CICS SME Pod Lead

Computer Task Group, Inc•UNAVAILABLE, UNAVAILABLE

3d•Remote

About The Position

CTG is seeking to fill a CICS SME Pod Lead position for our client. This role involves leading the administration, support, and maintenance of IBM CICS environments within a large-scale z/OS infrastructure. The successful candidate will serve as the technical SME and Pod Lead for CICS platform operations, ensuring system stability, availability, and performance. Responsibilities include managing CICS regions, transactions, resource definitions, and middleware configurations, as well as performing installations, configurations, maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting of CICS and related mainframe infrastructure components. The role also requires monitoring system health, analyzing performance metrics, implementing tuning recommendations, and coordinating incident response and problem resolution. The Pod Lead will oversee ticket prioritization, workload distribution, and provide technical guidance to support team members. Collaboration with cross-functional infrastructure teams, ensuring compliance with security standards and change management processes, and supporting planned maintenance, disaster recovery testing, and production implementations are also key aspects of this position. Participation in a 24x7 support model, including on-call rotations, and documenting system configurations and procedures are required.

Requirements

Expert knowledge of IBM CICS administration, systems programming, and middleware management.
Strong experience with z/OS platform administration and enterprise mainframe infrastructure.
Experience with mainframe storage management and system performance optimization.
Knowledge of SMP/E, RACF, JES2/JES3, VTAM, TCP/IP, and other z/OS infrastructure components.
Strong troubleshooting, diagnostic, and performance tuning skills.
Experience supporting highly available, mission-critical production environments.
Familiarity with change management, automation, monitoring, and operational best practices.
Excellent leadership, mentoring, organizational, and communication skills.
Ability to prioritize multiple production issues while maintaining service level commitments.
15+ years of experience in mainframe infrastructure administration.
Extensive experience administering IBM CICS in enterprise production environments.
Strong background in z/OS systems administration, middleware, storage, and platform management.
Experience providing technical leadership and coordinating infrastructure support teams.
Proven experience supporting 24x7 production operations and participating in on-call rotations.
Experience with system installations, upgrades, migrations, maintenance, and performance tuning.
Infrastructure administration experience is required; application development-focused backgrounds are not suitable for this role.
Excellent verbal and written English communication skills and the ability to interact professionally with a diverse group are required.

Nice To Haves

Candidates should have strong experience in infrastructure administration rather than application development.
Backgrounds primarily focused on COBOL, PL/I, JCL development, CICS application development, IMS application development, DB2 application programming, Java on z/OS, web services development, mainframe application maintenance, or application support are not aligned with this position.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical discipline preferred.
Equivalent combination of education and extensive enterprise mainframe experience will be considered.

Responsibilities

Lead the administration, support, and maintenance of IBM CICS environments within a large-scale z/OS infrastructure.
Serve as the technical SME and Pod Lead for CICS platform operations, ensuring system stability, availability, and performance.
Manage and support CICS regions, transactions, resource definitions, and middleware configurations.
Perform installation, configuration, maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting of CICS and related mainframe infrastructure components.
Monitor system health, analyze performance metrics, and implement tuning recommendations.
Coordinate incident response, problem resolution, and root cause analysis for complex infrastructure issues.
Oversee ticket prioritization, workload distribution, and technical guidance for support team members.
Collaborate with cross-functional infrastructure teams supporting z/OS, storage, networking, security, and middleware technologies.
Ensure compliance with security standards, operational procedures, and change management processes.
Support planned maintenance activities, disaster recovery testing, and production implementations.
Participate in a 24x7 support model, including scheduled on-call rotations for weekdays and weekends.
Document system configurations, operational procedures, and technical solutions.