Engineer III - Middleware

Inland Empire Health Plan•Rancho Cucamonga, CA

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Engineer III - Middleware serves as a senior technical expert responsible for leading the design, implementation, and maintenance of IEHP’s middleware applications like Nginx, IIS, Kafka, Kubernetes, and others to enable secure, scalable, and reliable integration across systems. This role leads strategic middleware initiatives, including roadmap development, architecture design, and performance optimization, while ensuring compliance with security and regulatory standards. The Engineer III – Middleware provides technical leadership, oversees complex deployments, and collaborates with cross functional teams to deliver high-performing solutions that support organizational goals. Additionally, the incumbent utilizes their passion for debugging complex problems to manage incident resolution, capacity planning, and continuous improvement efforts to enhance middleware capabilities and operational efficiency. This role will also be responsible for production code release with the support of the IEHP’s Application Development teams. Commitment to Quality: The IEHP Team is committed to incorporate IEHP’s Quality Program goals including, but not limited to, HEDIS, CAHPS, and NCQA Accreditation.

Requirements

A minimum of eight (8) years of experience required in a combination of the following: Middleware applications like Kafka, IIS, Tomcat, WebSphere, performance tuning and managing them in clustered environments
Container orchestration and automation tools, with a strong focus on Kubernetes and Helm for managing deployments, scaling, and configuration of microservices in production environments
Executing scripts and independently performing troubleshooting on Linux and/or Unix (RHEL/Solaris) operating systems
Bachelor’s degree with a major in a Computer Systems-related field or similar technical field from an accredited institution required
Expert comprehensive knowledge and understanding in the following: Installing, configuring, administering, implementing and performance tuning clustered Middleware environments
Writing UNIX Shell Scripts (Korn, Bourne), WLST and Python Scripts
The JVM and how it operates and optimize it for best performance and availability, i.e., Garbage Collection, Tuning, etc.
Strong planning, organization, critical thinking, decision-making, and communication (verbal and written) skills
Skills in root cause analysis and rapid resolution of service interruptions
Strong analytical skills for performance tuning and optimization
Proven ability to: Work effectively with application development, infrastructure, and security teams
Manage projects, ensuring timely delivery and alignment with organizational goals
Lead initiatives, provide guidance to junior staff, and influence architectural decisions
Communicate technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders

Nice To Haves

DevOps toolsets such as Jenkins, Kubernetes, Docker desirable
AZURE or any other cloud technologies

Responsibilities

Lead the development and maintain a comprehensive roadmap for middleware initiatives, including business projects, application upgrades, core infrastructure upgrades, middleware platform upgrades (Kafka, Kubernetes, NGINX, etc.), compliance requirements, and operational improvements.
Establish and include in roadmap compliance and operational items including functional and security patches, middleware managed server certificate refreshes, vulnerability remediation, platform upgrades and changes.
Establish and include middleware improvements (e.g., log file rotation, automation) in the roadmap.
Provide technical leadership and subject matter expertise in middleware applications’/products’ architecture, configuration, development, product capabilities, and deployment.
Lead middleware definition requirements and ensure adherence to best practices and middleware security controls.
Coordinate middleware efforts across teams, manage task assignments, and ensure timely delivery of project requirements.
Provide inputs for middleware backlog prioritization including, analysis and assessment of epics/stories, SWAG / estimates, identify dependencies and story sequencing and participate in feature deep-dive working sessions and meetings.
Perform installation, configuration, performance tuning, capacity planning, optimization review, troubleshooting, and design for large, complex middleware platforms across multiple environments and platforms.
Perform system monitoring to ensure system operation health to meet service level agreements.
Support Business-As-Usual (BAU) activities, respond to alerts and service interruptions, and provide 24/7 on-call support to minimize disruptions, restore functionality, and support customers.
Execute production releases of software updates/new functionality in partnership with application development teams.
Interact with system and storage teams to perform back-up and recovery procedures for ensuring business continuity.
Implement and maintain middleware controls, manage vulnerability remediation, certificate refreshes, and patching.
Develop and maintain documentation to support middleware infrastructure and processes.
Maintain effective communication with vendors, systems support teams, local teams, end users, and next level management.
Provide technical consulting and support integration efforts to ensure business continuity.
Identify and implement middleware enhancements such as automation and log management.
Investigate middleware and integration issues to provide resolutions and to develop root cause analyses for supporting maintenance improvements and upgrade planning.
Develop, enhance, debug, support, maintain, and test software applications and associated products.
Participate in peer reviews for designs, code, and other work products.
Monitor the IT Service Management System to resolve customer issues and meet service expectations.
Manages middleware team tasks to meet project requirements.
Perform any other duties as required to ensure Health Plan operations and department business needs are successful.