IBM iSeries System Operator

Full-time shift: Monday–Friday, 8 AM–5 PM. Occasional evenings, weekends, and holidays required for production support, maintenance, system outages, and critical incidents.

About the role

The iSeries System Operator runs daily, weekly, monthly, or as-needed processes to support all business applications. This role also participates in planning and implementing policies and procedures to ensure system maintenance aligns with company goals, industry best practices, and regulatory requirements. Operational tasks may occasionally be required during non-business hours to minimize impact to business operations.

Responsibilities

• Assist with the management of all scheduling processes.
• Perform and test routine system backups and restores.
• Execute assigned tasks for all applications in a consistent and accurate manner.
• Run assigned processes for supported applications and maintain current, accurate documentation.
• Ensure documentation and processes are clear, precise, and easily accessible.
• Maintain the integrity and security of multiple databases and data transfers in accordance with business needs and industry best practices for privacy, security, and regulatory compliance.
• Manage reports and output queues (Outqs), ensuring archiving processes are performed.
• Assist with setting up end-user accounts, permissions, and access rights.
• Anticipate, mitigate, identify, troubleshoot, and resolve hardware and software problems; escalate incidents when necessary.
• Assist with testing of application upgrades.
• Support application development teams throughout project lifecycles.
• Assist in software and hardware improvements, upgrades, patches, reconfigurations, and ongoing maintenance.
• Run required reports in response to business user needs.
• Ensure operational tasks can be performed in your absence through documentation and training of other staff members.
• Run reports to clean up IBM iSeries Outqs, old programs, and other objects in coordination with IBM iSeries Admin.
• Ensure telephone coverage during the absence of Administrators.
• Back up System Management.
• Complete and assign milestones on operational duties in a timely manner.
• Develop IBM iSeries Control Language Programming (CLP) when required.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• High School Diploma or G.E.D.
• Minimum 3–5 years of experience supporting IBM i (AS400, iSeries, and Power Systems) environments.
• Established residency in Pennsylvania.
• High-level manual dexterity to operate a computer keyboard, mouse, power tools, and other computer components.
• Availability to work occasional evenings, weekends, and holidays to support maintenance windows, system upgrades, testing, and disaster recovery activities.

Skills & Qualifications

• Experience with IBM i Operating System Administration, including subsystem management, job management, message handling, and system monitoring.
• Experience performing IBM i system upgrades, PTF installation, Technology Refresh updates, and system health checks.
• Experience with data management.
• Experience documenting processes.
• Hands-on software and hardware troubleshooting experience.
• Experience managing tape libraries, virtual tape systems, and cloud backup solutions.
• Experience with batch processing, job queues, output queues, printer configurations, and spool file management.
• Experience using system monitoring and alerting tools.
• Experience with workload automation and job scheduling products such as Robot Scheduler, HelpSystems automation products, or equivalent solutions.
• Working technical knowledge of network, PC, and IBM iSeries platform operating systems.
• Working technical knowledge of current systems software, protocols, and standards.
• Knowledge of IBM i Security Administration, including user profiles, authorization lists, object-level security, and auditing.
• Knowledge of high availability and replication solutions such as MIMIX, PowerHA, Quick-EDD, or similar products.
• Familiarity with IBM i performance monitoring and tuning tools.
• Good understanding of the organization’s goals and objectives.
• Knowledge of applicable data privacy practices.
• Adept at reading, writing, and interpreting technical documentation and procedure manuals.
• Strong customer service skills.
• Proven analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Ability to troubleshoot system performance issues using IBM i diagnostic tools.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.
• Ability to present ideas and solutions in user-friendly language.
• Keen attention to detail.
• Ability to work effectively within a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
• Highly self-motivated; ability to work independently with minimal supervision and make sound operational decisions under pressure.
• Ability to collaborate with internal IT teams, software vendors, and business users to resolve system and application issues.
• Ability to sit for extended periods of time.
• Willingness to go the extra mile when necessary.