Mainframe Production Operations Specialist

Bank of America•Plano, TX

4d•Onsite

About The Position

At Bank of America, we are guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better through the power of every connection. We do this by driving Responsible Growth and delivering for our clients, teammates, communities and shareholders every day. Being a Great Place to Work is core to how we drive Responsible Growth. This includes our commitment to being an inclusive workplace, attracting and developing exceptional talent, supporting our teammates’ physical, emotional, and financial wellness, recognizing and rewarding performance, and how we make an impact in the communities we serve. Bank of America is committed to an in-office culture with specific requirements for office-based attendance and which allows for an appropriate level of flexibility for our teammates and businesses based on role-specific considerations. At Bank of America, you can build a successful career with opportunities to learn, grow, and make an impact. Join us! Job Description: This job is responsible for being the first point of contact for requests or service failure incidents and maintaining stability for a portfolio of applications. Key responsibilities include performing initial investigations, mitigating impacts through routines and engaging in triages, responding to user requests, and working with technology teams to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve issues. Job expectations include following well defined Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and partnering with experts to improve service levels by proposing changes to monitoring, alerting, and configuration. Position Summary The individual will coordinate the weekly mainframe maintenance windows within established SLAs. Review changes utilizing BMC tool, align the moving parts into a concrete plan, pivot when the unexpected happens, has a strong attention to detail, is a leader/team player, and is able to calmly multi-task during a high stress window and see the big picture. Escalate elongated issues risking SLA. Document issues or improvements. Able to provide and communicate process improvements/solutions across differing audiences including technical, managerial. Participate in the resolution process for problems where analysis of situations or data requires an evaluation of various factors. Take part in multiple projects and activities related to special initiatives or operations. Leading and facilitating meetings to debate and understand risks associated with change and how they impact the production environment.

Requirements

Able to work weekdays and depending on the job responsibilities, a rotating weekend night schedule. (Includes Saturdays and Sundays)
Strong working knowledge (> 5 yrs.) and experience on mainframe technology infrastructure utilizing the zOS operating system, transaction and queuing systems, database systems and batch systems and understanding system start-up/shutdown, console messaging, and technology dependencies.
Strong Knowledge of standard mainframe tools such as TSO, JCL, JES2, SDSF, Console, etc.
Experience with BMC Remedy.
Able to closely vet change request that can be disruptive, need operational assistance and/or requires a service outage on Mainframe, understanding of infrastructure and business applications and able to minimize disruption of services.
Strong ability to multi-task and manage activities during a coordinated multi-technology change window.
Strong organization, attention to detail and project management skills.
Flexibility to react and adapt to rapidly changing scenarios, able to pivot where needed to ensure changes are successfully installed in the window while still meeting SLAs.
Exhibits excellent communication and interpersonal skills, collaborates effectively with team members, cross-functional teams, applications, and business units.
Good analytical and problem solving skills.
Self-motivated and results-orientated, able to create and maintain comprehensive documentation, including but not limited to operator procedures, detailed scripts outlining task clearly, ensuring clarity and consistency.
Excellent communication skills both verbal and written; must be able to appropriately convey ideas, concerns and opinions across differing levels of management
The ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines.
Strong leadership and teamwork skills and experience in supervising junior staff or leading project teams is desired.
Coordinating people and task to achieve goals.
Works effectively with others by establishing and maintaining positive working relationships on a functionally diverse team

Nice To Haves

Candidate must have 2 or more years of console operations work experience. Technical experiences should include operator knowledge of JES2, and MVS commands would be helpful.
Candidate must understand the sensitive and critical nature of data processing and service level agreements and be able to proactively contribute to organizational goals and delivery targets.
Knowledge of standard mainframe tools such as: ITSM, APVIEW, HMC, Microsoft office 365 suite products, MatterMost, Python, NETVIEW, SA z/OS.
A working knowledge of HMC, IPL and POR procedures is a plus.
Must be able to escalate issues and problems to support teams or upper management groups as required.
Previous experience in performing similar function is highly desirable.
ITIL certification a plus.
Strategic Thinker: able to anticipate business needs and growth opportunities. Challenging the status quo and continuously looking for opportunities to modernize and automate wherever we can.
Skills: Adaptability Analytical Thinking Influence Production Support Risk Management Automation Collaboration Result Orientation Solution Delivery Process Solution Design Business Acumen DevOps Practices Innovative Thinking Project Management

Responsibilities

Monitors and supports application components and related infrastructure, acts as the first point of contact for users, and responds to alerts regarding potential production incidents
Interprets and monitors dashboards, tools, and reports in order to proactively identify and address potential issues prior to production impact, escalating issues to senior team members or subject matter experts as needed
Performs environment routing and cycling, implements splash pages, and conducts user ID administration access provisioning/deprovisioning (additions, modifications, deletions) for applications
Works with technical partners to generate status updates, create technical detail for awareness communications, such as infrastructure, application and client impact, and component points of failure, and schedules follow up meetings
Partners with change and release teams to support implementations and proactively identify potential issues resulting from changes
Tracks incidents and requests in a defined system, executes procedures reliably, fulfills requests from business users and operations, and escalates issues as needed to solve incidents quickly
Keeps operational procedures updated and provides data that adheres to documentation requirements and audits
Coordinate the weekly mainframe maintenance windows within established SLAs
Review changes utilizing BMC tool, align the moving parts into a concrete plan, pivot when the unexpected happens
Escalate elongated issues risking SLA
Document issues or improvements
Provide and communicate process improvements/solutions across differing audiences including technical, managerial
Participate in the resolution process for problems where analysis of situations or data requires an evaluation of various factors
Take part in multiple projects and activities related to special initiatives or operations
Leading and facilitating meetings to debate and understand risks associated with change and how they impact the production environment