CICS / MQ Senior System Programmer

Northwestern Mutual is a leading Life Insurance, Financial Planning, and Investment company where we believe in putting people first.  As a mutual company, we don't have shareholders, so instead of reporting to Wall Street, we report to our policyowners.   NW has earned the highest financial strength ratings awarded to life insurers from all four major rating agencies. 

We are looking for a subject matter expert (SME) of Mainframe CICS / MQ who would look after the critical infrastructure that underpins Northwestern Mutual where 85% of the business runs through.  This is a hands-on role where you’ll configure and maintain products and services according to standards and policies.  As a CICS System Administrator you must have experience in installation, configuration, maintenance, and monitoring of CICS regions, MQ products and related ISV products, with z/OS Connect and TableBase being a plus.   The SME for this team is required to work on critical systems and strategic  projects associated across all business divisions, as well as technology and process service improvements. 

Soft Skills

• Self-starting and motivate, works under little supervision
• Ability to self-manage multiple projects
• Network with employees, vendors, and outside organizations to help find solutions or opportunities for improvement
• Regular communications with their peers; Shares information with the awareness of its effect on others; Demonstrate a balance of speaking and listening so that neither is overly dominant
• Create technical documents; Review, edit and offer suggestions to others with appropriate oral and written communications. Concise and diplomatic
• Understand waterfall and/or Agile processes

Technical Skills

• Demonstrate a thorough working knowledge of the mainframe platform (software / hardware) for CICS and MQ
• Understand & perform typical system programmer (SYSPROG) tasks such as: the upgrade & maintenance process, SMP/e, HOLDDATA, early code, target zones/libraries, system libraries, terse files, end or marketing (EOM) and end of life (EOL), review implementation procedures and make recommendations to ensure a smooth product release and system upgrades
• Understand vendor communication protocols/forms when issues arise:  PMR, PTF, Hyper fixes, APAR
• Basic understanding of MVS: z/15, CPUs, SYSPLEX, LPAR, coupling facility, zIIPs, general purpose machines, WLM, DVIPA, JCL, PDS, ISPF, SMF, IFCIDs, RMF/CMF
• Basic understanding of storage: SMS, ACS routine, storage pools, vendors (IBM, Hitachi, etc.)
• Basic understanding of security: certificates/key rings, RACF, pervasive encryption
• Work with management to resolve middleware risks that has been identified by compliance, internal and external auditors 
• Basic understanding of High Availability: CICSPlex System Manager (CPSM), MQ queue sharing and RLS
• Basic understanding of z/OS CICS architecture; minimum product exposure: CICS - TOR, AOR, WOR, FOR, CSD, RDO
• Basic understanding of CICS dynamic routing
• Basic understanding of CICS Regions and how it is used to communicate with DB2 & MQ
• Basic understanding of z/OS MQ architecture; minimum product exposure MQ - channels & queues
• Basic understanding of MQ queue mangers/channels and how it is used to communicate with DB2 & CICS
• Understanding and build out of z/OS Connect (dockers, kubernetes, etc.)
• Provide recommendations for the middleware platform ensuring its stability, reliability, recoverability, security, scalability
• Help build out a multi-tendency highly available environment and then ensure continued scalability within the platform 
• Participate in DR exercises; effectively utilizes recovery control practices; implementing changes to ensure recoverability of platform
• Experience working with vendor utilities; demonstrate knowledge of monitoring tools available
• Actively worked on system and application performance tuning and monitoring; recognizing performance implication that the system design has; troubleshoot and diagnose issues; provide tuning recommendation; work with development/management on tuning efforts and implementation of changes
• Help identify new tools, technology, or improvements on the middleware platform
• Serve as escalation point when needed; Provide oncall support
• Alert appropriate areas of possible impact of change, whether improvements or negative customer exposure to build customer satisfaction; notifies management of problems early in the process; mitigate risk and ensure that back-outs can be done within a specified timeframe delivering on the SLA business requirements
• Provide permanent resolution/follow-up for issues; gather enough information to understand problem correctly
• Understanding of IBMs strategic software licensing & catalog
• Knowledge in PL/1, COBOL, REXX, JAVA, or Python, a plus

