​The Role: Head / Director Principal Engineer - IBM Z/OS

Location: Sheffield, UK

Position Type: Contract Inside IR35

Remote work option Available: Hybrid – 3 Days Onsite

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Job Description:

Technical Expertise & Tooling Mastery

1. Core Platforms Engineering Depth

- IBM Z: Deep-level expertise in z/OS, parallel sysplex, GDPS, WLM, CF structures, USS, and RMF/SMF performance analysis.

- IBM I: Comprehensive mastery of IBM I objects, Integrated File System (IFS) and PowerHA clusters.

2. OpenTelemetry & Observability Stack

- OTel Specification: Deep understanding of the Open Telemetry Protocol (OTLP), including the design and configuration of OTel Collectors (receivers, processors, and exporters).

- Distributed Tracing: Experience with context propagation (W3C Trace Context) to link mainframe transactions to distributed microservices.

- Backend Integration: Ability to export telemetry to industry-standard backends such as IBM Instana, Splunk, Dynatrace, Elastic, or Grafana/Prometheus.

- Middleware Mastery: Hands-on experience with zCEE, CICS, DB2, and MQ. You should understand how to enable trace propagation across these subsystems using OTel-compatible headers.

3. Quantum-Safe Encryption & Modern Security

- PQC (Post-Quantum Cryptography): Knowledge of implementing Quantum-Safe APIs and algorithms (like Crystals-Kyber) available on the IBM z16 and modern Power systems.

- Pervasive Encryption: Expert-level ability to implement Dataset and File System encryption with zero impact on application logic.

- Zero Trust Architecture: Architecting "Least Privilege" access systems and ensuring end-to-end encryption of data using AT-TLS or TLS 1.3.

4. Modern Tooling & Open Platform Integration

- DevOps Orchestration: Mastery of GitHub (Actions/Enterprise), Jenkins, and Ansible for cross-platform CI/CD.

- Automation Frameworks: Expert-level Ansible Automation Platform usage, including specialized IBM Z/I Collections for system automation.

- Cloud-Native Stack: Expert knowledge of Red Hat OpenShift (OCP) and z/OS Container Extensions (zCX).

- Modern DevEx: Experience of Zowe and VS Code to modernise the engineering interface.

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If this position is of interest to you, apply now!