IBM iSeries (AS/400) Infrastructure Administrator – L3

IBM iSeries (AS/400) Infrastructure Administrator – L3

Location: Colombia (LATAM)

Work Model: 100% Remote

Seniority: Senior / L3

Rate: USD 40/hour

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly experienced IBM iSeries (AS/400) Infrastructure Administrator – L3 to lead the administration, optimization, maintenance, and modernization of enterprise IBM i environments.

The ideal candidate will serve as the highest level of technical escalation, ensuring the performance, security, availability, and reliability of business-critical IBM i platforms. This role requires deep expertise in IBM i infrastructure, IBM Power Systems, Hardware Management Console (HMC), Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), high availability, disaster recovery, and enterprise storage.

The successful candidate will provide technical leadership, mentor L1/L2 support teams, coordinate with vendors, and drive infrastructure improvements across complex production environments.

Key Responsibilities

1. Technical Leadership & Escalation Management

• Provide L3 technical support and resolve complex infrastructure incidents.
• Mentor L1 operators and L2 administrators.
• Establish operational procedures, technical standards, and IBM i administration best practices.
• Lead critical incident investigations and root cause analysis.

2. IBM i Administration & Performance Optimization

• Administer, monitor, and optimize IBM i environments.
• Conduct performance assessments, capacity planning, and system tuning.
• Monitor system availability and generate operational and executive-level reports.
• Support application deployments across IBM i partitions.

3. Security Administration

• Design, implement, and maintain IBM i security policies and access controls.
• Manage SSL/TLS certificates, digital certificates, SSH security, and secure key generation.
• Support security audits, compliance initiatives, and vulnerability remediation.

4. Backup, Recovery & Business Continuity

• Monitor backup schedules and troubleshoot backup failures, unsaved objects, and BRMS-related issues.
• Develop and maintain backup, recovery, and business continuity procedures.
• Ensure data protection and recovery processes meet business requirements.

5. High Availability (HA) & Disaster Recovery (DR)

• Design, implement, and administer HA and DR environments.
• Lead disaster recovery planning, testing, failover, and failback activities.
• Ensure recovery strategies meet defined Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).

6. Storage & Network Administration

• Administer internal and external storage environments.
• Perform storage expansion, disk balancing, performance tuning, and security configuration.
• Manage the Integrated File System (IFS).
• Configure and troubleshoot TCP/IP networking on IBM i systems.
• Maintain connectivity across servers, HMCs, tape libraries, and integrated services.

7. Job Scheduling & Tape Library Management

• Administer Advanced Job Scheduler environments and production workload scheduling.
• Manage enterprise tape libraries, tape devices, and associated firmware.
• Maintain media lifecycle, tape movement, and retention policies.

8. IBM i System Maintenance & Upgrades

• Plan and execute IBM i operating system upgrades and Program Temporary Fix (PTF) management.
• Lead infrastructure maintenance, patching, and upgrade activities.
• Perform system health checks and support production deployments.

9. HMC & IBM Power Systems Administration

• Install, configure, and administer Hardware Management Consoles (HMC).
• Manage managed systems, frames, logical partitions, and HMC user access.
• Maintain HMC monitoring, security policies, backups, and recovery procedures.
• Plan and execute IBM Power server firmware upgrades.
• Validate compatibility between firmware, IBM i, HMC, and VIOS versions.
• Perform pre-upgrade and post-upgrade health checks.
• Troubleshoot firmware-related incidents and manage escalations.
• Configure Call Home and maintain SSL certificates.

10. Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) Administration

• Install, configure, maintain, and upgrade VIOS environments.
• Configure Virtual SCSI, NPIV, Virtual Ethernet, and Shared Ethernet Adapters (SEA).
• Manage storage presentation, SAN connectivity, and virtualized resource redundancy.
• Perform LPAR disk provisioning and removal through VIOS.
• Manage the VIOS Virtual Media Repository for IBM i LPAR operating system installations.
• Configure and support Virtual Tape Libraries (VTLs) for backup operations.

11. Vendor & Stakeholder Management

• Coordinate with IBM and third-party vendors to resolve complex technical issues.
• Participate in architecture reviews and infrastructure planning.
• Provide technical guidance to project teams and business stakeholders.
• Lead service improvement initiatives and operational governance meetings.

Required Qualifications

• 11+ years of relevant IT infrastructure experience, with strong expertise in IBM iSeries (AS/400) administration.
• Advanced troubleshooting and L3 escalation experience in enterprise IBM i environments.
• Strong knowledge of IBM Power Systems, HMC, VIOS, LPARs, and firmware management.
• Hands-on experience with IBM i security, performance tuning, backup and recovery, BRMS, HA/DR, and storage administration.
• Experience with IBM i operating system upgrades, PTF management, TCP/IP networking, and job scheduling.
• Knowledge of SAN connectivity, virtualized I/O, tape libraries, and enterprise backup solutions.
• Strong incident management, root cause analysis, documentation, and technical leadership skills.
• Ability to coordinate with vendors and collaborate with technical and business stakeholders.

Work Environment

• Enterprise production environment with 24/7 support requirements.
• Participation in on-call rotations and critical incident management.
• Occasional after-hours work for planned maintenance, upgrades, migrations, and disaster recovery exercises.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a senior IBM i infrastructure specialist with extensive hands-on administration experience, strong technical leadership, and the ability to manage complex enterprise environments while maintaining high standards of availability, security, and operational resilience.