge with Mainframe Performance and Capacity Management in a support and Project Management role - 15%

• Demonstrated knowledge and operational support experience with Mainframe in a large scale environment similar as the Government of Ontario and 10+ years demonstrated experience in complex projects related to data center uplifts and hardware/software migrations.

Key Skills & Competencies

IBM mainframe, Mainframe performance, Capacity management, Z16, Disaster recovery, IMS, DB2, MICS, RMF, ISV tools, SMF, CPU capacity planning, What-if modeling, Mainframe billing, MIPS, MSUs, LPAR, zIIP, SAS, CBU, CoD, Incident management, Problem management, SLA, MOP, Mainframe migration, Network components