Technical Lead - AS400/ITIL (4-9 yrs)

Job Purpose :

- The key purpose of this role is to provide support with projects to improve and enhance the production environment as well as maintaining it and ensuring all changes have a positive impact.

- Ensure the systems hardware & software of all IBM devices are running as per SLA's.

- You will also ensure that the operating environment for the iSeries partitions are utilised efficiently, kept secure and technically up to date.

- This role involves the project management of the design, deployment, configuration, management & on-going support of the IBM infrastructure.

- Furthermore the role must ensure a smooth and simple process when dealing with live system incidents, maintaining visibility, tracking live issues and working closely with key internal OSB stakeholders.

- The Technical Lead must also ensure that the team adhere to all agreed service level agreements and highlighting capacity and service issues early.

Core Responsibilities

- Incident Management: All support request raised to us will be managed within agreed service level as agreed with the business.

- 3rd line support of critical applications running on the Iseries called Bastion.

- Take complete technical responsibility of the entire iSeries project.

- Identifying risks and forming contingency plan as soon as possible.

- Information Management: Building a team Knowledge base that is easy to understand and usable by junior members of staff.

- Engage with business leads and the 3rd party supplier to progress resolution of issues.

- Knowledge sharing with other support staff to build good knowledge base and ensuring we always look to add value.

- Actively manage general risk and audit issues and ensure that relevant control/risk processes are adhered to by complying with relevant risk policy and procedures.

- DR Test Verification of systems as per the yearly DR policy.

- All Change Requests (CRs) and Project deliverables are expected to be delivered in agreed timelines.

Problem Management :

- Ensuring recurring issues are addressed by the right process and recurring issues escalated to architecture.

Post Implementation Signoff :

- Getting signoff from the business that delivery into production is complete.

- Attend Weekly meetings with the team and any project meetings.

- Dealing with hardware and software problems with our external support.

- Liaising with RPG developers for any codes change requirements.

- Supporting the testing team with any requests they have.

- Provide support where required to any project activity.

- Performance Analysis on all LPARs.

- Maintaining security policy.

- Ensuring all documentation is kept up to date and relevant.

- Maintaining our licensing across all IBM hardware & software.

- Ensure that the iSeries partitions are being monitored effectively for machine resource utilization, remediating when necessary, where possible and/or escalating where appropriate.

- Ensure that the iSeries Operating Systems and associated hardware/software components within the Power8 &power 10 architecture (Server, Physical Tape & Virtual Tape Drives, SAN, VIOS and HMC) are up to date with PTFs, certificates and licenses and are within active support by IBM and/or other vendors.

- Plan for the BAU integration into production of anything arising from the Bastion/Power10 migration project work.

- Look to continually reduce operating costs across all iSeries partitions by identifying existing or potential synergies and/or proposing innovative ways to process current and future workloads in an efficient way maximizing the resources and capabilities of machine, tools and staff, including shift-left opportunities.

- Act as a technical mentor for iSeries teams and be the 'go to' person for any and all non-application queries and issues.

- Lead a small team of L2 and L3 personnel.

- Ensure that you fully understand and comply with the organisation's Risk Management Policies as they relate to your area of responsibility and demonstrate in your day to day work that you put customers at the heart of everything you do.

- Ensure that you fully understand and comply with the organisation's Data Governance Policies as they relate to your area of responsibility and demonstrate in your day to day work that you treat data as an important corporate asset which must be protected and managed.

- Maintain the company's compliance standards and ensure timely completion of all mandatory on-line training modules and attestations.

Experience Requirements

- 10+ years' experience working with production iSeries environments is essential with 5 or more years at L3 level is mandatory.

- 4 years or more experience supporting applications in a financial services environment is desirable.

- 4 years or more demonstrated experience in managing communication "upwards" to senior leadership is essential.

- Basic windows server knowledge knowledge is desirable.

Knowledge Requirements :

- Robust understanding of Incident and problem management is essential.

- Basic knowledge of UK mortgage and/or savings products is desirable.

- Good knowledge on document management, including document formats and viewers is desirable.

- Good knowledge on IBM iSeries OS upgrade to V7R4 & V7R5.

- Specialist knowledge of the iSeries environment and associated industry best practice is essential.

- Specialist knowledge on BRMS, HMC, Replication, Advanced Job Scheduler, Tape management, CL/400, VIOS & IBM SAN, IBM security, automation is essential.

Skill and Competency Requirements :

- Operating system upgrades, PTF maintenance, Security management, Software upgrades, High Availability setup/maintenance, Automation setup/maintenance, Performance analysis and reporting, System monitoring, IBM server installation and setup, IBM server network specialist are desirable.

- Excellent trouble shooting skills to trace root cause is essential.

Required Qualifications/Certifications :

- Industry specific qualifications in iSeries technical administration would be desirable.

- Technical IT training qualifications is beneficial.

- ITIL- Foundation Certification is beneficial.

- ITIL- Intermediate : Continual Service Improvement certification is beneficial.