Senior Principal Engineer - IBM Z/OS
- Posted 12 March 2026
- LocationSheffield
- Job type Contract
- Discipline Technology
Job description
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 modernize the engineering interface.
