Description:
We are seeking an exceptionally high-caliber Senior IBM MQ and Middleware Specialist for a critical 4-month mandate. This role is a direct backfill for a highly technical senior consultant. The ideal candidate must possess an advanced blend of enterprise messaging administration, application integration (IBM ACE/IIB), and modern DevOps monitoring automation. Given the short-term nature of this mandate, there is zero ramp-up time. We require a hands-on technical expert who can immediately manage high-volume MQ environments, oversee critical upgrade paths, and support customized monitoring tools built in Go.
Key Responsibilities
- Appliance & Infrastructure Management: Administer, configure, and maintain physical IBM MQ Appliances (2002/2003) and deployed Queue Managers (QMGRs) in a high-volume, 24/7 operational environment.
- Monitoring & Tooling (Golang): Maintain, optimize, and support multi-threaded monitoring tools, specifically custom-built Prometheus Exporters written in Golang designed to monitor MQ physical servers and a large number of MQ objects.
- Middleware Administration (MQ & ACE): Provide comprehensive day-to-day administration and operational support for both IBM MQ and IBM App Connect Enterprise (ACE) / IIB across development, testing, and production environments.
- Upgrades & Migrations: Prepare, test, and execute technical version upgrades for both IBM MQ (including high-availability clustering and multi-instance configurations) and IBM ACE/IIB.
- Troubleshooting & Performance Tuning: Act as the primary escalation point for complex integration and messaging issues. Tune Queue Managers and ACE execution groups for optimal throughput, latency, and stability.
- Security Administration: Ensure compliance with enterprise security policies, configuring SSL/TLS, Object Authority Manager (OAM), and advanced security features (e.g., IBM MQ Advanced Message Security / AMS).
Required Qualifications
- Experience: 7+ years of dedicated, hands-on experience in Middleware Administration, with a heavy focus on enterprise-grade IBM MQ and IBM IIB / ACE deployments.
- IBM MQ Appliance Expertise: Direct experience configuring and maintaining IBM MQ Appliance hardware (2002/2003), virtual appliances, and high-volume QMGRs.
- Development / Scripting Skills:
- Golang (Go): Practical experience writing, compiling, and debugging optimized, multi-threaded applications in Go.
- Strong automation scripting (Bash, Python, etc.) for administrative task acceleration.
- Modern Monitoring Integration: Hands-on experience integrating middleware with modern monitoring stacks, specifically Prometheus and Grafana.
- Upgrades & High Availability: Demonstrated success executing major MQ/ACE platform upgrades, setting up Queue clustering, and administering multi-instance high-availability architectures.
- Operating Systems: Deep expertise in Unix/Linux (RHEL, AIX) and Windows Server system-level environments.