Responsibilities

• Monitors the mainframe system hardware/software for performance degradation, connectivity issues, system events and alerts. Updates and manages tickets through resolution with vendors and internal support groups. Tests, analyzes, performs corrective actions, and restore availability and services in a timely and accurate manner to eliminate/reduce application impact. Provides timely notifications to management/outage team and escalate tickets to appropriate internal and external management as needed.
• Participates in pager rotation to provide 24x7 support for Mainframe Systems (Prod, Test, Development).
• Plans and performs scheduled changes (patching, maintenance, deployment, decommission, configuration, performance tuning) for all hardware and software used to support the mainframe infrastructure.
• Provides consultative services to infrastructure and application teams regarding project work, POCs and/or troubleshooting exercises.
• Contributes to product delivery, influenced by strategic direction across Business Technology and enterprise including investment decisions (i.e., build vs buy) across multiple products. Uses automation, system tools, open-source solutions, observability and 'security first' principles in daily work.
• Contributes to team agile ceremonies, leads demos and presentations, helps new engineers learn established norms.
• Bridges desired Business features to BT capabilities and executes groundwork in requirement translations and design. Initiates detailed level solution design approaches across multiple domains, and guides team to achieve desired key software delivery capabilities using automated, coded enterprise and observability.
• Participates in (internal/external) speaking and advocacy events. Coaches core technology communities and is actively engaged in understanding and researching new technologies.
• Researches and adopts new technology solutions and ways to build technical capabilities.
• Continues professional education and creates opportunities for broader engineering teams to learn industry best practices.
• Provide leadership in mainframe on-line and batch design with an emphasis on high availability design.
• Provide expertise in performance tuning and enhancements.
• Participate in a pager rotation to provide 24x7 support for all DFS mainframe environments.
• Support several major applications (Development, testing, & production installation).
• Provide mainframe consulting services to infrastructure and application teams on project development.
• Provide support for managed service team.
• Research and implement new mainframe technologies to enhance existing infrastructure.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities

• Cumulative of prior level plus following:
• Proactively monitor to prevent and resolve application system performance bottlenecks.
• Proactively ensure SLAs are maintained and systems are built for sustainability.
• Understand the technical concepts necessary to do your job effectively and are aware of industry trends in your domain.
• Consider and build for many different use cases but avoid over engineering.
• Determine where to find answers and grow your own knowledge both with and without guidance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years professional experience required.
• May include:
• 3 years of professional IT experience.
• 3 years experience with at least one OS/hosting platform.
• 3 years experience in performance tuning of application stacks, OSs, DBs, etc.
• 3 years experience with Cloud based PaaS and SaaS platforms and integration points to On Prem infrastructure.
• 3 years experience with virtualization and containerization.
• 3 years experience with monitoring and performance management of systems.
• 3 years experience with Scripting development.
• Networking knowledge.
• 3 years experience with Identity Platform and tools.
• Exposure to Infra as Code concepts and tooling Experience with CICD concepts, and tools including GIT, branching strategies and leveraging knowledge to assist in delivering an infrastructure as a product.
• Experience with modern development and scripting languages.
• In depth knowledge of immediate systems you work on and some knowledge of adjacent systems.
• Excellent troubleshooting skills within area of expertise.
• Understanding of high-availability concepts.
• Experience with multiple delivery methodologies such as Agile and Waterfall.

Northwestern Mutual pays on a geographic-specific salary structure and placement in the salary range for this position will be determined by a number of factors including the skills, education, training, credentials and experience of the candidate; the scope, complexity as well as the cost of labor in the market; and other conditions of employment. At Northwestern Mutual, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. Please note that the salary range listed in the posting is the standard pay structure. Positions in certain locations (such as California) may provide an increase on the standard pay structure based on the location. Please click here for additional information relating to location-based pay structures.

We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

If you work or would be working in California, Colorado, New York City, Washington or outside of a Corporate location, please click here for information pertaining to compensation and benefits.