AS400 Admin/iSeries Support - Lead

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Job Title: AS400 Admin/iSeries Support - Lead
Position: SSE/LA
Experience: 6-9 years
Category: Infrastructure/Admin
Positions open: 4
Shift: 5:30 PM to 2:30 AM IST
Main location: Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad
Position ID: J0926-1800
Employment Type: Full Time
Education Qualification: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field or higher with minimum 06 years of relevant experience
Job Summary
Experience Required: 6–9+ Years
Job Summary
We are seeking a high caliber Senior AS/400 (IBM i) Systems Administrator / Infrastructure Engineer (L3 Support) to serve as the senior technical authority for our enterprise IBM Power Systems platform. In this lead engineering role, you will be responsible for platform architecture, operating system upgrades, virtualization design, deep tier incident forensics, high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) design, storage engineering, and performance optimization.
The successful candidate will act as the final internal escalation tier for mission critical IBM i infrastructure incidents, drive complex OS migrations across releases (IBM i 7.3, 7.4, and 7.5), architect PowerVM and VIOS environments, optimize enterprise storage configurations (IASP, SAN integration), and orchestrate automated HA/DR replication architectures (PowerHA, MIMIX). This role focuses purely on system architecture, operating system engineering, security hardening, and infrastructure resilience, serving as the technical liaison to IBM Support (PMR/Escalations), enterprise architects, and executive IT management.
Key Responsibilities
Level 3 Escalation, Deep Diagnostics & Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
Serve as the supreme technical escalation authority for severe (P1/Major) system outages, abnormal IPLs, kernel exceptions, hung partitions, and machine check conditions.
Conduct advanced system crash investigations using System Service Tools (SST), Dedicated Service Tools (DST), Main Storage Dumps (MSD), and LIC trace analysis.
Interrogate advanced logs (PAL, QHST, Advanced Job Logs) to diagnose complex intermittent hardware faults, bus channel errors, and memory corruptions.
Own and author definitive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) documentation; engineer preventative architecture changes to permanently eliminate systemic failure modes.
Manage and drive complex technical support cases (PMRs / IBM Support Cases), coordinating directly with IBM Level 3 labs and Rochester development teams.
Operating System Lifecycle, Version Migrations & PTF Engineering
Architect, plan, and execute major OS release upgrades (e.g., migrations from IBM i 7.3/7.4 to 7.5) and Technology Refresh (TR) cycles across large scale enterprise estates.
Formulate comprehensive PTF management policies; perform cross subsystem prerequisite/corequisite analysis, microcode/firmware compatibility matrices, and regression risk assessments.
Manage system level configurations including dynamic tuning system values, Workload Groups, Subsystem Descriptions (SBSD), Class parameters, and memory pool allocations.
Oversee system initialization scripts, startup programs (QSTRUP), subsystem routing architectures, and operational configurations.
Power Systems Architecture, PowerVM & VIOS Engineering
Architect, configure, and maintain enterprise IBM Power Systems hardware (Power9, Power10) managed via redundant Hardware Management Consoles (HMC).
Design and implement PowerVM virtualization solutions, including Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) clustering, Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) failover, and N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) SAN mapping.
Engineer enterprise LPAR topology, configuring shared processor pools, capped/uncapped partitions, Virtual Processors, and dynamic processor/memory optimization.
Lead HMC firmware lifecycles, service processor firmware upgrades, and disaster recovery replication for HMC configurations.
Enterprise HA/DR Architecture & Disaster Recovery Orchestration
Design, implement, and fine tune enterprise High Availability (HA) replication architectures using solutions such as Precisely MIMIX, IBM PowerHA SystemMirror, or Maxava HA.
Architect journal environments: Remote Journaling (RJ), asynchronous/synchronous network transport, dual journal receivers, and threshold management.
Architect and lead scheduled enterprise Disaster Recovery (DR) and full role swap (switchover / failover) tests, guaranteeing stringent Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).
Develop and maintain automated failover scripts, audit validation procedures, and emergency split brain recovery playbooks.
Storage Engineering, IASP & Resiliency Architecture
Architect auxiliary storage topologies, balancing internal NVMe/SAS drives and external SAN arrays (IBM FlashSystem, DS8000) using San Volume Controller (SVC).
Implement and manage Independent Auxiliary Storage Pools (IASP) to isolate databases for modular switchover and flash copy operations.
Formulate enterprise wide BRMS (Backup, Recovery, and Media Services) architecture, including network synced BRMS clusters, media lifecycle policies, and VTL encryption.
Author and validate bare metal disaster recovery procedures, cold start installation plans, and full scale recovery runs (SAVSYS / Option 21 rebuilds).
Advanced Performance Tuning, Profiling & Capacity Planning
Conduct deep tier system performance profiling utilizing IBM i Performance Data Investigator (PDI), Collection Services, Job Watcher, Disk Watcher, and IBM i Doctor.
Optimize system memory allocation by tuning dynamic system values (QPFRADJ), defining private memory pools, and resolving object lock contention.
Analyze disk subsystem bottlenecks, arm contention, queue depths, and optimize paging space allocation.
Formulate multi year capacity planning models predicting CPU (CPW), memory, and SAN storage expansion aligned with corporate business growth.
Security Hardening, Audit Forensics & Compliance Architecture
Architect and enforce OS security hardening in accordance with IBM i Security Level 40 and 50 standards.
Establish comprehensive security auditing architectures via QAUDJRN, configuring journal filters for security critical actions and unauthorized object manipulation.
Implement adopted authority controls, secure system values (QSECURITY, QPWD*, QALWUSRDMN), and service program access controls.
Drive compliance and vulnerability management programs (SOX, PCI DSS, ISO 27001), designing automated scripts to remediate non compliant configurations.
Infrastructure Automation, Modernization & Technical Mentorship
Architect reusable operational automation utilizing advanced Control Language (CL) programs and modern Db2 for i / IBM i Services (QSYS2).
Evaluate and implement modern administration frameworks, such as IBM i open source integration (PASE, Bash, Python), Ansible for IBM i automation, and REST APIs.
Serve as the technical mentor and escalation lead for L1 and L2 system administrators, conducting peer technical reviews and establishing enterprise engineering standards.
Participate in architectural review boards (ARB) for major business applications and enterprise infrastructure projects.
Key skills :
Backup strategies, disaster
Recovery plans
Performance tuning,
Capacity/resource planning
Data Restoration
System Upgrades
Required Qualifications
Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent industry experience.
Experience: Minimum of 6–10+ years of dedicated, hands on enterprise experience in IBM i (AS/400) System Engineering, Power Systems Architecture, and L3 Support.
Environment Experience: Proven track record architecting and supporting large scale enterprise environments (30+ LPARs, multi system Power9/Power10 estates, petabyte scale storage, and critical transaction banking/retail/logistics systems).
Required Technical Skills
Operating System Mastery: Deep internal architecture knowledge of IBM i (releases 7.2 through 7.5), LIC, SLIC, Microcode, Machine Check handling, and SST/DST forensics.
OS Migration & Lifecycle: Proven leadership in executing complex OS release upgrades (e.g., 7.3 > 7.4 > 7.5) and comprehensive Technology Refresh (TR) deployments.
Hardware & Virtualization: Advanced architecture experience with IBM Power9/Power10, redundant HMCs, PowerVM, dual VIOS configurations, NPIV, SEA, and dynamic LPAR allocation.
High Availability & DR: Mastery of enterprise HA solutions: MIMIX or PowerHA SystemMirror; comprehensive design of Remote Journals, data synchronization engines, and f

Work arrangement
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